S\ 
 
/0.2_Z.2-0 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Division. 
 Section... 
 
 J 
 
 S 
 

 T-a 
 
 ^ 
 
 BX 9841 .F76 1873 
 Frothingham, Octavius 
 
 Brooks, 1822-1895. 
 The religion of humanity 
 
A ■ 
 
A - 
 
<^^^' "' '"'ifue, 
 
 THE 
 
 OCT 
 
 192( 
 
 
 mlictIon of humanity. 
 
 O. B. FROTHINGHAM. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 DAVID G. FRANCIS 
 
 17 AsTOK Place. 
 
 1873. 
 
Entered according to act oi Congi-ese, in the year 1872, by 
 
 DAVID G. FRANCIS, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FAOB 
 
 30 
 
 no 
 
 I. — Tendencies 7 
 
 II.— God 
 
 III.— Bible 
 
 IV. — Christ 
 
 V. — Atonement 
 
 VI. — Power of Moral Inspiration 150 
 
 V^II. — Providence igo 
 
 VIII. — The Moral Ideal 207 
 
 IX. — Immortality 232 
 
 X. — The Education of Conscience 265 
 
 XL — The Soul of Good in Evil 280 
 
 XII-— The Soul of Truth in Error 312 
 
THE 
 
 llELIGIOK OF HUMANITY. 
 
 I. 
 
 TENDENCIES. 
 
 T T is admitted truth now, that the thought of a 
 -^ period represents the life of the period, and 
 affects that life by its reaction on it ; and there- 
 fore he Avho would move strongly straightforward 
 must move with its providential current. It is 
 not ours to remould the age, to recast it, to regen- 
 erate it, to cross it or struggle with it, but to pen- 
 etrate its meaning, enter into its temper, sympa- 
 thize with its hopes, blend with its endeavors, 
 helping it by helping its development and saving 
 it by fostering the best elements of its growth. 
 The interior sphit of any age is the spirit of God ; 
 and no faith can be living that has that spirit 
 against it ; no Church can be strong except in 
 that aUiauce. The hfe of the time appoints the 
 
8 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 creed of the time and modifies tli^ establishment 
 of the time. 
 
 Among those who are counted prophets in the 
 new dispensation, none is greater than Chemistry. 
 It is a Natural Science, taking Nature in its 
 largest sense. For while in the lower material 
 sphere it pulverizes the solid substances of the 
 earth — reduces adamant to vapor, and behind the 
 vapor touches the imponderable creative and re- 
 generating forces — in the upper intellectual sphere 
 it grinds to powder the mountainous institutions 
 of man, resolves establishments into ideas, and 
 behind the bodiless thought feels the movement 
 of that Universal Mind whose action men call 
 the Hoi}' Spirit. 
 
 Our generation is distinguished above preced- 
 ing generations by its instinctive faith in this dis- 
 covery, and by its persistent efforts to avail itself 
 of these fine vital forces. Not precisely a return 
 to Nature, for we never went to her, but an ap-~ 
 Ijroach to Nature, is the general tendency of 
 things. J Faith in natural powers is the modern 
 faith — often unconfesscd, sometimes disavowed, 
 not seldom indignantly rejected, but constant 
 still — the only constant faith. Medicine says, 
 " Lend the physical system a helping hand, and 
 if cure is possible it will cure itself. Open 
 door and window ; gratify the love for light and 
 air ; put Dr. Sangrado out of doors ; get rid of 
 
TENDENCIES. 9 
 
 splint and bandage as soon as you can, that the 
 joint may regain its own suppleness and the spic- 
 ulse of the bone may work themselves into their 
 own places ; water the physic and reduce drugs 
 to a minimum ; meddle not with the recupera- 
 tive forces of the body." 
 
 In l^iducation the new method consults the 
 aptitudes of the mind, humors the natural bent 
 of the genius, and tries to charm the faculties 
 into exercise. The very word education — the 
 mind's leading out, as into fresh fields and pas- 
 tures new — in place of the old word, instruction — 
 the mind's walling in, as with brick and stone 
 — tells the whole story of our progress in this 
 direction. 
 
 In Social Science the popular theories favor 
 the largest play of the social forces — the most 
 unrestricted intercourse, the most cordial con- 
 currence among men, free competition, free trade, 
 free government, free action of the people in 
 their own affairs — the voluntary system. The 
 community, it is felt, has a self-regulating power, 
 which must not be obstructed by toll-gates, or 
 diminished by friction, or fretted away by the 
 impertinent interference of officials. Ports must 
 be open, custom-houses shut ; over-legislation is 
 the bane. 
 
 In the training of the young the doctrine 
 comes into fair repute at last, that the disposi- 
 
10 TEE RELIGION OF EUMANITT. 
 
 tion must be a natural growth, not a manufactured 
 article ; that each character has its own proper 
 style, which must be considered, its own law of 
 development, which must be consulted. If you 
 have a lily in your garden you will not deal with 
 it as you would with a sun-flower. The old sys- 
 tem decreed uniformity, repression, the same treat- 
 ment for every individual, and that a harsh one. 
 Eradicate the special taste ; shock the natural sen- 
 sibilities; cross the working of the spontaneous 
 being ; break the disposition in. Now we consult 
 our children's dispositions, favor them and work 
 with them as much as possible, substitute en- 
 couragement for rebukes and love for law. If the 
 child goes wrong we throw the blame not on its 
 nature, but on something by which its nature is 
 limited, fretted and hampered. We do not know 
 what it needs, or knowing, cannot supply it. The 
 child is to be pitied for the misfortunes of its par- 
 entage or its environment, not punished for its 
 depravity. Solomon's rod is burned to ashes. 
 ' In the discipline of personal character, again, 
 the great mark of our generation is a deep faith 
 in the soul's power to take care of itself, and a 
 desire that it may exercise that power to the ut- 
 most. The curer of souls learns a lesson from the 
 physician of the body. Formerly, was one tor- 
 mented Ijy a doubt, he stopped thinking ; now, ho 
 thinks harder. Formerly, was one saddened by a 
 
TSNDENCIES. 11 
 
 disbeKef, he shut the skeleton in a closet under 
 lock and key, and made useless from the haunting 
 horror some of the most capacious chambers of 
 his mind ; now, he drags it out into the day, and 
 sees it decompose under the action of the light and 
 air. Formerl}^ had one a sorrow, he rushed into 
 his private room, darkened the windows, abstained 
 from food, dressed in black, refused to see his 
 friends, stocked his mind with melancholy 
 thoughts, cherished repining, swallowed cup after 
 cup of his own tears, and by blunting every natu- 
 ral instinct fancied he could, with the aid of a 
 ghostly man, obtain supernatural grace ; now, he 
 takes more than common pains to keep his mind 
 wholesome ; he seeks the breeze and the sunshine,^ 
 travels, calls in his friends, reads cheerful books, 
 collects the most brilliant pieces of thought, opens 
 his heart to the dayspring, sets himself some 
 loving task that will make the fountains of charity 
 and duty flow, would rather not see the priest 
 unless the priest can meet him, man-fashion, and 
 give him, instead of ghostly consolations, the 
 honest sympathy of a brave and hopeful heart. 
 Formerly, was one afflicted with remorse of con- 
 science, he stopped all the passages of seK-re- 
 cover}', sealed every fountain of joy, and set him- 
 self to brooding with all his might on hell and the 
 judgment ; if a cheerful view of his case came up, 
 he shut his eyes, that he might not see it ; if one 
 
12 THE RELIGION OF HUMAMTT. 
 
 suggested that he was not quite so bad as he 
 seemed, he exclaimed, " Get thee behind me, 
 Satan, with your intimations that I am not hell- 
 begotten and hell-doomed ;" if a gleam of hope in 
 regard to the future found its way to him through 
 a chink in the shutter, he stuffed cotton in the 
 chink ; he made it his business to muse on his sin 
 to vilify his nature, to anticipate his ruin, to drape 
 his Deity in black. Now, if one has a sin, he does 
 his best to forget it, to outgrow it, to cover it up 
 with new and better life ; he adopts a wholesome 
 moral diet, and keeps his conscience in robust 
 condition. The tacit assumption is that men for- 
 give themselves, and are by men and God for- 
 given, when they rally to do better. So they put 
 heaven before them in place of hdl, and use their 
 fault as a spur, not as a clog. Away with fears ! 
 away with despairs ! away with devils ! away with 
 perdition ! away with doom ! " In the name of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, rise, take up thy bed, and 
 walk'" 
 
 This familiar faith in the recuperative forces of 
 Nature, and the regenerating power of the organic 
 elements of the human constitution, holding thus 
 in the highest departments of the mind, is disin- 
 tegrating the old beliefs of mankind. The prime- 
 val faitliS"Bi^'deconTposing under the chemical 
 influence of this quick and subtile Naturalism. 
 Walking the other day through a Roman Catholio 
 
TENDENCIES. 13 
 
 convent with a priest of the New Catholic Church 
 — the Cathohc Church of Young America — I spied 
 a confessional in a corner of the chapel. So, I 
 said to my companion, the New Church keeps the 
 old box. " Oh yes," he solemnly replied ; " oh 
 yes, there is great significance in that. There a 
 man kneels face to face before the majesty of his 
 conscience, and owns up squarely to his wrong- 
 doing. It is a manly thing to do, and an educa- 
 tion in manliness." Not a word about confession 
 as a sacrament ; not a word about penance or 
 priestly absolution ; not a word about super- 
 natural aid ; not an idea suggested that might not 
 suggest itseK to a Protestant of the most heretical 
 school. I seemed to see the old Mephistopheles 
 sitting in the confessor's robes, behind the grate, 
 and hstening with a leer to the penitent's guilty 
 tale. 
 
 Protestojutism has the poison in its heart. Dr. 
 Bushnell complacently merges the supernatural in 
 the natural, thus making over to natural causes the 
 work of grace; and then, by deifying the Willy 
 tries to reinstate the supernatural in the flesh. 
 But while he carefully keeps open that little over- 
 grown postern-gate for the lurking Deity, he does 
 not perceive that through every door and window 
 the Prince of this world marches in with his 
 legion, and takes possession of the whole theolog- 
 ical castle. The old flag may fly from the walls, 
 
14 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 but the guards are slain and the citadel is in pos- 
 session of the foe. Eegeneration resolves itself 
 straightway into Christian nurture, and the scheme 
 of salvation is a process of home training. 
 
 From our own Liberal Theology, the elements 
 of unnaturalism, preternaturalism, supranatural- 
 ism, have disappeared almost as completely as 
 they have from the systems of Science. Our 
 fathers admitted naturalism into the understand- 
 ing and the affections, but left the reason, the 
 conscience, and the soul, under the dominion of 
 traditional beliefs and instituted forms. They 
 confessed the divine authority of custom and 
 creed. They inhaled the ecclesiastical spirit and 
 bent the head to the majesty of established law. 
 They wore the clerical dress of the ancient regime. 
 They were conservatives of the existing order of 
 thought and practice. They dreaded impulse, 
 and distrusted intuition, and feared the devouring 
 appetite of the soul. The understanding was per- 
 mitted to nibble at the Scripture, and the heart 
 was allowed to eat away a portion of the creed ; 
 but the core of neither could be touched. Their 
 appeal was to the common persuasions of Christen- 
 dom, and the appeal conceded the divine character 
 of the main beliefs of the Christian world ; antiquity 
 was with them the test of trutli ; the miracle proved 
 the doctrine ; revelation, regeneration, redemption 
 salvation, were still weighty with something like 
 
TENBENCIES. 15 
 
 the old accredited sense. Unconscious, as pioneers 
 always are, of the idea involved in their own posi- 
 tions, allowing inconsistent elements to lie side by 
 side among the first principles of its thought ; ex- 
 ternal in its method of viewing truths, empirical 
 in its mode of acquiring spiritual knowledge, 
 dreading individualism, delighting in harmony of 
 usage and form, judging rules of action by their 
 consequences, satisfied with the outward appear- 
 ances of order and excellence, magnifying good 
 behavior, prophet of the moral and becoming, 
 confessing a radical tendency to evil in man, 
 which called for repression by all the ancient ap- 
 pliances of the criminal code, and made necessary 
 a stringent doctrine of future retribution — the old 
 Unitarian system struggled between the upper 
 and nether millstones of Nature and Grace. 
 
