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SOME OUTLINES OF 
 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO ■ DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
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 TORONTO 
 
SOME OUTLINES OF 
 
 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 A BOOK FOR LAYMEN AND THE UNCHURCHED 
 
 BY 
 HORACE J. BRIDGES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "criticisms Or LIFE," ETC. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1916 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 COPYSIGHT, igi6 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published August, igi6. 
 
TO 
 
 THE MEMORY 
 
 OP 
 
 DODO 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Chapter. 
 
 I. The Position and Odtlook oe the Churches i 
 
 n. The Causes of the Relative iNErFiciENCY of the 
 
 Churches i8 
 
 III. The Re-interpretation of God 43 
 
 rv. The Re-discovery of Jesus Christ 75 
 
 V. The Resurrection of Socrates 123 
 
 VI. Inspiration: Its Nature and Conditions 160 
 
 VII. Immortality: A Study in Plato 188 
 
 VIII. Religion and Nationality 217 
 
 Conclusion: The Hope of SpiRrruAL Unification 261 
 
 Index 267 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The period through which we are passing has been 
 characterized with great accuracy and felicity by Mr. 
 Walter Lippmann as one of simultaneous drift and mas- 
 tery: mastery of detail, combined with drift in the 
 matter of the paramount interests of life and its direction 
 as a whole. In no way is this state of things more clearly 
 demonstrated than by the contrast between our great 
 and constant advances in scientific knowledge and the 
 control of the world's material resources, and the ever- 
 increasing confusion, obscurity and imcertainty in the 
 domain of morals and religion. We know more about the 
 trees than our forebears, and can handle them with 
 unprecedented skill; but of the dimensions of the wood, 
 and of the chances of finding a path through it, we do not 
 know. Indeed, we are tempted to despair of the possibil- 
 ity of knowing. Our impulse is towards agreeing with 
 Auguste Comte in his assertion that metaphysical in- 
 quiry is vain, and that we must deliberately limit our- 
 selves to the field of the phenomenal, in which "positive" 
 knowledge and "positive" results are obtainable. 
 
 And yet the soul of man refuses to acquiesce per- 
 manently in such a proposal. We caimot remain satisfied 
 with building a roof to our house and calling it the sky. 
 Moreover, a little attention convinces us that we cannot 
 attain to mastery in those departments of Kfe where 
 to-day we are adrift, unless we can discover some sover- 
 eign principle whereby to co-ordinate our activities and 
 to orient them towards goals which shall command our 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 spontaneous and rational loyalty. Such a principle is 
 not to be found in the phenomenal world. The Positivist 
 maxims of Love, Order and Progress, of devotion to 
 Family, Country and Humanity, are not self-justifying to 
 the post-Nietzschean age, if they ever were before; nor 
 can they be vindicated without overstepping the limit 
 which Comte arbitrarily prescribed to investigation. 
 Agnosticism is, no doubt, a right and wise attitude in 
 regard to many questions, but agnosticism as to the 
 question of the worth of life, as to the essential difference 
 between right and wrong, or as to the qualities of char- 
 acter which men should strive to develop in themselves, 
 is a fatal disease, paralyzing to the will, and involving 
 ultimately the suicide of the mind. Now the scientific 
 attitude, with its equal and impartial interest in all facts, 
 is bound to be agnostic on these issues, where the supreme 
 interests of life demand clear and confident conviction. 
 We need, then, something in the nature of a rehgious 
 faith upon which we can all agree. Yet tlie bare state- 
 ment of this as a desideratum is calculated to excite 
 ironical laughter. What is easier than to point to the 
 endless differences even among that minority which still 
 adheres to the various organized forms of religion, or to 
 remind us that a large majority has turned its back upon 
 them all? To hope for a time when the existing Churches 
 shall have composed their differences and arrived at 
 unity of faith and poUty seems Utopian. In so far as 
 various Churches are co-operating in philanthropic and 
 social work, they are doing so only after carefully stip- 
 ulating not to discuss the vital principles which inspire 
 them. Moreover, even if we could anticipate that 
 within the next twenty or thirty years the Protestant 
 sects will attain to unity among themselves, what hope 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 would this give us of bridging the gulf that divides 
 Protestants from Catholics, and both from Jews and free 
 thinkers? Yet what we need is a principle which shall 
 bind together all the members of the nation, and, in 
 time, all the nations of the earth. 
 
 Our only hope seems to lie in discovering some fresh 
 standpoint from which the doctrines and disciplines of all 
 faiths may be seen in a new Ught and re-valued.. This I 
 have attempted to do by raising the question of the 
 sociological function of religion. My first inquiry is not 
 as to the truth of the creeds, but as to their reason for 
 existence. What are those needs which have urged men 
 into rehgious fellowships, and induced them to elaborate 
 the various inadequate philosophies called theologies, 
 and the numerous systems of worship, prayer and 
 sacrament? Can these needs be isolated and studied 
 apart from the attempts made to satisfy them? If so, 
 may it not be possible to discover means of meeting them 
 upon which there could be the same kind of practical 
 agreement as there is in regard to the findings of physical 
 science? 
 
 In seeking to answer these questions, I have availed 
 myself in this volume of the luminous and helpful method 
 of the psychological students of religion. This is the 
 method of distinguishing between experience and its 
 theoretical interpretation. I have ventured to assume 
 that the creeds and doctrines of all the Churches are 
 attempts to precipitate into conceptual form certain 
 experiences of the human spirit, certain demands which 
 it makes upon the universe, and the response of the 
 universe to those demands. Now since the creeds are 
 imverifiable (because their propositions cannot be sub- 
 jected to experimental investigation), it seemed necessary 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 to turn direct to the experience out of which they grew. 
 Moreover, it seems probable that the study of the dis- 
 ciplinary practices of the Churches, — their sacramental 
 and other devices for placing the individual in contact 
 with the sources of spiritual strength, — will bring us 
 directly into the presence of those needs in response to 
 which organized religion has functioned. 
 
 This book is thus an attempt to bring to light some of 
 the verifiable factors in religion. Its suggestion is that 
 the Churches should concentrate exclusively upon these. 
 To those who are accustomed to find mental rest and 
 satisfaction in the detailed creeds of the older Churches, 
 such a suggestion may sound chilling and disenchanting 
 in the extreme. It will not do, however, to make the 
 wilfulness of a pampered appetite our guide when truth 
 and the other sovereign interests of mankind are at 
 stake. No doubt it might have been possible, in the days 
 of the infancy of science, to construct a much grander and 
 more fascinating view of the universe than was then 
 verifiable, if wilfulness and imagination had been sub- 
 stituted for the slow and plodding method of investiga- 
 tion and experiment. Not only, however, would such 
 an unreal world have been fruitless, but it Would also 
 have constituted a most effectual and permanent barrier 
 to the attainment of that truth, transcending in grandeur 
 all possible imaginary constructions, which the slower 
 method has gradually won. 
 
 Now, theologies elaborated in the days of alchemy and 
 astrology, and by the same a priori methods as those 
 employed by the alchemist and the astrologer, must 
 needs bear to the undiscovered truth such a relation 
 as alchemy and astrology bear to chemistry and astron- 
 omy. And just as, in the process of converting those 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 romances into our sciences, the first step was to cast 
 overboard all mere speculation and guesswork, and to 
 concentrate upon the tiny fragments of assured truth, 
 so to-day we must begin by denying ourselves the luxury 
 of indulgence in that which is unverifiable. We now 
 stand in religion where the fifteenth century stood in 
 physical science. We are only at the stage of beginning 
 to invent the new instruments and to devise the new 
 methods of inquiry by which we may at last attain to as 
 full a body of ascertained truth in religion as we have 
 won in our knowledge of the physical world. 
 
 It is because of an intense conviction that religion is 
 suffering through our failure to recognize the need of new 
 methods and instruments, that I have in these pages 
 given so large a place to the question of intellectual 
 honesty, and of that kind of sincerity which consists in 
 the rigorous separation of what is known from what is 
 merely assumed. Hence my assertion of the claim of 
 Socrates to rank beside Jesus Christ as a Saviour of the 
 world, in the conviction that his method and secret are 
 not only an integral part of any true religion, but a part 
 which, imder present circumstances, needs emphasis 
 more than any other factor. 
 
 This book, I am aware, can scarcely justify its title. 
 The subject of the Religion of Experience is too vast for 
 adequate treatment within the limits I have imposed 
 upon myself. I am in the dilemma remarked by Seeley 
 in the Preface to his Natural Religion: "An author has 
 always to decide whether he will write short or long; 
 and it is a choice of evils. If he writes long the public 
 will decline to read him; if he writes short they will 
 misunderstand him." My only possible justification is 
 that this book, like several others of recent date, may 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 supply hints and suggestions which, if worked out by a 
 multitude of other thinkers, will at last lead to the elab- 
 oration of the new philosophy, psychology and sociology 
 of religion. I am chiefly anxious that the book shall be 
 recognized as an essay towards a basis of peace and co- 
 operation. The day of the warfare between the provi- 
 sional hypotheses of science and the speculations of 
 theology (which was mistaken for a warfare between 
 science and religion) is over. The time has come to seek 
 peace upon the only possible worthy basis: that of the 
 acceptance of principles recognized as vaUd by both bel- 
 ligerents, and the application of those principles to the 
 task of achieving human salvation, by giving to the whole 
 of life a spiritual interpretation and a spiritual orientation 
 that will call forth a devotion at once rational and 
 enthusiastic. 
 
 My hope is that this volume may secure the attention 
 of laymen of all denominations, and of those who are not 
 members of any religious organization. To experts in 
 theology and philosophy I fear I have little to offer 
 that is profound enough to merit their consideration. 
 The salvation of rehgion, however, must come, in my 
 judgment, from the laity, and from those clergy who, by 
 the multiplicity of their tasks, are prevented from becom- 
 ing specialists in its ultimate problems. Both the clergy 
 and the unchurched laity may, indeed, be weary of the 
 theme. I can but hope that there may be in these pages 
 enough freshness of treatment and suggestion of points 
 of view which have not hitherto been emphasized, to 
 engage their interest. My desire is to set their minds 
 working in fresh directions, rather than to convert them 
 to agreement with my own views on points of detail. 
 
 As my colleagues in the Chicago Ethical Society have 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 generously undertaken the distribution of a number of 
 copies of this book, it is due to them to state that these 
 pages contain a frank expression of my own convictions, 
 the censure of which must fall exclusively upon myself. 
 The Ethical Movement is one in which the members 
 are challenged to do their own thinking. The leaders 
 are neither expected to supply a body of dogmas to 
 their congregations nor to submit their own minds to 
 collective coercion. Hence the distribution of this work 
 by my colleagues does not commit them to acceptance 
 of the more debatable positions it sets forth. 
 
 My obligations are too extensive for detailed specifica- 
 tion. It is this fact, and not any deficiency of gratitude, 
 which deters me from mentioning names here. I cannot, 
 however, deny myself the pleasure of thanking my friend 
 Mr. Arthur Little Hamilton for his constant help and 
 encouragement, and in particular for his practical assist- 
 ance in reading and criticizing this volume in manuscript 
 and proof. 
 
 H. J. B. 
 
 Chicago, June, 1916. 
 
SOME OUTLINES OF 
 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
SOME OUTLINES OF 
 
 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 
 
 There is in many minds a conviction that the day of the 
 Churches is drawing to a close. This is not merely an 
 idea entertained by unsympathetic critics in whom the 
 wish is father to the thought. It is the despairing belief 
 of many who, by antecedents and even by ordination, are 
 identified with the historical tradition and the spiritual 
 mission of the Christian fellowships. Recent periodicals 
 have been full of the question. Has the Church collapsed? 
 and most of the answers, even by ministers or ex- 
 ministers, have inclined towards the affirmative. In 
 many of the Churches the leaders are no longer leading; 
 they have lost the sense of their distinctive task and 
 function. They are groping in a twilight of intellectual 
 and spiritual uncertainty. Their whole tone is "timid 
 and apologetic," as of men who are uncomfortably 
 doubtful whether they are rendering a service commen- 
 surate with their emolument. 
 
 This misgiving in some cases has taken a very positive 
 shape. Papers have appeared affirming that the Chris- 
 tian Church is in a state of complete apostasy from the 
 spirit and teaching of its founders, and impljdng that 
 sincere men should come out of her, lest they become 
 partakers of her plagues. In this sense recently the 
 
2 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Rev. Elvet Lewis (formerly the coadjutor in London of 
 Mr. R. J. Campbell) expressed himself in the Atlantic 
 Monthly. He has abandoned his own pastorate, and 
 apparently despairs of any kind of religious organization 
 possible under existing circiunstances. 
 
 The Century Magazine for February, 1915, contained a 
 paper by Dr. Edwin Davies Schoomnaker, on the ques- 
 tion "Has The Church Collapsed?" The burden of his 
 plaint is that the Christian ecclesia has been false to its 
 mission and purpose, from the very first day that its 
 doctrine and organization began to crystalMze into 
 definite shape in the minds of SS. Paul and Peter. Dr. 
 Schoonmaker's indignation is awakened by the fact that 
 the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral was resented 
 by the world on aesthetic grounds alone. To his mind 
 the majestic beauty of the medieval shrines is itself a 
 thing to be deplored. The cathedral, he thinks, is not 
 the home, but the tomb of the spirit of Christ. It ex- 
 presses not the triumph of the Church, but the victory 
 of the world over the Church. His argument imphes 
 that Christianity ought always to have remained, what 
 it was in the lifetime of Jesus, a direct spiritual influence 
 of individuals upon individuals, without doctrine or 
 organization, without hierarchy, and without pecuniary 
 endowment. For him the apostasy began with SS. Paul 
 and Peter, the former of whom — so it is implied — turned 
 the religion of love into a system of improfitable dogma, 
 while the latter transformed it into a temporal power, 
 destined subsequently to enslave the minds and souls of 
 men. 
 
 One cannot but feel the earnestness of purpose which 
 these criticisms express, and it would be wrong not to 
 salute with respect the spirit of Dr. Schoonmaker and 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 3 
 
 Mr. Lewis. But their reasoning proceeds upon pre- 
 suppositions which are not congruous with the poor 
 world of actual experience. Organization and intellectual 
 formulation are, by the structure of our minds and the 
 nature of our circumstances, inevitable concomitants, 
 indispensable instruments of every spiritual movement. 
 St. Paul's theology may be as false as you please; and it 
 may be not wholly unjust to blame St. Peter for all the 
 sins and shortcomings of the Roman hierarchy. Yet the 
 patent fact is that, without their work and teaching, the 
 very name of Jesus would have perished in the bogs and 
 sands of oblivion, and to evil and to good been lost for 
 ever. The anarchistic ideas of the critics, — their visions 
 of a sweet and lovely spiritual influence, diffusing and 
 perpetuating itself without any worldly organization or 
 philosophical expression, — are dreams indeed: "dreams 
 out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight." 
 They owe to the organization and the theology which 
 they condemn, the preservation of that very standard of 
 Christian inwardness by reference to which they con- 
 demn them. Without the theology and the missionary 
 labours of St. Paul there never would have arisen those 
 groups of people who demanded information about the 
 life and work of their Lord; and consequently the Gospels 
 would never have been written. Nor, without the de- 
 velopment which led to the establishment of Christianity 
 by Constantine, is it conceivable that the Christian fel- 
 lowship could have survived the avalanche which de- 
 stroyed the proud fabric of Roman civilization. How, 
 then, can one condemn unreservedly an institution which, 
 amid whatever tyranny and corruption, has preserved 
 the standard by which its own shortcomings are to 
 be judged, and has communicated to Mr. Lewis and 
 
4 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Dr. Schoonmaker that very impulse of unworldly ideal- 
 ism which breathes in their writings? 
 
 The Church, to be sure, is corrupt. There is no single 
 branch of it, from the Roman to the Quaker, which is 
 not obnoxious to this censure. But to say this is only 
 to say that the Church is a human institution. If one 
 is so obsessed with transcendentalism that one forgets 
 what complications must needs ensue when the white 
 radiance of eternity is refracted through the atmosphere 
 of the time-world, one may say that the presence of 
 even the slightest degree of corruption must condemn 
 the Church beyond reprieve. But the man who keeps 
 his feet upon the solid earth of the actual, even while he 
 lifts his head among the stars of the ideal, will regard 
 the presence of corruption as a reason not for condemna- 
 tion, but only for reformation. 
 
 It will not do to compare the actual historic Church 
 with some perfect pattern laid up in the clear heavens 
 of the ideal. The only fair comparison is between the 
 Church and other hiiman institutions, all of which in 
 truth must finally be judged as sacramental vehicles of 
 the ideal, media of inward and spiritual graces to man- 
 kind. Has the Church been more corrupt relatively 
 than the State, the family, and the school? Have popes 
 and bishops, priests and deacons, been more traitorous to 
 their trust than kings and statesmen? Has the Church 
 done proportionately less good and more harm than so- 
 called secular governments? Granted that among its 
 evil it has done some good, could that good have been 
 better done in its absence? 
 
 Those who feel that Christianity has brought upon 
 the world a degree of harm that preponderates over the 
 good it has accomplished, must remember that the fair 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 5 
 
 way of judging the Church is not to compare it with 
 an ideal society that never could have been actualized 
 on earth, or even with the best and most catholic religious 
 fellowship conceivable to-day; but to compare it with 
 any other religious organization possible at the time and 
 under the circumstances in which it sprang into being. 
 Christian doctrine, ritual, and ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tion are, broadly speaking, a synthesis of the modernist 
 Judaism of the first century with the paganism of that 
 and later periods. The Christian element is tiny as 
 compared with the entire mass. The question, however, 
 is whether that element was a wholesome leaven, and 
 whether it did beneficently leaven the lump. Suppose 
 that, instead of Christianity, the predominant element 
 in the synthesis had been Mithraism, or Manichasism, 
 or Neo-Platonism of the t)rpe of Philo or Plotinus. Sup- 
 pose any phase of the degenerate paganism pictured so 
 vividly in the early books of St. Augustine's City of 
 God had taken in the synthesis the place that was 
 actually taken by the doctrine of Jesus and St. Paul: 
 would the result have been better? Would the pagan 
 hosts that overwhelmed the Empire have been more 
 speedily initiated into the principles of civilization? 
 
 Let the despairing critic of the Church place himself 
 imaginatively in the second or the third or the fourth 
 century. Let him obliterate from his consciousness the 
 memory of all that has since transpired, and contemplate 
 the possible alternatives that then were open to the 
 minds of men. Seeing that only a tiny elite could receive 
 the teaching of Seneca, or Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius, 
 and that the world then was even less ready for the 
 concretion of pure ethics into a cultus than it is now; 
 seeing that truth must needs be embodied in some tale 
 
6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 if it is to enter in at lowly doors; and seeing that, even 
 for the deepest minds (Plato's, for example), myth is an 
 inevitable and indispensable vehicle for the communica- 
 tion of that vision which cannot be conveyed by lan- 
 guage: which of the available tales would he have chosen? 
 Which of those revered figures wherein men saw, or 
 dreamed they saw, some incarnation of the spirit of 
 eternal truth and goodness would he have selected as 
 the object of reverence and worship? Can any fair 
 student of history doubt that the choice that was made 
 was the best possible, — that the figure of Christ was the 
 least inadequate symbol of the God in man that was 
 available? 
 
 If, now, it be admitted that the dominance of the 
 Christian element in the religious amalgam which 
 triumphant barbarism took over from Rome was benefi- 
 cent, the next question is whether the good done to the 
 Western world through the historic working-out of the 
 Christian process was in any degree ascendant over the 
 savageries and ignorances inevitably characteristic of a 
 growth from barbarism into rudimentary civilization. 
 We must keep vividly in mind the realism of the historic 
 situation. That Goths and Huns, Teutons and Saxons, 
 Franks and Vandals, should have been semi-barbarous, 
 lustful, superstitious, ignorant, tyrannical, and dogmatic, 
 was inevitable in the nature of things. That they should 
 suddenly cease to be so through being baptized and called 
 Christians, or ordained and called deacons, priests and 
 bishops, is what nobody but a very superstitious person 
 could for a moment expect. The only triumph of a 
 refining influence that can reasonably be looked for 
 is that they should occasionally have intermitted their 
 savageries, — that once in a while there should be a 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 7 
 
 Charlemagne, an Alcuin, a John the Scot, capable of 
 better things. Our gratitude is due to the institution 
 which made possible these rare stray gleams of light. 
 Who can measure the contributions to civilization which 
 have directly and indirectly ensued through Ulfilas' 
 translation of the Bible into Gothic? If it be urged that 
 he would have done more good by translating Plato, the 
 answer is that Plato would have been as remote from the 
 understanding of UlElas and his contemporaries in Gothic 
 as in the original Greek. 
 
 The theology of Tertullian and Augustine, it may be 
 said, was barbarous. So be it. But be it remembered 
 also that any ethical message which is to grip the con- 
 sciousness and command the allegiance of barbarians 
 must necessarily take to itself a barbaric integument, in 
 order that it may come within their apperceptive range. 
 That is why the Latin rather than the Greek Fathers 
 became the dominant theologians of the West. The com- 
 parative hiunanity and intellectual subtlety of Jerome 
 and Origen placed them outside the mental horizon of 
 the barbarized West, as completely as Emerson and 
 Bergson are beyond the ken of the average patron of 
 the baseball field and the moving-picture show. 
 
 For those, then, who, like myself, lay claim to the 
 noble style of free thinkers, I would sum up the argument 
 thus: Do not maintain in one breath that the Church is a 
 human institution, and in the next pass criticisms which 
 imply that it ought to have been superhuman and super- 
 natural. 
 
 Another consideration which must impress itself upon 
 anybody who remains aware of facts as they are, as 
 well as of the ideal, is that the Church — using the term 
 in its broadest sense — remains to-day the only possible 
 
8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 channel for the communication of ethical ideals and an 
 ethical djoiamic to the masses of Europe and of our own 
 country. I do not forget the enormous debt which man- 
 kind owes to the heretics, the innovators, and the free 
 thinkers; but is it not equally true that, in so far as their 
 spirit has acted upon the masses, it has been the Churches 
 which willy-nilly suppUed the channel through which it 
 was mediated? Is it not the commonplace of historians 
 of free thought that the Churches have continually been 
 changing, especially during the last hundred years, in 
 the direction of humanity and rationality? If Emerson 
 and Matthew Arnold, Strauss and Renan, Seeley and 
 Darwin, and the rest of the Uberators have at all in- 
 fluenced the masses, has it not been chiefly at second- 
 hand, through the teaching of preachers who have dnmk 
 directly of their spirit? 
 
 It will not do to hug to our souls any optimistic illu- 
 sions as to the power of self-education and self-direction 
 possessed by the generahty. We have, to be sure, our 
 free libraries, and our many cheap editions of the master- 
 works of hiunan thought; yet the direct influence of these 
 is at best small, and, even at that, is chiefly due to the 
 personal advice of teachers and preachers. Does not 
 every public teacher know that he can create a demand 
 for a certain kind of books by his recommendation and 
 advice? The fact is glaringly obvious that nothing but 
 social organization and the direct influence of the Uving 
 voice can avail to stem the flood of intellectual darkness 
 and spiritual deficiency which still imperils all the nobler 
 achievements of civilization. Yet, while the individual- 
 istic illusion, which in the teeth of the facts maintains 
 the contrary, is still prevalent, onp must insist upon the 
 truth, even at the cost of seeming platitudinous. We 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 9 
 
 must not attempt, in the words of Milton, to "sequester 
 out of the world, into Atlantick and Utopian polities." 
 
 We hold, then, these truths to be self-evident: first, 
 that the Church (including under this designation all 
 varieties of Christianity and Judaism) is not destined to 
 disappear; secondly, that, if it were, this would be an un- 
 mixedly bad thing for America and Europe, and not less 
 so from the point of view of the free thinker than from 
 that of the rigid authoritarian; thirdly, that if the 
 Churches did not exist, it would be necessary to invent 
 them; fourthly, that to-day there is no machinery ca- 
 pable of replacing them or of doing the practical good 
 which, in spite of aU their limitations, they actually do 
 accomplish; fifthly, that if the impossible did happen, 
 and they were to disappear, the new organizations 
 started by free-thinking hiunanists to replace them would 
 either have to reproduce many of those features of the 
 present Churches to which free thinkers commonly ob- 
 ject, or else would necessarily fail of their purpose. 
 
 The present volume is accordingly written in a spirit 
 of genuine friendship to the Churches, by one who sin- 
 cerely desires for them an increasing influence and suc- 
 cess; by one who deplores their narrowness, their mis- 
 takes and their present comparative inefl&ciency, only 
 because he is convinced of the reality of the need which 
 they are in part meeting, and which they could and ought 
 to meet far more effectually. 
 
 Doubtless the direct influence of the Church on our 
 modern populations is relatively less extensive than it 
 was in former days. Here in America, according to the 
 latest statistics I have seen, sixty per cent, of us have 
 no Church connection whatever. Some of the Churches 
 barely hold their own; others continue to grow, though 
 
10 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 slowly. Generally speaking, the rate of increase has de- 
 clined, relatively to the increase of population; in some 
 cases almost to the vanishing-point. There is here ample 
 warrant for discouragement. Yet those who feel that 
 discouraging circumstances are less an occasion for 
 apathy and despair than for an unprecedentedly vigorous 
 tackling of the task, will do well to turn their attention 
 to the other side of the shield. 
 
 Upon doing so, we note that in the United States to- 
 day there are forty millions of people who are connected 
 with religious bodies, and are to some extent influenced 
 in the conduct of their lives by such ethical standards 
 as the Churches uphold. It may perhaps be counted un- 
 fortunate that of these forty millions, no less than thir- 
 teen millions must be assigned to the Roman Church, 
 which in practice has been the least ethical and the 
 most anti-intellectual of all the Christian bodies. To be 
 sure, there is no necessary reason why this should con- 
 tinue to be the case. The Roman Church, without any 
 change in its hierarchical organization, could become as 
 potent an influence for personal and public morahty as 
 any of its actual or possible rivals. Its great difficulty 
 in America is that its priests are in general (by the ad- 
 mission of some of their own body) an ignorant and in- 
 ferior class of men. No Church suffering from such a 
 handicap can rise to the level of its possibilities. Those 
 possibilities, in the case of the Roman Church, are 
 represented by St. Francis and Dante, by Pascal, by 
 Thomas a Kempis, not to say by John Henry Newman 
 and George Tyrrell. The first things needful for the 
 Roman Church are an improvement in the average 
 cahbre of its officials, and a change of emphasis from 
 the miraculous and magical to the ethical elements of 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES ii 
 
 its doctrine. It is by right no less the custodian of the 
 humane, rarionaHstic and ethical spirit of Jesus, than 
 any of the brood of rivals which historically derive 
 from it. 
 
 Consider further the fact that the "Protestant Episco- 
 pal" Church in the United States now nmnbers over a 
 million adherents. This, in view of the democratic 
 and Puritan traditions of America, is a surprisingly 
 large measure of success to have been achieved by the 
 Anglican compromise, adapted as it was to the mon- 
 archical and aristocratic conditions of sixteenth-century 
 England. It has of course been won by an extension 
 of the compromising spirit; or, rather, by a develop- 
 ment iu the direction of democracy and comprehensive- 
 ness beyond anything that the Church of England has 
 yet attaiaed. There is far more liberty of prophesying 
 in the "Protestant Episcopal" Church of America than 
 in the English Establishment. The discovery of the 
 amount of freedom of thought, speech and action that 
 prevails among the clergy of the Episcopal Church in 
 this country has been to me a most agreeable surprise. 
 It is difl&cult to over-estimate the influence for good 
 which such a body, inheriting the splendid intellectual, 
 literary and aesthetic traditions of the English Church 
 and utilizing the liberty which it has here acquired, may 
 exert upon the future development of the nation. 
 
 Presbyterianism claims to be adding to its ranks 
 thousands of new members every year. That denomina- 
 tion has also not been immune to the influence of the 
 Time-Spirit. In the last twenty-five years it has achieved 
 the bursting of some bonds, and the loosening of others. 
 No more than any other human institution has it been 
 proof against the forces of mental and spiritual evolu- 
 
12 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 tion, as is testified by the attack upon its most "modern- 
 ist" seminary in the General Assembly of 1916. 
 
 And so one might go through the entire list of the 
 Christian denominations; but a detailed review of statis- 
 tics is unnecessary to the present argument. One should 
 not, however, overlook the fact that the large Jewish 
 stratimi of our population is undergoing a doctrinal 
 transformation in the direction of catholicity, rationality 
 and ethical quickening, exactly analogous to that which 
 has so extensively modified the Christian bodies. In 
 any large American city, the largest Jewish congregation 
 is fairly certain to be the hberal one. Witness the posi- 
 tions in the life of New York and Chicago held respec- 
 tively by Dr. Stephen Wise and Dr. Emil Hirsch, in 
 St. Louis by Rabbi Sale, and by their radical brethren 
 in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. My own task is the 
 leadership of the Chicago Ethical Society, one of five 
 congregations composing the American Ethical Move- 
 ment. This Movement, foimded by a living Hebrew 
 prophet, has gone further in the direction of clarifying 
 and stressing the ethical element, as that for the sake 
 of which the entire machinery of religion exists, than 
 any of the other denominations I have mentioned. In 
 the Ethical Movement there is a free mingUng of persons 
 of Gentile and of Jewish origin, with a supersession of 
 that distinction. This is a triumph not achieved in any 
 Christian Church (except perhaps in some few Unita- 
 rian bodies) or in any Jewish congregation, however ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 The inclusion of liberal Judaism and the Ethical Move- 
 ment, together with all Christian bodies, in the single 
 category of the Church is wholly in accordance with 
 the sociological and psychological truth of the situation, 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 13 
 
 however strenuously some may object to the classifica- 
 tion. We are in truth all one Church, in spite of our 
 divisions, just as we are in fact all one nation, though 
 we be divided into Republicans and Democrats, social- 
 ists and individualists, syndicalists and anarchists. Nor 
 can it be doubted that each of the divisions in religion 
 has a justification for its existence, in the shape of a 
 distinct contribution to the effort of human providence; 
 just as, undoubtedly, each of the political groups strikes 
 some note which is indispensable to the full symphony. 
 
 Individual religious bodies are no more to be taken 
 at their own interpretation than other social institutions. 
 They have to be viewed in the light of history, and 
 studied in terms of their psychological and sociological 
 function. When so regarded, they are all seen to have 
 a high significance and potential value, though the sig- 
 nificance and the value may be very different from those 
 that they claim for themselves. 
 
 In estimating the influence that the churches are exer- 
 cising upon contemporary Uf e, one has to look beyond the 
 statistics of membership, and beyond the ratio of their 
 numbers to the total population of the country. Even 
 from this point of view, however, their influence must 
 necessarily be enormous. Never before in the history 
 of the West has there been a nation whose Church em- 
 braced forty million human souls at one time; nor has 
 there ever been an epoch in which religion in practice 
 touched life at so many points as it does to-day. Gen- 
 erally speaking, the religion of our age is far more of a 
 force in conduct than that of any former Christian epoch 
 has been. It cannot be claimed, indeed, that we are 
 more reverent than our ancestors, or that we hold our 
 convictions with anything like the burning intensity 
 
14 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 of the ancient martyrs or of the seventeenth-century 
 Puritans. But we have enormously broadened that 
 area of our life within which we recognize the applica- 
 bility of our reUgious convictions. What is called the 
 social message of Christianity is new, not in the sense 
 that there has been an extension of the ethical doctrine 
 of the Church, but in the sense that there has been a 
 fuller recognition of what is involved in duty towards 
 one's neighbour. Have not the business men of our 
 coxmtry, to their intense disquietude, lately rediscovered 
 the Ten Commandments? Are they not imdergoing 
 the chastening experience of learning the larger meaning 
 of the verb "to steal"? The SociaUsts have rendered 
 an invaluable service to religion, — ^not so much by their 
 comparatively mechanical and pedantic doctrine of 
 economic determinism, as by the spiritual implications, 
 conscious and unconscious, of their propaganda. 
 
 Evolution, then, in the direction of mental freedom, 
 intellectual honesty, scientific method, and democratic 
 control has been and is going on throughout the entire 
 range of the organized Ufe of religion. The Church is 
 still imperfect; — but so it will be on the morning of the 
 day of judgment. So is the Republic; yet who for that 
 reason wants to overthrow the Republic and establish 
 a different system of government? 
 
 The case for the Chvurches, in short, is that we cannot 
 do without them, any more than the anarchist can do 
 without one or other of the forms of political society 
 which he repudiates. The superior soul, who is so dis- 
 satisfied with all attempts to organize the Hfe of religion 
 that he withdraws from every Church, acts as an anarch- 
 ist would who should go off to the wilderness and estab- 
 lish himself in airy and commodious lodgings in the 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 15 
 
 branches^ of a tree. The political anarchist generally 
 has too much of the saving grace of inconsistency to 
 act logically upon his principles. The religious anarchist, 
 on the other hand, commonly does try to square his 
 practice with his theory. He cannot completely suc- 
 ceed — it is inherently impossible that he should; but 
 he does succeed in so far that both he and society suffer 
 through his action. 
 
 In the Movement to which I belong, and in other 
 independent religious organizations, there are many who 
 conceive their fellowships to be the predestined suc- 
 cessors of the Christian and Jewish Churches. They 
 are fully entitled to their opinion, since freedom of 
 thought is the breath of life in all such bodies; but this 
 very principle entitles me to express my own convic- 
 tion that such a development is improbable, because 
 religious evolution does not proceed catastrophically. 
 Take the Ethical Movement as an example. It has 
 been in existence for just forty years; it numbers to- 
 day in this coimtry little more than 3000 members, 
 divided into five Societies. At such a rate of progress, 
 how soon could it be ready to assimie the functions and 
 responsibilities of the historic religious organizations? 
 
 Such clean-cut breaches with the past as some modem 
 free thinkers imagine are seen to be impossible in the 
 light both of evolutionary doctrine and of universal 
 experience. No new movement is ever wholly new. 
 Christianity in essence is as old as Judaism, and in its 
 developed substance it is a s3Tithesis of elements from 
 a hundred varieties of paganism, as well as from Judaism. 
 It was, in fact, a movement of permeation of existing 
 religious organizations, — as is well expressed in its own 
 metaphor of the leaven and the lump. The reformers 
 
l6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 in modem movements misinterpret themselves and their 
 mission when they talk of smashing the Churches, or 
 expect the Churches to collapse and to be replaced by 
 new societies. 
 
 The smallness in numbers of these modem movements, 
 however, ceases to be in any way relevant or important, 
 when we define accurately the task which devolves upon 
 them. Their function is that of influencing the historic 
 organizations, by stressing the importance of neglected 
 factors, and by demonstrating the possibility of com- 
 bining the principle of progress with the principle of 
 order in religion. The doctrines and the organization 
 of all the Churches need extensive overhauling, re-inter- 
 pretation, and reconstmction, to adapt them to the 
 exigencies of our complex life, and thereby to enable 
 them to discharge adequately the indispensable task 
 which constitutes their reason for existence. Experiment 
 and iimovation are as necessary here as in the life of 
 science and of industry. Now, just as in science a few 
 men can make experiments, which if successful can be 
 adopted by the scientific world at large, and which if 
 failures can save the world at large from the waste of 
 effort involved in repeating them; so, in the economy 
 of the religious life, small groups of thinkers and re- 
 formers can render an analogous service. This is the 
 tme justification for the existence of such bodies as the 
 Societies for Ethical Culture. The nature of their task 
 constrains them to give their main attention to the 
 growing-points, so to speak, on the tree of the spiritual 
 life. They cannot and need not erect a wholly new 
 machinery adequate to the religious needs of mankind 
 in general. A laboratory (if I may follow out the anal- 
 ogy) cannot be a substitute for a whole imiversity. The 
 
THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 17 
 
 Church must be so various and multiform as to make 
 provision for the spiritual needs of the entire range of 
 human characters and temperaments. It is enough 
 for an innovating and refo rmin g organization that it 
 shall, as the result of its work, permeate with its special 
 message the life and work of the Church at large. For 
 the Ethical Movement in America and in England one 
 may fairly claim that it has not failed to contribute its 
 quotiun to this work. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE RELATIVE INEFFICIENCY OF THE 
 CHURCHES 
 
 Having thus briefly sketched the reasons for my belief 
 that the Church is entrusted with a permanent and in- 
 dispensable function of vital import to humanity, let 
 me now enumerate the causes of the present compara- 
 tive inefl&ciency of the Churches, and the definite points 
 in which they need to reform themselves, in order that 
 they may extend their influence to the whole of our 
 population and multiply the concrete benefits which 
 they produce in the hves of their members, and through 
 them in the common hfe. It is of course to be under- 
 stood that the following accusations are true only in 
 general. Doubtless on each point the reader will be 
 able to think of exceptions. I would ask him to bear in 
 mind that I am also conscious of these. 
 
 I. The Churches have subordinated life to creed, 
 and, in so doing, have inverted the relation of the end 
 and the means. They have forgotten that the entire 
 machinery of doctrine and discipline, creeds and sacra- 
 ments, rituals and liturgies, exists solely for the sake of 
 purifying himian character and rectifying hmnan con- 
 duct. The true principle to be followed in this matter 
 is adumbrated in the celebrated saying ascribed to Jesus: 
 "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
 sabbath; therefore man is lord also of the sabbath." ^ 
 
 'In quoting these words, I take the liberty of substituting for the 
 ambiguous phrase "son of man" what authorities on the Aramaic dialect 
 
 i8 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 19 
 
 The mistake on this point lies at the root of most of 
 the crimes and blunders which give such an unedifying 
 aspect to a great part of Christian history. The Church 
 must now resolutely lay hold upon tie principle of 
 Jesus, and apply it unsparingly to the re-statement 
 and re-interpretation of doctrine and to the modification 
 of practice. Religion will then cease to seem hostile to 
 advancing knowledge. It will no longer repel the large 
 numbers of conscientious thinkers who refuse to come 
 into the Church, either as clergy or laymen, so long as it 
 is controlled by the implicit principle that traditional 
 doctrines and methods are more important than the 
 hfe to which they should be ancillary. The doctrine of 
 Jesus is a radical hiraianistic one, and the Church should 
 not hesitate to be as free and unconventional as its 
 founder. 
 
 2. Acting upon the principle criticized in the fore- 
 going paragraphs, the Churches have to a large extent 
 overlooked the legitimate claims of the human intellect. 
 The whole of the so-called conflict between science and 
 rehgion was due to this mistake. In their anxiety to 
 stress the miraculous uniqueness of Jesus, they have ig- 
 nored the indispensable contribution to human salva- 
 tion represented, let us say, by Socrates. There is surely 
 no impiety in suggesting that the method and secret of 
 Socrates are as necessary to the rounded development 
 
 declare to be its real meaning. I am not an Aramaic scholar; but any 
 layman who foUows closely the arguments of those who are (Professor 
 Nathaniel Schmidt, for example, in his fine work entitled The Prophet 
 of Nazareth), is bound to admit the cogency of their reasoning. The 
 substitution, moreover, of "man" for "son of man" in this saying of 
 Jesus, is the only means by which the logical force of his argument be- 
 comes visible. If "son of man" does not mean man in general, his "there- 
 fore" is hopelessly out of place. 
 
20 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 of hiunan character as the method and secret of Jesus. 
 One may admit, for the sake of avoiding argument, that 
 Jesus is pre-eminently the Saviour of the world, in the 
 sense that no other figure in history has appealed so 
 universally to the progressive portion of humanity as 
 he.^ Nor is it to be denied that the vital principle of 
 freedom and completeness of thought, to which Socrates 
 was a martyr, is impKcit, and even to some extent 
 expKdt, in the teaching of Jesus. But so little is it ob- 
 truded in the New Testament tradition that it became 
 possible for the Church to forget, or at least to ignore, 
 this element. It has historically been absolutely false 
 to the spirit of the great saying, "Why, even of your- 
 selves, judge ye not what is right?" and to St. Paul's 
 "Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good." It 
 has forgotten that the creed, for which it was so anxious 
 to contend, cannot in strict accuracy be called the creed 
 of one who has not subjected it to rigorous examination. 
 The word belief, as W. K. Clifford remarked, "is dese- 
 crated when given to improved and unquestioned state- 
 ments." We can easUy imagine with what distressed 
 contempt Socrates would have regarded any would-be 
 disciple who undertook to believe things simply because 
 Socrates said them.^ Can there be any doubt in the 
 mind of a close student of the Gospels that the attitude 
 of Jesus in similar circiunstances would have been the 
 
 1 1 omit the question of the claims of Buddha and Mohammed because 
 the adequate presentation of my reasons for rejecting them would 
 involve a long and unprofitable digression. 
 
 ^ "I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: 
 agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, with- 
 stand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself 
 in my enthusiasm, and, like the bee, leave my sting in you before 1 
 die."— PAaedo, § gi. 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 21 
 
 same? It is an unpardonable limitation of the philoso- 
 phy of the Christian doctrine of incarnation to encircle 
 Jesus with a fence that isolates his nature from that of 
 all other saviours and reformers. What is the meaning 
 of the teaching that the true hght lightens every man 
 who comes into the world, if not that others are to be 
 placed on the same plane with the founder of Chris- 
 tianity? I am not disputing the legitimacy of the pre- 
 eminence ascribed to him. My contention is that, 
 if first, he can only be primus inter pares. I contend 
 further that the acceptance of this principle is in no 
 wise inconsistent with his teaching, and that the Church 
 can refuse to adopt it only at the cost of sacrificing an 
 immense part of the good which it might otherwise 
 achieve. 
 
 3. The doctrine of the transcendence of God has been 
 over-emphasized by the Churches, to such an extent that 
 the true proportions of the mission of Christianity have 
 been almost completely forgotten. What I mean in 
 this connection will become apparent if the reader will 
 contrast the theory of the City of God which was elab- 
 orated by St. Augustine, with the idea of the Kingdom 
 of God as we find it in the New Testament tradition. 
 
 St. Augustine, and after him the Western Church 
 generally, conceived of human society in the mass as 
 irredeemable. This was one of the many mischievous 
 effects produced upon that powerful thinker's mind by 
 his early acceptance of the Manichsean heresy. He 
 never shook off the notion of the inherent vileness of 
 matter, and of everything associated with it. Among 
 other consequences of this doctrine, it followed that 
 himaanity, being (to use inexact popular language) a 
 fusion of the material and the spiritual, is totally de- 
 
22 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 praved, even on the spiritual side, by reason of this 
 blending. Accordingly, for St. Augustine the City of 
 God consists only of the angels, and of that small 
 minority of human beings into whom, by the arbi- 
 trary grace of God, a new spiritual principle is infused. 
 The Christian doctrine (of which St. Augustine's is 
 the antithesis) begins by affirming the immanence of God 
 in humanity. Addressing himself to an indiscriminate 
 muster of his contemporaries (who had received no 
 sacraments, and who thus caimot be conceived of as 
 regenerate in the Augustinian sense), Jesus begins his 
 teaching with the flat and unqualified assertion, "The 
 kingdom of God is within you." There are, to be sure, 
 inconsistencies in the New Testament tradition, but 
 the dominant note of the early followers of Jesus is 
 that the world in its totality is the subject of redemption, i 
 Even the Judaizers among the apostles believed this. 
 The squabble between them and St. Paul was not as to 
 this fact, but as to the means of reaHzing it. In the 
 fourth Gospel the entire presentation of the Christian 
 message centres in the idea that Christ had come in 
 order "that the world, through him, might be saved." 
 The first Epistle to Timothy may not be Pauline, and it 
 may be as late as the most revolutionary critic chooses 
 to affirm. The later it is, however, the more emphati- 
 cally does it witness to the long persistence of the idea 
 expressed in it, that God " is the saviour of all men, 
 specially of them that believe." ^ The Church must 
 return to this true primitive catholicity, and to the 
 
 ' See the powerful and unfairly neglected treatise on The World as the 
 Subject of Redemption, by the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Canon 
 of Canterbury. (London: Rivingtons, 1885.) 
 
 ' I Tim. iv, 10 (R. V.). 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 23 
 
 true doctrine of immanence, which consists in recog- 
 nizing as a manifestation of God every gleam of good 
 that appears in the World. 
 
 4. It was this same mistaken emphasis of the doctrine 
 of divine transcendence which led to the interpretation 
 of the sacraments in a magical instead of a social sense, 
 with the result that they became converted into instru- 
 ments of superstition as well as of salvation. Men have 
 excomimunicated and murdered one another for the sake 
 of rival and unintelUgible theories of the Eucharist, in- 
 stead of realizing, through the interchange of mutual 
 charity and helpfulness, the true significance of com- 
 munion. Nobody can prove or disprove transubstantia- 
 tion or consubstantiation. Nobody knows or can know 
 whether the analysis of phenomena into substance and 
 accidents is accurate, or whether, if it be so, the un- 
 knowable, non-spatial and ultra-sensible substratxmi of 
 one phenomenon is capable of being transmuted into 
 the substance of another, without assuming the acci- 
 dents of that other. Inquiry into such problems may 
 be an exhilarating mental g5Txinastic, but both one's 
 moral sense and one's sense of humour recoil from the 
 thought of excommunicating people because they refuse 
 to accept a particular dogmatic aflarmation as to their 
 solution. Even the use of bread and wine for the pur- 
 pose of the sacrament, though it perpetuates a long his- 
 toric tradition, is, in itself, supremely unimportant. 
 Any other articles of food and drink would serve the 
 same purpose equally well, since the essence of the 
 sacrament is the pubHc commitment of those participat- 
 ing to love and charity toward their neighbours, to the 
 restitution of ill-gotten gains, and to righteousness of 
 life. The communicant has the sense that in thus pledg- 
 
24 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 ing himself, he enters into the larger presence of the 
 over-arching good, and is enabled to supplement from 
 its inexhaustible resources his own feeble aspirations 
 towards righteous hfe. 
 
 A s imil ar simple and natural explanation can be given 
 of the sacrament of baptism. The advantage of em- 
 phasizing this side of the matter is that the reality of the 
 natural and social elements will not be denied, even by 
 those who afl&rm also the magical elements. Whatever 
 else baptism may be, it is first and foremost the assimip- 
 tion of responsibihty by the commimity for the nurture 
 of a new creatiure in the principles of justice and right- 
 eousness. The most extreme dogmatic theologians will 
 admit that the production of this effect is the reason for 
 the existence both of the sacraments and of the Church 
 which ministers them. Yet how completely has this 
 verifiable and most important side of the work of the 
 Church been forgotten or neglected during the last 
 fifteen hundred years! 
 
 5. The next most urgent respect in which the Church 
 must reform itself is by abolishing the false finahty 
 ascribed to the creeds. It is the theory of their absolute 
 value, rather than their actual content, which has made 
 them a barrier to the growth of knowledge, and conse- 
 quently, in the modem world, a danger to intellectual 
 honesty. If the creeds are studied from the point of view 
 of their historic fvmction, it becomes evident that they 
 were formiilated not to provoke divisions, but to put an 
 end to them. Those who take the most rigorous and 
 literal view as to their truth and importance, cannot 
 deny that they are at best inadequate expressions of 
 realities which in their fullness transcend the limitations 
 of human speech. Those, on the other hand, who take a 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 25 
 
 latitudinarian position with regard to doctrine, maintain 
 that many of the positive statements in the creeds are 
 baseless, and ineffectual as safeguards of the religious 
 truths to which they were supposed to witness. For 
 example, few men now suppose that in order to believe in 
 the Incarnation it is necessary to believe in the Virgin 
 Birth, or that the doctrine of Christ's victory over death 
 cannot be held apart from belief in the resurrection of 
 his body. 
 
 Nor is it certain that those who contend most ve- 
 hemently for the old formulas, have fully fathomed the 
 depths of their metaphysical subtlety. For example, 
 most of the High Churchmen who to-day in England are 
 contending for the retention of the Athanasian Creed, 
 are wont to declare their belief in the personality of 
 God, — that God is a person. They have failed to notice 
 that the Athanasian Creed does not countenance this 
 belief. God, according to that document, is the unity, 
 the identity^in-difference, of three persons, but it is not 
 stated that these three are one person. The Creed specifies 
 with careful detail that, while each of the persons is in- 
 comprehensible, yet there are not three incomprehensibles, 
 but one; that while each is God, yet there are not three 
 Gods, but one God. It does not state, however, that 
 there are not three persons, but one person. According 
 to the Athanasian Creed, to ascribe personality to God 
 is as unphilosophical as it would be, let us say, to ascribe 
 it to humanity. Hxunanity is the one essence of hun- 
 dreds of millions of persons, but it is not itself a person, 
 nor has it any of the attributes of individuals. It may be 
 a Httle mortifying to the ultra-orthodox, who have so 
 zealously contended for the doctrine of the Trinity, and 
 for the one Creed which unequivocally affirms it, to find 
 
26 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 that that Creed when closely construed gives no support 
 to the view of God which is commonly assumed to be 
 orthodox. 
 
 My contention is not that the efforts of hard thinking 
 by which theologians, like other philosophers, have en- 
 deavoured to define the nature of ultimate reality, should 
 be given up. One of the greatest sins and dangers of the 
 present age is its mental indolence. I protest only against 
 the ascription of finality to the metaphysics of the fourth 
 and fifth centuries. The early Church, by summoning 
 representative councils and concentrating co-operative 
 intellectual effort upon the attempt to formulate the 
 deepest truths cognizable by the mind of man, set an 
 excellent example, which ought to be followed to-day. 
 We have had to wait for Bergson and the Pragmatists to 
 remind us that a valid philosophy cannot be the work of 
 any single thinker. Co-operative efforts, renewed from 
 age to age, will be necessary to deepen our insight into 
 the nature of ultimate reality; yet, even so, it would 
 almost seem that this must for ever remain in its inmost 
 essence incognizable. For this very reason, however, we 
 should repudiate the suggestion that the thinking of the 
 fifth century attained the utmost depth of the know- 
 ledge of truth "that the mortal glass wherein we con- 
 template can show us." 
 
 I plead, then, not so much for the rejection of the 
 traditional creeds as for the right of every age to formu- 
 late its own creed. The so-called Athanasian formula 
 may well stand on record as a monument of the insight 
 and of the intense mental labour of those by whom it was 
 drawn up. But the policy of the Church should be to 
 offer such documents only as a challenge to the minds 
 of its members in successive ages. By so doing, it would 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 27 
 
 not only make possible a virile development of thought 
 and speculation, but it would also remove the handicap 
 under which many of its most conscientious members and 
 ministers are now labouring. 
 
 To this catalogue of the shortcomings of the Church, I 
 may be permitted to add two more points, which arise 
 from the peculiar circumstances of our immediate situa- 
 tion: 
 
 1. The activity of the clergy in every good work. 
 
 2. The lowering of the mental and moral calibre of the 
 ministry. 
 
 I. In Mr. Arnold Bennett's amusing play entitled 
 "What the PubKc Wants," a millionaire newspaper 
 proprietor, who quite frankly is out to make money and 
 cares nothing about the effect of his pubhcations on the 
 minds and morals of the public, gets into a high state of 
 virtuous indignation at the suggestion that his journals 
 ought to elevate the mind and taste of the public instead 
 of depraving them. He is angry with his critics for sug- 
 gesting that he ought to be (as he puts it) "a sort of cross 
 betweeh General Booth, H. G. Wells, and the Hague 
 Conference." 
 
 Now, the chief difficulty under which the minister of 
 religion laboxu-s to-day, is that the American public does 
 seriously expect him to be a compound of Miss Jane 
 Addams, Dr. Graham Taylor, Professor Zueblin, and 
 Billy Sunday; and the worst of it is that the minister 
 usually acquiesces in this conception of his job. By 
 honestly attempting to be all these various things to all 
 men, he succeeds in being none of them, and incidentally 
 sacrifices his equipment for his special and distinctive 
 
28 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 function. It is this state of things which constitutes the 
 most imminent danger to the Church. Either the 
 Church has a perfectly dignified and distinct task, which 
 is not that of Mr. Zueblin or Dr. Taylor or Miss Addams, 
 or else it is a belated imposture which only cumbers the 
 ground. 
 
 The extent to which the clergy have lost sight of their 
 special function, and of the means necessary to its dis- 
 charge, is painfully illustrated on many sides. Take, for 
 example, the recent book by Dr. Paul Moore Strayer 
 on The Reconstruction of the Church. Dr. Strayer 
 speaks for Presbyterianism; and, without any criticism 
 of his personal qualifications, it may be said that if his 
 own point of view and that which he gently criticizes are 
 generally shared in that denomination, one need look no 
 further for the cause of its relative failure. Many Presby- 
 terians, like other church-members, are obsessed with 
 the idea of " efficiency." They compare the Church with 
 the factory, using the graceful and suggestive term 
 "plant" to describe both institutions. As in the factory 
 there is supposed to be a rigorous elimination of unpro- 
 ductive machinery and effort, so these reformers want to 
 have each item of church activity measured up, cata- 
 logued, card-indexed, and all the rest of it, and to have 
 everything cast out or changed which does not produce 
 measurable returns. 
 
 Incidentally one may remark that the accepted notion 
 that business is efficient is an enormous illusion. Because 
 individual imits of production are organized with scien- 
 tific precision, we jump to the conclusion (sedulously 
 fostered by the friends of things as they are) that business 
 generally is entitled to the same commendation. Now 
 the only way to judge of industry is to take distribution 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 29 
 
 together with production, and to consider both from the 
 point of view of national economics and national well- 
 being. So regarded, business in all the great industrial 
 nations is still chaotic, wasteful, and in large measure 
 inefSdent. A river in which there is always an ample 
 diet for the sharks would naturally be a paragon of 
 efficiency from the sharks' point of view; but if one 
 regards the river from the point of view of God, so to 
 speak, it may appear to be quite otherwise. Such (be it 
 gently whispered) is the state of things in regard to 
 business. 
 
 Under this characteristic obsession — for which, indeed, 
 they are not to be blamed, since so few of us escape it — 
 many people have come to think that a Church ought 
 to be, at one and the same time, a soup-kitchen, a gyra- 
 nasium, a university extension centre, a social settlement, 
 a labour bureau, and a headquarters of political reform 
 activity; and, in virtue of being all these things, it may 
 induce a few people to come on Sundays, as a sort of 
 indulgence to the old-fashioned views of the parson, to 
 hear a few apologetic remarks, sandwiched in between 
 concert items, about God and the soul. This reminds one 
 of the device resorted to by the Nonconformist bodies of 
 England to attract the working class. They frankly 
 despair of getting working-men to come to regular serv- 
 ices, and so they have invented the nondescript per- 
 formance entitled "a pleasant Sunday afternoon" — the 
 adjective being presimiably intended to mark the broad 
 distinction between the afternoon and the morning and 
 evening events. At this performance there is singing, 
 and sometimes a brass or stringed band, — to emphasize 
 the pleasantness, — and a speech by an outsider (it would 
 never do to put the parson up!) on eugenics, woman 
 
30 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 suffrage, trade unionism, Liberal or Labour politics — ^in 
 fact, any mortal subject imder heaven except religion; 
 and at the end of the year the Church comes out with a 
 flourish of statistics, rejoicing in the fashion in which 
 it has attracted the "lapsed masses." The favourite 
 phrase in advertising these performances is "brief, bright, 
 brotherly." It is all very well, of course ; but it is in fact a 
 confession of the failure of the Church to do what it is 
 there to do. 
 
 The idea of the institutional Church and of the poly- 
 math parson, when it is not taken for granted, is de- 
 fended on the ground that the first apostles of Chris- 
 tianity made it a part of their task to provide for the 
 needs of the poor, and that in its catacomb days (when 
 its members were mainly of the slave cIeiss) the Church 
 was a kind of combination laboiu: union, sick-benefit 
 society, and burial club. 
 
