fdfs }\\\:\*^'—. II I!i'.ll!l!i!|iii(:ii!litlJiilil slim ill Ki!ilil!;lil;l!'.lir^i:(M m^' m mm g^pWHan iMttliHiliMiilti'. :i!iiUltitliliith«!Miti:iic{r CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library BR125 .R18 Humanity at the cross-roads, by John Her olin 3 1924 029 238 684 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029238684 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS WORKS BY JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, P.P. Humanity at the Cross-Roads To every thoughtful man and woman these are dctys freighted with profound significance for the future of humanity. The solemn responsibility rests upon the men and women of this generation to determine w^hat direction the civilization of the future shall take. The Culture of PersonaUty This inspiring work is divided into fourteen thought- ful chapters on various aspects of personality, on the training of the mind, the mastery of the affections, the education of the will, and kindred themes. A New Philosophy of Life We are living to-day in the midst of a profound thought movement, which has found expression in many different forms, each embodying certain truths, and each open to criticism — Christian Science, Mental Science, Metaphysical Healing, Faith Cure, The Em- manuel Movement, various New Thought Centres, etc. The writer believes that the truly Scientific and Religious principles underlying all these kindred phases of thought, can and should be clearly set forth, and their truth applied to human Ufe in the whole range of its experience. Size: 5X x 7% inches. Cloth binding, $1.50 Net; Leathercraft binding, $3.50 Net. DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS By JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, D.D. AUTHOR OF "THE CULTURE OF PERSONAUTY." THE NEW PHILOSOPHY OF UFE." ETC. NEW YORK DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 214-220 East 23d Street Copyright, igi5 Bt Dodge Publishing Company HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS CONTENTS PAGE forewoed 9 The Vitalitt to Gbow .... 37 The Honesty to Accept the Truth 67 A Spiritual Conception of Life . 103 The Courage to Live Reality . 135 The Knowledge of God . . . 167 Broad Enough to Include All Hu- manity 198 The Creation of Righteousness . 232 The Transformation of Society . 267 The Love That Establishes Peace AND Goodwill on Earth . . 296 The Realization of Mortality . 328 FOREWORD |OD'S great teachers are great men and great events. The world is witnessing to- day, in the tragic conflict of the nations, as great and significant an event as has ever taken place in human history. Its great lessons with their sol- emn warnings and their mighty inspira- tions, are freighted with meaning for Government, for Society, for Morals and Religions. Great as is the tragedy of the present hour, it would be a vastly greater tragedy, if, after the smoke of battle had cleared away and peace had once more been established, the world should be content to continue its polit- ical, social, moral and religious life, just 9 FOREWORD as it had been lived heretofore. Then we should indeed be convicted of total blindness to the new visions dawning, and should be proven deaf to the solemn warnings and profound truths growing out of this great world-event. The deepest prayer of every life these days should be, "O God, open my eyes to see, and make my heart and mind receptive to understand the great lessons of the hour." Great changes are taking place, and still greater changes must come in the near future. The simple fact is that the world can never again be the same as it has been. The responsibility rests upon us — the men and women of this generation — to determine what direc- tion the civilization of the future shall take. To all thoughtful minds the question that persists in presenting it- self is : What of Religion in this crisis? What has it done? What is it doing? What is its relation to the chaotic con- 10 FOREWORD ditions of "Christian" Europe? How is it to be affected by them? We have all felt that the finest expression of the religious spirit was being voiced more and more clearly of late, in terms of unity and co-operation, of righteous- ness and justice, of peace and good- will, of love and brotherliness. What means this monstrous perversion of all that has come to seem highest and best in himian life? Two opposing views have been taken of the relation of organized religion to present-day conditions both in warlike Europe and in "peaceful" America. According to the first view. Religion has been proven a failure. The militar- ism of European nations, the selfish commercialism of America, are the clear evidence. This opinion finds expres- sion in phrases that greet the eye in whatever direction we turn, such as "The Collapse of Christianity," "The 11 FOREWORD FaUure of the Church," "The Death Knell of Religion," etc. John Galsworthy, in a recent article in Scrihner's Magazine, thus represents this widely heard view: "Three hun- dred thousand church spires raised to the glory of Christ! Three hundred million human creatures baptized into his service! And war to the death of them all! I trust the Almighty to give the victory to my armies!" "Let your hearts beat to God, and your fists in the face of the enemy!" "In prayer we call God's blessing on our valiant troops !" "God on the lips of each poten- tate, and, under the hundred thousand spires, prayer that twenty-two million servants of Christ may receive from God the blessed strength to tear and blow each other to pieces, to ravage and burn, to wrench husbands from wives, fathers from their children, to starve the poor, and everywhere destroy the 12 FOREWORD works of the spirit! Prayer under the hundred thousand spires for the blessed strength of God, to use the noblest, most loyal instincts of the human race to the ends of carnage! God be with us to the death and dishonor of our foes (whose God He is no less than ours), the God who gave His only begotten Son to bring on earth peace and good will to men !" And then Mr. Galsworthy concludes, "No creed in these days when two and two are put together — can stand against such reeling subversion of its foundation. After this mon- strous mockery, beneath this grinning skull of irony, how shall there remain faith in a religion preached and prac- tised to such ends. When this war is over and reason resvmies its sway, our dogmas will be found to have been scored through forever. Whatever else may be the outcome of this business, let 13 FOREWORD us at least realize the truth: It is the death of Christianity as it has been." The opposing view to this proceeds from the spirit of self-complacency, that says: "There is nothing wrong with Christianity. The church is not seriously at fault; it cannot be blamed for present conditions either in Europe or America. See how it has steadily grown in the number both of its organ- izations and its adherents! Mark the increase of its wealth and the develop- ment of its missionary enterprises! Note the multiplication of its charities and benevolences I See how the church has stimulated the spirit of altruism, that finds so large an expression to-day both within the organization and out- side in Society! Remember the vast simis of money raised, and the shiploads of provisions that have been sent to relieve the suffering abroad! Surely Christianity should not be criticised." 14 FOREWORD And while all these facts and many- others cannot be gainsaid, the thought- ful man is not fully convinced, and feels that such "defenders of the faith" are committing the error that self-compla- cency always commits, i. e., hiding its eyes, ostrich-fashion, from many glar- ing facts that cannot longer be ignored. Let us admit frankly that while both of these opposing views contain much of truth, still they are extreme views, and neither is altogether fair to the other. Suppose there should be possi- ble a third view, more in harmony with all the facts than either view we have mentioned ! What if the true explana- tion of the incongruous situation in which Religion finds itself to-day, be due not to the "failure" of true Chris- tianity, nor yet to causes and conditions for which the Church is in no sense responsible. Suppose the world-condi- tions and the inconsistencies and ap- 15 FOREWORD parent helplessness so patent in organ- ized religion, be due to the fact that true Christianity — the real religion of Jesus — had never been seriously or persis- tently tried in the world as yet. If Nietzsche was right, there has been only one true Christian in the world, and he died on the cross. As a matter of fact this is the very thing that is beginning to dawn on people generally. Indi- viduals have seen this before, but for the most part, the people have imagined that Christianity as we know it to-day flowed directly from the life and teach- ings of its Founder. And now, sud- denly, with the coming of this hideous conflict, the scales have fallen from the eyes of multitudes. The war has done what a thousand books or ten thousand sermons could never do in arousing men and women from their smug self-com- placency and forcing them to see the wide gulf that separates Christianity- 16 FOREWORD the-system, that has grown up since the first century, from the pure spirit- ual and universal religious movement that Jesus inaugurated. All down through these centuries there has scarcely been a time when some great prophetic soul did not catch the vision of a spiritual religion and utter his protest, more or less openly, against the system of organized religion of his day. Sometimes he was dealt with leniently by the church authorities, more often harsher methods were em- ployed. All through Europe to-day can still be seen those cruel implements with which thousands of men and women were tortured and put to death by the authority of the Christian church, solely because they dared to stand for the things for which Jesus stood, in opposition to the organization which bore his name and professed to represent him in the world. As we read 17 FOREWORD the history of these centuries we know that the flame of a pure and spiritual religion was kept alive mainly through the lives of those whom the Church despised and, when it could, put to death. Still more nimierous in the last cen- tury have been the voices raised in pro- test against the contrast that existed between Christianity-the-system, and the religion of Jesus. Carlyle had a profound reverence for Jesus Christ, but out of a righteous indignation he thundered his condemnations against the hypocrisy, sham and pretense of the religious system of his day. John Rus- kin, with his new sense of human brotherhood, sought by voice and pen to bring the "system" into closer har- mony with the principles of Jesus. The Earl of Shaftesbury gave his whole life to improving the condition of Eng- land's poor, but confessed at the close 18 FOREWORD of his life that Christian people and church leaders had shown little or no interest in his work. Ralph Waldo Emerson in this country, while he re- signed his pulpit, was nevertheless all his life, the preacher of a spiritual re- ligion in contrast with the formal "sys- tem" from which he preferred to stand aloof. Or, if one thinks of the voices raised within the church during the last cen- tury, there have been in England men like Charles Kingsley, Frederick W. Robertson, Frederick Dennison Maur- ice, Canon Liddon; and in this country, Channing, Horace BushneU, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Heber Newton, not to mention the names of the great prophets still living; all of whom have devoted their lives to the bringing of Christianity into truer har- mony with the ideals and the spirit of Jesus, and making men see the gulf 19 FOREWORD that separated the two. And yet, gen- erally speaking, these prophetic voices have remained unheeded, and their warnings have had but slight effect upon the system of organized religion taken as a whole. To use a familiar illustration of what has been repeatedly witnessed: Here is some old structure, e. g., a hotel or factory that gives shelter to human lives. More than once fear has been expressed that the buUding is unsafe, that the fire protection does not protect, the stairways are too narrow, the exits too few, the water-supply insufficient. But the repeated warnings have faUen on deaf ears ; the owner of the building has taken the chance of nothing ever happening and has postponed making any improvements on his property. And then one day comes the catas- trophe — the great fire, — and scores of lives are lost. The application is 20 FOREWORD evident: for the past two generations, the prophetic voices of the great spir- itual experts have been sounding in our ears. They have pointed out the real weakness of organized religion, its superficiality, its formalism, its ten- dency to hark back to the past, oblivious of the revelations of truth that are ever coming with each new day; its emphasis upon the "mint, anise and cummin," and its neglect of the weightier matters of mercy and justice and love, and above all, its wide divergence from the spirit and teachings of its professed Foimder. But these warnings have fallen on deaf ears, and the system of Christianity has continued pretty much unchanged. And now, suddenly, has come the catastrophe — ^the great war with all its tragic consequences, and we realize at last the truth of aU these warnings. Never before, apparently, has the 21 FOREWORD attitude of Christendom been such as to frankly face the contrast that exists between its religious system and the religion of Jesus, and to demand the answer to the question: "Why?" But this is certainly its attitude to-day, and this is why Rehgion stands at the Cross- roads as never before. Shall the old system that has been proven inadequate to meet the present situation and solve our modern problems and is therefore discredited in the minds of so many in- telligent people, be continued as here- tofore, or shall the real religion of Jesus be seriously and honestly put into prac- tice? Let us consider briefly the contrast that stands revealed so clearly to-day, No one can read the Gospels in the light of modern scholarship, without realizing that what Jesus did was to inaugurate a new spiritual movement, that had as its basis the awakening of 22 FOREWORD the inner consciousness of man to a sense of his oneness with the Infinite spirit from whom he came, and also to a sense of unity with all men as his brothers. Jesus instituted no ritual, he formulated no creed, he organized no church. He doubtless foresaw that rituals, creeds and organizations would come, but he left them to the operation of the free spirit in and through men. His fundamental teaching revolved around a few great, pivotal words. These words were "Life," "Truth," "Freedom," "Righteousness," and "Love." "I am come that they might have Life, and that they might have it more abundantly," said Jesus. To him Life was of the very essence of God. Life came from God, and there could be no life apart from God. It was no ascetic conception of life that Jesus taught. He believed this was God's world and 23 FOREWORD that it was all good. His appeal was not to a segment or fraction of man's life, but to his entire all-around nature, spirit, mind and body. He sought to make man feel the latent possibilities of his being, and how, through the laws of growth he might attain the life "more abundant." His was the gospel of the richer, deeper, truer, more symmetrical life; and the audacity of his prediction for the future stirs us to the depths, when He says, "Ye shall be perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." "Ye shall know the Truth" not the truth of any particular creed, not the truth of some special system of theol- ogy, not the truth of the Bible, for the Bible did not exist at that time, not the truth of religion as separate from the truth of nature or of science — ^but Truth as comprised in the whole range of Reality. His God was the God of 24. FOREWORD Truth, and so he knew that every fact anywhere is a revelation of God, and that all truth, in whatever realm of thought it lies, is God's truth. Shortly before he left his disciples he said, "When I am gone, the Spirit of Truth shall come, and He shall be continually guiding you into all the Truth." His thought of Truth from the human standpoint, was of an ever-growing, ex- panding thing; he knew that men grew into Truth as their experience widens, as their insight deepens, as their inner consciousness broadens. This is why he never sought to compress truth into definitions, or limit it within set or fixed dogmas. He knew that Truth, like Life, must be left free to carve for itself ever newer and deeper channels of ex- pression, to create for itself new and more adequate forms. His was a Gos- pel of Truth. "And the Truth shall make you 25 FOREWOJID free." He loved to set people free from every form of bondage to the letter, that they might live indeed the life of the spirit. His whole life was a mighty protest against the tyranny that had been exercised over man, his body, his mind, his spirit. This is why he broke utterly with the traditions of the past and the conventional religion of his own day. He realized that man's spirit must be left free to find God in his own way, and then live his life confidently and joyously in God and with God. And he had no respect or use for any institution, or form, or ritual, or rule, that in any wise hampered the growth of man's free spirit. Jesus, more than any other character in history, sought to make real the true freedom of the chil- dren of God. His was a Gospel of Freedom. "Except your righteousness shall ex- ceed (i. e., go way beyond) the right- 26 FOREWORD eousness of the scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." His "righteousness" was not a mere abstraction to be discussed, but a something practical to be lived. It meant nothing less than all-around right relationships. It was not outward conformance to external rules, but an inner reality of heart and life. The truly righteous man was not righteous because men called him such, but be- cause God knew him to be such in his innermost thoughts and deepest mo- tives. Righteousness was to him a thing of character, not merely of re- spectability, or reputation; and as such it must find expression in the entire out- flow of a man's nature — ^his every secret thought and feeling, his every word and act, in all his manifold relations to his fellows or to society. His was certainly a Gospel of Righteousness. But supremely, his was the Gospel of 27 FOREWORD Love. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. . . . This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In these words Jesus sums up what, to him, is the eter- nal essence of religion. And yet no creed was ever written that put Jesus' doctrine of love first and foremost among its other doctrines. In fact, the doctrine of love is noticeable by its ab- sence from the great Church creeds. To Jesus love was more than the mere sentiment, more than just the kindly feeling. It was the basic principle of life, from which all thoughts, words and acts should proceed. It was that in us which is likest God. And life in us be- comes truly divine when every expres- sion of life through us proceeds from pure disinterested love as its source. To 28 FOREWORD know love as a principle of life is to know God; to live one's life habitually, not spasmodically, in the spirit of love and helpfulness, is to live one's life in God. To love not those who love us only, but those who are our enemies ; to forgive them if they wrong us, and to keep on holding toward them the atti- tude of good-will and love — this is to love like God, "who maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His rain on the just and on the unjust." It cannot but be plain to eyery un- prejudiced mind that the spiritual movement inaugurated by Jesus nine- teen centuries ago, was one in essence with every true spiritual movement in all religions throughout history. That it had little in common with the system which has grown up, both on its insti- tutional and its theological sides, is be- coming clear to a constantly increasing 29 FOREWORD number of people. We have only to recall the great central words of Jesus' teaching — Life, Truth, Freedom, Righteousness and Love — to realize how great has been the perversion and how incalculable the injury done to Jesus and his spiritual message by Christianity-the-system. Let one, for example, read through any one of the great historic creeds of the Church, and then turn to the Ser- mon on the Mount, and note the start- ling differences. In the case of the Creed, religion is stated in terms that are abstract and abstruse; the impres- sion is received that religion is primarily a philosophy or a system of meta- phj^sics ; the atmosphere of the creed is one of scholasticism and closely rea- soned processes ; the appeal is to the in- tellect, and the method is one of logic. In the Sermon on the Mount, on the other hand, religion is expressed in 30 FOREWORD clear and simple terms of life. God is construed not as an abstract proposi- tion, but as the loving Father, in terms of the home relationships. The appeal is not primarily to the intellect, but to the heart and its secret intuitions; the method is not of logic, but of experi- ence ; while the whole atmosphere of the Sermon on the Mount is the atmosphere^ of God's great out-of-doors, filled with sunshine, and redolent with the fra- grance of the flowers. The majority of people in Christen- dom continues to repeat Sunday after Sunday the so-called Apostles' Creed (though the Apostles had nothing whatever to do with it), and through sheer habit and force of repetition, they are accustomed to think that the Apos- tles' Creed is an adequate statement of the Christian faith. But has it ever oc- curred to these millions of people who suppose that the Apostles' Creed is the 31 FOREWORD actual statement of Christianity, that in this creed Jesus is introduced in two sentences, where it is stated that he was born of the Virgin Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate? All the wonder- ful stirring life that was lived between these two events, all the gracious teach- ing that Jesus uttered, all the profound principles he enunciated, all the living thought that went forth from his crea- tive mind, all the wondrous love that found expression in his many deeds of kindness — all these things are curiously enough omitted from the creed. Fancy calling any creed an adequate statement of Christianity that makes no remotest reference to the Sermon on the Mount, that part of the Gospels which, accord- ing to the scholars, we can be most sure of as coming directly from the lips of Jesus. A creed that never even hints that a certain life was lived upon the earth, in closest contact with human FOREWORD experiences of all kinds, that a certain strong and beautiful character was ex- pressed in daily human relationships, that a certain gracious Personality- came into direct contact with men, women and Uttle children, and always to bless and transform their lives — ^how can such a creed be an adequate state- ment of Christianity? Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was within; that in the inner con- sciousness of every individual was God's real dwelling place. Hence it followed that the only authority Jesus recognized as binding upon the soul was the inner authority of one's own percep- tion of God and truth. Down through the ages, however, organized religion has constantly sought to fetter man's mind and bind his conscience by the ex- ternal authority, either of the Church as an institution, or by the creed, or by someone's particular interpretation of 33 FOREWORD the Bible. Is it any wonder to-day that so many are repudiating utterly the right of any church to attempt the exer- cise of authority from without, over the minds and consciences of men? Does anyone doubt longer the wide divergence between the religion of Jesus and the system known as Chris- tianity? "Listen to the Roman and Episcopal communions, still telling us that Salvation can alone be obtained through their sacraments. What has the spirit of Jesus in conmion with that? Listen to the Evangelical com- munions telling us that salvation de- pends on the acceptance of one partic- ular view of the atonement. What has the spirit of Jesus to do with that? In whichever direction we turn, we find ordinances, ceremonies, rites, fast and feast, vestments, incense, flvunmery and mummery, pose and posture, ecclesias- tical orders, tests, hierarchies, temple- 34 FOREWORD treading, riches, dignities, preferments, and all the paraphernalia of officialdom — all of which may be necessary to the organization, doubtless they are — ^but, let us admit it frankly, they have noth- ing whatever to do with the real spirit of Jesus; we are beginning also to see that they have chiefly served to obscure his pure spiritual conception of religion and to substitute the mechanism of re- ligion for his high ethical and spiritual requirements." It is indeed a strange and paradox- ical situation that the world confronts to-day. On every hand Religion flour- ishes, while the organized church de- clines. The world is profoundly inter- ested in religion, more so perhaps than ever before, provided only it be a real and vital religion; but the world has scarcely ever had less interest in Churchianity. If it be true that the chief trouble 35 FOREWORD with the world and the anomalous posi- tion in which the church finds itself to- day, is due to the fact that the real spir- itual and universal religion of Jesus has never yet been seriously or persistently tried, then the supreme task of all true friends of organized religion, is to give themselves to the Christianizing of Christianity, and not to rest con- tent until Christianity-the- System is brought into harmony with the spirit and ideals of Jesus. It is thus that Religion faces the cross-roads to-day. Shall we continue to perpetuate a religious system so ut- terly at variance with the principles and spirit of its founder, or shall we move forward to where He stood, and begin seriously to translate his principles into the actual lives of men and of nations? The responsibility rests with the men and women of this generation to decide what the religion of to-morrow shall be. 36 THE VITALITY TO GROW |IFE is dynamic, not static. Every living thing must grow, if it be truly alive; and to grow always means, to change incessantly. This is the fun- damental law of life, from lowest forms to highest, from amoeba to governments and religions. It is possible to do one of three things with a grain of wheat: It can be ground into flour, made into food, and, when eaten, is assimilated into bone, blood and tissue. Or, it can be buried in the soil, and when it has "died," it will come to life again and bring forth thirty, sixty or a hundredfold. Or, it can be put into a bag with other grains 37 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS of wheat, and be stored away indefi- nitely. In the first two cases the outer form of the wheat is destroyed and lost forever, but the life-giving force re- mains to re-appear in the increased vi- tality of the individual who may assim- ilate it as food, or in the more abundant harvest that follows the seed-sowing. In the last instance, the outward form is preserved, but the inner vitality steadily deteriorates. Grain, when stored up, not only fails to nourish life, or to develop into more, but it loses in the end the very principle of life; for grain kept too long in storage fails to germinate. Its vitality vanishes. Out- wardly it may have the appearance of a grain of wheat, but its inner life has died. The old parable of the grain of wheat furnishes a striking illustration of the fate that may, and actually does, befall 38 THE VITALITY TO GROW every vital movement in the life of hu- manity. The outer form in which new life, new truth, new ideals, make their appearance, may be regarded as merely the envelope that encloses the living principle; and since all forms are tem- porary and transitory, we need to rec- ognize frankly that the time must come inevitably when the cherished outward forms must be broken up and de- stroyed, if the inner life or truth is to persist as a potent influence in the life of men. Or, we may regard the forms or institutions in which life and truth are enveloped, as the essential things, and by strict and jealous guard over the forms, we may succeed in preserving the external envelope, but at the tragic loss of the inner reality. This is the eternal law of life. "Keep your form," cries Nature, "if you will, but in the end, remember this: you will lose the inner vitality, and nothing but the 39 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS empty husks will remain as your sorry possession." For life is a constantly growing, changing, expanding force, and in the nature of things it must incessantly break through all forms and institutions as it seeks to carve for itself new and broader channels of expres- sion. The real heart of all rehgion is the inner life of the spirit. This is the true basis of everything that is worth while in the life of humanity; all ideals, aspi- rations, hopes, strivings proceed from the inner spiritual life of man. Every great Religion has always begun in a vital, spontaneous, spiritual movement. Creeds, rituals, organizations are al- ways a later development. Nowhere is this more clearly dis- cerned than in the movement inaugu- rated by Jesus of Nazareth. His con- ception of Religion was couched in terms of life. "I am come that ye 40 THE VITALITY TO GROW might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." He formulated no creed, he instituted no ritual, he or- ganized no church. He knew that life must always embody itself in forms and institutions, but he also knew that life was an ever growing, changing thing, and he was wise enough not to hamper and limit its growth by outward forms which would eventually prove to be the death-knell of its life. And so he loved to liken it to the grain of mustard seed or the fermenting leaven. Jesus gave to the world a purely spiritual concep- tion of religion, of which his own char- acter was the embodiment. He left the matter of forms and institutions to the future. Let us admit it frankly: the world was not ready for his kind of rehgion; it did not live on his high plane ; it could not grasp his spiritual conception of life; it did not discern his lofty ideals; 41 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS it did not know his God. Even the men who had stood closest to him and felt the spell of his personahty, failed ut- terly to grasp the inner significance of his religion. Perhaps, even to-day, after nineteen centuries of Christianity, the world is stiU incapable of under- standing and living a purely spiritual religion. That remains to he seen. This is not to say that down through the centuries there have not been many individuals who have come to see eye- to-eye with Jesus, and have learned to live the life of the spirit. And to-day there is an ever-increasing multitude, both within and outside the churches, who are grasping, more or less clearly, the spiritual conception of religion. But it is with organized religion rather than with individuals that we are particularly concerned just now. If the early leaders of Christianity had been content to frame their statements THE VITALITY TO GROW of religion and organize their churches in terms of those great, pivotal ideals, around which aU the teachings of Jesus revolved — Life, Truth, Freedom, Righteousness and Love — how vastly- different might have been the history of religion during these nineteen cen- turies 1 In addition to the absolute incapacity of the world of the first century to grasp the conception of a purely, spir- itual religion, there was the inevitable tendency of all institutionalism to deaden and destroy the primary im- pulse. Henri Bergson has suggested a theory of the creation of matter, which is luminous in this connection. Accord- ing to him, "matter is held to be a kind of degradation from spirit, a falling back Uke the descending drops from a fountain jet. When any spiritual movement begins to materialize into form, creedal or institutional, that form 43 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS is necessarily in the manner of a degra- dation from the primal, spiritual im- pulse." Institutional religion must al- ways be, therefore, a degradation from spiritual religion — the degree of its de- generation depending on the rigidity or fixity of the institution. There is al- ways a loss in Faith, when it comes to be expressed in a creed. You never build a fence without shutting out more than you shut in. No definition of any Truth defines the Truth, so nearly as it defines the one making the definition. This is why "authoritative dogma and formulated doctrine are always some- what at the expense of Truth in its pure integrity." When the "Kingdom of Heaven" of Jesus became embodied in an institu- tion, it was inevitable that it should be a degeneration from the spirit which created it. This is true of all institu- tions of every kind, and is applicable 44< THE VITALITY TO GROW to all forms of organized religion. Buddhism as it exists to-day in India, or Mohammedanism in Turkey, are vastly different from the Buddhism and Mohammedanism as preached and practised by their respective founders. At the very outset, the free, spiritual movement inaugurated by Jesus, came in contact with Greek philosophy and Roman organization. That it exercised a profound influence on its early en- vironment, goes without saying; but that it, in turn, was profoundly trans- formed by that same environment, is not as generally perceived or as frankly admitted. If Jesus enunciated the inner essence of Christianity, then Paul is to be credited for the tendency that later became the definite form under which Christianity is known even to- day. Paul was by birth a Hebrew, by adoption a Roman, by education, a lover of the Greeks. More than that; 4,5 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS he was a philosopher, and admirably- equipped to translate into philosophical terms the religion of the Nazarene. Paul marks the beginning of the great transition between the religion of Jesus and Christianity, the historic sys- tem. That which, in the hands of Jesus, was a religion — a life to be lived, be- came, in the hands of Paul, a philosophy — a creed to be believed. Henceforth, instead of the inner perception of the spirit, there was to be substituted log- ical processes; instead of conscience, there was to be intellect ; instead of love and the unity of love, there was to be disputation and a calling of names. "By intellectualizing primitive Chris- tianity, by making abstruse and difficult of comprehension that simple thing which the most childlike can under- stand, Paul opened the gates of endless controversy and casuistry. The church had now only to go straight on to come 46 THE VITALITY TO GROW upon the sword that was waiting for her, and to enter upon that campaign of cruel force against heresy which was to complete the monstrous perversion." By this it is not intended to question the sincerity of Paul's motives or the integrity of his life; and yet could he have foreseen the harvest of scholasti- cism, the bitter dissensions, the tragic controversies, the vague confusion of what is fundamental with what is ad- ventitious, that were to spring up from his philosophizing, it is possible he might have adopted different methods in his work. When we remember that philosophy is speculative, and that re- ligion is intensely practical, it becomes clearly apparent how easy it is for re- ligion to lose its vitality by being con- founded with philosophy or some sys- tem of theology. "When once the fog has settled down, it then becomes pos- sible for churchmen to discuss such m HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS questions as baptism, transubstantia- tion, the trinity, the person of Jesus, or the atonement without realizing that they have long ago left religion far be- hind." With this impetus toward philos- ophy, the way was opened in Early Christianity for the control of one man by another, of multitudes by the few. Church councils became the order of the day. The ethical content of Christian- ity was either crowded into the back- ground or utterly forgotten. Compli- cated and abstract creeds were formu- lated. Doctrines became more impor- tant than life. Not righteousness, but heresy, was to be henceforth the chief concern of the church. "From this time on one has only to believe and to obey those who formulate the belief. The spiritual kingdom becomes identified with the church, and to enter into the 48 THE VITALITY TO GROW one, a man has only to become a mem- ber of the other." The historian is accustomed to tell us that with the conversion of the Em- peror Constantine, Christianity suc- ceeded to the throne of the Csesars, but it is obvious that the name expresses only those external characteristics, which, owing to the transforming influ- ence of Roman organization, have since become known as Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth was the complete antithesis of the Csesars, and what he gave to the world was inherently and absolutely opposed to that which Rome gave the world. The essence of Roman power was external authority; the essence of the religion of Jesus was inner percep- tion. As a recent writer has said, "If any one familiar with Roman history and the Roman character, can read the Gospels and not see that it would be utterly impossible for Christianity to 49 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS conquer Rome, there is something seri- ously wrong with his psychology. And if any one thinks that Christianity ever did conquer Rome, he had better lay side by side the Sermon on the Mount and the history of the Dark Ages. To mistake the church which rose on the ruins of the Roman Empire for the free spiritual movement which the Man of Nazareth inaugurated, is proof positive of ethical and spiritual blindness." It is not a question of the inevitable- ness of the transformation wrought or of the unquestioned good done by the Church during the middle ages. The fact is startlingly clear to-day that in the institutionalizing of the religion of Jesus, Rome conquered the real Chris- tianity. In its outward organization and forms, in its rituals and creeds, in its pomp and craving for temporal power, in its assumed authority over the minds and consciences of men, in its 50 THE VITALITY TO GROW neglect of righteousness and pursuit of heresy, Christianity-the-system is the exact antithesis of the spiritual religion of Jesus. Under the leaders of the Protestant Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, the world for the first time awakened to the fact of how radical a transforma- tion the church had undergone since the time of Jesus. "More and more clearly it was being seen that the church was in reality the Roman empire resurrected and wielding its authority not now solely from the Seven Hills, but also from the throne of the hereafter. Whatever may have been the sacred aim of the great leaders of that period, the result was not the complete divorce- ment of Christianity from Cassarism and its reestablishment as a purely spir- itual religion, but rather the attempted overthrow of the Roman organization with its centrahzed, imperial authority. 