 We are far enough from that now ; Naturalism 
 has struck into the roots of the mind. One of the 
 most conservative men, occupying a position on 
 the extreme right, M-rites a book entitled, " Chris- 
 tianity the Beligion of Nature." It is becoming a 
 subtile and a deep conviction that the spirit of 
 God has its workings in and through human nature. 
 The inspiration of the moral sentiments, the divine 
 character of the heart's affections, the heavenly 
 illumination of the reason, the truth of the soul's 
 intuitions of spiritual things, are taking their place 
 among the axioms of theological thought. The 
 
16 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 natural iu every department quietly usurps tlie 
 place and function of the supernatural. Revela- 
 tion is viewed as the disclosure of truth to the 
 active and simple reason ; Inspiration as the 
 drawing of a deep breath in the atmosphere of 
 serene ideas ; Regeneration as the bursting of the 
 moral consciousness into flower ; Salvation as 
 spiritual health and sanity. Miracle is not a sus- 
 pension or violation of law, but the fulfillment of 
 an untraced law ; the doctrine establishes the 
 wonder ; the humanity of Christ proves his divin- 
 ity ; the child of human nature is the true son of 
 God ; the guarantee of immortality is the feeling 
 of immortal desires ; the pledge of the kingdom is 
 the undying hope of the kingdom ; all the soul's 
 books are sacred scriptures : 
 
 ' ' Out from the heart of Nature rolled 
 The buidens of the Bible old." 
 
 The creeds are man believing ; the churches are 
 man organizing his beliefs for Avork ; the liturgies 
 are man praying ; the holy books are man record- 
 ing his experiences ; the psalms are man's utter- 
 ance in words of his pious feelings ; the rites and 
 ceremonies are man expressing his- feelings in 
 symbols. 
 
 The new Liberal Church understands itself, and 
 triumphantly avows what the older Liberal Church 
 sadly suspected. It has a consistent scheme of 
 thought ; it goes to the mind for its ideas ; it 
 
TENDENCIES. 17 
 
 admits the claim of spontaneity ; its method of 
 obtaining truth is rational; the harmony it de- 
 mands is harmony of principles — the orderly 
 sequence of laws. " Show me causes," it cries. 
 " Let me into the motives of things ; for issues 
 and results I care not. Reveal to me the creative 
 powers of goodness — the genesis of all excellence 
 — that I may bring the semblances of goodness to 
 judgment." It is not disintegrating, anarchical, 
 revolutionizing. It simply demands freedom for 
 the individual,, and for every part of him — from 
 the part of him that touches the ground to the 
 iDart of him that touches the heavens ; subjects 
 the ancient order to criticism on the ground that 
 it nurses anarchical tendencies, scouts the notion 
 of inherent evil or sin or depravity, and looks for- 
 ward with immeasurable hope to the greatening 
 magnificence of the coming time. 
 
 The extent to which Liberal Christianity has 
 succumbed to this devouring spirit of Naturalism 
 is indicated forcibly in the part it has played in 
 the social transition in our country. Feeling the 
 pulse of the age in every nerve, having faith in 
 democratic institutions, because it has confidence 
 in the human nature that is in man — the word 
 Liberty always on its lips — thrilling instinctively 
 to the popular tendencies — it was by no accident, 
 or whim, or impulse of circumstance, that it 
 brought the power of the moral sentiment to act 
 
18 THE RELIGION OF EUMANITT. 
 
 against that institution whicli set every moral sen- 
 timent at defiance, that oldest and most tena- 
 ciously cherished institution of the earth, strong 
 in ancient prescription, sanctioned by the author- 
 ity of the greatest names, hallowed by holy Scrip- 
 tures, dear to all conservative minds as a piece of 
 the primitive rock of society. It has been dis- 
 tinguished for the natural earnestness of its pro- 
 test against that great obstruction to the sponta- 
 neous movement and free play of man's organic 
 powers. It had no words strong enough to enun- 
 ciate its verdict on that crime against human 
 nature. In the terrific agitation which inflamed 
 the southern mind to frenzy, and lashed the 
 northern mind to indignation — agitation which 
 from the field of sentiment passed to the field of 
 party polemics, and from the field of party po- 
 lemics stepped out at length, armed for deadly 
 duel, on the plain of war — the liberal faith was 
 known of all men as bearing a distinguished part. 
 From Church, and Bible, and Government, and 
 Society, and Organic Law, its children appealed 
 directly to natural justice, natural pity, natural 
 sympathy, assuming that all saving grace Avas in 
 the normal man. Its pulpits poured volley after 
 volley into the consecrated inhumanity, and many 
 a pulpit lost its brave soldier in the fight ; the 
 preacher abdicating or yielding to expulsion rather 
 than strike humanity's flag. 
 
TENDENCIES. 19 
 
 I think I am not wrong in saying that no body 
 of men, with such brave, hearty enthusiasm, ac- 
 cepted the civil war, at the first moment, as a 
 struggle for the ultimate rights of universal man, 
 a battle with the barbarism of the past, a life and 
 death conflict between human nature, simple and 
 free, and the unnatural, the preternatural, in the 
 European systems. When others were deploring 
 the sad necessit}^, and were dreading the disturb- 
 ance of the old order of things, our young men 
 flung up their caps and hailed the judgment-day 
 with hope. They went into the regiments as 
 army chaplains ; they went as privates into the 
 ranks ; they took rifle in hand and died at their 
 posts of honor ; they worked the associations 
 which were organized for soldiers' rehef ; they 
 m'ged tlie policy of emancipation ; they went 
 among the blacks as teachers. Their pulpits 
 were draped with the flag and resounded with 
 war sermons ; their vestry-rooms buzzed with the 
 laborers for the Sanitary Commission. They 
 were unwearied in their efi'orts and indomitable 
 in their faith. They believed in the divine decree 
 of the crisis, and in the divine inspiration of the 
 people. They saw no issue possible but liberty, 
 and liberty was the mend-all and the cure-all — 
 vindicator, consoler, regenerator, savior. They 
 never felt discouragement, save when the cause 
 of liberty trembled in the scale of fortune ; and 
 
20 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 that discouragement could not last, for they de- 
 voutly believed that at last servitude and servility 
 must kick the beam. The army of the North was 
 to them the church militant ; the leader of the 
 army was the avenging Lord; and the recon- 
 struction of a new order, on the basis of freedom 
 for mankind, was the first installment of the Mes- 
 sianic kingdom. 
 
 Here was Naturahsm pure and simple. The 
 axioms of the Liberal Faith rushed to their infer- 
 ences under the logic of events. In this card we 
 showed our whole hand. The sacramental Cath- 
 olic Church had no interest in the war, and as 
 little, probably, in the destruction of slavery. 
 The aristocratic Episcopal Church was lukewarm. 
 The conservative portion of the Calvinistic Prot- 
 estant Church could not heartily support a strug- 
 gle which involved so much of social, moral, and 
 religious radicalism. Some of the honored fathers 
 of the Unitarian Church, not yet drawn into the 
 current of Naturalism, suffered from a divided 
 mind ; but young Liberalism, which is Liberalism 
 carrying out its principles, had no misgiving, but 
 welcomed the grapple in the darkness between 
 the old systems and the Word. 
 
 And now, assuming the correctness of this de- 
 scription of the spirit and tendency of the time, 
 and of our relation to it, shall we look forward to 
 our immediate future with hope, or with fear? 
 
TENDENCIES. 21 
 
 Is this uuquestionable, universal, all-absorbing 
 and overruling tendency to Naturalism, rushing 
 us into the pit, or impelling us toward the king- 
 dom? It is doing one or the other. We are 
 either all wrong or all right. The religious Hfe 
 and the secular life of the community go one way 
 —the way of the moral life. If the times are out 
 of joint spiritually they are out of joint poHtically, 
 socially, and in every other respect. 
 
 Of course it is impossible, as yet, to say what 
 are or what are hkely to be the results of the ten- 
 dencies so many dread and so many welcome 
 with delight. They have not yet transpired in 
 history, and are matters thus far, of conjecture 
 merely. But so far as conjecture will go on the 
 trail of a principle, our attitude, as it seems to 
 me, is one of hope. The powers of Nature do 
 their work well, and do it best the more they are 
 emancipated. How self-sufficient is the constitu- 
 tion of things! How cheerful, and reliant, and 
 self-sustaining, the elemental forces ! With what 
 matchless ease the organic laws preserve the un- 
 broken order of the \\orld, in the heavens above, 
 the earth beneath, the waters under the earth ! 
 How enchanting the rhythm of their movement ! 
 What firm and exquisite grace as they urge the 
 successive and infinite changes from the chaos to 
 the cosmos ! Unaided by forces outside of them- 
 selves, unassisted by the mechanism of rope, 
 
22 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 •wheel, pulley, lever, they wear away primeval 
 rock, lift ]iiountains from their eternal base, con- 
 vert forests into coal-beds, change gas into granite 
 and granite back again into gas, take the cast-off 
 shells of infusorise and metamorphose them into 
 chalk and flint, shift the ocean margins, cut new 
 channels for rivers, push up green continents from 
 the bosom of the deep, and spread fields over the 
 gloomy abyss ; replace noxious plants, poisonous 
 insects, destructive animals, with plants, insects, 
 and animals of higher form and greater useful- 
 ness. With the sweetest dignity and the most 
 unerring judgment they handle comets, planets, 
 constellations, tossing the golden balls from centre 
 to circumference, and making the empyrean 
 sparkle from bound to bound with the lively play 
 of the flashing suns. 
 
 Working thus in the material world, will the 
 same immanent force Avork nothing in the 
 spiritual? May we confine our conception of 
 Law to the recognized system of the material uni- 
 verse? Must we not suspect at least that the 
 perturbed will, the eccentric desires, the wander- 
 ing wishes that whirl and flame along the moral 
 empyrean, may also be held in its fine leashes? 
 Creating such beauty in the realm of material 
 nature, will it create none in human nature ? Will 
 the irresistible grace which makes the orbs of the 
 solar system dance to their spheral music cause 
 
lENBEXCIES. 23 
 
 no Ijric movement among the members of the 
 human family? Can the fountain- spirit set the 
 springs among the hills flowing toward the sea, 
 and can it not set the springs of love in the heart 
 flowing toward their Infinite Ocean? Can the 
 all-pervading breath alter the composition of the 
 atmospheres, and can it not modify the commin- 
 gling of the social elements? Can the pitying 
 world spirit drape ruins with ivy and cover stones 
 with moss,' and cannot the quick spirit in man 
 grow over a wasted life or adorn with lovehuess a 
 hard natui'e? Can the decomposing forces pul- 
 verize Alpine peaks, and yet fail in the attempt to 
 convert a mass of iniquity into vapor that shall 
 vanish away ? Can the light touch of the solar 
 ray cause the whole race of flowers to open 
 their eyes to the sun and gUtter with the hues of 
 the diamond as they gaze, and will not the inner 
 light in the breast induce men to seek the all- 
 good? Can the sunbeam call the whole animal 
 world into being and create the very civilizations 
 of men, and shall the Sun of Kighteousness be 
 powerless to recreate the moral world and call 
 into being the kingdom of God within us ? Can 
 the plastic powers of Nature arrange the leaves 
 with mathematical precision on the stem of a 
 plant, change leaf into flower and flower into fruit, 
 and is there no plastic power in the very consti- 
 tution of man, that can arrange the elements in 
 
24 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Luman development, and from the raw material 
 of passion and impulse create the perfect results 
 of goodness? A singular inconsistency were it 
 true! That there should be a living God in 
 stocks and stones and none in hearts and souls — 
 a living God in the solar system and none in the 
 social system — a living God in the star-dust and 
 none in the dust out of which God made man ! 
 
 No man can read histojy for other men, but as 
 I read history it reveals to me the persistent effort 
 of organic human nature to come at its preroga- 
 tive of self-government ; and a new outbreak of 
 glory accompanies each new effort. The succes- 
 sive steps in the well-being of man were successive 
 emancipations of natural power. 
 