 Yet what an unreflecting conservatism is that which 
 would base the programme of the Church to-day upon 
 the precedent of things done under stress of necessity 
 by the Church of the first three centuries! This very 
 defence overlooks the fact that the apostles, at the earliest 
 possible moment, handed over their charity-organization 
 and social-settlement work to others, expUcitly on the 
 ground that "It is not reason that we should leave the 
 word of God and serve tables." ^ These first promul- 
 gators of the Christian evangel were conscious of a dis- 
 tinctive task, for which they did not feel it necessary 
 covertly to apologize, and which they would not sugar- 
 coat by commending themselves to the public upon all 
 sorts of adventitious groimds. Paul and Peter would 
 not have been willing to waste hours hstening to some 
 
 '■ Acts vi, 2. 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 31 
 
 applicant for work or charitable relief. They had other 
 and more important business on hand. Yet to-day if a 
 minister denies himself to such applicants, he is stig- 
 matized as unchristian. It is his "job" to be at every- 
 body's beck and call, at all hours of the day and night. 
 You need not make an appointment with him. It is 
 not as though he were a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist, 
 or any other kind of a real man. He only has to preach 
 on Sundays, and for the rest of the hundred and sixty- 
 eight hours of the week he is everybody's obsequious 
 factotum! 
 
 Now, although this intolerable state of things is largely 
 acquiesced in by the ministers themselves, it neverthe- 
 less spells the ruin of their work. The function of the 
 clergy is that of teachers and edi&ers. It is their duty 
 to see that their congregations develop continually in 
 mind and soul, that they learn more from year to year, 
 that they grow more refined, more morally sensitive, 
 more responsive to that spiritual challenge of reality as 
 a whole, which is poetically described as the voice and 
 the hand of God. Wherever this is not happening the 
 Church is failing, even though it be raising millions of 
 dollars for building and organization and for so-called 
 institutional work.^ 
 
 The reference to apostolic precedent, moreover, ig- 
 nores the crucial fact that in the modern world the prin- 
 ciple of division of labour and differentiation of function 
 
 ' The way in which preachers are beginning to disparage their essential 
 function is illustrated by the following words of Dr. Strayer, in the volume 
 to which I have referred: "Pastors give their time to the preparation 
 of sermons for people who have heard enough sermons to make them 
 saints if they practised one in fifty." It apparently does not occur to 
 him that the failure of the hearers to practise what is preached to them 
 shows that there must be something wrong with the sermons. 
 
32 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 has led to the development of specific social organs, each 
 entrusted with the expert handling of some one depart- 
 ment of the manifold work which the institutional Church 
 attempts to generalize. This principle of division of 
 labour renders it manifestly impossible for any Church 
 to be eflSdent in so many different activities at once. 
 Moreover, in so far as it undertakes them, even though 
 successfully, it is not a Church. 
 
 Suppose, to take a perfectly accurate analogy, a school 
 attempted to become an "omnium gatherum" of all 
 sorts of philanthropies, social and political reform ac- 
 tivities, and labour organizations, meantime apologizing 
 to its pupils for introducing occasional sugar-coated 
 references to reading, writing, arithmetic and the like. 
 It could not but be a hopeless failure as a school, as well 
 as in each of the other attempted activities. 
 
 This analogy is the most exact that one could choose, 
 because the Church is in fact a school, and must return 
 to the conception of itself as such. It is a school, the 
 purpose of which is not only to teach one special subject, 
 but also to give instruction from a special point of view, 
 and for a definite end, that shall cover all the manifold 
 activities and interests of life. It may be said that the 
 education given in the ordinary school is not religious; 
 to which I would briefly reply that it is not then educa- 
 tion. Even technical instruction fails of its main value 
 if it is not inspired by and directed towards ideal ends. 
 Or if it be said that the religious work of the Church is 
 not education, my answer is then that it is not religion. 
 Religion is the focussing of enlightened attention upon 
 the sources of the supreme blessings of life, to obtain 
 them and to secure their permanence and increase. 
 Education that does not truly direct the wUl to this end 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 3s 
 
 is an imposture, and a Church that does not deepen and 
 multiply men's powers of reacting to and increasing the 
 sum-total of the good in the world is a failure. 
 
 To put my case in the briefest and most challenging 
 form possible, I would say that those things which the 
 Churches to-day sugar-coat and apologize for, or bury 
 under a mass of adventitious activities, are the only 
 things with which they have any legitimate business; 
 to wit, God, the soul, and salvation. 
 
 The reader, I trust, will not do me the injustice of 
 supposing that in thus seeking to single out the special 
 function of the Church, I am casting the least discredit 
 upon the legitimate sphere of the other activities with 
 which it concerns itself to-day. Of course we want social 
 settlements; but these can only be efl&cient when they 
 are the exclusive concern of workers who have received 
 a special and expert training in their conduct and man- 
 agement. Certainly we cannot do without recreational 
 centres for the young, especially in view of the abom- 
 inable conditions of slum tenement life that we so cruelly 
 and foohshly tolerate in our great cities. But here again 
 is a function that cannot be discharged by casual and 
 overworked amateurs. We need employment bureaus 
 and labour imions, and we need — heaven knows we 
 need — organizations for the elimination of political 
 corruption and the cultivation of political intelligence. 
 But the conduct of each of these is (or should be) the 
 work of an expert specialist, who should devote to it 
 the whole of his time and brains. The first condition of 
 the "efl&ciency" we worship is the principle of one man 
 one job. The parson, like the cobbler, must stick to 
 his last. 
 
 No lesson, moreover, is now clearer than the fact 
 
34 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 that these various reforming and philanthropic activities 
 cannot be carried out on a sufficiently large scale except 
 by the action of the community as a whole. Private- 
 enterprise philanthropies are good and necessary because 
 they serve to blaze the trail which the conmituiity may 
 afterwards follow. They are investigation centres, to 
 make known the facts and to plan the machinery for 
 adequate relief. It is self-evident, for example, that 
 the unemployment problem not only cannot be solved, 
 but cannot even be understood, until we have a national 
 system of labour exchanges estabUshed in every indus- 
 trial centre of the country, with an efficiently elaborated 
 machinery of co-operation. Such an organization is 
 far too vast for any private body to attempt, and it 
 must be armed with powers of inquiry and of action 
 which could not be entrusted to any unofficial set of 
 persons. Now, what is true in regard to unemployment 
 is no less true in regard to the manifold provision for 
 women and children, and for the unassimilated immi- 
 grant, which the new social conscience demands. 
 
 If, then, even specialized and scientific private organ- 
 izations cannot deal adequately with our problems, how 
 much more hopeless must be the attempt of the Church 
 to deal with them in gross! 
 
 The difference between the Church and other schools 
 is that the Church has constantly to keep in view life 
 as a whole, and to regard the building up of character 
 and the generation of enthusiasm for righteousness as 
 its direct and immediate end. Education should, in 
 any case, be Hfelong, and the Church is the only organi- 
 zation which preserves even the tradition of this great 
 truth. The Church may be defined as at once a school 
 of the humanities for adults, and a store-house and 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 35 
 
 distributing centre of character-building force both for 
 adults and children. (I speak, of course, of what it 
 ought to be: not of what it usually is.) It has here a 
 function which will permanently tax the highest ener- 
 gies of those devoted to its service. No man can be 
 too good, and no man's time can be too long, for this 
 supreme task. The clergjrman ought to reserve at least 
 four hours of every working day (that is, of every day) 
 for reading and study, apart from the immediate work 
 of preparing his discourses and his material for class 
 teaching. If he does this conscientiously, he may, by 
 the time he is forty, be really competent to grapple with 
 the complex moral and spiritual needs of our age. In 
 doing this work, he ought to be as jealous of his time, 
 and of the claims of his task, as any banker or editor 
 or doctor or lawyer. He ought to repudiate as essen- 
 tially unreasonable the idea that he is to be constantly 
 at the disposal of the out-of-work, or of idle members 
 of his congregation seeking the luxury of private spirit- 
 ual consultation and personally administered soothing 
 s)Tnip. To be sure, he needs contact with Kfe as well 
 as with books. But this he should seek at set times, and 
 he should keep it rigorously under his own control. He 
 must not suffer his studies to be rendered impossible 
 through the unreasonable demands of those who have 
 no respect for his time and his peculiar task. 
 
 The Church, then, being, as I have said, a school of 
 the humanities, and a centre of character-building force — 
 this, and nothing else — ^is only indirectly concerned with 
 activities which do not promote this end. Its business 
 is to bring the sum-total of the good in the world 
 (conveniently called God) to the reinforcement of the 
 good tendencies and the overthrow of the bad ones in 
 
36 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 the individual, and to the purification of the common 
 life. 
 
 Now to the attainment of these ends various means 
 are necessary. Every means which does in any degree 
 achieve them is to that extent justified by its results. 
 All such instrumentalities are as natural, as legitimate, 
 and as controllable as those by which schools are con- 
 ducted or steamships run. 
 
 The educational work of the Church must be done 
 in part logically, by direct teaching, and in part psy- 
 chologically, by indirect teaching through atmosphere 
 and suggestion. All the arts should be pressed iato 
 service to this end, since all of them are indispensable 
 to the full development of the mind and the rounded 
 and harmonious balance of qualities that constitutes a 
 rich and mellow soul. Architecture, music, painting, 
 sculpture, ritual, sacraments, vestments, and all the 
 rest of the Church's instrumentalities — including per- 
 haps many things that it has never yet tried — are legiti- 
 mate, if and in so far as they help towards jnental de- 
 velopment and spiritual edification; and aU of them are 
 necessary if it be found that the full stature and the 
 perfect grace of character cannot be achieved without 
 them. 
 
 For certain types of htrnian beings, any one or more 
 of these means may be superfluous. But for mankind 
 in the mass they are aU necessary. Ev6ry form of re- 
 ligious ritual, from the gray silence of Quakerism to 
 the utmost elaboration of the Roman High Mass, is 
 perfectly natural, and if it were directed to the ends 
 that I have suggested, it would be perfectly legitimate. 
 Human salvation is too large and complex an end to be 
 attained by any single means. It is too vital to be en- 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 37 
 
 dangered by the setting up of unverifiable dogmas as 
 barriers between the individual and the natural devices 
 by which he could be helped. 
 
 The reason why artistic and ritualistic aids to re- 
 ligious edification are by many good people thought 
 dangerous is quite easy to see. It is because these things 
 are enormously powerful, and because they have un- 
 doubtedly been misinterpreted and misused. Any edu- 
 cational device would incur the same condemnation 
 if it were used to produce beliefs or conduct which merited 
 disapproval. Suppose, for example, that history-teaching 
 in our schools were used to make our children hate the 
 Republic and the principle of democracy, and eager 
 to work for the abolition of representative government 
 and the estabhshment of absolute monarchy among us. 
 It is palpable that the fault would lie not with the use, 
 but with the abuse of history- teaching; and the remedy 
 would not be the excision of history from the curriculum. 
 Such a remedy would be at least as bad as the disease. 
 
 Exactly so is it in regard to the use of such devices as 
 characterize the Roman Church, and other "rituahstic" 
 bodies. There is nothing magical or miraculous in any 
 of these devices. If they produce bad effects upon mind 
 and character (and in some cases they undoubtedly do), 
 this is because they are misinterpreted and directed to 
 wrong ends. Now the very fact that an educational 
 device is powerful for evil when misdirected constitutes 
 a strong presumption that it would be as powerful for 
 good if rightly understood and used for a legitimate 
 end. 
 
 2. The other peculiarly modern reason for the relative 
 ineflSciency of the Church, to which I have alluded, is 
 
38 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 the fact that, owing to various causes, the ministry of 
 all denominations is being recruited from men of inferior 
 mental caUbre and force of personality. Of course there 
 are exceptions; equally of course, any clerical gentleman 
 who reads this will distinctly understand that I place 
 him in the class of exceptions. My statement is in 
 general true, I believe, in all the Western nations, but 
 pecuUarly so in our own country. We have only to 
 glance back two or three generations to come upon a 
 time when the very ablest men the country produced 
 were attracted to the service of reHgion. The names 
 of PhilHps Brooks, of Beecher, of Parker, Channing, 
 Emerson, and many others, will rush into every reader's 
 memory. Certainly in Puritan New England not all 
 the clergy were men of first-class abiUty; but the rule 
 was that the preacher had a distinct vocation for his 
 task, and was in general superior in education and in 
 power of leadership to the majority of his congregation. 
 To-day, unfortunately, this rule no longer holds. 
 
 For such a state of affairs there are three main causes. 
 First comes the fact that, whereas formerly the preacher 
 had had greater educational opportunities than most of 
 his congregation, to-day he has seldom had more and 
 frequently less of such opportunities than they. Sec- 
 ondly, the rewards offered to the preacher, in the shape 
 not only of pecuniary emolument, but also of prestige 
 and social estimation, are insignificant as compared with 
 those offered by a moderately successful business career. 
 
 Now the hypnotizing idolatry of wealth and extrava- 
 gance infects us all to-day. None of us is entirely proof 
 against the seduction of the course described in the 
 cynical words, "Get on, get honour, get honest." We 
 have all to some extent imbibed the deadly ethical heresy 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 39 
 
 which is the corollary of materialistic economics, that 
 honesty, and indeed all the other spiritual graces, are 
 possible only as luxurious appendages to a wealthy 
 life. Poverty is regarded as excluding the possibiKty of 
 virtues and spiritual graces, and we actually tolerate 
 and act upon the blasphemous assimiption that a poor 
 man cannot afford to be honest. 
 
 It is this moral disease, engendered by and reacting 
 upon the enormous prosperity which the rapid develop- 
 ment of the country's resources has produced, which 
 leads public opinion to look almost contemptuously 
 upon the man who does not gravitate unresistingly to- 
 wards the corner in life where the showers of gold will 
 fall most richly upon him. In two recent novels — Mr. 
 Tarkington's The Turmoil and Mr. Winston Churchill's 
 A Far Country — we have over-true pictures of the way 
 in which elect souls are dragged or seduced into the 
 service of "the Brute." Let us frankly face the fact 
 that this thing is happening daily in a thousand pros- 
 perous homes. The American nature is not at bottom 
 phiHstine and materiaHstic; it really has an enormous 
 regard, even a superstitious reverence, for culture. But 
 being, unfortimately, at the stage in which they know 
 "the price of everything and the value of nothing," 
 many people accept the delusion that culture is a thing 
 that can be bought. It is assimied to consist in hav- 
 ing the best-bound books in the handsomest book- 
 cases, and the most expensive pictures on the most 
 magnificent walls. Hence follows the belief that the 
 ideal state of man is that in which he is able to give 
 the highest price for the rarest object of art. We have 
 not attained the stage of civilization (reached twenty- 
 four centuries ago in Greece) in which it is felt that great 
 
40 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 wealth is a disgrace, a thing to be kept secret if possible, 
 or apologized for if it becomes publicly known. Ac- 
 cordingly, among other disastrous consequences, it comes 
 about that the ablest men — those who might by a life of 
 consecration produce the fine fruits of genius in art and 
 literature — accept, instead of these high possibilities, 
 the lower certainties of business, and take upon them- 
 selves the yoke of the machine. This is the chief cause 
 for the relative inferiority of our present-day ministers 
 of religion to their professional predecessors and their 
 lay contemporaries. 
 
 The third cause of this state of things is one already 
 hinted at in my remarks about the creeds. Men of keen 
 intellectual integrity are unwilling to use even Hturgical 
 language, so long as this is assmned to be the exact and 
 scientific expression of their inmost personal convictions, 
 when it is not so in fact. The Church must place a dif- 
 ferent construction upon its creeds. It must either 
 modify their language or make their use optional, and 
 have it distinctly understood that they stand merely 
 as historical monuments, and not as adequate expres- 
 sions of the belief of men to-day. Otherwise they will 
 remain what they are now, a stumbling-block in the 
 path of the most desirable recruits to the service of the 
 Church. 
 
 Lest my criticism seem too severe, I would point out 
 that the clerical profession does not stand alone in its 
 present defects. It is suffering from the inevitable 
 results of forces which have led to a similar deterioration 
 in our poHtical life. The radical trouble in the latter 
 department is that it has come to be regarded as a 
 refuge for the relatively incompetent and for the more 
 or less unscrupulous. This cannot be cured, any more 
 
INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 41 
 
 than can the difficulty in regard to religion, without a 
 fundamental change in our general point of view. We 
 must return to the idea of noblesse oblige as a principle 
 of action, and as a motive that should determine young 
 men in their choice of a career. We must again learn 
 to see the real values of Hfe as other than material, 
 and inexpressible in terms of money. Only so shall we 
 attract to the high and noble tasks of statesmanship and 
 of spiritual leadership the finest types of character that 
 our community can produce. 
 
 To sum up: The Church has not collapsed. It is to 
 be hoped that it will not collapse. But in order that it 
 may achieve the full efficiency desirable for it in the 
 interests of mankind at large, it must adopt the follow- 
 ing radical principles of reform: — 
 
 1. Re-interpretation of its function as educator, edifier 
 and unifier of the nation. 
 
 2. Whole-hearted acceptance of the principle of free- 
 dom of thought for clergy and laity, and of the provi- 
 sional and instrumental nature of doctrine. 
 
 3. Recognition of the nation as the true Church, — 
 i. e., as the real sphere of psychic hfe and character- 
 building force, by which all individuals and groups within 
 it are mainly influenced, and of local Churches as chan- 
 nels by which the spiritual resources of the nation are 
 mediated to the individual.^ 
 
 4. New experiments, under scientific test conditions, 
 must be conducted in the use of liturgies,. rituals, etc.; 
 and anything in the traditional forms which does not 
 make for mental and moral edification must be given up. 
 
 5. All activities of an institutional or social order which 
 are irrelevant to or incompatible with the Church's 
 
 1 See below, chap. viii. 
 
42 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 special function, must be handed over to separate and 
 specialized organizations. 
 
 6. First-rate men must again be attracted to the 
 ministry, by the raising of the standard of admission, 
 the restoration of perfect self-respect to the clergy 
 through the relaxation of dogmatic tests and formulas, 
 and by assuring to the clergy an adequate and dignified 
 maintenance and the opportunity of real leadership in 
 their communities. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EE-INTERPEETATION OF GOD 
 
 The foregoing chapters have perhaps sufl&ciently indi- 
 cated what the title of this volume is intended to con- 
 vey, — that the present inquiry is to be confined almost 
 exclusively to the psychological and sociological aspects 
 of religion. It is my conviction that practical agreement 
 is less impossible as the outcome of an investigation of 
 these sides of the subject, than upon the basis of theo- 
 logical or metaphysical study. 
 
 But, before proceeding to consider the idea of God as 
 a force in human Hfe, I wish if possible to make it un- 
 mistakably clear that the limiting of attention to the 
 immediately verifiable side of reHgion involves no denial 
 of its transcendental aspects. Nor am I concerned to 
 dispute that some of the transcendental doctrines con- 
 cerning God may be necessarily implied in and deducible 
 from actual events of experience. The limitation of the 
 present inquiry, however, to facts of history and of 
 personal and social life, is justified both by the necessity 
 of keeping this book within manageable hmits, and 
 also by the hope that on this side hes the best chance 
 of finding conamon ground. 
 
 Belief in God has been and is a tremendous motive 
 force in conduct. It would, moreover, be paradoxical 
 to maintain that there is no objective reality corre- 
 sponding to that belief, and that the millions who have 
 been energized and guided in their conduct by the 
 
 43 
 
44 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 power which they called God were victims of a mere 
 illusion. They did imquestionably have their experi- 
 ence, — an experience for which, as history shows, any 
 number of explanatory theories may be framed. It 
 may prove possible, by limiting attention to the ex- 
 perience itseK, and prescinding from theological specula- 
 tions, to arrive at a common imderstanding which shall 
 be vaHd and indisputable so far as it goes, though leav- 
 ing open many questions as to the remoter implications 
 of the facts investigated. 
 
 I. Recent Developments. — The period which has 
 elapsed since the Protestant Reformation has been 
 marked by great activity in the field of religious thought. 
 In the course of that development. Protestantism has 
 gradually arrived at the solution of a fimdamental in- 
 consistency in the case which it presented to the world 
 in the sixteenth century. One may say broadly that 
 the reformed bodies originally set out with two mutually 
 destructive principles, and that the subsequent course 
 of events has been a struggle for supremacy between 
 these. Protestantism appealed from the authority of 
 Church and priest to that of the individual conscience. 
 Unless the authority of direct personal experience could 
 be vaHdated, there was no basis for its rejection of the 
 collective authority of the historic custodian of the 
 faith. Yet, at the same time, Protestantism set up the 
 final and infallible authority of the letter of the Bible 
 as constituting its own court of appeal from the doc- 
 trinal and ethical corruptions of the Papacy. Just as 
 the monastic orders had given a blind and superstitious 
 deference to the received text of the Vulgate (against 
 which Erasmus waged a memorable fight), so in the 
 next century, — against the example and practice of 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 
 
 45 
 
 Luther, and even of Calvin,— the Protestant societies 
 developed a superstitious deference for the letter of their 
 vernacular translations. In the case of the English, 
 this became (what it remains in some instances to this 
 day) a conviction of the direct divine inspiration, the 
 finality and infallibility of the King James Version 
 of 1611. 
 
 The idea of the infallibility of any book, being by 
 the nature of things incompatible with the supremacy of 
 conscience, could not fail to lead to self-contradiction. 
 The real controversy, then, of Protestant against Roman- 
 ist was not as to reason versus authority, but as to 
 the seat and natiure of the ultimate authority in reli- 
 gion. Both afl&rmed that there was a court of appeal 
 external to and rightfully despotic over the reason and 
 conscience of the individual. As against the despotism 
 of the living Church, Protestantism in its degenerate 
 form asserted the despotism of the letter of the Bible — 
 as construed by the groups into which it organized itself. 
 How speedily the new creed degenerated in this fashion 
 can be seen by a study of the Ecclesiastical Polity, the 
 classical treatise of Richard Hooker against the Puritans. 
 Before the end of the sixteenth century. Hooker found it 
 necessary to point out to them that, since scripture itself 
 could not guarantee the authority of scripture, their posi- 
 tion rested upon a circular argiunent which reduced it to 
 absurdity. 
 
 On the other hand, the Catholic position at bottom 
 involves an appeal to individual private judgment no 
 less vital than that made by Protestantism. The claim 
 of a living historical and collective authority to un- 
 conditional obedience cannot be so presented as to be 
 self-evident. If a child born under Catholic influence 
 
46 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 remains loyal to the Church in his mature life only be- 
 cause of the pressure of habit and the absence of thought, 
 his allegiance is not a thing in which the heads of his 
 Church can take any rational satisfaction. Or if the 
 claim of the Catholic Church is presented to an outsider, 
 he cannot become convinced of its validity without the 
 exercise of a long and exceedingly complicated process 
 of private judgment. It was such a process, lasting from 
 1833, or earlier, to 1845, which preceded and caused the 
 submission of Newman to the Church of Rome. Hence 
 it is somewhat of a misunderstanding to state the dif- 
 ference between Catholicism and Protestantism as 
 consisting in the opposition between authority and 
 private judgment. On the one hand, as we have seen, 
 Protestantism afi&rms an infallible authority; on the 
 other, Catholicism cannot escape from appealing to 
 individual reason. Ultimately, therefore, both these 
 systems of thought must rest upon the basis of personal 
 spiritual experience. Except in so far as their claim 
 can be justi&ed by an analysis of such experience, it 
 must fail. 
 
 Although the present-day situation in religion, as it 
 affects us here in America, offers vital problems to the 
 Cathohc as well as to the Protestant, yet the historic 
 development which led up to it was chiefly a matter of 
 the working out of the latent implications of Protestant- 
 ism. The nineteenth century witnessed a religious ex- 
 plosion; but the bomb which exploded had been set in 
 the sixteenth, and it had taken three hundred years for 
 the fuse to bum through. 
 
 It became apparent in the nineteenth century that an 
 infallible book constitutes a worse fetter upon the hiunan 
 mind than an infallible living voice. No set of men can 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 47 
 
 remain altogether impervious to the currents of thought 
 flowing around them. However slowly they move, move 
 they must. The "StiU it moves" of Galileo applies to 
 the Church as well as to the earth. Not only the doctrine 
 and philosophy, but even the practical attitude of the 
 Church towards many secular interests has changed re- 
 peatedly in the course of history. But once the text of 
 a book has been fixed, and infallibility ascribed to it, the 
 possibility of progress is virtually eliminated. Hence the 
 stark opposition and acute friction between the move- 
 ment of science in the nineteenth century and the old- 
 fashioned theology. Hence, too, the fact that this op- 
 position was overcome only by the unqualified surrender 
 of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. 
 
 But the so-called conflict between religion and science 
 in the nineteenth century was only one of several lines 
 of development which have converged in the religious 
 situation that confronts us to-day. Let us for conven- 
 ience enumerate four of these: (i) The advance of phys- 
 ical knowledge, culminating in the evolutionistic hy- 
 pothesis, had effects far beyond the mere destruction of 
 the notion of Biblical infallibility. (2) The latter illusion 
 was also attacked, so to speak, from within, through the 
 application of the principles of literary and historical 
 criticism to the canon and text of the Bible itself. (3) 
 Idealistic philosophy in the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries was anti-traditional, and tended more and 
 more to be true to its inherent nature, which, from the 
 days of Plato onwards, has involved the assertion of the 
 supremacy of individual reason and conscience as the 
 judge not only of men but of gods. Kant no less than 
 Hume is a destroyer of that slavish attitude toward ex- 
 ternal authority which all the old religious doctrines 
 
48 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 imply. (4) The advance of democracy has led neces- 
 sarily to changes in fundamental religious thought, since 
 a revolt against despotism in the State must sooner or 
 later involve a revolt against despotism in the Church, 
 and against the conception of God as an absolute 
 monarch. 
 
 I shall here treat only of three of the four lines of de- 
 velopment above enimierated, omitting the question of 
 Biblical criticism. 
 
 It now seems almost incredible that there ever can 
 have been any difficulty to religious minds in the opposi- 
 tion between ascertained facts of physical science and 
 the statements of the Bible. The notion of the infal- 
 hbihty of any ancient book is so inherently unworkable, 
 and seems to be such "Uves and Hves behind us," that 
 we find it difficult to realize the state of mind of those to 
 whom it was a reality. It is no unfairness to the Hebrew 
 scriptures to say that, from the point of view of science 
 and philosophy, they are to an indefinite extent in- 
 ferior not only to modem attaiimients, but to the attain- 
 ments of other Uteratures contemporary with them. The 
 works of Plato and Aristotle, while in some ways perhaps 
 less inspired than the finest parts of the Old Testament, 
 are throughout on a level of philosophic insight, logical 
 power, and scientific grasp of reaHty incomparably higher 
 than anything to be found either in the Old Testament 
 or the New. Indeed, the only philosophical interpreta- 
 tion of Christian doctrine in the New Testament — the 
 Logos theory of the Fourth Gospel — is nothing but an 
 adaptation of one of Plato's fruitful ideas. 
 
 From the point of view of intellectual development, 
 it has been a misfortune to the race that the superstition 
 of infalUbihty did not attach itself rather to the Dia- 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 49 
 
 logues of Plato than to the poetry, prophecy and folk- 
 lore of the ancient Jews. Of the two evils this would 
 certainly have been the less, had a choice been possible. 
 The past, however, is irrevocable; and we can only look 
 back with a wonder not unmingled with pity at the 
 distress caused to our grandfathers by the hopelessness 
 of their attempts to square the revelation of their own 
 time with that of the ancient Hebrews. The whole 
 confusion arose from the assumption that the writers 
 of the Bible had special sources of knowledge inacces- 
 sible to other human beings, and were supernaturally 
 guarded against errors of fact. 
 
 From the standpoint of to-day we can further see that 
 the conJlict of the nineteenth century involved another 
 delusion, to the effect that evolution rules out creation. 
 This delusion seems to have been shared by many of the 
 propagandists of the doctrine of evolution, as it certainly 
 is to this day by those who are seeking to popularize 
 that doctrine among the masses as the foundation of a 
 system of materialistic philosophy. The Darwin-Spencer 
 hypothesis, as we may call it, was really presupposed in 
 much of the reasoning of scientific men long before it 
 was formulated. It is, indeed, an inevitable corollary 
 of the principle of causality. That principle can only 
 mean that the forces of change in nature are inherent, 
 and consequently that the present state of the universe 
 is expUcable in terms of its former states. 
 
 Now, those who fought the battle between science 
 and theology felt that if this principle were sound, the 
 notion of creation must necessarily be false. For many 
 years few of the thinkers whose writings were sufl&ciently 
 popular to enter into the general consciousness seem to 
 have detected the fallacy of this antithesis. The most 
 
so THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 conspicuous exception that occurs to one's mind at the 
 moment is John Morley, who, in his essay On Com- 
 promise, in the early seventies, sounded a much-needed 
 warning against the hypostatization of the word evolu- 
 tion. It is unfortunate that he did not greatly expand 
 his pregnant observation that "Evolution is not a force, 
 but a process; not a cause, but a law." To-day, after 
 forty years, it is stiU necessary to insist upon this truth, 
 which, when fully grasped, is sufficient of itself to an- 
 nihilate the philosophy which the advocates of materi- 
 alistic and mechanical determinism are spreading among 
 the masses. 
 
 What do we mean when we say that evolution is a 
 law? We mean that it is a description of observed 
 uniformities of co-existence and sequence. It is a state- 
 ment of the order in which things happen. It is a gen- 
 eralization of fact. Any specific change which we ob- 
 serve is due to some force or other; but the description 
 of the process of change as evolution throws no light 
 upon the nature of the forces causing change. Now 
 the term "creation" necessarily implies a force. Crea- 
 tion, if it happens, is a cause; evolution is not a cause. 
 How, then, can there be any mutual exclusion here? 
 How can we speak of the world-process as being one 
 either of creation or of evolution? It is perfectly con- 
 ceivable that the world may be both created and evolved, 
 — that the process descriptively smnmed up as evolu- 
 tion may be a process of creation. I do not aflGirm that 
 it is so; my poiat is merely that the opposite idea, which 
 lay at the root of the conflict between science and theo- 
 logical orthodoxy, is a fallacy, which a very small effort 
 of careful thought sufl&ces to dissipate. 
 
 Another of those almost comical superstitions which 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 51 
 
 seem always to spring up in the train of any attempt 
 to popularize a philosophic or scientific doctrine, is the 
 evolutionary illusion that all change is improvement. 
 This idea still haunts many minds. An imaginary 
 picture is drawn of the development from the amceba 
 up to man, and under that picture is inscribed the 
 word Progress, with a capital "P." Mr. Bertrand Rus- 
 sell, with dehghtfuUy acidulated humour, remarks that 
 "whether the amoeba would agree with this is not 
 known." But, without consulting the amoeba, we may 
 point out that the evolutionary superstition involves 
 an optimistic fataKsm, which is calculated to disarm 
 the moral judgment and to paralyze the energies of man. 
 It is bad enough to transform evolution from a process 
 into a force, but it is far worse to turn the force into 
 a good fairy, and then to afiirm guilelessly that this 
 good fairy, which has, by a process of uninterrupted 
 advance, metamorphosed the ape into the archbishop, 
 may be trusted to continue its beneficent activities until 
 it transmutes the archbishop into the archangel. Prog- 
 ress is a reality; but so is stagnation and so is retro- 
 gression; and any belief that human affairs can be made 
 better except through ideals and through unremitting 
 determination to transform those ideals into actuaHties, 
 is a superstition which must speedily bring its own neme- 
 sis upon its heels. 
 
 Perhaps the most noteworthy defect in the old- 
 fashioned evolutionist argument was its failure to ac- 
 count for variation. At this point it was highly vul- 
 nerable to the attack of those who held the doctrine of 
 teleology in any form whatever,— even in the form in 
 which it was held by Samuel Butler. It is all very well to 
 taUc of the struggle for existence and the survival of the 
 
52 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 fittest, but the cardinal problem is that of the origin 
 of the fittest. Natural selection cannot begin to operate 
 until the variations upon which it is to work have come 
 into being. Before there can be a struggle for existence 
 the struggler must exist; and it therefore seems not 
 quite philosophical to describe him as a product of his 
 own struggle. The half-conscious recognition of this 
 weakness of the evolutionary position is betrayed by 
 the use of such a phrase as "spontaneous variations." 
 This phrase must either mean "variations which had no 
 cause at all" (in which case it involves the abandoimient 
 of the very possibility of science, and indeed a suicide 
 of thought), or else it must mean "variations the cause 
 of which is unknown." But this is a singular admission 
 to be made by a philosophy which is triumphantly 
 announcing the expulsion of all mystery from the world 
 of experience. 
 
 There seemed only one way in which the difficulty 
 could be got over, and that was by re-introducing, in 
 modified form, those very ideas of creation and design 
 which evolutionism was at first supposed to have ren- 
 dered superfluous. Samuel Butler's theory amounts in 
 effect to the substitution of a large number of designers, 
 each with a limited intelligence and each indifferent to the 
 plans of the others, for the one designer with unlimited 
 resources which old-fashioned theology had postulated. 
 
 In our own day, M. Bergson is making heroic efforts to 
 estabush a theory which retains design but eliminates 
 designers altogether. His ilan vital, which explodes from 
 nowhere and with no obvious cause, proceeds without any 
 intelligence to carry out a work, every step of which, as 
 Bergson traces it, would seem to require intelligence of 
 the highest conceivable order. The curious thing about 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 53 
 
 the Bergsonian elan is that 'its handiwork continues to 
 be perfectly intelligent, until it produces intelligence in 
 man. Human reason is the only thing, apparently, which 
 interferes with its rational working. Man's mind is a 
 sort of will-o'-the-wisp, which leads us astray and opens 
 between us and reahty a gulf impassable. It prisons us 
 up amid inveterate errors. It raises pseudo-problems, 
 due to the forcing of reality into a conceptual framework 
 which it cannot be made to fit without being denatured. 
 It substitutes immobihty for mobility, and unreal 
 mathematical time (which M. Bergson's Ithuriel-spear 
 quickly proves to be only a transmogrified kind of space) 
 for real duration. It consequently gives us a world 
 considerably less like true reality than the moving 
 shadows cast by the cinematograph are like the scenes 
 and acts which they portray. If it were not for the 
 intellect, we should be perfectly capable of understanding 
 the perpetual creation of living forms. It is logic which 
 makes this understanding impossible, because it is of the 
 nature of logic to fetter us within the circle of the given. 
 By a bewilderingly brilliant process of reasoning, M. 
 Bergson demonstrates that reasoning is not to be trusted. 
 We have to faU back upon intuition. When we do so, we 
 get a vision of reality which first came to M. Bergson as a 
 result of his intense analytical scrutiny and his very 
 effective criticism of the older theories of evolution. 
 It is the negation both of mechanism and of finalism. 
 Being neither creation nor evolution, it is yet both at 
 once. This reminds one of the extraordinary sound 
 emitted on a memorable occasion by Mr. Weller the 
 Elder, "which, being neither a groan nor a grunt nor a 
 gasp nor a growl, seemed to partake in some degree of 
 the character of all four." 
 
54 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 All of which is by no means intended for disparagement 
 of M. Bergson and his most fascinating and valuable 
 contribution to thought. When we reach the point 
 where knowledge fails, we have frankly to choose among 
 myths — or, as they are more politely called, hypotheses. 
 This was done of old consciously by Plato, and uncon- 
 sciously by the founders of all the religions. The myth 
 of the elan vital is in many ways preferable to that of 
 the world-machine, and to that of the "magnified and 
 non-natural man" of the older theology. All that one 
 need insist upon is that the framer of a myth shall recog- 
 nize it for what it is. Let him say with Socrates, "I 
 do not mean to affirm that the description which I have 
 given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true— 
 a man of sense should hardly say that. But I do say 
 that . . . something of the kind is true." What we need 
 is freedom of thought and fullness of thought, and the up- 
 rooting of the spirit of dogmatism. The old creationism, 
 the later evolutionism, and the new Bergsonian blend, 
 can dwell amicably together as speculations, and as 
 partial expressions of the effort of mankind to grapple 
 with a mystery which it cannot solve. There is design 
 in the universe, and there is absence of design; there 
 are progress and retrogression, creation and destruction. 
 The essential achievement of Bergson is his demonstra- 
 tion that each and all of these ideas are, in Bacon's phrase, 
 inadequate to the subtlety of nature. 
 
 2. Philosophical. — None of the great protagonists 
 of the doctrine of evolution was a materialist. Whoever 
 reads the writings of Spencer, of Huxley, of Darwin, or 
 of Tyndall will see how much profounder is their teach- 
 ing than the travesty of it which is to be found in the 
 works of most of the popularizers. But, though the 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 55 
 
 great protagonists of the idea were not materialists, yet 
 it is the shallow and noisy appropriators of their doctrine 
 who alone have won the popular ear; and the evolution- 
 ism of the man in the street is a materialistic fairy-tale. 
 Now the phenomenon that it imports us here to notice 
 is that the popular apologetic of religion entirely failed 
 to meet it on this ground, because popular religion, too, 
 has always been materialistic. The Old Testament it- 
 self, despite the ethical grandeur of many of its parts, 
 falls under this condemnation. Its ideas of creation, 
 of God and the angels, and of the spirit of man are quite 
 primitive, and are of a piece with that child-like an- 
 thropomorphism of the Greek populace, which is gently 
 chidden in the Dialogues of Plato. It was necessarily 
 difficult for those who regarded the Hebrew folk-lore as 
 final truth to rise above the plane of materialism, upon 
 which the so-called battle between science and rehgion 
 was, for the most part, fought out. 
 
 It is largely due to the prevalence of such confusions 
 of thought as those above noted that the ultimate prob- 
 lem at issue for religion is still almost universally for- 
 mulated in terms of the question whether God exists. 
 The true problem, as we shall see, relates to the nature 
 of reality as experienced, and should be approached by 
 way of a discrimination between the category real- 
 unreal and that of existent-non-existent. The real is not 
 conterminous with the existent. It is a broader, a more 
 inclusive category. There is no paradox in the assertion 
 that that which does not exist may be more real than 
 that which does. Accordingly, there is no absurdity in 
 stating that even if God does not exist, he may neverthe- 
 less be very real, and so it may not be necessary to invent 
 him. Perchance, as Mr. Zangwill says, "we serve God 
 
S6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 better, deeming He is not." Be it observed that I am 
 begging no questions here. I am not "denying the 
 existence of God." There is, however, this intellectual 
 dif&culty attaching to the popular idea of God's exist- 
 ence: that it either reduces God to the level of the finite, 
 making him simply a unit in the indefinite multiphcity 
 of objects, contra-distinguished from each of them as 
 they are from each other; or else it merges him with the 
 totahty of existence in a pantheism which is practically 
 indistinguishable from atheism. 
 
 It may indeed be maintained that the word " existence " 
 is ambiguous, seeing that, as apphed to spiritual reality, 
 it means something quite different from what it signifies 
 when applied to the phenomenal, the spatial, and the 
 sensible. Since this is true, and in order to avoid the 
 confusion between the two meanings of the term, it is 
 better, when one is philosophizing, to use it only in the 
 latter sense, as applying to that which falls within space 
 and time. If the idealists are right in sa)dng that exist- 
 ence means the possibility of being perceived, it must 
 follow that that which perceives, but is itself imper- 
 ceptible, cannot be reduced to the category of the exist- 
 ent. If man is the creator of time and space, it involves 
 a hysteron proteron to. trammel him within the limits 
 of his own creation. Here I am but repeating a truth 
 that was obvious to the mind of Socrates, who chaffs 
 Crito for asking "How shall I bury you?" immediately 
 after Crito has admitted the vaUdity of arguments tend- 
 ing to show that Socrates was neither temporal nor 
 spatial, and consequently could not be buried.^ 
 
 We may express the argument in brief by saying that 
 existence is strictly an intellectual category, to which 
 ' Phaedo, § 115. 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 57 
 
 the subject is irreducible. Reality then becomes the 
 volitional category, upon which the existent is condi- 
 tional and dependent. It is true that even a bare exist- 
 ential judgment involves the subject together with the 
 object in a synthetic unity, but the affirmation of reality 
 connotes a committal of the will, which an existential 
 judgment does not. 
 
 An apology is perhaps necessary for the introduction 
 of these considerations into a treatise which is frankly 
 intended for popular consumption, and does not pretend 
 to merit or appeal for the attention of specialists in 
 metaphysics or theology. I could not justify my subse- 
 quent arguments to the philosophic reader without offer- 
 ing a glimpse at the groundwork of my thought. While 
 the lay mind is unprepared to grasp a presentation of 
 the difference between the real and the existent, it 
 has grasped the truth that to state the question of 
 God in terms of existence annihilates in advance the 
 possibiHty of solving it. Whether there is within time 
 and space an instrumentahty through which functions 
 the individualized self-consciousness of some vastly mag- 
 nified man, who fabricated the world of things and 
 of organisms, is a question which no foreseeable exten- 
 sion of our knowledge could enable us to determine. 
 We may say, however, that if God is in this sense a 
 person, wholly other than you and I, but functioning 
 through instnmients in some sense analogous to your 
 body and mine, he cannot then be either infinite or 
 omnipotent. 
 
 But the study of this aspect of popular thought sets 
 us upon the trail of the psychological basis of religion. 
 The philosophy of Christianity presents us with a very 
 different God from that to which its popular teaching. 
 
S8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 its rituals and sacraments point. Whereas the orthodox 
 metaphysic postulates an infinite, in whom the eternal 
 discord between good and evil must necessarily be 
 transcended and resolved, yet the practical working of 
 Christianity points to a finite God — finite because per- 
 sonal, and because identified, not with the totality of 
 existence, but exclusively with the good. The first of 
 the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England de- 
 fines God as "the Maker and Preserver of all things 
 both visible and invisible." Such a power would neces- 
 sarily be the originator and sustainer of evil, as well as 
 of good. But such a power is not what anybody has 
 ever practically meant by God. It is merely the Spi- 
 nozistic natura naturans; and most people really agree 
 with John Stuart Mill as to the ab urdity of applying 
 ethical predicates to nature.^ 
 
 It is, however, in the reahn of the ritualistic and other 
 practices of rehgion that we should look for its psycho- 
 logical explanation; for these things precede the elabora- 
 tion of systematic theologies. A distinguished meta- 
 physician of our time has frankly said that " Metaphysics 
 is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon 
 instinct." The saying is most true; and accordingly 
 we must refer to the instinct if we wish to trace the 
 genesis of the metaphysic. Now the instinctive expres- 
 sion of religious faith takes the form of prayer to a man- 
 like God, and of the practice of sacraments by which 
 this man-Hke being can be, in a sense, coerced. The 
 Christian metaphysic declares God to be omnipresent; 
 yet the Eucharist, in the Catholic view, is a means of 
 forcing him to become present at a particular point in 
 
 ' See the most luminous and closely-reasoned essay on Nature in 
 Mill's posthumous volume entitled Three Essays on Religion. 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 59 
 
 space, from which, in the very terms of the idea, he must 
 otherwise and at other times be absent. This is but 
 one of a hundred self-contradictions, the logical absurdity 
 of which compels the conclusion that the practices are 
 begotten of psychological needs, and that God is in- 
 tended, as Professor Leuba says, not to be understood, 
 but to be used. 
 
 Let us then refrain from posing vain questions of fact, 
 which from inevitable lack of data are inherently in- 
 soluble, and let us see whether we may not arrive at 
 more profitable results if we inquire into the nature of 
 reality as experienced. I may point out in passing (with- 
 out stopping to elaborate its implications) the fact that 
 such an inquiry involves a dynamic and volitionalistic phi- 
 losophy as against a static and intellectualistic one. For 
 in essence the question "What is reality?" means, "What 
 satisfies the organic and constitutional will of man?" 
 
 To reduce our problem to its very simplest terms, let 
 us suppose the case of a child who is given a painted 
 ball, got up to look like an apple, but made of paste- 
 board and filled with dust and ashes. If the child bites 
 it and then says, "This is not a real apple," what does 
 he mean? He means that tlie phenomenon is not such 
 as to satisfy the desires evoked by its appearance; and 
 those desires are the expression of certain needs of his 
 nature which through experience he has learned can be 
 satisfied by apples. The reality of the genuine apple 
 consists in the fact that it meets this need. The painted 
 imitation exists as truly as the real apple. For the in- 
 tellect, the one phenomenon has every whit as much in- 
 terest as the other. But it is the will which rules, above 
 the intellect, in the field of the real and the valuable. 
 
 Now the rehgious craving of humanity is primarily a 
 
6o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 craving for that which is beyond all peradventure real. 
 Man becomes conscious within himself of spiritual needs 
 which are as insistent as the craving of the body for 
 food and drink. The religious need is the need for per- 
 fect righteousness, for inviolable justice, for utter purity 
 in oneself and in others, and for such a system of rela- 
 tions among all rational agents as shall actualize these 
 qualities and thereby satisfy the demand of the soul. 
 These needs are but partially met by the imperfect world 
 of things and persons in which we live. They cannot be 
 explained, any more than self-conscious rationality can 
 be explained, as an effect or product of the time-and- 
 space process. It may be possible to account for the 
 bodily cravings by reference to the make-up of the 
 physical organism, — though at bottom it would be fully 
 as rational to explain the organism as the result of the 
 cravings; — but the demands of the spirit for ethical and 
 rational satisfaction can never be accounted for by any 
 such process of reduction to a physical basis. These 
 demands transcend all the suggestions of experience; 
 and the more experience disillusionizes us as to the pos- 
 sibility of meeting them, the more does their definiteness 
 and intensity increase. 
 
 In Father George Tyrrell's posthumously pubHshed 
 volume, entitled Christianity at the Cross Roads, he gives 
 eloquent expression to this sad yet ennobling sense of 
 the insatiable demand made upon the world by the 
 deeps of our nature. He declares that the very presence 
 of these cravings in us proclaims our affiliation with a 
 transcendental order of spiritual reality. He compares 
 the spirit of man to the beaver in captivity. Like the 
 beaver, man "builds his dams across the floor; he cannot 
 tell why. Not till he is in his native river will he under- 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 6 1 
 
 stand his restless instinct; and the river is beyond all his 
 present experience and imagination — a missing link in 
 his mind." ^ These pathetic words are of more value 
 as a revelation of the personal experience of Father 
 Tyrrell than as a statement of religious or philosophical 
 truth. They doubtless contain some truth, but cer- 
 tainly more of pessimistic, exaggeration. The truth in 
 them is that we are conscious of needs which, being 
 spiritual, can naturally be met only by spiritual means. 
 The exaggeration is the suggestion that there can be no 
 satisfaction for these needs so long as we are imphcated 
 in the world of time and space. 
 
 That world, however, is in its very nature a means of 
 communication between spirit and spirit. Body is a 
 vehicle, not an obstacle; a window, not an obscuring wall. 
 Every man's ethical demand upon the universe is con- 
 tinually being met by the response of other spirits akin 
 to his own, functioning through those very instruments 
 of sense which sometimes seem like barriers and obstacles. 
 To say that man in this Ufe is in the position of a beaver, 
 bhndly obeying an instinct which is altogether incon- 
 gruous with its environment, is to indict the world as 
 an insane conspiracy against reason and conscience. 
 Nor is there in this bitter pessimism any trace of that 
 Christian philosophy which declares the phenomena of 
 the sense-world (including the human body) to be neces- 
 sary and pre-ordained channels for the communication 
 of spiritual graces from soul to soul. What does Incar- 
 nation mean, if not that these temporal and spatial 
 thought-forms are indispensable media for any mani- 
 festation of the divine? 
 
 ' Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-Roads, chap, xii, § a, pp. 125-26. 
 (London: Longmans, 1913.) 
 
62 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 To this contention Father Tyrrell might conceivably 
 have assented. But he would have proceeded to main- 
 tain that man's craving for spiritual reality and spiritual 
 satisfaction is infinite, and consequently is inherently 
 incapable of being satisfied under finite conditions. 
 Such is the drift of his entire argiunent. Yet this is a 
 confusion of thought, due to the partial survival in 
 Tyrrell of the old dogmatic theology and scholastic 
 philosophy. He has mistaken an infinite craving for a 
 craving for the infinite; and he has further overlooked 
 the difi^erence between the satisfaction of such a craving 
 and its extinction. 
 
 To take a very homely illustration : a person suffering 
 from thirst develops a longing for water that seems 
 altogether boundless. This infinite craving, however, 
 is not a craving for an infinite quantity of water. It 
 will be allayed by an absurdly finite amount. To be 
 sure, it will subsequently reawaken; but this is what the 
 sufferer desires, since the permanent stilling of organic 
 demands is the very definition of bodily death. To 
 treat thirst as a craving for an infinite quantity of water 
 would be to seek not its satisfaction but its extinction; 
 and this could only mean death. 
 
 Now, while all physical analogies to spiritual truths 
 are necessarily inadequate, yet they are the only ones 
 at our command. We must needs use them, while taking 
 care not to be misled by them. To compare the needs 
 of the soul to those of the body, as the psalmists were 
 wont to do, is not absurd, even though the things com- 
 pared are in truth incommensurable. The parallel holds 
 at least in so far, that the seeming infinity of a craving is 
 no index to the magnitude of that by which it may be 
 allayed; and the partial and transient nature of the 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 63 
 
 solace available is an indispensable condition of the 
 subsequent revival of that yearning which is hfe and 
 creation. Tyrrell's demand, not for the satisfaction 
 but for the extinction of spiritual needs, implies for the 
 soul a destiny more like the Nirvana of Buddhism than 
 the Christian City of God. The consciousness of needs 
 that can be slaked to-day only to reawaken to-morrow 
 with more insistent demands is the very stuff, the very 
 condition, of individuality. Life is growth, and growth 
 is the transcending of Kmitations, the surmounting of 
 obstacles, — only to be challenged anon by greater ob- 
 stacles and more formidable limitations in its progress. 
 We must not befool ourselves, through the old rationalis- 
 tic language about infinity and transcendence, into long- 
 ing for an inundation of the spirit by satisfactions out of 
 measure, under which the very hfe of the soul would be 
 submerged and lost. My need of God is a need for 
 spiritual goods that can be met and is met by other 
 spirits finitely conditioned as I am. It is a need for a 
 relation of perfect mutuahty, perfect equality, perfect 
 reciprocity between me and them. It is the yearning for 
 a quaUtative perfection, rather than a quantitative one. 
 The cup of cold water may indeed imply an unfaihng 
 fountain as its source; but it is the cup that I need, not 
 the inexhaustible stream. I need to have my thirst 
 slaked, but not to be drowned. I wish to thirst again, 
 not to have that inward incentive to creative activity 
 extinguished for ever. 
 
 In admitting that the cup of water may imply the 
 reservoir, we have perhaps approached as nearly as 
 popular language and homely imagery can take us to 
 the truth in Tyrrell's transcendentaUsm. We have to 
 stand upon the ground of experience; but within experi- 
 
64 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 ence we find the implication of a reality transcending it. 
 One need not dispute the reasoning that the rational 
 and ethical nature of man, as manifested amid the 
 limitations of the space-and-time sequences, testifies to 
 a universal reabn of inind and conscience as the drop of 
 water implies the ocean. If I find within myself qualities 
 not made by my environment, but making and mould- 
 ing it; if in the very possibility of my knowledge and 
 evaluation of the sense-world there is implied that which 
 cannot be derived from the sense-world: then I must, 
 by the principles of common logic, postulate a source 
 analogous in nature to that in myself which is thus 
 transcendent. Of such a source, no less can be said than 
 that it cannot be inferior to its product. Consciousness- 
 in-general is not entirely unknowable. In so far as we 
 know ourselves we may know it. But to define it in 
 terms of our limitations is a procedure in no wise war- 
 ranted by logic. Yet this is what we do when we speak 
 of "the personality of God," in the meaning usually 
 given to that phrase. 
 
 The inveterate anthropomorphism of religious thought 
 is here displayed in its most conspicuous instance. Men 
 insist in the same breath upon ascribing to God both 
 personahty and infinity; and they are unwilling to face 
 the diflaculty of disentangling these incompatible attri- 
 butes. So far as experience goes, personality is con- 
 stituted by its limitations. Finiteness is its very essence. 
 I am I because I am not you. If the dam of otherness 
 between us were broken through, the ensuing unification 
 would involve the disappearance both of your person- 
 ality and mine. Let us grant, to save dispute, that 
 there must be a common source whence each of us draws 
 the identical humanity which all share. It is incon- 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 65 
 
 ceivable that such a source could contain within itself 
 all those barriers of difference and otherness which make 
 personaUty possible. There may be in the undifferen- 
 tiated totaHty of "mind-stuff" or "consciousness-in- 
 general" something which, while unimaginable by us, 
 is higher and greater than unitary personality. As 
 Herbert Spencer remarked, the choice may be not be- 
 tween personahty and something lower, but between 
 personality and something higher.^ But, while allowing 
 for this possibility, we caimot ascribe individualized 
 self-consciousness to the infinite without intolerable self- 
 contradiction. 
 
 We are as men wandering in the dark subterranean pas- 
 sages of a mine, each carrying a httle lamp, upon which, 
 for us, everything depends. To extinguish it is death. 
 Accordingly, each clings to his lamp with anxious in- 
 tensity. Now, because we are always in the mine and 
 have no conception of other conditions, we inevitably 
 envisage all other possible spiritual life as similarly 
 circumstanced. God, in our popular theology, is simply 
 a bigger man groping in a vaster mine, and carr3dng a 
 lamp which indeed throws its beams farther ahead, but 
 is of the same type and construction as ours. That 
 lamp is personality, individualized self-consciousness. 
 May it not be that such personality on the plane of 
 extra-spatial and super-temporal being would be as 
 superfluous and irrelevant as the miner's lamp in the 
 sunshine? 
 
 Yet the clinging of the religious spirit to the notion of 
 
 personality may find elsewhere its justification. To 
 
 the miner the lamp is truly all-important; and to us the 
 
 preservation of self-conscious individuahty is the in- 
 
 1 First Principles, Part I, chap, v, § 31, par. 3. 
 
66 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 dispensable condition of all spiritual achievement. The 
 religious problem is a problem of the adjustment of 
 relations among finite beings, whose separateness and 
 difiference are as marked and real as their identity. 
 Our task is to superimpose an order of ethical relations 
 upon the natural world of non-moral strifes and blind 
 egotisms. Our perfection consists ideally in such an order 
 as shall enable each to develop what is best in all, and 
 thereby incidentally to bring out what is finest in him- 
 self. A man is not true to himself unless he does his best; 
 but what can that best be except that which produces 
 the best qualitative effect upon the character of others? 
 
 I must, then, revere my neighbour not as a reproduc- 
 tion of myself, but precisely in his uniqueness, in his 
 otherness and difference from myself. I must not patron- 
 ize him by treating him as though he were I. He is a 
 unique and unprecedented synthesis of the universal ele- 
 ments of conscious rationality and volition. He is an in- 
 duplicable original, a medal of which the die is lost. The 
 religious problem (which is also the social problem) is 
 the establishment of an order of relations among all 
 rational creatures which shall provide scope for the 
 actualization of all the latent possibilities of good in 
 each, with a view to that perfection which can consist 
 only in their harmonization. 
 
