CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Mr. and Mrs.w.F.E.'^tierley Cornell University Library BR 125 .J82 olin 3 1924 029 238 536 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029238536 THE RELIGION OF A SENSIBLE AMERICAN THE RELIGION OF A SENSIBLE AMERICAN BY DAVID STARR JORDAN President of Leland Stanford Junior University " Believe and venture; as for pledges, the gods give none. " BOSTON American Unitarian , Association 1909 ^ jW ^"W Copyright, 1909 American Unitarian Association A^3i^/y The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. TO THE MEMORY OF WILBUR WILSON THOBURN PROFESSOR OF BIONOMICS IN STANFORD UNIVERSITY BORN AT SINCLAIRSVILLE, OHIO JUNE 10, 1859 DIED AT PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA JANUARY 6, 1899 PREFATORY NOTE HE writer of this little book was asked by the Editor of "The Hib- bert Journal" to write an article on "the religion of a sensible American," to be the second of a series covering the religious experiences of " sensible " men of different nations, the first being " the religion of a sensible Scotsman." The title assigned seemed to shut out the possibility of a personal confession of faith, even were such a confession acceptable. For that reason and for other reasons the writer chose to set forth the religious belief and work of a friend, no longer living ; one who could stand without question as a sensible man, and one whose thought and whose life were typical of the best which we may call American. In reprinting this article as a booklet it has been somewhat extended in length by the in- clusion of some matters omitted from the article as printed in " The Hibbert Journal." D. s. J. UT of your lives take the love and sympathy, the purity, the truth, the ten- der things, and all that grows into the larger life. Put these on the cold altar of your heart. Cut out those lonely v^ords, 'To an unknown God,' and write 'Our Father.' Then bow before him. This is your God. He will not with- hold any good thing from you if you walk uprightly." THE RELIGION OF A SENSIBLE AMERICAN ^-"^ 2^ ^0 J@( N these pages I have tried to set forth the religion of a wise man, forceful and helpful, whose re- ligion justified itself by swaying the lives of many young men and women toward noble thoughts and sturdy righteousness. My friend was a man whose religion appeared in deeds rather than in words, more in life than in precept. But the power of speech was his and in good measure, and his words were often in demand at gatherings of students. After his untimely death, various memoranda of his notes and talks to young people were saved and brought together by his associates. For these fragments, privately printed and nowhere for sale, we chose a title which tells the whole of his religion in four clear words, " In Terms of Life." From these notes and from my own recollections I venture to reconstruct the religion of a "sensible American," a religion which, however incom- plete, is not far from the ideal toward which [Til • — S'- THE RELIGION OF A the average sensible American of to-day is clearly tending. In the use of the word " American," a term not of my own choosing, I do not wish to claim any special wisdom for the people of my own nation, or that their attitude toward religion is essentially different from that of men of other races. All people give their religious aspirations something of the color of their own individuality. An American is an Englishman who has had some additional experiences, whose ancestry has been judged and tested by influences other than those of the home country. In particular he has found himself in a motor environment, in a land of action, where no man can rest in the protection of privilege, and where the tradition of cen- turies counts for next to nothing. As a con- sequence, the American knows little and cares less for those things not inherently sacred, but which have become so in Europe through the accumulated tradition of religious associa- tion. He knows nothing of the ecclesiastical calendar. Thanksgiving, which is his own innovation, Christmas, and Easter constitute the only saints' days he remembers. He cares little for how things are done, his interest being in the fact that they are done. He is [12] SENSIBLE AMERICAN ^0 likely to get at the heart of things in religion as in other matters, and may very likely offend good taste in doing so. Later he will be at leisure to consider the refinements of religious aspiration. At present he is prone to neglect them, and in the degree that religion appears to be bound up in niceties of expression, the average American is likely to be indifferent to it as no concern of his. On the positive side the sensible American is sure that this is God's world, none other more so. " The God of things as they are " has his throne within the confines of his cre- ation and no condition of