 The grand moral achievement of Christianity 
 was the emancipation of human nature from its 
 terrible Jewish thraldom. Its revelation seems to 
 have been that men could judge for themselves 
 what was right — could please God by being true 
 to themselves — could find the blessed life by re- 
 turning to the simplicity of little children — and 
 could bring in the kingdom of heaven by yielding 
 to the solicitations of kindness. Man greater 
 than the Sabbath ; man greater than the temple ; 
 man greater than the priesthood or the law. The 
 religion at first was a consecration of nature, the 
 abolishment of the old oppressive hierarchies, and 
 a cordial invitation to the heart to make a reh- 
 
TENDENCIES. 25 
 
 gion for itseK. Just so far as it was in the deepest 
 and purest sense " natural " religion, just so far 
 as it emancipated the moral forces of humanity- 
 was it quick and quickening. Jesus broke a 
 fetter, and uumanacled man worked his way up- 
 ward by the use of his hands. Christianity with 
 multitudes stands for liberty of conscience and 
 soul-freedom. It is another name for personal 
 manhness and social justice. In some quarters 
 it is a name for sobriety, temperance, chastity, and 
 the finest physical condition which conformity 
 with the natural laws will produce. It was a 
 branch of the English Episcopal Church that in- 
 augurated muscular Christia. ity, the Christianity 
 of the oar and the foot-ball, '^^he name of Jesus 
 is everywhere spoken in connection with the 
 healthy normal development of mind and heart. 
 The rehgion is the emblem — human nature is the 
 creating power. 
 
 We boast of the superiority of Protestantism 
 over Catholicism, as shown in the greater thrift, 
 comfort, intelligence, of Protestant coimtries. Is 
 it Protestantism as a system of dogmas or of ap- 
 pliances that causes the difference? Is it not 
 human nature, which, under Protestantism, has a 
 better chance? Cathohcism fetters it: Protest- 
 antism releases it. Catholicism keeps it supine 
 on its back : Protestantism sets it upright upon 
 its feet ; and whatever progress it has achieved is 
 due to the excellent use it has made of its locomo- 
 
26 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tive powers. It was not the free Bible that did 
 the work of grace, but the free mind which set its 
 busy hands to the task of picking up knowledge 
 in every field, and very soon read the Bible, and 
 a great many books besides, in a fashion that 
 Luther and his friends did not like. The doctrine 
 of justification by faith caused thick scales to fall 
 fi'om human eyes ; and the eyes, once open, looked 
 straight into the verities of the moral and spiritual 
 world. The doctrine of justification had no mi- 
 raculous property — it was neither microscope nor 
 telescope ; the laws of spiritual optics helped men 
 to see. 
 
 Liberal Christianity takes credit to itself for the 
 happy influence of its truth on the unfolding of 
 personal character, the sweetening of domestic 
 life, the amelioration of the social state, the heal- 
 ing of the bruised and broken heart, the tranquil- 
 lizing of the death-bed, the beautifying of the im- 
 mortal hope. It is a great privilege to be able to 
 associate such rich benefaction with the Liberal 
 Faith. But the angel who opened Peter's prison 
 door did not give liim the feet to leave the prison. 
 The angel that rolled the stone from the door of 
 the sepulchre did not resuscitate the Christ. Lib- 
 eral Christianity but said to human nature : " Take 
 up thy bed and walk ;" manage your own econo- 
 mies ; heal your own hurts ; mend your own 
 fractures ; repair your own losses ; construct j'our 
 own scheme of providence ; build your own house 
 
TENDENCIES. 27 
 
 in the skies ; work out your own salvation. Lib- 
 eral Cbristiauit}^ was the first escaped slave es- 
 tablishing an underground railroad for his com- 
 rades. It stands for opportunitij, not for j^oicer. 
 Its force is the force of its maker, Man — force 
 greater than was ever manifested before, because 
 it is the force of the ivhole man. The Liberal 
 Faith is better than others, because it allows more 
 latitude than others. It unties more bands, and 
 leaves men foot-loose, to go whithersoever they 
 will. Do they go to perdition ? It is our boast 
 that they go to the kingdom. 
 
 Human nature, imder liberty, will vindicate 
 itself as a divine creation. The fi-eer it is, the 
 more harmonious, orderly, balanced, and beauti- 
 ful it is. The physical system proves it by the 
 increased vigor and heightened enjoyment of men 
 who obey the laws of their constitution. The in- 
 tellectual system proves it by the beneficence of 
 knowledge. The social system proves it by the 
 diminishing vice, crime, turpitude, under the vol- 
 untary regime — a point which I believe statistics 
 will abundantly establish. 
 
 The moral condition of the world proves it. 
 Where conscience is freest it rights the most 
 wrongs, removes the most evds, relieves the most 
 poverty, corrects the most sin. 
 
 The spiritual system proves it ; for where the 
 soul is freest it frames for itself the noblest, the 
 most encouraging, most beautiful, most earnest 
 
28 TEE RELIGION OB HUMANITY. 
 
 faith. Tlie very delusions it is led into, through 
 its inexperience, are fuU of a fine enthusiasm and 
 a boundless hope. The aberrations of its untried 
 power serve, like Leverrier's planet, to confirm at 
 last the irresistible law of gravitation, which draws 
 all souls to the great centre — God. Its super- 
 stitions catch a light fi'om the empyrean, instead 
 of a shadow from the pit. The enormous moral 
 heresies it blunders into have a gleam of splendor 
 and a touch of sanctity in them, which redeems 
 them from turpitude while they last, and quickly 
 rescues them from the grave they menaced. Its 
 daring infidelities burn with an ardor of aspiration 
 which gives them all the air of saving faith, and 
 makes the unbelief which is of nature look more 
 magnificent than the belief which is of grace. 
 Nature's seers, running their eye along the fine of 
 the moral law, catch vistas in the future brighter 
 than those were that now are fading from the Old 
 Testament page ; and nature's prophets, putting 
 their ear to the ground, hear the murmur of 
 nobler revelations than were ever given to the old 
 oracles now moving their stiffening lips in death. 
 Humanity's lieresiarchs are lordher than inhu- 
 manity's priests. The soul's image -breo,king is 
 diviner than the prelate's worship. Knowledge 
 distances faith. Human solidarity more than 
 makes good the CathoUc's communion. The rev- 
 elation of universal Law makes the belief in mira- 
 cle seem atheistical ; and the irresistible grace of 
 
TENDENCIES. 28 
 
 the Spirit that Hves and moves and discloses its 
 being in humanity, sweeps past the dispensations 
 of Cathohc and Protestant Christendom, as the 
 eagle distances the dove. 
 
 It is not to be denied tliat our position is beset 
 with many perplexities, and that, as thinkers, we 
 take our chance with the rest, who are seekers in 
 the domain of positive knowledge. We discredit 
 theology ; we liave conceived a distrust of system ; 
 we put not our faith in metaphysics. If we are 
 to have a philosoph}' of the universe we must find 
 a new one ; we must begin again ; we must wait. 
 The former things have passed away. The theo- 
 logical system of the old world is not for us under 
 any guise. The spirit of it has fied. The virtue 
 has departed fi'om its sacraments, the meaning 
 from its symbols, the sense from its formulas. 
 Our bark has sunk to another sea, and speeds 
 before other gales to another harbor. If the sea 
 is not alwa3s smooth, or the gale always steady, 
 or the harbor always in full view, as much may 
 be said of every sea, of every gale, of every har- 
 bor which the ship of our humanity tries. 
 
l£. 
 GOD. 
 
 OURS is an age of restatements and recon- 
 structions, of conversions and " new de- 
 partures," in many directions. There is an un- 
 easy feeling in regard to the foundations of belief. 
 The old foundations have been sorely shaken. 
 The structure still stands, and joresents a fine 
 appearance ; but the ground is settling, and the 
 walls show signs of weakness. There is not a 
 single cardinal doctrine of Romanist or Protestant 
 theology that has not been so far qualified as to be 
 virtually rejected by some leading teacher ; so 
 that, taking these teachers collectively, it may be 
 said that the whole system of so-called " Chris- 
 tianity " has been abandoned by its own defenders. 
 It presents a sound aspect still, and will present a 
 brave front for generations yet to come. It has 
 antiquity in its favor ; it is rich, famous, powerful 
 in prestige, thoroughly organized, with perfect 
 machinery in fine condition. It still draws the 
 people by force of association and habit, by the 
 allurements of art, the fascinations of beauty, the 
 
GOD. 31 
 
 seductions of personal interest and fashion, the 
 dignified attractions of historic renown, and the 
 questionable wiles of social advantage. It holds 
 the keys of patronage, and commands the ap- 
 proaches to infiuence and distinction. It is flour- 
 ishing in the branches, but it is dying at the root. 
 It does not engage the living thought or possess 
 the moral sympathy of the time. Neither the in- 
 tellect, nor the conscience, nor the earnest feeling 
 of the modern world confesses allegiance to it. 
 The intellect is busy with other problems than 
 those it propounds. The conscience is about 
 other tasks than those it appoints. The heart is 
 indebted to it neither for the burning of its hope 
 nor the trembling of its fear ; it neither goes to it 
 for its consolation nor blesses it for its peace. 
 One summer night the inhabitants of a country 
 house were startled from sleep by a crash of 
 thunder which told them a bolt had fallen in the 
 immediate neighborhood of their dweUing. In 
 the morning search was made for the ruin, but 
 none was found. The out-buildings were not 
 harmed; the trees were unscathed; not a bush 
 was torn, not a flower bruised. But in the au- 
 tumn a flourishing tree that stood on the lawn 
 showed at the top the sere and yellow leaf earlier 
 than usual. In the winter, Avhen aU the rest were 
 bare, it stood at no disadvantage ; the snow spark- 
 led on its branches, and the wind wailed no more 
 drearily through its leafless twigs. But when the 
 
32 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 spring returned, and the other trees put on their 
 verdure, the foliage of this one came back late 
 and languidly. In the summer it drooped, and in 
 the autumn it was cut down. The fatal electri- 
 city had made a scarcely visible hole in the ground, 
 and sent to its heart the deadly arrow. 
 
 The new faith, which, for lack of a better name, 
 we call by the unmeaning title of " Radicalism," 
 is just beginning to formulate itself. It is cau- 
 tiously feeling after its lines of definition, and 
 timidly staking out the ground of its future tem- 
 ple. It has made some brilliant studies, careful 
 observations, admirable sketches, serviceable 
 drawings, but hesitates as yet to accept, or even 
 to entertain seriously, a plan for its building, lest 
 it should commit itself prematurely to a system it 
 cannot alter. But the imjiatien^ people are ask- 
 ing when we mean to present the plan of our edi- 
 fice, and what it is to be like. It is in the hope 
 of pacifying these inquiries in some degree that 
 we venture on this faint prophecy. 
 