 The difference between this view and that of individ- 
 ualism or anarchism consists in its recognition of the 
 interconnection and interaction between all lives, and 
 of the fact that individual perfection is the establish- 
 ment of right relations between oneself and others. 
 The sacredness of the individual, and of those limitations 
 which constitute his individuality, consists in his power 
 of entering into these relations. Because he and his 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 67 
 
 contribution are unique, he is indispensable to the per- 
 fection of the spiritual order, since perfection is by its 
 very definition unrealizable unless it be complete. The 
 absence of one star destroys the constellation. The 
 moral ideal, which is God, is the integrated harmony of 
 all the potentiaUties of good in every actual and pos- 
 sible rational agent. Into this conception there enter, 
 as indispensable elements, both the completeness of the 
 series and the uniqueness of each of its terms; so that 
 again we find ourselves face to face with the impossi- 
 bility of thinking of God as a single personality, but also 
 with the impossibility of eliminating the concept of per- 
 sonality from the idea of deity. 
 
 The common conception of God regards him as an 
 already realized perfection, and declares that man is 
 made in his image. Such a view, however, renders man 
 superfluous : there can be no addition to perfection. If it 
 be already achieved in God, what need can there be for 
 images, reproducing by piecemeal fragmentary glim- 
 merings of the already perfect, under conditions involving 
 its violation and degradation? What could be more 
 discouraging to man in his pathetic strivings after hard- 
 won good than the thought that his effort adds nothing 
 to the essential achievement of the world? On the other 
 hand, what thought is more ennobling than the sense 
 that I, with my poor effort, my aspiration and failure and 
 renewed striving, am indispensable to the ideal perfec- 
 tion, — that without my contribution it cannot be, and 
 therefore that God needs me as truly as I need him? 
 Upon what other ground can we justify our concern 
 for the redemption of human beings from inhuman 
 conditions, except by seeing the truth that each most 
 wretched pauper and most befouled criminal has in him 
 
68 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 some element of spiritual uniqueness, without the realiza- 
 tion of which the divine perfection is incomplete, and 
 therefore imperfect, and therefore non-existent? 
 
 It is easy to see, when we turn to the fields of history 
 and psychology, that the actual religious interest of 
 himianity has always been in the establishment among 
 men of such relations as I have hinted at. Men have 
 used the term God to denote any source of power by 
 which their insatiable need for just relations could in any 
 degree be met. Matthew Arnold said that the word God 
 has practically meant "the best one knows." It would, 
 I think, be truer to say that God means "the best one 
 can desire." This transfers the problem to the region of 
 the will, and allows for the fact that desire perpetually 
 outruns knowledge. We yearn for what is good before we 
 know it; we desire the universal prevalence of a good 
 which transcends all our possible knowledge. 
 
 In the light of what has now been said, the distinction 
 I before tried to make between reality and existence may 
 have grown clearer. The thing which any man desires 
 so deeply that it acts as the magnet to his will, drawing 
 his whole being into devotion to itself, is the supreme 
 reality of his life. This truth is illustrated on every 
 plane, the lowest as well as the highest. In commerce, 
 men become absorbed in the pursmt of wealth which does 
 not exist, but which for that very reason is to them more 
 real than that which does exist. If the provisional 
 definition of reaUty, as that which satisfies the will, be 
 accepted, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that an 
 ideal is the most real of all realities, because it is that 
 which decides the fate of everything that merely exists. 
 Ideals build up and destroy States and Churches. They 
 determine the modifications effected by men even in the 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 69 
 
 physical configuration of the earth. They preside over 
 the issues of life and death. In the clash between what 
 is and what is desired consists the process and the prog- 
 ress of creation. The will to seek the good is God's effort 
 at self-realization. That desire transcending knowledge, 
 demanding and creating the impossible, removing moun- 
 tains and exalting valleys, wringing, as George EUot 
 said, "a human music from the indifferent air," — that 
 desire is God. 
 
 But Gk)d is more than the desire. He is also whatever 
 in any measure satisfies it. This truth is the only clue 
 that can guide us through the labyrinth of religious be- 
 liefs which we find in history. So far as the contents of 
 intellectuahst doctrines are concerned, there is no com- 
 mon denominator to which the gods can be reduced. If 
 the fetish of the African savage, the Chinese joss, the 
 popular deities of Greece and the purified God of Socrates 
 and Plato, the old Germanic deities and the Father of 
 Jesus Christ — ^if all these are gods, it must be in virtue 
 of their common function and of the common relation 
 in which men have stood toward them. It caimot be in 
 virtue of any objective quality comjnon to all the gods, 
 for there is none. The kaleidoscope of the history of 
 reUgion becomes a picture only when we define the gods, 
 in Aristotelian fashion, in terms of their function. They 
 are all conceived as centres of power which can be drawn 
 upon, and as sources of such blessings as to their wor- 
 shippers seem the highest that life can offer. Religion is 
 in practice the attempt to secure the favour and the 
 active help of the sources of blessing by concentrating 
 steadfast and reverent attention upon them. 
 
 The type of behaviour of aU men towards their gods is 
 the same as that which they observe towards fellow men 
 
70 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and animals.^ Professor Leuba has grasped and worked 
 out the impHcations of the fact that "the reason for 
 the existence of religion is not the objective truth of its 
 conceptions, but its biological value." ^ It is to be dis- 
 tinguished from the kind of behaviour by which men 
 seek to control the non-living world, and from the 
 magical practices by which extra-human agencies are 
 assumed to be coerced. No doubt there is much of 
 magic interblended with the specifically reUgious type of 
 behaviour, but the distinction is always clear. 
 
 Now it is obvious that the beneficial, or supposedly 
 beneficial, results of religious practices are not dependent 
 upon the objective truth of the doctrines held by those 
 who perform them. Otherwise it would be impossible 
 for the same results to be secured by men of radically 
 different theological belief. But it would also be im- 
 possible for any results at all to be reached if this type of 
 behaviour did not bring men into rapport with some 
 reality. If in Uteral strictness man had, as Tennyson 
 said, "rolled the psalm to wintry skies, and built him 
 fanes oi fruitless prayer," the whole of religion would be 
 nothing but a form of insanity, and no results in the 
 strengthening of the will, in the deepening of moral 
 purpose and the clarification of spiritual vision, could 
 ensue from it. The reality invoked may be quite differ- 
 ent in nature from what men have supposed it, just as 
 
 ' This is pointed out by Professor J. H. Leuba in the opening chapter 
 of his valuable book, entitled A Psychological Sttidy of Religion. (New 
 York: Macmillan, 1912.) 
 
 ' I deprecate the use, in this otherwise excellent formula, of the term 
 biological. If Professor Leuba had said life-enhancing, or any other term 
 denoting the fact that the purpose of religion is not merely the static 
 maintenance of life but the transcending of actually realized conditions, 
 he would have commanded complete assent. 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 71 
 
 many of the forces of nature which have long been used 
 for human ends are now known to be different from what 
 they were formerly believed to be. Like these natural 
 forces, however, it may be benignly indifferent to human 
 misconception and ready to bestow its blessings upon 
 all who seek them. We use electricity without under- 
 standing its nature; and it is in this fashion that men 
 have used their gods. 
 
 The reality which has thus been worshipped and 
 drawn upon for strength, encouragement and moral 
 quickening has many verifiable aspects which can be 
 laid hold upon. We may define it provisionally as the 
 sum-total of the good in the world, — meaning by that 
 phrase not merely a qualitative abstraction, but an 
 active force in hmnanity, and also all the concrete factors 
 of experience which actually do make for the satisfaction 
 of men's constitutional needs and the realization of their 
 ideal visions. That this is what has been practically 
 meant by God is shown by the evidence of common 
 speech and by the unsophisticated conduct of simple- 
 minded religious people. The notion of providence and 
 of its intervention points to a vague discrimination 
 between those events and forces which are indifferent 
 or hostile to human purpose and those which are friendly 
 toward it and yield it furtherance. 
 
 Foremost in this latter category comes the good in 
 man, consisting concretely of all the inward dispositions 
 and outward acts which tend in the direction of estab- 
 lishing the ideal order of human relations. Added to 
 these are all the forces of objective nature which are or 
 can be made subservient to the same end. 
 
 The totality of the good as thus conceived is a real and 
 positive fact of experience. In their attempt to under- 
 
72 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 stand it, to account for its achievements, its failures, and 
 its relation to the forces opposed to it, men have fallen 
 back upon myth. The religious experience is so deep 
 and intimate as to be inexpressible. Since it involves all 
 the problems of philosophy and science, it necessarily 
 outruns our powers of adequate intellectual formulation. 
 That which cannot be expressed in words has to be put 
 into symbols; and those symbols are the gods. The 
 strife of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the all-but-victorious 
 revolt of Satan against Jehovah, the torturing of the 
 fire-bringer Prometheus by Jove, — these and a hundred 
 other myths are the attempts which men have made to 
 express the inexpressible. 
 
 Nothing could be more pathetic, or more calculated to 
 inspire reverence for the essential fineness of humanity, 
 than these attempts to convey through legends the 
 demand which the soul of man makes upon the world, 
 and the response of the world to that demand. The 
 Hebrew prophets were impressed supremely by the 
 majesty and the unconditional binding force of the 
 imperative of conscience. To them, this was the very 
 voice of God, and the thought of its violation was in- 
 tolerable. They expressed their sense of the majesty of 
 the law by objectifying it in the only embodiment of 
 authority that was familiar to them. The personality of 
 the king in the eastern world was the great emblem and 
 centre of authority; and so they declared that God was a 
 king incalculably great, — a king of kings and lord of lords. 
 
 The Christian founders were less impressed with the 
 inexorable dignity of the ethical imperative than with 
 its loveliness and beneficence; and so for them the picture 
 changes to that of a parent. The eternal moral order is 
 imaged as a father pitying his children. The nations 
 
THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 73 
 
 are prodigal sons who have wandered from the true 
 relations in which their salvation consists, but the father 
 is ready to welcome them with rejoicing the moment 
 they are willing to return. 
 
 In the later Catholic mythology this sense of intimate 
 kindliness and love expresses itself anew by the picture 
 of a maternal element in the Godhead. The so-called 
 Mariolatry of the Roman Church symbolizes an aspect 
 of man's relation to the power of righteousness which 
 corresponds to a deep experience; and it is one of the 
 shortcomings of Protestantism that it failed to provide 
 any expression for this. It was felt that at the back of 
 things there was the intuitively compassionate heart of 
 a mother, as well as the mingled sternness and tenderness 
 of a father. Even in its most degenerate form (for ex- 
 ample, in the almost erotic devotion manifested in St. 
 Alfonso di Liguori's treatise on Le Glorie di Maria) the 
 psychology of this attitude is traceable. 
 
 In order that justice may be done to these religious 
 conceptions, it must be vividly realized that the ex- 
 perience underlying them all is profoundly real. Every 
 god, from the brutes of primitive devil-worship to the 
 mother-love and the father-love adored by St. Francis 
 of Assisi, represents some aspect of the world in its 
 relation to the hmnan will; each expresses a mood and 
 a reaction induced by actual occurrences of life. Poets 
 have qmte spontaneously reproduced these pictures of 
 the universe, — even those who have furiously denied the 
 objective truth of the doctrines of theology. All their 
 indignation at man's inhumanity and at the indifference 
 of nature has been prompted by their inexpugnable loy- 
 alty to "the God behind the gods." If we reject the old 
 myths, our chief reason for doing so must be our sense 
 
74 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 of their inadequacy. They do not exceed the truth; 
 rather, they fall short of it. The law that commands 
 and condemns us, the moral order to which we owe our 
 being and with which is bound up all that we can hope 
 for or aspire to, is yet nearer and more intimate than 
 father or mother. The deepest element of our experience 
 is not the sense of our dependence upon the universal 
 power of good, but the sense of our identity with it. To 
 call it "a power not ourselves" is to frame but a partial 
 and misleading characterization of it. It is also our- 
 selves, — or raUier Ourself. It is that ultimate moral 
 will in you and me which is identical with the ultimate 
 will of all rational agents. Cancel all the private eccen- 
 tricities, all the self-centred and self-regarding vohtions 
 and acts of men, out of which come their sorrows, their 
 frustrations and their bitternesses, and there is left in 
 each and in all one will, — the General Will of society as 
 a whole, — which is identical with the imiversal moral 
 law. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," says 
 Job the mystic. Yes; because at bottom I am he, — ^in 
 the sense that, by virtue of my constitution, I will the 
 decree that slays me. The "great commanding good" 
 that condemns and will destroy all that in me is base and 
 unworthy, is the expression of my deepest spiritual need, 
 and therefore of my real will, my inmost selfhood. This 
 is the ultimate reality of experience: closer than breath- 
 ing, nearer than hands and feet. 
 
 If we can but train ourselves to the vivid reaUzation 
 of this truth, there will be an end to controversy between 
 the theist and the atheist. We are all face to face with 
 the same reality; our misunderstandings arise from our 
 persistence in imposing our inadequate symbols of this 
 reality upon one another as final and complete truth. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 
 
 A PECULIAR difficulty stands in the way of popular 
 comprehension and appreciation of the hght thrown by 
 modern research upon the character and teaching of the 
 founder of Christianity. The old dogmatic and un- 
 critical interpretation of him is still vociferous and con- 
 fident. Its basis, indeed, is definitely shattered. Any- 
 body who is wUling to take a little trouble can speedily 
 familiarize himself with facts which render the eccle- 
 siastical theory of Jesus as incredible as the story of 
 Romulus and Remus. Yet, owing to a lack of courage 
 on the part of those to whom the new hght has come, 
 and to the confusing multiplicity of views on points of 
 detail entertained by the specialists; owing, also, to the 
 almost hypnotizing effect produced by the clamant 
 confidence of the old interpretation, the new views have 
 scarcely yet begim to affect the general consciousness. 
 Indeed, except for a growing minority of clergy and of 
 thoughtfxil church-members, we are still in the position 
 which confronted Matthew Arnold more than forty years 
 ago. On the one hand, believers in the old view will 
 hear of no change in it. Those, on the other hand, to 
 whom that view is repellent are apt to be impatient of 
 the whole subject; they ignore the Bible, and are not 
 willing to submit it to a fair and unprejudiced examina- 
 tion. By this they lose immeasurably; but, as they are 
 unconscious of their loss, they are content. 
 
 75 
 
76 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 I desire in this chapter to enumerate a few points con- 
 cerning the structure and contents of the Gospels, which 
 are agreed upon by many competent critics, and to 
 offer for the reader's consideration some views of my own 
 as to the meaning and value of the teaching of Jesus. 
 My purpose is not so much to expose the error of the 
 older view; it is rather, by pointing out elements in the 
 Gospels which are unquestionably there (however one 
 may choose to explain them), to suggest an interpreta- 
 tion which seems forced upon us by the facts, and which 
 throws upon the character of Jesus a new light: a Ught 
 that should endear him to aU who admire courage, free- 
 dom of thought, independence and originality of moral 
 judgment, and faithfulness to ideals even unto death. 
 My desire is to induce men to re-read the Gospels for 
 themselves, by the aid of principles of criticism which will 
 enable them to discriminate between earlier and later 
 stages in the tradition. Thereby they will learn to dis- 
 entangle the original elements, which from the hiunanistic 
 point of view are incomparably grander than the theory 
 of Christ that is embodied in the creeds and traditions 
 of the Church. 
 
 The first thing needful is that the student should assert 
 his own right to independent judgment. He must refuse 
 to be browbeaten either by the dogmatism of the ortho- 
 dox expounder, or by the authority of the ultra-learned 
 specialist. The case of the Gospels is analogous to that 
 of Shakespearian criticism. In both fields we are con- 
 fronted with a vast literature of commentary and ex- 
 phcation, comprising the views of a multitude of con- 
 flicting authorities. No living man could read aU that 
 has been written upon the Bible, or even upon the New 
 Testament alone, though he gave his entire time to the 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 77 
 
 task. If one decided not to read the Gospels until one 
 had mastered all the critical literature, one would never 
 get to the Gospels at all. The wisest course, under the 
 circumstances, is to follow a hint given by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh in his most valuable little book on Shakespeare.^ 
 He advises that the reader should first get, by reading 
 some one handbook on the subject, an approximately 
 accurate notion of the chronological order of the plays 
 and of the known facts of Shakespeare's life, and then 
 should read the plays for himself, bringing his own critical 
 judgment to bear upon their intrinsic beauties and their 
 relative values. 
 
 So, in regard to the New Testament, I would counsel 
 the lay student not to spend a great deal of time in read- 
 ing criticism, either higher or lower, either orthodox or 
 innovating. The doctors disagree endlessly over details, 
 and in the nature of the case there is such a lack of re- 
 liable information regarding date and authorship, that 
 confident judgment on such points is out of place even 
 for speciahsts. Very few, moreover, of the expert 
 students have brought to their task the qualifications 
 that are most essential for it. These are, not the know- 
 ledge of enormous masses of facts, not the ability to per- 
 form conjuring-tricks in the way of textual interpreta- 
 tion, but wide experience of life, wide knowledge of and 
 insight into general hterature — especially poetry, — and 
 freedom from prepossession and prejudice. 
 
 The layman cannot do better than to begin by reading 
 or re-reading Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma 
 and God and the Bible. He will soon discover that 
 these books, though written forty years ago, are stiU 
 amazingly up-to-date as regards essentials. He will, 
 ^ In the "English Men of Letters" series. 
 
78 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 moreover, catch from Arnold that method of patient 
 brooding over the text of the New Testament, which is 
 the surest path to the attainment of real insight. He will 
 learn in this way to allow for and to discount the special 
 bias of Arnold, and to root out misguiding prejudice from 
 himself. There is in Arnold a singular freedom from 
 pedantry, a trained Hterary sense, and a genuine power 
 of poetic analysis and construction, which renders him 
 invaluable to all who seek wisdom rather than bare 
 knowledge, and who have a practical interest in the 
 life-value of great characters and great hterature. These 
 remarks apply to his treatment of the entire Bible, 
 though my special interest at the moment is in his study 
 of the teaching of Jesus. ^ 
 
 An insight less poetic, though at times even more 
 penetrating, is displayed in the celebrated work by Sir 
 John Seeley, entitled Ecce Homo. To read it is to 
 become a better and a wiser man, though its study would 
 not enable one to pass an examination in the technical 
 problems of New Testament criticism. Arnold's poetic 
 power is supplemented by the statesmanlike historic and 
 social sense of Seeley. Arnold's thought is mainly of 
 the salvation of individuals; Seeley 's, of cities and na- 
 tions. One learns from Seeley to appreciate the ex- 
 traordinary freedom, originaHty and depth of insight 
 displayed by some man or men whose thoughts are pre- 
 served in the Gospels. One does not know, at the end, 
 whether these thoughts and sayings are actually those 
 of Jesus, of John the Baptist or John the Presbyter; 
 whether they come from Mark or "Q," from epistles by 
 Paul, or from "pseudepigrapha." One does not know; 
 
 ' In chapters vi, vii, and viii of Literature and Dogma, and chapters iv, 
 V, and vi of God and the Bible. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 79 
 
 but, what is more important, one does not care. The 
 importance of these problems to the expert and the 
 speciahst cannot, indeed, be over-estimated; but, on the 
 other hand, their importance to the layman, who wishes 
 to be in touch with reality and to get light and strength 
 for the tasks of Hfe, can scarcely be under-estimated. 
 
 An almost unique combination of ethical and poetic 
 insight with exhaustive scholarship is displayed in the 
 great work on Jesus by Professor Nathaniel Schmidt of 
 Cornell University.^ Those who lack leisure would do 
 weU to read the latter part of the fifth chapter of this 
 book (beginning at the middle of page 107 and con- 
 tinuing to page 134). They should then read from the 
 begirming of chapter nine (on page 205) to the end of 
 the volume. 
 
 Perhaps the finest example of scientifically competent 
 and impartial criticism in this field is the masterly study 
 of the Gospels contributed to the Encyclopedia Biblica 
 by Professor Paul Schmiedel, of Zurich. It is a liberal 
 education to read and re-read this long article, weighing 
 it point by point in confrontation with the texts of the 
 Gospels as cited and interpreted in it. The Encyclopedia 
 Biblica can be consulted at almost any pubhc hbrary. 
 It is unfortunate that the article on the Gospels is not 
 reprinted in a volume by itself, since it is literally indis- 
 pensable to all who desire not only to learn facts about 
 the Gospels, but to train themselves in the art of sym- 
 pathetic discrimination and exact study of the New 
 Testament texts. 
 
 I have enumerated five sources of information, three 
 at least of which (i. e., the works of Seeley and Arnold) 
 
 1 The Prophet of Nazareth, by Nathaniel Schmidt. (New York: 
 Macmillan, 1905.) 
 
8o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 are sneered at by some recent critics of the Bible, who 
 accuse these authors of unscholarly procedure simply 
 because they are not pedants, and are more concerned 
 with life-values than with a microscopic analysis of data 
 which have little meaning for the ordinary man. This, 
 however, is precisely the reason for my high valuation 
 and confident recommendation of them. What student 
 has not grown weary of wading through the ponderous 
 tomes, averaging twenty foot-notes to the page, in 
 which theologians and anti-theologians devote endless 
 chapters to the elaboration of arguments which are of no 
 importance even if true, and which after all are mere 
 speculations? Almost anybody can compile treatises of 
 this kind, if he is willing to grub in libraries after the man- 
 ner of Dominie Sampson; but nobody would be profited 
 by his exertions. For such hack-work little equipment 
 is needed beyond the tireless industry of the routineer, 
 a certain amount of linguistic skill, and an " impartiahty " 
 which really means blindness to the relative importance 
 of facts. The thorough study of the higher criticism of 
 the Bible compels one to labour through endless jungles 
 of this kind; and this is perhaps one of the chief reasons 
 why the very few incontrovertible facts and established 
 results in this field have not become widely known. 
 
 There are only two essential truths in connection with 
 the Gospels which can be regarded as beyond dispute. 
 The first is that nobody knows by whom or exactly when 
 they were written; the second, that the accounts they 
 give of the career of Jesus are hopelessly inconsistent, 
 so that it is impossible to construct from them a co- 
 herent story of his life. Probably there are more Lives 
 of Jesus in existence than there are books on any 
 other one subject. Yet all of them are founded on these 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 8l 
 
 four brief ancient documents, which are not contempo- 
 rary with the alleged events they record, nor written by 
 eye-witnesses of them; and which, as we have said, are 
 at vital points irreconcilable. No stronger proof of this 
 contention need be looked for than the heroic efforts 
 which have been made in the Church, from the time of 
 Tatian onwards, to "harmonize" these four accounts. 
 Here we have a long series of efforts, each tacitly con- 
 fessing the failure of all that preceded it, to do what would 
 not need doing if we had biographical accounts from 
 contemporaries of Jesus and eye-witnesses of his work. 
 
 We do not know the date of the birth of Jesus; we do 
 not know positively the place. We do not know at what 
 age he entered upon his ministry, or how long it lasted. 
 We do not know his age at death, nor the year in which 
 he died. Not until centuries after his time was a date 
 arbitrarily chosen for the observance of his nativity; and, 
 when the choice was made, it fell upon the birthday of 
 the sun-gods. Of his parents we know little more than 
 that their names were Joseph and Mary, and that he was 
 not their only son. The facts of his birth and childhood 
 are lost in a cloud of legends; and the same is true of the 
 end of his career. AU that we can feel certain of is that 
 he died by crucifixion. 
 
 This paucity of information concerning the outward 
 career of one who, after more than a century's develop- 
 ment of his gospel, was enrolled among the gods, has 
 led some thinkers to question whether the name of 
 Jesus belongs to history at all. Within the last few 
 years several volumes have been written to prove that 
 it does not. I have not space to enter into this un- 
 profitable controversy. I can only record here my 
 conviction that the mythologists are mistaken. The 
 
82 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 chief reason for beKeving in the historicity of Jesus is the 
 conflict between the picture of him which criticism can 
 reconstruct from the oldest strata of the Gospels, as a 
 human being with virtually no supernatural attributes, 
 and the picture afterwards fabricated of him and framed 
 in the cecmnenical creeds, as a transcendental being with 
 scarcely any vestige of humanity left about him. If, to 
 put it briefly, Jesus had from the first been conceived of 
 as a superhuman person, and had afterwards (by some 
 extraordinary collective haUucination) been inistakenly 
 supposed to have lived on earth as a man, then the 
 development traceable in the accounts of him, from the 
 earliest fragments of the New Testament to the time of 
 the framing of the creeds, would have been the precise 
 opposite of what it can be shown to have been. 
 
 Our Gospels, whatever their dates, are not the oldest 
 part of the New Testament. It is possible — indeed, it is 
 probable — that they are founded upon bare collections of 
 the sayings of Jesus, made by and for men who, having 
 known him, did not need biographical information. But 
 it is certain that by the time the demand arose for an 
 account of his Ufe, those who could have told the story 
 authentically were no longer available. When the 
 Christian movement began to spread as a missionary 
 faith there was a special and well-understood reason why 
 its converts did not at first demand written accounts of 
 the earthly career of their founder. This reason was 
 not the alleged fact that Jesus had never lived on earth 
 at all, but the ascertained fact that those who believed 
 in him expected very shortly to see him coming on the 
 clouds from heaven, and to be taken up to join him 
 there. 
 
 The oldest fragments of the New Testament are 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 83 
 
 certain letters of St. Paul, and in these the most pal- 
 pable fact is the faith of the writer in the speedy second 
 coming of his Lord, to wind up the affairs of a bankrupt 
 and hopeless world. Now when men are in a state of 
 tense expectation of a cosmic transformation-scene, when 
 their whole gaze is focussed with earnest yearning upon 
 the future, it is not to be expected that they shall devote 
 themselves anxiously to the collection of data concerning 
 the career of one whose earthly Ufe seems to them but a 
 trivial incident in the midst of everlastingness. St. Paul 
 was resolved not to know Christ "after the flesh," even 
 though he had formerly done so. His pecuhar position, 
 moreover, led him to disparage the personal intimacy of 
 his colleagues with Jesus during his earthly Hf e, since the 
 exaltation of that cormection implied a serious criticism 
 of his own apostolic credentials. Thus is explained the 
 fact of the silence of the earliest witness, which the 
 mythologists are wont to insist upon as the chief evidence 
 of their contention. Paul was silent because he de- 
 liberately wished to draw the attention of his converts 
 away from the hfe of Jesus, and to concentrate it upon 
 his death and resurrection. I am not aware that any of 
 the mythological school have denied St. Paul's intense 
 and earnest belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 
 But it is difficult to see how a man could believe in the 
 resurrection of Jesus without beheving in his death, and 
 in his death without beUeving in his earthly Hfe. Nor is 
 it possible to read the Epistles without being convinced 
 of the overmastering impression which had been made 
 upon Paul by the personality that inspired him. It is 
 sheer blindness to say, as one of the new myth-makers 
 does, that Paul's Jesus is a mere name, "a crucified 
 phantom" — whatever that may be. The one self-evident 
 
84 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and indisputable fact in Paul's career is that he regarded 
 himself as the disciple and minister of another. He was 
 no cult-founder, no propagator of a movement originat- 
 ing with himself. "I live," he said, "yet not I, but 
 Christ hveth in me." With Christ he was crucified, that 
 he might share in Christ's resurrection. His language 
 about the unsearchable riches in which he had been priv- 
 ileged to share, his desire to depart and to be with the 
 person he adored, his fidelity to a mission full of defeat 
 and discouragement, — aU these facts testify not to hal- 
 lucination or self-deception, but to such an inspiration 
 as necessarily impUes behind it a personahty of rare and 
 exalted power.^ As easily explain Plato without Socrates 
 or Boswell without Johnson as Paul without Jesus. 
 
 It is needless, however, to pursue an argument which 
 to the majority both of special students and of laymen 
 is obvious; and the case of Paul is only one of a score of 
 cruces which confront those who seek to remove Jesus 
 from the field of history. Equally insurmountable ob- 
 stacles to such an attempt await us in the pages of the 
 Gospels themselves. The moment it is explained why 
 the first Christians did not desire information about 
 their Lord's career, the objection on the ground of the 
 incoherence and incredibility of the biographical details 
 in the Gospels is dissipated. But there is a further in- 
 contestable fact of the highest significance. Just as St. 
 Paul is indubitably inspired by another, whom he counts 
 immeasurably greater than himself, so it becomes obvious 
 as we read the Gospels that their writers also are but 
 the mouthpieces of one greater than they, the com- 
 municators of a teaching which they, at aU events, could 
 not have invented, the depicters of a personality which 
 ' Gal. ii, 20; Rom. vi, 3-7; Philip, iii, 7-12, etc. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 85 
 
 they were self-evidently incapable of creating. One 
 cannot study the Gospels critically without being im- 
 pressed by the naivete and duhiess, the lack of insight 
 and imagination, of their compilers. If we see children 
 making clay figures and ornamenting them with jewels, 
 we do not need to be told that the children did not make 
 the jewels. There needs no elaborate process of critical 
 analysis to assure us upon the point. Just such children 
 were the evangelists; and just so incredible is it that they 
 can have invented the teaching, or the traits of personal 
 character disclosed by Jesus, which their narratives have 
 perpetuated for us. It might as well be argued that 
 Heminge and CondeU wrote the plays of Shakespeare as 
 that the evangelists invented Jesus and his teachings. 
 
 The consensus of recent criticism asserts that the Gos- 
 pel ascribed in our version to Mark was in its original 
 form the oldest of the Synoptics, though in the form in 
 which it has reached us many later touches have been in- 
 troduced. Matthew and Luke, according to the hypothe- 
 sis most generally accepted, proceeded upon a document 
 substantially identical with Mark, and upon one other 
 document, now lost, but capable of being partially recon- 
 structed from their text. The lay reader can get for him- 
 self a fairly clear idea of the evidence upon this point.^ Let 
 him place the three S)aioptics side by side, and go through 
 them to find out what all three have in common. He will 
 find that both Matthew and Luke have a great deal from 
 Mark. When he has thus used up Mark, let him examine 
 Matthew and Luke to find out how much of what re- 
 mains is common to them. He will again find a great 
 deal which they share, but which is not in Mark. By this 
 
 ^ It is admirably set forth in Dr. F. C. Conybeare's Myth, Magic and 
 Morals, chapters v-viii. (London: Watts & Co., 1909.) 
 
86 THE kELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 time exceedingly little wiU be left of Luke and Matthew. 
 The internal evidence further shows that both Matthew 
 and Luke freely adapted the material which they drew 
 from their sources, and did so with clearly defined pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The object of the Matthew Gospel is to demonstrate to 
 Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. As such, his message 
 must be exclusively to the Jews. He must be of Davidic 
 lineage, and he must fulfil the prophecies of the Old 
 Testament applying to the Messiah. The Matthew 
 Gospel subordinates everything and manipulates every- 
 thing to the end of sustaining these theses. Luke, on 
 the other hand, writes as a Gentile to Gentiles, selecting 
 and adapting his material with a view to demonstrating 
 the universality of Christ's appeal. Thus from Matthew 
 are omitted such parables as those of the Lost Coin, the 
 Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the 
 Pharisee and the Pubhcan, and the Rich Man and 
 Lazarus, all of which are unmistakably universal in their 
 humanistic appeal. Matthew inserts many Judaizing 
 particularities which Luke omits; for instance, the com- 
 mand not to cast pearls before swine, ^ the instruction to 
 the disciples not to go into the way of the Gentiles or 
 enter into any city of the Samaritans,^ and the un- 
 equivocal statement put upon the lips of Jesus, "I was 
 not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." ' 
 
 This contrast between Matthew and Luke comes out 
 in numerous details. Repeatedly Luke voices condem- 
 nations of the entire Jewish people which Matthew 
 either omits or converts into condemnations of the 
 Pharisees or other special groups, so as to remove the 
 impression that the Jewish Messiah condemned his own 
 1 Matt, vii, 6. 2 Matt, x, $■ ' Matt, xv, 24. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 87 
 
 nation wholesale. Several of these little traits will be 
 detected if Matthew's version of the parable of the Tal- 
 ents (xxv, 14-30) be compared with Luke's (xix, 12-27.) 
 
 The catholicity of Luke as compared with Matthew 
 is an evidence of relative lateness. Mark seems to have 
 in mind the problem of explaining to Gentiles why, if 
 Jesus was the Messiah, he should have been rejected by 
 his own people. He does this by the hypothesis of 
 secrecy: Jesus would not suffer his messianic character 
 to be known. Matthew, though he retains some traces 
 of the secrecy hypothesis, addresses himself throughout 
 to the task of convincing the Jews that they ought to 
 have received Jesus as the Messiah. Luke, writing to 
 Gentiles, is no longer conscious of the necessity of re- 
 conciling the alleged Messiahship with the Jewish re- 
 jection of it. The difficulty has evidently been got over 
 in the meantime. 
 
 The argument for the priority of Mark is further rein- 
 forced by the fact that many human traits in the char- 
 acter of Jesus are presented in it without any sophistica- 
 tion, whereas these same incidents in Matthew or Luke 
 are doctored to render them compatible with the rever- 
 ence for the person of Jesus which was developing among 
 the Christian groups. For example, in Mark vi, 5, it is 
 represented that Jesus, preaching in his own country, 
 discovered that, owing to the incredulity of those who 
 had always known him, "he could there do no mighty 
 work." In Mark (iii, 21) we are told that it was his 
 friends who said, "He is beside himself." Matthew and 
 Luke ascribe such sayings to the Pharisees or to the 
 "multitudes." John (x, 20) declares that it was "the 
 Jews" who said of Jesus, "He hath a devil and is mad." 
 
 The development of the legend is excellently illus- 
 
88 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 trated by the stories of the Birth and Baptism of Jesus. 
 Mark has no birth-story; those of Matthew and Luke 
 are late additions, and are in complete conflict with 
 each other; and John, without any allusion at all to the 
 circumstances of the birth, simply affirms that "the 
 Word was made flesh," though later he twice ^ represents 
 men speaking of Jesus as "the son of Joseph," without 
 any correction of their opinion. The genealogies in 
 Matthew and Luke have nothing in common except the 
 motive of demonstrating the Davidic descent of Jesus. 
 This they do by tracing from David the pedigree of — 
 Joseph. They thus represent a stage of belief when 
 Jesus was held to be something less than God, for no 
 Jew had ever supposed that the Messiah was to be an 
 incarnation of the divine personality, — Yahwe in bodily 
 form on earth. They also prove that when they were 
 compiled Jesus was believed to have been by normal 
 generation the son of Joseph the carpenter. The sub- 
 sequent working-over of these genealogies to make them 
 consistent with the doctrine of virgin birth reduces them 
 to palpable absurdity. How can the descent of a man 
 from David be proved by giving the pedigree of one who 
 was not his father? We know that in early times manu- 
 scripts read at Matt, i, i6, "Joseph begat Jesus." We 
 have one such ancient manuscript, — the Sinaitic Syriac 
 palimpsest. Even without it, however, the evident 
 logic of the case would force upon us the conviction 
 that this was the original reading. In Luke iii, 23, the 
 words "as was supposed" are an insertion, which, like 
 the change in Matt, i, 16, makes utter nonsense of 
 the pedigree which it introduces. The genealogies are 
 indeed mutually exclusive, since they differ in detail 
 
 1 John i, 4S, vi, 42. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 89 
 
 throughout. Their fortunate survival, however, enables 
 us to trace, more confidently than we otherwise could 
 have done, the growth of that myth which culminates in 
 the oecumenical creeds. 
 
 The story of the Baptism illustrates the development 
 from another aspect. According to Mark's account 
 (i, 9-1 1) there is no recognition of Jesus by John, and 
 the vision of the dove descending from heaven is seen 
 by Jesus alone. In Matt, (iii, 13-17), John, recog- 
 nizing Jesus, seeks to dissuade him from undergoing 
 baptism, on the groimd that John needed to be baptized 
 by Jesus, and not vice versa. In Luke (iii, 22) it is im- 
 plied that the theophany was witnessed by the multi- 
 tude. According to John (i, 29-34), the Baptist recog- 
 nizes and announces Jesus not as the Jewish Messiah, 
 but as the eternal divine saviour of the world. All 
 these stories, with the possible exception of Mark's, are 
 refuted by the subsequent testimony of Matthew and 
 Luke, which record that John sent messengers from his 
 prison to inquire of Jesus, "Art thou he that should 
 come, or look we for another?"^ — an impossible ques- 
 tion to be addressed to one whom he had from the first 
 perceived to be either the Messiah or the Lamb of God, 
 espedaUy if that perception had been ratified by a 
 heavenly vision and voice. 
 
 The myth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus may have 
 originated in misunderstanding of some of his sayings. 
 This apparently is the explanation of many of the al- 
 leged miracles.^ Several times the records betray both 
 the good faith and the incompetence of the disciples by 
 relating how Jesus was irritated by the impossibiUty of 
 
 1 Matt, xi, 3, Luke vii, 19. 
 
 2 See Schmiedel, art. Gospels in Ency. Bib., §§ 137, 140, 142. 
 
go THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 making his associates understand him. Thus, for in- 
 stance, the miracle of the feeding of multitudes with a 
 few loaves and fishes probably represents a misunder- 
 standing of the metaphorical use by Jesus of the term 
 bread, in allusions to his teaching as the bread of Hfe. 
 The resurrection stories may in like manner have taken 
 their rise from sayings such as that preserved in Mark viii, 
 35: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but 
 whosoever shall lose his life [for my sake and the gos- 
 pel's], the same shall save it." ^ The misapprehension 
 of such an idea by literal or pedantic minds, reinforced 
 later by misunderstood passages from the Old Testa- 
 ment, may have given rise to the stories of the bodily 
 resurrection. 
 
 These, however, fall by their iimer incompatibilities. 
 One has only to place them side by side to see that they 
 are hopelessly inconsistent with each other, and also 
 with the version of St. Paul. The Gospel of Mark origin- 
 ally ended at the eighth verse of chapter xvi.^ All that 
 is narrated of the resurrection up to that point is the 
 story of an empty tomb and a vision of a young man 
 in a white garment seen by two frightened women. Luke 
 multiplies the one young man into two, and the long 
 white garment into "shining garments," and then pro- 
 ceeds to add a number of details not given in any other 
 Gospel. Matthew explains the rolling away of the stone 
 by an earthquake, and transforms Mark's young man 
 into an angel of the Lord, descended from heaven, with 
 a countenance like lightning. Matthew also preserves 
 
 ' Comparison with Matt, x, 39, and Luke xvii, 33, together with 
 other reasons, makes it highly probable that the bracketed words did 
 not form part of the original sajdng. 
 
 ^ See footnote to Mark xvi, 9, in R. V. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 91 
 
 Mark's tradition that the risen Jesus, according to 
 previous appointment, had gone to Galilee. Luke, on 
 the contrary, declares that Jesus met two disciples near 
 Jerusalem, with whom he returned to the city. John's 
 version differs from all the rest by having two of the 
 disciples on hand to meet the one woman who discovered 
 that the sepulchre was open. This one woman, after 
 her interview with two angels at the tomb, turns and 
 meets Jesus in the garden, but does not recognize him. 
 John has many other post-resurrection stories pecuhar 
 to himself, among them that of the scepticism of Thomas. 
 This incident probably finds its motive in the need of 
 refuting the Docetic heresy, according to which Jesus 
 had never really lived in the flesh at all, but was, through- 
 out his earthly career, a mere phantom. 
 
 The growth of the legend, and our knowledge of the 
 motives for inventing it, justify us in setting it aside as 
 unhistorical, without wasting time over the problem of 
 whether the re-animation of a truly dead man after 
 thirty-six hours or more is or is not physically possible. 
 Huxley, following some writers of the older German ra- 
 tionahstic school, argues that there is no clear proof 
 in the Gospels that Jesus was really dead when he was 
 taken down from the cross. He might simply have 
 swooned, and emerged from his grave when he recovered. 
 According to Mark it cannot be said that Jesus remained 
 in his grave until the morning of the third day. It was 
 then that the stone wa.s found to have been removed; 
 but it might have been displaced at any time on the 
 day preceding. One need not take the Huxleian hy- 
 pothesis too seriously; yet the very fact that it could 
 be framed without forcing the testimony of the Gospels 
 demonstrates the looseness of structure of the narratives. 
 
92 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The miraculous legend of Jesus, however, grew up 
 only because of the impression produced upon simple- 
 minded contemporaries by his personaUty and his 
 teaching; and for us to-day it is by his teaching that he 
 must stand or fall. If we find evidence justifying the 
 early impression that "never man spake" as he, this will 
 give us sufficient ground to entertain for him a rational 
 veneration, and to ascribe to his words the same kind of 
 authority as we attribute to any other sage or artist, — 
 the degree of the authority var3ang with the comparative 
 value of the message. The modern religious revolution 
 does not consist in the rejection of miracles: it consists 
 in the rejection of idolatry. Any teacher becomes an idol 
 the moment men believe things merely because he said 
 them, instead of believing in him because of the inherent 
 truth and worth of the things he said. If you believe, for 
 example, in the principle of human brotherhood because 
 Christ taught it, you are an idolater; but if you believe in 
 Christ because he taught brotherhood, which you accept 
 on independent grounds of reason and conscience, your 
 veneration for him is morally and rationally legitimate. 
 So that, from the standpoint of the religion of experience, 
 the only question is whether we have in the words of 
 Jesus some real contribution of wisdom and insight which 
 we do not get so convincingly or so finely put from other 
 teachers. 
 
 It is this cirounstance which renders so essentially 
 irrelevant the logomachy over the historicity of Jesus. 
 The teaching of the Gospels is what it is, from whomso- 
 ever it may come. Our estimate of the teacher is de- 
 pendent upon the value of the teaching, not vice versd. 
 To say that it comes not from Jesus, but from anonymous 
 disciples of one who never lived, is rather more idle 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 93 
 
 than the dictum of the schoolboy, that the Iliad and 
 Odyssey were written not by Homer, but by another 
 poet of the same name. 
 
 Now there is in the recorded utterances of Jesus one 
 element about which the new mythological school is for 
 the most part significantly silent. I refer to the Parables. , 
 The specifically ethical maxims of Jesus are not indu- 
 plicable; all, or ahnost all, of them can be found in earlier 
 writings, Jewish and Gentile. This is not remarkable, 
 even if Buckle be not wholly right in his contention that 
 there are no discoveries in morals. But where are we 
 to look for anticipations of the form, the contents, and 
 the deep humanistic insight of the Parables of Jesus? 
 To their hterary excellence I shall quote, instead of using 
 poorer words of my own, the following eloquent testi- 
 mony of Professor Nathaniel Schmidt: — 
 
 In one province of art Jesus was a master. No man ever 
 spoke as he. The beauty of his speech was as marked as its 
 originality. Even the handful of fragments that has come 
 down to us gives an impression of his extraordinary power. 
 Though Oriental oratory abounds in figurative language and 
 illustrative anecdote, and volumes of wise sayings prized "as 
 apples of gold in baskets of silver" have been preserved from 
 Hebrew antiquity, there is nothing that even approaches the 
 parable of Jesus. It has the excellence that forbids imitation. 
 There are works of art so perfect in their kind that the world 
 instinctively leaves the sacred ground pre-empted by genius 
 for other fields of endeavour. The beauty of nature im- 
 pressed itself upon the sensitive mind of Jesus, and was re- 
 flected in the simplicity and grandeur, the harmony and 
 radiance, of his speech. Each work of art in the Galilean 
 master's gallery stands forth in maiden purity, chaste, modest 
 and imconscious of its loveliness, yet breathes the breath of 
 
94 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 life. These characters of his creation will Uve as long as the 
 human race. Churches may rise and fall, theological systems, 
 may come and go, works of great merit may be dropped into 
 the limbo of forgotten things, but the love of inspiring art 
 will itself secure against obUvion the Good Samaritan, Dives 
 and Lazarus, the FooUsh Virgins, the Prodigal Son, the 
 Sower, the Widow, the Shepherd, and their companions. 
 Jesus may have known next to nothing of sculpture and 
 painting, of music and drama, and may have had no idea of 
 their place in the moral and spiritual development of man; 
 but he knew as few know the art of touching all the chords 
 that vibrate within the soul, the emotions, the will and the 
 mind, and to lift and refine whenever he touched them.^ 
 
 The parables of Jesus have suffered in a specially acute 
 degree from the general neglect into which the Bible has 
 fallen. More than any other part of the New Testament 
 (except perhaps the Apocalypse), they have been the 
 hunting-ground for wild and fantastic exegesis. They 
 have been converted, as Professor Jiilicher ^ pithily ex- 
 presses it, from Gleichnissreden into allegories. Esoteric 
 meanings have been vainly sought in every item of 
 the imagery, — ^in the ring, the shoe, the lamp, the talent. 
 St. Augustine, though not perhaps one of the worst 
 sinners in this respect, is yet responsible for the use of 
 the phrase "Compel them to come in," taken from the 
 parable of the Banquet, as a justification for rehgious 
 persecution. So preposterously has the evident sense and 
 the literary structure of the parables been distorted, to 
 force them to yield meanings of which their author can- 
 not have dreamed, that one is bound to sympathize with 
 the legendary schoolboy, who, having been taught that a 
 parable is "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning," 
 1 Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 362-63. ^ Art. Parables in Ency. Bib. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 95 
 
 inverted the definition in his examination paper, and 
 declared that a parable is a heavenly story with no 
 earthly meaning. The follies of commentators, however, 
 cannot justly be visited upon the head of Jesus, any more 
 than in the case of any other poet. The cure for false the- 
 ology, said Emerson, is mother-wit; and the cure for pe- 
 dantic absurdities of interpretation is a re-examination of 
 the texts in the Kght of common sense and hterary insight. 
 
 The parable form is not peculiar to the New Testa- 
 ment. There are several examples of it in the Old 
 Testament, one of which (the homily read by Nathan to 
 David in II Samuel xH, 1-7) is as fine and apt as anything 
 in the Gospels. But whereas the parable is rare and 
 exceptional in the older scriptures, in the Gospels it is 
 usual and frequent. It is there that we find ascribed to 
 Jesus those masterpieces which, as Schmidt says, forbid 
 imitation. 
 
 The first problem that confronts us when we begin to 
 study the use of the parable by Jesus is the question of 
 the secrecy of his teaching. This, as we have noted 
 above, is the thesis of Mark. The dehverances of that 
 evangehst are somewhat incoherent, both among them- 
 selves and as compared with the testimony of the other 
 Gospels. Mark iv, 10-13, reads as follows: 
 
 (10) And when he was alone, they that were about him 
 with the twelve asked of him the parables. (11) And he 
 said unto them. Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom 
 of God: but unto them that are without, all things are done 
 in parables: (12) that seeing they may see, and not perceive; 
 and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest haply 
 they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them. 
 (13) And he saith unto them. Know ye not this parable? 
 and how shall ye know aU the parables? 
 
96 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Verses ii and 12, with their bitter cynicism, are pre- 
 sumably a later insertion, since verse 13 follows nat- 
 urally after verse 10. Moreover, these two added verses 
 are flatly incongruous with verses 21-24 of the same 
 chapter, and more particularly with verses 33 and 34, 
 which give the following humane and common-sense 
 explanation of the use of parables: 
 
 And with many such parables spake he the word unto 
 them, as they were able to hear it: and without a parable 
 spake he not unto them: but privately to his own disciples 
 he expounded all things. 
 
 The same explanation is given also in Matt, xiii, 13 : 
 
 Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing 
 they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
 understand. 
 
 The question, however, is again complicated by the 
 citation from Isaiah in verses 14 ff. 
 
 Here, then, we have two explanations; — the one, that 
 Jesus taught in parables because without them the 
 multitude could not understand; the other, that he used 
 the parables in order to prevent them from understanding 
 him. This is a charming problem, over which the 
 harmonizers and reconcilers may quarrel till doomsday. 
 The higher critics as a rule assume that the two tradi- 
 tions are mutually exclusive. We may readily agree 
 with them that Jesus caimot be correctly reported in this 
 particular place both by Matthew and Mark. It cer- 
 tainly is not conceivable that he can have said both these 
 things at the same time, in reply to questions from his 
 disciples about the parable of the Sower. 
 
 We ought, however, to remember that every man says 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 97 
 
 conflicting things upon different occasions, and that 
 each of two assertions which are incompatible with each 
 other may be consistent with the special circumstances 
 of the moment at which it is uttered. Everything we 
 say presupposes a huge context of things which we do not 
 say, but which, being understood and taken for granted 
 by our companions, provides the necessary light for the 
 interpretation of our words. If isolated fragments of 
 the conversation of any man were jotted down in differ- 
 ent years and afterwards Juxtaposed by some clumsy 
 redactor, a thousand seeming inconsistencies could not 
 faU to arise. So it well may be that Jesus at different 
 times adopted different courses. One cannot believe, 
 indeed, that he resorted to the trick of systematically 
 dividing his teaching into exoteric and esoteric; but there 
 are traces of a growing conflict between him and the 
 rehgious and poKtical authorities of his nation, which 
 may at times have forced upon him a device to which 
 every propagandist is sometimes compelled to resort, — 
 that, namely, of using language which would convey 
 his meaning to the initiated and to sympathizers, while 
 concealing it from hostile outsiders. 
 
 Jesus evidently foresaw the fact that his work would 
 some day bring him into collision with the ruling powers. 
 He was no revolutionist in the vulgar sense, — no claptrap 
 Messiah seeking to estabhsh a petty kingdom in place of 
 the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire. He was, how- 
 ever, a propagandist of ethical and social principles 
 calculated to produce disturbance within any existing 
 system of government, civil or religious. To demand 
 social righteousness is more menacing than to seek to 
 substitute monarchy for imperialism, or republicanism 
 for monarchy. To insist upon the cleansing of the inside 
 
98 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 of the cup is more far-reaching than to change a king into 
 a president, or a priest into a minister. There is con- 
 siderable uncertainty as to the exact shape which the 
 idea of the kingdom of God took in the mind of Jesus.^ 
 Nobody but a pedant can pretend to give a detailed 
 chart of the order of society which would come about 
 through the adoption of just principles. But that Jesus 
 became early suspected of revolutionary designs is made 
 clear, among other things, by the entrapping questions 
 occasionally put to him. And that he saw through the 
 wiles of his enemies is shown by the evasive answers he 
 returned. For example, when priests and scribes inquire 
 as to the authority by which he taught and laboured, he 
 rephes by asking them a question concerning the creden- 
 tials of John the Baptist, which they dare not answer.^ 
 And agaia, when certain poHticians seek to embroil him 
 either with the people or with the Roman authorities by a 
 trick question about the lawfulness of paying tribute to 
 
 ' Considerations of space, as well as of subject-matter, constrain me 
 to omit the discussion of the now fashionable theory of " thorough- 
 going eschatology," set forth in many recent works, and with special 
 freshness and ability by Albert Schweitzer, in The Quest of Ihe Historical 
 Jesus and The Mystery of the Kingdom of God. Readers familiar with the 
 controversy will agree, I think, that the arguments in the text do not de- 
 pend for their validity upon the determination of the eschatological issue. 
 
 ''Mk. xi, 27-33, R- v.: "And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he 
 was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the 
 scribes, and the elders; and they said unto him. By what authority doest 
 thou these things? or who gave thee this authority to do these things? 
 And Jesus said unto them, I wiU ask of you one question, and answer 
 me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The bap- 
 tism of John, was it from heaven, or from men? answer me. And they 
 reasoned with themselves saying. If we shall say, From heaven; he will 
 say, Why then did ye not believe him? But should we say, From men — 
 they feared the people : for all verily held John to be a prophet. And they 
 answered Jesus and say, We know not. And Jesus saith unto them, 
 Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 99 
 
 Caesar, he replies with an oracular dictum that reminds 
 one of Captain Jack Bunsby.^ 
 
 Professor Jiihcher opposes to the secrecy theory the 
 alleged fact that a great body of the teaching of Jesus 
 addressed to the multitudes is non-paraboHc, instancing 
 especially the long passage, Matt, v, i-vii, 27. Here, 
 however, arises one of the most interesting of all the 
 problems connected with the teaching of Jesus. This 
 long passage is introduced with the statement that the 
 teaching it contains was addressed exclusively to the 
 immediate disciples.^ Unfortunately, the evangelist 
 creates a problem for us by informing us (vii, 28) that 
 "When Jesus had finished these words, the multitudes 
 were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one 
 having authority, and not as their scribes." Here we 
 have another splendid file for the harmonizers to break 
 their teeth upon. 
 
 The dilemma is presented over again in the correspond- 
 ing passage of St. Luke. That Gospel informs us (vi, 20) 
 that "He lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said" — 
 
 ' Mk. xii, 13-17, R. V. : "And they send unto him certain of the Phar- 
 isees and of the Herodians, that they might catch him in talk. And 
 when they were come, they say unto him. Master, we know that thou 
 art true, and carest not for any one; for thou regardest not the person 
 of men, but of a truth teachest the way of God: Is it lawful to give 
 tribute unto Caesar or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, 
 knowing their hj^jocrisy, said unto them. Why tempt ye me? bring me 
 a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And he saith unto 
 them. Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto 
 him, CsEsar's. And Jesus said unto them. Render unto Casar the 
 things that are Csesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And 
 they marvelled greatly at him." 
 
 2 Matt. V, I : " And seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain : 
 and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him: and he opened 
 his mouth and taught them, saying," etc. The plain implication is that 
 he had climbed the hiU to escape from the crowds which had followed 
 him from Galilee, Decapolis, and elsewhere. (See the preceding verses.) 
 
lOO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 all that follows down to verse 49. Then it is straightway 
 added: "After he had ended all his sayings in the ears of 
 the people, he entered into Capernaum." 
 
 It is palpable that the teaching in Matthew which 
 begins with the Beatitudes and continues for three whole 
 chapters was never given consecutively as a sermon. 
 No teacher would utter seriatim, without comment or 
 connecting words, such a series of quintessential maxims 
 and epigrams. They epitomize the reflection and the 
 garnered wisdom of a lifetime. Many of them, too, are 
 old sayings, earlier versions of which have been traced,^ — 
 for example, in one of the recently recovered translations 
 of the Book of Enoch. On grounds of general probability 
 we may infer that much of this teaching was voiced by 
 Jesus both publicly to the multitude and privately to his 
 immediate coadjutors, but also that much of it was given 
 to the latter alone. The comparison between his auditors 
 and the persecuted prophets,^ for instance, is enormously 
 more appropriate as addressed to a select group of co- 
 workers than to the indiscriminate crowd. The char- 
 acterization, again, of those addressed as the salt of the 
 earth ^ is practically impossible as applied to a promis- 
 cuous assembly, containing enemies as weU as friends. 
 
 Again, there is much in the so-called Sermon which 
 seems fanatical and impracticable if construed as counsel 
 to ordinary men for the guidance of ordinary life, but 
 which is emphatically wise and appropriate as a code for 
 the conduct of missionaries of an unpopular cause, likely 
 to encounter persecution.^ Non-resistance as a maxim 
 
 ^Matt. V, II-I2. 2 Matt, v, 13. 
 
 ' E. g.. Matt. V, 38-48, containing the doctrine of non-resistance, the 
 command to turn the other cheek, to give the cloak to him who takes 
 the coat, etc. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST loi 
 
 for the laity would make life impossible. It would enable 
 the masterful to inherit the earth, and lead to bitter 
 enslavement for all but a handful of mankind. Yet this 
 very attitude is that which makes the martyr invulnera- 
 ble, and gives to the prophet of spiritual reformation an 
 irresistible authority. There is nothing in. the career of 
 Jesus consistent with the notion that he was a senti- 
 mental fanatic of the Tolstoian type. He was quite 
 ready both to denounce judgment upon evildoers and to 
 resort to the use of force when the matter in dispute was 
 not a personal one.^ He would not, however, seek to 
 avenge by violence any insult or injury to himself. It 
 seems, then, not altogether arbitrary to suggest that this 
 much-criticized teaching of non-resistance was part of 
 the special instruction given by Jesus to the disseminators 
 of his message, with a view to those peculiar exigencies of 
 their task to which it is admirably adapted. Such an 
 interpretation accords at least as well with the context of 
 the Gospels as the contrary one; and it has the advantage 
 of rescuing Jesus from the imputation (so inconsistent, as 
 we shall see, with the rest of his teaching) of being a kind 
 of Sunday-school milksop. 
 