51 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS That organization itself, while neces- sary, is no part of the real religion of Jesus, seems not to have been perceived, for on the ruins of the Roman church in the North, rose organizations not ut- terly dissimilar. For centuries still the idea was to prevail that the spiritual kingdom is not whoUy spiritual, that inner perception must somehow be squared with outer visible authority. Naturally the creed had to be main- tained or the church as a material or- ganization would disappear. For it would then be possible for a man to be- come a Christian by practising the Ser- mon on the Mount, i. e., by following or obeying the principles of Jesus, and not, as now, by accepting the Thirty- nine Articles or the Westminster Con- fession or those other matters of pro- fession which virtually all the 150 or more Protestant churches still insist are of divine origin." 52 THE VITALITY TO GROW At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the generally accepted theol- ogy was summed up in the so-called Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. There had also grown up around these two historic creeds, a secondary body of doctrines, or a body of speculative thought, which aimed to be a further interpretation of these great creeds, from the viewpoint of the theologians of the various sects of Protestantism. If these two creeds had stood alone, if they had been kept free and open, and men had been made to understand that they were justified in translating the truth of these creeds, or the truth of which the creed was only the sym- bol, into constantly enlarging thought terms, it would have been very differ- ent. Or, if this secondary body of the- ology dealing with the subordinate ideas of religion, had in like manner been kept free and open, it might have HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS been all right. But there was a third fact which has created the crisis in mod- ern religious thought so far as the church is concerned. All the churches have claimed and taught that these statements in the creeds and these doc- trines in the various systems of theology which have gradually grown up, are ab- solutely fixed and final: from which it follows naturally, that a man's religion is tested by his intellectual acceptance or rejection of certain particular state- ments about religion. The practical result of this belief and teaching on the part of organized re- ligion is, that an increasing number of people are leaving the churches, or pre- fer to remain outside of all organiza- tions of religion, not because they are any less religious than formerly — ^in many cases they are much more pro- foundly religious, — but simply because they have been thinking their way out 54 THE VITALITY TO GROW of the old thought-forms of the creeds ; the statements of the old doctrines no longer satisfy either the mind or the conscience ; the church, in its blind alle- giance to the letter of the creeds, has lost for all such, its vitality, its truth and its inspiration. If the Church had understood in the past that every definition or statement of truth is only temporary and must constantly be succeeded by new and broader statements, just because our perception of Truth is always growing and expanding, or if the Church could realize that all forms and organizations are impermanent, and must steadily give way to the changes demanded by the law of life, then much of the crit- icism directed to-day against the Church would lose its force. If the Church had said in the past, if the Church to-day would say, "I am but the temporary body, the external 65 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS envelope for the time being, to protect the germ of spiritual, universal re- ligion. I can express certain aspects of it, reveal it in a particular way, but in due time I must wither and decay, hav- ing passed on the living reality of re- ligion to create for itself a new and higher body, since this is the transitory character of all external forms or bodies" — how different might be the at- titude of multitudes toward the church ! But this is just what the church will not admit. It predicated divinity of its outward body rather than of its inner life. "It wants to live, persist and be immortal, just as it is; it does not see that it can only live on by dying to all those outwardnesses, which it imagines to be its true self; it does not believe that it can save itself only by losing it- self. It is self-bound in the mirror- lined prison house of self -consciousness. In whatever direction it turns, it sees 56 THE VITALITY TO GROW only itself." It regards itself as the great end, whereas in any of its various forms it is only a means to the end — for the great end is the purely spiritual religion which Jesus taught. It has been said by more than one modern writer that the most disastrous thing that could come in the spiritual life of any age is, that it should not be responsive to the deepest thought of its age. This is, to a large extent, what has happened in our time. Thought and discovery have moved with un- precedented rapidity during the past fifty years. New interests have crowded in upon men; new ideals have emerged; new viewpoints have been gained; new perspectives disclosed. There is a deepened realization of the essential unity of humanity, which has developed a new social consciousness, and that in turn has awakened a new social conscience. The spirit of democ- 57 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS racy grows apace amongst all peoples. New religious cults have sprung up outside of all conventional organiza- tions of religion, which number their followers by the tens of thousands, and have created a new literature all their own. Signs of the times, too nimierous to mention, proclaim the resurgence of the life of the spirit in practically every land and amongst all peoples. In such an age, thrilling and throbbing every- where with the new and expanding life of the spirit, it is organized religion alone that seems to lag behind. It is constantly turning to the past; it strives to anchor itself to the dogmas of the past; or it seeks expression in the ritual and the symbolism of the age of dogmas; it is timid and conservative; it constantly defends indefensible posi- tions; it will not fairly and squarely face the thought and needs of the time, and it does not, therefore, state its 58 THE VITALITY TO GROW truths in a way which would grip both the intellect and the conscience of the Age. In short, there is little sympathy and less harmony between the Church and the vital thought and living spir- itual aspiration of the Age. This maladjustment produces what the Church calls religious indifference; it accounts for the neglect of public worship and the decline in the active work of the church; it explains the alienation from the church of so many thoughtful men and women, and also the gulf that separates the church and the so-called "masses." This tragic condition exists chiefly because Religion in its institutions, its doctrines and its forms, still regards itself from the static rather than the dynamic viewpoint. Since Darwin gave the world the Doctrine of Evolu- tion, man has gradually become con- scious that in all the Universe there is 59 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS nothing fixed or final; that from the earliest beginning there has been a movement onward and upward. Evo- lution has necessitated the rewriting of aU the Sciences, the revising of all his- tories, the re-interpretation of all phi- losophies. It explains the growth of all governments, the development of every institution, the unfolding of every art, the progression in all morals. It is the clue to the meaning of the Bible, and explains the contradictions both in its ethical and spiritual teachings. All re- ligious systems were formerly fixed, final and dogmatic. Each preferred to proclaim the ultimate of truth and prac- tice, both in its doctrines and its insti- tution. And all at once the key of thought and life everywhere became evolutionary and progressive. But or- ganized Religion has held aloof, and, practically alone, has refused to admit 60 THE VITALITY TO GROW or submit to the universal law of life and growth. To quote from a recent writer in the Atlantic Monthly, "Christianity is as much a closed system as ever Judaism was. It believes in its own potential finality; it believes in minor develop- ments within itself, but that in essence it is the final word in rehgion; there may be 'more light' to break forth from the Word, but there are no other 'words.' It is the walled Eternal City; within the walls there is sufficient accommodation, but there is no question of the walls ever being dissolved. It has no real outlook. AH that really matters is withia. It is capable of vari- ation, but not of mutation. Salvation is through its gateway alone; it goes 'out into the highways and byways,' but only in order 'to compel them to come in.' It talks about evangelizing the world, but it really means bringing 61 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS the peoples of other religions into the Christian system and institution. Its one hope for those who die unbelieving is that in some other state of existence they may have a further chance of be- coming Christians." The same writer tells of a recent con- versation with a Franciscan padre in Italy, who said to him, "In ten thou- sand years the church will be here just as it is now." He meant, of course, his own communion in its institutional form. The Doctrine of Evolution is, for the Roman Catholic, on the Index ; and yet, how large a number of Protes- tants believe, with equal confidence, that their church is identical with the King- dom of God, and will still be here "in ten thousand years"? Yet to the student of life, the Chris- tian Church as an organization is neces- sarily impermanent ; it must go the way of all other institutions. "The life 62 THE VITALITY TO GROW which creates forms always destroys them in the fulness of time; the Church must either perish, or it must be de- stroyed by being fulfilled. It can only persist by being left behind, paradox- ical though it may appear. Whatever of ancient Judaism, for example, vitally persists in the modern world, is to be found in the Judaistic elements of thought and practice which are em- bedded in the Christian system. And history wiU repeat itself. Christianity, as we know it to-day, with all its sects, its dogmas, its rituals, its formulae, must ultimately be dissolved in a new and higher religious synthesis." May not the real truth beneath those sinister expressions that greet the eye so frequently to-day — "the collapse of Christianity," "the failure of the Church," "the decline of religion," arouse the church to the realization that it can only preserve its true inner life, 63 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS by surrendering everything in its out- ward forms that make it an anachron- ism to-day. It is always emergence. "Out of the nut, the seed — ^the husk cast aside; out of the chrysahs, the butterfly — the cerements left behind to be reab- sorbed by mother earth; out of Semi- tism, Hebraism; out of Hebraism, Judaism; out of Judaism, Christian- ity." But can Christianity as we know it to-day be the final expression of re- ligion for the world? Must there not come a something beyond Christianity- the-system, in which have become incor- porated so many un-Christian ele- ments? And must not that which suc- ceeds Christianity as we have known it, approach ever nearer to the pure spir- itual and universal religion as voiced by Jesus ? It was one of the great and beautiful sayings of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, that the best use of the 64< THE VITALITY TO GROW Bible was made when a man passed be- yond the Bible itself to the eternal life and infinite power to which it testified. In the same way, will not the Church find its new life and power, when it passes beyond its present form of insti- tutionalism, its rituals and its creeds, to that eternal truth and living spirit of which all its forms and dogmas are but the crude and imperfect symbols? The one supreme question that is being put to the Church by this modern age is, whether it has sufficient vitality to outgrow the dead and meaningless past? The final answer to this question depends on the willingness of its actual leaders to make those changes which are the inevitable accompaniment of life and growth. It remains for all who have caught the vision of a universal and spiritual religion, whether within or without the Church, to dedicate themselves to the high task of bringing 65 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS organized religion into line with the idea of progression. Only thus can the Church be empowered to move onward to better and larger things. "Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be, They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 66 THE HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH 'N the widespread and serious thinking that has been awak- ened by these "restless and troublesome times," things which have long been clear to the few are fast becoming plain to the many. Among such patent facts is the com- pelling conviction that the real test of organized religion can no longer be found in statistics. The reports are published each year, giving the number of new churches organized, the increase in the valuation of church property, the nimiber of new converts received into church membership, the large simis con- tributed for various missionary and 67 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS philanthropic objects. And yet, judged by figures only, organized religion has grave cause for concern. According to statistics compiled by Dr. Josiah Strong, the percentage of increase in church membership in this country has steadily lessened since 1850, as com- pared with the increase in population; and in the last twenty-five years it has fallen behind to an alarming degree. Judged by statistics, Religion is not gaining but losing in America to-day. The same is true in England and the countries of the continent. In addition there has been a noticeable falling off in attendance upon religious services as compared with the previous genera- tion. Many churches have felt com- pelled to resort to all kinds of new and "attractive features" in order to secure an audience, and in many others that are still following the older and simpler methods, the congregations have dwin- 68 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH died to pitiful proportions, as compared with the throngs that people the com- munity. This growing indifference toward the Church, even among those who are still its nominal adherents, is most marked in two classes of people: the educated and really intelligent men and women, and the uneducated, though not necessarily unintelligent, working class. Doubtless the reasons for this growing indifference differ somewhat in these two classes, though in many respects they are the same. There are many within the church who are content to place the blame for this waning influence upon the "irre- ligious age," or upon the superficiality and pleasure-loving tendency, if not downright wickedness, of the people of to-day. The Church itself, they say, is in no sense to blame. It has fallen upon evil times. It should be pitied, not criticized. The Church suffers be- 69 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS cause the age is given over to frivolity, indifference and sin. It has lost all in- terest in religion, and aU we of the churches can do is to hope and pray for some great revival of religion. There is no question as to the practi- cal materialism of this modern age, its love of pleasure and its indifference to many of the higher concerns of life, and yet, it is doubtful if these tendencies are any more pronounced than in previous times. On the other hand, over against the growing indifference toward the churches of so many people, their in- creasing impatience with all creeds, their actual repugnance to historic dog- mas, their waning interest in the old, familiar formulas of religion, is the fact that outside all organizations of religion there is a large and rapidly growing number of men and women who are accepting Jesus' great message, in which he voiced a new conception of 70 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH Reality, the immediate consciousness of the Divine hfe in the himian such as men had not known before. Every- where people are finding it and they are finding it directly from Jesus' own per- sonality and teachings. They are get- ting it independently of all organiza- tions and creeds. The world to-day has little interest apparently in Churchian- ity; it is profoundly interested in the religion of Jesus, what He was and what He taught. This is most signifi- cant. Men everywhere are beginning to realize that Jesus' great personality and life and message are not the exclu- sive property of organized Christianity. His is a world-character. His religion is a world-religion. His personality and message are so large and universal that they will burst aU bonds that would encompass them, and that is just what they are now doing. In the last twenty years there has come into being a new 71 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS literature, the extent of which is most surprising. It is a literature based on a profound idealistic philosophy; and at the same time it is intensely practical, in that it touches the minutest details of everyday life. Its basis is substantially if not identically in agreement with the great central principles of Jesus' mes- sage. This literature has gone actually aU over the world, and there are mil- lions of people to-day, both inside and outside all the churches, who through reading it have been awakened to Jesus' great life-giving principle, and are thus experiencing the vitalizing results that must inevitably come from a life brought into harmony with it. Large numbers of these have formerly been members of the churches. The signifi- cant fact is that this new literature which has brought richness of life and power to countless multitudes and which is teaching nothing less than the 7a HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH spiritual conception of religion as voiced by Jesus, has nothing to do with the theology of the churches and makes practically no reference to the creeds and dogmas of Christianity. It finds its source in Jesus and it teaches its message as if the theologies did not exist. The fact is that the whole world is moving rapidly and the entire system of organized Christianity, as we know it to-day, is being challenged both as to its validity and efPectiveness. The in- ner content of true Christianity con- tains the very essence of Uf e and power. But the essential thing has been crowd- ed out by a multitude of little things that have nothing to do with real re- ligion. What avails the number of our churches, or the multitude of church members, or the increase in the wealth or contributions of the church, when in 73 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS a moment of time every spiritual value and every one of the principles of Jesus can be surrendered by Christian nations to brute force and the powers of or- ganized selfishness? If there were no other facts to cause us to pause and think, the Great Conflict of the Nations would be all too sufficient to compel the question; What is the matter with or- ganized religion to-day? The primary answer to the question, why the churches of Christendom are not to-day the effective agents for good that they might be, and why they are compelled to work so hard even to hold their own instead of continually grow- ing and expanding, is found in the fact that the whole underlying structure of Christian Theology, and hence of mod- ern organized Christianity, is out of harmony with the best thought, the deepest needs and the truest aspirations of the times. That this is the case 74 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH might be proved by quoting the words of scores of the recognized leaders of thought, men and women both inside and without the church. The modem world has been advanc- ing with rapid strides along all lines of investigation, research and thought. Particularly has this been true since 1850, and never was it more true than to-day. Science has given us literally a new universe. Astronomy has made it an Infinite Universe in space. Geology has made it an Eternal Universe in time. Biology has given us a new con- ception of Life. Anthropology has given us a new science of Man. Psy- chology has revealed or is revealing a deeper conception of the Self. All his- tory has been rewritten. The study of Comparative Religions has given us broader conceptions of the moral and religious development of humanity. Sociology is revising our notions of hu- 75 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS man relationships. Biblical scholarship has given us a new and luminous Bible. And the end is not yet. While this tremendous expansion and revision of human knowledge has been taking place organized religion, as represent- ed by the Church, has clung tenaciously to its old pre-mediaeval notions, even to the extent of being hostile to many of the conclusive findings of modern thought. "Instead of being keenly alive to embrace the best of modern truth and thus become a leader, she has fought bitterly for the preservation of her ancient beliefs, and her whole history has been that of a follower." Instead of expressing the life-giving will-to-renew, she has been content to express the will-to-preserve. Let us briefly simimarize the ancient thought that lies at the basis of all the historic creeds of Christendom. For ages men have been taught that 4004 76 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH years before Christ, God created the world; that on the sixth day of the crea- tive week He made man directly out of the dust of the earth; that man came forth from the hand of the Creator a perfect being; that he was gifted at that time with all the faculties which he pos- sesses to-day in their highest perfec- tion. And, not only this, but he had then certain attributes which are lack- ing in him to-day. He had in the Gar- den of Eden the gift of original right- eousness. He could communicate directly with God and talk with Him face to face. Being tempted by the serpent through his companion to eat of the forbidden fruit, he committed an act of disobedience to God's arbitrary command and thereby lost his place in the Universe; he was deprived of his original righteousness and all his per- fect faculties became depraved. He descended from the height of his crea- 77 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS tion and became like unto a brute. By man's first sin death entered the Uni- verse for the first time and cast its tragic bhght over* every living thing. The first man not only fell from his original lofty estate, but through his sin the whole race, the millions yet unborn, became involved in the universal ruin, so that henceforth every child born into the world possessed within himself the taint of original sin, and was a fallen creature, living his life under the wrath- ful curse of God. The descendants of our original parents at length became so corrupt that God repented that He had ever made man, and sought to destroy him utterly. But, not altogether liking to efface his work, the Divine Being per- mitted one family to survive the general catastrophe. This family continued the generation of evil down through the centuries, and man was still left with- 78 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH out the power to do anything good of and hy himself. Since then his whole history has been simply an effort, not on his part, but on the part of God, to recover him from his fallen and ruined condition. Finally, in "the fullness of time," God sent his only begotten son into the world, to become a great and gracious Saviour. He lived for a few years upon the earth and manifested the Divine Will and Wisdom to man- kind; by the foreknowledge and deter- mination of God he suffered death as an atonement for the sins of the whole world; he rose fromi the dead and, after tarrying a short time, he went back to his seclusion in the Heavens, going up in bodily form into the sky where he remains until this present time, seated somewhere at the right hand of the throne of the Most High. Further- more, not content with giving us the history of the past and present, we have 79 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS also been taught what to expect in the future. We have been told that this whole drama of human life is to come to an end by the descent of this One who has ascended. He is to come in bodily form again in the clouds of the heaven surrounded by an army of An- gels; then he will destroy the pres- ent order suddenly, and will separate men into those who believe on him and those who do not, and he will receive all believers into everlasting habita- tions of hght, and will condemn the un- believers to everlasting misery in the regions of darkness. This spectacular second coming of Christ is to be the consimimation of human history. This, in brief, is the view of human nature and the conception of human history that forms the background of every historic creed in Christendom; it has constituted the basis of every sys- tem of Christian Theology; it finds ex- 80 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH pression in the phraseology of the pul- pit, the formulas of the prayers and the sentiment of the hymns of all Chris- tian churches to-day. This scheme of history is really a philosophy of history, which seeks in some way to account for human history as it is. If it were true, it would make the philosophy of history a simple thing. All the good things in the world would be ascribed to the im- mediate action of God, and all that is bad would proceed from the Devil, op- erating through the depraved nature of man. Such has been the philosophy of history taught to the western world by its priests for two thousand years. As anyone can see, it makes God a bungler and man a failure. "It fur- nishes the most pessimistic philosophy of history that has ever been conceived. Not even Schopenhauer, the arch-pessi- mist, has given or could give a more deplorable picture of himian life than 81 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS that which underlies the teachings of the old theologies. The final outcome of all the toil and travail of human life is the eternal punishment of the great mass and the salvation of the few. And this distressing outcome is all in accord- ance with the foreknowledge of a Per- fect Being, who is all-powerful, all-wise and all-good. The Cause and Effect have no relation to each otJier. The God and the man of theology are at odds with each other. The perfect God creates an imperfect man — for a per- fect man would never have disobeyed at the outset — ^and then the perfect God condemns the imperfect man for his im- perfection. The story of it all is the story of disaster and disgrace, a disgrace not redeemed by the fact that a few favored ones shall at last escape from under the wrath of God, and find eternal bliss in a place called 'the heavens.' " But, aside from the pessimistic in- 82 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH terpretation that this philosophy puts upon human nature and human history, apart from the reflection it casts upon the wisdom and the goodness of God, there is the additional fact that the mod- em man cannot accept its statements as being in harmony with the facts as he knows them to-day. Biblical Scholar- ship, in its interpretation of the litiera- ture of the Bible, has made it clear that the early stories of Genesis, upon whose literalness the theologian has based his dogmas of Original Sin, the Fall of Man and the resulting Depravity of the Race, were never intended either as history or as science. Th*y constitute poetry, great poetry, if you will — and are to be interpreted only as such. In this sense they possess spiritual mean- ing and truth; while to interpret them as literal history is to make them mean- ingless and absurd. More than this, the great key every- HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS where accepted for the true interpreta- tion of the universe and of life is Evolu- tion. Charles Darwin, who gave the Doctrine of Evolution to the world in 1857, is as truly a Prophet of God as was Isaiah, for Truth is one and God is the source of all truth. In the doctrine of Evolution, Darwin revealed God's great plan for bringing things to pass in this universe, from stone to star, from amoeba to man. Galileo declared that the world of matter moved from west to east; Darwin proved that the world of life moved from lower to higher. This is the last and most splendid con- tribution of Science to the intelligence, the hope and faith of the world. "The new declaration is of a God immanent in nature while He transcends it, iden- tified with His world, always creating and revealing Himself, always inspir- ing men who aspire after Him and al- ways inseparably joined with the des- 84 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH tiny of His creatures." Henceforth Science and Religion are twin compan- ions in the march of evolutionary prog- ress. Apart, they are detached polari- ties; united, they are a dynamo of in- spiration and of truth — religion, scien- tific in method; science, religious in spirit. It is from modern science that man has learned that this planet has been in existence for seons of time; that man did not first make his appearance on this globe 4004 B. C, but that he has had an existence here of from 150,000 to 300,000 years; that in 4004 B. C. there was a highly developed civilization in Egypt, and another complex and flour- ishing civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates, while at the same time there were settled communities in Hin- dustan and in China. We also know to-day that God did not create man by a direct and arbitrary fiat; that when 85 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS he appeared on the earth it was as the flower of the stupendous evolutionary process that had been going on for ages of time ; that instead of being in the be- ginning a perfect being and dweUing in a paradise, man had his beginnings in the wilderness. His faculties developed little by little, and behind every one of his present possessions lies a long story of aspiration, effort and accomplish- ment. Nature has been at work, or God in Nature has been at work from the beginning, producing life and de- veloping life, and man is the culmina- tion of this age-long process. If God's method of evolution reached its physi- cal climax in man's body, its great work henceforth lies in the developing or evolving of the psychic part of man's nature. And so aU his mental, moral and spiritual development is due to the same great God, operating in and through the law of evolution. There 86 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH are no traces of any downward march from a higher state except in dogmatic theology, but abundant evidence that man has been slowly climbing with the climbing world out of animality up to his destined inheritance as a child of God. His animal passions witness his relation to the brute race ; his persistent effort to overcome them is evidence of his relation to the Infinite. Rising from the animal to the human, from sen- suousness to spirituality, is a far sub- limer truth than the theological doc- trine of plunging from a pinnacle of innocence to an abyss of depravity. The evil man is not the depraved man, but the undeveloped man, the man who has not yet awakened to his true self. His nature is essentially divine, for he was "made in God's image," and is de- veloping its oAvn divine consciousness and power uiider the guidance of the 87 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS divine power that dwells in every indi- vidual. And what is Jesus in human history? He is God's best thought of humanity ; he is the goal toward which humanity is moving; he is the norm and type of what man may be and must at length become; and at the same time, Jesus is God's best and highest thought of Him- self as revealed in human life. So that we have the right to say, "the character of God is like Jesus Christ," for what has been evolved must first have been involved. In this newer view, Jesus is no less the Saviour of men than before. It is rather that all the old statements of the atonement are either unethical or partial or inadequate to the modern mind. Jesus stands as the supreme Saviour of men because he reveals "the way" to that more abundant life "that is life indeed." The only real "atone- ment" is the becoming at-one with God 88 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH through one's own inner consciousness of what God is, and the coming into harmony with the God within as well as without. The death of Jesus on the cross was not necessary in order to sat- isfy the justice of God, or placate His anger, or make it possible for Him to forgive mankind their sins. It was but the expression in time of God's eternal self -giving that grows out of His eter- nal, unquenchable love. Theology has made of the Cross a mechanism in a scheme of salvation, a piece of stage machinery, as it were, whereas the Cross is the eternal symbol of that great prin- ciple of unselfishness to which every life must at length conform if it would reach the heights and realize its true possibilities. Even the secular novelist to-day is pointing out the unethical and inadequate elements in our doctrines of the atonement. Amelia Rives, in her latest story, now running in one of the 89 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS magazines, puts these words into the mouth of her heroine who is recalling her childhood days: A pious old Aunt Sarah had come to her with a little religious book. In this volume was the picture of a Hin- du woman throwing her baby to a crocodile to propitiate her gods. Sophy could see this old woodcut now as though it were before her. The woman in the picture had worn arm- lets and anklets. "Darling," Sophy's great-aunt said, "wouldn't you Uke to become a holy missionary and go to teach poor women like this how God sent his only beloved son to die upon the cross for them?" "Give me the book. Aunt Sarah," Sophy had replied, "and I will go out under the trees and think it over." Lying on her little stomach in the warm grasses, the book before her, 90 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH she had gazed and gazed at the pic- ture, brooding. Then she had re- turned to her great-aunt. "Aunt Sarah, I've thought very hard ; I couldn't go to teach the Hin- dus that God wouldn't forgive people till He had made His own son die on the cross, because, you see, Aunt Sarah, this poor woman is killing her son to please her god, and it's worse for a god to kill his own son to please himself." Aunt Sarah had cried in horror: "But, my child, don't you believe that the Blessed Saviour died for us?" "Yes, in a way," Sophy had an- swered. "I believe that He knew wicked men would kill him if he tried to teach them to be good. In that way I do believe he died for us. But I'll never, never, never believe that God made him to be crucified ! God is love!" 91 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS To fully accept and intelligently grasp the meaning of those words, "God is love," would relegate to the limbo of the past everyone of the historic doc- trines of the atonement. And when man reaches the experi- ence of death, he knows it need not be feared; for death is not the result of man's sin; it is not an after-thought on the part of God as a punishment for Adam's disobedience. Death was in the world ages before man or "sin" ap- peared. It is as much a part of God's plan for man's true unfolding as is birth; like birth it is a change in the outward conditions of man's life, not in the man's true self. And man himself continues his evolution there, even as he has begun it here, learning the les- sons he failed to learn here, growing continually into righteousness and truth and love. "This dream of the Infinite, how up- 92 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH lifting to the imagination! This key of higher evolution unlocking the enigmas of life! That out of the image made of earth, the image of God should slowly appear; that 'up the world's great altar stairs' man climbs slowly into conscious sonship with God; his animal lust transformed into love, his proneness to sin into a passion for righteousness, his selfishness and greed into an enthusiasm for humanity! Man developed to the full is the meaning of the whole uni- verse. And the end is not yet. God is in no haste. He takes months to grow and ripen an apple, ten thousand years to make a ton of coal, uncounted aeons to evolve a man with a brain like Plato's and a heart like Jesus Christ's." This modem view of human nature and of human history, which we have briefly simimarized, is not the "strange fancies" of a few. In substance, it rep- resents the view held to-day by all in- 93 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS telligent men and women. It is the con- ception that underlies the teaching in all our high schools and colleges, and also in our leading theological seminaries. Every educated minister of the Gospel knows these things, whether he preaches them or not. In his own thinking he takes all this into account; in private conversation, if not in the pulpit, he gives expression to the modern views. He no longer believes that the year 4004 B. Q. marks the beginning of man's life on the earth, and yet, with few exceptions, he persists in assuming that whole story as the groundwork of all his teaching. It is daylight plain that until Rehgion reconciles itself with that view of the history of the earth and of man which has taken possession of the modern mind, religion will fail ut- terly in reaching the modem mind. Re- ligion must free itself from false and mistaken history before it can hope to 94 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH regain its infltience over the minds and hearts, or to regulate the consciences of men to-day. It is said, "True, but people pay very- little attention to the creeds to-day ; but few believe them in their entirety, or are in any way influenced by them." It is just here that we face the tragedy of the modem religious situation. It is true that the great mass of the people and a multitude of the clergy do no longer believe the statements in the creeds or the theologies of the