 The phrase " Religion of Humanity " has, 
 unfortunately, been associated with the name and 
 philosophy of Auguste Comte, who does not 
 deserve credit for the main ideas it stands for. 
 If the name was of his invention the thing was 
 not. His leading conceptions — of the solidarity 
 of mankind, of tjie grand man, and immortality 
 in the race — were thrown out several years in 
 advance of him. Comte elaborated them, but, as 
 
GOD. 33 
 
 we believe, corrupted and perverted them ; for his 
 elaboration was artificial, cousistiug much less iu 
 a development of spiritual capacities than in a 
 mechanical arrangement of outward apparatus. 
 It was with him a manufactured system done with 
 malice aforethought. He found no soul in it, and 
 put no soul into it. His spasm of sentimentali- 
 ty gratified itself by constructing this ambitious 
 mausoleum, which was to take the place of the 
 Church of liome, but it was dturcli against cJiurch. 
 The monarchical and Romanist tendencies which 
 Comte inherited from his parents, and which his 
 manlier intellect rejected, revived in his later 
 years, and reasserted themselves in his scheme of 
 a new religion. The Church of Humanity was 
 modelled in every respect on the Catholic plan. 
 It had its Supreme Head clothed with vast pow- 
 ers, wielding enormous patronage, and nominat- 
 ing his own successor, paid with a salary of 
 twelve thousand dollars, and provided with a re- 
 sidence in Paris. Under him is instituted a hie- 
 rarchy of priests, also maintained at public ex- 
 pense. Other elements of the Catholic system 
 are prominent ; sacraments, jjenances, prayers, 
 interdict and excommunication, saints' days and 
 festivals, as numerous as iu Italy. It is the Ro- 
 man Church over again witiiout its theology ; St. 
 Peter's without a saint. It is the mechanism of 
 the old faith without the soul of the new. The 
 despotic character of the mediiBval religion was 
 
34 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 retained ; the distinction between the priesthood 
 and the laitj ; the distinction between the various 
 secular orders ; the subjection of woman to man, of 
 the industrial classes to the intellectual, the intel- 
 lectual to the ecclesiastical. In a word, Comte's 
 Church of Humanity was in every important re- 
 spect European. France was the holy land. Its 
 chief city was his Home, Jerusalem, Mecca. The 
 French spirit of imperialism was retained and ex- 
 aggerated, made more imperial still by placing a 
 positivist pope at the head of all authority and 
 power in state and church. We have neither 
 space nor disposition to give here a critical 
 account of Comte's scientific chimera. These 
 hints of its character are thrown out that the 
 reader may understand why we repudiate it, as 
 we do, and may believe us perfectly sincere in 
 disavowing all purpose of recommending a sys- 
 tem which seems to be full of pernicious elements 
 and wholly at variance with the intellectual, so- 
 cial, and spiritual tendencies of the age. 
 j-'.^-Tlie human mind must interpret the Religion 
 I of Humanity in accordance with its own prin- 
 ciples of thought and feeling. It must think it 
 out and work it out for itself, availing itself of 
 all good suggestions, eager to learn what has 
 been discovered in regard to its leading princi- 
 ples, gratefully welcoming contributions of doc- 
 trine and sentiment from whatever quarter coming, 
 but starting from its own premises, and proceed- 
 
OOD. 35 
 
 ing along its own lines, consulting its own needs 
 and building to suit its own convenience ; not 
 adopting the plan of even the most accom- 
 plished foreign architect, but working its prob- 
 lems out after a fashion and towards conclusions 
 of its own. 
 
 At the heart of all religions lie certain great 
 ideas which they make it their business to inter- 
 pret. They are the staple of religious thought. 
 They are not the proj^erty of one faith, but are 
 the common property of mankind ; no more pro- 
 minent in one faith than in another, but central 
 in all faiths. Whence they come we know not. 
 They always have been, and they are. Buddha 
 did not invent them, nor Zoroaster. They are 
 not the discovery of Moses or of Jesus. Each 
 found them, took them, used them, built upon 
 them the sjstem that bears his name. These 
 ideas give life to all religious speculation, Avarmth 
 to all religious feeling. They constitute the 
 framework which the heart and soul clothe with 
 flesh. There has never been a religion without 
 them ; it is hard to conceive that there ever 
 should be a religion without them. Science may 
 rule them out of its province, philosophy may de- 
 cline to deal with them ; but religion stakes on 
 them its very existence. It may be that reli- 
 gion will one day decline and pass away, giv- 
 ing place to philosophy and science ; but un- 
 til that day comes they will hold their ancient 
 
3C THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 place and command their ancient respect, exer- 
 cising thought and feeHng and conviction as of 
 old. What are these ideas which science disa- 
 vows, of which philosophy takes no cognizance, 
 and which religion claims as peculiarly its own ? 
 Here are some of them : God, Revelation, In- 
 carnation, Atonement, Providence, Immortality. 
 There may be others, but these are vital and 
 cardinal. These every religion interprets after 
 its manner, but no religion has authority to in- 
 terpret them finally, or for any save its own ad- 
 herents. Christianity offers an interpretation of 
 them — an interpretation that has stood two thou- 
 sand years, and has gained the assent of the 
 most intelligent portions of mankind — but the in- 
 terpretation of Christianity is not the sole, au- 
 thoritative or final one. Though Christianity as 
 a system of faith should pass away, these ideas 
 W'Ould remain, to be set in new lights, and load- 
 ed with fresh significance. Religions may suc- 
 ceed one another for thousands of years to come, 
 but till the heart that warms them with life grows 
 cold, till the devout affections from which they 
 spring dry up, till awe and reverence and fear 
 and hope and love and aspiration cease, these 
 ideas will excite and charm and exalt, will try 
 the mind and test experience, and sound the- 
 deeps of feeling, and put imagination on new- 
 quest after the secret of spiritual life. 
 
 Let us look at the first-mentioned idea — the 
 
QOD. 37 
 
 idea of God — by the light of the Rehgion of 
 Humanity. About a century ago, in France 
 and elsewhere in Europe the belief in God 
 seemed passing away. The very name of God 
 was spoken in derision, as a word that was no 
 longer powerful to conjure by. A philosopher 
 declined an article on God for his encyclopedia, 
 saying the question of God had no significance. 
 He who professed behef in God was black-balled 
 at the clubs. A distinguished x4.merican — I think 
 it was Dr. Franklin — remarking in a i)hilosophical 
 company in Paris that he never saw an atheist, 
 and did not believe there was one, a gentleman 
 ■ replied, " Well, you may have that pleasure now. 
 Every man here is an atheist." In fact, for a 
 brief period the behef in God had lost its hold 
 on cultivated minds ; materialism had the argu- 
 ment. But since then the ancient conviction has 
 been taking heart, and has steadily pushed its an- 
 tagonist to the wall. And this in the face of phy- 
 sical science, which has in these latter days at- 
 tained prodigious giowth, and has been sweeping 
 gods and demi-gods out of the world as the 
 house-maid sweeps chips and cobwebs from a 
 parlor. Definitions of God have been vanishing, 
 idols have been tumbling, symbols have been 
 fading away, trinities have been dissolving, per- 
 sonahties have been waning and losing them- 
 selves in light or in shadow ; but the Being has 
 
38 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 been steadily coming forward from the back- 
 ground, looming up from the abj'ss, occupying 
 the vacant spaces, flowing into the dry channels, 
 and taking possession of every inch of matter 
 and mind. The mystery of it deepens, but the 
 conviction of it deepens also. The great John 
 Newman, the English Catholic, says, " Of all 
 points of faith, the being of a God is encompassed 
 with most difficulty and home in upon our minds 
 with most 2-iower.'^ Ernest Renan, to whom the 
 word " religion " means about as little as it does 
 to anybody, writes, in a somewhat similar strain, 
 " Under one form or another, God will always 
 stand for the full expression of our superseusual 
 needs. He will - ever be the category of the 
 Ideal, the form under which things eternal and 
 divine are conceived. The word may be a little 
 clumsy, perhaps ; it may need to be interpreted 
 in senses more and more refined, but it will 
 never be superseded." Etienne Vacherot, a 
 scholar and a philosopher of the finest intellect- 
 ual grain, a man of pure intelligence, who be- 
 lieves that religion under every form belongs to 
 the childhood of mankind and is destined to pass 
 away and be supplanted by philosophy, as it is 
 already in educated minds, will not let go the 
 thought of the absolutely perfect Being. Pan- 
 theism is to him the last impiety, because it 
 identifies this Being with an imperfect, undevel- 
 
QOI). 39 
 
 oped universe, and so drags perfection down to 
 mere conditions. Atheism is intolerable because 
 it abolishes the ideal world altogether, and leaves 
 man nothing to aspire after. The personal God 
 of the theist he wiU not accept, for He is too 
 much like a man. His deity must be of the 
 most refined intellectuality, the most ethereal 
 texture of spirit ; but so far from being unreal 
 or attenuated, he is the most solid and positive 
 entity there is. The avowed atheist — for there 
 are such — finds it harder to put his creed into 
 words and to adjust it to the human mind than 
 ever Athanasius did to define his doctrine of 
 trinity. You cannot push him into a corner ; 
 you cannot make him avow his unbelief in un- 
 qualified terms ; you cannot compel him to back 
 out of the region of confessed divinity. He re- 
 tires beyond the reach of definition, but not be- 
 yond the reach of thought. 
 
 Comte says, " The principle of theology is to 
 explain everything by supernatural wills. That 
 principle can never be set aside until we ac- 
 knowledge the search for causes to be beyond 
 our reach, and limit ourselves to the knowledge 
 of laics" And again, "The universal religion 
 adopts as its fundamental dogma the fact of the 
 existence of an order which admits of no varia- 
 tion, and to which all events of every kind are 
 subject. That there is such an order can be 
 
40 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 shown as a fact, but it cannot be explained." 
 How can a man wlio uses those tremendous 
 words "law" and "order" hesitate to use the 
 other tremendous words " cause " and " God ?" 
 What is Icnv but steady, continuous, persistent, 
 consistent power ; cumulative, urgent, regulated 
 power; power moving along even tracks and 
 pressing towards distinct aims ; power with a 
 past behind it and a future before ; power that is 
 harmonious, rhythmical, as he calls it himself, or- 
 derlij ? Can he conceive of such a power as un- 
 intelligent ? Can he conceive of it as intelligent 
 and purposeless ? Can he conceive of it as pur- 
 poseful and yet as uucausing? Does not the 
 very word " force," as science uses it, compel the 
 association with mind and will ? And can we 
 think of mind and will without thinking with the 
 same brain-throb of wisdom and goodness ? It 
 seems as if one must have completely suppressed 
 in his memory the constitution of the human 
 mind, to help being dragged by such overbearing 
 words as " law " and " force " and " order," up- 
 ward out of all the meshes of materialism to- 
 wards the Infinite and Perfect One. It is logi- 
 cal precision itself that lends wings. The very 
 stones of fact become ethereal, and float us upon 
 the eternal sea. 
 
 Whither, cries the psalmist, whither shall I go 
 from thy spirit, whither shall I flee from thy pres- 
 
GOD. *1 
 
 ence? Wliitlier, indeed! In tlie metaphysical 
 as in the physical world the divine Omnipreseuco 
 is inevitable. If we ascend up into the thin ether 
 of thought, there, in the still rarified atmosphere 
 of ideas, is He. If we make our bed in hell 
 among coarse conceptions and wild, animal pas- 
 sions, there, among sensualists, scoffers, and blas- 
 phemers, a dark, shadowy, brooding terror is He. 
 If we take the wings of the morning and speed 
 away to the uttermost parts of the sea, there, 
 among fossil shells and petrified bones, the skel- 
 etons of monstrous creatures, the hideous wastes 
 and wildernesses of the pre-adamite world, there, 
 in the formless void, there, in the writhing con- 
 volutions of the coohng fire mist, is He, leading 
 and holding with his unseen but omnipotent 
 
 hand. ^ 
 
 But while thus with firm and eager asseveration 
 we declare that God is, with asseveration equally 
 firm and resolute we declare that he is unsearch- 
 able. This is as truly, as universally, a doctrine 
 of rehgion as the other. The old Hebrew Bible 
 is emphatic on this point : " Canst thou by search- 
 ing find out God?" "It is high as heaven: 
 what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what 
 canst thou know ?" " Thy way is in the sea, and 
 thy path in the great waters : thy footsteps are 
 not known." The Christian Scriptures echo the 
 strain : " The Light shone in darkness, and the 
 
42 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 darkness comprehended it not." " No man hath 
 seen God at any time." " Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard." Job is dumb, hxys his hand on his 
 mouth, and says penitently, " I have spoken what 
 I did not understand, what I did not know." 
 The psalmist exclaims, " Such knowledge is too 
 wonderful for me." The prophet hides his face 
 before the Lord. 
 