 Returning to the question of secrecy, we may note the 
 objection, based on Matt, xxi, 45, that the Pharisees who 
 had overheard the parable of the Vineyard understood it, 
 and saw that it was meant for them. I would repeat, 
 however, that it does not follow from this that Jesus 
 never desired to conceal his meaning. His fondness for 
 the aphorism, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," 
 suggests an acute and almost humorous sense of the 
 differences of capacity among his auditors. He knew by 
 close observation how self-centredness and self-deification 
 1 Matt, xxi, 12 S., Mark xi, 15 ff., John ii, 14 ff. 
 
I02 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 render the perception obtuse. His own familiar friends 
 were sadly unpenetrable, and he often resents the ne- 
 cessity of laboriously explaining to them things that 
 should have been self-evident.^ It is obvious that he 
 often suffered, as would any poet whose figurative speech, 
 was taken Hterally; and it well may be that weariness of 
 this sometimes led him to say, not without irritation, 
 "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
 
 A remarkable analogy exists between the parables of 
 Christ and the ancient folk-lore fables which we associate 
 with the name of .^sop. These illustrate exactly that 
 combination of secrecy and openness which we find in 
 the tales of Jesus. It has sometimes seemed to me that 
 the only people who can suppose ^sop's fables to be fit 
 reading for young children are those who having eyes see 
 not, and having ears fail to hear. For these fables mask 
 under their deHghtful imagery all the bitter and tragic 
 resentment of the poor and enslaved against the rich and 
 prosperous. The cunning they commend is a cynical 
 crystalHzation of the lesson taught by cruel experience of 
 the inhumanity of the "haves" to the "have-nots." The 
 earthen pot floating down the stream must avoid the 
 brass pot, for, if the two collide, the earthen pot will be 
 shattered to fragments. The earthen pot is the poor 
 man; he must avoid the society of the rich and powerful. 
 Such is also the half-concealed meaning of the stories of 
 the wolf and the lamb, the fox and the goat. Msop 
 warns the poor and the enslaved to be on their guard 
 against the blandishments and the heartless deceits of the 
 rich and free. 
 
 ' Matt. XV, IS ff.; xvi, 9 ff.; Mark viii, 16 ff. The characterization of 
 his followers as "babes" (Matt, xi, 25), if authentic, is another evidence 
 of his sense of the situation. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 103 
 
 One great group of the parables of Jesus is in like man- 
 ner addressed to the poor and oppressed. These parables 
 are not bitterly cynical like the fables of ^sop, and they 
 do not convey a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, 
 like that which breathes through the fable of the earthen 
 pot. They are rather an appeal to self-reliance and co- 
 operation, implying a confident consciousness that by 
 these means the blessings of which the poor and outcast 
 are deprived could be won. 
 
 There is in the sayings of Jesus a realistic sense of the 
 actual conditions of Kfe, which for his time, and in view 
 of his circumstances, is amazingly original. He insists 
 that people seeking any sort of advancement in life must 
 rely upon themselves, and not trust to outside powers. 
 He repeatedly emphasizes that doctrine of the moral 
 indifference of nature which, as presented by thinkers in 
 the nineteenth century, has been denounced as atheistic. 
 He points to the fact that the sun shines impartially on 
 the Just and the unjust, and the rain falls alike on the evil 
 and on the good. There is a favourite sa)dng of his which 
 in the three Synoptics is repeated five times over,^ a fact 
 which Justifies the inference that it was a characteristic 
 maxim, repeated many more than five times by Jesus. 
 This is the saying, rendered with slight differences of 
 wording: "To him that hath shall be given, and from him 
 that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." 
 There could not be a more perfect summary of the doc- 
 trine familiarly known to us as the struggle for existence 
 and the survival of the fittest. 
 
 The denial of special providences, conveyed by the 
 aphorism about the sun and the rain, is repeated very em- 
 
 ^ Matt, xiii, 13, xxv, 29 (Parable of Talents), Mark iv, 25, Luke viii, 18, 
 zix, 26. 
 
104 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 phatically in Luke xiii, 1-5, in which Jesus declares that 
 victims of a barbarous sentence and a tragic accident were 
 not thereby proved to be worse sinners than their neigh- 
 bours. This is a stinging rebuke to the towering egotism 
 which imagines that the order of the universe is inter- 
 rupted to inflict exemplary punishment upon wrong- 
 doers or bestow palmary rewards upon individuals of 
 exceptional piety. Jesus is almost as satirical as Hotspur 
 to the braggart Glendower.^ 
 
 In studjdng the parables of Jesus, then, we must begin 
 by clearing our minds of the Sunday-school notion of the 
 man whose teaching lies before us. He is not a senti- 
 mentalist, not a dreamer; not a bloodless phantasm, such 
 as he is made to look in many of the old pictures. Neither 
 is he a pedantic theologian, bent on forcing the facts of 
 life to fit some preconceived theory. Rather, he is at 
 once a poet and a reformer. He is ' ' that most formidable 
 of all combinations, a mystic and a man of action." He 
 has, indeed, a serene and imperturbable faith in the 
 ultimate rightness of things. His confidence that the 
 universe is sound at heart reposes upon the mystic in- 
 tuition that the disinterested and super-personal will in 
 himself is identical with the innermost core of the world. 
 But this intuition, — which is in truth the working faith 
 of all reformers and martyrs, — is consistent with the 
 clearest and most unilluded perception of the obstacles 
 
 ' King Henry IV, Part I, Act iii, Scene i: 
 Glendower: At my nativity 
 
 The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes 
 
 Of burning cressets; and at my birth 
 
 The frame and huge foundation of the earth 
 
 Shaked like a coward. 
 Hotspur: Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's 
 
 cat had but kitten'd, though yourself had never been born. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 105 
 
 and resistances to righteousness opposed not only by the 
 outer world, but also by the self -regarding will of men and 
 women, and especially of the masters of things as they 
 are. Jesus feels that most of the evils suffered by the 
 poor and the oppressed are due to their own apathy, and 
 to their neglect of the irresistible power which they 
 unitedly could exercise. 
 
 His call to them is, accordingly, a challenge to alertness 
 and efficiency. It is perhaps not surprising that the 
 old doctrinal interpretation assigned fantastic theological 
 meanings to these parables, for their lesson is not, in the 
 ordinary narrow sense, an ethical one. In the parable of 
 the Tares,! of the Thief,^ of the Hidden Treasure,^ of the 
 Pearl,* of the Lost Sheep,^ as well as in the longer stories 
 of the Talents,^ the Ten Virgins,' and the Wedding Gar- 
 ment,^ we have no neat Kttle examples of "material for 
 moral instruction," with the moral symmetrically nailed 
 on at the end, but vivid hints of the hard and brutal 
 reality that confronts men, — especially those men who 
 seek the good. These parables all centre in the idea that 
 many are called and few chosen, and that the prize of 
 success in any undertaking goes only to him that hath — 
 to him, that is, who is endowed with that minimum of 
 advantages which enables him to cope successfully with 
 his enviroimient. 
 
 The most sensational instance of this ruthless realism is 
 afforded by the parable of the Unjust Steward, which has 
 always been a stumbling-block to commentators. The 
 version we have of it (Luke xvi, 1-13) has evidently been 
 
 1 Matt, xiii, 24-30. * Matt, xviii, 12. 
 
 2 Matt, xxiv, 43. ° Matt, xxv, 14-30. 
 ' Matt, xiii, 44. ' Matt, xxv, 1-13. 
 « Matt, xiii, 45-46. * Matt, xxii, 1-14. 
 
lo6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 worked over from verse lo onwards by puzzled theo- 
 logians, who could not edit away its apparent meaning, 
 and yet were aghast at it. In that story a thief is 
 commended, — not, indeed, for his theft, but for his 
 alertness and skill in adapting his circumstances to his 
 needs. 
 
 This is but an exceptionally glaring proof of my conten- 
 tion as to the meaning of the series of stories which I shall 
 venture to call the Efficiency Parables. These have 
 nothing whatever to do with salvation in a life after 
 death, with correctness of theological belief, or even with 
 moral character, in the ordinary and limited sense of that 
 phrase. The five foolish virgins are not represented as 
 believing more or less than the wise, or as being morally 
 inferior to them. Their folly consists in their unreadiness, 
 their failure to prepare for the call of opportunity or to 
 anticipate the circumstances with which they will have to 
 cope. The unjust steward is commended, "because he 
 had done wisely: for the sons of this age are for their own 
 generation wiser than the sons of the light." 
 
 Jesus, like every practical reformer, encountered the 
 disheartening fact that good people are often good for 
 nothing. They are ineffectual; they sit apathetically 
 waiting for the law of righteousness to execute itself. 
 They will not combine with others, they will not organize 
 the forces in men and things which must be marshalled 
 before victory can be attained. The sons of this age are 
 indeed wiser. Who that has sought to overthrow any 
 concrete evil has not learned to wonder at and to respect 
 the never-sleeping vigilance of those who, profiting by 
 the evil, desire its continuance? The white slave traffic, 
 the liquor interest, the exploiters of child labour, the 
 capitalistic opposers of the just claims of the working- 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 107 
 
 class, — all these seem to be hydra-headed and argus-eyed. 
 No chance for a successful coup ever eludes them. Their 
 grasp is upon all our poKtical and municipal machinery. 
 Their emissaries are to be found at every strategical 
 point. If at long intervals the far more numerous forces 
 of good are successfully organized against them, they 
 know that they have but to bide their time until the next 
 election, or the next lock-out, meantime judiciously dis- 
 tributing backsheesh and raising sham issues to divert 
 the public attention from themselves and their de- 
 signs. 
 
 This, then, is the excellent foppery of the world, — 
 that they who believe in the good leave it to come of 
 itseK, superstitiously trusting the blind forces of nature 
 to give them a victory they "have done naught to earn"; 
 whereas aU the powers of darkness, with perception 
 sharpened by self-interest, count upon no effect unless 
 they have with deadly efi&ciency marshalled the natural 
 causes that cannot fail to bring it about. The lesson that 
 Jesus read to his contemporaries has to be learned over 
 again, in sorrow and disillusionment, by the reformers of 
 every new generation. 
 
 But Jesus, as I have said, is as little a pessimist as he is 
 a sentimental optimist. He sees where the strength of 
 evil Hes, — ^in the never-wearjdng vigilance of those who 
 make evil their good. But he also sees that the forces 
 of the world are ready to wait upon the will of those who 
 seek justice and righteousness, as soon as they comply 
 with the conditions that inhere in the eternal order of 
 things. 
 
 We miss the whole point of the great parable of the 
 Talents if we fail to see that its lesson is for the man 
 with the one talent. The reason, says Jesus in effect. 
 
lo8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 why the world is governed by a haughty and brutal 
 aristocracy in Church and State, is not because that 
 aristocracy consists of persons whose abihty is to that of 
 average mankind as five to one or as two to one. It is 
 simply because the mass fails to make use of such natural 
 endowments as it does possess. This is the secret of 
 democracy, which consists essentially in an appeal to the 
 uncommon possibilities of the common man. The 
 preaching of the will to power as a doctrine for aristocrats 
 and supermen is from this point of view a serious mis- 
 take, for it may perchance be overheard by the com- 
 monalty. When the poorly gifted realize that ten men 
 possessing one talent each are stronger than any one 
 man with five talents, we may see a demo'cratic assertion 
 of the will to power, which will make a compendious end 
 of all the tyrannies, religious, political and economic, 
 under which the race is as yet groaning. What is the 
 whole organization of the proletariat in our modern 
 nations, the formation of labour unions and socialist po- 
 litical parties, but a seizing upon the lesson taught to 
 the have-nots and the outcasts nineteen centuries ago by 
 the proletarian Founder of the Christian Church? In 
 any nation, the latent power of the oppressed majority is 
 necessarily greater than that of the oppressing minority. 
 In this ultimate sense it may be said that every people 
 gets the government it deserves. But commonly the 
 majority sleeps or permits itself to be blinded to its true 
 interests by the crafts and wiles of its exploiters. Yet 
 even to-day the great awakening is in process. Every- 
 where the man with the one talent is unwrapping it from 
 the napkin in which he had hidden it in the earth, and is 
 pooling it with the single talents of his neighbours. The 
 triumph of democracy throughout the world which will 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 109 
 
 thus be brought about will be one expression of the 
 triumph of Jesus Christ; for it will be effected by an 
 application of his teaching. 
 
 It is to be noted that when Jesus recognizes the moral 
 indifference of nature, he passes no ethical judgment upon 
 the law that he detects. He merely states the fact, with- 
 out pausing to justify or condemn it. The sun, he tells 
 us, shines on the just and the unjust; the rain falls upon 
 the evil and upon the good. To him that hath shall be 
 given; therefore (he implies), see that you have, in order 
 that you may have more. He does not say that this law 
 of nature is ideally just. He leaves open the question 
 whether the world-order may not be anti-human and 
 inhuman. Like a modern man of science, he seeks to 
 define precisely the conditions under which the game of 
 hfe must be played. He denies utterly the naive moral 
 theology of the early Jews, who thought that compliance 
 with the law of righteousness on the part of individuals 
 was an infallible means to success. He would have 
 laughed to scorn that childlike psalmist who said, "I 
 have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the 
 righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." ^ 
 Such a doctrine he would rightly have regarded as the 
 essence of superstition. Matthew Arnold has put the 
 truth into lines that seem but a paraphrase of the 
 words of Jesus:— 
 
 Streams will not curb their pride 
 
 The just man not to entomb. 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 To leave his virtues room; 
 Nor is that wind less rough that blows a good man's barge. 
 
 ' Ps. xxxvii, 25. 
 
no THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Nature, with equal mind, 
 
 Sees all her sons at play, — 
 Sees man control the wind, 
 The wind sweep man away, — 
 Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark.' 
 
 This is a stern teaching; yet the truth, however rigorous 
 it seem, is more precious than any flattering illusion. 
 Nobody will discuss whether the outward order of things 
 is moral or immoral, unless he is still slumbering in the 
 dreamland of anthropomorphism. If we read the order 
 of laws and events in the world as the expression of a 
 personal will, we shall have to appraise it in ethical 
 terms. We then shall find ourselves involved in per- 
 petual doubt as to whether the will it expresses is divine 
 or diabolical. We cut away the ground, however, from 
 this idle controversy by recognizing the impersonality, 
 and consequently the non-morality, of the outward order 
 of things. The world with its laws is neither moral nor 
 immoral, and places no handicap either upon morality or 
 immorality. The only vaUd faith is that which accepts 
 this fact, and does not try to blink it or to soften the 
 harshness of its implications. 
 
 But it is precisely this indifference, this impartiality, 
 of the universe, which gives the opportunity for the eth- 
 ical will to embody itself. If nature were anti-moral, 
 if the dice were loaded in favour of evil, the cause of 
 righteousness would be foredoomed to failure. If, on the 
 other hand, the world-order foreordained the victory of 
 right, then right would be but another name for cunning 
 prudence and self-interest, and the nobility of virtue 
 would surcease. Because nature is impartial, the re- 
 
 ' Arnold, Empedocki on Etna. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST ill 
 
 sponsibility lies upon man to create the righteous order 
 that he dreams of, and, in labouring for it, to create 
 himself into something nobler than his original condition. 
 
 Alongside of the group of stories which preach the 
 doctrine I have just elaborated, and which I have called 
 for convenience the Efl&ciency Parables, lies another 
 series, which may be termed for distinction the Ethical 
 Parables. Under this heading fall all those beautiful 
 tales preserved in Luke, but omitted from Matthew 
 because, as we have seen, they preach a universaUst 
 doctrine to which that evangelist was opposed. It was 
 early believed that such characters as Lazarus and the 
 Prodigal Son represented the Gentile nations, the Rich 
 Man of the Lazarus story and the Elder Brother of the 
 Prodigal standing for the Jews. If this interpretation 
 rightly seizes the thought of the narrator, it only throws 
 into a stiU finer Kght the marvellous art of the charac- 
 terization. In the case of the story of the Good Samar- 
 itan, there can be no question whatever as to the purport. 
 The greater nobility of the despised foreigner is thrust 
 into the teeth of the narrow and race-proud Jew, and the 
 ancient doctrine of duty to one's neighbour undergoes a 
 broadening which at one stroke purges it of hateful ex- 
 clusiveness. 
 
 The Hterature of the world does not contain the 
 artistic equal of the tale of the Prodigal Son. In twenty- 
 two short verses are presented to us three perfectly 
 depicted and marvellously contrasted types of character. 
 Many conventional valuations are revalued in the pure 
 white light of its ethical vision. With what skill is 
 brought out the inward vileness of the respectable elder 
 brother, whose ungenerous spirit cared only for favours 
 received, and meted out its curmudgeonly loyalty in 
 
112 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 strict proportion to the amount of its rewards! How 
 finely is this contrasted with the open-hearted generosity 
 of the father, — willing, indeed, to let the wa3rward child 
 dree his weird; resigned, though with grief, to the in- 
 evitableness of the bitter price he must pay for his 
 experience; but ready to pour out his unstinted bene- 
 volence the moment there is any expression of penitence 
 on the prodigal's part. 
 
 The inner secret of the democratic faith of Jesus, 
 however, is his recognition of the hidden fineness even of 
 vile persons. The blackguard prodigal had indeed been 
 basely ungrateful to his father, and had devoured that 
 father's living with harlots. Yet he it is who exhibits a 
 truly magnificent gleam of character the moment he 
 comes to himself. The faith of democracy is that the 
 real self, to which any man comes when his eyes are 
 truly opened and he sees realities as they are, is always a 
 noble and splendid self, capable of all justice, of every 
 generosity and every renunciation. This is the self which 
 in the prodigal rises to the height of the sentiment, "I 
 have sinned against heaven and in thy sight; I am no 
 more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of 
 thy hired servants." It is the same self which in the 
 father overflows in the generosity that gives to the re- 
 turned wanderer the best robe, places the ring on his 
 finger and the shoes on his feet, and kills for him the 
 fatted calf; the same which, in the parable of the La- 
 bourers in the Vineyard, gives magnanimously "unto 
 this last" even as unto those who have toiled all the day: 
 taking their need, not their desert, as the measure of 
 what they are to receive. 
 
 In the literary miracle of the parable of the Pharisee 
 and the Publican, this conviction of the inherent fineness 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 113 
 
 of humanity blasts the dark idolatry of self in the irre- 
 proachable religious leader with the same lightning that 
 reveals the unsuspected nobility of the publican. Jesus 
 does not need to preach or moralize — he can destroy with 
 description and create with disclosure. Nor can we 
 cease to wonder at the utter freedom from sentimentality 
 which takes for its example not a character that is falsely 
 condemned by conventional standards, but one that is 
 truly censurable according to genuinely ethical canons. 
 The publican, who for hire had made himself the instru- 
 ment of foreign tyranny over his compatriots, and who 
 had swindled both his employers and his victims into 
 the bargain, is a man whom every disinterested onlooker 
 would rightly dislike. Yet, according to Jesus, when 
 even he comes to his true self, he finds that it is a self 
 which condemns his record. By uttering the prayer 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner," the pubUcan identifies 
 himself with the justice whose verdict is against him. 
 Emerson held the conviction that Jesus was the only 
 man in aU history who had justly estimated the greatness 
 of man.^ This tribute to the GaKlean has been con- 
 demned as sentimental. In associating myself with it, I 
 would ask the critics how otherwise they can explain the 
 facts to which I have pointed. Here is the insight that 
 pierces through the rags and the vileness to the hidden 
 royalty. We do not read it into the Gospels; there it is: 
 and where else shall we find it? Not in the aristocratic 
 satires of Plato upon democracy; not in Aristotle's ac- 
 ceptance of slavery as a part of the order of nature; not 
 in the Buddhist condemnation of aU individualized ex- 
 istence as an incurable evil to be fled from; not in the 
 
 1 Divinity College Address. Concord edit, of Emerson, vol. i, p. 128. 
 (Houghton, Mifflin.) 
 
114 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 abstract and theoretical humanitarianism of the Roman 
 jurists. This is an original contribution by Jesus to the 
 moral insight of the world. In the light of it, and by 
 virtue of our grudging and partial acceptance of it, 
 democracies have at last begun to exist, slavery is begin- 
 ning to be abolished in fact as well as name, and the 
 moral personahty of woman to be recognized in law and 
 social institutions. 
 
 Consistent with this doctrine of the greatness of man 
 is the teaching of Jesus that the iastitution of the sab- 
 bath, hke all the rest of the machinery of religion, 
 existed for man's sake, that man was lord of it and could 
 dispense himself from the observance of its regulations 
 whenever this was contrary to its main end. I need not 
 repeat the argument briefly outlined in Chapter 11,^ 
 tending to show that the words "The son of man is lord 
 also of the sabbath," mean "Man is lord of the sabbath." 
 
 It is from such fragmentary teachings (which caimot 
 have been invented by men who believed the contrary) 
 that one gradually discerns the true lineaments of the 
 founder of Christianity. By his immediate followers he 
 was misunderstood, and the misunderstanding grew 
 wider and deeper in the ages that followed. Only by 
 means of a minute analysis of the ancient record and a 
 close discrimination between its parts can any vision of 
 the truth now be attained. The critical principle, how- 
 ever, by which this procedure is justified is a simple one, 
 and one that cannot, I think, be invalidated: Search your 
 evangelist to find out what special axe he wishes to grind. 
 Having done this, examine all the sayings he records 
 which are flatly contradictory of the theory he is seeking 
 to prove. You then may know with certainty that he 
 
 ^ Ante, p. 19, note. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 115 
 
 did not invent these, and that the tradition affirming their 
 authenticity must in his time have been so well estab- 
 lished that he dared not defy it by modifying them. 
 
 One of the most interesting of these indisputably 
 authentic traditions is the saying ascribed by Mark and 
 Luke to Jesus in reply to the question of the rich young 
 man, " Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit 
 eternal Ufe? " Jesus replies, "Why callest thou me good? 
 none is good save one, even God." So the incident is 
 introduced by Mark, who at this point is accurately 
 followed by Luke.^ Now there is no possibiUty of inter- 
 preting the reply of Jesus otherwise than as a repudiation 
 of the epithet "good," on the ground that he was not 
 God, and consequently had no right to be invested with 
 the attributes of God. One ancient authority reads, 
 "Call thou not me good"; and this is the unmistakable 
 meaning of the answer as given by Mark and Luke. 
 That these words were from a very early period felt by 
 the Church to be a stumbling-block is evidenced by the 
 utter distortion which they have received in the first 
 Gospel. Matthew or some later scribe has, with perverse 
 ingenuity, worked over the question and answer as 
 follows: 
 
 And behold, one came to him and said, Master, what good 
 thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? And he said 
 unto him. Why askest thou me concerning that which is 
 good? One there is who is good: but if thou wouldst enter 
 into life, keep the commandments.^ 
 
 This Matthaean adaptation, which makes both the 
 questions childish, is an example of the clumsiness with 
 
 1 Mark x, 17 £f., Luke xviii, 18 £E. ^ Matt, xix, 16-17. 
 
Il6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 which it was sometimes attempted to force the early 
 tradition into conformity with later doctrinal develop- 
 ments. The fourth Gospel, it need scarcely be said, omits 
 the incident altogether; and indeed it is remarkable that 
 the original form should have been preserved in the 
 second and third Gospels. The manly modesty it dis- 
 plays on the part of Jesus is as incompatible with the 
 notion that he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah as with 
 the idea that he was consciously an incarnation of the 
 personal creator of the world. Modesty does not demand 
 that a man shall disclaim characteristics essential to the 
 ofl&ce that he bears. For example, one would not expect 
 an attorney-general to say, "Do not call me a lawyer." 
 It would have been just such bathos for one claiming 
 Jewish Messiahship to say, "Why callest thou me good? " 
 So obvious is the incongruity between this saying and 
 the orthodox doctrine of Christ's divinity that I doubt 
 whether any theologian has ever sought to grapple with 
 it. It is the habit of paraphrasts and commentators to 
 dodge the problem by palpable evasions or "wrestings of 
 scripture." ^ Once, anxious to read orthodox expositions 
 of this passage, I searched for hours in the London 
 Library to find sermons on it.. I hunted through hun- 
 dreds of volumes, Catholic and Protestant, dating from 
 the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the 
 nineteenth; but I could not find a single sermon on the 
 text, "Why callest thou me good?" This is significant 
 of the conspiracy of silence which has concealed the con- 
 
 1 Witness the suggeslio falsi in the scholium of Richard Baxter on 
 Matt, xix, 17 (which in the version of 161 1 had the same reading as at 
 Mark x, 17): "Thou knowest not how great a word thou speakest of me, 
 when thou callest me Good: Goodness is God's Name and Attribute: There 
 is none Essentially, Absolutely, and most perfectly Good but God." — 
 Baxter's Paraphrase on the New Testament, edition of 1701. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 117 
 
 flict between the original tradition and the later doctrine 
 of the Church. 
 
 That original tradition, as preserved in and capable 
 of being extracted from the Ss^noptic Gospels, justifies 
 the following conclusions: — 
 
 (i) That Jesus was not conscious of any difference of 
 nature between himself and other men; he did not claim 
 to be in any sense supernatural or supernormal. 
 
 (2) He was a free thinker, appealing away from pre- 
 scription and authority to the independent moral judg- 
 ment of every man. The working maxim of his life was, 
 "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" 
 
 (3) Whatever may have been his power over nervous 
 diseases and mental disturbances, he was no miracle- 
 monger. "No sign," he emphatically said, "shall be 
 given to this generation." By his own testimony, the 
 cures that he effected were identical in kind with those 
 performed by the ordinary Jewish exorcist.^ The in- 
 credibility of the mass of the miracle stories is demon- 
 strated by the fact that the effect of the reputation ac- 
 quired by Jesus was to make his immediate relatives 
 think him insane.^ This is a curious impression to be 
 produced by a man healing incurable diseases and re- 
 storing lunatics to sanity. 
 
 (4) Jesus was avowedly a disbeliever in special prov- 
 idences, and a believer in the doctrine of struggle for 
 existence and survival by adaptation to enviroimiental 
 exigency. 
 
 (5) He was so far from believing (with St. Augustine 
 
 1 Matt, xii, 27: "And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do 
 your sons cast them out ? therefore shall they be your judges." 
 
 ^ Mark iii, 21: "And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay 
 hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself." 
 
Ii8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and the Church generally) in the total depravity of 
 mankind and the necessity for miraculous regeneration, 
 that he was for ever insisting on the inherent capacity of 
 man himself to rise to the finest heights of character and 
 the truest nobility of conduct. 
 
 (6) The doctrines of the Church concerning the unique 
 nature and the supernatural functions of Jesus are 
 demonstrably founded not upon the original tradition, 
 but upon later accretions. This is especially the case in 
 regard to the legends of his birth and resurrection. 
 
 Thus fundamentally different is the true Jesus from the 
 Christ of ecclesiastical tradition. What then is to be his 
 place in the rehgion of the present and the future? Are 
 we to say, as so many are saying in effect, with the doctor 
 in Tennyson's poem, "The good Lord Jesus has had his 
 day "? Or may we endorse the reply of the nurse, "Had? 
 Has it come? It has only dawned: it will come by and 
 by." ^ Despite the necessary brevity of my treatment of 
 the subject, I hope I have said enough to indicate and to 
 Justify my own conviction that the nurse's words are 
 nearer to the truth than those of the blase doctor. The 
 coming of the day of Jesus will not be by the conversion of 
 the world to the orthodox dogmas, but by a great ethical 
 and spiritual renewal. 
 
 When men cease to follow blindly the dictates of 
 custom and convention: when they are able to pierce 
 through catchwords to realities: when they trust their 
 independent moral judgment: when they see character 
 and conduct as more real and important than the exter- 
 nals of life: when they are ready to hve by and to die for 
 their ideals: then his day will come. 
 
 1 Tennyson, In the Children's Hospital. 
 
THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 119 
 
 When men forgive the injuries committed against 
 them before presuming to ask forgiveness of their own 
 offences: when the motive of personal gain has been 
 transcended, and all men live for the sake of universal 
 standards of justice, love and truth, and for the incarna- 
 tion of these in the common life: when they combine the 
 zest and spontaneity of childhood with the courageous 
 wisdom of maturity: when they are efl&ciently and not 
 idly good: then his day will come. 
 
 When, through the spread of knowledge and the 
 purification of motives, there shall cease to be occasion 
 for divorce: when there is victory over lust and unchaste 
 desire: when every Hfe that comes into the world is cer- 
 tain to be welcomed, loved, cherished and respected: 
 when there is neither asceticism nor excess in eating and 
 drinking: when class prejudice and race distinctions and 
 all uncharitableness are done away: then his day will 
 come. 
 
 When men become so fine in their moral quality that 
 their very presence puts evildoers to shame (as Jesus put 
 to shame the stony-hearted pedants who sought his 
 judgment on the woman taken in sin) : when we have the 
 authentic sign of godship that he displayed — the power 
 to quicken by our personal radiance the spiritual life 
 in others: then his day will come. 
 
 When priests no longer pervert his teaching and insult 
 humanity by declaring it impotent to save itself, and by 
 pretending through magic to secure to men pardon and 
 strength from an outside God: then his day will come. 
 
 When monarchies and aristocracies, and all laws and 
 ordinances inconsistent with the sovereignty of the 
 people, are done away; when poverty and wealth no 
 longer mihtate against the exercise of those powers of 
 
120 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 service to the good of all through which alone men can 
 find their personal salvation: then his day will come. 
 
 When perfect law secures perfect Hberty: when every 
 man is a light to himself and an inspiration to others: 
 then his day will come. 
 
 In the measure in which Christianity succeeded, it 
 deserved to succeed, because its founder had made an 
 original and indispensable contribution to the spiritual 
 treasure of humanity. Not that the Christian message 
 alone is sufficient for our salvation. At vital points it 
 needs to be supplemented by the wisdom and insight of 
 other teachers, whom future piety wiU unquestionably 
 place on the same plane with the prophet of Nazareth. 
 Jesus is unique only in the sense in which every individual 
 is unique. Each man represents an unprecedented and 
 indupHcable synthesis of the elements of personality. 
 The claim that Jesus was different in kind from the rest 
 of the human race will be abandoned. But its abandon- 
 ment is a gain and not a loss, since the maintenance of 
 the claim is less of an honour to him than a depressing and 
 discouraging depreciation of humanity. It is a gain to 
 realize that what this man was and did is an expression 
 of what is possible for other men, without miraculous or 
 supernatural aid. By every shining example of what man 
 has achieved, men are challenged to an emulation which 
 calls into action their highest powers. They are crushed, 
 however, and robbed of the most effectual incentive to 
 self-regeneration, by the doctrine that true goodness and 
 true wisdom are alien to human nature and can only be 
 injected into it from without by a special operation of 
 transcendent grace. If Jesus was right in that inter- 
 pretation of humanity which he set forth in his tales of 
 the Publican and the Prodigal Son, we need no myths and 
 
' ' THE RE-BISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 12 1 
 
 legends to account for the manifestation of goodness and 
 greatness by human beings, since these are the attributes 
 of every man's true self. Rather, as I have elsewhere 
 remarked, it is declensions from this standard that need 
 to be accounted for.' 
 
 The piety which is consistent with free rationality and 
 with the moral autonomy of mankind, will not seek to 
 express its reverence for Jesus by imitation of the out- 
 ward incidents of his career. The notion of "the imita- 
 tion of Christ " has in it something of slavishness. The 
 worthy following of any great leader consists in acting 
 from his principles and in his spirit; and, as we have seen, 
 the cardinal principle with Jesus was the defiance of 
 precedent and the bringing of independent and untram- 
 melled moral judgment to bear upon the circumstances 
 that confronted him. He acted instinctively upon Kant's 
 principle, that "Imitation has no place in morals." We 
 can never transcend his rule of mutuality and his rever- 
 ence for the unconditional worth of every human soul. 
 But, seeing that the circumstances in which ethical 
 principles have to be applied are always different, we 
 may not govern the moral life by precedent. If we do, 
 we fall short both of the demand of conscience and of the 
 example of Jesus. Since he imitated nobody, the only 
 true loyalty to him is to be original and to abstain from 
 imitating even him. We must not abdicate the sover- 
 eignty that he ascribes to us in bidding us judge for our- 
 selves what is right. The ordinary Christian practice of 
 looking to Jesus is inconsistent with this demand. Rather 
 we should look with him, first to the sources of spiritual 
 strength and moral insight, and then at the world of facts, 
 which challenges us to redemptive labour by reason of its 
 
 ' See my Criticisms of Life, p. 157. (Houghton, MiflBin: 1915.) 
 
122 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 clash with those righteous laws which are the structural 
 principles of our nature. 
 
 The true resurrection of Jesus consists in the appropria- 
 tion of his long-forgotten spirit and principles. Just as 
 the spirit of Aristotle has risen again from the dead in the 
 minds and wills, the purpose and method of our modem 
 men of science, so that of Jesus is rising again among 
 those who are seeking to establish a reign of righteous- 
 ness based on the principles of democracy and freedom of 
 thought. This is the real meaning of the hackneyed say- 
 ing that there is more true Christianity outside the 
 Churches than within them. Within the Churches we too 
 often find the very temper against which his life was a 
 protest: the temper of authoritarianism, of distrust of 
 human nature, and of superstitious faith in the overruling 
 of the natural order to moral ends by a power external to 
 humanity. Yet even into the Churches the spirit of 
 Jesus, risen again in the innovators, the free thinkers, and 
 the social idealists of the modern world, is returning. 
 Thus we look not in vain for the resurrection of the dead, 
 and for the hfe of the world to come — by virtue of that 
 resurrection. It is in the very spirit of Jesus that the 
 trammels of the enslaving doctrine which has hitherto 
 borne his name are being burst. The world is reaching 
 forward to a new rehgious S3Tithesis, in which, for the 
 first time, the life-giving principles which he taught will 
 bear their legitimate fruits, and demonstrate their af- 
 finity with the good which has come to us through other 
 movements of the human spirit than that which orig- 
 inated with him. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 
 
 In the preceding chapters I have advanced the view 
 that one of the chief developments of religion will con- 
 sist in placing other personalities on the plane with 
 Jesus Christ. This does not mean that he will be rele- 
 gated from the first place to an inferior one, but it does 
 mean that he will cease to be regarded as the monopolist 
 of the supreme religious function of saviour. I would 
 not seek to disguise from the reader how intensely radical 
 is the revolution involved in this change of attitude. As 
 compared with it, aU the modifications introduced of late 
 years into the Churches are insignificant. Theological 
 liberalism has thus far consisted in the abandonment of a 
 number of dogmas and in a freer interpretation of those 
 retained; but not in any Church has there yet been a 
 conscious and deliberate placing of other men in the same 
 category with Jesus. 
 
 It has been maintained by some thinkers that the 
 Church cannot evolve beyond the point of exclusive 
 devotion to the personahty of Christ. According to these 
 critics, if the Church ceased to be Christocentric, it 
 would lose its identity. This opinion seems to me 
 groundless. I hold that the Church could modify its 
 view of the nature and ofiices of Christ, and could come 
 to regard human salvation as the work of many persons 
 instead of one, without making such a breach with the 
 
 past as to destroy its identity and continuity. Whether 
 
 123 
 
124 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 it will be able in practice to effect this change remains to 
 be seen. My present contention is that the change is 
 desirable and theoretically possible. A nation does not 
 lose its identity when it changes its form of government. 
 It can swing from monarchy to republicanism, from 
 aristocracy to democracy, and still remain the same 
 nation, the same State. I maintain that in religion we 
 can similarly change from the monarchical to the demo- 
 cratic conception of God; and it is precisely this change 
 which is involved in extending the idea of salvation in 
 such wise that not only one, but many persons shall be 
 recognized as having made essential contributions to it. 
 
 While it will be hotly disputed whether others than 
 Jesus Christ may be looked upon as saviours, it for- 
 tunately happens that we can agree as to what salvation 
 is. It will be admitted that the saved man is he who has 
 undergone an inward renewal of heart and will. The 
 attainment of virtuous character and its expression in 
 righteous conduct is salvation. The truly saved man is 
 he who has lost his self -regarding Uf e and has found a Ufe 
 that beats in unison with impersonal and universal good. 
 He who no longer mistakes the material goods of the 
 world, which are but means, for the end of life; he who 
 lives in disinterested principles and benevolent purposes 
 that embrace the entire hfe of the universe, is the man 
 who has found salvation. 
 
 That this inward renewal is the essence of redemption 
 will not be denied even by those who assert that the 
 attainment of endless life and f ehcity is a necessary con- 
 comitant of the process. For that felicity itself is held to 
 consist in the complete harmonization of the finite will of 
 man with the infinite and perfectly good will of God. The 
 anticipated happiness of the immortal life is a result of 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 125 
 
 salvation; but the salvation consists in something other 
 than happiness. The beatified spirit is happy because it 
 is saved, not saved because it is happy. The Christian 
 idea is not merely hedonistic, however widespread may 
 be the popular misunderstanding that regards it as such. 
 Christ's purpose was to quicken in men a vital and 
 original seed of the spiritual life, capable of fructifying 
 in them and communicating itself from them to others. 
 It is a vulgarization of this idea to represent it as designed 
 merely to ensure happiness. Rather its purpose is to 
 produce a loyalty and an enthusiasm which shall make 
 men capable of forgoing happiness. The typical Chris- 
 tian is not the ecstatically happy Salvationist, but the 
 mart3rr, whose spiritual life is so deep, so real, and so 
 serene that he counts misery and frustration insignificant, 
 and is willing to' embrace the stake or the cross. To 
 speak of him as happy involves a somewhat degrading use 
 of that ambiguous term. He is fully conscious of the 
 bitterness of the cup, which he prays may pass from him; 
 but his salvation is testified by his willingness to drink 
 it to the dregs. 
 
 It is further admitted on aU hands that that qualitative 
 change in which salvation consists may be undergone in 
 the present life. Protestant Christianity, indeed, insists 
 that it must be — that imless a man be saved on earth he 
 is lost for ever. The Roman purgatorian doctrine, hu- 
 maner in spirit, has been morally laxer in practice. Even 
 it, however, fully admits the possibility of complete 
 salvation during the earthly lifetime. By the consent, 
 then, of all Christians, men are quickened here and now 
 into that t)^e of character which is the highest thing 
 that could be attained even in an immortal existence. 
 It is also conceded that the entire machinery of Chris- 
 
126 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 tianity exists for the purpose of producing this effect in 
 men. Must it not then be acknowledged that whoever 
 contributes to this change any indispensable element is to 
 that extent a saviour? If, independently of the Christian 
 tradition, any man undergoes a transformation identical 
 in its ethical results with that which Christianity effects, 
 it cannot be denied that the change is a salvation, and the 
 person responsible for it a saviour. Things which are 
 equal to the same thing are equal to each other. 
 
 As one instance of the change of standpoint which I 
 anticipate in religion, I shall outline here the new recogni- 
 tion which should be given to the personahty and work of 
 Socrates. My contention is that he has bequeathed to 
 mankind a spirit and example, a "method and secret," 
 which form a necessary part of human salvation. He 
 stands for the elaborate development of a principle which 
 is indeed embodied in the original Christian teaching, but 
 which is there so httle stressed that it has been possible 
 for the historic religious bodies to ignore it and to act for 
 centuries in defiance of it. That principle is intellectual 
 honesty. Socrates hved and died for freedom and fulness 
 of thought. He convicted men of intellectual sin, Just as 
 Jesus convicted them of moral sin. No less than Jesus, he 
 considered himself the emissary of a power greater than 
 himself; and he had the same high sense of responsibility 
 for the sacred mission entrusted to him. Like Jesus, he 
 hved in poverty, was condemned as a blasphemer, and 
 died a martyr's death. His spirit, like that of Jesus, was 
 speedily ecHpsed, and is only now rising into newness of 
 Hfe. 
 
 The validity of his title to rank as a saviour is estab- 
 lished, in the first place, by his effect upon the char- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 127 
 
 acters of those with whom he was personally associated. 
 Just as one cannot explain St. Paul without Jesus, so one 
 cannot explain the reverence of Plato and Xenophon for 
 Socrates without beheving their accounts of his exalted 
 character. The impression which he produced upon the 
 greatest and ablest men of his time is unmistakable and 
 immeasurable. It is further dupUcated in the effect 
 which to this day and to all future time he is capable of 
 exercising upon all who come into contact with his spirit 
 as it Uves and commimicates itself through the writings of 
 Xenophon and Plato. No reader of the Apology can 
 doubt the proud contention of Socrates, that instead of 
 being a corrupter of young men, he had been the very 
 opposite; he had saved many from corruption, and had 
 been the only restraining influence upon some who, after 
 leaving him, went to the bad. With Socrates as with 
 Jesus, one feels that the spirit is greater than the letter, 
 the life more than the doctrine. We are at once abashed 
 and exalted by the spiritual grandeur of these men; what 
 they are is more than what they say and do. 
 
 Of the life of Socrates we have more reliable details 
 than in the case of Jesus. It is reasonably certain that 
 he was bom in the year 470 or 469 B. C, his father 
 Sophroniscus being a sculptor, his mother Phaenarete a 
 midwife. Tradition has it that he worked at his father's 
 trade, though there seems no reliable basis for the state- 
 ment, made centuries later by Pausanias, that a group of 
 the Graces at the entrance of the Acropolis was his 
 handiwork. In the usual Athenian fashion he learned 
 music, g3annastic, geometry, and astronomy. He was 
 early familiar with the philosophy and the physical 
 speculations current in his time, but he soon gave up the 
 habit of guessing at the secrets of the external world, 
 
128 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 since he considered self-knowledge of the first importance. 
 He served as a soldier in three campaigns,- — at Potidaea 
 in the years from 432 to 429, at Deliimi in 424, and at 
 Amphipohs in 422. Plato has recorded many anecdotes 
 of hiis courage and his extraordinary physical hardihood.^ 
 To his personal ugliness we have not only the witness of 
 the traditional bust, but the anecdotes of his contem- 
 poraries ^ and his own witty references to himself. It 
 seems probable that he was unhappily married, though 
 the gossip about Xanthippe is unauthenticated. He 
 believed himself to be divinely inspired. Many are the 
 references to the "daimon" by which at all important 
 crises of his life he was prompted. It is related that on 
 one occasion he remained for twenty-four hours simk in 
 
 1 "We messed together, and I had the opportunity of observing his 
 extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue and going without food when 
 our supplies were intercepted in any place, as will happen with an army. 
 In the faculty of endurance he was superior not only to me but to every- 
 body; there was no one to be compared to him. Yet at a festival he was 
 the only person who had any real powers of enjoyment, and though not 
 willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us all at that; and the most 
 wonderful thing of all was that no human being had ever seen Socrates 
 drunk. . . . His endurance of cold was also surprising. There was a 
 severe frost, for the winter in that region was really tremendous, and 
 everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out had on no 
 end of clothing, and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felts 
 and fleeces: in the midst of this, Socrates, with his bare feet on the ice, 
 and in his ordinary dress, marched better than any of the other soldiers 
 who had their shoes on, and they looked daggers at him because he 
 seemed to despise them." — Alcibiades, in the Symposium. See also 
 Apology 28-29, Laches i8i, and Charmides i. 
 
 ^ "He is exactly Uke the masks of Silenus, which may be seen sitting 
 in the statuaries' shops, having pipes and flutes in their mouths; and they 
 are made to open in the middle, and there are images of gods inside them. 
 I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You will not deny, Socrates, 
 that your face is like that of a satyr." — Symposium 215. See also the 
 witty dialogue between Socrates and Critobulus in Xenophon's BaTt- 
 quet, § 5. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 129 
 
 meditation and oblivious to the outer world.^ In the 
 closing portion of the speech at his trial he argues that 
 his condemnation will certainly be a good, because the 
 familiar oracle, which had often dissuaded him from some 
 contemplated course, had set up no opposition to the very 
 unconciliatory speech he had planned to make to his 
 judges.^ 
 
 Though he lived to be seventy years of age, there 
 was to the end no decline in his extraordinary mental 
 powers. How far the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo 
 are historical we cannot definitely say, but from the 
 general correspondence between Plato's and Xenophon's 
 accounts of the trial, it is clear that the Apology 
 faithfully presents the main lines of his defence. The 
 chief point of the Crito is in like manner borne out 
 by Xenophon, who tells us that "when his friends would 
 have withdrawn him privately, he would not consent, but 
 asked them with a smile if they knew of any place beyond 
 the borders of Attica where death could not approach 
 him." Xenophon also relates another anecdote showing 
 the imperturbable magnanimity with which Socrates met 
 his fate: 
 
 Apollodorus . . . saidtohim," But it grieves me, Socrates, 
 to have you die so unjustly." Socrates, with much tender- 
 ness, laying his hand upon his head, answered smiling, " What, 
 my much-loved Apollodorus, would you rather they had con- 
 demned me justly?" ' 
 
 ' Symposium 220. 
 
 ^ "The oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was leaving my 
 house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this 
 Court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and 
 yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in 
 nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed 
 me." — Apology 40. ' The Defence of Socrates. 
 
I30 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Between the picture of Socrates by Xenophon and that 
 by Plato there is a difference analogous to that which dis- 
 tinguishes the Synoptic from the Johannine picture of 
 Jesus. Many of the Platonic Dialogues were written 
 long years after the master's death, and into his mouth 
 Plato has certainly put many expressions of his own 
 maturer thought. Yet it cannot be doubted that the 
 superior intellectual powers of Plato rendered him a much 
 more competent interpreter of Socrates than the plain 
 blunt Xenophon. The important thing is not the exact 
 separation of the Socratic from the Platonic elements, 
 which indeed is impossible, but the fact that the entire 
 inspiration of Plato came from Socrates, without whom 
 we should have had neither the Platonic Dialogues nor 
 the philosophy of Aristotle. 
 
 Another point of resemblance between Socrates and 
 Jesus is found in the fact that Socrates, too, was a poor 
 man of humble origin. This, however, did not hinder 
 him from receiving an education equal to that of the 
 aristocratic class. In the intellectual democracy of 
 Athens education effectively bridged social distinctions; 
 and we find that Plato, like most of the companions and 
 disciples of Socrates, was of patrician lineage. Socrates 
 seems never to have written anything. At all events, 
 nothing from his pen has come down to us. His life was 
 one of volimtary poverty. Both Xenophon and Plato 
 testify that handsome pecuniary offers were made to 
 him, but that he always refused them. Indeed, he 
 frequently sneers at the Sophists on the groimd that they 
 accepted fees for their teaching. His irony leads him to 
 explain the matter by saying that, as he knew nothing, he 
 could teach nothing, and consequently could not earn a 
 fee; whereas the Sophists believed that they had real 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 131 
 
 knowledge of great value to communicate, and therefore 
 were entitled to monetary rewards. They were of course 
 mistaken; but as their pupils shared their error, the 
 payments were given and received in good faith. Soc- 
 rates always refused to stand for public ofl&ce. He 
 thought that if by his teaching he could raise up a hne of 
 able statesmen, he would thus render a better service to 
 the State than by giving his own life to political work. 
 
 The character of Socrates is nowhere more charmingly 
 manifested than in his ironical account of that Delphic 
 oracle which had proclaimed him the wisest of men. 
 His friend Chasrephon reported this oracle to him; and 
 Socrates, knowing, as he said, that he knew nothing, set 
 himself to discover what the god could possibly mean. 
 He went from one renowned philosopher to another, and 
 discovered by cross-examination that these men were 
 really without knowledge. At last, with genuine modesty 
 as well as with irony, he concluded that because he was 
 aware of his ignorance, he therefore was wiser than those 
 who erroneously imagined themselves to know some- 
 thing.^ 
 
 His attack upon the influence of the Sophists was of 
 immense value as a stimulus to thought. The difference 
 between him and them was perhaps less complete than 
 he imagined, though no doubt it was a vulgar mis- 
 representation to identify him with them, as Aristo- 
 phanes did in his comedy of The Clouds. Many times 
 his reasoning, as reported by Plato and Xenophon, is 
 as fallacious as theirs can have been; but there was the 
 fundamental difference that he always insisted upon 
 distinguishing between knowledge and assumption. He 
 had, moreover, completely abandoned physical specula- 
 ' Apology 22-23. 
 
132 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 tions, on the ground that the trees had nothing to teach 
 him.^ Nothing could be more delightful or more merci- 
 less than his chaff of the Sophists.^ 
 
 The basis of the charge that he was a corrupter of 
 youth lay in the limitless influence which he certainly 
 exercised over the younger men. They regarded him 
 with spell-boimd admiration, and were always eager to 
 drink in his words. There can be no doubt that his 
 influence was essentially good and elevating. The trouble 
 was, however, that these young men were much more 
 wilhng to obey him than their parents; and this probably 
 led to many a heated scene. One can imagine the 
 virtuous indignation of elderly Athenian gentlemen when 
 their sons subjected their commands to the merciless 
 scrutiny of the Socratic dialectic, and worked off on 
 their grave and reverend seniors that demonstration of 
 complete ignorance which Socrates had first made to 
 them. 
 
 The other count in the indictment was a somewhat 
 confused accusation of atheism and of introducing 
 strange gods. Socrates had no difficulty in demonstrating 
 the muddle-headedness of Meletus in seeking to charge 
 him with both offences at once; but we can easily see how 
 such an accusation could be more convincing to the 
 Athenian laity than the very rational defence set up by 
 the accused. In order to destroy the Sophistic scepticism, 
 Socrates had systematically driven the doubts far deeper 
 than the Sophists had done. He was, moreover, an 
 extremely formidable critic of the orthodox religion of his 
 
 1 " I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the dty are 
 my teachers, and not the trees or the country." — Phaedrus 230. 
 
 ^ Meno 71, 76; Euthydemus 272 ff.; Gorgias, passim; Republic (in the 
 character of Thras3fmachus, &c.); and elsewhere. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 133 
 
 time. Witness the long passages in the Republic in 
 which he accuses Homer and Hesiod of blasphemy on 
 account of the degrading anecdotes of the gods which 
 they retailed. We can perceive that he was an intensely 
 religious man, with a far deeper reverence for truth and 
 goodness (which are essential deity) than any of his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 But the charge of atheism on the lips of the vulgar 
 never proves that those who are accused are really god- 
 less. It only proves that they have a conception of 
 God which is beyond the comprehension of their critics. 
 The "atheism" of Socrates consisted in his assertion that 
 nothing is to be taught concerning God which represents 
 God as other than good.^ The application of such a 
 principle made a clean sweep of most of the religious 
 legends of the Athenians, just as it will of the great bulk 
 of the doctrines which orthodox people for the last 
 fifteen hundred years have mistaken for Christianity. 
 This was the blasphemy of Socrates, — this and his un- 
 flinching analysis of the current ethical ideas. Nor was 
 the indictment upon which he was condemned a new and 
 hastily trumped-up one, since substantially the same 
 
 ' " God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many 
 assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things 
 that occur to men; for few are the goods of human life, and many are 
 the evils, and the good only is to be attributed to him: of the evil, 
 other causes have to be discovered. . . . 
 
 "And if anyone asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties of 
 which Pandarus was the real author, was brought about by Athene and 
 Zeus, or that the strife and conflict of the gods was instigated by Themis 
 and Zeus, he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our 
 young men to hear the words of /Eschylus, when he says that ' God plants 
 guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.' . . . 
 
 "Let this, then, be one of the rules of recitation and invention, — 
 that God is not the author of evil, but of good only." — Republic, Book ii, 
 §379- 
 
134 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 charges had been brought against him twenty-four years 
 earlier by Aristophanes. 
 
 Let us pause to note how far-reaching is the principle 
 laid down by Socrates in the passages to which I have 
 referred. It not only destroys a vast proportion of the 
 received teaching about God, both in popular Greek and 
 in popular Christian thought, but it also makes the 
 conscience of man the supreme authority upon all ques- 
 tions of religion. For who is to determine what is good? 
 The answer of Socrates would be that the individual 
 thinker, using his own judgment and thinking out the 
 entire question fully and fairly, can alone be the judge. 
 The principle of authority, as applied in Judaism and 
 in the Roman and Protestant Churches, is djmamited by 
 this ethical doctrine of the great Athenian. The principle 
 commonly accepted, — namely, that everything is to be 
 received as good which authority declares to have been 
 done or commanded by God, — finds in the Socratic 
 doctrine its polar antithesis. The law hidden in the 
 spirit of man is to be the supreme judge both of men and 
 of gods. 
 
 The authoritarian principle has been throughout 
 history the great perverter of rehgion and moral judg- 
 ment. It has forced men to approve of doctrines and 
 acts flagrantly contradictory to the intuitions of the 
 unsophisticated conscience. Christendom has been fun- 
 damentally degraded by the idolatrous idea that what- 
 ever is recorded of God in the Bible is true, and is neces- 
 sarily good. This is essentially the principle maintained 
 in the nineteenth century by Dean Mansel, and opposed, 
 in the very spirit of Socrates, by John Stuart Mill. 
 Mansel maintained that the goodness of God, being 
 infinite, was probably different in kind from goodness as 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 135 
 
 understood and practised by men. To this suicidal 
 position he was driven by the necessity of justifying the 
 received Christian theology, with its ideas of blood atone- 
 ment, substitutionary righteousness, everlasting tor- 
 ment, and the like. Mill, in refuting this doctrine, ex- 
 pressed himself in the following terms: 
 
 Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged principle 
 of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things 
 we have no right to call them by the same name, and to 
 apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. 
 Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Bene- 
 volent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow- 
 creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by 
 them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirm- 
 ing them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, 
 differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosoph- 
 ically nor morally entitled to afSrm them at all. ... If in 
 ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by 
 goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some 
 knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incom- 
 prehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a 
 totally different quality from that which I love and venerate — 
 and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed, be in some 
 important particulars opposed to this — what do I mean by 
 calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating 
 it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot 
 tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that 
 God's goodness may be different in kind from man's good- 
 ness, what is it but saying, with a shght change of phraseology, 
 that God may possibly not be good? . . . 
 
 If, instead of the "glad tidings" that there exists a Being 
 in whom aU the excellences which the highest human mind 
 can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am in- 
 formed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes 
 
136 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are 
 the principles of his government, except that "the highest 
 human morality which we are capable of conceiving" does 
 not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate 
 as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and 
 at the same time call this being by the names which express 
 and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms 
 that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have 
 over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall 
 not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who 
 is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow- 
 creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not 
 so calling him, to hell I will go.* 
 
 This is the only principle which can prevent religion 
 from becoming a system of superstition enforced by 
 terrorization. It implies the essential identity of man 
 with God, in the sense that there is and can be nothing 
 higher than the conscience of humanity when disinter- 
 ested and fully enlightened. We owe to Socrates the 
 first clear and unmistakable enunciation of this doctrine. 
 It is intensely depressing to reflect on the enormous 
 difference which its acceptance would have made to the 
 course of history from the fourth century B. C. down to 
 the twentieth century of the Christian era. The bar- 
 barous forcings of conscience, the insistence on salvation 
 through correctness of theological belief, the bloody wars 
 of religion, the inhuman burning and torturing of her- 
 etics, would have been rendered impossible if men had 
 only stood upon the simple principle that, since God is 
 goodness, nothing evil can possibly have been done or 
 commanded by him. And if at last we accept from 
 
 ' J. S. Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 
 pp. 127-29. (Fourth edition, London: Longmans, 1872.) 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 137 
 
 Socrates this doctrine, and apply it as the regulative 
 principle of our faith, we shall effectually estabhsh the 
 spiritual freedom and responsibility of man. We shall 
 not destroy authority, but we shall see it where alone it 
 can truly be found. It will involve the abandonment of 
 the notion that God is infinite and omnipotent; but, at 
 the same time, and for that very reason, it will destroy 
 the artificial theological notion of evil, a notion which 
 creates an insoluble contradiction by representing a per- 
 fectly good will as the source both of evil and of good. 
 