churches. Our young men and women who receive their education to-day do not and will not for an instant accept the conception of human nature or the view of human history that lies embedded in all the creeds and theologies. To retain these creeds, then, or to interpret them in a loose or poetic sense as they were nev^r intended to be interpreted, is not only a crime against truth and against hu- 95 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS man nature, but it also means the loss of the younger generation of trained and educated men and women to the great cause of Organized Religion. For what is any creed or any system of theology but the honest attempt of men living in a certain period of history to interpret the facts of the universe of life and of experience? There never was a theology "inspired of God." So long as man is growing and learning there can never be a final theology. No intellectual expression of religion framed yesterday can suffice for to-day. Why, then, should not the various churches frankly abandon the view of human nature and scheme of human history which human thought has out- grown, just as they have already aban- doned the old but no longer tenable view of Astronomy and Geology and Chronology? There can be no question that the fundamental duty of organized 96 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH Religion to-day in the interest of sim- ple honesty, is to accept openly and frankly the new truth that God has been reveahng through His prophets, the scientists and scholars of this modern age, and so translate the fimdamental verities of religion as to harmonize with God's truth everjrwhere else. To retain these outgrown creeds in an age of such wide dissemination of knowledge, is not only to be false to the God of Truth, but it is to bar the doors of the church to multitudes of honest and intelligent men and women, and to forfeit all claim to the respect of sincere lives everywhere. Never was the contrast between the teachings of Jesus and the theological teachings of the church, more clearly drawn than to-day. Not one of the dogmas with which modern thought finds itself out of harmony, has any place in his luminous teachings. He 97 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS holds no such view, either of htunan nature or of human history, as is em- bodied in the Churches' creeds. He never mentions Original Sin, or the Fall of Man, or Total Depravity. He no- where hints that God required the death of some one before He could forgive man's sins. In the Parable of the Prod- igal Son, he gives his view of God's re- lation to erring man. In the "far coun- try" the son learns his lesson at length and "comes to himself," his true self, always there but unawakened before. "And when he was yet a great way off, bis Father saw him and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." It was not a question of satisfying the Father's justice, or placating his anger, ©r winning his forgiveness. His for- giveness was always ready, waiting only the son's free acceptance. Jesus saw man not as degraded, but as divine ; not as lost to God, but as seeking God ; not 98 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH as totally depraved, but as ignorant and undeveloped, and aspiring toward truth and life.. And he sought to show man how to find God in his own inner life and how to live the divine life out in joy- ousness, in confidence and in love. It is safe to say that if a man should sit down to-day in the light of modern knowledge and the new appreciation of the life and teachings of Jesus, and attempt to frame a religious creed de novo, it woiold bear little resemblance to the creeds of the past. This is the crying need of the modern age, — a credo simple, and yet true to Jesus and in harmony with the best thought of the times. My own convic- tion is that if all the creeds and dogmas and paraphernalia of the Churches in Christendom to-day could be iset aside — and I recognize that it would take al- most superhuman courage and faith to do it — and if all organizations of re- 99 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ligion could then reestablish themselves firmly on the great central principles of Jesus' life and teachings, nothing would be lost but what deserved to be lost, and they and all the world would be the gainers by a thousand-fold. Organized Religion would then have the right to command the loyalty and cooperation of all thoughtful and earnest men and women, and its new and all-compelling authority — ^the only authority for this Age — ^would be the authority of the Truth. Rudolph Eucken, one of the great leaders in the world's thought, has re- cently written these words : "Christian- ity finds herself at a crisis which is deep- er-reaching and more dangerous than any she has faced before in the whole course of her history. For it is not this or that element that is called in ques- tion, but the whole structure of her life and being. We have already seen that 100 HONESTY TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH since the time when the ecclesiastical form of Christianity was finally fixed the profoundest changes have taken place alike in the world and in the pre- vailing temper of life. But Christianity is far from having come conclusively to terms with these changes, far from hav- ing raised above their ebb and flow the imperishable truth that is in her. The present form of Christianity often pre- sents this truth in sorriest guise, and out of sympathy with that phase of the spiritual life which is now unfolding. In truth the religious problem has now passed far beyond the control of any ecclesiastical body; over and outside the existing churches, and, through them and beyond, it has become a concern of the whole human race. As such it de- mands to be treated, but this is not pos- sible unless it takes on new hopes and follows new lines of its own. * * * What the age must win for itself is an 101 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS essentially new form of Christianity, an- swering to that phase of the Spiritual Life to which the world's historical de- velopment has led us." 102 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE nHE real depth of any man's religion depends upon its power to enable him to truly grasp a spiritual conception of life. The real life of any Age es- capes this fatal weakness of superficial- ity, in just the measure that its practi- cal working philosophy proceeds from a deep and genuine conviction of the spiritual meaning and value of life and the universe. On one side of his nature man has instinctively recognized that he was one with stocks and stones. In his physical being he is absolutely akin to all other physical organisms. Here he must ac- 103 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS knowledge the rule of universal physi- cal law. The chief functions of his body are identical with the functions of ani- mal and plant, viz., nutrition and repro- duction. But at the other pole of his being he knows that he is separate from and stands above all else. Here he has broken through the boundaries of physi- cal equality, and stands alone as a self- conscious individual. If he thinks at all he knows himself to be absolutely unique, incomparable. The whole weight of the universe cannot crush out this individuality of his. "This is the superstructure of the Self, which rises from th? indeterminate depth and dark- ness of its foundation into the open, proud of its isolation, proud of having given shape to a single individual idea of the Great Architect, which has no duplicate in the whole Universe." So it follows that a life is rich in the 104. A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE proportion that it is deep ; and it is deep to the extent that the moral and spir- itual consciousness is awakened. This is not true merely because religion has said so : it is profoundly and universally true. Creeds may be false, but this is certain. Bibles may be mistaken, but this is unquestionable. The individual who lives in the conscious presence of the Unseen Reality, who has transcend- ed the physical in his own body and in the Universe, and found the realm where faith and hope and love hold sway, who possesses the sense of justice keen and large, and lives by it in rela- tion to his fellows, and tries to organize more of it through himself in Society, lives deeper than the man of intellect merely, and infinitely deeper than the man of pleasure. The affections are richer than the money-making or truth- seeking capacities ; and the richest affec- tions are those that bind us consciously 105 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS to the Infinite. Every kind of life is essentially superficial that does not bring the human heart nearer to the In- finite Presence. The heart of truth is gone and a man has only the empty shell of it, if he does not see the expression ©f an Infinite Mind in the splendors of order and majesty which the outward world dis- closes. A man may know all the secrets which the earth contains, every link in the chain of geological ages, the struc- ture and distribution of all the animal species, the names and classifications of all forms of plants, the facts and laws of the mineral Kingdom — but what if he feels no breath of an Infinite Pres- ence upon his heart? What if he dis- cerns no traces of an Infinite skill in the wondrous universe which his thought inhabits? What if he feels no sense of reverence toward an all-penetrating Mind, or awe toward a sovereign Right- 106 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE eousness, or gratitude toward an all- sustaining Love? What if his knowl- edge be such that it has banished all poetry, mystery and sacredness from the forms and the very air of nature? Then, though the life may be intellectu- ally broad, it is spiritually shallow. The man who knows nothing about Astron- omy, but who looks up to the stars with an instinctive recognition of a power of which they are the mere sparkles, — the man who is ignorant of Botany, but who looks upon the fragrant flowers in his hand as a burst of creative good- ness, the poor woman who could not comprehend a single problem of the higher sciences, but who believes that this little globe is under a Father's con- stant watchful care, and that the grave of her child is not a blind alley but a path that leads from earth to heaven — each of these lives is a deeper life, be- cause in them is awakened a deeper 107 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS faculty to receive life from the world without and within, than he whose thoughts and feelings are limited by merely intellectual processes. If this should sound absurd in an age that has glorified the intellect to the ex- clusion of all other means of apprehend- ing Reality, we have only to be remind- ed of the profoundly significant philoso- phy of Henri Bergson, whose writings have created a "new epoch in the his- tory of human thought." Does man possess the means whereby he can come into immediate touch with life, so that he can learn to know its very nature? Is it possible for man to come into com- munion, not only with life, but also with the source of life? Bergson claims that we can. But by what means? Not by the intellect ; it must be, he contends, by a divining sympathy, a purified and transmuted instinct, or, in other words, by the intuition in man. Intuition, for 108 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE Bergson, however, does not supersede intelligence for practical scientific pur- poses; it complements it. "Intuition may enable us to grasp what it is that the intellect fails to give us, and indi- cate the means of supplementing it. But, though it thereby transcends in- telligence, it is from intelligence that has come the push that has made it rise to the point it has reached." Bergson claims that "the intellect can turn in- wards on itself and awaken the poten- tialities of intuition which slumber within it." Down through the centu- ries many have told us that the way to the intuition of Reality lay in that direc- tion — the turning inward of the mind on itself, the stilling of the intellect, the banishing of phantasy, and the bringing to rest of the operations of the discur- sive reason. This is no negative quiet- ism, but a very positive state of intense attention, followed by vital union. 109 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS But the intellect is not mind itself; it has, according to Bergson's theory, been cut out of mind by a process re- sembling that which has generated mat- ter. It has been called into being by the conditions of our physical environ- ment; the brain is the organ of its ex- pression, and when the brain ceases to be, the intellect, this temporary form of mind, vanishes also. On the contrary, says Bergson, "Intuition is mind itself, and, in a certain sense, life itself. * * * We recognize the unity of the spiritual life only when we place ourselves in in- tuition, in order to go from intuition to the intellect; for from the intellect we shall never pass to intuition." Thus in the philosophy of our mos-t modern thinker we find the sanction for that power upon which the great mys- tics of all the ages have based their knowledge of Reality. Henri Bergson has set the seal of modern philosophic 110 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE thought upon the vahdity of the Intui- tion as the true and only means of ar- riving at the deeper significance of Life. The most obvious and most generally accepted explanation of the world has always been that of Naturalism or Realism ; the point of view at once both of the unthinking man and of physical science. Naturahsm affirms simply that the real world is as we perceive it through our senses, nothing more. It congratulates itself on resting in the concrete; it accepts material things as real. And yet, curiously enough, this ex- planation has never, even from the be- ginning, satisfied man's hunger for Re- ality. Life, as we coiiceive of it to-day, appears to be one great stream of Be- coming, the mutual thrust and effort, the perpetual interpenetration of the two forms under which Reality is known to us: «the inelastic, tangible somewhat called matter, and the free, 111 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS creative, impalpable somewhat called mind or spirit. From bottom to top of the organized world, from the emer- gence of the amoeba to the final flower- ing of the hvrnian consciousness, is seen this one great, continuous effort. And it is to new combinations and reactions of the two forces involved in this strug- gle that we must look for the central meaning of that amazing mystery which we accept as Life. Throughout the whole course of this struggle, we discern on the side of spirit, or, on the psychic side of life, an unmis- takable instinct for transcendence; "an internal push, which has carried life by more and more complex forms to higher and higher destinies." The higher the type the clearer it becomes that it has not yet "arrived," but is on the way to a something higher. Life appears un- willing merely to make itself at home in the material universe; determined 112 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE rather to use that material universe as a means toward the discovery or ac- quirement of something else, of "a new kind of reahty over against all mere nature." The amazing thing is that primitive man should not have been con- tent with himself as he was, and with the world as it appeared to be to his senses. He found himself possessed of a wonderfully organized body, skillfully contrived through the coordination of all its ingenious parts to perform the great functions of nutrition and repro- duction, upon which physical life de- pended. He found himself surrounded by a physical environment that, in a marvellous way, responded to and satis- fied every need of his physical nature. Why demand anything more? Why could he not have been satisfied with things as they were? Why did he ever begin to question the evidence of his senses and attempt to peer behind the 113 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS veil of phenomena? Why does he con- clude so early in his sojourn on this planet that things are not just as they seem to be to the eye of sense? And why, through all the mighty changes that man has made in the conditions of his life and the intricate and complex de- velopment of civilization, does man still refuse to be content with things as they are and persistently pursue his quest toward the heart of things— the hidden secret of Life's true meaning? There is but one answer: The spirit in man is inevitably called to some victory beyond the sphere that w,e call physical ; it feels within itself cravings and intuitions which that physical environment cannot satisfy; it is conscious of a capacity for freedom which its own highest physical manifestations are unable to express. Thus it is that "The strongest power within the world constitutes in reality the conviction of an over-world." 114. A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE No longer can it be objected that the consciousness of an all-embracing spir- itual life, in which "we all live and move and have our being," is alone possible to the "exceptionally endowed souls" of the race, that the experiences of the great mystics are essentially abnormal, and that the rank and file of men and women can never pass that way. Even the most normal, ordinary hxmian life includes in its range of fundamental ex- periences unforgettable sensations, sa- cred hours, forced on us, as it were, against our wUl, for which no science as yet is able to account. These experi- ences and the hours of exalted emotion which they bring — often recognized by us as the greatest and most significant hours of our lives — play absolutely no part in relation to the physical functions of nutrition and reproduction. Their influence, indeed, is far-reaching on character, but they do nothing to assist 115 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS that character in its struggle for physi- cal life. They belong to a realm above and apart from the physical. Among such spiritual experiences are those which we associate with religion, with pain and with beauty. All three possess a mysterious authority far greater than those feelings or appear- ances which they seem to contradict. All three, were we living merely in a material universe, would be absurd. All three are universal and therefore worthy of the reverence due to all vital experiences. 1. It is well known that all great re- ligions rest upon a primary assumption that has never and can never be intellec- tually demonstrated — the assumption that the supra-sensible is somehow im- portant and real, and that man can come into vital relations with it. The existence of God, however He may be defined, can never be intellectually 116 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE proven. This is why every religion has continually emphasized man's general dependence upon faith rather than upon knowledge. Hence religion, whatever form it may take, always proceeds from a fundamental assumption that is from the merely intellectual viewpoint hope- lessly irrational. And yet religion is one of the most universal and ineradica- ble functions of man, and this although it constantly acts detrimentally to the interests of his merely physical exist- ence. Irrational though it be, the decay and death of one form of religion has invariably furnished the soil out of which has sprung some new and higher form of that same "irrational" religion. The only explanation is that religion, in all its forms, has never proceeded from the intellect primarily, but rather from that deeper intuition in man's nature that will never let him rest satisfied in any materialistic universe. It may be- 117 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS gin in low, crude and superstitious forms, but it ends in pure and disinter- ested love in union with the Unseen Reality. Why did the Cosmos elabo- rate this religious instinct, and safe- guard so zealously its perseverance, if things are not more than they seem? 2. Or, think again of that large group of experiences which constitute "the problem of suffering," the physical pain and mental anguish which appear to be the inevitable result of the inexora- ble operation of "natural law" and all its voluntary assistants, the cruelty, greed and injustice of man. In the case of many forms of suffering it is easy to see how useful the part they play in the education of the race — as punish- ments for past follies, or the spurs to new efforts, or the warnings against fu- ture infringements of "the law." But there are many others that refuse to fall under this simple formula, e. g., the 118 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION 01* LIFE long torments of the incurable, the tor- tures of the innocent, the deep anguish of the bereaved, the existence of bo many agonizing forms of death for which man is in no sense responsible, and, greatest of all mysteries in life. Death itself, whensoever it may come. The real question is not, whence come these conditions which provoke in the self the experience called pain, but why do these conditions hurt the self? Why does fuU consciousness always include the mysterious capacity for misery as well as for happiness? "Why does Evolution, as we ascend the ladder of life, increase instead of diminish the ca- pacity for useless mental anguish, for long dull torment, for bitter protracted grief, for torments of impotent sympa- thy for other people's irremediable pains, the dreadful power of feeling the world's woe? We are hopelessly and 119 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS cruelly over-sensitized for the part Nat- uralism would call us to play." We are not here attempting the solu- tion of the age-long "problem of pain." What we need to realize, in this connec- tion, is that Pain, whatever form it takes, always indicates a profound dis- harmony between the sense world and the human self. If it is to be overcome, either the disharmony must be resolved by the careful adjustment of the self to the world of sense, or that self must turn from the sense-world to some other, with which, in its deeper aspects, it is in harmony. The pessimist, resting in appearance only, sees nature "red in tooth and claw" offering him no hope of escape. The optimist dares to think that pain and anguish which may, in their lower forms, be life's harsh guides on the path of physical evolution, in their higher and apparently "useless" developments are 120 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE her leaders and teachers in the upper school of supra-sensible Reality. He believes that they press the self forward to another world, still "natural" for him, in which he will be more at home. He sees in pain the complement of love, and is inclined to call these the wings on which man's spirit can best take flight toward the Absolute. Pain, then, which plunges like a sword through creation, that "groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," leaves on the one side cringing and de- graded cowards, and on the other the world's greatest heroes and truest saints, and thus reveals facts of univer- sal experience that no materialistic phi- losophy can explain. 3. In the same way the sensations of awe, reverence and rapture evoked by Beauty in any of her myriad forms, are almost as difficult to accoimt for. It is the function of the great arts, 121 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS music, painting and poetry, to express for us the inexpressible, to define for us the indefinable, to discover for us the undiscoverable. Each speaks its own language, and yet they are one in that they all reveal to the responsive soul some aspect of a supra-sensible Reality. Why does the snowy peak in the Alps awaken in us the "sense of the sublime," from whence arises awe and adoration? Why does the song of the skylark, or the blue of the violet, or the still, quiet shining of the stars, or the restless ebb and flow of the tide, arouse in us the sense of "wonder and mystery"? Why should great poetry move us to un- speakable emotion, or a symphony of Beethoven or a Wagnerian opera lift us to heights from which we but slowly and reluctantly descend? Why do we turn from "The Angelus" in a silence too deep for words? How does what we call best in art and 122 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE letters contribute in any way to the physical evolution of the race? The truth is that Beauty's secret is still her own, and we receive her message and respond to it, not because we under- stand it, but only because we must, "Beauty," said Hegel, "is merely the Spiritual making itself known sen- suously." "In the good, the beautiful, the true," says Eucken, "we see ReaKty revealing its personal character." "If the mind," says Recejac, "penetrates deeply into the facts of Beauty, it will find more and more that these facts are based upon an ideal identity between the mind itself and the underlying Real- ity. The beautiful then becomes the sublime; brief apparition by which the soul is caught up into the true mystic state and touches the Absolute." It was of this inner truth of things that St. Augustine cried in a moment of lucid vision, "Oh, Beauty, so old and so 123 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS new, too late have I loved thee I" It is in this profound sense also that "beauty- is truth and truth is beauty." Josiah Royce thus describes the instinct of man for a supra-sensible world, for the Un- seen Reality behind appearance: "Fi- nite as we are, lost though we seem to be in the dark woods, or in the wide airy wilderness, in this world of time and of change, we have still, like the strayed animals, or the migrating birds, our homing instinct. We seek. That is the fact. We seek a city still out of sight. But, if this be so, then already we pos- sess something of Infinite Being even in our finite seeking. For the readiness to seek is already something of an attain ment," and, we may add, the sure prom- ise of a larger finding and a more com- plete realization in the future. Thus it becomes clear that not only the "exceptionally endowed" mystic, but also the average normal man, if he 124 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE stops to reflect, finds that he is led out inevitably through these common uni- versal experiences of religion, pain and beauty, into a supra-sensible world of Reality that no materialistic hypothe- sis can explain. Nothing is more strikingly significant in this modern age than the new emer- gence of the spiritual sense, or the mys- tical spirit, in quarters where we would be least hkely to look for it. It is true, wonderfully true, that "the moon is ris- ing again and the tide of dreams once more floods the naked shingles of the world." The old starlit mystery of things is coming back, and life is once more filled full of meaning and signifi- cance. The very science that since the time of Darwin has seemed to be taking all the glory out of the sky and all the divineness out of life is to-day becoming more and more mystical, or, in other words, less and less hostile toward the 126 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS things of the spirit. Every day this sci- ence is confirming more clearly man's intuitive faith that he is spirit, that he does not live by bread alone, and that the meaning of his life is something mysteriously sacred, radiant and exalted beyond all mortal telling. It is not strange that at the outset modern science, with its tendency toward narrow specialization, should see only the bare physical facts. The field was so vast, the work of observing, sift- ing, verifying and amassing the neces- sary data was so stupendous that it was impossible for a time to inquire as to the wider meaning of this vast mass of new facts. But to-day there are ap- pearing on the horizon scientists who are more than specialists searching for facts. They are philosophers as weU, possessed of the power to generalize from the new facts, and explain their real significance in our interpretation of 126 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE the universe and of life. Not much, so far as I know, has as yet been published in regard to the inevitable significance of this new science, and, indeed, it is as yet a prophecy rather than something fully realized. It is an apprehension, a feeling, an intuition, rather than a for- mulated doctrine. And yet, as we listen to men like Sir Oliver Lodge, we feel that it resembles the hush, the faint illu- mination in the east, which ushers in a new and nobler day for humanity. When science tells us that this brick I hold in my hand, and which I describe as solid and red, is no more solid than a snow-storm, that it really consists of in- numerable atoms, whirling and dancing one about another; that the red color is only a question of the relation between my optic nerve and the light waves which it is enabled to absorb, that the atom itself is only a "Center of Electric Energy," I begin to feel that if I could 127 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS track matter to its lair, under the guid- ance of modem Science, I might dis- cover that it has no extension, and thus become an idealist, in spite of all ap- pearances. When we turn to modern philosophy, we find that the old materialistic hy- pothesis has vanished, and in some form it is idealism that is everywhere being taught and preached. Rudolph Euc- ken, the sturdy thinker of Jena, says: "The cornerstone of all philosophic thought and the axiom of axioms is the fact of a world-emhradng spiritual life. * * * The union of the Divine and Human natures is the fundamental truth. Man becomes immediately con- scious of the Infinite and Eternal, of that within him which transcends the world of sense." Henri Bergson, who, as we have seen, gives the fundamental place to intuition in himian life, says: "The life force which we find in every 128 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE living thing must have come from a source. That source is unceasing life, action, freedom. You may call it God. This life force is shown in the form of intuition, which aU of us possess more or less, and which at times permits us to catch glimpses of the very nature of our existence." With the new and almost mystical note in science, and the new idealism in philosophy, there is also coming a new appreciation for the great principles enunciated by Jesus. Apart from all theological considerations, we are com- ing to think of him as holding the same place in the realm of the ethical and spiritual life that was held by Coper- nicus or Newton or Darwin in the realm of physical science. Like them, Jesus was a discoverer of eternal laws, a for- mulator of the inherent methods, a de- finer of fundamental principles — ^laws, methods and principles which are just 129 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS as true, universal and inevitable in the moral and spiritual realm as are the laws of gravitation or of evolution in the physical. And when Jesus says that God is Universal Spirit, the All- Father, and that we are literally His children, that we come forth from Him and possess His life as the center and source of our individual lives; when he says that Life is more than meat and drink and raiment, and that a man's life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesseth; when he simis up all of life's duties as consisting in love and confidence toward God and love and helpfulness toward our fellows ; when he says that death is never the end of hfe, but only an incident in life, and that "Eternal life" may be realized and lived here and now, he is simply stating in practical terms his spiritual conception of life, which finds its corroboration to- day in our most modern thinking, as 130 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE well as in the experience of every indi- vidual. The most hopeful thing about the new spiritual consciousness that is dawning on the world, is the fact that its great word is realization, not renuncia- tion. For centuries men have believed that the only path to the spiritual life led away from the real world of action. So the anchorite fled to the desert, and the monk prayed alone in his cell ! But if so-called spiritual vision half -starves the body, impoverishes the natural af- fections, weakens the mental powers, producing a pallid, ghost-like, anaemic personality, the modern world will not consider it of high value, and the mod- ern world will be right. Not through leanness, but through fulness of life, not through renunciation, but through reali- zation of all the wealth of resources that lie potentially within every individual, is found the pathway to attainment for 131 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS the new mystic of to-day. Mr. Tagore voices this new spirit of modern mysti- cism, in striking contrast to the old mys- ticism of renunciation that has been so prevalent in India, where he says, "De- hverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thou- sand bonds of delight. Thou ever pour- est for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various colors and fragrance, filhng this earthen vessel to the brim. My world will hght its hundred differ- ent lamps with thy flame, and place them before the altar of thy temple. No, I wiU never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight and hear- ing and touch wiU bear thy delight. Yea, all my illusions will burn into il- luminations of joy, and all my desires ripen into fruits of love." It is by these outward fruits of love that the value of any inner realization of God must ulti- mately be tested. 132 A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF LIFE vThe greatest of all needs in the world to-day is that men and nations should grasp the spiritual conception of life. It is the absence of this conception in man's practical thinking and living that breeds all the war and strife of modem civilization./ When the materialistic values of money and force and selfish- ness are replaced by the spiritual val- ues of character, of cooperation and love, when man realizes who he really is and the actual oneness that binds him to his fellows and to God, then man's true and spiritual life will begin here upon earth. The supreme challenge of this age, in which the old materialism is struggling with the newly-awakened spiritual consciousness, is a challenge to all the forces of organized religion to lift up the eyes and discern the new day dawning; and then, catching the in- , spiration from all the new truth as taught by science and philosophy and 133 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS human experience, to so preach and teach and live the spiritual conception of hfe, that all dead or dying or out- grown forms of religion shall be for- gotten. 134 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY F^HE profoundest fact of hu- man life is that, for everyone, the real, the only true life is lived in the realm of the spirit. The actual difference between people is not that some are religious and some are not, that some attend church and many more do not, that some believe certain things about God or the Bible or salvation while others do not; the fundamental difference be- tween people is that some clearly and frankly recognize that the "real life" is an inner spiritual thing, while others have not yet become conscious of what their true life actually consists. From 135 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS the beginning the great seers and sages and poets of the race have borne witness to this supreme fact. It has been their mission to awaken in the lives of others that which has already come to con- sciousness in themselves. In popular speech we say that Jesus is the Saviour of mankind, that he came to bring salvation. But what is "Sal- vation," and how does Jesus "save"? When Jesus stated his mission in the words, "I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly," he announced a World of Reality lying within and about men, but unperceived by aU save the very few. Into this World of Reality he sought to lead men, for he knew that when man became clearly and fully conscious that the true Kingdom of God was within himself, the only salvation worthy the name would be achieved. 136 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY He sought to save men, not from God, as the older theology has conceived sal- vation, but to God, which is a radically different thing. This is the Christ to whom men and women are tiirning with a new and deeper appreciation than ever before. The modern world cares very little for what men in the past have said about Jesus, but they are intensely interested in what Jesus said himself. This age of ours is seriously bent on finding reality in rehgion, as well as everywhere else. We have grown tired of empty formu- las and meaningless phrases. We have less and less interest in the Christ of the old Dogmas, i. e., the Christ as in- terpreted by men of an age that is past and gone. But the Christ who in his own personality revealed a life of Real- ity, and who in his teachings disclosed the way to that Reality and who also be- lieved that every man could find that 137 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS "way" and walk therein, — it is to this Christ that the hearts and minds of thoughtful people are turning every- where. It is this hunger for Reality that un- derlies the new mysticism of our day that is finding expression in poetry, in drama, in fiction, in certain marked ten- dencies of the latest science, in numer- ous modern cults that have sprung up recently, to say nothing of the scores of recent books dealing with mysticism from the historical and philosophical viewpoint. There is a confusion in many minds as to what is meant by the "new mysticism." To some it is a phi- losophy, to some a religion, to some an illusion, to some a disease. What is mysticism? In its simplest terms, to quote Evelyn Underbill, "Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree, or who 138 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY aims at and believes in such attain- ment." But why, in this practical, scientific age, when the tendency has been to rele- gate all mysteries to the limbo of igno- rance and superstition, do we find man suddenly turning mystic once more, and reaching out vaguely and oftentimes crudely for the Reahty that lies behind aU "appearances." It seems almost to be Nature's revenge on an age that has boasted of its "knowledge," and al- lowed itself to become too wholly ab- sorbed in a practical materialism of life and thought. It is the unquenchable spirit within man, reasserting itself and demanding its inalienable rights. It is the resurgence of the life of the Spirit that no mere intellectual development or scientific "discoveries" can ever wholly destroy. It is the eternal and irrefutable evidence of man's Divine in- heritance. 