 Christian teachers have with one voice pro- 
 claimed the doctrine of a hidden God. It was 
 the background of every other doctrine. The 
 eloquent language of Hooker embodies in devout 
 and tender phrase the thought of generations of 
 theologians, divines, and mystics : " It is danger- 
 ous for the feeble brain of man to wade far into 
 the doings of the Most High, whom, although to 
 know be life, and joy to make mention of his 
 name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know 
 that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can 
 know him, and that our safest eloquence concern- 
 ing him is our silence, whereby we confess with- 
 out confession that his glory is inexplicable, his 
 greatness beyond our capacity and reach." Henry 
 Mansell, the champion of the severest orthodoxy, 
 writes, " The conception of the Absolute and In- 
 finite, from whatever side we view it, appears en- 
 compassed with contradictions. There is a con- 
 tradiction in supposing such an object to exist, 
 and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to 
 
OOD. 43 
 
 exist. There is a coutradiction iu couceiving it 
 as one, and there is a contradiction iu conceiving 
 it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiv- 
 ing it as personal, and there is a contradiction in 
 conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot, ^\ithout 
 contradiction, be represented as active, nor, with- 
 out equal contradiction, be represented as inac- 
 tive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all 
 existence ; nor yet can it be conceived as a part 
 only of that sum." With equal force and solem- 
 nity Herbert Spencer, whom the unreflecting 
 call a foe to religion, writes, " In all directions 
 our investigations bring us face to face with an 
 insoluble enigma ; and we ever more clearly per- 
 ceive it to be an insoluble enigma. We learn at 
 once the greatness and littleness of the human 
 intehect, — its power in dealing with all that comes 
 within the range of experience, its impotence in 
 dealing with all that transcends experience. We 
 realize with a special vividness the utter incom- 
 prehensibleness of the simplest fact considered in 
 itself. The scientific man, more truly than any 
 other, knows that in its essence nothing can be 
 known." Thus from all sides comes the same 
 confession. Thus in all places we see all sorts of 
 men building altars to the unknown and unknow- 
 able God. From the orthodox dogmatist, who 
 afl&rms that " a God understood would be no God 
 at all," that " to think that God is, as we can 
 
44 THE RELIGION Ot HUMANITY. 
 
 tliiuk him to be, is blasphemy," to the Unitarian 
 believer, who says, " Until we touch upon the 
 mysterious we are not in contact with religion, 
 nor are any objects reverently regarded by us ex- 
 cept such as from their nature or their vastness 
 are felt to transcend our comprehension," the tes- 
 timony is unanimous. 
 
 Every seeker brings back the same report. 
 Science scales all heights and sounds all abysses, 
 counts the stars, turns over the granite leaves of 
 the globe's history, bathes in the light of the 
 morning and broods amid the shadows of the 
 evening, and comes back from ocean ca-\ erns and 
 mountain peaks, from beds of fossils, and from 
 the silvery pavement of the milky Avay, with the 
 same unvarying message : " There are footprints, 
 but He that made them could not be found." 
 
 Intellect takes up the quest. The designed 
 shows the Designer. But what does the appar- 
 ently undesigned show ? The watchmaker makes 
 a w^atch : but who makes the gold, the platinum, 
 the steel, the diamond ? Who sets on foot the 
 laws that bid its mechanism run ? The watch- 
 maker puts things nicel}'*together : but whence 
 came the things ? Whence came the properties 
 in the metals and springs? Whence came the 
 possibility of their doing anything when put 
 together '? Whence came the watchmaker ? 
 Whence the watchmaker's brain ? AVhence the 
 
ODD. 45 
 
 tingling sensation that be calls thought ? Again 
 the hand is upon the mouth. 
 
 The heart sends out over the waste of waters 
 the dove of its tender feeling ; but the wearied 
 wing finds no resting place on the boundless bil- 
 low. The timid bird hurries back to its home, in 
 its mouth no message, but an olive branch, the 
 symbol of peace. 
 
 With sturdy resolution conscience goes forth to 
 sound the dim and perilous way. But the scent 
 is lost amid the jungles and rocky pas-jes of the 
 world. Terrified by the glare of the tiger, the 
 spring of the leopard, the coil of the serpent, the 
 sting of the reptile, horror stricken by triumphant 
 iniquity and bleeding equity, shocked at seeing a 
 Tiberius on the throne and a Jesus on the cross, 
 Nero an emperor and Epictetus a slave, it loses 
 the thread of the moral law, and recoils from 
 problems it cannot confront. With the lamp of 
 duty pressed faithfully against its bosom, it stands 
 with bended head and waits. 
 
 Boldest of all, the soul plumes her wings of 
 faith for a flight to the very empp-ean itself. 
 Her pinions of aspu'ation bear her above the 
 earth ; she distances vision, outruns the calcula- 
 tions of the mathematician, leaves time and space 
 behind, with open eye looks steadily at the sun. 
 But the sun itself is a shadow. Light there is, a 
 shoreless ocean of hght, atmospheres glowing 
 
46 TEE RELiaiON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 with its radiance, throbbing with its gracious un- 
 dulations ; on its waves she floats serenely ; in its 
 silence she rests at peace. But no voice breaks 
 the silence, no form of creative godhead walks on 
 the sea of glory. The soul must be content to 
 find a home as wide as infinite thought, as warm 
 as eternal love ; but never to see the fashioner of 
 it, never to find the soft bosom of the mother in 
 whose breast it can nestle. She dwells in a castle 
 of air, built by the vapors exhaled from tears, and 
 made gorgeous by the upward-slanting light of 
 her hope. 
 
 But of what possible use can such a God as 
 this be? some will ask. " A hidden God !" "A 
 God unknown and unknowable !" "A God who 
 sends no private message and receives no private 
 audiences !" Against the assertion of the Chris- 
 tian theologian that a God understood would be 
 no God at all is set the protest of the Christian 
 sentimentalist that a God not understood is no 
 God at all. 
 
 But the conception of God simply as being, the 
 bare intellectual conception of him — the less defi- 
 nite, in some respects, the better — is of vast mo- 
 ment to the life of mankind. 
 
 I. Mentally. The thought that tlie upper 
 spheres of the world are filled with Mind is of 
 immense value. It spreads a firmament, and 
 gems it with stars. Suppose for a moment that the 
 
OOD. 47 
 
 visible heavens were blotted out ; that there was 
 no morniug radiance and no evening glow ; that 
 no morning or evening star shot its beam out of 
 the twihght ; that no planet wandered, and no 
 constellation blazed. To the cultivated man the 
 loss would be immeasurable ; but to the boorish 
 man it would be immeasurable, too. Though he 
 knew nothing about the heavens, never saw a tel- 
 escope, never heard of astronomy, only thought 
 of the morning as caUing him to labor, only 
 thought of the evening as permitting him to rest, 
 never gazed with other than blankest wonder at 
 *' the majestical arch fretted with golden fires "— 
 still, that all-covering canopy being taken away, 
 that luminous immensity being abolished, that 
 far-off, spreading, encompassing mystery being 
 withdrawn, the rudest mind would be deprived of 
 a sense of grandeur it never accounted for or was 
 conscious of, but never could be quite unimpressed 
 by. The sense of a space overhead peopled with 
 moving though never approaching orbs ; the feel- 
 ing of a fathomless upper world, bright and sha- 
 dowy by turns, by turns calm and convulsed, 
 lowering with portentous storms and serene with 
 bottomless depths of blue ; the field of light, the 
 battle-gi-ound of clouds — could not be taken away 
 without leaving the mind impoverished and de- 
 pressed. 
 
 The Koman poet described the difference be- 
 
48 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tween man and the lower creatures by saying, " He 
 gave to man an uplifted countenance, and bade 
 bim survey the sky." He was thinking only of 
 the ethereal vault. But let those eternal spaces 
 be thought of as filled with eternal mind, and 
 what an expansion the human intelligence receives ! 
 Naturalists have accustomed us to look downward 
 for our origin, to trace our ancestry in the ape, 
 and, further back still, in the kangaroo and the 
 crocodile. But if such were our progenitors, the 
 sooner they are forgotten the better. There is 
 small benefit in bathing in primeval oceans, plash- 
 ing about in preadamite ooze, rehearsing the ex- 
 periences of the cave and jungle, reproducing the 
 sensations of prehensile claws and caudal extre- 
 mities. If we cannot deny our ignoble origin, we 
 can at least forbear to speak of it. If we cannot 
 get the baboon out of our blood, we can at least 
 get him out of our imagination. We need not 
 be forever looking into the skeleton pit. Does 
 the lily think of its stem? Does the century- 
 plant draw its glory from its twisted, uncouth 
 stalk? What if we are natural products, shall 
 we never ask for air and light ? What if we are 
 plants sucking juices from slimy and most unfra- 
 grant compost, will the plant live without at- 
 mosphere and sunshine ? Will the shrub flourish 
 in a cellar ? It requires the upper world for sus- 
 tenance as much as the lower. Tlie leaves spread 
 
GOD. 49 
 
 out their hands to heaven to catch the descending 
 sunbeam, and open every one of their myriad 
 pores to arrest the passing breath of that spirit 
 which bloweth as it listeth. The mere thought 
 of a supernal intelhgence is such a sunbeam. 
 The bare conception of a brooding will is such 
 an atmosphere. The very idea that the source of 
 life is above, and not below, that tlie creative 
 power descends before it ascends, that the streams 
 of energy that trickle underground and burst up 
 in springs have their origin in vapors that gather 
 on the invisible, unapproachable summits of the 
 mountains of the dawn, the very imagination of 
 a Being who is a celestial spirit, and not a tel- 
 luric force or world demon — ^puts the mind in a 
 noble attitude. If the word " God " did nothing 
 but make us look up, and not down, it would de- 
 serve a place in the vocabulary of mankind ; for 
 it would break the tyranny of organization, and 
 would open the " eastern windows of divine sur- 
 prise." 
 
 II. In the next place, the importance of the 
 thought of God, and especially the thought of a 
 hidden God, is of inestimable value to the spirit- 
 ual nature which aspires, worships, adores. " It 
 is the (jlo)'u of God to conceal a thing," says 
 the wise Solomon. " Verily thou art a God that 
 hidest thyself, O God of Israel, our Saviour!" 
 exclaims the prophet. The woods were God's 
 
50 TRE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 first temples, because they were full of baffling 
 shadows. The evening hour is the hour of con- 
 templation, for it is the dim, vague, misty time 
 when observation ceases and wonder begins. The 
 imagination lives in the undefined. If we knew 
 all about God we should need another being to 
 adore. If we could see him we should desire to 
 see behind him. The God who is familiar is un- 
 impressive. In China, relates a traveller, " if the 
 people, after long praying to their images, do not 
 obtain what they desire, they turn them off as 
 impotent gods ; give them hard names, and heap 
 blows upon them. " How now, dog of a spirit !" 
 they cry ; " we give you lodging in a magnificent 
 temple, we gild you handsomely, feed you well, 
 and offer incense to you : yet, after all this care, 
 you are so ungrateful as to refuse us what we 
 ask." Whereupon they fasten cords to him, pull 
 liim down, and drag him along the streets, through 
 mud and over dunghills, to punish him for the ex- 
 pense of perfume they have wasted on him. If, 
 in the meantime, it happens that they obtain their 
 request, then, with much ceremony, they wash 
 him clean, carry him back, set him in his niche 
 again, and make excuses for what they have done. 
 " To tell the truth," they say, " we were somewhat 
 too hasty : but what is done cannot be undone. 
 Let us say no more about it : if you will forget 
 what is past, we will gild you over again." 
 