 In his analysis of the contribution made to human 
 salvation by Jesus Christ, Matthew Arnold explains the 
 power of Jesus as consisting in a method and a secret. 
 The secret is that of inwardness; the method is that of 
 self-renunciation. But Arnold was for the most part 
 obhvious of that great crux of the moral life which so 
 constantly forced itself upon the attention of Socrates. 
 Arnold seems to have thought that if once the will were 
 purified by self-renunciation and earnestly engaged in the 
 cause of righteousness, its difficulties would end. He 
 held that to the man of good will the content of the 
 moral law is self-evident. He contends that it is not 
 difficult to see what is right, but only to do it.'^ 
 
 This, however, is one of the disastrous practical mis- 
 takes which have played so tragic a part in Christian 
 history. We are realizing to-day more than ever before 
 that frequently it is even more difficult to decide what 
 
 '■ "Conduct is really, however men may overlay it with philosophical 
 disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it is the 
 simplest thing in the world so far as understanding is concerned; as 
 regards doing, it is the hardest thing in the world. Here is the difficulty, — 
 to do what we very well know ought to be done." — Literature and Dogma, 
 chap. i. 
 
138 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 is right than to act rightly. There is in this respect a 
 strange and saddening difference between the way in 
 which the world advances intellectually and that in which 
 it advances ethically. Every student of the physical 
 sciences can start from the point reached by all his 
 predecessors, and can avail himself of the full store of 
 their garnered knowledge and experience. He is not 
 obliged to repeat the experiments and the errors of men 
 of centuries ago. His methods have been elaborated for 
 him by the accumulated work of ages, and he inherits a 
 mass of received and tested truth, upon the basis of which 
 he can proceed in his quest for further knowledge. In 
 practical moraHty, on the other hand, there is no such 
 utilization of the experience of the race. Each new 
 generation buys its wisdom by the same tragic and costly 
 method of trial and error as all that have preceded. The 
 hard-won discoveries of mankind as to the ways that 
 lead to life and those that lead to death cannot be made 
 convincing and coercive to the judgment as can the 
 truths of physical and mathematical science. Now, one 
 main reason for this state of things is the fact that we 
 have scarcely begun to apply the scientific method to the 
 demonstration of the empirical truths that relate to moral 
 practice. 
 
 It is here that we most need to supplement the method 
 and secret of Jesus by the method and secret of Socrates. 
 Not, indeed, that we are to accept as completely true 
 the Socratic ethical theory. There is in the Christian 
 tradition an indispensable truth which Socrates ignored; 
 but also there is in the Socratic teaching an indispensable 
 truth which is almost omitted from the New Testament, 
 and which has been completely overlooked in the doc- 
 trine and practice of the Christian Church. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 139 
 
 The secret of Socrates (if one may continue to use the 
 convenient terminology of Arnold) is the doctrine of the 
 identity of virtue with true knowledge.^ His method is 
 to convict men of intellectual sin, by exposing their false 
 conceit of wisdom, and by forcing them to confess that 
 what they had taken for knowledge was really ignorance 
 and baseless assumption. He maintained that if any 
 man really knew what was good, he could not do any- 
 thing that conflicted with it. Socrates does not mean by 
 this merely to endorse the platitude of common prudence, 
 that a man will not act against his own interest. He goes 
 further. He conceives of good or right as a single and 
 indivisible reality, and does not draw the common dis- 
 tinction between a man's own interest and the interest of 
 others or of all. 
 
 In order justly to understand this doctrine, we must 
 constantly remember that Socrates is not a materialist, 
 and is not entangled in that ethical heresy and idolatry 
 which imagines that the good of man consists in the 
 things that he possesses. To identify the good with 
 virtue and virtue with knowledge is to define the good as 
 spiritual, and as qualitative, not quantitative. The good 
 is a disposition of the mind and will, a quality of char- 
 acter, and a state of consciousness resulting therefrom. 
 Certainly there is a physical organism through which the 
 soul of man must function, and everything necessary to 
 
 ' The essence of the Socratic doctrine is well expressed by Richard 
 Hooker: "There was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not 
 preferred before a greater, and that wilfully; which cannot be done 
 without the singular disgrace of nature, and the utter disturbance of 
 that divine order, whereby the pre-eminence of chiefest acceptation is 
 by the best things worthily challenged. There is not that good which 
 concemeth us, but it hath evidence enough for itself, if Reason were 
 diligent to search it out." — Ecclesiastical Polity, Book i, § 8. 
 
I40 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 the maintenance and efficiency of that organism is an 
 indispensable auxiliary to the attainment of the good. 
 Material possessions are therefore not to be despised, nor 
 is poverty to be exalted as desirable. The wise Hooker 
 again furnishes us with a perfect statement of the case: 
 
 Inasmuch as righteous life presupposeth life; inasmuch as 
 to live virtuously it is impossible except we live; therefore 
 the first impediment, which naturally we endeavour to re- 
 move, is penury and want of things without which we cannot 
 live.i 
 
 The point to be remembered, however, is that all posses- 
 sions and all wealth are merely possible auxiliaries of the 
 good; they are never good in themselves. Even in the 
 most beautiful works of art, what is good is not the 
 material substance but the spiritual impress which they 
 bear and commimicate. In so far as they incarnate their 
 creators they are good, because they are thus effective 
 means to the creation of an analogous good in the minds 
 of those who behold and use them. All separation of 
 good from the spirit, all ascription of worth to anything 
 other than spiritual quahties, is at once erroneous and 
 dangerous. Ruskin reaffirmed this doctrine (which he 
 had learned both from Socrates and from Jesus) when 
 he asserted that there is no wealth but life. Money, and 
 that wealth of which money is a measure and to which it 
 constitutes a transferable title, is but a means to an 
 end. Money in itself can be neither good nor evil. Only 
 the end, which is the spiritual condition of rational agents, 
 can possess any ethical or anti-ethical quaUty. 
 
 It is in this sense that Socrates is able to beheve in the 
 unity of the good. He ignores the clash between the good 
 ' Ecclesiastical Polity, Book i, § x. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 141 
 
 of one and the good of all, because, from his point of 
 view, that clash does not exist. The opposition is tran- 
 scended. If we think of good as consisting in houses and 
 lands, in metals and jewels, and in the currencies by 
 which these things are appraised and transferred, there 
 may be an endless conflict between the interests of men. 
 But if we accept the principle that the good does not 
 and cannot consist in externals, we then see that the 
 conflict over them is not a conflict of goods. If the good 
 be the perfection of the spiritual nature of man, then, 
 since aU men share the same nature, they must be capable 
 of experiencing the one indivisible good. What is truly 
 and essentially good for me must, by the force of the 
 terms, be good also for you and for all rational agents. 
 
 This is the presupposition of all the ethical reasoning of 
 Socrates. That quality of mind and character which 
 alone is good is for him an attainable reality. It is of 
 such nature that its claim to be considered good becomes 
 self-evident to every man the moment he adequately con- 
 ceives it. It is inherently and intrinsically preferable to 
 aU else; to know it is to desire it, with all the force of the 
 soul's spontaneous love. It destroys the attractive 
 power of aU its rivals, as the rising sun puts the stars to 
 flight. We believe in the possibility of a conflict of goods 
 only because we are not enlightened as to the true nature 
 and unity of the good. 
 
 It is impossible to use concerning the good, as Socrates 
 conceived it, language adequate to the exaltation of his 
 thought. Nor can one too emphatically insist that this 
 intensity of appreciation was no sentimental preference 
 of his. It was in the deepest sense a rational conviction, 
 arrived at and justified by way of the fullest debate with 
 all opposing doctrines. Among the many "modem" 
 
142 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 ideas with which the Republic abounds, nothing is more 
 conspicuous than the complete anticipation of that 
 widespread doctrine which identifies moraUty with the 
 self-interested conventions of a slave class. Thrasym- 
 achus and Glaucon are permitted to develop this thesis 
 to the uttermost. So, too, is Callicles in the Gorgias. 
 It is after taking full account of it, — after knowing all 
 that can be said in the strongest terms against his own 
 position, — that Socrates reaches the magnificent heights 
 of ethical certitude which give such persuasive dignity 
 to the closing books of the Republic. He does not 
 always refute the anti-ethical position of the supermen 
 by direct argumentation. Rather he leads them on, 
 by a gradual disclosure of his thought on other subjects, 
 and by engaging their minds in new aspects of the theme, 
 to the point where suddenly their eyes are opened to the 
 inherent nobiUty of real virtue, and to the fact that it is 
 demanded by the ultimate law of their own being. Im- 
 mediately this vision is caught, all the sophistry of the 
 individualistic will-to-power school falls away of itself. 
 The ultimate anchorage of the moral law is the fact that 
 it is what the nature of man spontaneously wills as soon 
 as it understands itself. 
 
 This central conviction of Socrates accounts for the 
 unique importance ascribed in his system to right educa- 
 tion. The high and solemn dedication of his philosopher- 
 rulers to their hfe work ^ finds its explanation in the 
 imperative need that before they assume their functions 
 in the commonwealth their eyes shall be opened to the 
 divine vision, and their minds trained to a just apprecia- 
 tion of the scale of human values. They must know 
 what is the paramount and essential good attainable by 
 1 See Books iii, iv and v of the Republic. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 143 
 
 humanity, in order that they may administer the affairs 
 of the State in accordance with sound principles, and 
 secure to all its inhabitants the highest measure of true 
 good (as distinguished from mere wealth or happiness) 
 which they are capable of achieving. The same central 
 conception explains the Socratic insistence that education 
 is something more than a knowledge of facts. It is the 
 path to essential beauty, to virtue, and to the divine. 
 Since the real is to be sought in the sphere of ideas, the 
 world of fact becomes a mere symbol and illustration of 
 these intangible and super-sensible realities.^ Thus all 
 real knowledge is of the nature of intuition or inspiration,^ 
 which may ensue upon the process of laborious study, but 
 is not ensured by it and does not follow from it by logical 
 necessity. 
 
 Such a conception of knowledge and of the knowable 
 explains the overwhelming enthusiasm with which 
 Socrates devoted himself to his mission of exposing the 
 false conceit of wisdom. For him all sin was ignorance, 
 and all ignorance sin. His conception of virtue is ex- 
 pressed with literal exactness in the majestic and exalted 
 language of one of the Church's invocations of God: 
 "In knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life: whose 
 service is perfect freedom." It was because he held this 
 belief with an inexpressible intensity of conviction and 
 realization that he chose a life of voluntary poverty and 
 underwent a martyr's death for the sake of convicting 
 men of that sin which blinded them to the perfect good. 
 
 He does not make a formal classification of the inward 
 obstacles to knowledge, but throughout his teaching is 
 
 1 See dosing sections of Book vi, and opening section of Book vii of 
 the Republic. 
 
 ^ See below, chapter vi. 
 
144 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 implied his consciousness of the four great sources of 
 error which Bacon calls the idols of the tribe, the idols of 
 the cave, the idols of the market-place, and the idols of 
 the theatre. Remembering the extent, to which he was 
 occupied in refuting the fallacies and unfounded assump- 
 tions of what passed for philosophies, we cannot doubt 
 that he would have endorsed most heartily the statement 
 of Bacon concerning these: — 
 
 Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's 
 minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also 
 from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the 
 Theatre; because in my judgment all the received systems 
 are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own 
 creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. Nor is it only 
 of the systems now in vogue, or only of the ancient sects and 
 philosophies, that I speak; for many more plays of the same 
 kind may yet be composed and in like artificial manner set 
 forth; seeing that errors the most widely different have 
 nevertheless causes for the most part alike. Neither again 
 do I mean this only of entire systems, but also of many 
 principles and axioms in science, which by tradition, credulity 
 and negligence have come to be received.^ 
 
 The explanation of the failure of Socrates to recognize 
 the possibility of wilful wrong-doing, of what we call 
 sinning against the light, is to be found in the extraor- 
 dinary force of his own character. It was the very 
 strength of the man that caused the weakness of his doc- 
 trine. He seems to have been endowed by nature with 
 a fortitude of the spirit that was of a piece with the 
 bodily hardihood ascribed to him by Alcibiades. By iron 
 discipline, continued through Ufe, he had become able to 
 ' Novum Organum, Aphorism xliv. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 145 
 
 do effortlessly and habitually what others could do only 
 rarely and with difficulty, or not at all. For him, to know 
 what was right was to be able to do it. It was not that he 
 was immune by nature from temptation. On the con- 
 trary, in some respects, if we may believe Plato, he had 
 in his youth been specially subject to the promptings 
 of desire for several of the pleasures of the senses. But 
 his inborn love for philosophy had enabled him to master 
 these, and thus to turn what might have been besetting 
 sins into besetting virtues. 
 
 Rationalist as he was, his rationaUstic procedure was 
 prompted by an intuition, involving an unshakable faith 
 in an indemonstrable doctrine. That ultimate good 
 which he identified with knowledge, and against which 
 he could not imagine any man deliberately acting, was 
 indefinable. "He could give," says Sidgwick,^ "no 
 account that satisfied him of good in the abstract." The 
 reality of the good, and its identity with beauty and with 
 truth, were for him presuppositions, not conclusions; or 
 rather we may say that they were truths which, being 
 self-evident, needed no demonstration. Since his own 
 natural and acquired firmness of purpose enabled him 
 always to tread the path marked out by conviction, he 
 failed to allow for the fact that with other men there is a 
 terrific and often insuperable obstacle to the doing of 
 what is seen to be right. St. Paul was always bitterly 
 conscious of this difficulty, and the whole of his energy 
 was directed to overcoming it. It was his keen sense of 
 the "war in our members," and of the spontaneous 
 tendency to do what is admitted to be wrong, which in- 
 spired his unbounded gratitude to Jesus Christ, who for 
 him had suppHed the strength necessary to overcome 
 ' History of Ethics, p. 37. 
 
146 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 the wayTvard impulse. The shortcoming of Socrates is 
 that, having himself been able, without the expulsive 
 power of a personal affection, to eradicate the weakness 
 that would have beguiled his feet from the paths of 
 known duty, he did not realize the necessity for providing 
 others with a d)aiamic to reinforce their insufficient 
 powers in this direction. 
 
 For an instance of the method of Socrates which is not 
 only illuminating, but has the added advantage of being 
 in all probability authentic, we cannot do better than 
 turn to Xenophon's record of a certain dialogue with 
 Euthydemus.^ In the Platonic composition of that title 
 we cannot be sure whether we are Ustening to Socrates 
 or to Plato. Its irony is almost more marked than that 
 of any of the other Dialogues, and it is presumably not so 
 much the actual memory of conversations with Euthy- 
 demus which inspires Plato as the purpose of killing 
 with satire the eristic method. Plato was certainly equal 
 to the invention of all that his Euthydemus contains. 
 The limitations of Xenophon, on the other hand, con- 
 stitute our best guarantee that he did not invent what 
 he records of the dealings of Socrates with that noble 
 youth, and accordingly we may the more securely rely 
 upon the probable genuineness of what he offers us. 
 
 Euthydemus was a handsome young Athenian gentle- 
 man, of considerable attairmients, who had formed a 
 collection of the writings of many poets and sophists, 
 imagining that he was thereby surpassing the accomplish- 
 ments of his contemporaries. He intended to devote 
 himself to public affairs. It was his manner, however, 
 not to seek any instruction from other men, but by his 
 ' Memorabilia of Socrates, Book iv, chap. ii. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 147 
 
 own study and thought to equip himself for the career 
 to which he aspired. Socrates, observing this, made a 
 point of uttering in the hearing of Euthydemus remarks 
 to the effect that no man could prepare himself for the 
 work of a statesman merely by reading, or, without 
 special discipline in the particular tasks which he 
 proposed later to undertake. As Euthydemus, with the 
 superior self-confidence of youth, was wont to withdraw 
 from conversations of this kind, Socrates satirized his 
 procedure by depicting him as applying to the public 
 for the oflEice not of a statesman but of a physician: — 
 
 "I, O men of Athens" [he imagines Euthydemus sa5dng], 
 "have never learned the medical art from anyone, nor have 
 been desirous that any physician should be my instructor; 
 for I have constantly been on my guard, not only against 
 learning anything of the art from anyone, but even against 
 appearing to have learned the medical art; nevertheless, con- 
 fer on me this medical appointment; for I will endeavour to 
 learn by making experiments upon you." ^ 
 
 In like manner he points out that any person who wished 
 to learn to play the flute or to ride would go for tuition 
 to masters of those simple arts; and that the pursuits 
 of the statesman, being incalculably more difficult, 
 necessitated special instruction in a much greater degree. 
 Afterwards, out of consideration for the modesty of 
 the young man, Socrates went alone to a certain bridle- 
 maker's shop where Euthydemus was wont to read, and 
 questioned him concerning his books. He begins with a 
 half -ironical expression of his admiration, "because you 
 have not preferred acquiring treasures of silver and 
 gold rather than of wisdom." He then, by a series of 
 ' Memorabilia, loc. cit., § 5. 
 
148 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 questions, elicits the confession that Euthydemus was 
 desirous of attaining that talent "by which men become 
 skilled in governing states, in managing households, 
 able to command, and qualified to benefit other men as 
 well as themselves." His next step is to raise artfully 
 the question of the nature of justice. Euthydemus is 
 at first quite confident that he will be able to enumerate 
 the works of justice, and to distinguish them from those 
 of injustice. Socrates proposes to make lists of these 
 "works," and to draw up a catalogue from his victim's 
 dictation. Under the heading of injustice he thus enu- 
 merates falsehood, deceit, the enslavement of men, etc. 
 Having extracted these data, he at once proceeds to 
 state cases in which every one of them might be practised 
 justly, — for example, the enslavement of an unjust and 
 hostile people by the leader of an army. 
 
 Not being able to deny this, Euthydemus qualifies 
 his former assertions by maintaining that it was just 
 to do such things to enemies, but unjust to practise them 
 towards friends. Hereupon Socrates, by stating more 
 hypothetical cases, extorts the acknowledgment that 
 this distinction also fails. A father, for example, would 
 be right to deceive a sick son by giving him medicine as 
 ordinary food; or a man might justly steal the sword 
 with which his friend intended to slay himself. Euthy- 
 demus is by this time reduced to saying, " I no longer put 
 confidence in the answers which I give, for all that I 
 said before appears to me now to be quite different 
 from what I then thought." He ventures, however, to 
 suggest that intentional deception is more unjust than 
 involuntary deception. 
 
 By a highly sophistical argument, which imposes upon 
 Euthydemus, Socrates next compels the admission that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 149 
 
 a man who knows what is just but practises injustice 
 is more just than he who does just deeds unreflectingly. 
 With many more questions Socrates produces in the 
 young man the disheartening reahzation that he does 
 not know what is good, either for himself or for others. 
 "These points, however," proceeds Socrates, "you have 
 perhaps not sufficiently considered, from a too confident 
 belief that you were already well acquainted with them; 
 but since you intend to be at the head of a democratic 
 government, you doubtless know what a democracy 
 is." "Assuredly," answers Euthydemus, and defines 
 the demos as consisting of the poorer class of citizens. 
 Socrates promptly catches him here by asking him what 
 constitutes poverty. Having shown that small means 
 were sufficient for some, while large fortunes were insuffi- 
 cient for others, and therefore that the conventional 
 judgment as to riches and poverty must be in many 
 cases inverted, he at last forces the bewildered youth to 
 say, "I am considering whether it would not be best 
 for me to be silent, for I seem to know absolutely 
 nothing." 
 
 Of those who were thus treated by Socrates [says Xeno- 
 phon] many came to him no more, and these he regarded as 
 too dull to be improved; but Euthydemus, on the contrary, 
 conceived that he could by no other means become an es- 
 timable character than by associating with Socrates as much 
 as possible; and he in consequence never quitted him, unless 
 some necessary business obliged him to do so. He also 
 imitated many of his habits. When Socrates saw that he 
 was thus disposed, he no longer puzzled him with questions, 
 but explained to him in the simplest and clearest manner 
 what he thought that he ought to know, and what it would 
 be best for him to study. 
 
ISO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 We must remember that this terrible dialectic ma- 
 chine, in which poor Euthydemus was crushed, was not 
 employed by Socrates for the sake of its negative results. 
 He neither wished to display his own cleverness, nor to 
 provide the young men with an instrument by which 
 they might make themselves a nuisance to others. His 
 unshakable conviction was that, hard as the obtaining 
 of true knowledge may be, yet the greatest obstacle to 
 it was men's false idea that they already possessed it. 
 Now from this false idea very few of us are free. We 
 are all more or less in the position of that student of 
 botany who defined a leaf as "a flat green object which 
 we know all about already." Until this illusion of 
 knowledge is removed, truth can gain no entrance into 
 the mind. 
 
 Socrates is differentiated from the Sophists in part by 
 the fact that he never used his critical method for its 
 own sake, and that he was as rigorous with himself as 
 with others, and as ready to be confuted as to confute. 
 Despite the genuine modesty with which he avowed his 
 own ignorance, moreover, we know that he had in re- 
 serve a body of very definite and positive ideas touching 
 all the problems of the conduct of life, which he was 
 eager to communicate to his pupils as soon as he had 
 disciplined them into readiness for it. First he must 
 convict them of sin, that afterwards he might initiate 
 them into the way of right knowledge and righteousness. 
 
 To what positive beliefs the process of conviction was 
 introductory, we may see in the Platonic Dialogues. 
 There we have an inexhaustible fount of ideas, many of 
 which to-day are being laboriously rediscovered and 
 trumpeted abroad as the newest and best results of 
 human wisdom. The Republic offers us the majestic 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 151 
 
 image of an ideal State, governed competently and be- 
 nevolently by an aristocracy, in the literal sense of that 
 term, — that is, by a caste selected in virtue of its natural 
 endowments and educated by a lifelong rigorous discip- 
 line for the lofty functions it is destined to discharge. 
 These governors are to possess no property of their own, 
 in order that they may be absolutely disinterested in 
 their ofl&ce.^ 
 
 In outlining their studies, Socrates incidentally lays 
 down one of the most fundamental of the modern prin- 
 ciples of pedagogy, which is that the voluntary interest 
 and self-activity of the pupil must always be engaged.^ 
 
 Nor does he fail to pierce through that most obstinate 
 of prejudices which until our own day has excluded 
 woman from an equal part with man in the control of 
 the world's affairs.^ 
 
 The idea of the selective breeding of the human race, 
 which is the inspiration of our modern eugenics move- 
 ment, is equally familiar to Plato. He also avoids that 
 degradation of it which, by reducing it to the level of 
 pigeon-fancying or cattle-breeding, would make it in- 
 compatible with the spiritual dignity of mankind. Greek 
 
 1 Republic, Book iii, §§ 416-17. 
 
 2 "A free man ought to be a free man in the acquisition of knowledge. 
 Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm; but knowledge which 
 is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind^' — Republic, 
 Book viii, § 536. 
 
 ' "In the administration of a State, neither a woman as a woipan, nor 
 a man as a man, has any special function, but the gifts of nature are 
 equally diffused in both sexes. . . . 
 
 "The woman has equally with the man the qualities which make a 
 guardian; she differs only in degrees of strength. . . . 
 
 "Being of the same nature with them, ought they not to have the 
 same pursuits? . . . 
 
 "The contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality a 
 violation of na,t\iie."— Republic, Book v, §§ 4SS-S6- 
 
IS2 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 as he is, Plato does not suggest that bodily fineness 
 should be the sole end aimed at in a eugenic scheme. It 
 is the blending of spiritual quahties, for the purpose of 
 ensuring their harmonious balance and stability, that 
 he advocates. His plan is "to make matrimony as holy 
 as possible, the most beneficial marriages being the 
 most holy." 
 
 Such are a few of the ideas, commonly supposed to be 
 essentially modern, which we find presented by the 
 Platonic Socrates, and discussed with a many-sidedness 
 and maturity of wisdom all too rare in our own day. Yet 
 not alone for these are we indebted to him. Far more 
 important is the teaching, which is constantly recurring 
 in his conversations, that morality finds its basis in the 
 nature of man and of things, and its justification in the 
 quality of character which it produces. The essential 
 fallacy of the school which claims (however falsely) to 
 follow Nietzsche is the notion that a man can trample 
 down the dictates of conscience, can utterly ignore 
 the good of others and use them merely as a means 
 to his selfish ends, and can be the same man after he 
 has done this as he was before. The unanswerable 
 refutation of this naive idea is the priceless achieve- 
 ment of Socrates. "Do not imagine," he says in effect, 
 "that we are telling you to be honest, truthful, chaste, 
 sober, just and merciful, in order to prevent you from 
 enjoying life and being happy. On the contrary, it is 
 because we are as deeply interested in your self-fulfill- 
 ment as you yourself can be, that we give you this coun- 
 sel. Try it and see. Prove all things, but hold fast 
 that which is good." Nowhere is the doctrine of the 
 inevitable deterioration that follows upon immorality 
 more perfectly brought out than in the great myths 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 153 
 
 in the Gorgias ^ and in the Phaedo,^ in which, as 
 elsewhere, Plato advances the idea of eternal punish- 
 ment, as being the only adequate expression of the in- 
 curable corruption of a soul which has chosen evil and 
 systematically committed the worst crimes. With this 
 teaching he combines the humane and rational doctrine 
 that the purpose of punishment should be either re- 
 formatory or exemplary, but never vindictive.^ 
 
 Be it remembered that the Platonic myths * embody 
 no dogmatic teaching. They are attempts to express 
 in pictures the truths which cannot be conveyed by 
 words. The ultimate purpose of the teacher — Socrates 
 or Plato — is to arouse something more than a mere logical 
 assent to his positions. He desires to quicken an en- 
 thusiastic conviction which shall fructify in ennobling 
 and consistent action. Therefore it is that, after ex- 
 hausting all the resources of his dialectic art, he pre- 
 cipitates into mythical pictures the profound intuitive 
 convictions which are the inspiration of his own hfe. 
 
 1 Sections 524-25. ^ Sections 1 13-14. 
 
 ' "Now the proper ofiiice of punishment is twofold; he who is rightly 
 punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought 
 to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he suffers, 
 and fear and become better; those who are punished by gods and men, 
 and improved, are those whose sins are curable; still the way of im- 
 proving them, as in this world so also in another, is by pain and suffering; 
 for there is no other way in which they can be delivered from their evil. 
 But they who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and are incurable 
 by reason of their crimes, are made examples; for, as they are incurable, 
 the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit themselves. 
 But others get good when they behold them for ever enduring the most 
 terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins; 
 there they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world 
 below, a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come 
 thither." — Gorgias, § 527. 
 
 * In this connection should be studied the excellent treatise on The 
 Myths of Plato, by Professor J. A. Stewart, of Oxford. 
 
154 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The question whether life is good and is worth living 
 presents itself to the intellect as a problem demanding 
 to be solved; but the whole man,^ — the synthesis in which 
 intellect is but one element — ^is the concrete solution of 
 that problem. He is the outcome of action by past 
 generations upon the instinctive but indemonstrable 
 certainty that life is good. On the plane of rational and 
 conceptual thought the question, Is life worth living? 
 is unanswerable, and therefore idle; but the answer is 
 given in the fact that we are alive, and in the further 
 fact that we cannot act save upori the presupposition 
 that life is worth living. 
 
 Now the service of myth and poetry consists in re- 
 storing to us the vision of the world as felt. It precipi- 
 tates and communicates what Professor Stewart has 
 well called "transcendental feeling." The purpose of 
 the myth-form is not to answer questions, but, by touch- 
 ing hidden chords, to stir the memory and open the 
 forgetful eyes. Our greatest modern American poet, 
 William Vaughn Moody, in his drama The Fire-bringer, 
 has some Unes which exactly convey this function of 
 myth. It is to restore to consciousness the sense of 
 
 ... an inner freshness in the dew, 
 A look inscrutable the stars put on, 
 A fount of secret colour in the dawn; 
 After dayfall a daylight that remains, 
 Brighter than what is gone. 
 
 Among the unutterable truths by which the whole 
 life of Socrates was animated, the chief was his convic- 
 tion of the unconditional worth and imperativeness of the 
 law of virtue, considered not as an arbitrary command 
 imposed from without, but as the expression of that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 155 
 
 deepest selfhood in man which is one with the ultimate 
 reality of the universe. This it is which he seeks to con- 
 vey by the doctrine of immortality and of the eternal 
 punishment of the desperately wicked, who incur this 
 fate as the natural consequence of having violated their 
 own essential nature. Such is his answer to the clever 
 sophistry which declares morality to be a mere bundle 
 of conventions devised by "the many weak." 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in this book, I find myself enmeshed 
 in the hopeless difficulty of treating in a single chapter 
 a theme to which even a large volume could not do jus- 
 tice. Yet perhaps I may make my peace with the reader, 
 and with the imperial spirit of Socrates, if I can but 
 achieve the one purpose of this inadequate sketch. I 
 am not seeking to give a synoptic outline that shall 
 serve in lieu of first-hand study, but only to bring my 
 readers to Plato. 
 
 It was once said of Shakespeare that he was "an intel- 
 lectual ocean, whose waves washed all the shores of 
 thought." This is an excellent phrase, though as applied 
 to Shakespeare it is inept and incongruous; but it does 
 with most felicitous appropriateness characterize Plato. 
 My contention is that the Platonic Dialogues contain 
 a revelation as genuinely divine as that of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures. Nor do I use these words sentimentally, 
 but with a vivid and clear idea in mind which I wish 
 to convey by them. Revelation does not mean the 
 disclosure, from a superhuman source, of new truth 
 which the mind of man could not otherwise attain. 
 There is perhaps not a single doctrine in the Bible 
 that has not been set forth by other men whom nobody 
 asserts to have been supernaturally enlightened. What 
 revelation practically means is the presentation of 
 
156 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 spiritual truth with vivifjang power, so that it becomes 
 not a mere intellectual belief but a volitional force. 
 That truth is to me a revelation which springs to life 
 within me, changing the course of my conduct and the 
 quality of my character. 
 
 In this sense, there is to some extent a divine revela- 
 tion in the literature of every nation, but pre-eminently 
 in the literatures of Palestine and Greece. Of the in- 
 fluence of the Bible it would be irrelevant to speak here; 
 and my silence should not be imderstood as implying dis- 
 paragement of it. But Plato for more than twenty 
 centuries has been to the learned and the elect what the 
 Hebrew and Christian Scriptures have been to the mass. 
 One of the advances most earnestly to be desired is that 
 he may henceforth become for the mass what hitherto 
 he has been only for the minority.^ To say that this 
 is impossible would be to pass a final condemnation upon 
 democracy. For the source of all the rawnesses from 
 which our democracy suffers is precisely the lack of such 
 
 ' This influence of Plato has been expressed in a manner beyond 
 rivalry by Emerson: "These sentences contain the culture of nations. 
 These are the comer-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of 
 literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, 
 language, rhetoric, ontology, morals or practical wisdom. There was 
 never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are 
 still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes 
 he among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which 
 all these drift boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for 
 twenty-two hundred years, every brisk young man who says in succession 
 fine things to each reluctant generation, — Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, 
 Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, — is some reader of Plato, 
 translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things. Even the men 
 of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall 
 I say?) of coming after this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, 
 Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg, Goethe, are Ukewise his 
 debtors, and must say after him." — Essay on Plato, in Representative 
 Men. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 157 
 
 enlightenment as philosophy can give. We walk in 
 darkness because we are materialists, and by necessary 
 consequence idolaters. We are bemused by the hypno- 
 tism of sense and outward things. By nobody can this 
 baleful spell be so effectively and permanently remitted 
 as by the enchanter Plato. Our popular religion would 
 be completely transfigured and incalculably enhanced 
 in its value as a light and a force for the conduct of life 
 if its ministers and adherents were discipHned from 
 childhood in Plato as they are in the Bible. They should 
 know the words of Socrates as familiarly as they know 
 the words of Jesus. 
 
 It is complained that ethical doctrine is cold and 
 abstract, and that for the purposes of reUgion a per- 
 sonahty is needed, in whom the abstract truth shall 
 be incarnate, and upon whose strength the wayfaring 
 man may draw. One of the virtues of the Platonic 
 literature is that it meets this need. In the pages of 
 Plato we do indeed find a person, as distinct, as original, 
 as inspiring and stimulating as the divine person whom 
 fifty generations have found in the Gospels. The com- 
 bination in Plato of the skill of the poet and dramatist 
 with an unexampled power of abstract thought consti- 
 tutes one of the high-water marks of the literature of 
 all time. How desperately difficult is the dialogue as 
 a literary vehicle for philosophic teaching is demon- 
 strated by the almost universal failure of Plato's imi- 
 tators. 
 
 The Platonic secret is the possession, and the use in 
 the service of ethical philosophy, of a power of characteri- 
 zation equal to that of a Shakespeare or a Dickens. 
 Without resorting to description, but simply by placing 
 self-disclosing words in the mouths of his characters. 
 
1S8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 Plato renders them as vivid and as highly individualized 
 as those of the greatest fiction or drama. Think of the 
 impression he gives of the reeling demigod Alcibiades 
 in the Symposium,''- and of the dramatic way in which 
 the picture of his entrance, "crowned with a massive 
 garland of ivy and wall-flowers, and having his head 
 flowing with ribbons," is timed to relax the tension 
 produced by "that celestial colloquy sublime" with 
 which Socrates has just "strained to the height" the 
 reader's mental and spiritual powers. Consider, again, 
 the way in which the noble modesty and rare abilities 
 of Theaetetus are anticipated, and afterwards mani- 
 fested in his own person. Or study by the canons of 
 dramatic or fictional criticism the character of the 
 kindly old Crito, so loyal to his friend and master that 
 he will surrender, though with a breaking heart, the 
 hope of saving that master's life, rather than urge him 
 to violate his conscience. One of the noblest literary 
 revenges in history is that taken by Plato upon Aris- 
 tophanes, by introducing that slanderous comedian in 
 the Symposium, and placing upon his Hps a story ^ en- 
 tirely in his spirit, but finer than anything he could 
 himself have done. 
 
 Thus might one go through the rich gallery of Plato's 
 pictures of other men, each depicted with some master- 
 touches that make them living and unforgettable. But 
 the glory of them all is gathered up and transcended in 
 the central picture of Socrates himself, the greatest 
 example in human story of inflexible integrity combined 
 with unfailing urbanity and practical sagacity. Socrates 
 is such a gentleman that any glimpse of him makes us 
 ashamed of our modern vulgarity. In his poverty he 
 1 Sections 212-13. ' Sections 189-Q3. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 159 
 
 is richer than our millionaires, more majestic than 
 our kings. In his freedom from pedantry he puts to 
 shame many of our educators, whose whole vitality 
 is absorbed in a single specialism. Socrates is capable 
 of such subtlety of intellectual construction and dis- 
 crimination as human thought has never surpassed. 
 Yet he is the beloved boon companion of the young men, 
 who are able at once to revere and to chaff him. And 
 which among the modern thinkers who strive to be 
 impartial has ever rivalled the dispassionateness of one 
 who (as we see ia the Crito) would not condescend to 
 twist an argument even to save his life? 
 
 Addison, in one of his charming essays, uses the phrase, 
 "the divine Socrates." ^ If this epithet is not to be an 
 empty word, it must connote, as I have suggested, the 
 power of creating spiritual Hfe in others. Such divinity 
 can no more be denied to Socrates than to Jesus. To 
 enter the presence of the immortal Athenian is to be 
 made ashamed of all that is low and petty and self- 
 centred. For he is not merely an example of unsur- 
 passable human grandeur, but also a living source of en- 
 noblement to all who approach him. He is, in short, a 
 Saviour. 
 
 ■ Spectator, No. 146. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 inspiration: its nature and conditions 
 
 The time in which we live has one characteristic which 
 it shares in common with all preceding periods. This 
 is the tendency to self-depreciation. We hear on every 
 hand that the age lacks inspiration, and does not com- 
 mand the conditions which lead to the emergence of 
 genius in any department. We have fallen, it is said, on 
 a time of machinery and mediocrity. Masters of the 
 means of life to a degree unparalleled by any former 
 epoch, we have lost sight of the ends of life. Nay, even 
 the mastery of machinery is in great measure illusory, 
 for we tend ever more and more to become the slaves 
 of the great engines which our hands have made. The 
 outward and visible mechanism is a symbol of our 
 hypnotization by the mechanical energies of life. We 
 have lost our grip of the spirit as a force and a cause of 
 events. We regard ourselves as phenomena, as effects, 
 as links in a chain, mere vehicles of forces which we can- 
 not control or direct. 
 
 Self-depreciation, however, on some pretext or other, 
 is, as I have said, a characteristic of all ages. The dis- 
 paraging contrast between our own day and former 
 periods is a part of the perennial illusion of "the good 
 old times" — those golden days whose disappearance has 
 been lamented by writers in every age, from Homer to 
 our own. When Sir Owen Seaman was appointed editor 
 
 of Punch, somebody complained to him that the paper 
 
 1 60 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS l6l 
 
 was not half so good as it used to be. He replied, "No, 
 it never was." The great humorist here supplied the 
 true refutation of all pessimistic comparisons between 
 the present and the past. When we are told that times 
 are not so good as formerly, the answer is, "No, they 
 never were." Homer bewails the decadence of the men 
 of his day as compared with an earlier race, any one 
 of whom could hurl a rock that not three of Homer's 
 contemporaries could lift. Bacon's contempt for the 
 degenerate dramatic poetry of his time is a phenomenon 
 that we do well to remember. Addison, writing in the 
 noonday of what was afterwards called the Augustan 
 age of English literature, is full of satire over the cor- 
 rupt taste of his contemporaries. The inspiration of an 
 age is thus almost always concealed from those who are 
 its chief embodiments. 
 
 I propose in this chapter to attempt an analysis of the 
 conditions under which what we term inspiration mani- 
 fests itself, with a view to arriving, if possible, at an 
 approximate and working definition of it. For one of 
 our difficulties is the vagueness of the idea. Not knowing 
 what inspiration substantively is, knowing it only 
 negatively (that is, being conscious when it is absent), 
 or only adjectivally — through its effects, which fre- 
 quently do not appear until it is spent — we are unable 
 to interpret rightly the signs of its approach, or to prepare 
 the conditions which favour its manifestation. 
 
 To almost all of us, whether our antecedents be Chris- 
 tian or Jewish, the term inspiration still suggests, first of 
 all, the Bible. We were brought up on the idea that 
 that one book is inspired, in a sense in which no others are. 
 Let us, then, try to determine what the inspiration of the 
 Bible has practically meant to those who believed in it, 
 
l62 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and what is the value of the theory by which they sought 
 to account for their experience. 
 
 The doctrine of Biblical inspiration was not hit upon 
 by a mere vagary of the human mind. There was a sohd 
 basis of experience out of which it grew. The history of 
 Protestantism and Puritanism convinces us that those 
 who formulated the mechanical doctrine of verbal in- 
 fallibility were driven to do so by phenomena which cer- 
 tainly called for some explanation. They had come into 
 touch with a vitalizing and transforming power as a 
 result of their devout study of the Hebrew books. The 
 martyrs of Smithfield, the Pilgrim Fathers, Cromwell's 
 Ironsides, John Bunyan and George Fox, — all these and 
 many others were instances of the power which somehow 
 flowed from those old pages. It was no delusion of theirs 
 that they had been raised above themselves. They had 
 revalued all the values of life. They had been quickened 
 into a boundless humility towards the Moral Ideal, which 
 they envisaged as a personal God, and into a boundless 
 courage and self-rehance in facing the unjust claims of 
 kings and tyrants. Macaulay has well and truly said 
 of the Puritan that "he prostrated himself in the dust 
 before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his 
 king." 1 Verily, there was some wonderful power which 
 could thus make martyrs, heroes, soldiers and statesmen 
 out of the lackeys and apprentices of London, the tinkers, 
 cobblers and hinds of the countryside. 
 
 It needs but slight study of hterature to enable us to 
 realize that it was the intense passion for justice of the 
 Hebrew prophets, expressed in the burning eloquence 
 of the English version, and conned with the reverence 
 naturally accorded to what was considered a divine 
 ' Essay on Milton. 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 163 
 
 revelation, which thus entered into the souls of men, 
 making the weak strong and the strong stronger, trans- 
 muting the commonplace into the rare soul, and quicken- 
 ing into genius and the power of leadership characters 
 that without this inspiration would have remained 
 mediocre. 
 
 The misfortune was that owing to the very limited 
 literary experience of those who underwent this trans- 
 formation, they were able to give only an inadequate 
 and misleading account of it. They resorted to a theory 
 according to which the Biblical books were inspired, 
 but not their writers. The old doctrine of the verbal 
 inspiration and infallibility of the Bible means that the 
 writers did not express their selfhood in what they wrote. 
 It was not their human souls that were incarnated in 
 these und)dng utterances. They functioned merely as 
 amanuenses to a conscious intelligence other than their 
 own. Their highest achievement was a microscopic 
 accuracy in transmitting what had thus been commu- 
 nicated to them. They played the part only of steno- 
 graphers or dictaphone records; and it is not customary 
 to speak of stenographers as inspired, save in a satirical 
 sense. 
 
 Out of this forced and unnatural theory of verbal in- 
 spiration there arose the childlike notion that all the 
 statements of fact in the Bible must necessarily be true. 
 We look back to-day upon this theory with a certaia 
 sense of amusement, not imtinctured with shame. It is 
 only just to remind ourselves, however, that the essential 
 premiss of the theory in question was accepted not only 
 by the orthodox, but also by the iconoclastic rationalists 
 of the school of Thomas Paine, Charles Bradlaugh, and 
 Robert IngersoU, who fought against them. The ortho- 
 
1 64 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 dox maintained (as we saw above, p. 45 ff.) a sort of cir- 
 cular argument, to the effect that every statement in the 
 Bible must be true because the Bible was inspired; and, 
 conversely, that the inspiration of the Bible was proved 
 by the fact that all the statements it contained were true. 
 The iconoclasts, on the other hand, accepting the crite- 
 rion of inspiration thus implied, maintained that because 
 there were errors of fact in the Bible it could not be in- 
 spired. 
 
 It is the naivet6 of this position which strikes us to-day. 
 We smile at arguments which imply that if only Jonah's 
 fish had had a sHghtly larger throat, the critics could 
 comfortably have swallowed the story that it swallowed 
 Jonah; that if only Noah's ark had been rather larger and 
 better ventilated, the story of the Flood might have 
 stood as history; that if the periods of the first chapter 
 of Genesis had not been quite so obviously meant for 
 literal days, the account of creation might have passed 
 muster. Such an attitude makes the days of the " cudgel 
 controversialists" seem indefinitely remote from our 
 own, recent as they are in fact. We feel about the whole 
 preposterous contention much as we might feel about 
 a dispute concerning the inspiration of Macbeth, one 
 party to which should maintain that the play was in- 
 spired because all its historical statements were true, the 
 other contending that it could not be so because some of 
 its assertions were erroneous. We are amazed by the 
 ineptitude of the criterion, and the irrelevance of the 
 whole discussion. With a wider literary experience, a 
 broader acquaintance (as Matthew Arnold said) with 
 the way the human mind works, we assume without dis- 
 cussion the principle that the test of inspiration is the 
 effect of any great literature in quickening the mind and 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 165 
 
 conscience of those who study it, and in arousing them 
 in turn to original activity. 
 
 The Bible writers give us scarcely any hint of what 
 their inspiration meant to them; but the old mechanical 
 view is clearly due to a falsely literal interpretation of 
 their poetic and figurative phrases. In one of the few 
 places where a Biblical writer lets us to some extent into 
 his secret, we get an account totally different from that 
 of the amanuensis-theory. The writer of the Book of 
 Revelation tells us, indeed, that he was in the Spirit, and 
 that while in the Spirit he was shown a vision of the 
 celestial world and talked with hierarchs of the host of 
 heaven. By these he was conducted and shown the 
 things that must shortly come to pass. But the words 
 in which he was to describe the vision, unUke the special 
 messages to the seven Churches, were in no wise dictated 
 to him. "What thou seest write in a book," says the 
 great voice, ^ but the narrator is left to choose his own 
 language for this purpose. He chose words which, even 
 through the medium of a translation, stir the blood after 
 nineteen centuries, amazing us by their poignant elo- 
 quence and by a descriptive power which sets a new and 
 higher limit to the known range of literary possibility. 
 Yet the work is confessedly that of a man, who is not 
 merely the amanuensis of a superhuman intelligence. 
 I am not, of course, contending that we have in Revela- 
 tion a literal transcript of a subjective experience. The 
 more we allow, however, for the free play of the writer's 
 poetic genius, the more is this view of his inspiration 
 strengthened. 
 
 St. Paul too was a man of visions, and occasionally 
 he intimates that he is voicing an authority higher than 
 1 Rev. i, II. 
 
l66 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 his own/ though at other times he acknowledges that he 
 is speaking out of his own moral judgment,^ and even 
 expresses some doubt as to whether he has the sanction 
 of the Lord.' But few, reading his letters, with their 
 strongly marked individuality of style and their obvious 
 relation to the stormy incidents of his busy and heroic 
 career, can now seriously entertain the notion that their 
 inspiration emanated from any other source than his own 
 mind and experience. 
 
 It is the phrase of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord," 
 which has chiefly given rise to the theory of mechanical 
 and verbal inspiration. When the prophet, by brooding 
 over the iniquity of his people and musing deeply on 
 the principles and ideals which ought to guide Israel, 
 had attained to a clear vision of the course that should be 
 followed, he prefaced his appeal to his compatriots with 
 the words, "Thus saith the Lord." We may take our 
 choice between believing that he meant, "Thus saith the 
 universal moral judgment, which exists both in you 
 and me; whose dicta you can verify by searching your 
 own conscience and your own experience," and believ- 
 ing that he meant, "Thus saith a superhuman and 
 supernatural conscious intelligence, which has revealed 
 to me what I never could have discovered for myself, 
 and what you are bound to believe upon its authority, 
 without hope of verifying it." Which of the two is the 
 sounder construction is a question which answers itself 
 to anyone familiar with other inspired literatures as well 
 as with the Bible. 
 
 In the writings of Plato we find a most interesting 
 account of inspiration, as well as one of the most mar- 
 '£. g., I Cor. vii, lo. 'Ibid., verse 12. 'Ibid., verse 25. 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 167 
 
 vellous instances of it which antiquity has bequeathed 
 to us. Professor Jowett has well said of the Sympo- 
 sium that of all the works of Plato it "is the most per- 
 fect in form, and may be truly thought to contain more 
 than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe 
 said of one of his own writings, more than the author 
 himself knew." The Symposium contains that incom- 
 parable speech of Socrates which ostensibly embodies 
 the substance of a revelation made to him by the wise 
 woman Diotima, the prophetess. Happily, there is no 
 narrow-minded religious sect of Platonists burning to 
 convince us that this account of the wise woman is 
 literal fact, and that Socrates was merely the trans- 
 mitter of the doctrine of inspiration which his speech for- 
 mulates. The substance of the revelation is, indeed, little 
 more than a compendium of principles and doctrines set 
 forth in many other parts of the Socratic teaching as 
 conveyed to us by Plato! 
 
 Its teaching is that inspiration is a reality, — a possible 
 experience; yet one that may come only after the most 
 rigorous and persistent intellectual discipUne, begun in 
 childhood and continued into mature life. The child has 
 to start by concentrating his attention upon some one 
 beautiful form; then he must study many such forms. 
 He will thus become aware of the identity of the beauty 
 embodied in them all. Gradually, after the study of fair 
 forms, he can proceed to the contemplation of fair ideas 
 and of institutions animated by them: and at last it may 
 be his good hap to have the vision of Beauty absolute 
 and eternal burst upon his view. Such, says Socrates, 
 is the only possible means of attaining to inspiration; 
 and such is the divine reward awaiting him who has fol- 
 lowed the gleam "down the nights and down the days," 
 
1 68 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and " down the arches of the years"; who has toiled up- 
 ward in the night, and laboured over the crags and steeps 
 of the mountainous years, until he attains the summit 
 whence alone may be beheld "the high-heaven dawn of 
 more than mortal day." I cannot forgo the pleasure of 
 quoting the closing sentences of this speech of Socrates: — 
 
 But what if man had eye to see the true beauty — the divine 
 beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged 
 with the pollutions of mortality, and aU the colours and van- 
 ities of human life; thither looking, and holding converse 
 with the true beauty, divine and simple, and bringing into 
 being and educating true creations of virtue, and not idols 
 only? Do you not see that in that communion only, behold- 
 ing beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to 
 bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has 
 hold not of an image but of a reality; and, bringing forth and 
 educating true virtue, to become the friend of God and be 
 immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble 
 lifePi 
 
 It would be cruel to elaborate the comparison which 
 inevitably suggests itself between this passage, from what 
 has ordinarily been regarded as profane and secular 
 literature, and such books as Daniel and Esther, which 
 are included in the canon of works divinely inspired. 
 
 In Plato's Republic this theory of inspiration is de- 
 picted even more minutely in the celebrated allegory 
 of the cave men, at the beginning of the seventh book. 
 The native state of man is as that of chained dwellers 
 in an underground den, which is lighted only from be- 
 hind. These subterranean prisoners can see nothing but 
 the shadows before their eyes; hence they mistake the 
 ' Symposium, §§ 211-12. 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 169 
 
 shadows for realities. It may, however, be the hap of one 
 of them to break free from his chains, to turn his back 
 upon the shadows, and to set out upon the toilsome 
 steep that leads upwards to the source of light. His eyes 
 will at first be dazzled, but gradually he will become 
 capable of seeing those objects 'which had cast the 
 shadows of his previous experience. After a long adapta- 
 tion to his new surroundings, he will become capable 
 of beholding the moon and stars, and finally of "kindling 
 his undazzled eye at the full midday beam." 
 
 Here is most beautifully expressed the essential para- 
 dox of the Platonic doctrine. The struggle, the dis- 
 cipline, the scaling of the heights, — this is the indis- 
 pensable preparation for the vision; yet, when that vision 
 comes, it is of the nature of revelation. It is not the 
 consequence of what the striver has gone through, nor is 
 it guaranteed to him. He may or may not attain to the 
 beatific vision. Certainly he will not without the long 
 preparation; that is indispensable in any case: but he 
 may not, even after he has undergone it. The view 
 from the mountain-top is not the logical or necessary 
 result of the climb: but without the climb it never can 
 be seen. 
 
 This intense rationalism of Plato is most unwelcome 
 to the mental indolence of our times. We are afficted 
 with a species of Cubists and Futurists, not alone in art, 
 but in every department of human activity. Our ears 
 are assailed by the doctrine which opposes inspira- 
 tion to mental effort, and sets up a false and danger- 
 ous antithesis between intellection and intuition. This 
 school takes in vain the name of Bergson, and professes 
 to have his authority for disparaging hard thinking and 
 hard study. There is in truth no justification for this to 
 
170 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 be found in Bergson's works. He has proudly and rightly 
 claimed that no philosophy gives to the method, spirit 
 and results of science a higher value than his own as- 
 cribes to them. But because he has emphasized the 
 extra-logical factors in the human spirit, and has in- 
 sisted that a full and true vision of reality cannot be 
 attained by the logical process alone, he is seized upon 
 by those who desire to be absolved from the task of hard 
 thinking and scientific work. They seek to make him 
 the sponsor of an anti-intellectualism which is suicidal, — 
 which, indeed, would prevent the development of his 
 own philosophical method, as well as of every other 
 worthy human enterprise. 
 
 The common shibboleth of the anti-rationalists in 
 painting and poetry, as well as in other fields, is a variant 
 of the special doctrine of Quakerism. It is possible 
 that they may feel shocked or intellectually insulted by 
 such an assertion. Yet when they talk, as they do, of 
 expressing oneself, irrespective of social consequences, 
 they are only parodying the Quaker notion of that Inner 
 Light which is directly kindled by the Spirit. They 
 forget, too, that before you can express yourself, you 
 must first acquire a self that is worth expressing; and 
 they ignore the difficulty of developing such selfhood. 
 
 It is not for a moment to be questioned that the in- 
 spired artist can and rightly does transcend the prescrip- 
 tions of technique. It is, indeed, his breaches of rule 
 that create rules for his successors. His felicitous de- 
 partures from convention become a new technique for 
 after-times. But one condition of transcending an 
 established artistic standard is that a man shall first 
 have mastered it; and this can only be done through in- 
 tense labour. 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 171 
 
 An amusing illustration of this fact was once brought 
 to a friend of mine by a young lady who sought his judg- 
 ment upon a poem she had written. It was a poem of 
 the vers litre order. It reminded him irresistibly of the 
 description of the earth in the first chapter of Genesis, 
 in that it was not only without form, but also void. 
 Wishing to be truthful as well as polite, my friend ven- 
 tured the suggestion that there are two possible reasons 
 for ignoring technique: the one, because you are above 
 it; the other, because you can't do it: and that her poem 
 left in his mind a certain doubt as to which of these two 
 reasons had actuated her. 
 
 The refutation of the lazy modern theory that in- 
 spiration is independent of intellectual effort is supplied 
 by a mere glance at the life and work of any great creative 
 artist. Think of Shakespeare's years of apprenticeship, 
 when, in addition to direct work in every department 
 of practical stagecraft, he whetted the edge of his poetic 
 power upon aU sorts of old plays, inserting characters 
 and incidents to suit the taste of the London tradesmen 
 and their wives and 'prentice boys, as well as his own. 
 