139 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS For the past half century or more man's mental energies have been chiefly expended in the observation, investiga- tion, verification and formulation of physical facts. As a result, an incredi- ble amount of new knowledge has been attained. It has all been properly clas- sified, correctly labelled and neatly put away in the right pigeon-hole of our mental furnishings. This has been the work of the scholars to whom we can- not be too grateful for their wonderful achievements. On the other hand, the practical man of affairs has been ab- sorbed in building up colossal fortunes and in developing, by the aid of science, the marvellously intricate and complex material civilization which is ours to- day. In such an age there has been small room for, and scant interest in, the great poet, or artist, or spiritual seer, whose function it always is to in- terpret, not things, but the Reality be- 140 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY hind things. As a result we find our- selves to-day living in a museum-like Universe, in which, to many minds, aU mysteries have been explained, all facts have been discovered, all forces have been reduced to laws. Everything has been classified and labelled and put in its proper case, and, if we only study hard enough, we can know all there is to be known. It is in no sense to disparage the achievements of Science, or belittle their worth for the future, when we recog- nize the limitations of Science and real- ize how much remains as yet undiscov- ered and unexplained. The simple fact is that the past scientific age has been necessarily and inevitably an Analytical age. We are somewhat in the position of the child to whom has been given an intricate and mysteriously working toy. Boy-like, he is not content until he has taken the toy to pieces, to see "how it 141 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS works," and then, with the separate parts strewn about him, he finds himself powerless to put them together again; he has learned all about its parts, but he has lost the toy as a whole ; its power to "work" is gone. It is thus that multitudes are stand- ing to-day with the "separate parts" of the universe strewn all about them. By the scientific method everything has been taken apart and analyzed and de- scribed; each separate part has been named and put into its proper place in the "system." The world of phenomena has been tabulated and formulated and reduced to law, and yet there is something in us that remains unsatisfied. We would not surrender a single fact we have learned in our analytical processes, but we feel instinctively the need of a netJO synthesis that shall put together for us again the "separate parts" and enable us to "see life steadily and see it 142 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY whole." The hour has come when the human spirit demands insistently a higher Science that shall interpret for us the meaning of the Universe as a whole, whose "parts" we have been so busily analyzing, a deeper Philosophy that shall bring together the scattered fragments of life as we have been inves- tigating them, and in a new and lumi- nous synthesis explain for us life's deep and true significance. What avails our Astronomy, or Geol- ogy, or Botany, or Zoology, if we have lost the sense of the Infinite Presence, of which every star and stone, flower and animal is the constant expression? What is the value of a Biology that en- ables us to trace the laws of life's un- folding from amoeba to man, if it leaves us blind to the mighty significance of that life force which no Biology has as yet explained? Of what profit is the Psychology that analyzes man's intel- 143 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS lectual faculties and traces their devel- opment, but leaves him in ignorance of the nature of his true self, or oblivious of the profound significance of his per- sonal consciousness ? What is the worth of a Theology that formulates beliefs about God but leaves the soul powerless to effect any union with the Divine? The new mysticism, whatever its form or expression, is nothing else than the old, eternal spirit in man reaching out for the "bread of life," for which the "stones" of mere physical facts can never be successfully substituted. When we speak of the World of Reality, and man's possible union with such a world, we are not thinking of Saint Francis, or Saint Theresa, or Thomas-a-Kempis, or persons who have borne witness to experiences that are, at least, supernormal. History records many such lives, and literature abounds in many experiences that, according to 144. THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY Professor James, are extremely signifi- cant and cannot be left out of account in an estimate of the possibilities in this realm for the human spirit. Let us frankly admit that the great mystics are exceptional individuals. Are their achievements in the reahn of the spirit due to exceptional endowments or to exceptional development? We cannot all be great prophets, or great law-giv- ers, or great seers, but it is self-evident that everyone who chooses may live the life of Reality. The best must be within the reach of all, or it would not be the best. Everyone is permitted to share life's highest good. It is not a question of endowment, but of developm^ent ; and we are thinking in this connection of the average, practical man and woman, to whom such development is always possible. It is obvious to all who reflect at all that even under normal conditions man 145 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS dwells in a world of imagination rather than in a world of facts ; that the Uni- verse in which he lives and at which he looks is but a construction which the mind has made from some very few among the wealth of materials at its disposal. "The relation of this Universe to the world of fact is not unlike the relation between a tapestry picture and the scene which it attempts to portray. You, the practical man, are obliged to weave your image of the outer world upon the hard warp of your own men- tality, which perpetually imposes its own conventions and checks the free representation of life. As a tapestry picture is ultimately reducible to little squares, so the world of common-sense is ultimately reducible to a series of static elements, conditioned by the ma- chinery of the brain — subtle curves, swift movement, delicate gradation — 146 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY that machinery cannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless suggestions, the tangle of many-colored wools which the real world presents to you, you snatch one here and there. Of these you weave together those which seem the most useful, the most obvious, the most often repeated, which make a tidy and coherent pattern when seen on the right side." Shut up with this sym- bolic picture you have formed of the world or of life, you soon drop into the habit of behaving to it as if it were not the mere representation colored by your own mental limitations, your ig- norance, or prejudice, but as if it were the "real world." The world becomes to you a museum-like place, where cer- tain things are labelled and classified, but where all the great fluid facts of life which have no label are ignored. It was escape from such a cut-and-dried- world that Keats sought when he cried 147 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS out, "O, for a life of sensation rather than thought!" He felt — as all poets have felt with him — that "another love- lier world, tinted with unimaginable wonders, alive with ultimate music, awaited those who could free themselves from the fetters of the mind, lay down the shuttle and the weaver's comb, and reach out beyond the conceptual image to intuitive contact with the Thing it- self." This is the mission of the great artist whenever he appears — ^to translate into the sensuous forms of his art, the glimpses of Reality that he has attained, so that the average man may share his experience of the "real life." The power or the truth of the real artist, whether he be poet or musician or painter or sculptor, lies in the fact that he has achieved a passionate communion with deeper levels of life than those with which we usually deal, has "thrust past 148 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY the current notion to the Fact." This is why the great artist must always be the mystic. But there is something of the artist, and therefore of the mystic in every man, though he may not realize it. The seer is the mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality be- yond the reach of the senses. The phi- losopher is a mystic when he passes be- yond the mere logical processes of thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The scientist is a mystic when he generalizes from his facts and attains a conclusion which his bare facts never contained. The active man is a mystic when he knows his actions to be a part of a greater activity. All these various types express different forms of the working of the contemplative conscious- ness, a faculty which is natural to aU men, though few take the trouble to develop it. The old story of "Eyes and No- 149 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS Eyes," which Evelyn Underhill tells, illustrates the mystical and umnystical types. "No-Eyes" has fixed his atten- tion on the fact that he is obliged to take a walk. For him the chief factor of existence is his own movement along the road, a movement which he intends to accomplish as easily and as comfort- ably as he can. He does not notice what lies on either side of the hedges. He ignores the caress of the wind until it threatens to remove his cap. He trudges along steadily, diligently avoiding the muddy pools, but oblivious) of the light which they reflect. "Eyes" takes the walk, too, and for him it is a perpetual revelation of beauty and wonder. The sunlight inebriates him, the winds delight him, the very effort of the journey is a joy. Magic pres- ences throng the road-side or cry salu- tations to him from the hidden fields. The rich world through which he moves 150 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY lies in the foreground of his conscious- ness and gives up new secrets to him at every step. "No-Eyes," when told of his adventures, refuses to believe that both have walked the same road. He can never be persuaded to the contrary, unless he can be persuaded to look for himself. Still, it is true that every man, even the unmystical type, enters at times into the experience when for a season he lives Reality. It may be some great outburst of beauty; it may be some dev- astating visitation of love or pain; it may be some long period of sickness, in which the things of time and sense fade into the background; it may be some overwhelming sorrow, when the very foundations of his familiar world seem cut asunder — ^whatever form the ex- perience may take, it is in such lumi- nous hours that a man realizes how much of his life is immaterial, irrele- 151 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS vant and unessential, and when these "unreal" things of life are swept away, he finds himself, for the time being at least, face to face with Reality. No one has voiced this common ex- perience more truly or more beautifully than has Matthew Arnold, in his poem, "The Buried Life." "But often in the world's most crowded streets, But often in the din of strife. There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life ; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course ; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart that beats So wild, so deep in us ; to know Whence our thoughts come and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves. But deep enough, alas ! none ever mines. 152 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY And we have been on many thousand lines, And we have shown on each, talent and power. But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves ; Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast. But they course on, forever unexpressed. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — ^but 'tis not true. And then we will no more be racked With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power ; Ah ! yes, and they benumb us at our call : Yet still, from time to time, vague and for- lorn, From the soul's subterranean depths up- borne. As from an infinitely distant land. Come airs and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day. Only — but this is rare — 153 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed — A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again : The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean we say, and what we would, we know; A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth forever chase That flying and elusive shadow. Rest ; An air of coolness plays upon his face And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hiUs where his life rose. And the sea where it goes. . . ." 164 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY If the doors of perception were cleared, said Blake, everything would appear to man as it is — Infinite. But the doors of perception are hung with the cobwebs of thought and prejudice, cowardice and sloth. "Eternity is with us, inyiting our contemplation perpet- ually, but we are too frightened, lazy and suspicious to respond, too arrogant to still our thought and let divine sen- sation have its way." For every one of us there are mo- ments when "the buried life" rises into consciousness, and we do live reality. It is an intensely practical mysticism for which we plead, that is perfectly possible to all men; without it man is not whoUy conscious nor wholly alive. It is a perfectly natural human activity, no more involving the exceptional pow- ers and sublime experiences of the mys- tical saints and seers than th^ ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special 155 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS creative powers of the great musician. We all know in some form the occasion- al or spasmodic experience of Reality, with its accompanying inner serenity and calmness and peace, but are we will- ing that our participation in Reality shaU depend wholly on these incalcul- able visitations, on the sudden wind and rain of some great experience that washes clean the windows of the soul and brings us face to face with the vision splendid. We can, if we choose, keep those windows habitually clear. We can, if we choose to turn our atten- tion that way, learn to look out of them and see the world of Reality. It re- quires courage and industry; in the language of the mystic, it will necessi- tate the purification of the senses and the wUl. Whether we make the effort depends on how strong is our desire to live Reality. Let me make a few simple sugges- 156 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY tions as to how the life of Reahty may become an habitual thing. First : We need to accustom ourselves to keep in mind the true end of human existence. Constituted as we are, there exist for us lower and higher ends. Food is necessary to our physical existence, but the getting of food is a lower end. Knowledge is a necessary end and a higher one. The practical moral ends, educating the ignorant, improving con- ditions of the poor, combating disease, etc., are yet higher ends. But, above aU these, there is the highest end. We are here to grow the soul, and the end of the soul's growth is moral complete- ness, not in one particular, but in every particular. Jesus called it "perfec- tion." "Ye shall be perfect even as your Father is perfect," and in the Ser- mon on the Mount he defines perfection as the "righteousness that is through love." To live reahty means never to 157 HUAIANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS lose sight of the loltimate end of my sojourn in this physical body; it means never allowing anything, — ^work, pleas- ure, interests, friendship, — ^to inter- fere with that true growth of the inner hfe that constitutes the center of Real- ity for me, and is one with Reality everywhere. One needs also to acquire the habit of frequently detaching one's self from one's accustomed interests and pursuits and becoming, as it were, a spectator of one's self and one's doings. From the time we awake in the morning we are caught up in the rushing stream of duties, responsibilities, engagements and pleasures of all kinds, and carried along ceaselessly until we retire to rest again at night. Each day is a repeti- tion of the day that preceded, and we have no leisure to get acquainted with the true Self apart from the mad whirl of the things and the activities of daily 158 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY life. For this reason it is imperative that we set apart certain times, prefer- ably a certain time each day for self- recollection ; dedicate an hour or a half- hour to steadily seeing one's life in all its relations. You may call the time spent in this way prayer, or going into the silence, or meditation with your true Self — it matters not what we call it, if only we do it. No one can live Reality who does not learn to see the things which absorb so much of time and thought, in relation to the other things, which are far more "real" because more truly essential to the attaining of life's true end than most of the things that engross us. Living Reality does not consist in turning one's back on things mundane, in neglecting the plain duties of life, or becoming unsocial, or in win- ning the name of being "queer," but rather in seeing all mundane things in their relation to things ultimate and 159 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS perfect, in catching that true perspec- tive of life, whereby first things always come first, and minor things sink into the background. Whatever our pior- suits may be, we all need often to men- tally detach ourselves from them and, standing aloof as impartial spectators, inquire as to whether they are leading us toward the only true goal of life. Another suggestion is this: "Live as if this hour were thy last here on earth," not because this world is a vale of tears, and other-worldliness is the only reahty, but because we need to be reminded constantly that we are chil- dren not of time but of eternity. The Ancients used to exhibit a skeleton at their feasts, and to them death was the grim King of Terrors. But, when I commend the thought of death, it is in no sense with this conception in mind. Death is like the mighty angel, holding with averted face a wondrous lamp, that 160 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY sheds its rays on all the past and drives the last lurking shadow from the future. To think of death in this way need not dampen the healthy relish for life, but it would enhance the relish for real hv- ing, the kind of living that is devoted to things really worth while. As such a test it becomes invaluable;. If I am only to live for the three score years and ten and then die, I might be content with a certain physical standard of val- ues. But, if I am to live on after death, apart from physical conditions as we know them here, then nothing save a spiritual standard of values can suffice. The man whose physician tells him that he has a fatal malady and cannot live more than a year, if he be a strong, sane and morally developed man, will only be ennobled by the knowledge. Every- thing that is beautiful in the world wiU still be beautiful, and all that he loved he will stUl love — only how clear wiU 161 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS become the distinction to him between the really essential and the unessential! Thus to think of life and death would be indeed to "see life steadily and to see it whale." We need, also, to learn to look upon our own pains and injuries as we would look upon them if they were being en- dured by some one else. Expect the same patience and fortitude and trust of yourself that you would ask to see in others. If one has done you a wrong, remember what you would adduce in palliation of the offense if another were in the same situation. Remind yourself, as you would another, that probably there had been some provocation ; say to yourself as you would to another, "to understand all is to forgive all." Real- ize the essential unity that exists be- tween you and your fellow-men, in every experience that comes to you or to them; identify yourself with others, 162 THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY even though guiltless, with the guilty. For the highest end with which we must ever be in touch, toward which we must be ever looking, is to make actual that unity between ourselves and others of which our moral nature is the prophecy, and which is the basis of living Reality. If, then, the supreme function of Re- ligion is to open for us tJhe door to Real- ity, if salvation is a process by means of which we enter, through the unfold- ing of our inner consciousness, into a new world of Reality and live joyously and confidently "the life that is life in- deed," in which all the material, irrele- vant and unessential things of our life here fall into their proper places, then the question becomes pertinent: Is or- ganized religion adequately discharging this supreme function in modern So- ciety? Are the churches, the creeds, the rituals, the sermons, the manifold activi- ties of church life to-day, sending men 163 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS and women back into life to live Real- ity? The self-gvident answer was never clearer than to-day as we face the con- flicts of modem society and the practi- cal materialism of the times. And yet, to hmnbly confess failure, if at the same time the vision of the ideal emerges more clearly, is to make possible for organized religion a more glorious fu- ture than it has ever known in the past. In one of his short stories, Mr. H. G. Wells imagines a country inhabited only by blind people and surrounded on aU sides by high and all but impassa- ble mountains. The people of the val- ley thus enclosed knew no other world, and for the most part did not believe there could be another world. They made the most of their valley. Every- thing that they understood by science was done to develop their resources. They had all kinds of public works, of which they were very proud. Their THE COURAGE TO LIVE REALITY streets and roads were laid out on mathematical plans, so that they could easily find their way about. They were perfectly satisfied and content with their wonderful world. But one day a visitor found his way through the mountains from the world outside and tried to tell them of what he had seen. He assured them that their valley was only a fragment of the real world, that their notions about it were quite absurd, as were their various devices for making it habitable, and that what they considered grand and beauti- ful was both petty and ugly. No one would listen to him, no one would be- lieve him, except one woman, who had learned to love him. She could not see any more than the others, but the love in her life awoke in her a perception so nearly akin to sight that in time she came to feel and understand something 165 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS of the glory of the larger world which he described. If love does not bring actual sight it does bring insight. It makes the eyes telescopic, the mind receptive, the heart quick to understand. To love Reality above everything else, to earnestly de- sire that vital union with Reality which is possible to every individual, wiU be to find the World of Reality all about us and within us, and eventually we shall come to live habitually the only Real life here and now. 166 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD Y the word "God" we mean the Supreme Being of the Universe, hut how many and how varied have been the conceptions taught under that familiar name! "When the Gods arrive, the half gods go/' This is what has been taking place continually since man, the "wor- shipping animal," first made his appear- ance on this planet. Man has been con- stantly discovering and rediscovering God, and the end is not yet. Low and narrow ideas of God have ever been giving way to higher and broader ideas ; inadequate and unworthy nptions have disappeared with the coming of more adequate and worthy notions ; imperfect 167 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS and limited conceptions have vanished with the dawning of more nearly per- fect and universal conceptions. The race has come to its knowledge of God through the knowledge of itself, for we must not forget that every "revelation of God," which has become enshrined in the Bibles of the race, was first of all made in the inner consciousness of some individual. "Revelation" does not con- sist in God removing some veil which hides Him from the searching gaze of man, but rather in man removing the veil from before his own eyes, which blinds him to the truth and beauty of God. The true God always "arrives" to take the place of the half -gods, as man makes the discovery of his truer, deeper self. What is the intellectual conception of God to which man's ceaseless quest dur- ing all the ages, has at length brought him? How do we think of God in this 168 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD our modern age? In that stupendous work, "The Synthetic Philosophy," to which Herbert Spencer gave a hfetime of thought and energy, he attempts to set forth the conclusions to which hu- man thinking has arrived at the close of the nineteenth century. In his phi- losophy he does not teach that mind has been evolved from matter, but merely that in evolution the series of psychical phenomena have been parallel with the series of physical phenomena. The re- lation between the two classes of phe- nomena is one of concomitance, not a causal relation. This is the same posi- tion taken by Tyndal in his famous ad- dress on "Scientific Materialism." In other words, mind and matter are mani- festations, under two different aspects, of an underlying reality which cannot be formulated in the terms of one or the other, since both relate to the character- istics of conditioned existence. Spen- 169 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS cer sees in mental and physical phe- nomena but different modes of inscru- table power, of which matter and force are symbolic representations. This un- derlying reality, this eternal substance, this inscrutable power, is to Spencer, "The Unknowable." This is not dual- ism ; surely it is not materialism. Spen- cer admits the fact of God, for God must be identical with reality, or eternal substance, though to him God is the Great Unknowable. Ernst Haeckel, the nestor of modern science, agrees with Spencer in the con- ception of the unity of physical and psychical phenomena throughout na- ture. For causal relations Spencer looks to the realm of the Unknowable; while Haeckel posits in the atoms them- selves the potentialities of all phenom- ena. He even endows every atom not only with an eternity of being, but with 170 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD sensation and volition, pleasure and pain, desire and aversion. Such is the brief and inadequate con- clusion with which the formulated phi- losophy of the nineteenth century leaves us. But what of the future? The world of thought moves on and must continue to move on. In that pathetic preface to the last volume of "The Syn- thetic Philosophy," as he reviews at last the finished work of a lifetime, Herbert Spencer realizes that his philosophy only marks a stage in the development of human thought, that it does not ex- press the ultimate truth, and that it must in turn be superseded by still truer phi- losophies. The mere recognition of "an Infinite and Eternal Energy whence all things proceed," in and of itself com- pels men to try and find out something about it. To know, has become abso- lutely imperious for the human mind. Huxley's remark, uttered in an address 171 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS within a year of his death, was pro- foundly significant as indicating the temper of the human mind to-day. He said: "I no longer wish to speak of anything as unknowable ; I confess that I once made that mistake, even to the waste of a capital U." Consequently, while not discarding the material gath- ered by the fathers, upon which is based the laws of Evolution, scientific men are penetrating ever farther into the great mystery. What will come of it? Since Spencer's death many new discoveries have been made. To what do these new discoveries point? Which way is their trend? The philosophic scientist is not satis- fied in his search after Reality or Sub- stance, which he recognizes lies behind all phenomena, to rest with the concep- tion that the atom, even though it be as marvelously endowed as Haeckel claims, is the ultimate fact. Neither is 172 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD he content to allow Spencer to say that there is an impregnable wall at the con- fines of the atom which cannot be scaled, and beyond which lies the Un- knowable. And so we find him in search of a bridge that shall span the chasm between the atom and that which lies beyond. In other words, he feels that if he can understand the atom fully, it may then be known what God, Man and the Universe really is. It is not too much to say that some of our modern scientists, who are also philoso- phers — ^men like Dolbear, Cope, Lodge, Hall, Duncan and others — are begin- ning to entertain the tremendous con- ception that they have found the clew to the maze, and they are peering with a profound awe and wonder toward the unspeakable glory that seems to be con- tained in the possibilities of the future of human thought. In a little book, entitled "New Modes 173 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS of Thought," by G. T. Stockwell, the author points out that in the newer view of the ether and in the vortex- wave theory of the structure of the at- oms, the more daring scientist is begin- ning to think he can see "real sub- stance" in at least some of its aspects; and, in using the word "substance" nothing else is implied than that which is commonly understood by the terms "Reality," "Spirit," "God." Niewton was probably the first to grasp the conception of the existence of some substance outside of, or independ- ent of matter, but which is the medium through which one particle of matter acts upon another. That the ether is not matter, in any of its forms, prac- tically all scientists are agreed, but that all forms of matter spring from it is coming to be generally conceded. "Physicists to-day quite concur in the belief," says Prof. Dolbear, "that what 174 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD was called at first liiminiferous ether, on account of its function in transmit- ting light, is the same medium that is concerned in the ether phenomena of magnetism, electricity, gravitation, etc." In summing up his later studies con- cerning the ether, he further says : "If, then, the ether fills all space, is not atomic in structure, presents no friction to bodies moving through it, is not sub- ject to the law of gravitation, it does not seem proper to call it matter. As for myself, I make a sharp distinction between the ether and matter." Haeckel also says: "We are as sure of the existence of ether as we are of the existence of matter," and he speaks of it as the "Eternal Substance." Speaking of the ether as "Spiritual Substance," Calthrop says : "Not only is matter a mode of motion of spirit, but all things, thoughts, beings, worlds, are modes of motion of spirit. Spirit-sub- 175 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS stance underlies them all." Tesla says : "Nature has stored up in the Universe an infinite amount of energy. The eter- nal recipient and transmitter of this en- ergy is the ether." Prof. Hemstreet, writing of these views of Tesla, says: "Now call this energy God's mind, and the ether God's body, then we have the secret of eternal life and the process of cosmic evolution. * * * God in the ether is no more strange than a soul in the body. Mind in the ether is no more unnatural than mind in the flesh and blood." Prof. Lodge closed a lecture on the ether and its functions in Liverpool, with these words : "I have now endeav- ored to introduce to you the simplest conception of the material universe which has yet occurred to man — ^that is, of one universal substance, perfectly homogeneous and continuous and sim- ple of structure, extending to the far- 176 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD thest limits of space of which we have any knowledge, existing equally every- where; some portions either at rest or in simple irrational motion, transmit- ting the undulations which we call light ; other portions in rotational motion — ^in vortices that is — and differentiated per- manently from the rest of the medium by reason of this motion. These whirl- ing portions constitute what we call matter; their motion gives them rigidity and of them our bodies and all other bodies are built up. One continuous substance filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which can be sheared off into positive and negative electric- ity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and which transmits by continuity and not by impact, every action and reaction of which matter is capable — ^this is the modern view of the ether and its func- tions." If this conception, which is based 177 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS upon the present scientific aspect of the ether as one omnipresent, omnipotent and eternal substance from which all phenomena spring, is true, then these qualities, omnipresence, omnipotence and eternity, must surely be applied to Deity alone. If out of the ether we see evolved all that we know as conscious- ness, intelligence, imagination, wiU, faith, love, personality, we know that in the ether, in the nature of things, must reside all of these and infinitely more; for what has been evolved must have been first involved. How then can we escape the conclusion that this omni- present, omnipotent and eternal ether, from which all proceeds, which not only surrounds, but which permeates all things, is nothing less than the body of God, in which Infinite Mind and Eter- nal Energy are immanent throughout? How literally and scientifically true be- comes the statement, then, "for in Him 178 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD we all live and move and have our be- ing!" In connection with this real and liv- ing conception of God, let us recall the deeper meaning of Evolution — not as the law of development, of the move- ment of life from lower to higher on this planet alone, but in its broader cosmic aspects. The spirit of the Uni- verse, or the "primal life force" of Bergson, is eternally striving to realize and find itself in the Universe and in man. "Self-realization, self-discovery and striving is the law of God's life just as certainly as it is of man's. In fact, it is the law of man's partial and earthly life only because it is originally the law of God's whole and universal existence. The law of cosmic evolution, in truth, is nothing but the law of the striving toward self-realization of the Universal Being or God of the Universe." This is what Bergson means to say in his 179 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS "Creative Evolution." Evolution sig- nifies the self-realization of God, and hence self-reahzation is the law of man's life, because man is, in truth, but a part — organ and function of the Divine whole. So when man, through self-real- ization finds and knows himself, when he truly orients himself in the world of Being and gets his real bearings, it act- ually means that the Universal Spirit, or God, has found Himself in His world of Being as a whole. Thus God finds Himself and knows Himself in man and through man; and thus man finds him- self in God and of God; for man and God are not two separate beings, but are as the organ and organism, the function and being, the brain and body, of one indivisible and co-operative unit and whole. For there is but "one Be- ing without a second," of which Uni- versal Being we are but individual parts. Thus has God — ^the whole — 180 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD found himself in man — ^the part; and thus has man — ^the part — found himself in God — ^the whole. At last God knows Himself as God, in man; at last man knows himself as man, in God. Thus, it is now coming to be seen, we must start with God at the very out- set, as the first principle in both the physical and spiritual realms. In the physical as well as in the psychical worlds we see but different aspects, equally divine, of one and the same thing; and this One is nothing else than God — God embodied in the ether. All aspects, all phenomena, are but the veri- table thoughts of God: or in other words, the objective expressions of His own volition, modes of the Infinite Mind, which, since man proceeds from God and is a part of the One Universal Being, cannot fail to create responsive thrills in the finite mind. It is impossible to imagine all the re- 181 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS suits that will follow when men gener- ally have grasped so profound and thrilling a conception of God and His vital relation to the Universe and every individual life. Try to think what the outcome may be, when all the physical textbooks in all the schools and colleges of the world shall begin, as the first postulate, where the author of Gene- sis starts, "In the beginning, God." Is this an Utopian idea? A Professor of Literature in one of our universities, recently asked an eminent physicist, "Will college textbooks declare this doctrine of the unity of force, the one- ness of all phenomena, physical, mental, spiritual?" "Most assuredly," was the answer. "Just as soon as it is settled how to regard inertia, whether as a con- dition or as a mode of force, even the most elementary manuals will begin with the fact of God, as the first prin- ciple of physical knowledge, and thus 182 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD Theology and Science will be brought into solidarity." It may have been some such thought as this that induced John Fiske to pre- dict a great revival of religion in the near future, which, though different in character, should excel in the univer- sality of its effect, that of those days which built the Cathedrals of Europe. Wonderful and thrilling as are these new conceptions of God that are grad- ually driving out of human thinking the half-gods of the past, still we must real- ize that the knowledge of God means vastly more than merely entertaining great and glorious notions about God. Our ideas of God may be purely intel- lectual, our knowledge of God must be spiritual. It was Jesus who said, and it was the profoundest statement he ever made, "This is life eternal, to krww Thee, the only true God." We come to a knowledge of God not 183 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS through reasoning about Him, but rather through the power of spiritual perception as the inner consciousness expands and enlarges, so that one says to himself and realizes the truth of what he says: "The God for whom I have been searching throughout the Universe, is all the time myself — not my little, separate and individual hu- man self, but my great, all-inclusive, divine and God-like self." In view of all the wondrous truth that modern Science is suggesting to-day, let us briefly attempt to char- acterize the Knowledge of God that may come to any man or woman, who patiently and persistently seeks to know God through the expanding of the in- ner consciousness. 