ODD. 51 
 
 In proportiou as they claim to be t'oiniliar with 
 their Deity, meu become irreverent towards him. 
 Mr. Spurgeon talks with God in prayer as a driv- 
 ing business man iu need of a loan talks to a 
 wealthy friend. He seizes the balustrade before 
 him with both hands, and puts his case with a 
 directness that seems quite sure of its object ; 
 " We have not much to give you," he says, with 
 honest frankness, " only five barley loaves and a 
 few small fishes, but you can feed us with them." 
 The divine, who understands God's secret pur- 
 poses, peddles out the mysteries of creation as 
 deftly as the keeper of a booth at a village fair. 
 Here is tlie prayer of a sainted English divine — 
 he is praying for his two children who are dan- 
 gerously ill : "If the Lord will be pleased to grant 
 me this my request concerning my cliildren, I will 
 not say as the beggars at our door use to do, 
 ' I'll never ask anything of you again ;' but, on the 
 contrary, thou shalt hear oftener from me than 
 ever : and I will love thee better as long as I live." 
 Compare this with the prayer of the theist Socra- 
 tes : " Grant that I may be inwardly pure and 
 that my lot may be such as shall best agree with 
 a right disposition of the mind." The first is the 
 petition of a man whose God is known ; the 
 second, the petition of a man whose God is hid. 
 The fii'st is the supplication of the man who 
 Mould have God do his will : the second is the , 
 
62 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 petition of a man wlio bows before the divine, in- 
 scrutable Avill. As definition becomes sharp, de- 
 voutness disappears. The soul places God in the 
 background of existence, not in the foreground : 
 as the centre of mystery, the quickener of awe 
 and trust, the inspirer and minister of the devout 
 affections, the object towards which faith strains 
 its eye, on which hope leans, beneath which 
 patience sits, as the sum of possibility, the goal of 
 perfection. He is needed there. We meet the 
 infinite, as Adam in Eden did, among the shadows 
 at the cool close of the day ; as the patriarch did, 
 when the dews were falling and the dusk was 
 creeping on ; in the weird eerie hour which -belongs 
 neither to the night which is to fold in our un- 
 consciousness, nor to the day that has been guid- 
 ing our steps, — the hour when little is seen and 
 much suggested, little discovered, but much felt'; 
 when palpable objects are becoming dimmer, and 
 the boundless impalpable is becoming each in- 
 stant more thickly sown with stars. 
 
 The most unintelligible sayings about God are 
 the most impressive to the religious mind : " God 
 is spirit ;" "In him we live and move and have 
 our being ;" " God is a circle whose centre is 
 everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere ;" 
 " I am alpha and omega ;" " I am the grandsire 
 and preserver of the world ; I am. the holy one 
 worthy to be known ; I am the comforter, the wit- 
 
OOD. 53 
 
 ness, the resting-place, the asylum and the friend . 
 T am generation and dissolution, the place where 
 all things are deposited, and the inexhaustible 
 seed from which all things spring." A Christian 
 minister found one of his parishioners, in a time 
 of deep bereavement, comforting her heart with 
 the mystical phrases of a pantheistical hymn. 
 The vague words that defied the understanding 
 had an unspeakable charm for the imagination ; 
 she did not want to think ; she did not want to 
 feel ; she wanted to be hushed and quieted, and 
 the soft, fleecy language folded her sore heart 
 about with sweetest consolation. 
 
 Humility and meekness and patience are chil- 
 dren of the hidden God. The noble dignity of 
 slience and reserve, the calm of the high soul, is 
 from this meditation. To him worship is ren- 
 dered. In the gracious dusk of his omnipresence 
 the weary heart finds repose. " He is nearer to 
 thee,' said the oriental, " than thou art to thyself." 
 " Withdraw both feet, one from this world, the 
 other from the next, and thou art with him." 
 What does such language say to the understand- 
 ing? Nothing. What does it say to the imagina- 
 tion? Everything. 
 
 III. Finally, it is the thought of the hidden 
 God that strengthens. It strengthens because, 
 while it kindles the imagination and exalts senti- 
 ment, it leaves will and endeavor free. It gives 
 
54 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 men free play iu the world tliey live in. The 
 development of individual character, the progress 
 of society demand this. The living world of use 
 and knowledge we must have to ourselves. The 
 world of circumstance and responsibility, of cul- 
 ture and duty, of study and growth, must be ours ; 
 ours to investigate and to comprehend ; ours to 
 conform to or to force into conformity with our- 
 selves ; ours to do battle in, to conquer, to shape ; 
 ours as a school of instruction, a laboratory of ex- 
 periment, a field of toil, a home of affection. There 
 must be no spot too holy to be trodden, no peak 
 too sacred to be scaled, no depth too awful to 
 sound, no laws too solemn to be questioned, no 
 book too divine to criticise, no institution too ven- 
 erable to be altered, no creed too full of inspira- 
 tion to be submitted to the search of reason. Man 
 must be free, nay, must be compelled to do his 
 own work, without interference from spectres. 
 The intruding Gc^d mars his own best creation. 
 If God is at hand to perform our tasks, reform 
 our faults, save us from the consequences of our 
 blunders, moral discipline is at an end. If He 
 answers questions, human wit will decay. If He 
 makes laws, judgment will perish. If He sets 
 boundaries, progress is stopped. If He writes 
 books, genius is stultified. If He plants institu- 
 tions, the organizing power is of no use. "Who 
 will attempt the overthrow of evils that God sends, 
 
OOD. 55 
 
 or the redress of wrongs that He permits, or the 
 correction of abuses that He approves, or the 
 removal of superstitions that He encourages? 
 Enough that He inspires will and braces endeavor 
 and makes glorious the dream of possibility and 
 sets the universe to the music of eternal law. 
 Enough that He is at the centre, that He is the 
 circumference also. The assurance that He is 
 there gives us perfect confidence in the world we 
 live in, a sense of absolute security, a complete 
 i'aith that nothing can befall amiss to him who 
 obeys the benignant rule of the invisible and 
 eternal, but permanent and immanent Father of 
 the universe 
 
m. 
 
 BIBLE. 
 
 T)IBLE, as everybody knows, means "book." 
 ^-^ The Bible is the book, the special book, the 
 book of books, the holy or divine book, the re- 
 vealing word, the book that, in a peculiar manner, 
 discloses the thought and will of Deity. 
 
 The idea of revelation is primary in religion. 
 God must reveal himself. It is as necessary as it 
 is that water should flow or light shine or force 
 act. It is the nature of water to flow and lic:lit 
 to shine. He cannot remain concealed. Without 
 expression there is no thought. Thought and ex- 
 pression are simultaneous. The divine being and 
 the divine existence cannot be even contemplated 
 separately. To be is to exist. To have life is to 
 impart life. Thus the universe is the embodied 
 thought of the Creator. It is God's frozen breath. 
 " God said, ' Let there be light ! ' " and light loas. 
 In a flash, thought became speech and speech 
 became fact ; the three were one. Creation is the 
 visible demonstration of the Creator. The heavens 
 declare his glory ; the firmament showeth the 
 
BIBLE. 57 
 
 work of his hands. Day shouts tidings of him 
 today ; uight breathes knowledge of him tonight. 
 There is no articuLate speech nor language, their 
 voice is not heard ; but their sourcI, their signifi- 
 cance, is felt in all the ends of the earth. The 
 dust of the streets illustrates his order ; the stones 
 proclaim his law ; the flowers preach his beauty ; 
 the elements declare the flowing beneficent sym- 
 metry of his will; atoms, as well as suns, an- 
 nounce the even equity of his decrees. Tell more 
 than he tells, show more than he shows, give more 
 than he gives, He cannot. To use the expression 
 of Goethe, nature is " the garment we see him 
 by," not the mask that conceals him. Who now 
 questions that the world is animated, quick with 
 living powers, burning with intelligence, glowing 
 with passion, throbbing with emotion, crowded 
 with intentions ? AVho thinks now of a dead uni- 
 verse, of a mechanical world? The old phrase 
 "iuauimatc creation" is falling into disuse; for 
 matter itself, hon, rock, diamond, is discovered to 
 have no dead particle, but to be the visionary rai- 
 ment that clothes for the moment invisible and 
 imponderable force. It is nothing : it only seems 
 to be. How foolish the notion that one can be 
 imprisoned in nature ! As well talk of being in- 
 carcerated in light! IntelUgence does not con- 
 fine, it emancipates. 
 
 The old conception of matter as a dull, hard, 
 
58 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 stubborn substance, which divine power tried to 
 manipulate, has been dispelled. Chemistry, that 
 searching philosopher, has given us a new one, 
 which ShakesjDeare seems to have anticipated in 
 the great lines, — 
 
 ' ' And , like the baseless fabric of this vision 
 The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples , the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded. 
 Leave not a wrack behind." 
 
 But this symbolic revelation does not satisfy 
 the ordinary, unobservant, undiscerning, unintelli- 
 gent mind. It requires a sensitive and trained 
 perception, such as only the few possess. It is 
 enough for an Agassiz, a Huxley, a Darwin, or a 
 Spencer. The man of science needs nothing 
 more, for he lives among the living laws ; he is 
 conscious every moment of the intimate relation 
 between himself and the subtile forces that weave 
 the investiture of God. His finger is laid on the 
 very pulse of creation. He holds in his hand the 
 connecting threads of the perpetually vital cosmos. 
 Why should he not bo satisfied who dwells in the 
 •' Real Presence ?" 
 
 This revelation is enough for the poet ; for the 
 poet's eye sees beauty everywhere. He says, 
 " Not the sun nor the summer, but every hour and 
 
BIBLE. 69 
 
 season yields its tribute of delight." "la the 
 woods I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no 
 disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes,) which 
 nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare 
 ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and up- 
 lifted into infinite space, all mean egotism van- 
 ishes. I am nothing ; I see all ; the currents of 
 the universal Being circulate through me. I am 
 the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty ; I 
 am part and particle of God." " The active en- 
 chantment reaches my dust ; I dilate and conspire 
 with the morning wind." The man who feels 
 thus in the presence of nature needs no other rev- 
 elation. The symbols interpret themselves to his 
 awakened mind. 
 
 But this high privilege of discernment is not for 
 the many. To the many nature is a blank. It 
 discloses nothing. Its supreme glories dazzle and 
 overpower. The landscape that enchants a 
 Coleridge, a Shelley, or a Buskin is too much for 
 the peasant who lives in the midst of it. To the 
 artist and poet Switzerland is full of enchant- 
 ments ; it satisfies, exalts, enraptures. But to 
 the habitual dweller in Switzerland, to the native 
 there, the landscape is oppressive and discourag- 
 ing. The Swiss is, perhaps, the least interesting 
 personage in Europe. He blackens in the gloom 
 of his mountains, and is not radiant in their 
 glory. In gorgeous climes the contrast between 
 
60 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 nature and liumanity is paiufiil ; the eye is liter- 
 ally blasted by the vision it cannot understand. 
 
 Hence the cry heard all over the earth for a 
 spoken voice, an articulate word, a revelation to 
 the ear, a message to the average mind, an intelli- 
 gible communication which cannot be mistaken. 
 Such a revelation people claim to have in their 
 bibles. Every race above the savage has its bible. 
 Each of the great religions of mankind has its 
 bible. The Chinese pay homage to the wise words 
 of Confucius ; the Brahmans prize their Vedas ; 
 the Buddhists venerate their Pitikas and many 
 other scriptures in Sanscrit ; the Zoroastrians 
 cherish their Avesta ; the Scandinavians their 
 Eddas ; the Greeks their oracles and the songs of 
 their mighty bards. The books of the Old Tes- 
 tament constitute the bible of the Hebrews ; the 
 books of the New Testament constitute the bible 
 of the Christians. To each race and religion its 
 own bible is best, because intelligible to it, most 
 in sympathy with its genius. 
 
 These books contain the highest and deepest 
 thoughts respecting man's relations with the Infi- 
 nite above him, with his fellows around, and with 
 the mystery of his own inward being. There are 
 found the purest expressions of faith and hope, 
 the finest aspirations after truth, the sweetest 
 sentiments of confidence and trust, hymns of 
 praise, proverbs of wisdom, readings of the moral 
 
BIBLR 61 
 
 law, interpretations of providence, studies in the 
 workings of destiny, rules of worship, directions 
 for piety, prayers, prophecies, sketches of saintly 
 character, narratives of holy lives, lessons in de- 
 voutness, humility, patience, and charity. They 
 express the whole upward and inward tendency of 
 the mind. Nothing has place in them that is not 
 felt to concern the soul. The Vcdas abound, it is 
 true, in matter so dry and dusty to us that we can- 
 not read it ; but it is all important to the Hindoo. 
 The Old Testament contains long books of dreary 
 chronicle and fanciful legend, and at least one love 
 song, — the " Song of Solomon." But the chron- 
 icles are read as solemn reports of the providence 
 that works in the history of nations, the legends 
 are credited with hidden meanings, and the love 
 song is spiritualized into a holy allegory. The 
 New Testament contains many things we never 
 care to read, and it closes with a wild, stormy 
 book that is anything but edifying to the modern 
 religious mind. But the allegorical interpretation 
 glorifies all it touches, and changes the coarse 
 images into divine symbols. To the believers in a 
 religion its own bible is inspired, however unin- 
 spired parts of it may seem to others. 
 