 I would prefer, however, to cite an instance which to 
 most readers is unfortunately less famiUar. We have 
 almost forgotten that Milton is not only a greater poet 
 even than Shakespeare in respect of sheer subUmity 
 (though, to be sure, a lesser poet in respect of versatility 
 and insight into human character), but also the writer 
 of the very greatest prose in the English language. Even 
 those who study him ia high school or college generally 
 become acquainted only with fragments of his prose 
 work, particularly \he Areopagitica. This is a great mis- 
 fortune; for in the tomes that we do not read, despite 
 the seeming obsoleteness of many of their themes, there 
 
172 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 are scores of passages full of moral wisdom, lofty thinking, 
 and a majestic eloquence with which nothing outside the 
 English Bible is worthy to be compared.^ 
 
 Now, making every allowance for Milton's exceptional 
 native endowment that the anti-intellectual inspira- 
 tionist cares to insist upon, it remains true that his 
 mastery in prose and verse was achieved only by the 
 deliberate dedication of his entire life to his vocation. 
 Even from his Cambridge days he was planning the epic 
 which he did not write until his old age. After a period of 
 quiet retirement in the country followed by Continental 
 travels, he felt bound in conscience to turn aside from 
 his poetic projects and to take a share in the great battle 
 for mental and political freedom which was then breaking 
 out in England. He could not refuse to write in the 
 cause of religious liberty, though the controversy was 
 distasteful to him. By reason of his exceptional scholar- 
 ship and his rare powers of expression, his conscience 
 challenged him to do a work which the hour demanded, 
 and which he more than other men was equipped to 
 perform. Yet he carmot conceal his bent, or abstain from 
 the topic that really interests him. In the midst of a 
 volume of argumentation about the government of the 
 
 ' I am reminded that I am here repeating a lament voiced ninety ■ 
 years ago by Macaulay: "It is to be regretted tliat the prose writings of 
 Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they 
 deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted 
 with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages 
 compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into in- 
 significance. They are a perfect field of cloth-of-gold. The style is 
 stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the 
 Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts 
 of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find 
 a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own 
 majestic language, 'a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sym- 
 phonies.'" — Essay on Milton (1825)- 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 173 
 
 Church by bishops, he suddenly interpolates an auto- 
 biographical fragment, which to us is worth more than 
 all the rest of the book, though he probably inserted it 
 with reluctance and with a strong sense of its irrelevance. 
 In this he explains how it is that he, who had dedicated 
 his Kfe to poetry, felt constrained to join in the hurly- 
 burly of theological disputes. He also tells the reader 
 that the work he still hopes to achieve is such as carmot 
 be done by a young man, because of the long and arduous 
 preparation which is an indispensable preliminary to it. 
 Note the spirit in which he tells of his poetic vocation, 
 and his sense of the way to equip himself for it. He 
 speaks first of "an inward prompting, which now grew 
 daily upon me, that by labour and intense study (which 
 I take to be my portion in this Hfe), joined with the 
 strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave some- 
 thing so written to after-times as they should not will- 
 ingly let it die." And a httle later he thus pledges him- 
 seK to his contemporaries: — 
 
 Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing 
 reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with 
 him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as 
 being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the 
 vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen 
 of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rh5aning 
 parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame 
 Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to 
 that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and 
 knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire 
 of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. 
 To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady 
 observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and 
 affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine 
 
174 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation 
 from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity 
 upon the best pledges that I can give them.^ 
 
 Such was the discipline, rigarously continued from 
 childhood almost into old age, which led to the in- 
 spiration for Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and 
 Samson Agonistes. The notion that this intense in- 
 tellectual preparation can be dispensed with would be 
 rightly described as an imbecility if it were not even 
 more obviously an attempt to find a justification for 
 indolence. So far from those who preach it leaving 
 something that after-times will not willingly let die, it is 
 virtually certain that they can produce nothing that the 
 future will be willing to let live; — unless, indeed, we are 
 passing into a period of barbarism, and the world has to 
 wait another thousand years for a rebirth of true civiliza- 
 tion and culture. 
 
 Our own great Emerson is one of the many master- 
 spirits who have endorsed the Platonic paradox that 
 inspiration can only follow upon intense labour, and yet 
 is in no wise guaranteed by it. He also, out of his own 
 experience, is able to testify to the truth that when the 
 inspiration comes it is of the nature of a revelation, — a 
 disclosure of something unanticipated, unpredictable. 
 "We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its 
 manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. 
 These are always attended by the emotion of the sub- 
 lime." ^ And elsewhere he writes: — 
 
 When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is 
 
 ^Milton, The Reason of Church-Government urged against Prelaty, 
 Intro, to Book ii (1641). 
 
 ^ Emerson, The Over-Soul, in Collected Works, vol. ii, p. 280. 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 175 
 
 not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern 
 the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; 
 you shall not hear any name; — the way, the thought, the 
 good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude 
 example and experience. You take the way from man, not 
 to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten 
 ministers.! 
 
 In the same spirit Matthew Arnold, who also had 
 bought his inspiration at the price of years of labour, 
 acknowledges the uncertainty of the celestial visitant. 
 When all the conditions for it are prepared, it may or may 
 not come: — 
 
 Our conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can our- 
 selves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely different de- 
 grees of force and energy in the performance of it, of lucidity 
 and vividness in the perception of it, of fulness in the satis- 
 faction from it; and these degrees may vary from day to 
 day, and quite incalculably. Facilities and felicities, — whence 
 do they come? suggestions and stimulations, — where do they 
 tend? Hardly a day passes but we have some experience 
 of them. And so Henry More was led to say "that there 
 was something about us that knew better, often, what we 
 would be at than we ourselves." ^ 
 
 This familiar fact of experience Arnold used as one of 
 the chief points in his demonstration of our dependence 
 upon a "Power not ourselves." He reminds us how such 
 a thing as a neuralgia, which on one day seems an in- 
 superable obstacle to any sort of effective work, will on 
 another day act as a spur, driving us to more than we 
 could attempt without it. Such is the uniform experience 
 of all whose inspiration is real. "The spirit bloweth 
 
 ' Sdj-Rdiance, ibid., p. 68. ^ Literature and Dogma, chapter i. 
 
176 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 where it listeth" — and when it listeth. There is no 
 royal road to inspiration and the awakening of genius. 
 The gods give not to those who have not laboured to win 
 their favour; but, even among those who have, they pick 
 and choose in a fashion that to us seems arbitrary. 
 
 There is, after all, no mystery here; or, to be more 
 exact, there is no greater mystery here than on the lower 
 and more familiar planes of life's activities. Every 
 athlete knows how incalculable is the thing called 
 "form," even after the trainer's regimen has been 
 scrupulously followed. Every singer or actor or public 
 speaker can testify to the same experience. No doubt 
 there is, here as elsewhere, a definite correlation between 
 physical and psychic conditions; only it is so obscure that 
 it has not hitherto been ascertained. Consider, too, the 
 element of what is called chance in the field of invention 
 and scientific discovery. Why is it that of two men who 
 seem equally well equipped and equally gifted by nature, 
 one will hit upon a revolutionary discovery or an epoch- 
 making invention and not the other, even though both 
 are giving the same amount and degree of attention to 
 the same subject-matter? 
 
 These facts, whether in regard to poetic inspiration, to 
 scientific discovery, or to what is called "form" on the 
 cricket-field, attenuate the optimistic ■ certainty which 
 was formerly entertained, particularly in regard to 
 physical science, that the so-called Baconian method of 
 observation and induction was an infallible means of 
 arriving at rich discoveries. We find this idea surviving 
 into the nineteenth century, and haunting the minds of 
 many capable thinkers. Nor must we for a moment for- 
 get or under-estimate the invaluable discoveries which 
 have been made under its influence. Our debt to empiri- 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 177 
 
 cal science is inexhaustible. The point, however, that 
 needs to be borne in mind, especially by young people 
 who are preparing for a scientific career, is that the mere 
 routine grind of the experimental method, though in- 
 dispensable to new discovery, is no unfailing guarantee 
 of it. There is always the incalculable factor of the ob- 
 server's inspiration. To remember this is the way to 
 escape discouragement and to sustain hope through 
 many a weary hour of labour. 
 
 The truth in this matter has been distorted for us by 
 the fact that the moment a scientific worker has a new 
 revelation he proceeds to invent a process of argument, 
 which he offers to us as the means by which he has 
 arrived at his discovery. He himself speedily overlooks 
 the fact that his argument is even more of an invention 
 than the thing he has hit upon. It is a method rather of 
 hiding his tracks than of revealing them. Of course, his 
 deception of us and of himself is completely unconscious. 
 When one makes a discovery, one has to correlate it by 
 reasoning with the rest of one's knowledge. But the 
 psychological process of discovery is one in which the 
 conclusion invariably comes before the premisses. You 
 first catch your hare, and then you proceed to cook it. 
 First you have your revelation, and then you frame a 
 train of reasoning to legitimatize it among the family of 
 things known. 
 
 My argument thus far, if it has succeeded at all, has 
 estabhshed two points: first, that inspiration, though a 
 reaKty, is an incalculable factor, a visitant apparently 
 from outside oneself, upon whose coming any worthy 
 achievement depends. The second is that the severest 
 and most intense discipline is an indispensable pre- 
 
178 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 requisite for the experience of inspiration. This holds 
 universally, whether in regard to the attainment of reli- 
 gious truth, scientific discovery, mechanical invention, 
 artistic felicity, or even unwonted success in gymnastics 
 or athletics. A third point upon which I must dwell for 
 a moment is the fact that the supreme condition for 
 experiencing inspiration is contact with the common 
 life, or social co-operation with others in concentration 
 upon the tasks of the common life. 
 
 There is in the writings of Emerson a strain of in- 
 dividualism which would seem to contradict the pro- 
 position I have just advanced. His notion seems to be 
 that the altitudes of life are always solitary; that "we 
 descend to meet"; that when on quest for inspiration we 
 "take the way from man, not to man." Any student 
 of the facts of Emerson's life, however, will admit that 
 my contention is consistent with them, if not with 
 Emerson's theory. The impulse that drives the thinker 
 into the wilderness is one which the common life has 
 stirred within him; and that visitant whom he meets in 
 the solitude is not indeed any man's individual selfhood, 
 but it is the social self, the General Will. This produces 
 a quickening of the mental activity on which the thinker 
 has previously concentrated, by bringing it to the focal 
 point and preventing attention from being dissipated 
 upon extraneous matters. 
 
 Thus the mental activity of Emerson, the individualist, 
 clearly springs out of his experience with such groups of 
 people as those to whom he ministered as a Unitarian 
 pastor in Boston. To these groups most of his great 
 essays were first read, having been written in response 
 to requests from them. The iron string in Emerson — 
 the self-reliance, the defiance of convention and opinion — 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 179 
 
 is his reaction to the demand that he should comply with 
 the standards of an orthodoxy none the less narrow and 
 stereotyped because it was that of a little group of rela- 
 tively advanced thinkers. It was indeed Emerson's 
 own Unitarianism which induced his inadequate interpre- 
 tation of his experience. Through concentrating upon 
 unity, he forgot the multiplicity in unity. He did not 
 apprehend the true doctrine of the Trinity; hence his 
 Over-Soul apparently springs from nowhere, and is an 
 anarchic and unaccountable manifestation. The Over- 
 Soul is, in truth, the common mind of two or more per- 
 sons animated by an identical principle. This is the ex- 
 periential truth in the antique doctrine that the Holy 
 Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son. It 
 embodies the common rational nature of many men, and 
 consequently always manifests itself as a third factor, 
 mightier than any of the individuals it inspires. 
 
 The facts which even Emerson's life forces upon our at- 
 tention are more clearly exempHfied in the genesis of the 
 great literatures of Israel and Greece. Nothing could be 
 clearer than that the Hebrew prophecy and psalmody 
 grow out of the common mind of the Jewish people and 
 result from the intense devotion of their most sensitive 
 souls to the exigencies which the nation had to encounter. 
 The prophet is always of the type of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 and Joan of Arc : a politician, inspired by patriotism. The 
 powers developed through years of concentration enable 
 him to see the course that his people should take, to 
 judge what is amiss in their conduct and in their policy. 
 When the vision becomes intense and luminous, when 
 the certitude made poignant by love of country and love 
 of righteousness has reached its zenith, he bursts out 
 with counsel or condemnation in the name of the Lord. 
 
l8o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The social source of inspiration was clear to the Greek 
 thinkers. Aristotle, at the outset of his Politics, insists 
 upon the precedence of society over the individual, 
 and the dependence of the individual upon society. 
 He that is so complete in himself as not to need social 
 reinforcement and sustentation is not a man, says 
 Aristotle, but either a beast or a god. Socrates knew that 
 the philosophy to which he devoted his Hfe could grow 
 only out of continuous contact with the minds of other 
 human beings. Despite his bcHef in the inward monitor, 
 he was not accustomed to go to the solitudes to listen for 
 its promptings. His talk with Phasdrus under the plane- 
 tree by the banks of the IKssus was a rare departure from 
 his customary haunting of the Athenian streets. He 
 seldom or never went outside the waUs of the city. The 
 trees, he said, had nothing to teach him. He was willing, 
 however, to spend whole days and nights in conversation 
 with men immeasurably his inferiors, since he knew that 
 it is the clash of mind upon mind which strikes the spark 
 of new truth that blazes up into the light of further 
 vision. Thus the great Platonic revelation, as divine as 
 any that came to the Hebrews, is the outgrowth of one 
 school and the inspiration of another. 
 
 Milton, although he had all the characteristics of the 
 mental aristocrat, is, no less evidently than Plato, a 
 product of social quickeiung. In the case of his prose 
 work this is self-evident. Almost all of it is controversial : 
 that is, it grows out of the exigencies of a time when the 
 whole of England was divided into two schools of reli- 
 gious and poUtical thought, which were in constant con- 
 flict over a long period of years. He begins with a 
 treatise Of Reformation in England, and proceeds with 
 others on Church Government. He next takes up 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS l8l 
 
 the cudgels in behalf of liberty of thought and publica- 
 tion, seeking to rescue it from the tyran,ny of the "new 
 presbyter," who had promptly shown himself to be only a 
 fresh epiphany of the "old priest." Later he controverts 
 the book forged in the name of the executed king Charles 
 I, and defends the people of England against foreign 
 criticism of their action in shedding the blood of the 
 Lord's Anointed. Among the latest of his prose writings 
 are his tracts on A Ready and Easy Way to Establish 
 a Free Commonwealth, and on The Likeliest Means 
 to Remove Hirelings out of the Church. From first to 
 last, it is a splendid manifestation of the interaction 
 between a superbly gifted soul and that general soul 
 which environed him and had sent him forth. 
 
 If it be urged that what is true of Milton's prose is not 
 true of his poetry, I would answer that the subjects of his 
 three longest poems alone suffice to prove my contention. 
 Why should he have chosen to write of Paradise Lost 
 and Paradise Regained, save for the fact that the run 
 of his attention was conditioned by that of the party with 
 which he had co-operated? His age was the century 
 of Puritanism, of Hebraism, of full-blown Protestantism, 
 with its mechanical scheme of salvation. It was the 
 concentration of the common mind on these ideas that 
 caused the concentration upon them of the mind of 
 Milton. By native temperament he was rather Greek 
 than Hebrew, and he expressed his own bent much more 
 clearly in the Allegro, the Penseroso, and the Comus 
 than in the fairy-tale of Adam and the myth of the 
 Temptation of Christ. 
 
 The proof that inspiration can come only after intense 
 study can be given negatively as well as positively. The 
 latter side of the argument I have attempted to present 
 
1 82 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 by instancing the apprenticeship of the greatest minds. 
 The former can be made evident by considering the in- 
 spirations foisted upon the world by people who have 
 not undergone the hard toil of preparation. They are 
 in general worthless. This is the essential defect in our 
 modern habit of mental laziness, which opposes intuition 
 to intellect and disparages reasoning as inimical to in- 
 spiration. Consider the fantastic result of the Mormon 
 attempt to produce a new religion on the lines of the 
 theory of supernaturahsm invented to account for the 
 revelation given to the Hebrews. Whoever has read the 
 Book of Mormon knows that the only good things it con- 
 tains are its extensive plagiarisms from the Bible. What- 
 ever has been concocted by its author under the in- 
 fluence of his inspiration is of no value. 
 
 Christian Science is not morally and intellectually 
 defective in the same sense or to the same degree as 
 Mormonism. Nor does the juxtaposition of a criticism 
 of Mrs. Eddy's cult with that of Joseph Smith imply 
 any invidious comparison. Yet the philosophic feeble- 
 ness both of Christian Science and of that schism from 
 it called the Science of Being, are due to the fact that 
 the founders of these cults have misunderstood the na- 
 ture of inspiration. They discounted intellectual work. 
 They cultivated a passive resignation to the dictates of 
 the spiritual visitant. They reproduced the phenomenon 
 of "speaking with tongues," against which St. Paul's 
 common sense forced him to protest. The result is that 
 their books are a mere mass of words, darkening counsel 
 without knowledge. They have seized upon a fragment 
 of truth and imagined that it fills the universe. They 
 have converted this half-truth into a whole error through 
 the omission of its complementary truth. By the over- 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 183 
 
 emphasis of their fragment of truth they have succeeded 
 only in setting up a religion for invalids. What the world 
 needs is a rehgion for those who do not need to waste their 
 time in feeling their muscles and taking their tempera- 
 ture, but are free to do battle with those social evils, the 
 existence of which Christian Science very unwisely 
 denies. 
 
 The necessity for mental discipline as a propjedeutic 
 to inspiration is illustrated also in the history of the 
 Society of Friends. That noble movement grew out of the 
 same stirring activity of the social mind which produced 
 the prose of Milton. George Fox's intellectual activity, 
 though narrow and one-sided, was intense and continu- 
 ous. The most eminent of the early Quakers, such men as 
 Barclay and Penn, were learned beyond the average, 
 according to the standards of their time. Unfortu- 
 nately the Quaker conviction of the indispensableness of 
 the Inner Light led to the error of confusing the indis- 
 pensable with the all-sufficient. It was forgotten that, 
 while water is necessary to life, yet one cannot live by 
 water alone. The Inner Light, which seems to wax and 
 wane independently of the will, cannot even begin to 
 shine into the dark places unless it has been prepared for 
 "by labour and intense study." The Quakers made a 
 mistake in their refusal to establish a regular ministry. 
 It is not enough to wait for the Spirit; one has to make 
 ready for its coming. The disparagement of conscious 
 effort in these matters is a part of the general blunder 
 of supematuraHsm. 
 
 The most elaborate philosophy of inspiration current 
 to-day is that of M. Bergson, which, as already indicated, 
 is being wrongly used to disparage intellect and intellec- 
 tual discipline. M. Bergson has sought to do Justice 
 
1 84 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 to the fact of inspiration, to admit it among the other 
 truths of our mental and psychic life. In order to do this, 
 he was compelled to attempt a definition and demarca- 
 tion of the function of the discursive intellect. Now to 
 show that there are limits to any special activity is not 
 in the least to disparage the activity within those limits. 
 To admit the existence of art as well as science is not to 
 attack science. To say that the artist reaches his results 
 by a course different from that of the man of science 
 (or at least from that which the man of science is 
 generally supposed to follow) is no reflection either 
 upon the artist's results or those of the scientific 
 worker. 
 
 This is really what Bergson has done. The head 
 and front of his offending is that he has declared it 
 necessary to combine the procedure of the artist with 
 that of the man of science in order to attain a full and 
 true vision of reality. Indeed, so far from justifying 
 the procedure of our anarchic Cubists and Futurists in 
 art and politics, M. Bergson's philosophy is in truth the 
 most complete antidote to their pretensions. For it 
 impHes that the sphere of intuition or inspiration lies 
 beyond that of the intellect; and accordingly the frontiers 
 of the intellect must be reached and over-passed before 
 the reahn of inspiration can be entered. 
 
 Now, what is this but a reassertion of what we have 
 learned from Plato? It is quite true that when the new vi- 
 sion comes, "it is not by any known or accustomed way." 
 It comes after but not merely because of intellectual 
 preparation. It is post hoc, but not propter hoc. I do 
 not, of course, lose sight of the fact that the relation of 
 the mental discipline to the inspiration is causative: 
 to deny that would be insane. My point is that the 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 185 
 
 inspiration is an effect not of the mental discipline alone, 
 but of the combination of this with a complex of other 
 factors which (at present) is unanalyzable. 
 
 If this account of the conditions of inspiration be 
 sound, we are now perhaps in a position to attempt a 
 rough definition of the power whose antecedents we have 
 traced. Inspiration; then, let us say, is insight trans- 
 muted into purpose and commanding the services of the 
 intellect. Insight alone is not inspiration; nor is volition 
 without insight. Intellectual activity alone falls far 
 short of it. But when the will has been purified and 
 quickened by insight, and when the intellect has been 
 so disciplined that it is able to serve as the supple and 
 facile instrument of the purified will, then — in that 
 threefold unity — the celestial visitant appears. Even 
 then it seems uncaused, accidental; because we are never 
 able to foresee the precise assemblage of the conditions 
 of its manifestation. 
 
 This definition of inspiration indicates the way to 
 attain it. The precedent conditions are: a fervent desire 
 for the best, a himible awareness of one's shortcomings, 
 and intense labour to qualify oneself for it. Such is 
 the philosophy of Plato; such, too, is the meaning of 
 the great picture of inspiration which we owe to the 
 Hebrew Isaiah. When the Spirit takes him into the 
 presence of the Lord of Hosts and his seraphic sentinels, 
 he cries out, — 
 
 Woe is me ! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean 
 lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of imclean lips: for 
 mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. Then flew 
 one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, 
 which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and 
 
l86 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched 
 thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 
 And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying. Whom shall I 
 send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send 
 
 We cannot become the fit champions of the ideal, the 
 messengers of the highest, until the uncleanness of our 
 Kps has been burnt away by painful contact with the 
 divine fire; until we have drilled and disciplined ourselves 
 out of our pettinesses and self-centred promptings, and 
 out of intellectual arrogance and dogmatic certitude. 
 Only when littleness and self-sufiiciency have been thus 
 purged away, only, when after intense struggle we have 
 attained the divine vision, can we respond to the chal- 
 lenge of that eternal reason which presses to actualize 
 itself in man, with the words, "Here am I; send me." 
 
 The inspired man makes the mass of us uncomfortable, 
 because we carmot live at his level of self-abnegation. 
 The great void in our lives is the absence of inspiration. 
 We feel the need of the miserable luxuries that enslave 
 us because we cannot breathe the upper air, and the 
 view from the heights is hidden from us. We live in the 
 passing moment. We are querulous and wilful because 
 our will has not been caught up and quickened by pur- 
 poses that eternalize us, dwarfing into insignificance 
 all outer things. He who has been thus transfigured 
 is the only man to be envied, the only one whom, what- 
 ever he suffer, we never need pity. 
 
 Even for the most highly favoured, the moments of 
 vision are rare; but the strength they impart sustains 
 the seer through all his after days. As Arnold has sung: 
 
 ' Isaiah vi, 5-8. (R. V.) 
 
INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 187 
 
 We cannot kindle when we will 
 The fire that in the heart resides. 
 
 The spirit bloweth and is still; 
 In mystery our soul abides. 
 
 But tasks in hours of insight willed 
 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. 
 
 He who has thus toiled upward in the night, he who "by 
 labour and intense study" has clarified his intellect and 
 purified his will, is the only man who can truly be called 
 master of his fate. Because he can be neither bribed 
 nor terrified, the world is at his feet. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 immortality: a study in plato 
 
 If it should happen that among my readers there are 
 some hitherto mute, inglorious Shakespeares, I would 
 venture to suggest to them that one of the plays for which 
 the world is stiU waiting is that magnificent tragedy in 
 three acts, to be entitled, The Death of Socrates. It 
 was by a very unfortunate oversight that Shakespeare 
 (whom the high gods probably sent into the world for 
 the special purpose of writing this play) omitted to do it. 
 Perhaps it was because neither North nor Holland 
 happened to translate Plato; perhaps because Shake- 
 speare felt that the theme was too sublime, even for him. 
 Yet it may be that the intention of the gods has been 
 not frustrated, but only deferred. It may be that, in the 
 fulness of time, after we have recovered from the age of 
 Ibsen and Bernard Shaw, the tragedy of The Death of 
 Socrates wiU get itself written and acted. 
 
 Very little actual invention will be needed by its 
 author. The materials and the characters are at hand in 
 the Platonic trilogy. ^ The first act wiU present the 
 trial and condemnation of Socrates, with his superb 
 contempt of Court, his refusal to say or do anything 
 which might imply that the Court owed him aught save 
 honour and respect, or that an acquittal by them, or 
 even the granting of maintenance in the Prytaneum, 
 would be an unmerited favour to him. The second act 
 
 ' The Apology, the Crito and the Phaeio. 
 i88 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 189 
 
 will take place in the prison, at an early hour of morning; 
 the curtain rising upon the scene where the aged Crito 
 watches by the bed of the sleeping Socrates, astonished 
 that his friend can rest so soundly, seeing that on the 
 morrow he is to die. The sacred ship from Delos has been 
 sighted off Sunium, and with her arrival the life of 
 Socrates must end, as the life of Meleager ends with the 
 consuming of the brand that flamed when he was born. 
 The substance of this second act will be the attempt of 
 Crito to induce Socrates to escape, and the statement by 
 Socrates of his reasons for refusing. 
 
 The third act wiU set upon the stage the tale told 
 by Phaedo to Echecrates of Phlius. The day is that on 
 which Socrates is to drink the poison. From early morn- 
 ing his friends are about him, and they spend the day 
 in discussing with him the question of the soul's im- 
 mortality. In the course of the talk various little in- 
 cidents of which the dramatist can make good use occur 
 or are alluded to : as when, for example, Socrates is rep- 
 resented as stroking the curly hair of his beloved dis- 
 ciple Phaedo; and again when the jailer comes weeping 
 to teU his illustrious prisoner that the hour of his death 
 has struck, and Socrates, serene and unmoved, turns to 
 his heart-broken companions with the remark, "How 
 charming the man is ! " Then, with the rays of the setting 
 sun falling upon him like the pointing hand of God, the 
 wisest man of his age drinks the hemlock and sets forth 
 on the high adventure called death. 
 
 If the next Shakespeare should agree with his prede- 
 cessor in thinking such a theme too sublime for dra- 
 matic presentation, one's hope of seeing this great play 
 written will be disappointed or indefinitely deferred. 
 But meantime one may remind the Michael Angelos of 
 
1 90 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 twentieth-century America that no theme has ever been 
 considered too sacred for the painter to depict. An 
 attempt has indeed been made to put on canvas the 
 scene of the death of Socrates, but unfortunately the 
 artist shared the prevalent illusion that Greek men were 
 like stone statues, only less alive. When the predestined 
 painter of this scene arrives, he will be one who recognizes 
 that Athenian gentlemen of the fourth century B. C. 
 were exactly like the most cultivated sons of the twen- 
 tieth century of the Christian era. He will therefore 
 seek his models not in the British Museum or the Louvre, 
 or in the shop of an antique dealer, but in — let us say — 
 the literary clubs of Boston or London, or in the Senate 
 at Washington. 
 
 But to our theme: 
 
 It is well to bear in mind, when reading the words of 
 Plato concerning immortality, that he was not confused 
 by the mental muddle created in modern times by the 
 attempt to furnish a substitute for it. He knew, what 
 the unsophisticated consciousness has always known, 
 that the immortality which men desire is personal or 
 nothing. It means the continuance (with whatever 
 development) of the self-conscious individual soul. If 
 it is not this, it is not immortality. The attempt of 
 Positivism to deny this, and at the same time to provide 
 the same consolation, by talking about the incorporation 
 of the (non-existent) soul into the Great Being Humanity, 
 if taken seriously (and there actually are some people 
 who take it seriously), is a strange piece of intellectual 
 jugglery. It is like the construction sometimes placed 
 upon the Apostles' Creed, according to which "conceived 
 of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary" means, 
 "conceived of the carpenter Joseph, born of the married 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 191 
 
 woman Mary"; and "I believe in the resurrection of the 
 body" means, "I deny the resurrection of the body, but 
 I rather fancy that the soul may be immortal." 
 
 I would not even seem to disparage that noble aspira- 
 tion which is expressed by George Eliot in The Choir 
 Invisible. "To make undying music in the world," 
 to "be to other souls the cup of strength in some great 
 agony," to leave to after- times "the sweet presence of a 
 good diffused, and in diffusion ever more intense," — this 
 is the sole aim worthy of the life of man. But to call it 
 immortality is to use language with reckless ambiguity. 
 An influence is not a person; it is not a consciousness; and 
 a personal consciousness is the only possible subject of 
 the kind of life to which this desire relates. To anybody 
 who longs for personal continuance, the surrogate ar- 
 rangement offered by Positivism is a positive insult. 
 If you do not believe in conscious life after death, and 
 some bereaved friend comes to you for consolation, be 
 brave enough to tell what you really think. Do not say, 
 "I can offer you an excellent substitute," because you 
 cannot. Do not imitate those vegetarian restaurants 
 in London, where they give you a hash-up of beans and 
 fried potatoes, and call it steak. Do not say in effect, 
 "Of course you want to be assured that your friend is 
 alive, and that you and he will meet again, whereas he is 
 really dead and done for; but you can easily lull yourself 
 into believing that it is very much the same as if he were 
 still Hving." In other words, do not pretend that a 
 figure of speech is a statement of fact. We can permit 
 the poet to speak of " those immortal dead who live again 
 in lives made better by their presence," only upon the 
 strict understanding that this is not to be offered as a 
 consolation to anybody who is seeking the kind of com- 
 
192 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 fort of which this doctrine is a denial. Such persons 
 need first to be weaned from their vain yearning, — vain, 
 because the assurance they seek is unattainable, — and led 
 up to that nobler but quite different faith to which George 
 Eliot's spirit can appeal. 
 
 Of Plato's attempt to find a rational basis for his belief 
 in personal survival, Matthew Arnold speaks almost with 
 asperity: "By what futilities the demonstration of our 
 immortality may be attempted is to be seen in Plato's 
 Phaedo." Mr. Arnold then proceeds to indulge in a 
 futihty of his own: — 
 
 Man's natural desire for continuance, however little it may 
 be worth as a scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a 
 proof a thousand times stronger than any such demonstra- 
 tion. The want of solidity in such argument is so palpable 
 that one scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at 
 all.i 
 
 It may be so. We may never be able to find, on either 
 side of the question, argimients that will sustain one 
 moment's steady regard; and yet the everlasting riddle 
 will always continue to be propounded. Although we 
 have no data which could convert our feeling of what is 
 probable into a knowledge of what is actual, we shall 
 continue to dispute about this subject, because we must; 
 and after we have recognized the "futilities" of Plato 
 and of Arnold for what they are, we shall proceed to 
 invent fresh ones of our own. Those whose faith in 
 immortahty is shocked or shaken by Arnold's criticism 
 may at least find comfort by remembering that nothing 
 that Plato or anybody else, down to the most ranting 
 ' Literature and Dogma, chap. xii. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 193 
 
 revivalist or the most feeble-minded siance-haixnter:, ever 
 offered as a proof of immortality, can equal in futility the 
 arguments advanced in recent times as proof that man 
 is not immortal. When scientific "philosophers" or 
 their popularizers tell us that the human soul is "a func- 
 tion of the nervous system," or that "the brain secretes 
 thought as the Uver secretes bile," we feel that the wildest 
 non-sequitur in the Phaedo is by comparison logical and 
 rational. With people who can believe that the subject 
 is derived from the object; that the spirit is created by 
 its instruments; that the knower is a product of a few of 
 the items which he knows;— with such people it is dif- 
 ficult to hold serious argument. One cannot but an- 
 ticipate that they will shortly undertake, with a specially 
 powerful microscope, to show us a little bit of hiunan 
 kindness, or a fragment detached from a chain of argu- 
 ment. Why not, if thought is a secretion of the brain? 
 
 If we are to attempt a serious discussion, worthy of the 
 high mood of the Phaedo, we must begin by recogniz- 
 ing the absolute mystery in the presence of which we 
 stand, and which confronts us when we gaze within our- 
 selves. We cannot to-day say more than was said nearly 
 three himdred years ago by Sir Thomas Browne: "We 
 are men, and we know not how." He is the victim of an 
 illusion who thinks that the description of the develop- 
 ment of the body which modern science gives us, is an 
 explanation either of the body or of the mind. There 
 are, strictly speaking, no explanations in science; there 
 are only descriptions and correlations of the given. If I 
 stand in speU-bound astonishment before the fact that 
 I am the son of my father and the father of my son, my 
 astonishment is not to be dispelled by a mere restate- 
 ment of the fact of the relationship, however full of detail 
 
194 
 
 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 it may be. Now, science is little more than such a de- 
 tailed restatement of facts, many of which are superfi- 
 cially familiar to common sense. Science can tell us 
 much of the make of the world, but nothing of its making. 
 To questions that begin with the word "How?" it can 
 reply at great length; but to questions that ask "Why?" 
 it has no answers. 
 
 Men had marvelled, for example, at the mystery of 
 creation. Then came science, substituting the word 
 evolution for the word creation. What it meant thereby 
 (as we saw in Chapter III) was that the force or forces by 
 which observed changes in the world have come about, 
 are inherent in the world, and not acting upon it from 
 "outside." This, however, is only a convenient hypothe- 
 sis, unproved and unprovable, but serviceable as a simpli- 
 fication of practical problems. To those who have 
 erected it into a complete system of mythology, the vir- 
 tual meaning of which is that Evolution is the name of 
 God, there is no mystery; but for the rest of us, who can- 
 not so easily succeed in deluding ourselves with names, 
 there is nothing for it but the frank recognition that all 
 that was mysterious to Plato remains equally mysterious 
 to us. The essence of the mystery is not any special 
 collocation of particular facts, but the very possibility of 
 there being such a thing as knowledge, — the possibility 
 of the co-existence and connection of thought and thing, 
 of the multiplicity of minds in relation with each other 
 through a world which serves as their instrument of 
 communication. 
 
 But Man is magnificent as well as mysterious. We 
 have been brow-beaten by the conclusions of physical 
 science into thinking of him as merely one among the 
 animals, subject to their vicissitudes and to the blind 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 195 
 
 play of uncontrollable forces. The old estimates of his 
 dignity and greatness sound foolish and presumptuous 
 to our ears. We are too modest to realize that our 
 very ability to raise the question of our kinship with the 
 lower animals is itself a proof of our essential differ- 
 ence from them. This view, of course, is consistent 
 with the fullest recognition of the descent of the body 
 from animal ancestors. I am not in the least disputing 
 the Darwinian argument on that side. But if we could 
 shake ourselves free from the gross illusions of the ma- 
 terialistic standpoint, we should find nothing strange or 
 unwarrantable in that estimate which places man not 
 among the animals but among the gods. The truth is 
 under-stated rather than exceeded in those beautiful 
 Unes of Mr. Watson's: — 
 
 We are children of splendour and flame, 
 
 Of shuddering also, and tears; 
 Magnificent out of the dust we came. 
 
 And abject from the spheres.^ 
 
 The under-statement here lies in the possible implica- 
 tion that the duahty of man's nature intersects the line 
 of cleavage between body and spirit, and that the spirit, 
 or some part of it, came, like the body, out of the dust. 
 To this extent Mr. Watson seems to side with the mate- 
 rialistic biologists, whose whole procedure is vitiated 
 through their mistaking of conditions for causes — an 
 error which was so completely exposed by Plato in the 
 Phaedo ^ that it ought never to be made again by any 
 thinker claiming to be scientific. 
 
 1 William Watson's Ode in May. 
 
 ^"1 found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other 
 principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and 
 other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by 
 
196 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 It is refreshing and encouraging to turn from those 
 biological inquiries which humiliate man by seeking his 
 antecedents among the apes and in the dust, to that 
 higher and truer account of him penned by Sir Thomas 
 Browne. He speaks rhetorically of himself, but his 
 words are true of all men: 
 
 Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to 
 relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would 
 sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count 
 it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to 
 die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm 
 of my own frame that I cast mine eye on: for the other, I 
 
 maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, 
 but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my several 
 actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is 
 made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard 
 and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and 
 they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of 
 flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their 
 joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend 
 my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture: that is 
 what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking 
 to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he 
 would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to 
 mention the true cause, which is, that the Athenians have thought fit 
 to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right 
 to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that 
 these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or 
 Boeotia, — by the Dog of Egypt! they would, if they had been guided 
 only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the 
 better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to 
 undergo any punishment which the State inflicts. There is surely a 
 strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, 
 indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body 
 I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of 
 them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from the 
 choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking." — 
 §§ 98-99- 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUBY IN PLATO 197 
 
 use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for 
 my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing 
 only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I 
 am above Atlas's shoulders. The earth is a point not only 
 in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and 
 celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circum- 
 scribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the 
 heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I 
 take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though 
 the number of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth 
 not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, 
 or little world, I find myself something more than the great. 
 There is surely a piece of divinity in us; something that was 
 before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. . . . 
 He that understands not thus much hath not his intro- 
 duction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of 
 man.i 
 
 The problem of immortality, then, is not whether man's 
 body contains some rarefied physical essence which at 
 death can rise from it like an exhalation and continue 
 to subsist without it. We grant to the biologist that 
 no part of the body survives; the resolution of the 
 physical frame at death into its component solids, fluids 
 and gases is complete. He has very kindly told us, in 
 learned language, what we knew before. Upon the prob- 
 lem with which we are concerned, his researches are 
 inherently incapable of throwing any Hght whatever. 
 Our quest is as to the fate of the essential man, who is 
 non-physical and non-spatial; and our first question is 
 whether he is also extra-temporal. 
 
 There are, indeed, two ideas fused together in the or- 
 dinary conception of immortality. That word is com- 
 
 '■ Sir T. Browne, Rdigio Medici, Pt. ii, § 11. 
 
198 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 monly treated as synonymous with eternity. We speak 
 indifferently of immortal life and of eternal life, and we 
 do not usually trouble ourselves to inquire whether this 
 procedure is legitimate. The two ideas should, however, 
 be kept distinct. The one is the vague popular notion 
 of indefinite continuance; the other has no relation to 
 continuance. It is a qualitative, not a quantitative 
 conception. The immortal life of ordinary reUgious 
 aspiration is simply a reproduction of the same t5T)e of 
 existence that the phenomenal man passes through 
 before death. It is an indefinite prolongation of that 
 life through endless time. It sets aside the question 
 whether man is truly in time, or whether time is, so to 
 speak, in man. 
 
 Now one may, as a matter of faith or by logical neces- 
 sity, but without any dogmatism, believe in an eternal 
 spiritual order, and yet remain unconvinced as to im- 
 mortality, or as to the possibility of a life after death 
 which should be something less than immortal. I have 
 elsewhere pointed out that even a scientific proof (if 
 such a thing were possible) that man continues to live 
 after death would in no wise prove that he will live for 
 ever.^ To believe in an eternal order is to believe that 
 the spirit of man is now outside of time and above suc- 
 cession. One may hold, with Kant, that time is a form 
 of thought — one of those functions of the understanding 
 by which, as he said, it "makes nature." In that case, 
 man does not begin and end in time, but time begins 
 and ends in him. Or one may beUeve, with Bergson, 
 that time should be expressed in terms of duration, 
 which is not that of the body, but of that noumenal 
 
 ' Crilicisms of Life, chap, iv, p. 137. This argument was of course 
 anticipated by Plato. See below, p. 211. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 1 99 
 
 force by which all living bodies are organized, and the 
 fate of which is not involved in their vicissitudes. Ac- 
 cording to Bergson's view, there is nothing with which 
 the duration of man's life can be compared, except the 
 universe itself in its totaUty. We think we measure 
 ourselves by units of a homogeneous medium called 
 time. But in order to do this, we have to delude our- 
 selves into thinking that we have performed the impos- 
 sible conjuring-trick of objectifying the subject. It is 
 only what William James calls the empirical ego, as 
 distinguished from the pure ego, which can thus be 
 measured: the me, not the I. The pure self overspans 
 any succession which it measures, embracing both its 
 ends; otherwise the measurement would be impossible. 
 Now, in doing this we necessarily transform the suc- 
 cession into a simultaneity. A period of time, if I am 
 thus to deal with it, must become for my consciousness 
 a unitary object. The fifteen years of the twentieth 
 century which have thus far elapsed are gathered up 
 in our memory into such a unity. The year 1901 and the 
 year 1915 co-exist in the mind. 
 
 A simple way of bringing home the paradox involved 
 in the idea of time is to divide time, as common sense 
 always does, into past, present and future. We spring 
 from the past; we live in the present; and we are continu- 
 ally reaching forward into the future. But what and 
 where is the past? It does not exist. And the future? 
 It is to be, we say; but this is an indirect way of admitting 
 that it also does not exist. BafHed, we seek to grasp at 
 the present; but it proves as elusive as past and future. 
 The word, as it leaves my lips, is no longer present; it 
 has slipped into the non-existent past. What then is 
 the reality of this time, which is everywhere and nowhere, 
 
200 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 which is always and never; of which two- thirds do not 
 exist and the other third cannot be grasped? 
 
 In an earlier chapter I attempted a distinction be- 
 tween existence and reality which I must here recall 
 to the reader's memory. Existence, I suggested, should 
 be regarded as the purely intellectual category; reality as 
 the voUtional. That which does not exist may yet be 
 real. If so, its reahty consists in the fact that it satisfies 
 some inherent need of the spirit. All ideals are of this 
 nature. Everybody can see, for example, that it would 
 be absurd to say that justice exists; but nobody hesi- 
 tates for a moment to declare that justice is intensely 
 real. Or, if any pessimist should choose to deny this, 
 I would take the hberty of reminding him that in the 
 act of doing so he has afl&rmed the reality of injustice, 
 which equally carmot be thought of as existing. 
 
 Time, then, may without absurdity be called non- 
 existent but real: so too may space and causality, — both 
 of which ideas, when analyzed, are found to be as 
 elusive as time. We differentiate the unbroken con- 
 tinuiun of the senses into an ordered universe by means 
 of the intuition of space; and by means of that mental 
 creation or rational function called time we succeed in 
 distributing the world of events into an intelligible se- 
 quence. Past, present and future have no more existence 
 apart from us than have the lines of latitude and longi- 
 tude, which we draw on our maps, in the world which 
 those maps depict. Like them, time is a creation of the 
 mind to meet its own needs. 
 
 Now the consequence of admitting this is the recogni- 
 tion that the spirit of man, being outside of time, is 
 outside of succession. It does not move forward to grasp 
 the future; the stream of events flows towards it and is 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO iot 
 
 absorbed in it. But the common idea of immortality, 
 as we have seen, is simply that of indefinite succession. 
 In these terms we continue to pose the problem, because 
 the transcendent order of reality, to which the essential 
 man belongs, is and must remaui incomprehensible to us. 
 It is not, however, inapprehensible. We cannot present 
 it to ourselves in conceptual form, because (not being 
 able to jump out of our skins) we cannot objectify the 
 subject, the pure ego. But it is of this timeless reality 
 that we should be thinking when we use the words 
 eternity and eternal. 
 
 Our intellectual difficulty in the matter is to some 
 extent helped by poetic pictures, though even these 
 are apt to be misleading. Shelley, in an inspired mo- 
 ment, compared life to "a dome of many-coloured glass" 
 which ' ' stains the white radiance of eternity. ' ' A Hebrew 
 psalmist said of God, "A thousand years in thy sight are 
 but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
 night." ^ In the Fourth Gospel there is placed upon the 
 lips of Christ the bold paradox, "Before Abraham was, I 
 am." ^ Now, in the strict sense, the words of the psalm- 
 ist in reference to God are true of man. A thousand 
 years in everybody's sight are but as yesterday when it 
 is past. The comparison is not in respect of the duration 
 of yesterday, but in respect of the simultaneity into 
 which the thousand years, like yesterday, are fused, in 
 order that they may become present as a unitary object 
 to consciousness. So with the words of the Johannine 
 Christ: they too are true of everybody. Man is before 
 Abraham was, because in his consciousness is embraced 
 the time-span from before the day of Abraham to the 
 present moment. Time has no other assignable reaUty 
 > Ps. xc, 4. " John viii, 58. 
 
202 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 than as a constituent and instrument of consciousness. 
 It is the duality of our nature — the fact that as objects 
 we form part of the series which as subjects we create — 
 that causes our confusion, breaking up the "white radi- 
 ance" into the many colours of the dome. 
 
 We may think of eternity under the image of a ver- 
 tical line, cutting across the horizontal line called time. 
 At the point of intersection stands man, a member of 
 both series; the only point at which there is in time the 
 gleam of eternity. 
 
 This notion of man as non-successive (whether in this 
 life or after death) is, as I have admitted, inconceivable. 
 But we know why it is so; and the inconceivable (as 
 science has frequently demonstrated) is not the impos- 
 sible. The only question is whether the notion is forced 
 upon us by the logical analysis of our own nature and of 
 the conditions of knowledge. If it is (as I believe to be 
 the case), we cannot refuse to entertain it. In whatever 
 direction thought proceeds, it always conducts us to the 
 inconceivable. I would claim for the view here suggested 
 that it is logically necessitated, is self-consistent and con- 
 sistent with the data of experience; whereas the opinion 
 which reduces the soul of man to phenomenal rank, 
 regarding it as a product of an independent time-process, 
 involves a series of gratuitous and unprofitable incon- 
 ceivabiKties. 
 
 The futilities complained of by Arnold in the Phaedo 
 are due not merely to the abstruse nature of the subject 
 it discusses, but to the imperfection of Plato's dialectic, 
 which belongs, as Professor Jowett reminds us, to the 
 age before logic and psychology. Abready, indeed, we 
 have encountered the further diflQculty, remarked by 
 Simmias towards the close of the argument, which "arises 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 203 
 
 necessarily out of the greatness of the subject and the 
 feebleness of man." The effort of Socrates to prove the 
 pre-existence of the soul by means of the doctrine of 
 ideas imparted before birth, ^ is one of the futilities. It is 
 easy for us now to say, in Kantian language, that not 
 explicit knowledge, but only its presuppositions, are 
 evolved by reason a priori, and to distinguish between 
 the a priori and the irmate. We cannot be satisfied by 
 sa)dng, with Cebes, that "if you put a question to a 
 person in a right way, he will give a true answer of him- 
 self; but how could he do this unless there were knowledge 
 and right reason already in him? " For we should be met 
 with the retort that "putting a question in a right 
 way" means putting it in terms that contain the answer, 
 and that to identify knowledge with "right reason" 
 is to beg the whole question. We regard the knowledge 
 developed by such interrogations not as reminiscent, 
 but as a new creation, produced on the spot by the 
 thinker through the normal operation of his rational 
 powers. If knowledge could begin in the soul before 
 birth, why should it not begin in this life? And if it can 
 begin in this life, what need have we of the hj^othesis 
 of pre-existence to account for its origin? 
 
 Nor can we do otherwise than accept Arnold's epithet 
 as a true description of the argimient by which Socrates 
 seeks to prove that opposites are generated out of each 
 other, and therefore that life is born of death.^ That 
 argument confounds succession with generation, and is 
 thus an instance of the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. 
 His later attempt to demonstrate the existence of quali- 
 ties out of relation, and to show that greatness and small- 
 ness, oddness and evenness, are the causes of particular 
 1 Phaedo, § 73- ' ^*«^-' §§ T^l^- 
 
204 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 things being great and small, odd and even, is, in similar 
 fashion, a palpable hypostatization of mere words. In 
 all this we see the great workman struggling with in- 
 efficient tools. 
 
 We cannot say, indeed, that the possibility of pre-natal 
 existence faUs with the collapse of Plato's argimient. 
 That doctrine is an h}T)Othesis of which we have no need, 
 because we can, as we think, explain the facts of our 
 present knowledge without invoking it. It remains con- 
 ceivable that birth may be but an interruption of our 
 hfe, by which continuity is broken and consciousness 
 becomes tangential to its former course. While recog- 
 nizing this, however, we agree with Arnold that an 
 argument which assumes it is a futility. It is an attempt 
 to explain the unknown by the still-more-unknown. 
 
 But the whole point of the Pkaedo is missed if we 
 do not see that its purpose, from beginning to end, is 
 ethical rather than metaphysical. What Plato is inter- 
 ested in is that quality of the soul by which it can realize 
 its eternity. The notion of the prolongation of individual 
 consciousness after death is for him confessedly a myth: 
 that is, a guess. The epistemological and other consid- 
 erations introduced by Socrates are altogether subordi- 
 nate to the ethical purpose of the conversation. The key- 
 note is struck at the beginning, in the answer of Socrates 
 to the question why the philosopher desires death. It 
 is because death liberates him from a thraldom from 
 which, throughout his Ufe, he has been trying to escape.^ 
 
 ' "If we would have pure knowledge of anything, we must be quit of 
 the body, and the soul in herself must behold all things in themselves: 
 then I suppose that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which 
 we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom; not while we live, but after 
 death, as the argument shows; for if while in company with the body 
 the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow — 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 20$ 
 
 The Socrates who here argues for the immortality of 
 the soul is the same man who, before his judges, had 
 taken the agnostic attitude. To them he had argued 
 that whether death is a dreamless sleep or the entrance 
 to a new life, it is in either case a good. Because the 
 man whose soul is clothed with the armour of virtue is 
 invulnerable to the shafts of chance, no evil can befall 
 him, either in life or after death. His reconciliation to 
 his lot is therefore not conditional upon a balancing of 
 external goods against external ills. He has attained to 
 that quahtative perfection which is the highest conceiv- 
 able fruition even of an everlasting life. The production 
 of a soul like his is the only end which could make an 
 immortal life desirable. Since its perfection is intensive, 
 not extensive, it is independent of duration. Though 
 it were manifested but for a moment, the spirit of Soc- 
 rates is as great as it could be if it continued to ex- 
 ist for ever; for, as Aristotle says, "it will not do to 
 say that the eternity of the essential good makes it 
 to be more good; for what has lasted white ever so 
 long is no whiter than what lasts but for a day." ^ 
 Plato's interest, like that of all truly religious moralists, 
 is in the whiteness, not in its duration. The Phaedo 
 is there not to prove that men are immortal, but to make 
 
 either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For 
 then, and not till then, the soul will be in herself alone, and without the 
 body. In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach 
 to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the 
 body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure 
 until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the 
 foolishness of the body will be cleared away, and we shall be pure and 
 hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear 
 light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure 
 thing is aUowed to approach the pure." — Phaedo, §§ 66-67. 
 1 Ethics, Book i, chap. 3. 
 
206 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 them realize that they are eternal. They can in this 
 life develop in themselves essential and substantive 
 wisdom and goodness. These are, indeed, indestructible, 
 and may persist in the individualized consciousness in 
 which they are developed; but in any case they are the 
 supreme values, for the sake of which alone an endless 
 existence could be worth while. 
 
 The primary purpose, then, of Socrates is to teach his 
 followers to emancipate themselves from bondage to 
 their bodily affections and desires. This he does by ex- 
 hibiting, with unparalleled keenness of moral discrimina- 
 tion, the difference between the prudential self-abnega- 
 tion of the philistine and the truly ethical self-discipline 
 of the enlightened lover of virtue. '^ The philistine, as 
 he points out, forgoes one bodily pleasure in order that 
 he may enjoy another. He is, in the seemingly paradox- 
 ical words of Socrates, "temperate because he is intem- 
 perate." Thus the man who abandons certain luxuries of 
 drink or diet, not for the sake of the spiritual liberation 
 which results, but in order that he may live the longer 
 to gratify hunger and thirst, has made no progress in 
 virtue at all. Even the man who acts bravely to escape 
 death because he fears death, is, according to Socrates, 
 "courageous only from fear." This is not a disparage- 
 ment of prudential self-abnegation, except in so far as 
 it makes self-evident the inferiority of such conduct to 
 that of the philosopher. If I abandon one class of pleas- 
 ures because there is another class of pleasures which 
 I must have, my thraldom to pleasure at the end of 
 the process is as complete as at the begirming. Such 
 an exchange is the . exchange of commerce, not of 
 virtue: — 
 
 1 Phaedo, § 68. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 207 
 
 But in the true exchange there is a purging away of all 
 these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and 
 wisdom herself, are a purgation of them. And I conceive that 
 the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were 
 not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago 
 that he who passed unsanctified and uninitiated into the 
 world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives 
 there after initiation and purification will dwell with the 
 gods. For "many," as they say in the mysteries, "are the 
 thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics," — meaning, as I 
 interpret the words, the true philosophers. In the number 
 of whom I have been seeking, according to my ability, to 
 find a place during my whole life; whether I have sought in a 
 right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I 
 shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself 
 arrive in the other world: that is my belief.-' 
 
 Thus the pursuit of virtue requires us first of all to 
 discriminate between empirical goods and those qualita- 
 tive goods of the soul which are eternal. The latter are 
 substantive, whereas the former are only adjectival. 
 This is what Emerson has in mind when he speaks of 
 becoming "not virtuous, but virtue." With this doc- 
 trine the Phaedo begins and ends; and the mainte- 
 nance of it is the real purpose of the long, and somewhat 
 unprofitable, discussion which intervenes between the 
 two ethical affirmations. 
 
 The utilitarian may be afifronted by the suggestion 
 that the self-abnegation which looks to future pleasure 
 is not virtuous, and may declare that Socrates is advocat- 
 ing an idle and purposeless asceticism. What other 
 reason can there be, he may ask, for giving up drink, 
 for reducing one's diet, for living in chastity, than the 
 
 1 Phaedo, § 69, 
 
2o8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 maintenance or recovery of one's health and physical 
 fitness? This is a perfectly natural question to be put 
 in an age which has invented a new religion for the sole 
 purpose of making the body healthful, — though, to be 
 sure, that rehgion offers the bewildering paradox of 
 denying the existence of the body as a means of securing 
 its health. Our answer must be that health is good not 
 only in itself, but also as a means to ends which are more 
 important than it, and for the sake of which health it- 
 self, and even life, must at need be sacrificed. It is these 
 ends that Socrates has in view. The self-abnegation 
 he inculcates is quite consistent with utilitarianism, 
 unless the utihtarian can disprove the worth of the end 
 sought. This, however, he carmot do; for the good that 
 Socrates seeks is the realization of the inherent powers of 
 the human spirit, which are hampered or frustrated by 
 its slavery to bodily cravings. Now the unconditional 
 acceptance of every rational creature 's claim to true self- 
 realization is the intuition upon which utilitarianism 
 reposes. 1 
 
 The ascetics of the degenerate period of Christian 
 history would have been horrified by the assertion that 
 spiritual perfection is an inherent and inalienable attri- 
 bute of man's nature which can be actualized in this 
 hfe. Their attempt to placate the devil whom they 
 mistook for God, by all sorts of insane and insanitary 
 
 ^ Cp. the discussion of the intuitional basis of Utilitarianism in Sidg- 
 wick, Methods of Ethics, especially Book iii, chap. xiii. He there says, 
 "There being ... no actual desire ... for the general happiness, the 
 proposition that the general happiness is desirable cannot be in this way 
 estabUshed: so that there is a gap in the expressed argument, which can, 
 I think, only be filled by some such proposition as that which I have 
 above tried to exhibit as the mtuition of Rational Benevolence." — P. 388, 
 seventh edition. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 209 
 
 mortifications of the flesh, is a superstitious caricature 
 of the Socratic discipline. For Socrates held that many 
 kinds of bodily pleasures may be indulged in, provided 
 one has so completely mastered the craving for them 
 that it no longer hinders the development and the free 
 functioning of one's mental and spiritual powers. We 
 have seen ^ that he could drink deeper than any of his 
 companions: but he was never drunk, and could go on 
 with the hardest kind of thinking when the rest of the 
 assembly were unable to stand or speak. 
 
 The ultimate Greek ideal, to be sure, is the same as 
 that of Christianity at its highest. Both Aristotle and 
 Plato are convinced that the noblest state of man is that 
 of contemplation. To see, with the eye of the soul, per- 
 fect goodness, truth and beauty, as they are in their very 
 nature and pure essence, and not as momentary gleams 
 breaking through the darkness of the sense-world, — 
 this is the Beatific Vision, and the long-sustained ac- 
 tivity that conducts to it is the noblest pursuit open 
 to man. It is not formally different from the "end of 
 man" as defined in the Westminster Confession: "To 
 know God and enjoy Him for ever." The real difference 
 is that the Westminster Confession lost sight of the fact 
 that God is nothing but Goodness, Truth and Beauty, 
 whilst the Greek masters kept it always in mind. 
 
 Nothing in the Phaedo is more captivating than the 
 divine condescension of Socrates to the confusion and 
 weakness of Simmias and Cebes, who in a very human 
 fashion confess to the instinctive horror of death after 
 they have admitted the force of arguments designed to 
 prove the indestructibility of the soul. It is difficult to 
 live long on the mountain-peaks of philosophic insight; 
 1 Ante, p. 128, n. 1. 
 