1. God is no longer the Unknowable, but can be known through self-discov- ery and self-realization. "Know thy- self and thou shalt know God." All 184 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD discovery is self-discovery and all knowledge is self-knowledge, for it is the discovery and knowledge of Being by its OAvn very self; for all being, in the last analysis, is but one whole Be- ing; and it can discover and know no other being than itself, because there is no other and second being besides itself. The whole trend of modern sci- ence and philosophy is in the direction of the demonstration that there is but one real Unity of Being in existence in all this vast and varied Universe : in which case our personal lives are but individualized parts of the Infinite Whole of Being, or God. Hence, all human knowledge is also divine knowl- edge, for man's knowledge is also the knowledge of God, who comes to con- sciousness in men. It is God's knowl- edge of Himself. All the knowledge that man possesses is in reality knowl- edge of this so-called "Unknowable 185 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS God." So that knowledge, in the last analysis, is never the knowledge of one being by another and second being, — since there is only one Being — ^but is always the knowledge of one integral being by its own true self — ^the knowl- edge of the whole organism by and through the organ of knowledge, which here on earth is the mind of man. This is what Robert Browning means when he says : "Truth is within ourselves, . . . And to know, Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor can escape, Than in effecting entry for a light. Supposed to be without." 2. To the eye of inner spiritual per- ception, God is not something or some One separate and apart, but a God of whose very substance we are. Accord- ing to the view of the essential oneness 186 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD of all phenomena, physical, mental and spiritual, of God as the ultimate fact, the eternal spirit and substance whence all things proceed, God has nothing but his own perfect substance out of which to make worlds and all that they con- tain. Matter, therefore, is not only di- vine, but it is the crowning expression of the Divine Love and Self-sacrifice. It is God giving away Himself for man to use, to enjoy, to govern. Further than this, it is in perfect accord with the law of all parenthood that, of the very substance of God himself, we his children, body as well as soul, have come. Thus truly we are "begotten not made," being of one substance ; and we are the children of God, not in some poetic sense, but because we are such in strictest scientific truth. Think for a moment of the tremendous difference between the conception of being begot- ten and that of being created. We, in 187 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS our finite way, are capable of creat- ing; — of creating, for instance, a beau- tiful, complex machine, or picture, or statue. But this is all purely mechan- ical and artificial. The product of cre- ative skill is a mere thing; it lacks all the elements of inherent life and growth, and is therefore transitory. Things can be created, but no power can ever create personality. Personal- ity can only be begotten, and because it is begotten, it possesses, in potential form, the qualities and attributes com- mon to the begetter. If we would drop out of our consciousness the conception of the word "creation," as applied to the universe and ourselves, and all the allied conceptions that have gathered around it, and rise to the full signifi- cance of this other term, "begotten," which is the modern scientific concep- tion, we should realize in very truth what it means to be children of God. 188 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 3. Through this eye of inner per- ception God is seen no longer to be merely the Cause of things, but rather the hving fact in everything. "Empty space is an empty phrase," for, as we look with the eye of Science into the deep blue toward the stars, we actually see Infinity in the ether that fills all space, while with the inner eye we see ourselves amid a measureless, infinite ocean of throbbing, pulsating, thrilling, vital energy, everywhere present, pene- trating, pervading all things, even our own bodies, as the substance and source of our very being. Space, with its omnipresent ether, is thus seen to be, in very truth, the actual presence of God. Nature, with its now all-inclusive borders, is the constant manifestation, revelation, appeal of the Infinite Mind and Will to the finite mind and will; of the Father to his chil- dren, of Spirit to spirits; of Being to 189 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS beings. This conception, once grasped in a measure commensurate to its own splendid fullness, lifts one into an en- tirely new world. It means, indeed, a new birth, a new life f orevermore ; for the one who realizes its truth must henceforth live consciously in a spiritual world. God is thus seen to be no longer re- mote in time or distant in space. The poet's conception "Nearer is He than breathing, Closer than hands and feet" is now seen to be an exact scientific statement. As we sit in a lighted room, looking into each other's faces, I am I, and you are you, and we seem to be talking about God as if He were still another being, remote from us; but when we close our eyes, and turn the mind inward upon itself, there, in the 190 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD silence and darkness, you and I and God are one. As Prof. Royce says: "You truly are one with God, part of His life: He is the very soul of your soul." "God has nothing but Himself to make His children out of." In other words, there is but one Being, and we are parts of that Being; there is but one Life, and in that life we live; there is but one Mind, and that mind we share ; there is but one Spirit and we are spirit ; there is but one Consciousness, which wells up in us as finite consciousness. How luminous the familiar words, "In Him we live and move and have our being !" A God whom we may possibly approach in some far-ofp to-morrow is giving place to a God in whose bosom we rest, the presence of whose life and love we daily and hourly feel. It is a new manner of thinking to many people, and it may take the world 191 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS a long time to adjust itself to such glori- ous conceptions. But what a wondrous thought it is! How all the half -gods of the past, all the partial, limited, ma- terial, unethical conceptions of other days disappear utterly in the presence of this modern thought of a Universal and Omnipresent God, who is the life, the soul of all things. Just think for a moment ! As we look out into the ether (space) we literally see God. When we admire the beauty of a violet or rose or sunset we are in the actual presence of the beauty of God. Looking out across the ever-restless ocean we catch not a hint of, but the actual vision of the power of God. And when we send our thought back along this line of sci- entific reasoning we see that every form of matter, however small or himible it may seem, "even the very dust of the street," reveals His order and pro- claims His law. Everything is dynam- 192 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ic, animated, "quick with living pow- ers, burning with intelligence, glowing with passion, throbbing with emotion, crowded with intentions." And it is all God, for, in the last analysis, all is God, and God is aU. This view leaves no room whatever in the whole universe for death or dead matter. Death at last is dead. It is seen to be only illusion. There is abso- lutely nothing but life anywhere. We cannot escape it if we would. What we call death is only change in the outer form, never the destruction of life. The only question for us to decide, is as to the form of life we shall live. There is an old Hindu parable that runs as follows : "If the king goes mad and goes about to find the king in his own country, he wUl never find him, be- cause he is the king himself. It is bet- ter that we know we are the king and give up this fool's search after the king." 193 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS So man, in his intellectual in!imaturity and spiritual childishness, has for so long been seeking elsewhere, outside and always in vain, for the God who all the time dwells within. Always in vain has been his search for this other being outside, because this other being, as he conceived Him, existed only in his im- mature mind and undeveloped con- sciousness. It is only as man outgrows his delusions, and truly finds himself, that he finds the only true God. The fourth Gospel, which is a philo- sophic or spiritual interpretation of the meaning of the life and message of Jesus, is surcharged with this great thought. Reflect upon these words from this Gospel, in view of the fore- going statements : "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," for, "I and the Father are One," and "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you," and 194 THE KNOWLEDGE OE GOD "Whatsoever ye do to the least of these my little ones, ye do it also unto me." "That they may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, may they also be one in us," for "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be per- fected into One." Is it too much to claim that when Christianity-the-System gives way to the Religion of the real Jesus it wUl be found that he, in his own person and spirit, stood for just this absolute one- ness of God and Man and Nature, toward which science and philosophy are tending to-day? The Fourth Gos- pel would alone be a basis sufficient for such a claim, were there nothing else; but his sayings and parables, as record- ed, are fuU of insight into and sympa- thy with nature and human nature, and express his consciousness of the essen- tial oneness of all. How significant in this connection 195 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS are those recently discovered sayings of Jesus, about which so much has been written: "Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me ; Cleave the wood and there am II" Did he not, as has been said, "make his followers feel that the heart-throb of Nature was that which beat in his own breast, and the breast of the Eter- nal"? No truer or more inspired words were ever written than these lines by W' H. Carruth: A firemist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian. And caves where cavemen dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod, Some call it Evolution, And others call it God. 196 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD A haze on the far horizon. The infinite, tender sky. The ripe, rich tint of the corn-fields. And the wild geese soaring high ; And aU over upland and lowland The charm of the golden-rod, — Some of us call it Autumn And others call it God. Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, When the moon is new and thin. Into our hearts, high yearnings Come welling and surging in, — Come from the mystic ocean. Whose rim no foot has trod, — Some of us call it Longing And others call it God. A picket frozen on duty, A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood ; And millions who humble and nameless. The straight hard, pathway have trod,- Some call it Consecration, And others call it God. 197 BROAD ENOUGH TO INCLUDE ALL HUMANITY 'F our modern conception of the immanency of God has led us into a real and intel- ligent knowledge of God as the One Infinite and Eternal Substance, "in whom we all live and move and have our being," then there must follow, inevitably, cer- tain other profound convictions. Then I must believe in the Great Scheme of all things, however it may baffle my un- derstanding; I must believe in the sig- nificance of myself, and of aU life; I must feel that my defects and limita- tions and failures, just as much as my powers and achievements, are things 198 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY that are important and contributory to that Scheme; so that no difficulty, however great, or no problem, however dark, can effectually defeat my faith, whatever perplexities may confront my mind. However the Scheme as a whole may surpass my understanding, there is one aspect of it which is being per- ceived ever more clearly and which is becoming constantly more compelling to all thoughtful minds. The essential fact in human history j as we read it to- day, is the slow awakening of a sense of unity, the gradual unfolding of a feeling of community between men, na- tions and races, the dawning possibility of co-operations, of undreamed-of col- lective powers, of a coming synthesis of the species, of the eventual development of a common general ideal, a common universal purpose for Humanity as a whole, out of aU the present chaotic confusion. The struggles and blood- 199 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS shed of all the past have proven the duty and won the right of every indi- vidual to be him-self. But at last we are beginning to realize that one's in- dividual existence is not so entirely cut off as it seems at first, that one's en- tire separate individuality is but one of the many subtle delusions of the human mind. "Between you and me as we bring our minds together, and between us and the rest of mankind there is something, something real, something that rises through us and is neither you nor me, that comprehends us, that is thinking here and using us to play against each other in that thinking." This is no mere poetical statement; it is as hard a fact as any fact we know. We, you and I and everyone, are not only parts in a thought process, but parts of one universal flow of life and blood. From the Biological viewpoint this 200 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY is scientifically true. We all know that the number of one's ancestors increases as we look back in time. Mr. H. G. Wells has worked out the mathematical problem which any one may verify for himself. Everyone has two parents, and four grandparents, and most peo- ple have eight great-grandparents, and if we ignore the possibility of inter- marriage, we shall go on to a fresh power of two with every generation. On this basis, in two generations one would have 1025 ancestors, in 30 gen- erations 15,745,024 ancestors, and in 40 generations 1,956,282,976 ancestors. If we allow four generations to a cen- tury, and disregard intermarriage of relations, the ancestors living only a thousand years ago needed to account for a person living to-day would be far more than the estimated present popu- lation of the world. When we allow for intermarriage it only extends the 201 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS time, it does not change the fact. In the case of the Jews, the most exclusive race in the world whose blood has turned in upon itself again and again, for all we know, "one Italian proselyte in the first year of the Christian era may have made by this time every Jew alive a descendant of some unrecorded bastard of Julius Csesar." People, like the Chinese, who have been until re- cently segregated from the great stream of humanity, only defer the inevitable conclusion, they do not stave it off in- definitely. As Mr. WeUs points out, "it needs only that one philoprogeni- tive Chinaman should have wandered into those regions that are now Russia, about the time of Pericles, to link east and west in that matter; one Tartar chief in the Steppes may have given a daughter to a Roman soldier and sent his grandsons east and west to inter- 202 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY lace the branches of every family tree in the world." With the evidence that we have of the wide wanderings of prehistoric tribes, extending even to the western world, — as witness the ancient ruins in Central America — and remembering the ceaseless wanderings to and fro on the earth's surface of tribes and peoples during historic times, with the inevi- table intermarriage of individuals from different tribes and races, we realize how baseless is the idea that there is to-day any such thing as a pure race. If any race has stood apart, it is such an isolated group as that of the now extinct Tasmanian primitives or the Australian blacks. But, even here, in the early dawn of navigation, may have come shipwrecked Malays; or some half-breed woman, kidnapped by wan- dering Phoenicians, may have parried g03 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS this link of blood back to the western world. As one of America's foremost an- thropologists said in a recent address, "The world has nothing to fear, bio- logically, from the intermarriage of the races, for the simple reason that the races have long since become hopelessly- mixed." The more one lets his imagi- nation play upon the incalculable drift and soak of the world's poptJation, the more one realizes the tremendous fact of the biological oneness of humanity, regardless of all racial and national names which we still employ to sepa- rate peoples from one another. From this strictly scientific point of view, our individualities, our nations and states and races, are but "bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species, inci- dental experiments in the growing 204 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY knowledge and consciousness of the race." Or, if we think of the intellectual achievements of the race, we are again impressed with the essential like-mind- edness of all men. So long as there were no easy means of communication between different portions of the globe, and men and nations Hved of necessity separated lives, each group worked out its particular problems in its own way. It is thus that ideals of government, social and economic sys- tems, sciences, philosophies, the arts, morals and religions, were originally developed, each separate nation or race slowly working out its ideals and theories and general system of knowl- edge, as if there were no other races or nations in the world. To-day, with our modern transportation facilities, the telegraph, the wonderful development of travel between different countries, 205 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS the interchange of literatures and the extension of commerce, we realize that this old barrier of simple ignorance of one another has been torn away, and we find that, aU unconsciously, the dif- ferent nations and races of men have been working out their separate desti- nies along essentially the same lines, and toward practically the same great ends. Some, to be sure, for obvious reasons, have been moving more rap- idly, some have made greater progress and approached more nearly their ideals than have others, but all have been moving along the same general lines of development. All men, however isolated, have con- fronted the same universe of mystery, have faced the same problems of human existence, have reflected upon the same experiences of the inner consciousness; and whatever the different forms of the conclusions at which they have 206 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY arrived, the content of those con- clusions has been essentially the same. The human mind, the whole world round, is one; its activities con- form to the same laws ; its powers, given the same opportunities and an equal time for development, are practically the same. To-day the world is moving toward Democracy, and mankind is pretty well convinced that some form of self-gov- ernment is the ideal form of govern- ment to be attained by all nations, just as soon as the people are capable of self-government. If Science be "the systematized body of ascertained knowledge," then there can be but one Scientific System for the World. We cannot conceive of a Chinese science or a Grerman science or an American science. Science, in just so far as it is science, must be one — a World-Science. While the external forms of the Art of 207 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS different peoples has varied widely, in poetry, in music, in painting or sculp- ture, still we recognize that the funda- mental principles out of which true Art grows are the same for the World. In the same way, though more gradually, we are beginning to see that all the past systems of philosophy have but been preparing the way for the coming of a World-Philosophy, in which the truth of the many various systems shall be comprised in a new and universal synthesis of thought. The comparative study of the World's great Literature reveals the same like-mindedness, the same outreachings toward Truth and Beauty, the same heart-hungerings for Love and Goodness. It is this recogni- tion that in the realm of intellectual and moral achievements there is an essen- tial oneness, a World-life, in which all mankind participates and to which aU men have contributed and must con- 208 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY tribute, that is rapidly drawing all men and nations into an ever closer unity that must eventually lead to an actual fellowship of humanity. Our modern view of Religion has also forced us to realize, in a still deeper sense, the profoundly essential unity of mankind. Religion is as old as the human race, and in its fundamental purpose should have proven to be the great unifying principle in the life of humanity. The word "religion" means, etymologically, "to bind together." But the tragedy of every great religion from the beginning lies in this: that what began as a universal or purely spiritual movement, has in a short time degenerated to a sect; and while true religion is unifying and all-inclusive, sectarian religion is always divisive and exclusive. To this, perhaps, inevitable tendency Christianity has been no exception; 209 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS and it is because of its sectarianism that Christianity has lost its universal char- acter, and failed thus far of becoming the world-power that it might become. For centuries the Christian world has believed and taught that God made the Jews the peculiar channel of His revel- ation of Himself. The Egyptians, the Phcenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the people of India — all these worked out a purely human des- tiny in a purely himian way. They had no inspiration from the Divine Spirit, and their life expressed no revelation of the Divine Nature. The history of the Jews, therefore, is sacred history, while the history of all other peoples is purely secular, or profane history. Think of what this view involves. It is as if one should attempt to discriminate be- tween the children of the same family, and declare that one son bore the image of his father, reflected his character, 210 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY and was the recipient of his love, and that all the other children were aliens and strangers, shut off from participa- tion in the nature or the love which was a conunon inheritance. Multitudes of Christians still believe in a httle cur- rent of divine influence flowing through a vast sea of corruption, in a chosen people saved, arbitrarily, out of a vast host disinherited and rejected; but to a truly religious nature such a faith is to-day incredible. This view has made of the universal and spiritual movement inaugurated by Jesus, a mere sect among other sects. It is worse than a partial view; it is a kind of atheism; it sets about the Di- vine Love the narrow limits of the in- sight, intelligence and capacity which restrict human affection, and is abso- lutely inconsistent with the conception of a Universal Father. Nothing has so broadened our ideas 211 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS of Religion and forced us to see that while "religions are many, religion is one," as has the discovery of the Sacred Books of the East. In 1754, a French- man came across an old manuscript in the Royal Library of Paris, which proved to be a portion of the "Avesta." This led to further discoveries, and to- day we have 183 manuscripts repre- senting the sacred books of the Parsees or Zoroastrians. In 1787, the "Rig- Veda," part of the oldest Bible in the world, was discovered in India. This, with subsequent discoveries, has given to us a total of sacred Hindu literature that is over four times the size of the Christian Bible. A little later, the "Pitakas," the sacred literature of the Buddhists, were discovered, which are eight times the size of our New Testa- ment. From these discoveries of the sacred literatures of the Orient, which have 212 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY now been translated into some fifty vol- umes, accessible to all who care to read them, has come the modern "Science of Comparative Religion." This Science has proven that all such moral senti- ments as justice, temperance, truthful- ness, patience, love, mercy — far from being the peculiar property of any one religion, were found inculcated in the Bibles of all religions. It has also found that the great spiritual senti- ments out of which all religions have sprung, such as awe, reverence, wonder, aspiration, worship, etc., have found rich expression in all the varied sys- tems of faith. It has also pointed out that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and the Golden Rule of the New Testament, are more or less, and in slightly varying forms, to be found in these other sacred scriptures. Someone at a great meeting in Boston once declared that certain passages HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS which he quoted could not be paralleled anywhere outside our Bible. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was present, rose and in that serene, dignified manner, so characteristic of him, said, "The gen- tleman's remark only proves how nar- rowly he has read." Let me illustrate how the moral and religious sentiment of Catholicity has found expression in these different Bibles of the race. The Hindu Bible: "Altar flowers are of many species, but all worship is one. Systems of Faith differ, but God is one. The object of all religions is alike; all seek the object of their love, and all the world is love's dwelling place." The Buddhist Bible: "The root of religion is to reverence one's own faith, and never to revile the faith of others. My doctrine makes no distinction be- tween high and low, rich and poor. It gl4 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY is like the sky; it has room for all, and like water, it washes all alike." The Zoroastrian Bible: "Have the religions of mankind no common ground? Is there not everywhere the same enrapturing beauty? Broad in- deed is the carpet which God has spread, and many are the colors which He has given it. Whatever road I take joins the highway that leads to thee." The Chinese Bible: "Religions are many and different, but reason is one. Humanity is the heart of man, and jus- tice is the path of man. The broad- minded see the truth in different re- ligions ; the narrow-minded see only the differences." The Jewish Scriptures : "Wisdom in all ages entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God and the Prophets. Behold how good and pleas- ant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." 215 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS The Christian Scriptures: "Are we not all children of one Father? Hath not one God created us? . . . Who hath made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell on the face of the earth." Or, let us compare the seven different versions, from these same seven Bibles, of the Golden Rule, which has been regarded as the climax of the ethical ideal of Christian teaching. The Hindu: "The true rule is to guard and do by the things of others as they do by their own." The Buddhist: "One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself." The Zoroastrian: "Do as you would be done by." The Chinese: "What you do not wish done to yourself, do not unto others." The Mohammedan: "Let none of 216 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY you treat your brother in a way he him- self would dislike to be treated." The Jewish : "Whatever you do not wish your neighbor to do to you, do not unto him." The Christian: "All things whatso- ever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." As Mr. Martin has said, "If we lis- ten to a Hindu chant, we shall think we have lighted upon some missing psalm of the Old Testament, so alike are they in spiritual content. Hear the Parsee, as he offers his prayer for purity, and how slight a change in the language should we have to make, in order that it should suit our spiritual need. We may not believe in 'Nirvana,' but we all must walk 'the noble eight-fold path' of Gautama, the Buddha, if complete character is to be ours. Open the 'Koran' of the Mohanmiedans, the 'Analects' of the Confucians, the 217 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS 'Kings' of the Chinese before Confu- cius, and in each case we shall find our- selves face to face with a religion that speaks to us in accents strong, beauti- ful and oftentimes sublime." One of the greatest concrete results of the translation of the great oriental sacred books, was the "World's Parlia- ment of Religions," held in Chicago in 1893. Never since the world began was any such general meeting of repre- sentatives of all the World's Faiths on the same platform, even deemed pos- sible. The Parliament was conceived and qarried out by a Presbyterian min- ister of Chicago, Rev. John Henry Barrows. The closing address was by a Swedenborgian, the final prayer by a Jewish Rabbi, and the benediction by a Romg^n Catholic Bishop. At the open- ing Session there walked out on the platform. Catholic and Protestant, Greek and Jew, Confucian and Bud- 218 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY dhist, Mohammedan and Parsee, Bap- tist missionary and Hindu monk — one hundred and twenty-eight pairs — ^all marching in one grand, triumphal pro- cession of brotherhood. The effect of the Parliament was sin- gularly profound upon aU who at- tended the services. To the non-Chris- tian it meant a better and truer con- ception of Christianity, that had sent them the missionary and the Bible, but had also brought them the battleship, opium and rum. The effect on the Christian delegates was still more striking. The spiritual conceit that had formerly prayed, "O Lord, we thank thee that we are not as these pagan idolaters," was removed forever from the hearts of all who listened. They discerned heights of spirituality reached by these "foreigners," of which they had never dreamed. They heard prayers to the "Father in heaven" of 219 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS which they thought these orientals ut- terly incapable. They found among all these various delegates from different religions, the same expression of wor- ship, of spiritual development, of reli- gious ideals and ethical teachings that exist under different forms in Christian- ity, and they said irresistibly, "Are we not all children of one Father?" Never again, since the disclosures of the Science of Comparative Religions, can any intelligent person make the old classification of religions, according to which Christianity is put by itself in one class as the only one, true, divine Reli- gion, and all the other religions grouped in another class and labelled "pagan" or "heathen" or "false" religions. The simple conclusion to which we are forced to-daj^ is, that there has never been but one true Religion in the world, and that is the universal, spiritual and ethical religion, as voiced in its simplic- 220 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY ity and clearness by Jesus, but as also voiced more or less clearly, by all the great founders and leaders of religion. All religions, of whatever name, are but the more or less imperfect representa- tions of this one true Religion. All religion whatever in any age or country, is in its essential being, good and not evil. It has always sprung from the same source — the same reli- gious impulse in man. It has always had the same goal — ^the knowledge of God, under whatever name He has been worshipped. It has always pointed out more or less clearly the pathway of spiritual development. It has been at the root of aU morality that ever made society possible, and has been the up- lifting force of whatever progress the world or any part of the world has ever made. Held in connection with what- ever amount of error or falsehood you like, it is the beginning of all truth. 221 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS Burdened with whatever superstitions or cruelty or lust or hate the religion of a people may be, those people are always better off than they would be without any religion. The one obstacle that prevents so many good people from seeing this, is the almost ineradicable tendency to ascribe to the religious beliefs of those we call heathen, all the abuses we find in heathen society. No religion, Chris- tianity any more than others, can stand that test. Apply it fairly, and you must make a clean sweep of every religion. On that basis, all the wrongs and in- justices, the greed and lust, the selfish- ness and cruel warfare of Christian na- tions are the results of Christian beliefs. All the divine ideals which Jesus gave the world go by the board. The im- partial student of the working of be- liefs on the himian mind cannot help seeing that the gigantic evils of society 222 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY which exist in Christendom and hea- thendom alike, are due solely to the sel- fishness of human nature, against which religion, whatever may be its form, is always, in a degree which is the real test of its value, a solemn protest. This is not to claim that all forms of religion are equally true, or equally good. The purely ethical and spiritual religion of Jesus, since it is the youngest of all the great world-faiths, with the single exception of Mohammedanism, appeals to us of this western world, and rightly, as being the best and high- est form of religion that the world has yet known; but this is not to deny the essential unity of all religions and the insistent demand for a real and intelli- gent sympathy between all faiths. Our foremost missionaries are telling us to- day that the attitude of Christianity toward non-Christian systems, should be not one of condemnation, but of in- 223 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS terpretation, that while we have much to teach them, they also have much to teach us. One cannot listen to these prophetic messages on the one hand, or note the financial straits into which the great Foreign Missionary Societies of all denominations have fallen, without realizing that everything is calling loudly to-day for a radical change of attitude and of methods on the part of Christian men. Our denominational distinctions have for the most part be- come absurd anachronisms. They rest on certain hopeless arguments which can never be settled one way or another. Our divisions are strangling us. Our denominational names no longer define. Our labels have become libels. The most hopeful sign to-day is the new movement toward Christian unity, but stUl our attitude toward the non-Chris- tian world is stiff and unbending in the extreme. Christian unity is not the 224 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY end, but only a stepping stone to a still broader Religious unity that shall em- brace all mankind. As we have already pointed out, the race flows through us. Humanity is the Great Drama in which we, as in- dividuals or nations, are the incidents. In so far as we are mere individuals, as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as ex- periments of the species for the sake of the species, just in so far do we escape from the accidental and the chaotic. We all live our lives in a greater Life. Our personal experiences are episodes in an Experience greater than ourselves. This does not make for the suppression of one's individual differences, but it does make for their correlation. We must get everything possible out of ourselves for the very reason that we 225 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS do not stand alone. Our separate Selves are our charges, our talents, of which we must make the very utmost; but our true significance lies in the fact that we are all parts of a universal and immortal development. The same principle holds true of re- hgions. Any religion that holds itself in its external forms, separate and apart, that refuses to merge itself in the deeper stream of universal religion, is accidental and doomed to extinction. Only as the great extant religions are willing to die a sectarian death, can they hope to survive in spiritual reality. The religions in the past have been the "great dividers," but religion in its true essense is, in fact, the only ade- quate and permanent uniting power. All Christian churches believe it is their duty to "preach the Gospel to every creature." But what is the Gospel of Jesus? All too often it has been con- 226 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY strued in terms of some particular the- ology or ritual, and always in terms of sectarianism, for the purpose of build- ing up some particular one of the many branches of the Christian Church. How foreign all this is to the spirit of Jesus! He taught that God is the All-Father, with whom are no distinc- tions of race or color or creed, and that therefore all men, irrespective of every accidental difference, are truly brothers. He taught that God's true dwelling- place was in every individual bom into the world, and that "salvation" consisted in coming into conscious oneness with God and with one's fellows everywhere. The result of this conscious unity with the Whole would be, he said, love to God and love to man, which was his simuning up of "all the law and the prophets." If we believe the Author of the Fourth Gospel, the Christ, or the divine life that dwelt in Jesus in such 227 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS conscious fulness, is "the light that lighteth every man coming into the world;" then, the Christ was in Laotzse, in Confucius, in Buddha, in Plato, in Marcus Aurelius, in Epictetus, in every individual who has ever existed or who ever will exist. Then, to preach the real Gospel of Jesus, does not mean to preach our theological or ritualistic or ecclesiastical differences, but rather to proclaim man's spiritual unity in God, and therefore man's practical brother- hood here on earth, and to help man everywhere to realize that unity and to live that brotherhood. The world has never before been so ready or so eager for this real message of Religion as to-day. In all countries the conviction is growing apace that the next step in the progress of humanity must be toward a higher International- ism, in which all distinctions of separate race and nation must be subordinated BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY to a World-life, a universal humanity. To achieve this is clearly the high task of the 20th Century. President Wood- row Wilson, in a recent address, made the significant statement, that "wars would never have an ending until men ceased to hate one another, ceased to be jealous of one another, and achieved that feeling of reality in the brother- hood of mankind which is the only bond that can make us think justly of one another, and act righteously before God." What an opportunity is presented to- day for Religion to realize, at last, its true mission in the world, and minimiz- ing all differences, begin to magnify those things common to all religions! If Christianity, catching the vision of its Founder, and rising to his plane of a spiritual and universal religion, were willing to die to all its sectarianism, its outgrown theologies, its undemocratic 229 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ecclesiasticism, and begin to proclaim the Unity of the race, the Universal Fatherhood of God, and the real Broth- erhood of Hiimanity, it would become the mighty instrument in laying the foundations sure and deep for that new World-life in which we should see real- ized the dream of the ages, "the parlia- ment of man, the federation of the world." Is this only a vain ideal? Let us remember tha;t it has ever been the pe- culiar mission of religion to furnish those illxmiinating and inspiring ambi- tions which have been as "songs in the night" of humanity's upward march. Religion, once purified and made a vital and spiritual power, can become the mightiest of forces in bringing about the new World-consciousness that must be attained, because religion has always en- listed imagination, faith and daring in its service. 