life and no place or time can lie outside his presence. But whatever the extent of space and time, two things are real with us — Here and Now. This is our day, and here is the spot where our life must be made to count. In history other men have had their other days, but yesterday is already numbered with the rest of man's "seven thousand years," or his seventy million, it may be — who shall say? Yesterday has passed away and is as far be- yond our reach as the days of Julius Cssar. To-morrow is still unborn and may never belong to us. We have to-day, and no day was ever so inspiring, so glorious, so worship- [13] THE RELIGION OF A f ul. For this is our time to act, the hour for us to play our part. Let the part be large or small, it is a part of action. It is for us to do our best, not our second best; to do it with good cheer and with perfect confidence that in God's economy no good life is ever wasted. " God's errands never fail." It is not for us to cringe or whine, nor need we cry for any spe- cial recompense for days of doubt or despair or discomfort. Our part is a part of love and helpfulness of love as translated into terms of helping our neighbor. Lord, here am I, my three score years and ten All counted to the full. I have fought thy fight, Crossed thy dark valleys, scaled thy rock's harsh height, Borne all the burdens thou dost lay on men With hand unsparing, three score years and ten. Before thee now, I make my claim, O Lord, What shall 1 pray thee as a meet reward ? I ask for nothing ! Let the balance fall ! All that I am or know or may confess But swells the weight of mine indebtedness. Burden and sorrow are transfigured all ; Thy hand's rude buffet turns to a caress ; For Love, with all the rest. Thou gavest me here. And Love is Heaven's very atmosphere. Lo, I have dwelt with Thee, Lord ; let me die : I could no more, through all eternity. The positive phase of this religion is the feeling of being at home in God's universe. [14] ^»^^ — • SENSIBLE AMERICAN This is no alien land. Our fathers were born here, and our fathers' fathers, and the same Hand has led them on from the primordial sandstones of Quebec to the foundations of our own republic. The pledge of the future is adequate. We are links in an eternal chain, and the little part assigned to us is the con- quest of Here and Now. Wisdom, as I have often said, is knowing what one ought to do next; virtue is doing it; and religion is the feeling or attitude which braces us up to our duty when it is easier to stand aside or to let the part assigned to us slip by through default. This may not matter in the long run — the ages are patient and the evasion of man is no novelty ; but it means everything in the make- up of our own conduct of life, and that is the whole thing with us. "Confessedly," says Charles Ferguson, "this is a jangling world for one who is bent on quick pleasures; there may be rhythm and music in it for a lover who can wait." In the notes of my friend I find these words : " It is a great event in a boy's life when he can say, 'I and my father are one.' It is greater when a man finds that he can keep step with God ; that he wants to do, and can do, the things that God is doing. [15] • S'T- THE RELIGION OF A "-■ " When men search with so much heartache for faith in order that they may believe, they think they are groping in the darkness to find God. They think if they can only find him, they will get faith from him. It is not faith in God that they need, but faith in themselves. God will do his part. He will run the uni- verse without falter. It is self-confidence that men need, belief that they can do their part. No man ever falls away from God and loses confidence in him until he has first warped and twisted his life by falling away from him- self. Faith does not depend upon anything God does or may do in answer to our prayers, but upon us — upon our training, our experi- ence, our knowledge. ■^ Faith in self — faith that links God and 'man and is the key to all the riches of heaven — is the result of experience and is to be won, like any other power, by persistent and con- stant exercise. You, and you alone, hold the key to your heaven. 'There is,' says Ferguson, ' no blackboard demonstration that God is good. You must risk it or die a :oward.' " My friend used the word "God" freely in his talks to young men and women. With him God was not a mere abstraction, but a very [16] SENSIBLE AMERICAN potent element in the trend of events, the great First Cause and the Last Cause of things as they are. His God was not anthropomorphic, not " made in the image of men," nor did he conceive his attributes in such fashion as to justify Haeckel's sneer at worship of " a gase- ous vertebrate." It is only in mythology and poetry that God appears as angry, jealous, benevolent, a judge, a tyrant, a king, a huge hoary-bearded giant. The God of my friend's worship is an immanent god, " numen adest," in the fine words of Linnaeus.