 But why should the Christian Bible be limited 
 to the writings included in the New Testament? 
 The creative power of the religion was not ex- 
 hausted, surely, by the first two centuries. These 
 
62 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 are the earliest scriptures, but not the deepest nor 
 the richest. They are the first attempts at ex- 
 pression, — the spiritual primer of the faith, sim- 
 ple, fragmentary, incoherent, with flashes of 
 splendor, and exquisite touches of beauty, but no 
 intellectual or spiritual completeness. The genius 
 of the religion has been gaining in clearness and 
 fullness as the centuries went by, and out of its 
 more enlightened mind, its profouuder experience, 
 its wiser heart, its sweeter and more divinely kin- 
 dled soul, strains have poured so strong and 
 clear, so sweet and ravishing, so tender and pa- 
 thetic that, compared with them, the writings of 
 the New Testament are but as feeble, passionate 
 utterances of a newly-born soul. If that is justly 
 to be regarded as the bible of Christendom which 
 voices Christian thought and feeling in greatest 
 purity, then other names must stand at the head 
 of its chapters than those of Paul or James or 
 John, of Matthew, Mark or Luke, who set down 
 the thoughts that struggled for utterance in the 
 excited breasts of the earliest converts. The 
 scriptures that did full justice to the Christianity 
 of Palestine and Asia are not an adequate ex- 
 ponent of the Christianity that has existed in 
 worlds then undiscovered* We run over the list 
 of those who have given expression to Christian 
 sentiments since the apostles fell asleep, and the 
 religion became detached from the crude elements 
 
BIBLE. 63 
 
 that clung to it in its early epochs, and the names 
 call up master minds by the score. Fenelon, 
 Augustine, More, Francis de Sales, Behmen, Tau- 
 ler, Gerhardt, Swedenborg, Baxter and Brewster, 
 Hall and Fuller and Hooker, Vaughan and Her- 
 bert, South, Leighton, Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Sir 
 Thomas Browne, Channing, Dewey, Martiueau — 
 where do we find such various, complete, lofty 
 expression of the peculiar sentiments of the 
 Christian faith as these and their brethren in 
 every generation and in every church pour forth ? 
 These, and sucli as these, sounded the spiritual 
 deeps of the faith, developed its thoughts, searched 
 its secrets, tested its capacities, basked in its sun- 
 shine, felt the rushing wind of its inspiration, ex- 
 perienced the full measure of its joys. They were 
 preachers, prophets and psalmists indeed, worthy 
 the name. It is but an imperfect bible for Chris- 
 tendom in which the best words of John Bunyan 
 and John Milton, of Henry More and Henry 
 Vaughan, of EUery Channing and Theodore Par- 
 ker have no place. It is but an incomplete bible 
 that contains the "Apocalypse" and excludes 
 Pante ; that admits the mysticism of John and 
 has no place for the richer mysticism of Tauler 
 and Madame Guion. Bible writers are of no sect. 
 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and wherever 
 it blows it consecrates. The Christian Bible is 
 not finished, nor will it be finished until the 
 
64 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Cliiistian heart ceases to glow with emotion, until 
 the Christian conscience ceases to bear witness to 
 moral truth, until the Christian spirit of aspiration 
 burns low ; when its knowledge shall have passed 
 away and its tongues shall have ceased, then, 
 and not until then, will its canon of inspired and 
 inspiring scriptures be closed and sealed, and then 
 the religion will 4iave lost its power to quicken. 
 
 But the Bible of Christendom, be it made ever 
 so comprehensive in its way, will not satisfy the 
 wants of humanity. The lieligion of Humanity 
 must have a broader one. The conception of a 
 Bible of Humanity has latel}^ been in many minds. 
 In the meetings of the Free Religious Association 
 it has been commended. Friends of the idea on 
 which the Association is founded have made care- 
 ful studies towards it. One scholar has been 
 toiling long in the library of the British Museum 
 collecting and sifting the materials of which it 
 might be composed. The project, if project it 
 can be called — it is no more as yet than a fancy — 
 contemplates a collection of the pearls of thought 
 from the scriptures of all nations, the classification 
 and arrangement of them, and their publication as 
 a comprehensive Book of the Soul, which shall 
 meet the wants of the large and increasing multi- 
 tude who need a more copious supply of sj^iritual 
 food than can be furnished by the religious litera- 
 ture of any people. The idea is exceedingly at- 
 
BIBLE. 65 
 
 tractive to the generous minds and hospitable 
 hearts of modern liberals. It is of a piece with 
 the broad thinking, the warm sympathetic feeling, 
 the fervent aspirations after unity that character- 
 ize peculiarly the new epoch of faith. It is ra- 
 tional, too ; for if it be once conceded that the 
 bibles of the race are, like their literature, expres - 
 sions of the human mind in its natural moods, it 
 must follow directly that all these expressions, 
 supposing them to be equally genuine, are of equal 
 validity. If of equal sincerity they are of equal 
 value. No race has the monopoly of religious 
 faith or of religious expression, of aspiration, joy, 
 praise, moral reverence. Emotions of gratitude, 
 virtues of loyalty and truth, graces and patience, 
 meekness, humility, are as respectable and be au- 
 tiful in Persia as in Palestine, on the plains of In- 
 dia or the steppes of Tartary, as in the fields of 
 Galilee or on the Mount of Olives. Prayer 
 breathed under the shadow of the Himalayas is as 
 venerable and acceptable as praj-er breathed un- 
 der the shadow of Sinai, or beneath the olives of 
 Gethsemane. Religious emotion, however various 
 in mood or complexion, is of essentially the same 
 stuff and uses substantially the same forms of 
 speech. Every living soul touches India and 
 China and Egypt and Judea in the course of its 
 inward experiences, and in hours of devotion 
 finds itself perfectly at home with the devotees, 
 
66 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 prophets, teacliers, saints and sages of every clime 
 and people. The variety of genius and tempera- 
 ment in the several races of mankind, instead of 
 making their spiritual sympathy impracticable, 
 simply makes it rich and enchanting. It enables 
 them to voice all the changes of key in the per- 
 petually varying moods of the soul, to do full jus- 
 tice to every shade of sound, to satisfy the possi- 
 ble hunger of every heart. It is not unreason- 
 able, therefore, but quite the contrary-, to medi- 
 tate the assemblage, on equal terms, of the vital 
 scriptures of all lands. They are peers and they 
 are brothers ; though bearing different names, 
 and clothed in different garments of speech, and 
 decorated with different orders of imagery, they 
 are all members of the same royal and priestl}' 
 family. 
 
 Such a conception of the Bible of Humanity 
 has a fine significance, too, in view of that ulti- 
 mate pacification of religions of which ''the san- 
 guine dream and for which the enthusiastic hope. 
 The battles of the bibles are the most terrible to 
 contemplate. They are battles of inspiration 
 with itself ; the divine word is disputatious and 
 self- contradictory : the Holy Spirit tears and 
 wounds its own heart ; God denies his own affir- 
 mation, flings defiance into his own face. If we 
 could make the bibles of the world take hands, 
 the worshippers of the bibles would; ere long, 
 
BIBLE. 67 
 
 drop their swords. Could it once be fairly shown 
 that the texture of sentiment in them all is the 
 same ; that when either of them makes its domi- 
 nant chord ring clear, the others respond by a low 
 murmur or a joyous chime ; that the water of life 
 in them sparkles clear as crystal in all their jars, 
 vases, and communion-cups, and that, whatever 
 the shape of the vessel the believer drinks from, 
 he always drinks the same elixir and always ex- 
 periences the same exhilaration — could this be 
 fairl}- illustrated, as it would be by a collection of 
 the most expressive texts, the bitter old rivalries 
 of faith would receive a strong rebuke. Zealots 
 could not justify any longer their hateful intoler- 
 ance. If jealousy and hate continued, they 
 would do it in direct defiance of the authority to 
 which they pretend to bow. People who read 
 the same bible may hate each other, not, how- 
 ever, as readers of the bible. That is the stand- 
 ing argument against their hate ; and to that ar- 
 gument hate will sometimes yield. The simulta- 
 neous reading of the same bible by all who read 
 any bible at all would, at all events, aid in the es- 
 tablishment of a genuine Truce of God. 
 
 To this scheme of a Bible of Humanity it has 
 been objected that bibles cannot be manufactured. 
 True : but canons of scripture can be arranged 
 with deliberate selection of materia-ls. This was 
 done in the case of the Hebrew canon by the 
 
68 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 learned men who decided "wliat writings should be 
 admitted and wdiat excluded. It was done in the 
 case of the Christian canon, the greatest care be- 
 ing taken to cull out frpm a large mass of litera- 
 ture the books that have been preserved under the 
 name of " New Testament," and to arrange them 
 in order as they stand. It is simply proposed to 
 do the same thing on a more extended scale. No- 
 body thinks of manufacturing a bible, but only of 
 arranging and classifying one. The materials 
 exist, and only wait to be combined. The bible 
 is written, and only waits for an editor. Nor 
 would the process of selection be difficult but for 
 the immense extent of the literature to be sur- 
 veyed ; for the crucibles of time have been at 
 work so long that the gold is well separated from 
 the alloy ; the gems are ready pohshed for the 
 setting. 
 
 Still, noble as this conception of a Bible of 
 Humanity is, it fails to meet the full demand of 
 the enlightened mind. And for this reason : The 
 bibles of the world express too exclusively the 
 tec/nncdJh/ religious, the theological attitudes, and 
 devotional moods of the mind. They consist too 
 exclusively of hymns and prayers, of pious alle- 
 gories and symbols, literal precepts, proverbs, and 
 maxims of duty. They have a peculiar luonotony 
 about them which fatigues. Their atmosphere is 
 too highly rarefied for general wholesome breath- 
 
BIBLE. 69 
 
 ing. They do not so much bring divine things 
 near as hold them up before the eye, out of the 
 hand's reach. Their lofty tone is discouraging to 
 ordinary emotion, which cannot attempt such 
 ethereal ilights, and takes refuge in literatures 
 that live closer down to the ground. A man's 
 bible should be next his heart ; so close to his 
 best sentiments that it will put him into immediate 
 relations with divine things, while yet he is sitting 
 at his door. It should be to him the most natural 
 book, not the most unnatural ; the easiest, not the 
 most difficult, for him to read ; the freshest and 
 sweetest, not the " best preserved " merely ; the 
 perennially living, not the " providentially trans- 
 mitted." 
 
 It is an open secret that neither the Old nor the 
 New Testament meets this requirement. Our 
 Bible is much less read than its reputation- would 
 seem to imply, or its place in the regards of Chris- 
 tendom to render imperative. It is more praised 
 than perused, more celebrated than studied. It is 
 diligently circulated ; it is conspicuously displayed 
 on ornamental shclvo'S and centre tables ; but the 
 familiar converse with it, whore the reading is not 
 made a sacred duty, is not common. And the 
 reason is, that the Bible, taken in its own charac- 
 ter, is too remote from the natural sympathies of 
 men. It is oriental and mystical. They must 
 
70 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITT. 
 
 " get lip " an interest in it wliicli they do not feel 
 and do not know how to cultivate. 
 