230 BROAD ENOUGH FOR HUMANITY But it will never come by any me- chanical process. The lofty ideals of religion which Jesus announced will only be reaKzed as men and women everywhere come to feel that spiritual freedom means more than slavish ad- herence to any tradition or creed, as men and women everywhere come to care more for the victory of truth than they do for the triumph of their sect; only then, wUl "the world hasten the advent of that universal religion that shall lift mankind above all differences of caste, color, creed and race, into that sublime religious fellowship which has been the dream of every age and of every race." 231 THE CREATION OF RIGHT- EOUSNESS 'F the supreme inner aim of Religion has ever been the at- tainment of the knowledge of God, so that one consciously lives his life in God and with God, then its supreme manifestation in character is righteousness. "If ye believe that God is righteous, then ye know that he that doeth righteousness is born of God." The ultimate test of every re- ligion is found just here: does it cre- ate such righteousness in the heart and life of the individual as to insure all- around right coilduct in his manifold relations with his fellows? The relation of religion to ethics is THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS one of the most vital questions of the day. On the one hand we have social philosophers engaged in constructing an ethic which shall be independent of all religion. Ethical societies have grown up in Christian communities which seek to organize and direct life on a non-religious basis. On the other hand, there is clearly visible an active religiousness which seems to have the smallest regard for morahty. Mr. Brierley reminds us that there are ban- dits who go to mass as a preparation for robbery and murder. In Catholic cities women of the town may be seen enter- ing the church to light a candle to the Virgin before sallying forth to ply their trade in the street. Nor is Protestant- ism beyond the same strange mingling of unrighteousness and religion. In "New Worlds for Old," Mr. Wells de- scribes a New York transaction where- by the capitalization of a railroad of a HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS little under forty million dollars was swollen to nearly one hundred and twenty-three millions to cover an ac- tual expenditure in improvements of twenty-two and a half millions. The financiers who rob the public by such dishonest methods, and who are doing similar things day by day as part of their business are, as often as not, mem- bers of orthodox churches who make a point of being religious and oftentimes hold high official positions in their respective communions. Facing such conditions, it is no wonder men are ask- ing the questions : What is religion and what is morality? Are they separate things, or one and the same? Let us think briefly of the develop- ment of Religion. Every form of re- ligion in the world has always been as- sociated with some system of morality and, conversely, every system of morals has always directly or indirectly implied THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS a religion. It has been the fashion to cite China as an example to the con- trary. Confucius, it is true, was a mor- alist rather than a theologian, but it is a mistake to suppose that he ignored religion. His biographer records how he expressed admiration for an inscrip- tion on the golden statue in the Temple of Light : "When you speak, when you act, when you think, you seem alone, unseen, unheard ; but the spirits are wit- nesses of all." And Laotzse, who pre- ceded him, as we are now learning from the translation of his writings, had a very noble religion indeed. Back of the teachings of the great stoic moralists there breathes the sense of the Unseen Presence, which constitutes the essence of religion. In every religion, moreover, there stand out two strongly contrasted types: (1) the Prophet and (2) the Priest. Jewish history, as we have it 235 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS in the Old Testament, illustrates this constant struggle going on between Prophet and Priest. The Prophet al- ways stands for an ethical and spiritual conception of religion. His message is in substance this: Jehovah is a right- eous God, and the one and only demand he makes of men is that they should live righteous lives, as individuals and as nations. The Priest always stands for the theological, ritualistic, ecclesiastical conception of religion. The substance of his message always is : The only way to please God, or to be religious, is to believe certain doctrines, or to conform to certain rites or ceremonies, or to sub- mit to the authority of certain institu- tions. Sometimes the influence of the Prophet is in the ascendancy, and then the supreme stress is always placed on the ethical side of religion. Sometimes the Priestly influence dominates, and then it is the theological or ceremonial THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS side of religion that is chiefly empha- sized. To-day, as we read the Old Testa- ment, we realize that the Hebrew Prophet and his message of righteous- ness alone has meaning and inspiration for our lives. The Priest, with all his doctrines, rites and ceremonies has no longer a vital message for us. Both were constantly contending against each other. Both could not be right. Either religion is primarily an ethical or spiritual thing as the Prophet claimed, or else it is primarily a theo- logical or ritualistic thing as the Priest contended. This modern age in its best and deepest thinking has elected to stand with the Prophet as against the Priest; and this modern age is right. What is true of the Jewish religion is true of every religion in the world, not excepting Christianity. Everywhere and always you will find the two oppos- 23T HUMANITY AT THE CROSH-ROAUS ing conceptions of religion, as typified by Prophet and Priest. But the inter- esting thing to remember is that every great religion in the world came into existence through a Prophet, never through a Priest, The founders of the great world-faiths were in every in- stance men of the prophetic type. The priest is always a later development. Confucius was so anxious to fix men's attention on their duty that he would enter into no metaphysical speculation. The whole duty of man, he said, might be Slimmed up in the word, reciprocity. We must refrain from injuring others as we would that they should refrain from injuring us. Zoroaster taught that the one thing needful was to do right. All good thoughts, words and works lead to Paradise. All evil thoughts, words and works, to hell. Gautama taught that every man has ^38 THE CREATION OP RIGHTEOUSNESS to work out his salvation for himself without the mediation of a Priest. On one occasion, meeting a sacrificial pro- cession, he explained to liis followers that it was useless to shed the blood of bulls and goats; that all they needed was a change of heart. He summed up his teacliing in the celebrated verse : "To cease from sin, To get virtue. To cleanse the heart, That is the religion of the Buddhas." Mohammed said : "It is not the flesh and blood ye sacrifice; it is your piety which is acceptable to God. It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces in prayer toward the east, or toward the west, but righteousness is of those who perform the covenants which they have covenanted." The great Hebrew prophets reahzed that righteousness and religion were al- 239 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ways inseparable. The message of Isaiah is unmistakably plain, "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow," In another passage he pictures Jehovah as weary to the point of disgust with a re- ligion in which righteousness is not the essential thing. A religion that con- sists in observing fast days, in the keep- ing of assemblies, in the holding of meetings can only be a wearisome thing to Jehovah, since the one thing Jehovah requires is that men should cease their wrongdoing and learn to do the right. The teaching of Amos is identical with that of Isaiah, and it is Micah who says, "What doth the Lord require of thee, O man, but that thou shouldst deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." The meaning of this 240 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ^great statement can be nothing else but that the essence of rehgion is righteous- ness and love and humility before God and man. The messages of all these great Hebrew prophets were essentially the same. There could be to them no divorce of righteousness from religion, but rather the absolute identification of the two. When Jesus appears, as the "last of the Prophets," his message differed in no real sense from that of these great Hebrew leaders. He placed no empha- sis whatever upon the temple or the temple ritual, upon the synagogue or the synagogic service, upon any of the thousand and one things which the de- vout Jew was supposed to regard as essential to religion. Jesus lays the stress once again just where the Psalm- ist and Isaiah and Amos and Micah laid it — ^upon righteousness. "Except your righteousness shall exceed," or "shall go 241 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS far beyond" the righteousness of these Scribes and Pharisees, the recognized religious leaders of the day, you shall never even enter the Kingdom of Heav- en. This was his one insistent demand. In the Sermon on the Mount he inter- prets the meaning of righteousness. To the average Jew righteousness meant the compliance with these exter- nal, legal, formal requirements, such as the washing of the hands, and bringing of the sacrifice, and the offering of it in a certain way, etc. And Jesus differen- tiates his ideas of righteousness from the idea prevalent in his day when he makes clear that it must be the right- eousness that is born in love and exists because of love and finds expression in and only through love. This is the es- sence of religion according to Jesus, — the only thing that God requires of man. Translating it into its simplest terms, 242 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS what Jesus said to men about religion was this : God is good, and God wants His children to be good, and I am here to show you the way to live the good life. This was the supreme thing in the message of Jesus, put into plain Anglo-Saxon speech; and the old words like sanctification and holiness, profane and sacred, clean and unclean, — these words which have played so large a part in the religious life of all peoples — were either entirely omitted by him or else completely transformed; and in their place he put the one old word, "goodness," or "righteousness." There can be no question to-day in the minds of any intelligent people that Christi- anity, as voiced by Jesus, meant noth- ing else than the absolute identification of religion and morality. This has been the essential teaching of all the great religious leaders, and in their supreme emphasis upon the ethi- 243 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS cal side of religion we find the funda- mental unity binding all religions into one. But within a short time after the death of the Founder of these respec- tive religions, the Priest makes his ap- pearance; and, as the priestly concep- tion comes to prevail more and more, theologies and creeds, rituals and cere- monies, rites and ordinances, and all the paraphernalia of ecclesiasticism crowd the ethical essence of religion into the background, and men are taught to be- lieve that morality is something sepa- rate from religion. The same has been true of Christianity. Jesus taught no dogmas; he laid down no system of ceremonialism. Yet, what do we find in Christendom? For centuries his fol- lowers engaged in the fiercest contro- versy over the question, "Whether the substance of Jesus was the same sub- stance of God, or only similar." They fought with the bitterest hatred over the 244 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS definition of the Prince of Peace. Later on, Christendom was literally rent asunder over the question of whether the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father or the Son, or from both Father and Son. In these later days the Anglican Church has more than once been threat- ened with disruption over the question of miUinery, — the proper clothes to be worn by the officiating priest. And in this country just now another promi- nent branch of the Church is on the verge of disruption over a proposed change of name. As we read the story of the Roman Church during the middle ages, or the biographies of many of the popes, — ^men like Clement the 6th and Alexander the 6th, — the only possible explanation for the conditions that existed is that the people actually believed that re- ligion and morality were two separate 245 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS things, and did not necessarily have anything to do with one another. This explains how the good Alberto, in his writings can frankly recognize the gross immorality of a pope like Clement the 6th and yet at the same time regard him as the vicar of Christ and the vice-gerent of God. It was not hypocrisy for this saintly bishop; it was due to the false conception that religion and morality were two separate things, so that a man might be a vicar of Christ and a vice- gerent of God and yet be openly and grossly immoral in his life. This di- vorce between religion and morality continued down to the time of the Prot- estant Reformation. I need not weary you with details that can be found in any history as to the base lives that many of these men lived, as to the in- trigues that went on, not only in the city of Rome, but also in the papal court at Rome, and then again at Avi- 246 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS gnon, and later at Florence. As we read of these intrigues, the treachery, the baseness and injustice, to say nothing of the coarser forms of immorality, we need to exercise unusual patience as we keep in mind that these shameful con- ditions were possible in the Christian Church, simply because few in those days believed with Jesus that religion and morality must be forever one. A man need not be a good man, and yet he might be the vice-gerent of God. When we read of the "holy father," we must remember that "holy" did not mean "good," as we understand the word to-day, and the "Holy Catholic Church" did not necessarily mean a good and righteous organization. Then came the Protestant Reforma- tion. Beneath all the complex move- ments of that period, amid all the stir and ferment of the Renaissance, we should never forget that the Reforma- 247 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS tion proceeded primarily from one source, viz., the outraged conscience of the people. It did not begin as a theo- logical but as an ethical movement. Our best writers in this particular field of history are agreed as to this. It was the outraged conscience of humanity that rose in solemn protest and ushered in the Protestant Reformation. Deep in the human heart, in man's own inner consciousness there was the instinctive feeling, growing more and more clear, that religion and morality ought to be one and the same thing, that a holy man ought to be a good man and that a holy institution ought to be at least a good institution. In spite of the so-called "Holy Father," and "the Holy Catho- lic Church," men could no longer en- dure the intrigue and baseness, the im- morality and cruelty, the grasping greed and the abominable superstitions ; and so it was the conscience of human- 248 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ity, making a determined, desperate ef- fort to bring together these two concep- tions of morality and religion that had been separated so long. Notwithstand- ing all the limitations, the prejudices and the personal passions of the leaders of this reformation period, everything else is incidental to one fact : that these great men, more or less consciously, were protesting with aU the strength of their manhood against this false and dangerous separation of righteousness and religion. As Protestantism began its develop- ment, if it could have stood on this ethi- cal platform — ^religion and morality one — ^if it could have maintained the funda- mental principle — ^the right of every individual to interpret the Scriptures for himself — ^we should have had a very different history of Christianity during the last three hundred years. But the church began to split into various 249 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS groups; the sectarian spirit soon made its appearance, and as the years went by each new separate denomination be- gan not only to interpret the Bible for itself but also began to insist upon foisting its interpretations of the Bible on other people. And so the seat of authority in religion was transferred from the institution, the Roman Catho- lic Church, to the new creed, or the theological views of the special group of people who approached the Bible, and righteousness almost inevitably was crowded into the background. Yet we must never forget that it was the Bible, misused, misinterpreted, mis- applied, as it has been in countless ways, — ^it was this book that saved Eu- rope to Christianity. At the time of the Reformation, European christians would have broken absolutely with Christianity if it had not been for the Bible. But this Book was rediscovered. 250 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS The art of printing made possible its wide circulation. The work of scholars, like Erasmus and many others, made possible the translation of the Bible into the common vernacular of the people, and thus its influence spread far and wide into every hamlet and home. As men read the Bible for themselves they discovered two things — ^first, that the Bible absolutely contradicted the idea of an External Authority as held by the Roman Catholic Church, and sec- ond, that the Bible, especially the teach- ings of Jesus, expressed clearly what their own hearts wanted to believe, viz., that religion was one with morality, and morality one with religion; neither could exist without the other. When men discovered these facts they were saved, not to the Roman church, but to the Christianity of Jesus. So that the Reformation, in just so far as men real- ized and understood the significance of 251 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS that movement, meant a return once again to the fountain-head of religion, a recognition that rehgion is not a creed or a theology, a ritual or an institution, least of all is it something separate from morality, but that religion is a life pro- ceeding from God within the soul, a life of righteousness that is through love. During the past three hundred years, while the ethical significance of religion has received an emphasis it never had during the middle ages, stiU with the growth of power, the multiplication of sects, the writing and rewriting of num- berless creeds, and the emphasizing of minor things that have separated Chris- tian people, the old errors have persist- ed, and there is to-day in many minds the feeling that after all religion is something else than righteousness and that there must be a distinction between morality and religion. Let me point out two or three of the 252 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS sources of criticism of organized re- ligion to-day. First: With the grad- ual development of our systems of the- ology from the time of the Reforma- tion, and with the origin and growth of our different denominations — 160 and more in all — as Protestants, we have more or less unconsciously heen placing the primary emphasis upon our particu- lar system, our creed, our theology, our rites, our ceremonies, our special form of institutionalized religion, with the re- sult that the great principles of right- eousness, the fundamental ideals of the ethical life have been left in the back- ground, or at least have been subordi- nated to something else. I do not sup- pose that ministers have always been conscious of this, or that church mem- bers would like to admit it, but never- theless this charge is made to-day — and let us have the honesty to admit its jus- tice — that we have all of us been more 253 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS interested in preaching our particular views of theology than we have in incul- cating the fundamentals of ethics or righteousness, that we have heen preaching our conceptions of religion instead of the vital principles making for the moral life and the development of the righteous character. If this were not true, how can you account for the springing up in various conmiunities of Ethical Culture Societies? Secondly: We have not only placed our supreme emphasis upon theologies, creeds, rites and ceremonies, and thus perhaps unconsciously crowded the whole field of ethics into the back- ground, but in many of our theological doctrines we have been teaching unethi- cal and immoral conceptions of religious truth. The doctrine of the atonement has been preached again and again in terms so absolutely unethical and false 254. THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS that it has simply put a premium on um-ighteousness in many lives. Men and women who, because they believed that Jesus died on Calvary for their sins, have come to feel in their hearts that they could go on doing the unright- eous thing and that their faith in the death of Jesus would absolve them from the penalty of their wrongdoing. There can be no more unethical or harmful teaching than that the right- eousness of Jesus is a substitute for any man's unrighteousness. Who is the righteous man? Does the Bible anywhere say that the righteous man is the man who believes that Jesus' righteousness is a substitute for his im- morality or unrighteousness? No! but "if you believe that God is righteous, then you know that he that doeth right- eousness is born of Him." Any con- ception of the death of Jesus Christ that makes him or his righteousness a sub- 255 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS stitute for your own unrighteousness is unethical and directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus, who said "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Phari- sees ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Whatever your interpretation of the death of Jesus Christ may be, remember this, it is a hindrance and a stumbling stone in your pathway and fatal to your own spiritual development unless it helps you to live daily and hourly the more truly right- eous life yourself. Thirdly: Or, take the matter of Truthfulness. Pascal's maxim that "the first of Christian truths is that Truth should be loved above all things," has never yet taken real hold of the Christian consciousness. The Christian scholar to-day is meeting endless per- plexities simply because the earlier Christian writers did not always esteem 256 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS truth and accuracy of statement a vir- tue. And to-day there are numbers of rehgious people who refuse to open their minds to a truth, however well it has been established, which seems to contradict some early prepossession. It is not the truth that the majority of Christians love supremely, but their own particular sectarian opinions about the truth. It is this that has caused the leaders of organized religion all too often to take the attitude of apologists for, rather than proclaimers of, the truth. And to thoughtful minds there is always a fatal weakness in truth pre- sented from the viewpoint of the apolo- gist. But there is still another sense in which as churches we deserve the criti- cism of this modern age as respects our attitude toward righteousness. With the tremendous change that has taken place in the shifting from the individ- 257 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ualistic to the social viewpoint, the church has remained, generally speak- ing, in a static condition. There are notable exceptions but, as a whole, the church has not yet in any real sense caught the social vision or discovered the meaning and significance of a social Christianity. For the most part we are still preaching the old individualistic type of morality ; we are trying to help people to become better in their per- sonal lives, but we have not yet come to realize that no man can live his life alone, that a man only lives his life at all as he lives it in relation to those about him; and that, good and bad, right and wrong, sin and righteousness, are words that must be translated for man to-day into terms of social rela- tionships. There may be those who think that these are exaggerated statements, and that the church has outgrown the nar- 258 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS row individualistic viewpoint. Let us see. All modern thinkers recognize that at bottom every one of our modern problems is an ethical problem. We may call them social, or economic, or political, but in the last analysis they are moral problems. What has been the general attitude of the church and its leaders to these moral problems? The Earl of Shaftesbury, who did more for the poor of England during the nineteenth century than any other one man, carrying through many reforms that made possible a larger and health- ier and happier life for multitudes in his country, when he came down to old age said with tears in his eyes, "The thing that has discouraged me most in my life work for the poor of England has been the cold indifference, if not ac- tual hostility of Christian ministers and churches to the reforms I have sought to bring about." Richard T. Ely, in 259 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS this country, had identically the same experience, when he said, "The hardest people to interest in these social and economic problems that are essen- tially moral problems, were the minis- ters and church members." All must admit that the churches have not been teaching ethics in their broad social aspects. For, when a min- ister begins to preach social Christian- ity and to teach social righteousness in its concrete terms, we all know that in every church there are always those who immediately cry out and say, "Why does not our minister preach the Gos- pel? Why does he not conjBne himself to religion?" In a letter written by John Wesley to his brother Charles he said, "But of all preaching, what is usually called Gospel preaching is the most useless if not the most mischievous; a dull or a lively harangue on the sufferings of 260 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS Christ, or salvation by faith, without sharply inculcating righteousness, I see more and more that this naturally tends to drive righteousness out of the world." But, to come still more closely home: how many people there are who think they have religion, who profess to have religion, and yet their professions are no security to right living on their part ! How many men there are who profess religion but find it difficult to always tell the truth; how many people there are who profess religion but who are sadly lacking in a high sense of honor; how many church members there are, yes, how many ministers there are, who lack that delicate scrupulousness about veracity, frank dealing and fair play, who are not broad and generous in their thought and conversation about others, who are not above even stooping to a questionable transaction in business! 261 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS Wliat is the source of the ahnost pro- verbial sajnng, "If you are going to do business with a church member be care- ful." It is not altogether a joke. Where there is so much smoke there is usually some fire. Let us admit in all charity that it is not because church members are worse than people outside the church; but if the supreme empha- sis were placed by the teachers of re- ligion on the great ethical ideals and principles of Jesus, ought they not to be better in the whole range of moral liv- ing? It is an open question whether the morality of religious people is nota- bly better than the morality of the men and women of the world — but be that as it may, what justice there is in the criti- cism of the morality of professing Chris- tian people is primarily due to the fact that we have separated morality from religion, that we have divorced things that ought never to be divorced, and 262 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS that as a result there are mviltitudes of Christian people who keep their religion and their morality in separate compart- ments, and who think that they can be religious without being absolutely moral; who fail to see that righteous- ness and religion from Jesus' viewpoint are one and the same thing. In many a community and in many churches you wiU find the individual who has been successful financially, who is praised by his fellow church members, who gives generously to church and be- nevolent enterprises, who is eulogized by his pastor when he dies ; and yet the whole community knows that that man's life would not bear the inspection of the light of day. But alas ! when a man is rich and gives money to church enter- prises it is a great temptation to omit preaching on the ethical principles which would touch his hfe or practices in any vital way. So the outside world 263 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS laughs us to scorn, and we become little less than contemptible in the minds of those men and women, outside all churches, who are aflame with moral passion and who are possessed by a moral energy and enthusiasm that puts us all to shame. We are told from many quarters that what the world needs to-day is a revival of religion. If they mean by a revival of religion a re- vival of righteousness, the awakened moral sense of this modern age would be in heartiest accord. But if they mean a revival of anything else, the age will be suspicious or entirely indifferent. We have enough religion of the other kind and to spare. A revival of relig- ion that awakens emotion merely, that arouses the fear motive, that appeals to a man's theological prejudice or secta- rianism, will never succeed to-day. But if they mean by a revival of religion a revival of righteousness so deep, so sin- 264 THE CREATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS cere and so vital that ministers and church officials and church members everywhere shall recognize that their great business in the world is to preach the goodness of God, and that men ought to be good like God, and that there is nothing else in all the world that can save a man, here or hereafter, but the goodness that is wrought out in his own life and character through the life of the indwelling God, — ^if they mean this, and that we are not only to preach goodness, but that we are to translate goodness into our daily lives and then translate it into the life of the community — for such a true revival of religion this age most earnestly waits. Do we not see that just as the Protes- tant Reformation was bom out of the outraged conscience of humanity be- cause of this divorce between religion and morality, so there is taking place in our time the New Reformation, or, if 265 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS you will, the completion of the Refor- mation that began three hundred years ago; and that this new or perfected Reformation consists in nothing else than in the bringing together of right- eousness and religion and making them absolutely one forever? The church that dares to stand on such a platform and preach that kind of a religion, is the church that will have the genuine re- spect of the community and the loyal devotion of the people, for such a church would be teaching and living the universal, ethical and spiritual religion of Jesus Christ. 266 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY HE most revolutionary truth that has dawned upon this modern age is the truth in- volved in the Doctrine of Evolution, with all its far-reaching im- plications ; while the greatest new force of our times grows out of the new So- cial Consciousness. These two empha- ses, the evolutionary and the social, are the most notable features of present- day thought. And the two are closely akin. The first involves the change from the static to the dynamic view of the world; whUe the second substitutes the social for the individualistic view of life. Both of them involve unity and 267 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS continuity. We see aE things and all lives vitally connected with one another. Neither in nature nor in human life is there any real segregation, separation, sharp division, whether temporal or spacial. The unitary view of the World is dominant to-day, and it finds expres- sion in the social emphasis as truly as in the idea of evolution. No one who is alive at all, can escape the fact that this is the age of the new social consciousness. All literature throbs with it, from the philosophic es- say to the latest fiction. The daily press, in both news columns and edi- torials, reflects it. It has made its way into the curricula of college and univer- sity. Political parties are being re- formed because of it. Legislatures are grappling with it as with some new and mighty force that cannot be ignored. Not only the soap-box agitator, and the political demagogue, but the schol- 268 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY arly statesman and all thoughtful citi- zens are possessed with an ever-increas- ing interest in social problems. Evolution has been at work for ages, and the Kingdom of God has been ever coming, but to-day, unless all signs mis- lead, we are at the birth of a new social order. The social reorganization taking place in China, Japan, India, Persia, Europe and America is not less than revolutionary. The conflict of the Na- tions that seems to have checked the progress of social forces in Europe, cannot fail in the end to tremendously accelerate the social changes that have been taking place in England, in France, in Germany and in Russia, during the last generation. Far-reach- ing social movements are nearing their climax, and whether they be toward destruction or fvdfilment is the question of supremest moment. The world-wide social revolution is on. It cannot be 269 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS stopped, but it may be guided, under wise and courageous leadership, to the fulfilment of humanity's loftiest dreams. What part is organized religion play- ing in the guidance of the mighty forces that proceed from the new social con- sciousness ? What part might it play in this critical 20th Century? To under- stand the relation of the church to the great social movement of our times, we need to make a brief historical survey. In striking contrast with the domi- nant ethical ideals of our own day, the ideals of traditional Christianity have been as a rule controUingly individual- istic. Under the influence of the cur- rent dualistic notions of the ancient world, the Christian life was early inter- preted as the scene of a constant strug- gle between the powers of good and of evU. Over against the Spirit of God was supposed to be arrayed the world, 270 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY the flesh and the devil, all striving to overmaster the Christian and drag him to perdition. The natural man is con- trolled by the lusts of the flesh and the love of the world ; the spiritual man be- longs to a higher realm, and has set his affections on things above. The present life is at its worst, wholly corrupt; at its best, but temporary. The more com- pletely detached from the interests and concerns of the world a man became, the more of a Christian he seemed to be. Not harmony with one's environ- ment, but revolt against it was com- monly inculcated. This result, as a rule, took the form of an effort to escape from the present world rather than to make it over into the Kingdom of God. The view of the world was usually pes- simistic to the extreme. It is doomed to speedy and inevitable destruction. The ascetic tendency joined with this pessimistic estimate of the world, led 271 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS naturally to monasticism, and from the Fifth century on, though only a minor- ity of Christians ever became monks, the monastic life was generally re- garded as the most consistent expres- sion of the Christian ideal. Jesus' emphasis upon love for one's neighbors was not forgotten by the Christians of the ancient and mediseval world, but as Prof. McGiffert points out, "it has been socially of less value than it might have been, because eter- nal salvation seemed so overwhelmingly important as to make earthly welfare and happiness dwindle into insignifi- cance. Already in the earliest days the tendency was abroad to reduce brotherly love to the dimensions of mere charity, and give it as such a place with other so-called meritorious acts among the means of salvation." Whenpoverty was thus regarded as an opportunity for the exercise of Christian virtue, 272 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY there might be, and there was ahns- giving on a large scale, but acquiescence in the conditions making for the con- tinuance of poverty was all too easy. Religious duties were considered more important than moral, and religious of- fenses of greater heinousness than any other kind. So prayer and similar re- ligious exercises came to be thought of as the Christian's noblest occupations; and sacrilege, heresy and schism as the worst of crimes. The result was de- cidedly vicious, distracting attention from the every-day duties of life and often making men worse instead of bet- ter citizens of this world. So that while there was a great deal of charity, viz., almsgiving, there was practically no social interest and effort, no attempt to secure social justice, no desire to re- move the causes out of which poverty and misery proceed. We must remember that down 273 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS through the Middle Ages the belief in the permanence of existing conditions was in control. Whether right or wrong, things had always been as they were and would always continue so. The World belonged to the DevU and was necessarily a faulty and imperfect place. The golden age of innocence and happiness lay in the distant past. In the future there could be only con- tinued evil and misery until the end came and the earth was destroyed. Re- ligion was thus translated into purely individualistic terms. It was a personal matter between the soul and God, and the great end of salvation was the res- cuing of the individual soul from this wicked world and seeing it safely through to some distant heaven. In his conception of the Christian life Martin Luther broke completely with traditional Christianity. At almost every point he repudiated the common 274* THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY Roman Catholic view. But as is true of all reform movements, those who came after him failed to appreciate his attitude, and the old dualism, asceti- cism, otlier-worldliness and individual- ism continued to prevail within Prot- estantism. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the rationalists made two im- portant advances. They minimized the special religious duties and put the common moi-al virtues into tlie fore- front. They also made benevolence the one supreme virtue. Asceticism and other-worldliness, as tliey reappeared in contemporary pietism and evangelical- ism, they wholly disapproved. More and more the good of man took the place of the glory of God as a motive for himian conduct. The influence of the old Stoics, who were earnestly studied by the moralists of the eight- eenth century, was far-reaching. Tills 275 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS broad cosmopolitanism and emphasis upon common humanity were particu- larly seized upon by those who felt keenly the evils of sectarianism and party spirit, and the great phrase "the brotherhood of man" became one of the most potent catchwords of the century. Many of the rationalists went back to the teachings of Jesus and tried to sub- stitute his simple Gospel of Love for God and man, for the elaborate theolo- gies and rituals of the various sects. As the historian points out, the eight- eenth century was the humanitarian century above all that had preceded it, and to it belongs the credit of estab- lishing the supreme obligation of hu- manitarianism in the moral conscious- ness of the modern man. But there is vastly more in the modern social em- phasis than mere humanitarianism. Following the Renaissance and Ref- ormation came a gradual change of at- 276 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY titude. The great changes they had seen taking place encouraged men to believe that everything was possible. With the dawning of the new science was born the conviction that the world was growing better and that man had been gradually rising from a state of ignorance and barbarism and might yet hope to attain a position far higher and h3,ppier than he had ever occupied. The literature of the eighteenth century is, for the first time, full of the idea of the indefinite perfectibility of man and so- ciety. Such ideas, of course, were in absolute contradiction to the theologies and teachings of the Churches, and those who dared to utter them were regarded as heretics. But the new ideas continued to spread. New standards began to be applied and new demands to be made. Among the earliest champions of the new cause were Robert Owen in Eng- 277 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS land and Henri Saint Simon and Charles Fourier in France. So long as the great manufacturer Owen con- fined his efforts to improving the condi- tions under which his workmen lived, and giving them model homes and schools, he was everywhere applauded; but when he began to denounce the existing economic system he became the most warmly hated man in England. Thus a new class consciousness began to emerge among the working people. No one did more to arouse it than the Germans, Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, the former the founder of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, the latter the father of International Socialism, though it should be remem- bered that the modern social movement is much broader and more comprehen- sive than Socialism or any other specific organization. The attitude of these early leaders toward organized religion 278 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY is most significant. At an early day- Owen broke with Christianity, finding it "bigoted, selfish and wholly blind to the needs of the poorer classes." But he did not renounce all religion. He retained a belief in a Supreme Being of infinite benevolence, whose worship consists in brotherly love and labor for the poor and suffering. Saint Simon's attitude was similar. In his last work, "The New Christianity," published in 1825, he denounced both Catholicism and Protestantism as heretical, because they had apostatized from Jesus' re- ligion of humanity. "God has said men ought to conduct themselves toward each other as brethren. This sublime principle embraces all there is of divin- ity in the Christian religion. * * * If Luther's reformation had been com- pleted, he would have said to the Pope : 'Your predecessors have sufiiciently perfected the theory of Christianity; it 279 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS is now the general application of this doctrine which ought to occupy you. True Christianity ought to make men happy not only in heaven, but also on earth. You ought to use frankly and energetically all the means acquired by the Church to ameliorate promptly the moral and physical existence of the most numerous class. The preliminary la- bors of Christianity are finished. You have a task to fulfill much more satisfy- ing than that accomplished by your predecessors. This task consists in es- tablishing the universal and final Chris- tianity. It consists in organizing the whole human race according to the fundamental principles of divine moral- ity. To fulfill this task you ought to make this principle, viz., love, the foun- dation and the end of all social institu- tions.' " Saint Simon's attitude has been that of many other social reformers. But THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY most modern socialists, and many social workers have apparently been either hostUe or indifferent to Christianity as it existed, though by no means to all religion. And then, about the middle of the Nineteenth century there sprang up a movement within the church called Christian Socialism. Men like Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, etc., had been preach- ing their social gospel, but now within the church men like Charles Kingsley, Frederick D. Maurice, Thomas Hughes and others, began to preach the social message of Jesus. They vigorously emphasized Owen's principle of co- operation and declared it to be alone consistent with the true Christian spirit. Gradually the finer spirits in the church awoke to the consciousness that the in- dividualistic conception of religion was aU too inadequate, that Jesus preached a social Gospel, as well as an individual 281 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS one, and that the church had not yet grasped the whole Gospel of Jesus. In 1867 Prof. J. R. Seeley published his celebrated book "Ecce Homo," in which humanitarianism was claimed to be the great burden of Jesus' message. "His biography may be summed up in the words 'he went about doing good.' His morality required that the welfare and happiness of others should not merely be remembered as a restraint upon action, but should be made the principal motive of action * * * He set the first and greatest example of a life wholly governed and guided by the passion of humanity." A few years later Canon Freemantle published his classic work "The World as the Sub- ject of Redemption," in which he set forth the great social message of Jesus, as contained in that phrase so often on his lips, "the Kingdom of God." He makes clear that the primary object of THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY the church, as it was the fundamental purpose of Jesus, is nothing less than the perfection of human society. A high ideal of national righteousness is set before us. Not the isolated individ- ual is to be saved, but the individual in the nation ; not the nation is to be saved as an isolated nation, but as one of a family of nations filling the earth. The world here and now is the subject of redemption. The purpose of Canon Freemantle is to turn the faces of men away from the fruitless controversies engendered by an exclusive interest in worship and dogma to the more fruitful field of a practical influence on the na- tional and universal life. We have here the watchword for every movement toward religious unity. Men can never agree respecting the subtleties and mys- teries of theology, but they may unite in efforts for the redemption of the 283 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS world, the transformation of human society. In the last generation the numbers of those within the church who have caught the vision of a social Christian- ity, of a church devoted to the high task of perfecting society, has been steadily increasing. In this country, among the great leaders of this broader and more practical Christianity, have been men like Richard T. Ely, Washington Glad- den, Josiah Strong, Prof. Rauschen- busch, and many others, and there can be no question but that through many of its leaders, both in ptdpit and in pew, the Church is slowly awakening to its true social mission. And yet the natural conservatism of the church, the fact that for the most part the church is supported by those who are interested in maintaining the present existing social and economic conditions, the absence of proper train- 284 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY ing in most of our theological semi- naries for a social ministry, both wise and eif ective, and perhaps, above all, the lack of any clear notions of what con- stitutes Christian ethics in this modern industrial age — these and other causes militate against an enthusiastic, united and successful social ministry on the part of the church. Jane Addams complains that even in this age of the social consciousness, it is to the theatre, not the church, that men go to hear the problems of capital and labor, work and wages, class and class, seriously grappled with. Dr. Parkhurst says that there is more pulpit pohtics on Thanksgiving Day than aU the rest of the year put together. This, he says, is because Thanksgiving Day is thought to be only one half as holy as the Sab- bath, and this 50 per cent, of secularity permits us to forget all about heaven and say something about the nation, 285 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS the government, and the industrial life of the people. We have come to the age of an in- dustrial organization of the world. In- dustry absorbs the life of the people. If we have nothing to say about industrial right and wrong, we have little to say that matters. When the Archbishop of Canterbury announced some time since that he worked seventeen hours a day and had no time left to form an opinion as to the solution of the problem of the unemployed, Mr. Keir Hardie replied that "a religion which demands seven- teen hours a day for organization, and leaves no time for a single thought about starving and despairing men, women and children, has no message for this age." What is needed in the pulpit to-day is the ethical and religious interpreta- tion of all of life — not simply of one's individual relationship to God. "If ye 286 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY love not your brother whom ye have seen, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?" Every human rela- tionship raises a moral question; but to many it has never occurred that moral issues are involved in their industrial, economic or social relationships. When Jesus said to the four fishermen, "Fol- low me and I will make you fishers of men," they understood. They simply left their boats and nets and went with him to become learners at his side. When the relation between employer and employee was a simple personal relation, before the age of machinery had made possible the huge factories employing their hundreds and thou- sands of men and women, the code of individual ethics sufficed ; but to-day, in this complex industrial age it is not so simple. What does it mean when Jesus says to the modern Lawyer or Banker or Merchant or Manufacturer, or Mine 287 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS Owner, "Follow me"? How can one follow Christ in the industrial or eco- nomic or judicial or political world? How can a multi-millionaire follow him who had not where to lay his head? This needs interpretation. Personal ethics no longer suffice. With the growth of the factory and corporation and trust, moral problems become for the most part impersonal, and the majority of men are hopelessly at sea as to what is right and wrong. Most men want to know what is right, and how they may perform it. They want to be consistent, but they do not know how. The majority fail to realize the impossibility of living in accordance with the ethical principles of Jesus in an age whose social and economic sys- tem is organized on a basis diametric- ally opposed to those principles. The ideals of Jesus must be translated into economic, industrial and social terms. THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY before society can ever be Christianized. It is such wise and trained leadership that the Church needs most of all to- day. It is such leadership that is sadly lacking. To-day as never before the Church needs to call men's attention away from the question of rights to that of duties, as Mazzini did. It should make plain what the Golden Rule means as it applies to employer and employed, to landlord and tenant, to seller and buyer, to mistress and serv- ant, to promoters and investors, and to all human beings at the points where their lives touch another's. It should teach a new kind of competition, a com- petition in doing right and in rendering community service. According to Jesus, the great test of true religion is found in the conscious- ness that every other individual is my brother or sister, and to treat them accordingly. We may have our beliefs, 289 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS we may attend church, we may talk glibly enough about religion, but unless our beliefs, our church attendance, our religion, has awakened in us the con- sciousness of our vital relation to God, and the vital relation of every other individual throughout the world to God, and therefore the essential unity and oneness of our lives with all who live anywhere — we do not know the meaning of religion. A distinguished layman addressing a great denominational gathering re- cently, made a plea for the teaching of what he called "the pure and simple Gospel." Here is his conception: "We should constantly hold up Sinai and Calvary to mankind. The vicarious atonement should be emphasized. The sacrifice of Christ should be presented daily. His deity and mediatorial work should be constantly kept before the people. The whole Gospel and nothing 290 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY but the Gospel should be preached." Would it be possible in the same space to state anything more widely differing from the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed? If we can trust the New Testament Gospels it follows that, if Jesus knew what his gospel was, there are many modern preachers who do not know. The simple fact is we are living in an age that is fast becoming socialized from top to bottom, and individual re- ligion, like individual ethics, must give way to broader and more social concep- tions. Our Psychology is becoming socialized. Man does not live alone. There are no isolated individuals com- plete in themselves. Personality is recognized as a social product and i;s impossible apart from social relation- ships. Education is being transformed in the same way, both as to its ideals and its methods, and religion must be socialized or else be left behind. The 291 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS evangelical notion of religion as a purely personal relation between God and the soul, setting man apart from his fellows, is widely regarded as an exploded fiction. There is no such iso- lated soul and no such religion. With our conception of the imma- nency of God as one with His world and one with all life, true religion must be fatal to any idea of separateness whatsoever. So our estimate of human character has been socialized. We real- ize that both virtue and vice are social products ; that no man is solely respon- sible for his own sins any more than for his own goodness. Bound together as we are inextricably, we are all in some sense responsible for whatever crime is committed, for whatever wrong is per- petrated, for whatever injustice exists. But if we recognize the corporate char- acter of sin we must equally recognize the social character of salvation. The 292 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY old doctrine held that all were sinners; some only are saved; there is oneness in sin, but not in salvation. This arti- ficial distinction is overcome by the modern social way of looking at things. There is unity and association in the one case as well as in the other. If one is a social product the other is also. No one can be saved alone. If there cannot be an isolated personality or character, there cannot be an isolated salvation. No one can be saved from Society; he must be saved with it. As Herbert Spencer profoundly said, "No one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy tUl all are happy; no one can be per- fectly free till all are free." The Church is awakening. The so- cial creed adopted by the Federal Council of the Churches of America in 1908, and since adopted by most of the leading denominations, is indicative of HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS progress. But the apparent enthusias- tic endorsement of recent revivalists whose conception of rehgion is couched in individualistic rather than in social terms, the recent controversies between different branches of the Christian church as to what Christians have the right to sit down to the Lord's Supper together, the frantic efforts in many quarters to build up and strengthen denominational lines, thereby deepen- ing the sectarian consciousness which is the most tragic form of the un-chris- tian notion of separateness within Christianity — these facts and many others reveal how slowly the Church as a whole is awakening to the new social consciousness, the mightiest and most hopeful force in our midst to-day. The uppermost question throughout Christendom to-day is the pathetic question — when we consider that Chris- tianity has been in the world for more 294 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY than nineteen centuries — ^What does it mean to be a Christian? The individ- ualistic terms in which that question has been answered in the past will never suffice for the 20th century. The problem of Salvation is the problem of Society — ^how to live together as God's children. We have not yet worked it out. Individualistic religion has domi- nated Christianity for all these cen- turies — ^and the result, an un-christian civilization, an untransformed society, and as brutal and savage a war as the world has ever known. Is it not worth whUe trying the Social Gospel of Jesus, before we pronounce Christianity a failure? What a future for a United Church, dedicated to the great task of perfecting Society, of making real the Kingdom of God on earth! 295 THE LOVE THAT ESTAB- LISHES PEACE AND GOOD- WILL ON EARTH 'T is the chief glory of Re- ligion, as interpreted by Jesus, that it gives the fore- most place to Love. He sums up all religious duty in love to God, and all ethical duty in love to man, and to him religion and ethics are blended into one, in the righteous- ness that is through love. To him. Love was the highest revelation of God, and therefore the highest expression of human character, in which God had his true dwelling place. The Apostle Paul, whose earlier writings are given largely to theological questions and matters of 296 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE dispute or controversy among the Chris- tian converts, in the last part of his life writes that wondrous "Poem of Love," in which he realizes that the abiding things, after all, are Faith, Hope and Love — "but the greatest of these is Love." And the Seer of Pat- mos sums up his philosophy in the words "God is Love * * * He that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." It was in no arbitrary sense that Jesus declared Love to be the dominant characteristic of God's nature and the great goal of man's unfolding spiritual nature, but rather, because Love is woven into the warp and woof of the Universe. If his ideal of Love is true, it is not true because Jesus said so; Jesus made Love supreme because it is supreme, in the very nature of things. Love, even in religion, has usually been conceived as a beautiful poetic senti- 297 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ment, or as one of the fruits of the Spirit. But the sphere of Love is far wider. Love is a universal principle, holding within its bounds all the co-operating energies of nature. It is the primal force which, existing between two or more individuals, draws them into harmonious relations and estab- lishes the foundations of happiness. But the two individuals need not neces- sarily be human individuals or even ani- mals. All entities, of whatever charac- ter, which are subject to the force of mutual attraction, are the visible media of the foreshadowing of Love. "As much love exists, proportionately, be- tween two atoms as between two human beings, between the elements that com- pose the chemical substance as between hearts that beat in unison." When sev- eral atoms instinctively combine as con- stituent elements of any substance, Science calls the uniting force chemical 298 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE affinity. Yet such affinity is but mutual attraction, the common force that holds all entities in harmony; nor can we think of such harmonious relation but as a phase of love, the primal unitary force ever binding two or more into one. Love is a cosmic principle pervading the entire Universe. Mutual affinity in- hering in the particles of primal star- dust or nebulae of the first fire-mist, as we believe, drew them into the original rings or nodules of varying temperature and density, and finally into the revolv- ing spheres and grouping constellations that compose the vast universe. Thus we may speak of the love of the original atoms, without violating scientific ver- ity. "The Cosmos is primarily a drama of primitive atomic affections, uncon- sciously evincing the supreme force that sustains the world." As we ascend from the vegetal to the animal world, we discover this ever pre- 299 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS dominant principle increasing in power and manifestly directed by individual intelligence. Side by side with the struggle for existence is the strug- gle for the existence of others, as ex- pressed by the love of offspring. The mother-love in animals is the secret force that generates and ever preserves, protects and defends its offspring. In Nature's marvelous transmutation of forces, the very selfishness that compels the mother animal to fight for its own young becomes altruistic in that it re- sults in the preservation of the entire species. From a primitive force in the animal world, the love of offspring has become in human kind the strongest manifesta- tion of the cosmic principle of love yet developed. It is at once the conserving force of civilization and the great dy- namic of evolution. The experience of the race has finally 300 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE proved that the family is the essential and indispensable center and unit of Society. But whence came the family? The answer gives us another chapter in the unfolding Love Story of the Uni- verse. Although the mother-love pri- marily protected the young and pre- served the species, it was not until mother-love, through the lengthened period of infancy, awoke the father- love, and the two united, developed into household-love, that it was possible for the family to become manifest. The love of lover must become the love of husband, the love of husband and wife must become the love of Father and Mother, parental love must become household-love before the entire family is enrobed in love and the bond of unity is made secure. For what is the true family but "a congregation of consan- guineous individuals, bound under one roof by the sacred ties of love, each liv- 301 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ing to serve the other that none may want." But the family, ideally conceived, prefigures the ultimate ideal of the com- munity, of the state, of the nation, when all members shall mutually function in harmonious relations, each performing his just and worthy duty. Love springs only from a conscious condition of equality, freedom and harmony. As a race, we are still far behind such a stage of family development. Ideal Society wUl but be approached when true fam- ilyhood becomes voluntary familyhood, founded only on the principle of mutual affection and mutual affinity. Thus, as we trace the development of the love-principle in the Universe, we find it unfolding from primitive atomic affinities to love of offspring in the lower animals, from love of offspring to mother-love in the human species, from mother-love to parental love, from pa- LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE rental love to family love, from family love to social and communal love. But this is not the end of Nature's love story. The evolution of the love-prin- ciple does not stop here. The still higher stage of love is as yet but a bare suggestion in human ex- perience. The great sages and poets and seers of the race have caught the vision of a world-love, binding all races into one ; but at present there exists but the fragUe bond of a universal fellow- feeling. There come experiences when for a little while "one touch of nature seems to make^ the whole world kin." Gradually we are coming to realize that our common vicissitudes, our sufferings and our problems, our successes and our failures, our hopes and fears, our as- pirations and our longings are common experiences that do actually bind us into one great family. Yet this is but a bare hint of a possible social love that 303 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS transcends all distinctions of race or color or civilization or creed — ^the love which will break through all national boundaries and which will sometime generate a true human brotherhood in which will exist the soul of sincerity and the surety of willing service. To realize how far removed we are as yet from "that great far-off divine event," we need only to look forth upon the world to-day and review the social conditions that exist. And yet we need to remember that the fundamental cos- mic principle of Love, that alone makes for peace and harmony, will never be fulfilled until that which has its source in the heart of the Eternal, and whose wondrous development we may trace from the mutual affinity of the atoms to the love we know to-day, shall at length evolve into a genuine social brotherhood that shall include all hu- manity — ^the apotheosis of aspiring hu- 304 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE manity, God's dream come true at last. All religions, then, through the teach- ings of love of their great prophets and leaders, but especially Christianity as construed by Jesus in terms of love alone, have thus made explicit in their ideals, what we find to be implicit in the universe — ^the principle of love as the great law of individual hfe and the ul- timate foundation of a world-society. Religion has always been the strong- est ideal force in the life of mankind, and yet, let us admit it frankly, it is just here that all religions have most conspicuously failed, they have never yet either taught or practised their su- preme ideal so as to make love the dom- inating social principle. The failure of Christianity is most marked because in no other religion has the Love-principle held so supreme or exclusively compre- hensive a place as in the teachings of Jesus. 305 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS I have attended many ordinations of young men entering the Christian min- istry, but in no single instance have I ever heard the Ordaining Council ask the candidate if he believed in the doc- trine of Love. The examiners are al- ways very anxious to find out if he believes in the Trinity or the Atonement or the Virgin Birth or the Physical Resurrection or the Inspiration of the Bible, but never once have I ever heard the question suggested as to whether the prospective minister believed in Love as the supreme doctrine of Chris- tianity. At one ordination, for one hour and twenty minutes by the clock, I listened to the Council try to get the candidate to admit that he believed in a personal Devil. One would have thought that he was expected to go out to preach the gospel of a Devil, rather than the Gospel of Christ, which was Love. 306 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE The martyrs of the Church constitute a large and goodly company. But what about the tens of thousands of men and women whom the Church has persecuted, and tortured and put to cruel death ? If the Church had realized that its foremost doctrine was the Doc- trine of Love, could it ever have per- petrated the hideous crimes against hu- manity that now darken the pages of its history? And for what did these victims of the Church suffer? Was it because they were living immoral or sel- fish lives, or because they refused to follow Love's leadings ? As you know, most of them were men and women of purest, noblest character, the devoted lovers of their fellows. But because they could not honestly conform to some of the rules or requirements or doc- trines of the Church, they were done to death in the name of Him who said, "Love your enemies." 807 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS As a boy, I used occasionally to hear the minister condemn in bitterest terms men like Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Re- nan, Spinoza, or Darwin, and I came to think that these men must have been the great arch-criminals, the supreme ene- mies of God and humanity. But as I grew older and became acquainted with the lives and writings of these men for myself, I found to my amazement that these men whom the Church had called "infidels," "atheists," and "free- thinkers," and whom it had consigned triumphantly to Hell, have been in many instances, among the great Sav- iours of humanity and have believed as firmly as anyone in the God who is a God of Love. I discovered that great saying of Thomas Paine : "Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a little child, cannot be a true system." I found that Voltaire believed in the God of Love, but could not endure the 808 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE priestcraft, the superstition and the idolatry of the Roman Catholic Church as he saw it in the France of his day, and that he was far more "Christian" than many of those who called him "infidel." I found that Spi- noza, the persecuted exile from his na- tive land, was in very truth "the God- intoxicated" man, whose consciousness of the Divine Presence within and with- out should have shamed his persecutors. And I learned that Charles Darwin, whom many "popular" preachers still consign to "endless punishment," was one of the most gentle and lovable of men, whose charity for all was bound- less and whose forgiveness for his per- secutors within the Church was akin to the spirit of the Master. If it is true that "he that loveth is born of God," then certainly Charles Darwin was born of God, whatever his theology may have been. 309 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS If this seems like ancient history, we have only to recall the latest Heresy Trial in this country, scarcely ten years ago, as a result of which a gifted and distinguished clergyman whose life for a quarter of a century had been filled with loving deeds and kindly ministra- tions to the poor and needy, was ex- pelled from his office simply because he dared to interpret religion somewhat differently than the theology of the creeds. The spirit anywhere that fosters and seeks to perpetuate sectarianism in any of its various forms, even though the dungeon and the stake are things of the past ; the spirit that leads one to speak disrespectfully of any man's religion, however it may differ from one's own; the spirit that cannot recognize the re- ligion of Life, though it does not ex- press itself in the same theological or ecclesiastical terms, does not and can- 310 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE not proceed from the principle of Love. Is it any wonder that organized selfish- ness and brute force still seem to rule the world, when within religion itself the principle of love has found so in- adequate an expression? The clear and patent fact is that no religion has ever yet grasped the pro- found meaning of Jesus' principle of Love; no church has ever yet made it the supreme basis of its organization; no church has ever yet placed it as the foremost article of its creed, and there- fore no religion has ever yet begun in real and intelligent manner to lay the basis in Society for the coming brother- hood of man. But if this has been the great failure of organized religion in the past, we need to remember it has been the failure to realize its ideals. The ideals of religion have not failed, simply because they have never yet been tried. From this viewpoint, the failure of Re- 311 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ligion is like the failure of Democracy, or Education, or any other great In- stitution in Society; it is the failure to realize outwardly the principles and ideals which constitute its very deepest essence. Let us recognize the fact that the world was not ready either to perceive or live the profound principle of Love that Jesus enunciated, and save for some exceptional souls, the world has never yet been ready to live this prin- ciple. Up to the beginning of the Chris- tian Era religions, wherever you found them, had been national in character. The Indian had the Hindu faith; the Persian, the Zoroastrian ; the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, the Hebrew, and many still older nations, each had its faith. And while you may find differ- ent religions living fairly peacefully side by side, when a man left his national rehgion, he was regarded more as a 312 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE traitor to the state than as a heretic to his faith. When Jesus came he voiced a uni- versal religion, for the Gentile as well as the Jew — ^universal, because it was spiritual. Paul, the first Apostle to the Gentiles, helped to break down the na- tional barriers that separated this new faith from other peoples. But simply because man had not progressed far enough to appreciate or live a purely spiritual religion, it was not long be- fore we find the spiritual religion of Jesus passing into the dogmatic stage, where it is construed not in terms of hf e and spirit, but in terms of theology and ecclesiasticism. Much as we may regret to-day this radical change that passed over early Christianity, as students of history we recognize that it was inevi- table. The World-Religion, when it comes, cannot be dogmatic ; it must be mystic, 313 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS or spiritual. And yet, dogmas are as necessary at a particular stage of re- ligious evolution as at a stage of Edu- cation. A dogma is only the statement of what is believed to be a truth, im- posed upon a person from outside. He is taught it by authority ; it may be the authority of a book, a creed, or a Church, it does not matter; it comes to the man from outside and demands be- lief. There are dogmas of Science as well as of Religion. When the student begins his work in the scientific labora- tory, he must at the outset accept cer- tain dogmatic statements from others. If he does not, he plays havoc with the laboratory. But that which the student accepts for a time as dogma, he finds out later by his own experiment, and then only does it become to him knowl- edge. That which you are told from without is not knowledge ; you may be- lieve it, but you do not know it; and 814 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE the whole aim of all education is to develop the student out of the dogmatic stage to the stage of the independent scholar, where he knows by his own ex- perience. It is the same with Religion. In the childhood of the individual soul, dogma is necessary for the soul's training, but dogma is never the end, only the means to the end. There comes the time when dogma must give way to knowledge. The belief of the mystic, or truly spirit- ual man, is not the acceptance of some truth imposed upon him by some au- thority from without, but the inner recognition of a truth that arises within him and compels his own obedience. If President Schurman, of Cornell University is correct. Religion, not only Christianity, but all religions are now passing out of the dogmatic stage into the spiritual. If this is true, and all signs point in this direction, then for the 315 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS first time in human history there is the possibility of the emergence of a World- religion. This would clearly have been impossible one hundred years ago, be- cause of the mutual ignorance of the World Faiths of one another. But to- day science has made communication between different portions of the globe swift and easy. Travel, among all classes, has increased incredibly. An- cient literatures have been translated and are being studied. The old igno- rance of other peoples has either gone or is fast going. The study of Comparative Religions has revealed certain fundamental prin- ciples or doctrines common to all Faiths. The symbols of religion are practically the same, the world round. There is a profound sympathy of ideals and sentiments in the Sacred Scriptures of all races. If you trace each religion back to its Founder or fountain-head, 316 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE there is found a wonderful unanimity of opinion as to the basic conception of religion. The differences belong to the later theological or ecclesiastical devel- opment. We realize to-day that the great Teachers in all religions were ani- mated by the same spirit and voiced the same great truths. On the spiritual side, all Religions are one — ^man seek- ing God and God seeking man. But while every religion contains universal teachings, every religion also is dominated by a spirit peculiar to it- self. Dr. Miller, the weU-known Presbyterian who founded the Chris- tian CoUege of Madras, writes after his retirement: "Remember that the Hindu rehgion has given the world the great truths of the immanency of God and the solidarity of mankind." If you ask Zoroastrianism what is its special contribution to the thought of the world, you will find that there rings out the 317 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS note of purity. Good thought, good deed, good words — ^is the triple state- ment that every Parsee makes daily as a part of his devotion. Purity of mind, purity of heart, purity of action, is their special contribution. Egypt sounded the note of Science in connection with her religious life ; the study of man and the world around him and of finding in the higher worlds the realities of which on earth we have the shadows. Greece sounded the note of Beauty, and worked the beautiful into the lives of her people as no nation has done before or since. So Rome spoke of Law, the greatness of the State, the might of the people as embodied in its government and repre- sentatives. Going back to India again we find arising the reUgion of Buddha, and right thinking was the keynote of his teaching; and here Jesus and Buddha literally clasp hands. With the Hebrews the great key-word is Right- 318 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE eousness. And in Christianity the dom- inant and characteristic note is Love. There is not one of these contribu- tions that the world can afford to lose, not one of these dominant keynotes of the various Faiths that can be left out of the coming World-religion. We must take from India her doctrines of the Immanency of God and the Soli- darity of mankind; from Persia, her teaching of Purity; from Egypt, Science, which is a part of real religion and should never be separated from it; from Greece, Beauty; from Rome, Law; from the Hebrew, Righteous- ness ; from Christianity, Love and Self- sacrifice. The truth is that aU the differences in the religions of the world are due to differences in environment, in view- point, in temperament and chiefly, in the degree of development attained by different peoples; and aU such differ- 319 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ences tell one great truth — a truth just beginning to dawn upon the religious consciousness of the race, viz., that spiritual truth cannot be transmitted by the intellect in its perfection. Only the spirit in man can reahze spiritual truth. The intellect grasps phenomena, and reasons from them to principles; the spirit, through the intuition, per- ceives the Spirit, and knows itself at one with All. All the religions of the world are the intellectual presentments of the one great spiritual Truth, which always and everywhere constitutes Re- ligion. Unity and uniformity are not the same. The Life is one, but the splen- dor of the world depends upon the diversity of forms. We a,re not greatly impressed when the child plays the scale of notes upon the piano; but let the skilled musician render the music of a Beethoven or a Chopin, and the blend- 320 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE ing of the various separate notes swells forth into a harmony of magic grandeur. When the World-religion at length emerges, it will not be this re- ligion or that, one religion or another; it will be the one great chord of har- mony, swelling up from humanity to- gether, in which every note is perfect; but on their union in one harmonious chord, depends the splendor and force as a whole. It is a significant fact that this figure of a coming Symphony of Religions, made up of the harmonious blending of the best and truest in all religions, has been recently used in public addresses by the leader of one of our Ethical Culture Societies and also by the Presi- dent of one of the National Denomina- tional Foreign Missionary Societies. It is thus that the minds of all thoughtful men are turning toward the realization of unity in religion. 