^ His will is that which is permanent in time and space, in a universe in which, using Huxley's words, " nothing endures save the flow of energy and the rational intelligence that pervades it." His is that rush of force; his is that rational intelligence. It is through him that right and justice are eternal. ^The sensible American finds that good men throu gh the ages have cherished an TdeaT of j pve and sery irp, Ayavpring at thf__hpsf_3nrl jrftpnnhspi^irfd by war ar|H rnntrnvprsy, hnt Ttending ^Jp^ard— tli£__e nd of servin gu-Ged-- 1 It is said that on the doors of Linnaeus' home at Haramarby, near Upsala, were these words: " Innocue vivito; numen adest." "Live blameless; God is here." "This," said Linnaeus, "is the wisdom of my life." [17] THE RELIGION OF A through b uilding up stronger, purer._ ha,^ier "^unitsjH^Eumanit^ He finds that Ihis^ ideal and many otherToflike import, the dream of "lives made beautiful and sweet by self- devotion and by self-restraint," had their origin, or at least their first connected promulgation, in the words of Jesus the Jew. The records show that this young man, who "spake as never man spake," was born at Bethlehem in Jud^a, nearly twenty centuries ago ; that he taught among men and ministered unto men for a few years with a few disciples, and that he came to a cruel death. He finds that the teachings of Jesus are reported in fragments only, in a tongue not his own, and with many variants and some additions, but with their essential spirit strong and clear in every ver- sion of his language. In reconstructing the life of Jesus, "we find," says Charles F. Dole, " a very remarkable torso, or at least the fragments of a statue. But a torso is definite and complete as far as it goes. Fragments and pieces are firm in your hands. You can match them together. You can re- construct a torso. The fragments in our case crumble. They are mixed with other frag- ments. If they combine, they never form one and the same combination. You hav e not [18] SENSIBLE AMERICAN one Jesus, but two or more with diflferent elements." As to what men say of Jesus, " their descrip- tions and paintings and panegyrics almost never appear like the genuine work of even tolerable copyists. There are second-hand artists who have at least seen original work. But the conventional descriptions of Jesus not only vary, they seem never to have been near an original. The more complete and entertaining they are, the nearer they come to be pure creations of the author's mind. They are German or Italian or English or American pictures, and generally somewhat modern — they are not Hebrew — whereas Jesus was a Jew of twenty centuries ago." But the sensible American finds that these words, however fragmentary and at times even contradictory, nevertheless bear their own witness. All the wisdom of the wise ages as to the conduct of life cannot add much to them. All the history of human civilization is per- meated with his doctrines. Even were every syl- lable he has spoken lost to-day, his teachings could be restored and retraced in the history of civilization ; for they rise above everything else in history ; above the pomp and splendor of empire, the hideous orgies of holy war, the [19] ST- THE RELIGION OF A ferocity of religious persecution, and the bitterness of theological disputation. The tested and co-ordinated results of human experience, which we call science and by which all theory must be judged, emphasize and verify these teachings in their relation to human conduct. As religion is the impulse to strive for the highest and best in human conduct, and as science furnishes our human test of what is best and highest, my friend finds no conflict between religion and science. If this is the age of science, it is largely so because it is the age of religion and in like degree. Between new ideas and preconceived ideas, between discovery and tradition, there is in the nature of things a constant struggle. This struggle must involve each individual man and each phase of human society. But in this struggle the truth is sure to survive at last, and the inevitable clash has in it no occa- sion for despair. Meanwhile the wisdom of the race is never in conflict with the worthiest ideals, the most repaying experiences in the conduct of life. And he finds that the words of Jesus suffer nothing under any analysis he can give them. They have always been true, and they are part of the framework of creation, of which the [20] SENSIBLE AMERICAN ^0 , conduct of human life is the crowning feature, the most lofty, and at the same time the most imperfect, and for the same exalted reason. These words are true, he will say, not be- cause Jesus said them. Jesus said them be- cause they were true. And in this sense, his words, " 1 and my Father are one," have a definite and