2IO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and the two Thebans are "haunted, like children, with 
 a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may 
 really blow her away and scatter her." Cebes, with a 
 smile, demands that Socrates shall argue them out of 
 their fears: "And yet, strictly speaking, they are not 
 our fears, but there is a child within us, to whom death 
 is a sort of hobgoblin." Long and hard is the discipline 
 by which we can be emancipated from the irrational 
 fears of that child within. Every natural craving prompts 
 us to cling to the bodily life, to linger among " the warm 
 precincts of the cheerful day." In spite" of our philo- 
 sophic conviction of the spiritual nature of the soul, we 
 yet have vague pictures of it as being "blown about the 
 desert dust, or sealed within the iron hills." Socrates, 
 using the language of accommodation, argues that it is 
 only compounds which can be dissolved and scattered, 
 but that the soul is single and simple, and therefore 
 irreducible. He is here using a physical analogy — 
 though without saying so. May we say that an irrational 
 argxmient is legitimate for allaying an irrational terror? 
 The fear admitted by Cebes assumes an altogether self- 
 contradictory notion of the spirit. It supposes that the 
 soul is in the body: that is, that it is material and spatial. 
 How else could it be blown before the wind? 
 
 Recovering from their terror, the two interlocutors 
 proceed to test Socrates by offering further objections. 
 Simmias urges that the soul is related to the body as the 
 harmony to the lyre. He is promptly disposed of by 
 Socrates with the retort that a harmony caimot be 
 "prior to the elements which compose" it, whereas 
 Simmias has already admitted that the soul exists before 
 the body. Cebes suggests that, though the soul is more 
 enduring than its physical instrument, there is no proof 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 211 
 
 that it may not cease to exist after it has worn out a num- 
 ber of bodies: — 
 
 The parallel which I will suppose is that of an old weaver, 
 who dies, and after his death somebody says: He is not dead, 
 he must be ahve: and he appeals to the coat which he himself 
 wove and wore, and which is still whole and undecayed. And 
 then he proceeds to ask of someone who is incredulous, 
 whether a man lasts longer, or the coat which is in use and 
 wear; and when he is answered that a man lasts far longer, 
 thinks that he has thus certainly demonstrated the survival 
 of the man, who is the more lasting, because the less lasting 
 remains. But that, Simmias, as I would beg you to observe, 
 is not the truth; everyone sees that he who talks thus is 
 talking nonsense. For the truth is, that this weaver, having 
 worn and woven many such coats, though he outlived several 
 of them, was himself outlived by the last; but this is surely 
 very far from proving that a man is slighter and weaker than 
 a coat. Now the relation of the body to the soul may be 
 expressed in a similar figure; for you may say with reason that 
 the soul is lasting, and the body weak and short-hved in 
 comparison. And every soul may be said to wear out many 
 bodies, especially in the course of a long life. For if while 
 the man is ahve the body deliquesces and decays, and yet the 
 soul always weaves her garment anew and repairs the waste, 
 then of course, when the soul perishes, she must have on her 
 last garment, and this only will survive her; but then again, 
 when the soul is dead, the body will at last show its native 
 weakness, and soon pass into decay. And therefore this is an 
 argument on which I would rather not rely as proving that 
 the soul exists after death. For suppose that we grant even 
 more than you affirm as within the range of possibility, and 
 besides acknowledging that the soul existed before birth, 
 admit also that after death the souls of some are existing still, 
 and will exist, and will be born and die again and again, and 
 that there is a natural strength in the soul which will hold 
 
212 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 out and be born many times — for all this, we may be still 
 inclined to think that she will weary in the labours of succes- 
 sive births, and may at last succumb in one of her deaths, and 
 utterly perish; and this death and dissolution of the body 
 which brings destruction to the soul may be unknown to any 
 of us, for no one of us can have had any experience of it: 
 and if this be true, then I say that he who is confident in 
 death has but a foolish confidence, unless he is able to prove 
 that the soul is altogether immortal and imperishable. But 
 if he is not able to prove this, he who is about to die will 
 always have reason to fear that when the body is disunited, 
 the soul also may utterly perish.-' 
 
 The charming subtlety of this argument makes it an 
 admirable instrument for use against the too eager people 
 who wish to find scientific proofs of a future life. The 
 moral (or non-moral) root of their desire is usually no- 
 thing but the unacknowledged and unexercised fear of 
 death. They have not risen to the standpoint of eternity. 
 They want an assurance that the dreadful visitant is a 
 good fairy in disguise. Convince them that even if the 
 death of "this machine" is not a finality, yet their annihi- 
 lation may be only postponed and will finally occur, and 
 what comfort will the ghost-stories of the seance-room. 
 hold for them? Now, this refusal to rest satisfied with 
 anything short of a positive assurance of immortality is 
 due to a misunderstanding of our spiritual needs. It is 
 not endless life that we crave: it is spiritual perfection, 
 irrespective of duration; eternity, not immortality. As 
 soon as the eyes of the soul are opened and it understands 
 its own needs aright, it ceases to be concerned with the 
 question of its duration, and is absorbed in the problem 
 of its deserving. 
 
 ^ Phaedo, ^^ &7-88. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 213 
 
 This is one of the points in which the ethical insight of 
 Plato pierces deeper than that of the New Testament. 
 Jesus, indeed, says but little of a life after death. When 
 he mentions it, he does so in order to lay down a doc- 
 trine of salvation by righteous deeds, which is in stark 
 contradiction to the credal theory of the Church."- St. 
 Paul, beginning with the notion of bodily resurrection, 
 rises by degrees to the thought of ethical renewal. In 
 this life he becomes a partaker of Christ's resurrection, 
 by having "the same mind which was in Christ Jesus." 
 But in general the Church has insisted upon that side 
 of the Pauline doctrine which the Apostle has in common 
 with the apocalyptic Judaism of his time. Even to-day, 
 there is much more discussion in the Church over the 
 supremely unimportant question whether the body of 
 Jesus left the grave alive, than over the means of attain- 
 ing to that quality of character which makes the ques- 
 tion of resurrection and continuance insignificant. The 
 teaching of the Church should be that men may believe 
 as their own judgment dictates about the question of 
 personal immortality, but that they ought to rise above 
 the desire for it. If it is to be, our concern should 
 be to be worthy of it; but if not, our concern is the 
 same. 
 
 The last conversation of Socrates with his friends 
 closes with the great myth of the Underworld, in which 
 the ethical intuitions are reduced to pictorial form.' At 
 death, the genius of each soul carries it to its appropriate 
 place in the heart of the earth, where it is judged accord- 
 ing to its deeds. The indifferent characters are carried 
 from the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, there to 
 ' Matt. XXV, 31 £E. 
 
214 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 dwell in purgatorial penance until they deserve absolution 
 from their sins. Afterwards they obtain the reward of 
 their good deeds: 
 
 But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the 
 greatness of their crimes — who have committed many and 
 terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the 
 like — such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable 
 destiny; and they never come out}- 
 
 Lesser criminals are plunged for a year in the Tartarean 
 flames, after which they too pass to the purgatorial lake, 
 there to remain "until they obtain raercy from those whom 
 they have wronged: for that is the sentence inflicted on 
 them by their judges." Those who have lived holy 
 lives, and have duly purified themselves with "philo- 
 sophy," "live henceforth altogether without the body, 
 in mansions fairer far than these, which may not be 
 described." 
 
 The fact that the two highest systems of ethics thus 
 far evolved — the Platonic and the Christian — have both 
 taught a doctrine of eternal punishment, is exceedingly 
 interesting. Neither teaches, indeed, the barbaric doc- 
 trine of Tertullian, Augustine, and the other perverters 
 who degraded Christianity into mediaeval Catholicism. 
 Neither attaches this tremendous penalty to error of 
 belief or to the misfortune of not having heard some true 
 doctrine or experienced some magical sacrament which 
 could have averted it. Both insist that only unrighteous 
 deeds, and nothing else, can incur the dire judgment. 
 Yet, even so, the myth remains shocking to us, until we 
 divine the truth which it is meant to express. This is the 
 deep sense which the greatest seers — Plato and Jesus — 
 ' Phaedo, § 113, ad fin. 
 
IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 215 
 
 had of the qualitative degradation of the soul through 
 evil deeds. Those who go into Tartarus for ever are the 
 incurable. They are not sent thither by the arbitrary 
 fiat of any judge. Through their own acts they have 
 become incapable of any other destiny. If the good that 
 man can attain in this life is an eternal one, then we may 
 surely say (in myth) that the necessary consequence of 
 its deliberate forfeiture is also eternal. The wilful loss 
 of any opportunity for spiritual self-realization is an 
 "eternal punishment." The doctrine is in this sense 
 true, even though there be no Ufe after death. 
 
 Plato ends as he began — not with metaphysical specu- 
 lations, but with the ethical application of the whole 
 argument: — 
 
 Wherefore I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul, 
 who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body 
 as alien to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has 
 followed after the pleasures of knowledge in this life; who has 
 adorned the soul in her own proper Jewels, which are tem- 
 perance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth. 
 In these arrayed, she is ready to go on her journey to the 
 world below, when her time comes. ^ 
 
 This is the thing that is more important than im- 
 mortality. The yearning for that is commonly (though 
 not necessarily, and not always) a disguised desire to 
 escape death. But, in the words of the Apology, "the 
 difficulty is not to avoid death, but to avoid unright- 
 eousness." To him who cares only for that, the per- 
 sonal interest of the question of life after death is 
 destroyed. 
 
 The strongest inducement offered in the Pkaedo to 
 1 Sections 114-15. 
 
2l6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 belief in immortality is not any of its arguments, but the 
 character of Socrates himself. He is so transcendently 
 great in the hour of his freely chosen doom that he creates 
 (as Jowett has said) "in the mind of the reader an im- 
 pression stronger than could be derived from arguments 
 that such a one, in his own language, has La him ' a prin- 
 ciple which does not admit of death.'" It is hard to 
 resist the feeling that the final destruction of such a per- 
 sonaHty would represent a sort of suicide of the universe — 
 through the destruction of its noblest possible manifesta- 
 tion. We fall back, accordingly, on the intuition that if 
 Socrates is not immortal, he is something better than 
 immortal: he is eternal. His spirit lived again in Plato 
 and Aristotle, and in lesser degree in all whom they have 
 inspired. In the measure in which it lives in us, we shall 
 rise with him above the fear of death and the craving for 
 endless life, into the fairer mansion that is eternally open 
 to the soul which is adorned in its own proper jewels. 
 
 Yet to the end we must be content to wait and wonder 
 whether the personal self-consciousness that was in him, 
 and that which is in us, retains its selfhood and con- 
 tinues to live and act after this scene closes. The 
 patient Sphinx disdains our questioning: 
 
 We ask and ask: thou smilest, and art still, 
 Out-topping knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 
 
 Religion is an inexpugnable fact of human life. At 
 times it seems to sway with resistless power the con- 
 sciousness of individuals and the destinies of States and 
 empires; at other times, again, its hold on men and 
 polities seems almost ended. The strife of new philo- 
 sophies, the emergence of convictions based on changing 
 knowledge as to the make of the world, the ambitions of 
 kings and "fierce democracies," the shifting of human 
 attention from the gods to the economic forces that 
 condition daily life — all these things by turns drive 
 reKgion from the foreground of the collective conscious- 
 ness; and at first glance this repression seems identical 
 with extinction. It is not so in truth, however. The 
 forces of religion are but driven underground, whence 
 they again emerge — for another time, if not within the 
 life-span of the generation that has banished them — in 
 new outbreaks of destroying and creating activity. 
 
 We live in such a period of the seeming extinction of 
 religion to-day. Here, as in every European country, 
 except perhaps Spain and Russia, other interests are 
 usurping its old-time supremacy. The collective minds 
 of nations are given up to secular concerns. In nation 
 after nation Churches are being disestabHshed. New 
 commonwealths are arising which omit the name of God 
 from their constitutions, and which exclude themselves — 
 as this country did from the first — from the right and 
 
 217 
 
2l8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 power to "make any law respecting an establishment of 
 religion." Thus more and more reUgion is conceived of as 
 the personal and private affair of individuals, who may in 
 its interest organize themselves into volimtary societies, 
 but who may not demand for it national recognition. It 
 is not felt to have any fundamental or organic connection 
 with the hf e and destiny of nations and States, and these 
 as such are held to have no right to establish, endow or 
 assume responsibihty for any Church or Churches. 
 
 I do not believe that a State Church or Churches, in 
 the sense in which such Churches are established in 
 England and Germany, should be set up in this country. 
 The purpose of the present chapter is not to plead for a 
 State Church, but to draw attention to the relation of 
 reUgion to nationality, in the belief that by a correct 
 tmderstanding of the actual facts of life religion will be 
 humanized and nationality spiritualized. The Churches 
 should become aware of their national function, and the 
 nation of its religious function. Only so is the recon- 
 ciliation of our spiritual eimiities and the attainment of 
 our ideal national destiny possible. Such, at least, is the 
 thesis which I shall now attempt to establish. 
 
 It remains to be decided, by reference to the hard logic 
 of experience, whether the exclusion of an inevitable and 
 deep-seated interest of the spirit of man from the purview 
 of the national consciousness is expedient, or even per- 
 manently possible. We cannot bar out religion from 
 the sphere of the common life simply by declaring that it 
 ought to be so excluded. If rehgion be in natural fact a 
 force co-extensive with nationality, and vital to the 
 normal and efl&cient functioning of commonwealths, then 
 no antipathy of individuals to it, and no desire on the 
 part of statesmen to hvimiliate or destroy Churches, can 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 219 
 
 prevent such an irrepressible force from sooner or later 
 reasserting itself and compelling its recognition at the 
 hands of governments. "Things," says the wise truism, 
 "are what they are, and their consequences will be what 
 they will be." We have seen many times in history how 
 kings and parties have been forced, against their will, to 
 recognize principles which they hated, and to act in their 
 legislation upon doctrines which with their lips they 
 denied and denounced. Thus it has been that for more 
 than fifty years both the great political parties in Eng- 
 land have been legislating upon commiuiistic principles, 
 which, in their theoretical formulation, are repudiated 
 and anathematized by the leaders of those parties. Her- 
 bert Spencer was unquestionably right in asserting, in 
 The Man versus the State, that English Liberalism had 
 undergone a complete change of principle in the middle 
 decades of the nineteenth century. Measures animated 
 by the fundamental spirit of socialism are being passed 
 every year by Liberal and Conservative Goverimients, 
 whose members occupy their leisure hours in preaching 
 and writing eloquent denunciations of socialism and all 
 its works. Since the war began, the EngHsh Cabinet has 
 done a hundred things which in times of peace, when 
 Socialists demanded them, had been declared visionary 
 and impossible. Thus, too, in this country it has come 
 about that a President and party whose political tradition 
 and personal convictions bind them to Rousseau's 
 Contrat Social theory of society — to the upholding of 
 the rights of individual States and the restriction of the 
 functions of the Federal Government — are daily driven 
 to action destructive of that theory, because implicitly 
 afl&rming the illimitable authority of the central Govern- 
 ment over all constituent parts of the nation. 
 
220 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The lesson of these and similar incontrovertible facts 
 is plain for all to read. No political theory, no constitution 
 and no legislation which are not truly in harmony with the 
 nature of things can endure. The personal desires and 
 antipathies of men and nations must sooner or later be 
 subordinated to the intractable realities of existence, or 
 else those men and nations will suffer shipwreck. 
 
 One of these realities is the natural and inevitable 
 connection between religion and nationality. The his- 
 toric fact of the continuous interaction and interdepend- 
 ence between nations and Churches was an inevitable 
 outcome of the spiritual nature and social exigencies of 
 man. It was not an arbitrary result of the ambitions or 
 interests of kings and priests. The greatness of States 
 has waxed and waned step by step with the waxing and 
 waning of religion as an ethical and nation-moulding 
 force. The strength of kingdoms and commonwealths 
 has never lain primarily in their economic or military 
 resources; but their control of these things was itself an 
 outgrowth of that idealistic patriotism which is a vital 
 expression of religion. The internal decay of the latter 
 has always, and necessarily, preceded and caused the 
 decline of the former; and never has any nation recovered 
 from economic crisis or from military or pohtical over- 
 throw except as its people have been ideally bound 
 together in devotion to its spiritual and temporal 
 ends. 
 
 Religion, moreover, has demonstrated itself to be the 
 only force which can ensure the resurrection and im- 
 mortality of nationhood after a body politic has been 
 crucified by alien powers. Thus was it with ancient 
 Judaism, and thus is it in modem Ireland. The unifica- 
 tion of Italy in the nineteenth century was effected only 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 221 
 
 when the sentiment voiced by Mazzini, that "Italy is 
 itself a religion," became dominant in the breasts of her 
 patriotic sons. In mediaeval Germany, while there was 
 no political or economic unity, religion proved itself to be 
 a force that bound all Germans together; and that 
 idealism which brought about the political unification of 
 Germany in the eighteen-seventies was in its essence as 
 much religious as political or miUtaristic. Even to-day, 
 the Kaiser's fantastic claim to be the representative and 
 vicegerent of God expresses and answers to a sentiment 
 deeply rooted in the nation over which he rules. He is, 
 to those whose vision is not distorted by occultistic 
 theories, and who have learned to interpret facts ex- 
 pressed in theological language at their sociological value, 
 visibly as much the pontifex maximus as the imperator of 
 Germany. 
 
 In England, there have taken place within the last two 
 centuries a gradual transference of the prerogatives of 
 the monarchy to the Cabinet, and through it indirectly 
 to the electorate; and a virtual extinction of the Estab- 
 lished Church as a national force. It has not, however, 
 been generally perceived that these changes have approx- 
 imately corresponded with an assumption by the State 
 of functions hitherto considered exclusively religious and 
 ecclesiastical. The identity of purpose and result be- 
 tween many things now done by the State and things 
 formerly done by the Church will be clear to all who are 
 not hypnotized by names. For the rite of baptism 
 (which meant sociologically the recognition and assump- 
 tion of responsibility for each new individual life by the 
 community) is now substituted registration by the 
 State; and even those who most bitterly resented com- 
 pulsory baptism find nothing objectionable in the coer- 
 
2 22 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 cion exercised by the State in the matter of registration. 
 The reason is that men are never conscious of constraint 
 or resentful of compulsion in things which they see to be 
 of prime social necessity. This in the case of registration 
 is obvious to them; in the case of baptism, the very same 
 necessity was concealed by the supernaturalistic impli- 
 cations of the Sacramento 
 
 In the same way, even among the bitterest opponents 
 of compulsory ecclesiastical marriage, none save extreme 
 anarchists are found to object to compulsory civil mar- 
 riage; and this again for the reason that they perceive 
 in the latter an absolute need, arising from the nature of 
 things and the organic structure of himian society. This 
 it was, and not the alleged supernaturalistic institution 
 of monogamy, which explained and justified the enforced 
 matrimonial ceremony of the Church; and the decline of 
 the Church in the loyalty and reverence of men did not 
 and could not abrogate the natural necessity in response 
 to which the Church had functioned. 
 
 Yet more striking is the assent, even of the most rigor- 
 ously anti-religious and anti-ecclesiastical thinkers, to 
 the establishment of universal and compulsory education 
 by modern States. For fully fourteen centuries, the 
 Church had been the only educator of Europe. In the 
 main, its functioning in that capacity was lamentably 
 inefficient; yet by the common consent of men and na- 
 tions it was recognized as the natural and rightful de- 
 positary of this national responsibility. The Church's 
 monopoly of education, and the fact that "instruction" 
 was synonymous with "religious instruction," is testi- 
 fied to by the unerring evidence of language, which pre- 
 serves to this day the tradition identifying a clerk with 
 a clericus. Throughout English history, until recent 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 223 
 
 times, a man who could read and write was thereby en- 
 titled to certain legal privileges, known as "benefit of 
 clergy." The decline of the traditional Church has 
 synchronized precisely with the rise of the demand that 
 the function of educator should be assumed by the State. 
 It is interesting to observe, moreover, that the pressure 
 of necessity is forcing the most anti-ecclesiastical of 
 modern States to transform their educational codes from 
 mere vehicles of the rudiments of "secular" knowledge 
 into media for the imparting of moral truth and for the 
 awakening and guidance of idealistic aspirations. This 
 process is taking place before our eyes to-day in America 
 and France, and has already gone far ia England. 
 
 The contention, then, is that — since things do not lose 
 their identity when they undergo a change of name — all 
 modern States are in fact Churches, at least to the extent 
 to which they assume and discharge the historic func- 
 tions of Churches. The continuity of these modern 
 national and civic undertakings with those of the medi- 
 aeval Church could be demonstrated even down to details 
 too minute to fall within the scope of the present volume. 
 For example, no student can fail to perceive the socio- 
 logical identity between the ecclesiastical conditions for 
 ordination and the tests of knowledge and character 
 imposed by modern States on all candidates for the 
 teaching profession, and upon magistrates and other 
 functionaries who are empowered to perform marriages, 
 to register births and deaths, to hear confessions of sin 
 (albeit in the law-court instead of the church), to impose 
 penances, and to remit or retain the sins confessed by 
 or proved against the delinquents with whom they deal. 
 
 If, then, it be the State which celebrates our sacra- 
 ments and acts as our teacher, substituting a nurture 
 
224 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and admonition on behalf of its own ideals and enduring 
 interests for the traditional "nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord," it necessarily follows that the State to-day 
 is in so far a Church. 
 
 It is true that States do not presume to interest them- 
 selves in the life of individual citizens after death, or in 
 the precise details of their theological beliefs. Yet they 
 do take enormous pains to produce such conduct, and 
 even such beliefs, in their citizens as shall secure the im- 
 mortality of the nations whose brain and soul they are. 
 The sociological student can clearly see that the ancient 
 insistence of Christendom on theological orthodoxy and 
 uniformity of creed was actually, if unconsciously, mo- 
 tived by the same social necessity which to-day leads the 
 United States to prohibit anarchists and polygamists 
 from entering her borders, which in recent years led 
 France to imprison Gustave Herve for preaching a 
 "strike against war" among the conscripts of her army, 
 and which forced England, not long ago, to compel the 
 resignation of a Minister of War who had shown signs 
 of tolerating in the military caste opinions and conduct 
 destructive of the army's usefulness as an organ of the 
 Government. 
 
 Thus the actual reason why freedom of theological 
 opinion is tolerated in modern nations is because imi- 
 formity in such opinion is no longer held to be essential 
 to national safety and stability. Of any beliefs which, 
 if diffused and acted on by large masses of men, would 
 result in the overthrow of government and the destruc- 
 tion or even the serious imperilling of the nation, modern 
 States are by natural necessity as intolerant as were 
 mediaeval ones of theological heterodoxy. Australia, for 
 example, has of late years coerced Quakers to violate 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 22$ 
 
 their consciences by enlisting in her conscript army. Her 
 procedure may indeed be unjustifiable; but it was un- 
 mistakably prompted by the same motive which caused 
 the Roman Empire to insist on Christians paying rever- 
 ence to the statues of its deified emperors, which in- 
 duced the Catholic Church to persecute all deviators 
 from its accepted formulae, and which led the EngUsh 
 Government, after the Restoration of 1660, to make 
 the taking of Holy Coromunion according to the An- 
 glican rite a test for admission to civil and pohtical 
 offices. 
 
 The argument thus far set forth needs justifying and 
 developing by two further considerations. The first 
 is, that not merely is the modern State in truth a Church, 
 but that all nations, as such, have always been Churches. 
 The second is, that the modern nation is dangerously 
 inefficient on the spiritual side by reason of its unaware- 
 ness of its true nature. No society can discharge any 
 task with the attainable maximum of efficiency if it be 
 unconscious of the real nature and end of the activities 
 in which it is engaged. 
 
 That nations have always been Churches is a proposi- 
 tion which will be rejected as self-evidently absurd only 
 by those who hold that religion is exclusively engaged 
 with the supernatural. Whoever admits that the func- 
 tion of religion has been, at least in part, to inculcate 
 standards of conduct necessary for the elevation of hu- 
 man society in this life, must admit that it has been to 
 this extent an important auxiliary to secular govern- 
 ments. Nor can it be denied, in view of many well-known 
 facts of sociology and history, that the special standards 
 of conduct which religion dictated and sanctioned were 
 always those desired by the relatively far-sighted few in 
 
226 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 whom the tribal or national consciousness resided, and 
 to whom was committed the working out of the common 
 destiny. The almost universal combination in early 
 societies of regal and sacerdotal duties in the same person 
 is an illustration of this fact. Where We find the offices 
 differentiated, there is nevertheless complete interde- 
 pendence between the royal and priestly functionaries. 
 If the king is not the head of the Church, then the Church 
 is, so to speak, the head of the king. The priest is the 
 king-maker, if the king is not the priest-maker; and 
 either state of the facts sufi&ciently testifies to the socio- 
 logical identity between religion and nationality. 
 
 The history of the ancient Jews, in which these facts 
 are incontestable, was by no means so exceptional as it is 
 commonly supposed to have been. In many other com- 
 munities it was equally an essential part of good citizen- 
 ship for a man to worship the gods believed in by the 
 State. So much was this the case in ancient Greece that 
 Socrates, as we have seen, was condemned and executed 
 for alleged disbelief in the accepted deities of his city. 
 
 Now, what these typical and familiar facts signify 
 is that tribal gods and national religions have never been 
 anything but the objectification and crystallization of 
 whatsoever ideals and standards of conduct were held to 
 be necessary to national well-being, stability and per- 
 manence. To worship no gods at all meant, or was taken 
 to mean, indifference to or contempt for the national 
 code of morality. To worship alien gods was equivalent 
 to treason. An ancient Jew who indulged in the sensuous 
 polytheism of neighbouring tribes was acting in a way 
 which, if universalized, would have involved the annihi- 
 lation of the Jewish national consciousness, through the 
 absorption of the Hebrew people in other nations. Hence 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 227 
 
 the first Commandment,' and the denunciations of idol- 
 atry by prophets and lawgivers. And in like manner, 
 contempt for the gods of Athens was punished because 
 to the Athenians it meant contempt for the laws of 
 Athens. 
 
 A nation, in truth, is never a mere accidental aggre- 
 gation of persons born in a given geographical area; nor 
 is it merely a unit of economic, political or military life. 
 That which is above and beyond all these things, and 
 indeed determines their evolution, is what New Yorkers 
 humorously declare Boston to be: "a state of mind." 
 That is, a nation is a social unit animated by conscious or 
 unconscious common interests and by an intelligent or 
 instinctive devotion to common ideal ends. It is more 
 than the arithmetical sum of its inhabitants at any 
 moment, for it is the historic spirit which has begotten 
 each of its members, and which causes those mental and 
 spiritual peculiarities in them which differentiate them 
 from all other peoples. It is that Universal — in the 
 Aristotelian if not in the Platonic sense — which they 
 individually embody and illustrate. 
 
 England, for example, is the creator of all Englishmen. 
 She is the source of the deepest selfhood of each of them — 
 of their language and modes of thought, and even of the 
 wholly unconscious presuppositions which regulate all 
 their thinking and all their deeds. That Englishmen in 
 general, like the citizens of most other nations, are un- 
 
 1 It must not be forgotten that the Pentateuchal decalogues are not 
 "monotheistic" in any metaphysical or philosophic sense. The phrase 
 mistranslated in the English versions (Deut. vi, 4) to read "Hear, O 
 Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord," really means, "Hear, O Israel, 
 Yahwe is our God, Yahwe alone." It is thus consistent with the first 
 Commandment, which admits the existence of other gods by prohibiting 
 their worship. 
 
228 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 aware of this fact, proves nothing against it. As Seeley — 
 the one great modern English philosopher of religious 
 nationalism — has pointed out, we are commonly un- 
 conscious of the pressure of the atmosphere which we 
 breathe; yet that atmosphere is the most omnipresent 
 and ineludible fact of our experience. And if the truth 
 of one's vital and organic dependence upon one's nation 
 is hidden from the stay-at-home native, it nevertheless 
 becomes speedily apparent to any thoughtful man who 
 travels abroad. The first impression one gets on landing 
 in America, for instance, is that it is not these swarming 
 millions of people, with their obvious differences from all 
 other speakers of the English tongue, who make America, 
 but that it is America which has made them. The nation 
 is the elan vital, the brooding Oversoul, which engenders 
 the individual soul of each citizen. 
 
 To be sure, the universal humanity in all men is one 
 and the same, just as, no doubt, the pigments used by 
 the painters of Renaissance Italy were identical with 
 those used by the artists of the Flemish school. But 
 this uniform viscous medium is manipulated and dis- 
 tributed by the soul of each nation into forms that differ 
 from each other as much as the pictures of the Flemish 
 school differ from those of the Italian. Or, to take an- 
 other illustration, it is undeniable that the sounds and 
 letters which make up the French language are the same 
 as those into which English is analyzable, and both 
 tongues are regulated by identical principles of gram- 
 matical logic. Yet the striking fact about these two 
 languages is not their similarity, but their unlikeness. 
 So is it with a man begotten and born of the pervading 
 historical soul called England, as compared with one 
 engendered by that other overarching spiritual unity 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 229 
 
 whose name is China. The two men are compact of the 
 same physical organs, which in both cases prefigure the 
 same functions and demand the same psychic satis- 
 factions. The synthesis of primal instincts is the same 
 in each, and both possess the same framework of rational 
 and extra-rational mentaHty. Yet the two are stamped 
 and sundered by the entire difference of history, cir- 
 cumstance and ideal aspiration between England and 
 China for two thousand years. A human being, at any 
 given moment, is psychologically definable as a system 
 of impulses in unstable equilibrium; but the special 
 character and direction of these impulses is in every 
 case due to the fact of his affiliation with one par- 
 ticular reservoir of Uving national tradition, rather than 
 another. 
 
 The most significant and precious gift, then, of any 
 nation to its children consists of the super-temporal 
 group-consciousness embodied in its laws, its ideals, 
 its art and literature, and its proverbial wisdom. Yet 
 not even in these characteristic expressions does a nation 
 truly live. The essence of any commonwealth is that 
 spirit in it which creates these things, which proclaims 
 itself not only in positive laws and institutions but also 
 in the impulse of innovators and reformers. When a 
 people Hves by a borrowed religious creed, that creed 
 is inevitably modified in its social appHcation by the 
 total psychic atmosphere with which it becomes blended. 
 Thus in pre-Reformation Europe, despite the cosmopo- 
 litanism of the Church, Catholicism uttered itself in the 
 different countries in definitely individualized mintings. 
 GalHcanism, like Anglicanism, was a special incarnation 
 of the common spiritual energy of the Continent. And 
 to-day an orthodox Jew from Russia is different from 
 
230 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 an English orthodox Jew not merely in physical type, 
 but in his whole scale of moral and spiritual values, and 
 in his conception of the possibilities and impossibilities 
 of personal and social achievement. All Englishmen — 
 Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Jews and free thinkers 
 — are immensely more alike than different, and are 
 characterized far more by the fact of their nationality 
 than by their theological belief. There is actually more 
 in common between an English Catholic and an English 
 Agnostic than between an English and an Italian Cath- 
 olic. If you meet an American in any city of Europe, 
 you shall recognize him at once as an American, but 
 never (unless he tells you) as an Episcopalian, a Metho- 
 dist or a Mormon. So much more are men qualified 
 and characterized by their nationality than by their 
 theological creed. The influence of nationality is so 
 pervasive and ineludible that in any crisis it grinds to 
 powder all the barriers of class and philosophy by which 
 men separate themselves from their fellows. 
 
 Thus history and experience abundantly prove the 
 truth of the contention that nationality is a spiritual 
 and psychic rather than a physical fact. A nation is 
 ordinarily characterized by its occupation of a given 
 geographical area, as well as by unity and continuity of 
 consciousness through time. The former is necessary 
 to its efficient functioning; but the latter alone is essen- 
 tial to its continued existence. There are many cases on 
 record of the break-up and disappearance of nations 
 through the dissipation of conscious spiritual unity. The 
 extinction of ancient commonwealths, such as Assyria, 
 Persia, Egypt, and Greece, does not mean that the people 
 constituting them were ever annihilated. It means 
 only that the unified consciousness which had expressed 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 231 
 
 itself in their laws, religion, art, and customs was de- 
 stroyed. The physical representatives of all of them 
 are still with us, and for the most part are still occupying 
 their ancient territory. But that common consciousness, 
 that general will, which in Egypt built the Pyramids and 
 wrote the Book of the Dead, is gone. The Greeks of 
 to-day, despite some blending, are the authentic physical 
 descendants of the contemporaries of Pericles and Soc- 
 rates; yet they can scarcely be called the same nation. 
 Centuries of ahen dominance brought about the dis- 
 integration of that consciousness which had expressed 
 itself in the Parthenon, in the Acropolis, and in the 
 philosophy and drama which were the fountain heads 
 of European thought and literature. Under favourable 
 circumstances, no doubt, "the world's great age begins 
 anew, the golden years return"; and the development 
 which the Battle of Navarino inaugurated in 1827 ex- 
 presses at least the possibility of a resurrection of that 
 ancient unity of ideal and purpose. But the very need 
 of a resurrection testifies to the death which preceded. 
 On the other hand, we have in the case of the Jews 
 an instance of the preservation of nationality without 
 territorial unity or political autonomy. Unique as this 
 instance is, there is nothing mysterious in it — ^nothing, 
 that is, that cannot be traced to adequate social causes. 
 The weakness and constant peril of the Jewish political 
 State, surrounded as it was by powerful and ambitious 
 neighbours, had from the first produced an imcommon 
 intensification of the sense of spiritual unity and ideal 
 loyalty among the Hebrew people. When their crisis 
 came, and they were politically overthrown and dis- 
 persed about the world, their statesmanship deliberately 
 set itself the task of devising instruments for the preser- 
 
232 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 vation of their conscious unity, — instruments which 
 should be independent both of territorial and of po- 
 litical sovereignty. How this scheme was carried out 
 can be seen in part in the book of Ezekiel, the later Old 
 Testament writings, and some of the Apocrypha. Jeru- 
 salem remained, indeed, as it still does, the centre of 
 Jewish hope, aspiration, and devotion; but the necessity 
 for personal attendance there was obviated. Seeley has 
 well remarked that it was "by the waters of Babylon" 
 that Jewish nationality was transformed into Judaism. 
 The hateful persecutions which from of old have afflicted 
 the Jews in so many alien lands, were motived by the 
 obstinate resistance of this people to assimilation. Their 
 resistance was rendered possible by the highly articu- 
 lated system of symbolism and family religious ob- 
 servance, which ensured the continuity of their group- 
 consciousness, and made the old commands against 
 exogamy and against the worship of alien gods into 
 effectual motives in the breasts of the scattered Jewish 
 families. So long as their intense awareness of their 
 separation from all other peoples, their feehng of identity 
 with their fellow Jews throughout the world, and their 
 hope of restoration to their old territory and to national 
 sovereignty remained intact, it was impossible for them 
 to become absorbed into the nations among which they 
 lived. Now this sense of separateness was kept alive 
 by two factors only: first, their religious system; and 
 secondly, the very persecution which, in resentment 
 of their divided loyalty, sought to end it. In so far as 
 in modern countries, like England and America, persons 
 of Jewish descent are forgetting or repudiating their 
 origin and the loyalties prompted by it, this is visibly 
 due to change of creed, and to their admission in such 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 233 
 
 countries to full equality with their non- Jewish fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 To sum up, then: Nationality may be destroyed with- 
 out the loss of territorial unity. Or it can survive despite 
 this loss. When it does, its survival is due to the per- 
 sistence of national ideals and the resulting consciousness 
 of unity of inheritance and goal. 
 
 The importance of a true doctrine of nationality and 
 of its connection with religion is demonstrated by the 
 experienced dangers incident to a misunderstanding of 
 these tremendous forces. To contend, as I have done, 
 that rehgion and nationality are in large measure iden- 
 tical is not in the least to imply that either rehgion or 
 nationahty is in every case a good and admirable thing. 
 This I would request the reader to bear clearly in mind, 
 since the unfamiliar argument I am presenting will en- 
 counter his prejudice if he forgets it, or forgets that I am 
 aware of it. Either religion or nationality, or both, may 
 be good, bad, or indifferent; savage or civilized; rational 
 or mythological. National patriotism may be consistent 
 with and conducive to true humanitarianism and the es- 
 tablishment of universal peace and fraternity. It may, 
 on the other hand, be a menace to these ideals. If it is 
 exclusive, and coimotes hatred of other nations, or if it 
 aims at the domination of the world, poHtically or spirit- 
 ually, by a single people, it becomes the most mischievous 
 of all forms of insanity. Rehgion, too, is not a special 
 kind of consciousness, but a special mode or direction of 
 the same consciousness which functions in other spheres 
 of human interest. If it fosters an exclusive nationahsm, 
 or if it is so absorbed in extra-mundane hopes as to induce 
 neglect of the spiritual opportunities of the present hfe, 
 it also becomes a menace to the interests of hiunanity. 
 
234 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The necessity of a right understanding of these great 
 psychic forces has been vividly brought home to us by 
 the unprecedented disaster of the European War. Mod- 
 em sentiment had for years been growing obhvious to 
 the indestructible force of national loyalty, and had 
 mistakenly supposed that the development of the means 
 of world-wide intercommunication had inaugurated an 
 era of cosmopolitanism. This was a dangerous blunder. 
 The machinery which made possible the fulfilment of 
 national ambitions was supposed to have rendered im- 
 possible the perpetuation of the spirit which created it. 
 The interpretation, also, of human life in terms of mo- 
 tives controlled exclusively by economic interest had pro- 
 duced the gigantic illusion that national patriotism was 
 weakened and on the way to becoming extinct. 
 
 Now there are many to-day who in their humanitarian- 
 ism loathe the idea of patriotism or nationalism, just as 
 there are many who in their detestation of supernatural- 
 ism turn their backs upon every actual and possible 
 form of religion. To such thinkers I would merely urge 
 for the moment that it is of no use to ignore a fact simply 
 because one does not like it. The most stupendous fact 
 of history, and especially of the history that is to-day 
 in the making, is the indestructible and gigantic force 
 of national solidarity and loyalty, even in those who had 
 mistakenly imagined themselves to have outgrown it. 
 
 What, for example, is the explanation of the alleged 
 collapse of SociaHsm at the outbreak of the present war? 
 It was not a collapse of SociaHsm at all. On the contrary, 
 in each of the contending nations there has been an 
 immense advance in the practical appHcation of social- 
 istic principles, — though, to be sure, in undemocratic 
 fashion, vmder stress of necessity rather than from convic- 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 235 
 
 tion of their ethical soundness. What broke down when 
 this war began was the mythological metaphysic which 
 many Socialists, especially those of the school of Marx, 
 had foolishly supposed to be an integral part of their 
 system. For forty years they had been insisting, in the 
 teeth of the facts, that there was no such thing as unity 
 of interest between all the classes that compose a nation. 
 They had declared that the working-man in Germany 
 has more in common with the working-man in Russia 
 or France than with the aristocracy or plutocracy of his 
 own country. They had asserted that economic interest 
 is the sole determinant of the human will, and conse- 
 quently that solidarity must follow the pressure of this 
 motive throughout the world, irrespective of physical 
 and psychic frontiers. Accordingly, they had supposed 
 that the outbreak of an international war would herald 
 the combination of the workers of different countries in 
 solid opposition to the schemes of the capitalistic groups 
 by whom (as they maintained) the affairs of the nations 
 are controlled. 
 
 Now what happened when the war began was that 
 these theorists experienced in themselves the irresistible 
 working of the very forces of which they had denied the 
 existence. They became aware for the first time that 
 the German or French or English working-man actually 
 has many more interests in common with all the classes 
 of his own nation than with his own class in other nations. 
 Gustave Herve was one of the first to volunteer in France, 
 and the German Socialists have been among the bravest 
 fighters in their country's cause. To those who had for 
 years been preaching this truth, the instantaneous tmi- 
 fication of the nations in the face of the peril of in- 
 vasion was neither shocking nor surprising. To those. 
 
236 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 on the other hand, who with short-sighted optimism had 
 declared that it could not happen, it must needs have 
 been a heart-breaking disappointment. 
 
 Now there is no country in which the importance of a 
 correct understanding of these great sociological forces 
 is so vital and urgent as in America. We are here at- 
 tempting, imder whoUy unprecedented conditions, to 
 build up a unified nation out of the most diverse and 
 heterogeneous elements. Unless we rightly xmderstand 
 the factors in our own nature which we must control to 
 this end, the great experiment is foredoomed to failure. 
 If it fails, then the hope of a peaceful and fraternal 
 organization of mankind will perish with it, or at least 
 will be deferred for an incalciilable period. The Churches 
 have here their greatest opportunity and their greatest 
 responsibility. They must set themselves, firmly against 
 the spread-eagle jingoism which would make American 
 patriotism identical with hatred of other nations, and 
 also against the false theory of anti-patriotic cosmopol- 
 itanism which has gained so much grotmd in recent years. 
 It is the fimction of the Churches not only to be the 
 standard-bearers of the ideal, but also to clarify the 
 minds of men, in regard to the intellectual principles 
 which should govern the formation and revision of ideals. 
 
 The anti-patriotic theory of the class-war Socialist 
 needs no refutation. It lies dead upon the battlefields 
 of Europe. Every Marxian Socialist in the contending 
 armies is an irrefutable witness to the fact that hfe is 
 stronger than the single-track logic of the "materialist 
 conception of history." The actual spiritual imity of 
 nations, which in economic and other minor interests may 
 be divided against themselves, is demonstrated with 
 tragic convincingness. The dream of a imification of 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 237 
 
 mankind along class Hnes and in disregard of the spiritual 
 frontiers of nations is dissipated. For good or for ill, we 
 now know that that deep identity which is expressed in 
 unity of language, and in the consciousness of a common 
 past and a common lot, is greater and more radical than 
 any difference of immediate political policy or economic 
 interest. No party will ever again seek to build upon the 
 quicksands of the Marxian mythology. 
 
 But this demonstration of the reality and the in- 
 vincible strength of the psychic force of nationaHsm must 
 not lead us to abandon or to despair of what was sound 
 in the cosmopolitan ideal. That ideal was not so much 
 an illusion as a misstatement of a vitally important 
 truth, which has too commonly been overlooked by the 
 advocates of nationalism. That we may see how im- 
 portant this truth is, we have but to look at the horrible 
 prospect held out by those who consciously reject it. 
 General von Bernhardi is the man who has recently 
 gained the widest hearing for the doctrine of exclusive 
 nationalism. He maintains that it is of the nature of 
 treason for any citizen ^ to entertain an ideal loyalty 
 transcending that which he owes to his own country. 
 Everybody has recoiled in horror from the brutal national 
 egoism thus advocated. Yet here in America we have no 
 less representative a citizen than Colonel Roosevelt 
 proclaiming a doctrine which (whether he knows it or 
 not) is in fact identical with that of Bernhardi. This is 
 the doctrine of "My country right or wrong" — a princi- 
 ple which leads to a complete abdication of the moral 
 judgment of citizens in regard to any act or policy of 
 their country involving its relations to the rest of the 
 
 ' At least of Germany: it is not clear that the doctrine applies to Amer- 
 icans, especially those of German or Irish origin! 
 
238 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 world. Colonel Roosevelt and many others have 
 snatched up this ill-considered and fatal catchword with a 
 view to the unification of the American people. We are a 
 medley of new-comers from all the lands of Europe, and 
 the survival among us of extra-American loyalties in- 
 volves the possibihty of serious danger to the unity of 
 our chosen country. Many of us are looking back to the 
 civilization and the artistic tradition of Europe, instead of 
 forward to that which is to be in America. Mr. Roose- 
 velt is entirely right in saying that we should cease to ape 
 Europe. He is no less completely wrong in maintaining 
 that our American loyalty requires the abdication of our 
 freedom of thought and of moral judgment in regard to 
 America's foreign policy. 
 
 It is curious that the most vociferous advocates of the 
 doctrine of "My country right or wrong" are at the 
 same moment loudest in voicing condemnations of Ger- 
 many. How can they fail to detect the inconsistency of 
 their attitude? If the doctrine which they proclaim is 
 valid for America, it must be no less valid for any other 
 nation. Yet the criticism most often passed upon Ger- 
 many is that her people have slavishly acted upon this 
 principle. They have acquiesced in every militaristic 
 development demanded by their Government. They 
 assented to the invasion of Belgium, precisely upon 
 the ground that the acts of their Government are the 
 acts of their country, and that they are boimd to stand 
 by their country in whatever course her rulers decide 
 to take. Colonel Roosevelt's attitude in affirming this 
 doctrine and simultaneously pouring out the vials of 
 his wrath against Germany is a distressing evidence of 
 his fundamental incapacity for clear ethical judgment. 
 He is urging his compatriots to adopt an attitude Which 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 239 
 
 cannot fail to lead to the very results at which he is so 
 horrified in the Old World. 
 
 This narrow, chauvinistic and exclusive nationalism is 
 as great a menace to the peace and progress of the world 
 as the anti-nationalism of the cosmopohtan school. The 
 only way to encounter both perils is to affirm the true 
 doctrine of nationalism. The starting-point in all plans 
 for the peaceful federation of the world must be the 
 principle laid down many years ago by Mazzini: 
 
 Nations are the citizens of hvunanity, as individuals are the 
 citizens of the nation. And as every individual lives a two- 
 fold life, inward and of relation, so do the nations. As every 
 individual should strive to promote the power and prosperity 
 of his nation through the exercise of his special function, so 
 should every nation, in performing its special mission, ac- 
 cording to its special capacity, perform its part in the general 
 work, and promote the progressive advance and prosperity 
 of humanity. Nationality and humanity are therefore 
 equally sacred. To forget humanity is to suppress the aim of 
 our labours; to cancel the nation is to suppress the instrument 
 by which to achieve the aim.' 
 
 The great Italian has here formulated the true prin- 
 ciple of patriotism. He sees that there can be no such 
 thing as a melting down of all mankind into one un- 
 differentiated mass of humanity-in-general. He sees 
 that the nation is a permanent and indispensable organ 
 for the achievement of the ends of the race. He also sees 
 that, because this is true, patriotism must be expressed 
 in the form of a universal ethical principle. When this 
 is done, we transcend the immoral and braggart doctrine 
 
 ' Mazzini, " The Holy Alliance of the Peoples'' (1849), in Collected 
 Works, vol. V, p. 274. 
 
240 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 of "My country right or wrong," by defining the only 
 conditions under which our country can be right, and 
 consequently can demand from us a rational and un- 
 divided allegiance. By the very law that binds me to my 
 own country, I am equally bound to respect the devotion 
 of all other men to theirs. Because I hold my own nation 
 inviolable, I must equally protest against any pohcy 
 which would lead to the violation of another nation. 
 
 The principle here involved is the same as that to 
 which we were led in our study of the idea of God. 
 Spiritual perfection — of which for us the highest mani- 
 festation is the perfection of humanity — is the inte- 
 grated harmony of the minds and wills of all actual and 
 possible rational agents. Into this conception there 
 enter (as we said in Chapter III) "both the completeness 
 of the series and the uniqueness of each of its terms." 
 The reasoning which justifies this conclusion applies to 
 families and nations as well as to the totaUty. The 
 sacredness of every nation consists in the fact that it can 
 contribute to the "general deed of man" some indis- 
 pensable factor which no other nation can bring. Each 
 has thus a unique mission; each is a chosen people. It is 
 no sentimentality; but a literal truth of the highest 
 moment, that "in the gain or loss of one race all the rest 
 have equal claim." Such is the dynamism of our lives 
 that every act produces consequences far beyond the 
 possibiHty of conscious following. Every act of a nation 
 ramifies through space and reverberates through time, to 
 the utmost verge of the world and to the remotest genera- 
 tion of posterity. The Greeks at Marathon decided the 
 fate of Europe for all time — little as they knew it. AVhen 
 Spain equipped the expedition of Columbus, she changed 
 the whole future history of the world. 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 241 
 
 Love of country, then, and the duty of loyalty to one's 
 fatherland or the land of one's choice, is a specific applica- 
 tion of a principle which, being ethical, is necessarily 
 universal. That principle demands a respect for the 
 patriotism of other peoples as complete as the self- 
 respect that goes with one's own patriotism. What is 
 right for me is right for my neighbour. What it would be 
 wrong for him to do towards me, it must be wrong for me 
 to do towards him. The ethics of international policy 
 consists in the application to foreign affairs of the same 
 moral principles that are recognized as binding within 
 the hmits of the nation. Until the whole world reaches a 
 point where such an act as that of Germany towards 
 Belgium would be impossible, it will not have attained 
 even the beginnings of a truly ethical civilization. 
 Mazzini's doctrine is the foundation-stone of the edifice 
 of hiraianity. 
 
 Implied in these contentions is the truth that the Moral 
 Law is one and indivisible, and is paramount over all 
 expediencies that conflict with it. Patriotism is the 
 reverence that should be felt for one's nation as a special 
 custodian of this law, and as an agent for the actualiza- 
 tion of its requirements in face of a unique set of .oppor- 
 tunities and exigencies. The patriot is he whose ultimate 
 loyalty is given unconditionally to this law, and only 
 under it to his nation. The jingo doctrine is not pa- 
 triotism, but a debased counterfeit which is really the 
 opposite of what it simulates. 
 
 This placing of the nation under humanity, and of 
 both under a law that is objective, eternal and immutable 
 in principle, clears up for us the confusion raised by the 
 parrot-cry of "My country right or wrong." It is your 
 country's mission which gives her the right to your 
 
242 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 loyalty; and only in so far as she is seeking to fulfil it 
 can she have a right to your approval and co-operation. 
 In case she errs or sins, it is true patriotism to admonish 
 her of the error or to convict her of the sin.^ But if you 
 take the stand of the jingoes, you resign your pre- 
 rogative as a moral agent. You give your conscience 
 into the keeping of the Foreign Ofl&ce, Just as Cathohcs 
 have sometimes given theirs into the keeping of the 
 priest. Incidentally, too, you debar yourself from the 
 right to blame any foreigner for the sins of his country; 
 for if you blame him, he has but to retort that he acts 
 by the same principle that you profess, and you are left 
 without resource. In condemning the deeds of a foreign 
 power, you appeal to a law superior to and binding upon 
 all nations; and you tacitly pledge yourself to measure 
 any future act of your own country by the standard that 
 you invoke. 
 
 These considerations belong to the alphabet of ethics. 
 The fact that they are not self-evident and universally 
 accepted is a terrible commentary upon the failure of the 
 Churches to fulfil their trust. My plea is that they 
 should now rise to the full requirements of this hitherto 
 neglected duty, by teaching that patriotism is the highest 
 appKcation of the universal moral law, and is identical 
 with religion. A nation's mission to himianity — its 
 opportunity of rendering a unique but indispensable 
 service to the race — constitutes the authentic revelation 
 of God to its citizens. When they insist that its every 
 policy and deed shall be directed towards the fulfilment 
 
 ' "Patriotism is not the belief that your country is right: patriotism 
 is the passion to keep your country in the right. A country 'in the 
 right ' is thinking and acting not more for its own good than for that of 
 all humanity." — Booth Tarkington, article "The American View," in 
 Metropolitan, July, 1915. 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 243 
 
 of this its ideal destiny, they are truly patriotic, how- 
 ever violently the mob may accuse them of disloyalty 
 or treason. 
 
 The alarm aroused in the breasts of many Americans 
 by the reaction of the European War upon our domestic 
 problems serves to draw attention both to the special 
 task which America has in her keeping and to her com- 
 parative failure thus far to cope effectively with it. En- 
 couraged by the heartfelt gratitude expressed by immi- 
 grants of exceptional genius, we have come to look upon 
 America as being in truth the promised land to the op- 
 pressed of the whole earth. It is one of the superficial 
 bad habits of all peoples to confound the ideals of their 
 nation with its actual achievements. We mistake the 
 so-called "glittering generalities" upon which the Re- 
 public is founded for a statement of things already won, 
 whereas they are in truth only the outlines of remote 
 ideals. Because America aspires to be the promised 
 land, we are apt to imagine that she already is it. 
 Huxley once remarked that "the slaying of a beauti- 
 ful hypothesis by an ugly fact" is the daily tragedy of 
 science. There are many ugly facts on every hand to 
 slay the optimistic illusion of Americans as to what 
 their coimtry has accomplished towards actuahzing the 
 ideals which gave it birth. 
 
 Among them is the truth which during the last two 
 years has been realized more clearly than ever before, — 
 that America has not so treated her immigrant population 
 as to win to herself its complete and undivided loyalty. 
 No doubt it is possible to exaggerate the extent of the 
 evil of our disunion; but there is a very substantial re- 
 siduum of truth, after every allowance has been made 
 for exaggeration. It is not inconceivable that in the 
 
244 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 event of war between America and almost any nation in 
 Europe, the enemy power might have in this country a 
 large population openly or secretly loyal to it and hostile 
 to the Republic. Even in the case of those who have 
 sincerely taken their pledge of allegiance to the United 
 States, their loyalty is apt to be of the nature of an in- 
 tellectual conviction, and, as such, inevitably weaker in 
 its influence upon the will than the spontaneous and 
 passionate sentiment of an inborn patriotism. 
 
 Now, the first task for America (and it is indeed a 
 gigantic one) is to deserve on her own behalf such an un- 
 conditional and unquestioning allegiance as every other 
 great nation is able to count upon from its citizens in 
 any time of stress. This will necessitate, in the first 
 place, the thinking out and the adoption of a policy in 
 regard to immigration inmieasurably more radical and 
 far-reaching than any that has yet been contemplated. 
 It may necessitate the practical closing of our doors to 
 immigrants for at least a generation. I do not say that 
 this will be necessary. My point is that if the competent 
 study of the problem by disinterested experts should 
 show it to be so, we must be prepared to act upon their 
 finding. It certainly wiU be necessary to make far more 
 rigid than hitherto the conditions of naturalization. We 
 shall have to inaugurate a system of compulsory educa- 
 tion for adult immigrants. The path in this direction is 
 already being blazed in Chicago, where a body of un- 
 official citizens have begun to organize in the public 
 schools classes for the instruction of applicants for 
 citizenship. The effort is meeting with gratifying ac- 
 ceptance, both by the educational authorities and by the 
 immigrants, who in large numbers are availing them- 
 selves of the privilege thus accorded. But it is merely a 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 245 
 
 pioneer experiment, pointing in the direction of a far more 
 thorough handling of the problem on a national scale. 
 
 The tragic irony of the situation, however, lies in the 
 fact that the education we must give to the immigrant 
 will consist in the inculcation of ideals of Americanism 
 which at present are flagrantly belied by many experi- 
 ences of his daily life. We must teach him, as we now 
 teach his children and our own, that America stands for 
 human equahty; and on every hand he will see the grow- 
 ing power of class distinctions, quite as abrupt as those 
 of the European nations, and often more brutal. We 
 shall teach him that America stands for equality of 
 opportunity and for the granting of free scope to per- 
 sonal merit. He will go from the school, and see all 
 around him evidences of the power of an anonymous 
 plutocracy, which, by a hundred devices, has gained the 
 whip hand over State and municipal governments, and 
 organized its commercial monopolies so effectively that 
 no inventor of an improved process who might threaten 
 them with competition can procure capital for the flota- 
 tion of his enterprise.^ He knows by hard experience that 
 in this country there is no less brutality in the treatment 
 of labourers by their bosses and gangsters than in the 
 Old World. He has encountered many new restrictions 
 upon his liberty, such as he never met with in Europe. 
 In the inhumanly sordid slums of our cities, he finds the 
 "pursuit of happiness" tenfold more a mockery and a 
 wild-goose chase than he had ever dreamed it could be. 
 These are some of the reasons why, instead of forgetting 
 
 • The reader will scarcely need to be reminded of the vivid picture of 
 this state of things drawn by President Wilson in his book on The New 
 Freedom. I would commend also the excellent treatise on Unpopular 
 Government in the United States, by Prof. Albert M. Kales, of North- 
 western University. (Chicago Univ. Press: 1914.) 
 