321 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS In one of the ancient Scriptures of India, where the Supreme God is speak- ing, it is declared, "Mankind comes to me along many roads, and on every road that a man approaches me, on that road do I welcome him; for aU roads are mine." This is the great truth to be realized before the unity of religions can be attained. God is the center of the circle, while all the various forms of religion lie on the circumference ; but as all the radii lead to the center, so all religions lead to God at last. What is needed is not that we should convert each other, but that each of us should so deepen and spiritualize his own reli- gion as to find out its real value for himself. But how can we get rid of all the selfish sectarianism that separates, and the many differences that breed con- troversies? There is only one way: by seeking to raise men in all religions from LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE the intellectual ground to the higher plane of the spiritual consciousness where all men are at one, and reaUze their essential unity. In this great crisis of the world's life, all thoughtful men and women realize that in the re-construction of human life that is now going on, there must be a broader, deeper recognition of Love, not as a sentiment or a prophecy, but as the only true social principle that is at last capable of realization; that peace will never come upon earth, until there appears a generation of men of good- will, who have risen above the narrow and selfish nationalism of the past to the higher internationalism that is to be. It is because Religion is the mightiest of ideal forces, and the great dynamic in human evolution, that so many are looking to-day for the emergence of such a World-religion as shaU lay the 323 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS basis of a civilization of human brother- hood and thus bring about at length universal peace and harmonious rela- tionships between men and nations. What religion, if not Christianity, should take the lead in this great for- ward movement? Its supreme note is love ; and love realized means a spiritual rather than a dogmatic religion ; and it is only a truly spiritual religion that ever can become the World-religion. It is this that made possible in Chicago, the first World's Parliament of Reli- gions in hxmaan history. Such a parlia- ment could never have been called in Ceylon or in Mecca or in China. When John Henry Barrows, a Christian min- ister, conceived and carried out that great series of meetings, he was but re- sponding to the universal and spiritual elements that constitute the very heart of the religion of Jesus. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking 324. LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE recently in Exeter Hall in London to a party of missionaries who were going out to India, told them to remember that they were going to a country that had its own Scriptures, its own philoso- phy, and its own faith, and that they must not forget that all scriptures were God-inspired, that as Paul said many years ago, "God in many ways and divers manners spake in time past by the prophets," and that every nation has its prophets of God — does it not seem as if the day were dawning when as Christians we can begin to realize that in God's world there are no aliens or outcasts, but that all men everywhere belong to God's great family, and that the thing needed is for each of us to realize the oneness of our life with God and the unity of our life with every other individual the whole world round? But what message of brotherhood or 325 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS unity in human society can a church have for this modern age, so long as it continues to hold itself aloof and per- petuates its unchristian competition with 160 other sects in Christendom? How can Christianity hope to render any real service in laying the founda- tions for a World-civilization in which mutual co-operation shall displace war and strife, so long as it regards itself as "the only religion," and seeks to drive out all other World-faiths? What is the possible future for Christianity un- less in this world-crisis, by clear vision, deep insight and heroic faith, it can shake off the burdens of old traditions and outgrown theology, leave behind the weaknesses of a sectarianism no longer vital, and rise from the dogmatic past to the plane of the spiritual con- sciousness, where it shall begin at last to teach and live the universal and spiritual religion of Jesus? The reli- 326 LOVE THAT ESTABLISHES PEACE gion of Jesus is not yet outgrown, for the simple reason that the real religion of Jesus has never yet been seriously tried. The world is fast nearing the stage in its development when it will be ready to test out the principles of Jesus not only in individual experience, but in Society as a whole, and in the lives of nations. It awaits only the heroic lead- ership of a Religion supremely dedi- cated to His ideals. srt THE REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY jHE Immortality of the Soul! What words have been oft- ener on human lips? What idea has more strongly im- pelled man to fathom the mystery of the Universe? What question is so in- separably connected with our existence, in all that is best and dearest, than this old, yet ever new question of the im- mortality of the human soul? The best of human kind have pondered on it, the worst have always hoped for it. Many answers have been presented to the world by various minds. Thousands in every age have given up the search for more light, and yet the question re- REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY mains fresh as ever. The interest in the theme will never die, so long as human nature exists. In our absorption in the cares and duties of daily life we often seem to for- get the question entirely; then sudden- ly some one dies, one, perhaps, who is near and dear to us is taken from our side, and at once the all-absorbing things of our immediate life fade into the background, while our souls con- front the old question, "If a man dies, shall he live again?" When we remember that every year thirty-one and a half millions of human beings pass through the experience we call death, that every three years a number greater than the entire popula- tion of the United States, leave this world for the "Great Beyond," that in the span of a single life of four score years, the inconceivable number, two billion four hundred million fellow hu- 329 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS man creatures of the planet earth, will have passed from out the reach of time and sense, that the one inevitable ex- perience awaiting, sooner or later, every individual being, is death — ^how can any thoughtful mind fail to pause and re- flect? What question, by comparison, can rank in significance with this su- preme question of human existence? In its essence it has to do with nothing less than the value of a human soul. Is the soul nothing, or is it everything; is it of infinitesimal worth, or is it infinite? Let this age-old question be answered definitely in the affirmative and the so- ciological problem is solved forever. No man would knowingly grind pre- cious jewels into the dust. If the hu- man life is not an immortal soul in evo- lution the sooner we know it the better. If it seems that the multitudes of those now living on the earth were still standing in the valley of shadows, 330 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY straining their eyes to see and their ears to hear, it is well to remember that to- day as never before in human history, it is the valley of expectancy. While to many of us there may be only silence as yet, still the very silence is portentous; it is a whispering, breathing silence; there is a catching of the breath, a faint tremulous movement that but precedes the clear, full song of assurance. Science makes much of the climatic changes that have taken place on our planet. It tells us that bleak and dreary Labrador was once a tropical realm, a wilderness of fruits and flow- ers, while the region of the Amazon was the home of the iceberg. But some dis- turbance gave our Earth a new inclina- tion toward the sun, and the land that had never known frost became covered with snow and ice, while the Amazon passed into the warmth of perpetual summer. This change that has taken 331 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS place in the physical world may well illustrate the change of attitude that has taken place in man's relation to the ex- perience of death, so that now summer reigns where once winter ruled. The older philosophy that pictured death as a "Monster with hideous mien" is either dead or dying. The immortal- ity of the soul is proven in our best and deepest philosophies of to-day. The Science that was once materialistic and sought to clip the wings of faith, is now, through many of its foremost represen- tatives, learning itself to soar into su- pra-sensible realms. Nothing can be more significant than the fact that to- day it is science, not religion, that is leading the way in the study and inves- tigation of the meaning of death and immortality. Immanuel Kant, that master mind of the eighteenth century, once said, "At some future day it will be proved — I cannot say when or where S32 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY — ^that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted com- munication with those living in another world; that the human soul can act upon those beings, and receive in return impressions of them without being con- scious of it in the ordinary personality." To those familiar with the work of the modern psychologist and the leaders in the Enghsh and American Societies for Psychical Research, it would almost seem as if Kant's prediction were being fulfilled in our own day. In his inaugural address as President of the British Association for the Ad- vancement of Science, the foremost sci- entific organization in the world. Sir Oliver Lodge, in September, 1913, took as his subject "Continuity." Consider- ing the man and the occasion, no more significant statement has ever been made as revealing the changed attitude of Science toward the things of the; 333 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS spirit. In the course of this address, he says: "Science is incompetent to make comprehensive denials about anything. It should not deal in negatives. Denial is no more infallible than assertion. There are cheap and easy kinds of skep- ticism, just as there are cheap and easy kinds of dogmatism. * * * Conscious- ness and Will are realities of which we are directly aware, just as directly as we are of motion and of force. The plain man does not understand the process of seeing, he does not realize that it is a method of ethereal telegra- phy; but he sees and hears and touches and wills and thinks and is conscious. This is not an appeal to the mob as against the philosopher ; it is an appeal to the experience of untold ages as against the studies of a generation.* * * "The physical mechanism whereby existence entrenches itself is manifest, or at least has been to a large extent 334. REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY discovered, but it is my duty to remind you and myself (as scientists) that our studies do not exhaust the universe, and that if we dogmatize in a negative di- rection and say that we can reduce any- thing to physics and chemistry, we gib- bet ourselves as ludicrously narrow pedants, and are falling far short of the richness and fullness of our human birthright. How far preferable is the reverent attitude of the eastern poet: " 'The World with eyes bent upon Thy feet stands in awe with all its silent stars.' "Either we are immortal beings or we are not. We may not know our des- tiny, but we must have a destiny of some sort. Science may not be able to re- veal human destiny, but it certainly should not obscure it. I am one of those who think that the methods of Science are not so limited in their scope 335 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS as has been thought; that they can be appHed much more widely, and that the Psychic region can be studied and brought under law, too." And then Sir Oliver Lodge concludes with these words : "For myself and my co-work- ers I must risk annoying some of you, not only by leaving on record our con- viction that occurrences now regarded as occult can be examined and reduced to order by the methods of science care- fully and persistently applied, but by going further and saying with the ut- most brevity that already the facts so examined have convinced me that mem- ory and affection are not limited to that association with matter by which alone they can manifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists be- yond bodily death. The evidence — nothing new or sensational, but cumu- lative — to my mind goes to prove that discarnate intelligence, under certain 336 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY conditions, may interact with us on the material side, and that gradually we may hope to attain some understanding of the nature of a larger existence and of the conditions regulating intercourse across the chasm." This but represents the attitude of an increasing body of Scientists. As Prof. N. S. Shaler, of Harvard, says: "Thus we may fairly conjecture that we may be on the verge of something like a demonstration that the individual consciousness does survive the death of the body by which it was nurtured." But in spite of the fact that all re- ligions have taught some form of belief in immortality, that Christianity has made the resurrection from the dead one of the cardinal articles of its creeds, and that it can be said in a general way that all men believe in immortality, still the fear of death lingers in countless minds, and the dark clouds of sorrow hang 337 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS heavy over multitudes of lives; and when the hour of bereavement comes, our professed beliefs do not stand the test, and we are left in confusion of mind and darkness of soul. Though Religion has taught and Phi- losophy has proved and Science is ac- tually discovering the evidence for the soul's immortality, still there are multi- tudes who either secretly doubt or frankly disavow belief in immortality. In every audience of men and women, whatever argument may be used, or whatever evidence may be adduced, a certain percentage will go out believing, while the rest will go out to doubt the soul's continuance after Death. In other words, you can never convince an- other of the truth of immortality any more than you can of the existence of God by mere arguments or external evi- dence. The reality, whether of God or of immortality, must be perceived with- 338 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY ill, if it is to hold a vital place in one's life. The reason that the so-called univer- sal belief in immortality has not yet con- quered the fear of death, or banished sorrow in its deepest aspects from the world, is because, like so many other be- liefs, it is merely nominal and has not incorporated itself among the actual verities of man's inner consciousness. The great word in religion to-day is no longer belief, but realization. A be- lief may be merely the intellectual ac- ceptance of a certain statement or defi- nition of some truth, whereas to realize means to perceive that truth as a reality in one's own inner consciousness. It is one thing to believe in God, it is quite a different thing to realize God as the Soul of our souls, the Life of our lives. It is one thing to believe in the great ideals and principles of Jesus, it is a vastly different thing to realize those HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS ideals in one's inner personal life and translate those principles daily into thought and word and deed. So it is one thing to believe in the soul's immor- tality, while it is a very different thing to realize the truth of immortality in such a way as to live every day in the clear, glad consciousness that we are immortal beings here and now, and that Death can never touch the real Self at all. Far too long has Religion lain im- bedded in Bibles and embalmed in Creeds. The most hopeful sign for Re- ligion to-day is the determination on the part of an increasing number of people everywhere, to take the real truth of religion out of Bible and Creed, out of sermon and belief, and persistently realize its meaning and power in the ac- tual daily experiences of life. The only vital religion is the realized re- ligion, and the only belief that is worthy the name is the belief that, through ac- 340 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY tual inner experience, has become incor- porated in one's deepest personal con- sciousness. It is the actual experience within of the truth of one's own being, that alone can translate the mere belief in immortality into its actual realiza- tion. For centuries the Church has taught that men ought to believe in im- mortality because of the resurrection of Jesus. As a matter of fact, this is to reverse the process. If we believe in the rising of the spiritual Jesus from the body in any real sense, it is because, first of all, we believe in immortality, viz., that we ourselves are in our essen- tial beings, immortal. The author of the Fourth Gospel puts into the mouth of Jesus these sig- nificant words, that we read at every Christian burial service, "I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believ- eth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and 341 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS believeth in me shall never die. Believ- est thou this ?" Now, remembering that the Fourth Gospel is not an historical narrative of the life of Jesus, but a phi- losophical or spiritual interpretation of that life by one thoroughly imbued with the Philean philosophy, we realize that, from the author's viewpoint, "the Christ" who dwelt in such fulness in the historic Jesus was nothing else than the "logos," or divine life, or God- principle that dwells in some degree in every individual; it is "the light that lighteth every man coming into the world." Keeping this thought in mind, let us attempt to paraphrase these words of Jesus, It is as if he said, "The Christ, or divine life that dwells in me, is the resurrection or eternal life-principle; but this same Christ or divine life-prin- ciple dwells in every man ; he, then, who reaUzes that his essential self is divine. REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY the Christ within him, even though his hody does die, yet shall he, the real self, live ; and whosoever actually lives in the realization of his divine Selfhood shall never die. Do you realize, or have you awakened yet to this great truth as re- spects your real Self?" Jesus thus clearly states the possibility of realizing here and now the truth of one's immor- tality. He also points out that such realization is attained, not through ex- ternal proof, valuable as it may be, but rather through the knowledge of one's real Self. Let us turn now to Science and in- quire whether or not this remarkable statement of Jesus finds any corrobora- tion in man's best and deepest thinking about himself. We know, first of all, that Science teaches the absolute inde- structibility of matter and force. You cannot take away or add to the universe one atom of matter or one foot-pound HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS of force. As such, Evolution did not come out of nothing; it came in invo- lution before. The seed is the tree in- volved, and the tree is the seed evolved ; the child is the man involved and the man is the child evolved. All the possi- bilities of life must be in the original Cause. What do we mean by destruc- tion? Throw a glass upon the ground and it breaks to pieces. What becomes of it? It becomes fine. What is de- struction, then? The gross becoming fine. The elements, particles, materials, causes are combined and become this effect called the glass. They go back to their causes, and this is what is meant by destruction. What is the effect? The cause manifested. What becomes of the effect then? It is the same as the cause, only taking a different form of composition. Everything, then, and every force in the universe, is inde- structible. 3M REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY But all the forces that we see are com- plex, and all the forms that we see are combinations. Whatever in this uni- verse is the result of combination of matter and force must sooner or later get back to its component parts. This getting back to its simple components is what we call destruction or death. It applies only to forms, to combinations, to compositions; the simple parts that go into the forms or combinations, are never destroyed, can never die. This is the conclusion of Science. But what is man as we see him under these earthly conditions? He is a com- bination of mind and matter, of ego and mechanism, of self and body. From the physical viewpoint a man is made of matter just like a plant. The physical force in each case is derived ultimately, no less than chemical or me- chanical force, from that great reservoir of power — the sun. Under suitable 34.5 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS conditions certain portions of matter are organized and raised to the level of or- ganic existence. In time, after a wa- vering conflict between waste and renewal, these material organisms de- cay and fall to pieces. This law holds good throughout the whole organic realm — from the bulb of a weed to the brain of a Napoleon. When the weed dies it is resolved into its component parts ; and so, when man dies, his body- is dissolved into its component parts. But what of the Soul, the Ego, the Mind, the Self? — I use these terms syn- onymously. What is the soul? Is it a function of the body or an independent being that dwells within the body? Is it made up of changes in the organism, or is it entirely inorganic? To use the old Pla- tonic simile : Is the soul related to the body as a tune to a musical instrument, or as a rower to a boat? If the first is 346 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY true, it ceases to be when the instrument is broken up. In the second case the rower may survive though the boat is wrecked. It is here that Psychology comes to our assistance. Mind is the very antith- esis of matter. Sensation, thought, emotion, hope, volition, love, are un- thinkable as modes of material sub- stance. There is nothing in common be- tween an aspiration and an atom, be- tween a sentiment and a gas, between an idea of truth in the mind and a mass of matter in space. Material things are extended, divisible, ponderable. Men- tal things are unextended, indivisible, imponderable. Matter and mind be- long to difPerent realms. But not only are the experiences of the soul dissimilar to anything that can take place in the organism, but the soul itself is a simple:, single identical being. This fact alone would serve to distin- S4.7 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS guish it forever from the body. In the material world there is, strictly speak- ing, no identity. But a new element appears when we enter the realm of mind. Here, in spite of the fact that the substance of the body is in perpetual flux, the same con- scious personality persists, growing ever richer in experience, but remaining always identically itself. We know that we have been ourselves as far back as memory will reach. Every act of remembrance reveals to us our unity, makes us conscious of our personal iden- tity, produces in us the conviction that the mind which recalls is the same mind which formerly experienced the fact it- self. For instance, I remember an in- cident that happened to me ten years ago. To me — ten years ago. I, there- fore, must have existed, must have per- sisted, from then till now. During all these years I, one and the self-same 34.8 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY Ego, a single indivisible permanent be- ing, have felt and thought, remembered and reasoned, loved and hated, hoped and feared, willed and acted, and by- means of my identity have gathered up these various experiences into the unity of a personal life. ' The soul, then, is not the body, or the thought, or the feeling, or the will. It is the builder of the body, the thinker of the thought, the feeler of the emo- tion, the wiUer of the act. The self or the soul of man cannot be a combination or a composition or the effect of any causes, because the soul is a simple, sin- gle, identical being. It will never die, because death is going back to the com- ponent parts, and that which was never a compound can never die. No ma- terial processes can disintegrate a spirit. Through all the changes of its body, the soul continues to be itself. This Self is the "I am" that stands 349 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS behind every mental state; it is the thinker, the knower, the actor, the seer, the doer. Psychology cannot explain it: it only knows that it is, by its pres- ence in consciousness. As a simple, identical being, it cannot die, neither can it "live," for that which does not die cannot live. Like God, it just is. Life is another name for death, and death for life. The soul of man is an individualized part of the cosmic energy that exists eternally — one part of God. We now begin to see that it is beyond life and death. You^-the real you — were never born, and you will never die. "Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not ; end and beginning are dreams. For birthless and deathless and changeless, remaineth the spirit forever, Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seemeth." 350 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY What, then, can disturb or make you fearful? If suns grow cold, and stars grow old, and moons crumbled into dust, and systems are annihilated, what is that to you, when you know yourself to be indestructible? Prof. Ehner T. Gates, of the Smith- sonian Institute, has gone as far in his study of the human consciousness as any of the newer psychologists. He has not yet seen fit to publish the results of all his most interesting investigations, but the scholars who have been permit- ted to read his manuscripts all agree that he is one of the most original and remarkable men of this age. Prof. McGee says: "His work will revolu- tionize Education and lead to greater intellectual progress in the next quar- ter of a century than has been achieved in all the centuries before." This is not the place to give the processes by which Praf. Gates has arrived at his startling 351 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS conclusions ; we can but briefly summa- rize his thought. He finds life, mind and consciousness immanent in the Uni- verse. Life, mind and consciousness, as expressed in the human individual, could not have arisen in man, were they not inherent properties of the Eternal Energy whence all things proceed, or God. The Cosmic Consciousness, he argues, must have a nature more funda- mental than our own limited individual experience, and it is from this cosmic consciousness that there wells up into our individual consciousness the feel- ing-insights, or intuitions. Thus man's intuition, or instinct for immortality, proceeds from the cosmic consciousness, which must know the truth. Prof. Gates asks the further question: "Can consciousness directly know any truth about existence which the mind has not inductively experienced beforehand?" He answers in the affirmative. "I have 352 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY never, for example, found by experience that there is not a boundary to Space, but my consciousness tells me that there can be no such boundary. I have had no personal proof that Duration was without beginning, and yet my con- sciousness tells me that Duration must be without beginning or end. I cannot prove it, yet my consciousness tells me that the same truths that are now true did not at any remote time first begin to be true. Truth is eternal. And in somewhat the same way my conscious- ness seems to know that it will survive the death of my body, and I give it the same credence as I give to its cogni- tions about Space, Duration, Motion and Truth." And then he adds these significant words, "I cannot evade the conviction, based on my own experi- ence, that all persons may by proper training get that kind of skill in con- sciousing which will enable them to find HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS in their own consciousness the same evi- dence for immortahty which I have found, and those who do so find it will indeed have a priceless possession." But note: "By proper training all persons can get that skill in conscious- ing . . ." Is not this the reason why so few have entered into the realization of their own immortality here and now? The simple consciousness of the child should lead on to the self-consciousness of the adolescent. This in turn should develop into the clear and intelligent consciousness of the Self — ^the "I am," that stands behind all thinking, feeling, and wilhng, and can control and direct them all as it chooses. But this is not the end. Jesus taught that to really know the true self as "the Christ" with- in, or the divine-principle, would be to realize here and now the truth of im- mortality. And to-day our foremost psychologist tells us the same thing 354 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY when he suggests the further develop- ment of self -consciousness into cosmic consciousness, where the realization of God and immortality becomes possible to every individual who "by training" learns the supremest secret of life, — how to extend the boundaries of the in- ner consciousness. This is what Berg- son means when he says that "through intuition it is possible to discover the meaning of life, the very nature of ex- istence." Prof. Gates tells us that "he finds no chasm to be bridged between the self and the not-self; the individual self is part of the Total Self; you trace your pedigree back to the beginningless To- tality — ^the All ; you have the Universe- hood in you ; whatever God is, that thou art also!" It is not a preacher of religion, but a psychologist who makes this tremendous statement, "Whatever God is, that thou 355 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS art also!" Do we realize the signifi- cance of these words? For centuries Religion has said to man you must be- lieve, and then anathematized aU men who did not or could not accept the beliefs set forth by the Churches. Has not the time come when the message of Religion to men shall no longer be, "Be- lieve, on the authority of some Institu- tion or Book," but rather, "You may knowj it is possible for you to realize in your own inner consciousness the truth of God, of the soul and of im- mortality." If the representatives of Religion, possessed themselves of the knowledge, should be able to instruct men and women in the true method of self-realization, in the actual experience of the truth, would not the Religion of this twentieth century fulfill, as it never has done yet, its true function in the life of himianity? It is for such a realiza- 356 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY tion of the truth that the world expec- tantly waits to-day. In every age and clime there have al- ways been the great individual souls, who have found this inner path to truth and life, for whom all fears of death have vanished as they have discovered the secret of the mastery of grief and sorrow in the clear consciousness of the continuity of life and the persistence of personality. With the new light dawn- ing to-day, both within and without the church, there is an ever-increasing num- ber of men and women who, through their "skill in consciousing," have at- tained to such a realization of the true Self as being one with God, that they have reached the plane of spiritual or cosmic consciousness and live their lives continuously in God, free from all bon- dage to fears of every kind. Victor Hugo, who was in no sense the conventional religionist, had neverthe- 357 HUMANITY AT THE CROSS-ROADS less attained to the plane of cosmic con- sciousness possible to all men, where he could say: "I feel Immortality in my- self. I am rising, I know, toward the sky. The earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with the re- flection of unknown worlds. You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous as the bodily powers be- gin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. There I breathe at this hour, as I did at the age of twenty, the fragrance of lilacs and violets and roses. The nearer I ap- proach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds to come. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, yet a fact. For half a century I have been writ- ing my thoughts in prose and verse — history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song — I have tried 358 REALIZATION OF IMMORTALITY all. But I feel I have not said a thou- sandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave, I shall have end- ed my day's work. But another day will begin next morning. Life closes in the twilight ; it opens with the dawn." "Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleased to my soul at death I cry,) Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave. The ship is clear at last, she leaps ! She swiftly courses from the shore, Joy, shipmate, joy." THE END 359