human meaning — a meaning not concerned with any mystery of the priest. In the same sense, all right thinking and all right acting are one — one with the Creator of man and with his purposes. It did not matter to my friend what other forms of one- ness might exist so long as there was room for this divine and human unity in the life of every man. For reasons like these my friend was not disposed to measure the relation to Divinity on the part of the Prophet of Nazareth. Whether Jesus be one with God, or one with man, or both, is, after all, not a vital question. This he may leave the theologian to settle, if he can, through tradition, text, or syllogism. It is enough for the sensible American to be- lieve in the unity of the word and the spirit. The word is divine because it is true, and one name of Divinity is the Perfect Truth. In the religion of Jesus the end of truth is service, [21] THE RELIGION OF A and religion finds its function and justification in the conduct of life. The sensible American notes a contrast be- tween the subjects which aroused the interest of Jesus, as recorded by his disciples, and the subjects which have filled the history of the Christian Church. It is the contrast between the divine and the human in man's affairs. The simple life of the teacher who had no place to lay his head stands in contrast with the complex struggles of those who in his name established a holy empire. " In this sign conquer" was the symbol of domina- tion. It was in every respect the antithesis of the words of Jesus, as the life of Constan- tine, maker of this phrase, stood at the oppo- site pole from the life of him who suffered under Pontius Pilate. The historic Church has interested itself in war and conquest, in pomp and pageantry, in dominion over men and lands, in temporal rulership as well as spiritual control. None of these matters entered into the ambitions of Jesus. To him these were far-away affairs, evils to be endured, it may be, as the tribute money was rendered unto Caesar, but form- ing no part' of the ideals of rational religious life. [22] —^^ SENSIBLE AMERICAN The historic Church has, ahnost from the first, been entangled in a warfare of creeds. The creed as we know it to-day is a historic battle-cry of a contending host. It belongs to the war of words which succeeded the clash of spears and lances. To the sensible American the creeds are mostly harmless. They will not injure us if we do not read them. Without their historic background we can hardly un- derstand them. They should be left in this background. It is not well to revise them too often. Their galvanized life may work injury to our spirits. " Creeds are not true," Mr. G. L. Dickinson tells us; "they are merely neces- sary." "Since I read the Apostles' Creed," says Mr. Dooley, "it seems less convincing than when I heard it and did not understand it." As Dr. Holmes once said, " Old errors do not die because they are refuted; they fade out because they are neglected." Their place is in psychology and history, not in the religion of Jesus. To believe is surely adequate. We need not go into particulars. To _believe is to have fai t h in the jgnjyersejn man, and in all the torces_insid£ jor ouTiide ourse lves which ^JdTmaJeJorTighte^^ "venture?' nTis1rour_gart;_'' Asior pledges^ ■>The"gods give none." '- [23] THE RELIGION OF A As his religion is not regulated by intellec- tual assent to any proposition in metaphysics, spiritual or biographical, the average sensible American is not alarmed over the results of the Higher Criticism. Enough that is genuine and beyond question goes back to the teach- ings of Jesus. That devout enthusiasts have interpolated here and there an illustration, a bit of philosophy, or a bit of imagination, or that chapter or epistle may have been attributed to the wrong authority does not disturb his spiritual consciousness. These matters are in- teresting from the scientific side. They are inspiring to students of records and manu- scripts, but they do not touch bottom in their relation to religion. Neither is he concerned because wine is not turned into water in our day, nor in any other day, not even by the faith that moves mountains. The old story of Cana may not be true. It may be poetry, or para- ble, or error of record, or even pure falsehood. That he reads this tale does not help his faith, but it does not disturb it. In the face of the greatest marvel in human history, the teach- ings of him who spake as never man spake, of him who will draw all men to him, he will leave to each expert in Oriental imagery such theory of physical miracle as may seem to him [24] —^ — i SENSIBLE AMERICAN best. He can understand that the parables and fancies of Hebrew poets, like those of English poets, interpret spiritual rather than literal or historical fact. He knows the distressing in- adequacy of any poem when all its expressions