246 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 his past, he frequently institutes unfavourable com- 
 parisons between it and his present conditions. Until 
 America actually redeems the tremendous promises made 
 to its recruits from Europe, it will be vain to harangue 
 them about the duty of according to their adopted coun- 
 try a single and whole-souled allegiance. 
 
 Nor must we refuse to open our eyes to the appalling 
 anomaly still presented by the poHtical, economic and 
 social status of the negro race among us. Europe is still 
 smiling sardonically at the memory of that assemblage 
 of freedom-loving slave-owners who drew up the dec- 
 laration that all men are born equal and have an in- 
 defeasible right to Hfe and liberty. Since the days of 
 the fathers, however, the Republic, at the cost of a con- 
 vulsion which threatened its life, has succeeded in purg- 
 ing itself of the cancer of chattel slavery. She did this 
 very shortly after the backward and benighted despot- 
 ism of Russia had abolished her immemorial system of 
 serfdom. To-day the emancipated serfs of Russia are 
 for the most part landowners, cultivating each his own 
 little holding and hving by its produce. America pledged 
 her manumitted negroes the rights of free citizens, — a 
 pledge which in the South has never been redeemed, and 
 in the North has only been formally kept. Everybody 
 knows by what evasions of the plighted faith of the Re- 
 pubhc the negroes have been defrauded of poHtical rights 
 and denied equality of educational opportunity and of 
 professional and economic status with their white fellow- 
 citizens. The negro problem of to-day in this country, 
 like the Jewish problem in Russia, is one that has been 
 created by the nation's refusal to them of the rights of 
 citizens and of the homage due to their moral dignity as 
 human beings. The difference, however, between this 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 247 
 
 country and Russia is that Russia's tyranny has been 
 unblushing and unconcealed, whereas our own has been 
 rendered more odious by the hypocrisy of the Fifteenth 
 Amendment to the Constitution, solemnly guaranteeing 
 to the victims of past tyraimy a benefit which in practice 
 has been withheld from them. If the ideal unity which 
 all American patriots desire is to be actualized, we must 
 begin by purging our national system of these ugly and 
 poisonous defects. 
 
 It may be said that the problem is insoluble; that the 
 negro is inferior, and so must be debarred from the free 
 self-realization accorded to the white man. This is un- 
 proved and unprovable; but my contention is that, if 
 the white race of America really believes this, it ought 
 frankly and honestly to act upon the behef . Let us add 
 some footnotes to the Constitution. Let us rescind the 
 Fifteenth Amendment and Section I of the Fourteenth. 
 Let us, for heaven's sake, not perpetuate the falsehood 
 that we are according to these people a freedom and 
 equahty which we have no intention of permitting them 
 to enjoy. Let us not persist in first denjdng them educa- 
 tional opportunity, and then pointing to their ignorance 
 as a disqualification for the status of citizens. Let us not 
 deliberately close the avenues of professional training 
 and advancement to them, and then allege their economic 
 backwardness as a proof of their inherent inferiority. 
 Since we are in practice repudiating the ideals embodied 
 in our organic laws, let us honestly say that we cannot 
 live up to these ideals. Let us make clear what our 
 real belief is: that all men are born equal, except those 
 who are not; and that all have a right to the pursuit of 
 happiness, so long as their pursuit of it does not cross 
 the convenience of the dominant race or class. 
 
248 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 If it be asked what connection all this has with the 
 problem of religion, I would reply, in the first place, that 
 it was a system of law and custom, by which all the 
 exigencies of social life and class struggle were regulated, 
 that constituted the substance of the religion of the Old 
 Testament. Are the Constitutions of this nation and its 
 States less sacred to us than the laws of Moses? Those 
 laws emanated from the soul of the Jewish people, which 
 they very appropriately called their God. The divinity 
 of the system consisted in the fact that it embodied the 
 highest ideals they were capable of conceiving. In this 
 sense, and for these reasons, the legislation of the Old 
 Testament reaUy did constitute a divine revelation. 
 We ought to regard our own organic laws as possessing 
 for us the same kind of sanctity as the- Mosaic legislation 
 had for the Jews. They are our divine revelation. If 
 they are defective, we have among us the revealing 
 God — the reason and conscience by which to amend 
 them. If our practice falls below the level of their 
 demands, we are to that extent apostate from the faith 
 we have professed, and disloyal to the organizing genius 
 of our nation, which is for us the incarnation of God. 
 
 The Churches should systematically inculcate in the 
 minds of the people this exalted and exalting view of the 
 nation and its ideals. In our religion, American history 
 should take a place equal to that which Jewish history 
 held in the Hebrew religion, though without imitating 
 the Jewish exclusiveness. In addition to the hymns 
 of the ancient' Jews, which confess their sins and cele- 
 brate their deliverances, we should chant the psalms of 
 our own poets and prophets, in confession of the sins of 
 America, and in thanksgiving for her historic deUverances 
 and development. We are rendered bhnd to the sig- 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 249 
 
 nificance of our own position and problems, and to the 
 dignity and responsibility of our own function as a 
 contributor to the total achievement of humanity, by the 
 fact that we are living on a borrowed religion, which 
 consists mainly of expressions of another people's pa- 
 triotism. What have our Churches to do with the vic- 
 tories of the Jews over their neighbours, and with the 
 exaltation of Jerusalem and its temple? Were not the 
 American Revolution and the Civil War at least as 
 important — to put it mildly — for us and for the human 
 race at large, as the deliverance of the Jews from Egjrpt 
 and from Babylon? Has there not been in our common 
 life as intimate an experience of the ultimate spiritual 
 reality of the world as ever came to Isaiah, and have we 
 not had poets and prophets equal in power of vision and 
 speech to those of the old Hebrews? Why then should 
 not the Churches give to American history, literature 
 and poetry at least an equal place with that which they 
 now suffer to be monopolized by those of the Jews? 
 
 Never shall we see our own opportunities and respon- 
 sibilities in the light of their true dignity until we act 
 confidently upon the conviction that our experience of 
 the divine is identical with that of the ancients. The 
 secret of the strength of the Jewish religious system lay 
 in the fact that its essential elements were unborrowed. 
 This gave it such strength and vigour that the whole 
 Western world has ever since been paralyzed by the 
 thought that the Bible alone contained a divine revela- 
 tion. We profess to have advanced in the direction of 
 democratic and hmnanistic conceptions, but we are 
 still afraid to give effect to our convictions. We dare 
 not act upon the principle that Washington and Lincoln 
 stand in exactly the same category as Moses and David. 
 
250 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The result is that our own history and literature seem to 
 us secular and commonplace as compared with those of 
 this petty ancient people, — who, however, earned the 
 right to their immortality by reason of their unwavering 
 faith in their spiritual mission to mankind. Until we are 
 willing to accord to our nation and its mission the same 
 exalted position of identity with God and religion which 
 the Jews gave to theirs, we cannot rise to the demands 
 of our high calling, or achieve any fraction of the spiritual 
 grandeur which is possible for us. 
 
 The problem of America's national unification, and of 
 the hindrances that delay it, is momentous not only for 
 America but equally for the rest of the world. The 
 special mission which constitutes what may well be 
 called the divine task of this country is to supply, by the 
 solution of its own problems, an example of the way in 
 which the unification of the rest of the world may be 
 effected. If we can demonstrate that all the races of the 
 earth can dwell together as one people, in perfect amity 
 and freedom and in a unity of civilization enriched by 
 the contribution of each constituent element, we shall 
 have shown how the feuds and the estranging hatreds of 
 the European peoples can be purged away. Our national 
 ideals are sound and right; it is our practical violation of 
 them that is wrong. The only ultimate basis for the 
 peaceful federation of the world is that of republican 
 equality. Democracy is the only extant form of govern- 
 ment which can give scope to the finest spiritual possi- 
 bihties of every human being. If, on this Continent, 
 we can have forty-eight States in one nation, each pre- 
 serving its internal autonomy, but without so much as 
 the possibility of war, why should not the same state of 
 things be duplicated in Europe? They talk there of 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 251 
 
 "insoluble problems," of clashes of racial and economic 
 interest that can only be settled through bloodshed. The 
 answer is that we, with huge numbers of all the European 
 races in our population, have created a machinery by 
 which every possible conflict of aspiration and interest 
 can be harmonized, and by which the disastrous possibil- 
 ity of war is eliminated. There is in the nature of things 
 no more reason for war between France and Germany 
 than for war between Ohio and Indiana. The same 
 federal principle which has made war impossible as 
 between Ohio and Indiana, while securing to them all and 
 more than all the hberty enjoyed by France and Ger- 
 many, might bring about permanent and indestructible 
 peace in Europe. It is, indeed, the principle upon which 
 Europe wUl ultimately be driven to organize its life. 
 This, then, is the high mission of the American Com- 
 monwealth, — to demonstrate that what Europeans think 
 impossible can be done, and thereby to "give light to 
 them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
 and to guide their feet into the way of peace." 
 
 There are two views held by thinkers as to the develop- 
 ment of American civilization, which are mutually ex- 
 clusive, and both of which seem to me false. One is the 
 theory summed up in Mr. ZangwiU's happy phrase, 
 "the melting-pot." The other is the doctrine that each 
 national group represented in the population of the 
 United States should be culturally segregated, in order 
 that it may preserve the standards and traditions of the 
 civilization in which it originated. These two views are 
 derived, the one from the theory of cosmopohtanism, the 
 other from the doctrine of exclusive nationalism; both of 
 which, as I have sought to show, are morally and prac- 
 
252 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 tically impossible. The rejection of these two views 
 will lead us to a third, which I shall suggest is true and 
 sound. 
 
 (i) The notion of the "melting-pot" implies that it is 
 possible to cut off our immigrants from their past, and 
 to reduce them to a homogeneous and undifferentiated 
 mass of humanity-in-general, from which they may 
 afterwards be worked up into conformity with a fixed 
 American type. It is as impossible, however, to do this 
 with the souls of men as with their bodies. Humanity- 
 in-general is simply an abstraction. There are no "hu- 
 man beings" in this sense. As was said at the beginning 
 of this chapter, every man and woman is a synthesis of 
 the common elements of humanity, which has been 
 qualified and characterized by the manifold influences of 
 a special psychological atmosphere. We never meet a 
 man or woman who is merely a man or woman. We 
 meet only Chinamen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, 
 Germans. On the other hand, that American type, into 
 the likeness of which this theory requires us to transfigure 
 our immigrants, is only in the making; it is not yet com- 
 pletely made. Its development, moreover, is by way of a 
 series of modifications, due in large part to its contact 
 with the already highly differentiated new-comers from 
 the Old World. It is a violation of all that we understand 
 by evolution to suppose that this unfinished American 
 can assimilate into his own likeness all who come to our 
 shores, without being himself modified in the process. 
 Neither the New England Puritan, nor the Southern 
 Cavalier, nor yet the hardy pioneer of the West (to 
 specify three of the class-types which we associate with 
 the idea of the American) is a fixed and final product, 
 constituting a matrix upon which new arrivals can be 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 253 
 
 moulded without its being itself affected. The American 
 type, in so far as it is developed, represents the effects of 
 adjustment to an environment (physical and psychical) 
 which is itself changed to some extent by every immigrant 
 who enters it. We must face the fact that this American 
 tj^e will undergo further modification, if immigration is 
 suffered to continue. No doubt the immigrant will be 
 markedly changed: but the absorbing complex will be 
 altered by him, as well as he by it. 
 
 (2) The melting-pot ideal is thus impracticable. It is, 
 indeed, nothing but a hasty catchword, snatched up to 
 save the labour of serious thinking. We turn, therefore, 
 to the alternative embraced by those who favour the 
 perpetuation of foreign groups as such, each with a 
 set of ideals, traditions, and social and cultural aspi- 
 rations, differing from those of every other group, and 
 also from those which have determined the historic 
 development of America. According to this view, the 
 Republic can never become a true inward and spiritual 
 unity. It must remain a bundle of inwardly united but 
 mutually repellent groups, loosely bound together by a 
 tie of common interest totally inferior in strength and 
 quality to the ideal loyalty which fuses each constituent 
 to its past. 
 
 Setting aside the question whether this is permanently 
 possible, it cannot be denied that from the national 
 point of view it would be intolerable. No icommonwealth 
 can endure the thought of any group erf— its^itizens 
 cherishing another national loyalty, which rivals or 
 transcends that which they accord to the counjtry and 
 the Government with which they have cast in their lot. 
 No other nation would dream of tolerating such a state 
 of things. The very idea of England or Germany suffer- 
 
254 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 ing a large mass of its citizens to call themselves Franco- 
 Germans or Russo-English is inconceivable; and we can 
 all readily see why. The reason is sociologically identical 
 with that which led the Jewish lawgivers to deify the soul 
 of their nation, and to represent it as saying, "Thou shalt 
 have none other gods before me." By the accidents of 
 our historic and geographical situation, the indispensable 
 necessity of this inward unity of ideal has hitherto been 
 obscured to us. But the hour is coming, and now is, 
 when we can no longer hide it from ourselves save at 
 our peril. Whatever secondary loyalties and subsidiary 
 patriotisms may for another generation or two survive 
 among us, we have now reached the time when the "gold 
 and purple" of every American's heart must be given 
 imequivocally and unconditionally to this Repubhc. 
 Our recent exigencies have brought us abruptly to the 
 stark Eniweder-oder which is rightly insisted upon in every 
 nation except our own. The very hfe of the Republic 
 depends upon each citizen's deciding whether he is an 
 American or something else. If it be said that the choice 
 is a hard one, the answer is that it has been voluntarily 
 embraced by those who now resent having it forced upon 
 them. The choice of nationality is one of the includible 
 finalities of life. The man who hesitates to declare him- 
 self betrays the fact that he has in truth already de- 
 cided, — and decided against America. 
 
 He who rejects both the alternative theories sketched 
 in the last few pages, may reasonably be asked to out- 
 hne his own solution of the problem; and this I shall now 
 very briefly attempt to do. 
 
 (3) The advance of civilization takes place by way of 
 contact and cross-fertilization. Isolation is as bad for a 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 255 
 
 people as for an individual. The self-made nation, like 
 the self-made man, may adore its creator, but humanity 
 at large seldom has reason to approve that creator's 
 wisdom or taste. On the other hand, there have been 
 many instances of advance per saltum when two partially 
 developed types of civilization have been brought into 
 relations of contact and interaction. When this happens, 
 it is precisely the points of difference between the two 
 types of culture which produce the reciprocal enrichment. 
 That which is already common to both may blend, but 
 it does not propagate. 
 
 The high promise of American life consists in the fact 
 that it has within its control the possibility of a fructify- 
 ing contact between an imprecedentedly large number of 
 types of civilization, juxtaposed in a close and permanent 
 intimacy such as never has been seen elsewhere. What 
 may be the final result of this unexampled opportunity 
 is unpredictable, because it is contingent upon the opera- 
 tion of factors incalculable in number and complexity. 
 We know beforehand, however, that the efflorescence 
 must needs be of the. highest aesthetic and spiritual ex- 
 cellence, if only the situation which constitutes its po- 
 tentiality be wisely handled. We must arrange that the 
 process of contact between the different types of civiliza- 
 tion shall be dehberately controlled and guided. It must 
 not be fortuitous, as in the past. It must be an affair, 
 so to speak, of spiritual eugenics, in which, although the 
 outcome is incapable of exact quantitative prediction, we 
 shall have beforehand an assurance that it wiU be quali- 
 tatively desirable. 
 
 Such an ideal demands not the segregation of every 
 type of civiUzation which is imported, but the careful 
 study of the elements of all of them, as possible con- 
 
2S6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 tributions to that new and richer tj^e of civilization 
 which is to be evolved in America. The legitimate work 
 of our many nationalistic societies is simply this forward- 
 looking elaboration of their inheritance. These societies 
 have no business to think of themselves as agencies for 
 preserving the cultural achievements of the lands from 
 which their members came, and the loyalty to those lands 
 which such achievements inspire. Their business is to dis- 
 cover the elements of their racial inheritance which, if 
 transplanted into American soil, would be genuine con- 
 tributions to American civilization, compatible with 
 America's history and ideals, and valuable for their 
 future development. If, for example, there is in any 
 American city a Swedish or British society composed of 
 American citizens, that society must not exist and work 
 for the sake of Sweden or Britain. It would be treason 
 to the Republic for it to do so. It has, however, a per- 
 fectly legitimate place and function if it exists and works 
 for the sake of the United States. Let it by all means 
 keep alive what is good in its inheritance; but let it re- 
 member always that the things so preserved are offer- 
 ings on the altar of the God of America. 
 
 The national application of this principle would mean, 
 in the first place, that we must cease to subject our im- 
 migrants to conditions of urban life which make it im- 
 possible for them to preserve the traditions and the arts 
 which they bring with them. In the second place, it will 
 necessitate a new course of study, by which all Americans 
 shall come to know, with some degree of intimacy, the 
 history, traditions and culture of all the groups which are 
 being incorporated into the body politic. This study 
 should not be antiquarian and retrospective; it should be 
 utiUtarian and prospective. It demands on all sides an 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 257 
 
 attitude of modesty, a spirit of receptiveness, and a 
 whole-souled devotion to the common good of the nation 
 which is here being created. 
 
 When we go to Europe, we feel the power and the lure 
 of the past. It is our habit to express a certain good- 
 himioured scorn for the European, on account of his 
 submissiveness to history and precedent. We need, 
 however, so to train our imagination that we shall come 
 to feel in this country the claim of the future, as po- 
 tently as the urge of the past is felt elsewhere. We have 
 the possibihty of a civihzation which shall be to that 
 of Greece and the Italian Republics what the scientific 
 power of the modern world is to that of antiquity. But 
 whether this possibility shall be realized or not is con- 
 tingent upon our intelligent handling of our opportu- 
 nities. There is no inevitability about it. There is no 
 fate, no self-executing law of evolution, which will bring 
 it about independently of our conscious will. If we 
 are capable of taking the long view and co-ordinating the 
 activities of our life to the glorious but far-distant goal, 
 it will be attained. If we are not, the opportunity which 
 now is ours will be dissipated. We shall sink into a 
 slavery to our machinery yet worse than that which we 
 endure to-day, and America will become the most sordid 
 and provincial of all the nations of the earth. 
 
 The spiritual leadership necessary for such an enter- 
 prise constitutes the opportunity of the schools, the uni- 
 versities and the Churches. In every community there 
 should be international groups, bound by a conscious 
 sense and an explicit declaration of loyalty to America, 
 and bringing together, for the sake of America, the 
 riches of their national patrimonies. The questions for 
 each constituent of such groups are these: What is there 
 
2S8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 in the culture I have inherited which could with advan- 
 tage to America be transplanted here? What of my best 
 can I offer to the growing civilization of the land to which 
 I have sworn allegiance? What unique thing has my old 
 country produced which will serve for the enrichment 
 of mankind in general, and specifically of my new coun- 
 try? 
 
 It is easy to see how vast a programme of profitable 
 work is thus laid open to the national and international 
 groups that already exist in this country, and to others 
 which could be founded to carry it out. In its developed 
 form, the plan would entail courses of lectures and the 
 preparation of text-books for use in schools and colleges. 
 The study of the subject in our educational institutions 
 might be undertaken either as a new item in the curri- 
 culum, or by a remodelling of the courses in history and 
 literature. Every preacher could find in it inexhaustible 
 material for his sermons. It would provide a legitimate 
 channel for those secondary loyalties and subsidiary 
 patriotisms of which I have spoken. It would change 
 these from being, what they too often are to-day, a 
 menace to the unity and progress of America, into 
 the most potent means for the attaiimient of these 
 ends. 
 
 No less a motive, however, than the religious concep- 
 tion of our nation's destiny can be adequate to the 
 fulfilment of its spiritual promise. The names of Athens 
 and Jerusalem are, in Emerson's phrase, "ploughed into 
 the history of the world," because their citizens conse- 
 crated themselves to Athens and Jerusalem as to their 
 gods. Sir John Seeley has well remarked that it would 
 sound incongruous for us to give in our public worship 
 the same place to our own nations and cities as the Jews 
 
RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 259 
 
 gave to theirs.^ It would indeed seem like a bad joke 
 for me to suggest to my own fellow-citizens that in their 
 churches they should sing, "Oh, pray for the peace of 
 Chicago. They shall prosper that love thee . . . God 
 is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved." Yet 
 until its citizens do thus think and feel towards Chicago, 
 Chicago cannot begin to be worthy of such veneration. 
 Until America and her destiny mean to us what the 
 laws of Athens meant to Socrates, and what the mission 
 of Israel meant to the Hebrew prophets, we cannot hope 
 either for a truly exalted patriotism or for a great out- 
 burst of national genius in art; since only this idealizing 
 enthusiasm can possibly quicken such an outburst. 
 
 Genius fructifies only in the directions in which the 
 national attention is canalized. That is why we are 
 to-day building magnificent railway-stations, but no 
 cathedrals, except imitations of European models; lux- 
 urious private dwellings (which latterly have manifested 
 an immense improvement in taste), but no national 
 theatres. That is why our creative energy, which ought 
 to be producing literature and philosophy of more than 
 Elizabethan splendour and more than Athenian pro- 
 fundity, is being drawn off into commercial enterprise. 
 We are giving our life to acquiring the means of purchas- 
 ing from Europe artistic satisfactions which are not 
 congruous with the special inspirations of our own na- 
 tional genius. 
 
 This phase, of course, is transitional, and the situation 
 is not desperate. We have our own great prophets and 
 poets. We are even beginning to discover them. Nor 
 do I wish in the least to disparage the spirit which has 
 created the Panama Canal, and which expresses itself 
 1 Natural Religion, Pt. ii, chap, iv ("Natural Religion and the State.") 
 
26o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 in such novel combinations of utility and magnificence 
 as the two great railway terminals of New York City, 
 the Union Station at Washington, and the Woolworth 
 Building, — one of the wonders of the world in its beauty, 
 as well as in the engineering science it expresses. But 
 we must also yoke this mighty energy and inventiveness 
 to the work of consciously upbuilding our civilization on 
 its ffisthetic, literary, political and religious sides. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 THE HOPE OF SPIRITUAL UNIFICATION 
 
 My purpose throughout this book has been to draw 
 attention to elements of rehgion which are verifiable 
 by experience, and to indicate the enormous task, and 
 the consequent golden opportunity, which lie before 
 the Churches. In conclusion, I would urge that if the 
 Churches should concentrate their attention upon these 
 verifiable elements, they would not only render a service 
 of unprecedented usefulness to mankind, but they would 
 also, without external coercion and without surrendering 
 any vital principle, be insensibly led on to a unity of 
 purpose and conviction in the light of which their sec- 
 tarian differences would sink into utter insignificance. 
 The mediaeval Church was right in the high valuation 
 it placed upon unanimity of spiritual conviction. It 
 was wrong in thinking that such unity could be brought 
 about by coercion and by the suppression of liberty of 
 thought and discussion. Such a course can produce 
 only a maimed intelligence or a hypocritical conformity. 
 Out of the struggle between the authoritarian principle 
 and the demand for freedom has sprung the compromise 
 called toleration. We now have a world which is riven 
 to shards on the spiritual side, and has almost ceased to 
 regard unity of inward conviction and inspiration as 
 possible, or even as desirable. 
 
 The ultimate reason for this state of things is that in 
 
 the life of to-day there is no general sense of sovereign 
 
 261 
 
262 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 and unconditional imperatives, to which all personal 
 and class interests ought to be subordinated. Chris- 
 tianity, indeed, embodies such an imperative; but the 
 Churches have lost their power to teach it. Their own 
 apostasy — their own repeated sacrifices of principle to in- 
 terest — have enervated them. When they do proclaim 
 the doctrine that the gaining of the whole world ought to 
 be counted as nothing in comparison with the interests of 
 the soul, their message falls upon ears rendered scornful 
 and incredulous by the memory of the way in which the 
 Church has repeatedly denied in practice the doctrine 
 which its lips afl&rm. Slowly the reduction and the 
 denudation of the claim of duty upon men has gone on, 
 until for most to-day the very word means no more 
 than self-interest. In every department of Hfe we see 
 what Newman called "the wild living intellect of man," 
 ybked to the steeds of passion and self-interest instead 
 of to high self-obliterating loyalties, and heading for 
 the abyss of animalism and sensuality. To-day no law 
 is obeyed except for gain. Money and power are desired 
 not as means of larger service and usefulness, but for 
 the sake of "the dark idolatry of self." Marriage is 
 reduced to a mere convenience, to be tolerated or aban- 
 doned at whim. Even such self-restraint as is practised, 
 is endured only for the sake of the future capacity for 
 enjoyment which it promises to secure. Self-advertise- 
 ment, self-worship, self-enrichment — these three alone 
 animate the conduct of multitudes. 
 
 No nation can be great, no nation can endure, whose 
 people rxm after the false gods of self and class. We must 
 regain for America the high olden loyalty of her children, 
 else her glorious story will be "gathered Uke a scroll 
 within the tomb." Our noble and puissant nation must 
 
CONCLUSION 263 
 
 be released from the Comus-spell that has bemused her, 
 and freed from her idolatry of pelf and luxury. She must 
 become aware of herself as entrusted with a divine mis- 
 sion to all humanity, and all her children must learn to 
 care far less for personal gain, or even for the immediate 
 advantage of their class, than for the abiding welfare of 
 the nation, whose glory is her power of universal service. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that such a loyalty as is needed 
 can be nothing less than a religion. It may not bear 
 the Christian name; it cannot be expressed solely in 
 Christian phraseology. But it must be such a de- 
 votion as men have never rendered save to their gods, 
 and such as cannot be inspired by any motive short of 
 what is counted ultimately sacred and inviolable. This 
 can only be engendered by blending the ideal inspira- 
 tions of all religious bodies, and by a re-interpretation of 
 religion in such language as shall show its identity with 
 the highest patriotism and its vital relation to the en- 
 during good of men and nations in the life that now is. 
 Every Christian Church, if it be wise, can express its 
 message in such terms. If it cannot, then it is in so far 
 not truly Christian; and its inability to do so will involve 
 and justify its own speedy supersession. 
 
 But what I am contending for is an interest more 
 supreme and transcendent than the maintenance of 
 Christianity in its outward form. No true inheritor 
 of the spirit of Christ would hesitate for a moment to 
 say: Let the name of Christ perish from the memory 
 of men, if only so is it possible for his spirit to be lifted 
 into sovereignty over their hearts and wills. It some- 
 times happens in the spiritual Hfe, though not in out- 
 ward nature, that that which is sown cannot be quick- 
 ened except it die; and it may be that the only condition 
 
264 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 upon which the spirit of Jesus can rise into newness of 
 life as an impelling force in future civilization, is that 
 outward homage to him shall disappear. I do not sug- 
 gest that this is certain or even likely to happen; my 
 point is that it were better so than that his name should 
 continue to be outwardly reverenced, while that for 
 which he lived and died is in practice trodden under foot. 
 Short, however, of such a complete disappearance of 
 the outward form of historic Christianity, it is certain 
 that the existing Churches must make radical changes 
 of policy and doctrine if they are to survive. The cur- 
 rent apologetic of orthodoxy is worse than futile as 
 addressed to a generation trained in critical philosophy 
 and in the methods and the rigorous standards of ex- 
 actitude characteristic of modern science. The Church 
 to-day stands face to face with the choice between its 
 letter and its life. It can preserve the outward forms 
 of traditional orthodoxy only at the cost of the stifling 
 of that spirit by which, and for the sake of which, they 
 were originally created. Christianity now stands where 
 Judaism stood at the beginning of the Christian era. 
 It must either receive and blend with its historic ele- 
 ments the new spiritual Ufe that is surging through the 
 world, or it must suSev a tragic but not unmerited super- 
 session. More than half of America is to-day without a 
 rehgion. Without a rehgion it cannot live, nor can it 
 hve with the religion of the past. The experience of ages 
 justifies the conviction that the old faith cannot again 
 prevail, except by an adaptation more radical and far- 
 reaching than any it has hitherto undergone. The ques- 
 tion, then, for the Churches is whether they value the let- 
 ter more than the spirit, and the past more than that fu- 
 ture, the creation of which is entrusted to men now living. 
 
CONCLUSION 265 
 
 Mere toleration of differences in religion is as beggarly 
 and unsatisfactory a compromise as it would be in our 
 knowledge of the external world. Our feeling in regard 
 to science is that universal and objective truth is to be 
 found; and so long as there is difference of belief we are 
 unsatisfied. Now, no man who is convinced of the uni- 
 versal validity of the principles of reason can doubt that 
 incontrovertible truth in the sphere of religion, whatever 
 it may prove to be, is at least attainable. If we have not 
 reached it, this is because our methods of inquiry have 
 not been right, or have not been adequately developed. 
 We have adhered to the pre-scientific methbds of anti- 
 quity in the search for ultimate religious truth, and the 
 results have inevitably proved discouraging; so much so 
 that we have even surrendered the ideal. We have grown 
 so accustomed to mere individualistic toleration of differ- 
 ences of view with regard to God and fate that we have 
 come not merely to acquiesce in perpetual diversity of 
 conviction as unavoidable, but almost to count it good. 
 The proposer, therefore, of a plan which aims, among 
 other things, at ending it, must say at least a word in 
 explanation of his desire to do so. 
 
 I would accordingly remind the reader that it is not 
 long since men were at sixes and sevens over many of the 
 questions of physical science. Not only did unity of 
 beUef in these matters appear impossible, but it was not 
 even felt to be necessary. To-day, however, we can see 
 that the immense enterprises — ^in engineering, in mining, 
 in the building up of systems for the transportation of 
 men and commodities, in medicine and surgery, in the 
 improvement and safeguarding of the public health, and 
 in a thousand other matters of vital importance — which 
 have transformed the world within the memory of men 
 
266 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 still living, could never have even begun to be possible 
 had not the old diversity of belief in regard to the make 
 of the physical world been driven out and replaced by 
 approximate unity. The world to-day is suffering spirit- 
 ually by reason of the diversity of rehgious beliefs even 
 more than it formerly suffered materially through the 
 lack of unanimity in the understanding of physical facts. 
 
 It is, moreover, impossible for thoughtful men to rest 
 satisfied with a state of affairs which inevitably leaves 
 men's moral and spiritual convictions at the stage of 
 mere beliefs. Rehgion will not rise to its full power until 
 experience has given place to experiment, and until, 
 wherever possible, conscientious convictions are trans- 
 formed into demonstrated truths. 
 
 It is not possible at present to forecast the immense 
 achievements in the regeneration of human nature, in 
 the wedding of mighty genius to forms of unpredictable 
 efficiency and beauty, which will ensue when our com- 
 mand over the forces that generate character is as com- 
 plete as our present control over the resources of the ex- 
 ternal world. The anticipation, however, of such an era 
 of man's godlike self-fulfihnent, is justified by every ana- 
 logy of experience. No man in Francis Bacon's day could 
 have foreseen the effect of his proposals to cultivate nat- 
 ural knowledge as a means for the relief of man's estate; 
 and, to many, his visions of the triumphs to be won by 
 his method doubtless seemed baseless and fantastic. The 
 hope of the world in religion must also remain vague. It 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be. But it is as rational 
 to anticipate a surpassing glory to result from spiritual 
 unification as it would be fooUsh to attempt to delineate 
 that glory in detail before the hour of its manifestation 
 shall arrive. 
 
INDEX 
 
 B 
 
 Addison, 159, 161 
 
 /Esop's fables compared with 
 Christ's parables, 102 
 
 Agnosticism, scientific and eth- 
 ical, x 
 
 AiciBiADES, 128 notes, 158 
 
 America, national task of, 236; 
 ideals and achievements of, 
 243 S.; problem of immigration 
 in, 244, 251-5; negro problem 
 of, 246-7; unification of, 250; 
 evolution of civilization in, 
 
 Apology, Plato's, 127, 128; cited, 
 
 129 note; 131, 188, 215 
 Areopagitica, Milton's, 171 
 Aristophanes, 131, 134, 158 
 Aristotle, 113, 122, 180, 205, 
 
 209, 216 
 Arnou), Matthew, 68, 75, 77 f., 
 
 109, 137, 164, 17s, 187, 192, 202 
 Asceticism, 207 ff. 
 Athanasian Creed, and Personahty 
 
 of God, 25 f. 
 "Atheism": of Socrates, 132; vul- 
 gar conception of, 133 
 Athens, religion and law in, 227 
 Augustine, St., his City of God, 5, 
 
 21-2, 94, 117, 214 
 Authority, perverter of moral 
 
 judgment, 134 f. 
 
 Bacon: his "idols," 144, 161, 266 
 
 Baconian method, 176 
 
 Banquet, parable of, 94 
 
 Banquet, Xenophon's, 128 note 2 
 
 Baptism, social meaning of, 24, 221 
 
 of Jesus, four difiering 
 
 accounts of, 89 
 
 Bakclay, Robert, 183 
 
 Baxter, Richard, iidnote 
 
 Beatific Vision, 209 
 
 Behaviour, three tjfpes of, 69 f. 
 
 Beliefs not tolerated by modem 
 nations, 224 f. 
 
 "Benefit of clergy,'' 223 
 
 Bennett, Arnold, cited, 27 
 
 Bergson, 26; his elan vital, 52; 
 criticism of, 53, 169; on extra- 
 logical mentahty, 170, 183-4; 
 on duration, 198 f. 
 
 Bernhardi, 237 
 
 Bible, Protestant theory oi, 44-5; 
 current attitude towards, 75; 
 revelation in, 155; inspiration 
 of, 161 ff.; Western world and 
 the, 248-9 
 
 Birth of Jesus, legends of, 88 
 
 Blasphemy, Socrates charged with, 
 133 
 
 Book of Mormon, 182 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 193; cited, 
 196-7 
 
 267 
 
268 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Buddliism, 113 
 BUNYAN, 162 
 
 Bdtler, Samtjel, on natural 
 selection, 51-2 
 
 Catholidsm and nationality, 229 
 
 Caiises and conditions, confusion 
 of, iQS and note 
 
 Cave men, Plato's allegory of, 
 168 f. 
 
 Cebes, 203, 209 f. 
 
 "Choir Invisible," George Eliot's, 
 191 
 
 Christianity, original elements of, 
 S; social message of, 14; future 
 of, 120 f.; not merely hedonistic, 
 125; outlook for, 263-4 
 
 "Christian Science," 182 
 
 Church and State, 218 S.; in Eng- 
 land, 221 flf.; why modem States 
 are Churches, 223 £E. 
 
 Churches, dissensions of, x, xi; 
 Position and Outlook of, chap, 
 i; Causes of Comparative Fail- 
 ure of, chap, ii; erroneous in- 
 dictment of, 2 £f.; corruption of, 
 4; standard for judging, ibid.; 
 preserved the fragments of 
 Grffico-Roman civilization, 5 ff.; 
 mediators of innovating ideas, 
 8; membership of, in U. S., 10 BE.; 
 mistakes of, 18 £E.; distinctive 
 functions of, 28 S.; "institu- 
 tional" work of, criticized, ibid.; 
 and schools, 32 f.; sum- 
 mary of reforms needed in, 41-2; 
 relation of, to nationality and 
 
 the State, 217 ff.; task of Amer- 
 ican, 236, 242, 257, 261 ff. 
 Churchill, Winston, 39 
 Civilization, evolution of, 251, 
 
 2S4f. 
 Clergy, demands made upon, 27 f., 
 31; causes of decline of caUbre 
 of, 38 ff. 
 Clifford, W. K., cited, 20 
 Commandment, the first, 227 note 
 Commimistic practice coinciding 
 with individualistic theory, 219 
 Compromise, Morley's, cited, 50 
 Comte's rejection of metaphysics, 
 
 ix 
 Consciousness-in-general, 64 
 
 CONYBBAKE, F. C, 8$ HOte 
 
 CosmopoUtanism, fallacy of, 234; 
 sound ideal of , 237, 239 ff. 
 
 Creeds, misuse of, 24; inadequacy 
 of, 25; value of, 26; need for re- 
 interpretation of, 40; uniform- 
 ity of creed, why anciently in- 
 sisted on, 224 f. 
 
 Crito, Plato's, 129, 188 
 
 Cromwell's Ironsides, 162 
 
 Cubists, 169 
 
 D 
 
 "Daimon" of Socrates, the, 128-9 
 
 and note 
 Defence of Socrates, Xenophon's, 
 
 cited, 129 
 Democracy, present crudity of, 
 
 156; value of, 250 
 Dialogue, the Platonic, as literary 
 
 vehicle, 157 
 DiOTIMA, 167 
 
 Docetic heresy, 91 
 
INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 E 
 
 Ecce Homo, Seeley's, 78 
 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker's, 45; 
 cited, 139 note, 140 
 
 Education, Socratic theory of, 143, 
 151; monopoly of, by the me- 
 diaeval Church, 222; compulsory, 
 by modem States, ihid. 
 
 Ego, relation of, to time, 199 
 
 Eliot, George, 69, 191 
 
 Emerson, 95; on Jesus, 113; on 
 Plato, 156 note; on inspiration, 
 174 f.; 178-9, 207, 258 
 
 Empedocles on Etna, Arnold's, 
 quoted, 109-10 
 
 Erasmus, 44 
 
 Eschatology, 98 note 
 
 Established Church, the English, 
 221 S. 
 
 Eternal punishment, Plato's myths 
 of, 153; Platonic, Christian, and 
 Augustinian doctrines of, 214 
 
 Eternity and time, 198, 202 
 
 Ethical Movement, the, 12, 15 S. 
 
 Ethical teaching of Socrates, 139 ff. 
 
 Ethics, Aristotle's, cited, 205 
 
 Eucharist, 23; social function of, 
 ibid.; as a political test, 225 
 
 Eugenics, Plato's theory of, 151 
 
 Euthydemus, Plato's, 146 
 
 Edthydemus, 146-9 
 
 Evangelists, their dependence on 
 Jesus, 84-s 
 
 Evolution, misunderstandings of, 
 49 £f.; John Morley on, 50; Berg- 
 son on, 52-3; propounders of not 
 materialists, 54, 194 
 
 .Existence and Reality, 55 f., 200 
 
 Fathers, Greek and Latin, con- 
 trasted, 7 
 
 Federal principle, value of the, 251 
 
 Fire-bringer, Moody's, quoted, 154 
 
 "Form," 176 
 
 Fox, George, 183 
 
 Freedom of religious belief, why 
 tolerated, 224 
 
 Futurists, 169 
 
 Genealogies of Jesus through 
 Joseph, 88 
 
 General Will, the, 74, 178 
 
 Genius, dynamics of, 259 
 
 Germany, unification of, 221; Mr. 
 Roosevelt's criticism of, 238 
 
 God and the Bible, Arnold's, 77 
 
 God, Athanasian Creed on, 25 f.; 
 Re-interpretation of, chap, iii; 
 experiential basis for belief in, 
 43; existence of, sSi theoretical 
 and practical view of, 57; def- 
 inition of in XXXIX Articles, 
 58; need of, analyzed, 62; per- 
 sonaUty of, 64 f.; elements of 
 perfection of, 67; psychological 
 account of, 68-9; reality of, 
 70 ff.; symbols of, 72 ff.; "God 
 behind the gods," 73; dem- 
 ocratic conception of, 124; 
 Socratic conception of, 133 and 
 note; the Jewish, 248 
 
 Gods, common function of, 69; 
 nature of tribal, 226 
 
 Good, nature of the, 139 flf. 
 
270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Goodness and effidency, io6fE. 
 
 the divine, Socrates on 
 
 133; Mansel and Mill on, 134 £f. 
 
 Gorgias, Plato's, 142, 153 and note 
 
 Gospels, conditions for studjong, 
 76 ff.; effects of higher criticism 
 on, ibid.; works recommended 
 for elucidating, 77-9; Schmiedel 
 on, 79; "harmonies" of, 81; prin- 
 ciple for criticizing, 114; see also 
 titles 
 
 Greece, modem, 231 
 
 personal, 190; distinguished from 
 eternity, 197 £F.; root of the 
 desire for, 212 
 
 Individual, sacredness of the, 66-7 
 
 Inner Light, 170, 183 
 
 Inspiration, chap, vi; Biblical, 
 161 £f.; Platonic theory of, 
 166 £f.; conditions of experienc- 
 ing, 167; definition of, 185 
 
 Isaiah, 185, 249 
 
 Italy, unification of, 220 f. 
 
 H 
 
 Heminge and Condell, 85 
 
 Herv£, Gustave, 224, 23s 
 
 Higher criticism, 77, 80 
 
 Holy Alliance of the Peoples, 
 Mazzini's, dted, 239 
 
 Holy Ghost, the, 179 
 
 Homer, 161 
 
 Hooker, 45; his Ecclesiastical 
 Polity dted, 139 note, 140 
 
 Humanity (the Positivist abstrac- 
 tion), 190 
 
 Humanity and nationality, 228-9 
 
 HuxiEY, on the Resurrection, 91, 
 243 
 
 Ideals, reality of, 68 
 
 "Idols," the Baconian, 144 
 
 Imitation of Christ, 121 
 
 Immigrant population of America, 
 243; its relation to the RepubUc, 
 244, 250; problem of assim- 
 ilating, 251-5 
 
 Immortahty, chap, vii; must be 
 
 James, William, 199 
 
 Jesus, leadership of, 20 f.; "Re- 
 discovery" of, chap, iv; few 
 facts known concerning, 81; his- 
 toridty of, 82, 92; no contem- 
 porary written accounts of, 82; 
 genealogies of, through Joseph 
 as his father, 88; resurrection- 
 stories of, 89 ff.; sayings of, 90, 
 92, loi, lis; idolatrous attitude 
 towards, 92; Parables of, 93 S.., 
 105; his "secret" teaching, 
 95 fit.; revolution threatened by, 
 97; his answers to trick ques- 
 tions, 98-9 and notes; his teach- 
 ing of non-resistance, 100 f.; his 
 reaUsm, 103; his religious in- 
 tuition, 104; secret of his dem- 
 ocratic faith, 112; moral origin- 
 ality of, 114; repudiation of 
 title "Good Master" by, 115 f.; 
 original tradition of, 117 f.; has 
 he "had his day"? 118 f., 263-4; 
 real resurrection of, 122; his 
 teaching on salvation, 213 
 
INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 Jewish nation, struggle for exist 
 ence of, 231; religious patriot- 
 ism of, 332, 248-9 
 
 Jews, connection of politics and 
 religion among the, 179, 221, 
 226; of varying nations, dif- 
 ferences among, 229 f. 
 
 Jingoism, 236, 242 
 
 Job, 74 
 
 John (Gospel), 87 G. 
 
 Joseph, genealogies of, 88 
 
 JowETT, Benjamin, cited, 167, 
 202, 216 
 
 Judaism, liberal, leaders of, 12 
 
 JtJLiCHEK, on the Parables, 94, 99 
 
 Kaiser, the, 221 
 
 Kales, A. M., 245 note 
 
 Kant, 47, 121, ig8 
 
 Knowledge: and virtue, 143; ob- 
 stacles to, 144, 150; origin of, 
 203 
 
 L 
 
 Lazarus, Parable of, in 
 
 Ledba, J. H., on function of reli- 
 gion, 70 and note 
 
 Lewis, Rev. Elvbt, 2 
 
 Liberalism, British, 219 
 
 Life, problem of worth of, 154 
 
 LiGtroRi, S. Alfonso di, 73 
 
 LrppMANN, W., ix 
 
 Literature and Dogma, Arnold's, 
 77 f.; cited, 137 note; its, 192 
 
 Logos, 48 
 
 Luke (Gospel), 85 ff.; dependence 
 on Mark, 85; contrast with 
 
 Matt., 86-7; problem of Sermon 
 on Mount in, 99 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, 162; on Milton, 173 
 note 
 
 Macbeth, 164 
 
 Machinery, tyranny of, i6o 
 
 Man, spiritual nature of, 194 £E. 
 
 Man versus the State, Spencer's, 219 
 
 Mansel, 134 
 
 Mariolatry, 73 
 
 Mark (Gospel), 85, 87; compared 
 with Matt, and L\ike, ilid.; 
 human traits of Jesus in, 87; 
 secrecy of Jesus in, 95-6; story 
 of Rich Young Man in, 115 f. 
 
 Marriage, ecclesiastical and dvil, 
 222 
 
 MateriaUsm, popular, S4> of Old 
 Testament, 55, iS7. iQ3 
 
 Matthew (Gospel), 85 ff.; depend- 
 ence on Mark, ibid.; apologetic 
 motive of, 86; Parables omitted 
 from, ibid.; contrast with Luke, 
 86-7; dted, 96; problem of 
 Sermon on Mount in, 99; dis- 
 tortion of a story in, 115 
 
 Mazzini, 221; cited, 239, 241 
 
 Meleager, 189 
 
 "Melting-pot" theory, criticism 
 of, 251 ff. 
 
 Memorabilia of Socrates, Xeno- 
 phon's, 146 ff. 
 
 Messiah, Jesus interpreted as, 86 
 
 Metaphysics, ix, 56 ff.; 198 ff. 
 
 Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick's, 
 cited, 208 note 
 
272 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mill, J. S., 58; his Examination of 
 Hamilton cited, 135-6. 
 
 Milton, as prose-writer, 171; 
 Macaulay on, 172; his mental 
 development, 173 f.; his Reason 
 of Church Government cited, 
 ibid.; controversial works of, 
 180 f. 
 
 Mind and body, mystery of, 193 f. 
 
 Miracles, Jesus's repudiation of, 
 117 
 
 Moody, W. V., 134 
 
 Moral law, essence of selfhood, 
 74; universality of, 241 
 
 Morality, basis of, 152 
 
 MoRLEY, John, cited, 50 
 
 Mormonism, 182 
 
 Myth, Magic and Morals, Cony- 
 beare's, 85 note 
 
 Myths, religious, 72; Plato's, 153 
 
 N 
 
 Nations, relation of, to their cit- 
 izens, 227 ff., to humanity, 241; 
 conditions of survival of, 230 ff. 
 
 Nationality, Religion and, chap, 
 viii; spiritual dynamics of, 
 220 ff.; psychic elements of, 227; 
 more potent than sect or creed, 
 229 ff.; danger of misunder- 
 standing, 233 ; force of, for good 
 or evil, 234 ff.; Mazzini on, 239 
 
 Natural selection, 52 
 
 Nature, moral indifference of, 
 taught by Jesus, ioq; ethical 
 significance of the doctrine, no 
 
 Navarino, Battle of, 231 
 
 Negroes in America, problem of, 
 
 246-7 
 Nena Freedom, Wilson's, 245 note 
 Newman, J. H., 10, 46, 262 
 
 NUSTZSCHB, 152 
 
 Nonconformist churches, English, 
 
 29 f. 
 Novum Organum, Bacon's, cited, 
 
 144 
 
 O 
 
 Over-Soul, 179; nation as the, 228 
 
 Parables of Jesus, the, 93; Schmidt 
 on, ibid.; Jiilicher on, 94; 
 "secrecy" of their teaching, 
 95 ff.; compared with iEsop's 
 fables, 102; two groups of; (i) 
 Efficiency Parables, 105 ff.; (2) 
 Ethical Parables, iii ff. 
 
 Patriotism, good and bad, 233; 
 a universal moral principle, 241; 
 opposition of jingoism to, ibid.; 
 Mr. Tarkington on, 242 note 
 
 Paul, St., his Epistles, 83; his de- 
 pendence on Jesus, 84, 145; his 
 inspiration, 165 f.; his twofold 
 view of resurrection, 213 
 
 Pbnn, William, 183 
 
 Phaedo, Plato's, 129, 153, 188, 
 192, 193, 195 note, 203, 204 note, 
 
 207, 209, 2II-I2, 2X5 
 
 Phaedrus, Plato's, 132, 180 
 Pharisee and Publican, Parable of, 
 
 112 f. 
 Philosophy, 47, S4 ff. 
 Pilgrim Fathers, 162 
 
INDEX 
 
 273 
 
 Plato, 6, 47, 48, $4, 69, "3, 127, 
 iSij ''■SSi Emerson on, 156 note; 
 dramatic genius of, 137-8; on 
 inspiration, 166 £f.; his rational- 
 ism, 169, 192, 209; on eternal 
 punishment, 214 
 
 Poetry and myth, function of, 154 
 
 Politics, Aristotle's, 180 
 
 Positivism, maxims of, x; and 
 immortality, 190, 191 
 
 "Power not ourselves," 74, 175 
 
 Priests and kings, historic relation 
 of, 226 
 
 Prodigal Son, Parable of, in f. 
 
 Progress, evolution and, 51 
 
 Prophetic idea of God, the, 72 
 
 Prophet of Nazareth, Schmidt's, 
 cited, 19 note, 79, 93-4 
 
 Prophets, their inspiration, 162 S. 
 
 "Protestant Episcopal" Church, 
 II 
 
 Protestantism, original self-con- 
 tradiction in, 44 f.; attitude of, 
 towards authority and reason, 
 4S; development of, 46; a defect 
 of. 73; and salvation, 125; its 
 doctrine of BibUcal inspiration, 
 162 flf. 
 
 Punishment, purposes of, 153 
 
 Purgatorian doctrine, the Roman 
 CathoUc, I2S 
 
 Purgatorian doctrine, the Pla- 
 tonic, 213 S. 
 
 Puritanism, inspiration of, 162 
 
 Quakerism, 170, 183 
 Quakers, Australian, 224 
 
 R 
 
 Raleigh, Sir W., 77 
 
 Reality, distinguished from exist- 
 ence, ss; volitional category, $7, 
 591 religious craving for, 60; 
 transcendent order of, 201 
 
 Reason of Church Government, 
 Milton's, cited, 173 f. 
 
 Religio Medici, Browne's, cited, 
 196-7 
 
 Religion, sociological function of, 
 xi; definition of, 69; and na- 
 tionality, chap, viii; individual- 
 istic conception of, 218; connec- 
 tion of, with the State, 220; good 
 and bad religions, 233 
 
 ReUgious needs, distinguished 
 from doctrines, xi f.; nature of, 
 
 60; how satisfied, 61 f.; 
 
 task, establishment of right 
 
 relations, 66; practices 
 
 and their results, 70 f.; 
 
 functions of modem "secular" 
 
 States, 221 fE.; truth, 
 
 possibility of attaining, 265 
 
 Republic, Plato's, 133 and note; 
 142; 151 and notes; 168 f. 
 
 Resurrection of Jesus, the stories 
 of, 89 ff. 
 
 Revelation, divine, meaning of, 
 15s; in each national hterature, 
 156; the American, 248 ff. 
 
 Book of, 165 
 
 Ritual, use and abuse of, 36 f. 
 
 Roman Church, 10 f.; its con- 
 troversy with Protestantism, 45; 
 its appeal to private judgment, 
 ibid.; and nationalism, 229 
 
274 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 237-8 
 Rousseau, 219 
 
 RUSKIN, 140 
 
 Russell, Bertrand, cited, 51 
 Russia, abolition of serfdom in, 
 246!. 
 
 Sacraments, magical and social 
 
 functions of, 23 f . 
 Salvation, nature and conditions 
 
 of, I24f. 
 
 Saviours, 124 f. 
 
 Schmidt, Nathaniel, 19 note, 79; 
 
 dted, 93-4 
 ScHMiEDEL, Paul, on the Gospels, 
 
 79 
 Schoonmaker, E. D., 2 
 Schweitzer, Albert, 98 note 
 Seaman, Sir Owen, 160 f. 
 Seeley, Sir J., cited, xiii; his Ecce 
 Homo, 78; on nationality, 228, 
 232, 258 
 Self-depredation, in all ages, 160 
 Self-Reliance, Emerson's, dted, 175 
 Sermon on the Mount: to whom 
 addressed? 99 f.; not a "ser- 
 mon,'' 100; its non-resistance 
 doctrine, loi 
 Shakespeare, dted, 104 and 
 
 note; 155, 171 
 Shelley, 201 
 SiDGWiCK, dted, 14s, 208 note 
 
 SiMMIAS, 202, 209 f. 
 
 Smith, Joseph, 182 
 
 Sodalism, spread of, due to Euro- 
 pean War, 234; fallacy in Marx's 
 theory of, 23 s 
 
 Sodalists, the German, 235 
 
 Sodety of Friends, 183 
 
 Socrates, xiii, 20, 54, 69; "Res- 
 urrection" of, chap, v; "method 
 and secret" of, 126, 138-9, 
 146 £f.; comparison with Jesus, 
 126, 130; influence on contem- 
 poraries, ibid.; parentage of, 
 ibid.; as soldier — ^his hardihood, 
 128 and note; personal ugliness 
 of, ibid.; Plato's and Xenophon's 
 pictures of, 130; Delphic oracle 
 on, 131; difference of, from the 
 Sophists, ibid.; "atheism" of, 
 132 f.; his theory of the Good, 
 139 ff.; on education of rulers, 
 142, 151; weakness of his ethical 
 doctrine, 145-6; his conversa- 
 tion with Euthydemus, 146-9; 
 his personality, as depicted by 
 Plato, 158-9; his account of 
 inspiration, 167 f., 180; story of 
 his death, 188 £F.; on pre- 
 existence of the soul, 203; on 
 mutual generation of opposites, 
 ibid.; on self-denial, 206; on 
 nature of soul, 210; grandeur of 
 his spirit, 2i6 
 
 " Son of man," 19 note. 
 
 Sophists, Socrates and the, 130 f., 
 
 150 
 Soul, nature of the, 210 
 Space and Time, 56 
 Spencer, Herbert, cited, 65, 219 
 Spiritual unification, obstacles to, 
 
 261-2; possibility and promise 
 
 of, 265-6 
 State, the Platonic, 143, 151 
 Stewart, J. A., 153 note, 154 
 
INDEX 
 
 275 
 
 Straver, Rev. P. M., 28; cited, 
 
 31 note 
 Symbols, religious, 72 £f. 
 Symposium, Plato's, dted, 128 
 
 notes, 129, 158, 167, 168 
 Sjmoptics: see Gospels, and under 
 
 titles 
 
 Talents, Parable of the, 107 f. 
 
 Takkington, B., 39, 242 note 
 
 Tartarus, 214-15 
 
 Tatian, 81 
 
 Technique and genius, 170 
 
 Teleology, evolution and, 51 
 
 Tennyson, 70, 118 
 
 Teetullian, 214 
 
 Theology, compared with astrol- 
 ogy and science, xiif.; the So- 
 cratic, 133 fE. 
 
 Time, nature of, 199 f. 
 
 Toleration, limits of, in modem 
 nations, 224 f.; an imsatisfac- 
 tory compromise, 265 
 
 Transubstantiation, 23 
 
 Trinity, basis of doctrine of, 179 
 
 Tyeell, George, 10; his Chris- 
 tianity at the Cross-Roads cited, 
 60; criticism of, 61 f. 
 
 U 
 
 Ulfilas, 7 
 
 Underworld, Platonic myth of the, 
 213 ff. 
 
 Unitarianism, Emerson's, 179 
 Utilitarianism, intiiitional basis of, 
 208 and note 
 
 Variation, "spontaneous," 52 
 Verification in religion, xii 
 Vineyard, Parable of Labourers in, 
 
 112 
 Virgin Birth, 25 
 
 W 
 
 Watson, William, cited, 195 
 Westminster Confession, 209 
 Will, the General, 74, 178 
 Wilson, President, 245 note 
 Women's equality with men, 
 
 Plato on, 151 and note 
 "Wrestings of Scripture," 116 
 
 Xenophon, 127, 128 note; cited, 
 129, 146 £E. 
 
 Yahwe, 227 note 
 
 Zangwill, I., cited, s$, 251 
 
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