are literally interpreted. Therefore he is not distressed over the narrowness of the whale's gullet, nor over the maladjustment of the days of creation, nor the fact that the prayers of good men will not wring rain from a steel blue Australian sky. Neither is his faith impaired by the certainty that creation was a process very different from that which our fathers im- agined — even the creation of man. He rec- ognizes clearly enough that the ancestry of man runs close to that of the animals which are likest him, and in whose image, anatomi- cally, he is made. He rejoices, rather, that the world is far older and the universe far broader than his fathers had thought; that "Time is as long as space is wide." Infinite detail of preparation, even in the processes of creation, seems to guarantee ineffable achievement. The heavens declare the glory of God only the more insistently, now he has learned what his fathers could not know, — how vast the range of all these heavens must be. As he who believes " by the grace of Jupiter, the highest god, may [25] ■ — s^- THE RELIGION OF A despise all the lesser gods in silence," so he whose spirit is filled with the greater faith must turn away from all the lesser mysteries and marvels. As with the phases of belief, so with the symbolism in which they fmd expression. " Do this in memory of me " was a simple and natural ceremony so long as it bore wit- ness to the living reality in the hearts of men. But when the Eucharist became the signal of wordy or even bloody warfare, Homoiousian versus Homoousian, it is no longer a pledge of his memory. It is a weapon in the hands of ambition. Though among simple folk it holds its primal associations, its meaning is forgotten in the seats of the mighty. The baptism in the Jordan had a significance with a clear river in a dusty land that may be lost in costly covered fonts or cruelly burlesqued by holes cut through the winter ice. The Sabbath exists for man, not man for the Sab- bath. It is neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem that men are to worship. They are to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. It is clear to the sensible American that the religion of Jesus has no necessary connection with church or state. A church or state may be permeated with its spirit, but religion is not [26] -TS SENSIBLE AMERICAN dependent on organization. It has no neces- sary connection with creed or ceremony, with litany or liturgy, with priest or preacher, with symbol or miracle, with sacrament or baptism, with pious action or with pious refraining. These have been associates of religion : some- times religion has been helped by them ; but the reality lies with the individual man, his relation to his fellows and to his individual duty. My friend tells this parable : " In the old days a father built a home for his family. It was complete in every part, but the altar around which they gathered in prayer was not yet set in place. The mother wished it in the kitchen : there she was perplexed with her many cares. The father wished it in his study : God seemed nearer to him among his books. The son wished it in the room where guests were received, that the stranger entering might see that they worshiped God. At last they agreed to leave the matter to the young- est, who was a little child. Now the altar was a shaft of polished wood, very fragrant, and the child, who loved most of all to sit be- fore the great fire and see beautiful forms in the flames, said, ' See, the fire log is gone ; put the altar there.' So because one would not [27] 5>»- THE RELIGION OF A yield to the other, they obeyed, and the altar was consumed, while its sweet odors filled the whole house — the kitchen, the study, and the guest hall — and the child saw beautiful forms in the flames." Doubtless the others came to see them also, as the non-essentials passed out of their religious life. "Many fathers and mothers say to me," continues my friend, who was a teacher of science in an American college, " ' If my boy will only hold on to the fundamentals.' They are afraid that the business of the university is to overthrow fundamentals. As if funda- mentals could be overthrown I What they mean by fundamentals is their own conception of the truth, the basis of their own belief. They want their boys to wear their clothes — not the same style of garments, but the iden- tical clothes — with all the creases and wrinkles and patches in place. Now, the wrinkles and creases represent experience and testing, and the patches are the scars — honorable scars of victory. And I have no patience with the sophomorjc_^irit which Vriunts its reason aMTErows into the rag -hag pvprvthing that ffie^Jhe^Tdieved. ' We should not be here fo^yifour fafhers had not believed very close to the truth. However far afiel d we may go [28] "i ' SENSIBLE AMERICAN in our young and callow days, most of us will be found revamping the old beliefs of our fathers and mothers when we go to work in the world. Eighty-five per cent of our stu- dents take up their old practices again when, their real living finds expression, A little bit/ of real living brings back the enthusiasm anc^ the emotion, and no one can be faithful and true to his ideals without finding God disjf placing them with himself. "Calvinism and Arminianism are trifling matters compared with the fact that God is and that we may call Him our Father. Unita- rianism, Trinitarianism, are mere word quibbles compared with the fact that the spirit of Jesus is in the worid, saving it. These things are not fun damentals. They are only terms, forged by human intellects to express one phase of the truth as it appeared to them. Jesus cared for none of these things except as they ham- pered and hindered those who believed them instead of believing him ; who worshiped them instead of using them to serve their neighbors. " The time comes more than once in a man's life when he must know what he believes; when the truth that" iS in, his own heart is all that he can find. But no truth is ours until [29] 5-»^ THE RELIGION OF A we first live it; until it enters into our lives and we become it." I In a high sense no man can accept or embrace • the religion of another. It must become his : own first, or else he cannot receive it. If he i takes it from another without change it is not a religion; it is some statement of opinion, some type of ceremonial, or some collection of words, from which the life has long since faded away. Or, in a larger way, it means that he becomes a member of a historic asso- 1 ciation for the sake of participating in its \ benefits, or, better, for the purpose of sharing its efforts for the advancement of humanity. From his notes on a talk before a Bible Class I take these words : " If Jesus is an important factor in our social life, why should we not study him as we study Shakespeare, or Luther, or Csesar, and in exactly the same spirit? If Christianity summarizes the great forces which control and direct and shape our civilization, why, then, should we not study it as we would the French Revolu- tion, and in exactly the same spirit ? " In studying the person of Jesus, his biog- raphy and his character, we must do it in human terms. That is not saying that there are no other terms. Our object is to emp ha- [30] SENSIBLE AMERICAN --^a — . size the humanity of Jesus. There is a theology of Christ; its study belongs to metaphysics. There is a psychology of Christ; its study belongs in its particular place. Our study is • to show the strong and pure, the successful, the virile nature, the picture of whose life makes every true man stand taller and every weak heart stronger. " It is a fact that no man can ever stand true under the severest tests of life without increas- ing the self-respect of every other man who knows it. I never hear or see such instances without feeling proud that the human race can commit such virtue. So, setting aside all doctrines about Christ's nature and office, not for the reason that we do not hold them, but because they are not for us just now, we will use this wonderfully simple and natural teach- er's life as a key to solve the mysteries of our own lives. " A violet looking at the sun can know only its violet rays. Its knowledge fades on the one hand into actinic darkness ; on the other it is lost in the blues. Its knowledge of the great sun is limited by the work the sun has done in it, by its coincidence with the sun. " So with any ideal, with any friend. Friend- ship is but the common ground you and another [31] 6 ^ THE RELIGION OF A occupy. Your best friend is he who widens this common ground and quickens your whole being, the one who makes you live the most. You do not measure your friendships by your brains, but by your pulse beats. " Some of you say that you cannot reconcile your intellectual and your spiritual lives. I think you never will, if by reconcile you mean coincide. The head can never understand the heart, and the heart will always be doing such unreasonable things. But if the head is right in its sphere, it will fmd that the heart in its sphere is right also. "Jesus talked in the language and figures of the everyday life of his time. To the people who listened he was not using the language of the temple, but of the street, of the field, of the lake-shore. He talked to be understood by people whom he understood. We can only comprehend his meaning by understanding the conditions of the time, the people, the figures of speech, the changes that have come to the words he used. "The words of Jesus were not religious in his day any more or less than a lecture in hygiene is to-day. We expect to hear them in church or connect them with religion, but they were not such words as his audiences [32] SENSIBLE AMERICAN were accustomed to hear in the synagogues. They have become so largely the ecclesiastical language of our time that it is hard for us to realize that they were not ecclesiastical then. 'He taught not as the scribes taught' We can only get the meaning of these words by taking from them the ecclesiastical setting and expressing them in our own phraseology." In my friend's notes I find these words also : '"I am the Way.' Jesus is speaking — speaking of himself. A quick way to know a man is to watch him when he is speaking about himself. Some cannot speak respectfully of themselves. Others talk themselves to those who have ears to hear. Listen to these ; they are like children, and deal with the truth. "Jesus often speaks of himself. No other religious teacher does so much of it. And yet one always feels that his thoughts are not with himself, but with those to whom he is giving himself helpfully. No one could call Jesus an egotist. There are teachers who have wonder- ful power in selecting beautiful thoughts and pictures out of the records of the past and passing them on to others. They have an instinct for ideals, and they build Utopias of them that make this dusty world seem uncom- fortable, and their intoxicated followers never [33] THE RELIGION OF A get a sober view of , life without turning pessimists. "Again, there are teachers who talk about life and what they get out of it ; who exhibit the handful of nuggets they have dug and tell where they found them. And as we listen we are aroused to dig, too. Their hopeful and successful lives quicken ours. Jesus belonged to this second class. There is a peculiar power in his ' I say unto you.' One feels that he has lived his words and that they can be lived. Solomon holds up ideals and precepts, but does not live them. And every view of Solomon we get through his words shows a pessimist whom life has soured. We feel like saying, ' Solomon, take your own medicine ' ; ' Physi- cian, heal thyself.' The ideal of Jesus is him- self, and because he was so much of a man and dealt so much with commonplace things, we feel that we can do as he did. " Precepts and rules of life and high ideals are useful as they mold and shape us while we behold them. They are food for action. They are not guides to life. Habits are guides to living, and habits are formed by doing. One cannot stop at every crossroad to consult a notebook for the proper precept. Men are neither trained nor saved by being preached [34] -»s SENSIBLE AMERICAN -" at. They seem to enjoy it, and often pay liberally for a weekly exhibition of beautiful ideals and well worded proverbs. These de- light and amuse them, as the bottles on the druggists' shelves amuse a child, but they make wry faces if asked to taste them. " A patriarch, a preacher, who is surrounded by a family of men and women, said : * I never tried to talk religion to my children but once. I got my little girl, one Sunday afternoon, and preached at her. Next week I said, " Come, let papa talk to you." She said, "All right, papa; but please do not talk as you did last Sunday." ' " Far more reaching than a father's words — and fathers are apt to be popes in their families — is a father's life; and a mother is not a collection of fine sayings, but an eternal influence of finer acts. I have heard more than one mother mourn because she could not say the right thing, she who was all the time an incarnation, in her world of boys and girls, of the living God. Men and women are molded by the silent, constant influence of a home far more than by the daily scolding and advising. Morning prayers are a poor sub- stitute for a day of religion. A home saturated with peace and purity is the larger part of the 135] THE RELIGION OF A *>- training of every child. Schools and univer- sities are extras to be added later." Another fragment is this : "One day, when Jesus was talking about God to his disciples, Philip interrupted him by asking, ' Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.' And Jesus said to Philip, ' Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me ? The Father and I are so mixed, so amalgamated, that my loving is his loving; my goodness, his goodness; my wisdom, his wisdom. I am in the Father and the Father in me, and all these works that I am doing, we — the Father and 1 — are doing. The words I speak and the works I do are his works and words.' "This was the Master's way of quieting Philip's fears that he could not get near enough to God to feel at home with him. Jesus was conscious of God. He never de- fined him. He never sought to prove his existence or establish any doctrines about him. He assumed God, and talked about him as naturally as a boy talks about his father. When he was going about doing good, he unquestionably recognized that God was doing the same; so they worked together. I have noticed that a boy who occasionally takes [36] • »