 But the thoughts of God should not be remote. 
 We need not go to Jerusalem to find them ; we 
 need not clothe them in oriental language. Bible 
 thoughts are simply best thoughts, and best 
 thoughts may come to the mind when the man is 
 studying, exploring, talking with his neighbors, 
 travelling in Oregon or California, roaming over 
 the fields of history, or spending an hour with his 
 intimate friends. There are books of science 
 that bring the mind into very close proximity to 
 the divine mind, and awaken feelings of the mosf; 
 tender awe and affection. There are books of 
 history that introduce one to the dealings of Pro- 
 vidence with human affairs in such a way that in- 
 telligence seems to be admitted into the very 
 secrets of the divine arrangements, and the soiil 
 is compelled to bow the head and bend the knee 
 as in the presence of the Father who worketh 
 hitherto and always. There are books of biogra- 
 phy, Plutarch's Lives, Carlyle's Cromwell, Fred- 
 erick, Sterling, Lives of Charlotte Bronte, Tho- 
 mas Arnold, Margaret Fuller, Mrs. Ware, Robert 
 Hall, scores of others, that reach the hidden 
 places of the heart, stir noble emotions, exalt 
 ideals of human character, inspire heroism, deepen 
 charit}^ kindle aspiration, give new conception of 
 the dignity of duty and the heavenliness of love. 
 
BIBLK 71 
 
 and open an entirely new sense of the intimate 
 relations between the divine and the human. 
 There are poems that excite the purest feelings of 
 worship, that make the heart tremble with awe, 
 glow with gratitude, soar with ecstasy, burn with 
 enthusiasm, melt with pity, and throb with joy. 
 There are works of fiction by such men as Rich- 
 ter, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray, 
 Marian Evans, to name none but the best, that 
 are more efifective than the Psalms of David, or 
 the idyl of Ruth, or parables from the great 
 Teacher's lips, in engaging interest in the sorrows 
 and joys, the fortunes and misfortunes, the heights 
 and depths, of human life and character. 
 
 "Why are not books -like these worthy of the 
 sacred name of " bible," if they do bible work ? 
 Scriptures there are bearing the names, not of 
 Isaiah, or Solomon, or David, but of Plato, Fichte, 
 Carlyle, Emerson, Spinoza, which rank high in 
 the teaching, cousohng, inspiring, illuminating of 
 the race. Shall they be put down as secular 
 and profane because they were not written in 
 Hebrew and composed in Judea ? Shall the soid 
 reject them on the plea that the writings of 
 Moses are older, that the works of Paul have 
 the authentication of the church? 
 
 No one will, I trust, be so absurd as to im- 
 agine that we advocate the binding all these 
 books, or a selection of them, together in one big 
 
72 THE RELIGION' OF HUMANITY. 
 
 volume, to be called " The Holy Bible of Hu- 
 manity." BiuJing books together between paste- 
 board covers is not necessary to their perform- 
 ance of a very sacred office. They can do their 
 work as well unbound, and even better ; for 
 they can be more easily handled. The putting 
 of our common Bible between covers, and call- 
 ing it the sacred volume, has been productive of 
 great mischief, for it has in a measure helped 
 to take the writings out of the category of litera- 
 ture. By giving the volume a j)eculiar shape, 
 and stamping on it a peculiar mark, the impress- 
 ion was conveyed that it had a singular char- 
 acter. If the collection were distributed through 
 several volumes, and labelled " Early Hebrew 
 Literature," or " Early Christian Literature," the 
 charm would be broken. It is the unity of the 
 volume that keeps up the illusion of unity in its 
 contents. But all scripture is not in the Bible, 
 — could not be in any printed bible ; nor is all 
 that is in the Bible good scripture. We should 
 be thankful to recognize scriptures so many that 
 the thought of binding them up cannot be enter- 
 tained by the most audacious mechanical arts. 
 
 Thus, at all events, one old and pernicious 
 superstition is avoided, — that of reading the 
 whole Bible through as a sacred duty. Our 
 grandfathers did this, and in doing it fancied 
 they had served God well, and earned reward 
 
BIJBLK 73 
 
 in heaven. At least this can be said, that no 
 man can read the Bible of Humanity through. 
 No one need attempt to deal with it as a pious 
 undertaking, a mental pilgrimage, a piece of de- 
 vout job-work. The Bible of Humanity is a 
 literature ; or, rather, an order, a level, a range, 
 of literature, — the literature of the soul. It is 
 found in strata all over the earth. It crops out 
 everywhere, — in all intellectual formation, in every 
 kind of mental rock. It is known at once by 
 two distinct peculiarities which cannot be mis- 
 taken. 
 
 I. It meets common and universal wants. 
 That which we call Bible is not for the few, but 
 for the many. It concerns itself with the prin- 
 ciples that all acknowledge, with moral laws that 
 all confess themselves bound to obey. They ex- 
 press moods of feeling in which all, under certain 
 circumstances, share ; moods of highest feeling 
 which are universal. The Bible, under any view 
 of its comprehensiveness, is not an expression of 
 the wisdom of the worldly wise, whose number is 
 hmited ; nor of the cultivated, who are necessa- 
 rily few ; nor of the privileged in station, who 
 are a class. It is not a book of the reason, deal- 
 ing with pure philosophy ; nor of the intellect, 
 dealing with physical or metaphysical science ; 
 nor of the understanding, dealing with matters of 
 busiuess. It is not a scholar's text-book, if it 
 
74 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 were tlie multitude could not read it ; nor is it 
 a politician's manual, in that case it would liave 
 no meaning for the millions who have no capacity 
 for politics, or no taste for them. It is not a book 
 which may be perused with delight by some par- 
 ticular class of men, antiquarians, for example, 
 historians, poets, or philologists. It is a book of 
 the heart, taking the word "heart" in its most 
 comprehensive sense. It is a book of the moral 
 and religious sentiments, which are, and which 
 alone are, universal, the property and the pe- 
 culiarity of mankind.' The sentiments of adora- 
 tion, veneration, praise, longing, belong to the 
 race everywhere, not in its superior, but also in 
 its inferior condition. We know them to be the 
 staple of all bibles. So identical are they in 
 substance that the very language in which they 
 clothe themselves is the same. Except for a pe- 
 culiarity of coloring, due to the steru Hebrew soil 
 from which they spring, the Psalms of David 
 might be read anywhere on the planet. They 
 are read feelingly and responsively in Chicago 
 and San Francisco, at the opposite extremities of 
 the earth. The magnificent hymn of the Greek 
 Cleanthes Avould not be out of place in the collec- 
 tion of Hebrew songs, less still in the book of 
 Job, or the Old-Testament Apocrypha. The 
 splendid outbursts of Persian adoration would 
 but add to the lustre of the most brilliant passages 
 
BIBLE. 75 
 
 in the prophets. When from time to time I have 
 read as Sunday lessons extracts from the Scrip- 
 tures of India, those who suspected that they were 
 not in our Bible never suggested that they were 
 unworthy of being there. 
 
 The moral sentiment is still more universal in 
 its reach than the religious, because it comes 
 closer to practical experience. The ten command- 
 ments, with a few trifling variations, are written 
 in the sacred codes of the most dissimilar peoples, 
 showing the unity and the ubiquity of the sen- 
 timent of duty. All the bibles contain something 
 like a version of the decalogue. Enunciate the 
 " Golden Eule," and echoes come murmuring 
 from the consciences of men round the globe. The 
 sweetest lessons of charity are repeated over and 
 over by Egyptian and Syrian, by European and 
 Asiatic lips. The heart of mankind grows these 
 natural Howers of every conceivable color and 
 form. The principles that constitute the good 
 life are universal. There is but one essential 
 type of the perfect character. Individual traits 
 may be local or national ; quaUties are differently 
 emphasized, proportioned, and shaded, but the 
 basis is ever the same. 
 
 The literature that is written on the level of 
 these moral and spiritual sentiments is bible 
 literature, human literature, literature of the gen- 
 eral heart. No bible is ht to be called such iJiat 
 
76 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 can be enjoyed by a single tribe or nation, that 
 can be outgrown in a hundred or two of years. 
 If it cannot be translated into many tongues, if 
 it does not meet a response in a world-wide and 
 a world-deep experience, if it is not found native 
 to certain immensely broad strata of human 
 feeling, then it is not bible, and deserves no place 
 in biblical literature. Large portions of the Old 
 Testament are of this character, whole books, in 
 fact, are there which interest none but antiqua- 
 rians ; whole books are there which do not really 
 interest so small a class as these. The New Tes- 
 tament comprises much that is incidental and 
 local, the small concerns of Palestinian or Asi- 
 atic commuuities, trifling matters of dispute, 
 arguments on questions long forgotten, theories 
 and discussions that never concerned many and 
 now concern none, rules of practice that have 
 become obsolete, maxims of conduct that have 
 loct their application, letters addressed to some 
 passing emergency, one poem, the Apocalypse, 
 that is curious as a piece of literature, but of ab- 
 solutely no moment, and of even less than none in 
 a religious point of view, a book that owes its sa- 
 credness to its unintelligibleness. These are not 
 genuine bible, and the infrequency with which 
 they are read, the difficulty of understanduig 
 their meaning, the falling away of sympathy from 
 their contents, proves by the testimony of the 
 
BIBLR 77 
 
 general instinct that tliey do not belong to the 
 class of sacred literature. Bibles must answer 
 to universal needs. 
 
 II. The otlier criterion of the genuine bible lit- 
 erature is that it shall communicate moral power. 
 The test of inspiration is the power to inspire. 
 This is the very definition of inspiration given 
 in the so often misquoted text of " Timothy :" 
 " All scripture, given by inspiration of God, is 
 profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruc- 
 tion in righteousness." Which is as much as 
 saying that the scripture Avhich is not profitable 
 for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in 
 righteousness, is not given by inspiration of God. 
 The compilers of the New Testament omitted 
 very curious books on the ground that they were 
 not thus profitable. Luther spoke contemptu- 
 ously of the Epistle of James, calling it " an 
 epistle of straw," because it treated slightingly 
 the doctrine of justification by faith, which Avas 
 the spiritual battle-cry of the revolt against the 
 Church of Kome. Swedenborg rules out of bible 
 literature the Paaline E[)istles on the ground that 
 they are controversial and didactic writings, and 
 contain no hidden spiritual sense. These judg- 
 ments may both be arbitrary, but the judgment 
 that is not arbiti'ary is the unconsciously exercised 
 judgment of the great multitude of Christian 
 men and women. Examine, if you have oppor- 
 
78 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tunity, the copies of the Bible that are read pri- 
 vately or in the family circle, and see how unerr- 
 ingly the wheat is separated from the chaff. 
 The pencil marks, and the dog's ears, and the 
 prints of fingers are clustered together at the 
 chapters and verses that nourish the heart, fill its 
 emptiness, brace its weakness, solace its loneli- 
 ness, comfort its sorrow, still the tempest of its 
 grief, exalt its confidence, and brighten its hope. 
 These are the living scriptures, and all the rest 
 are dead. 
 
 Tried by this test of power to inspire, what le- 
 gions of volumes, unrecognized and disavowed by 
 Romanist Council and Protestant Bible Society 
 steal from the alcoves of secular Hbraries and 
 quietly range themselves in the line of sacred 
 scriptures — treatises of philosophy some of them, 
 immortal dialogues of Plato, discourses of Socra- 
 tes, poems of Shakespeare, the Brownings, novels 
 like " Adam Bede " and " Romola," which touch 
 the deepest places of the heart. It matters not 
 how the book be called — drama, fiction, epic, bal- 
 lad, lyric, narrative, biography — if it does this 
 work it is holy. If it inspires, it is inspired : the 
 helping word is the divine word. The portal of 
 the famous Alexandrine library bore, we are told, 
 the inscription, " Medicine for the Mind :" that is 
 what the Bible claims to be. Did these ancients 
 suppose that all books wore bibles ? Their libra- 
 
BIBLE. 79 
 
 ries were not then, like ours, full of cheap rubbish 
 in the shape of paper-covered novels and senti- 
 mental verses. Theirs must have been " books 
 that were books." But books that are books are 
 bibles. 
 
 Let one who needs the calm of contemplation 
 take up the poems of Emerson or Tennyson, of 
 Browning or Matthew Arnold, and read almost 
 at random, not lightly passing over " In Memo- 
 riam," and not faiUng to read " Eugby Chapel." 
 For the rousing of the moral nature to earnest 
 purpose and resolve, for the awakening from 
 sleep of the sentiments of truth, sincerity, jus- 
 tice, there is nothing so good as the earlier writ- 
 ings of Thomas Carlyle, the " Sartor Eesartus," 
 " Chartism," " Past and Present," " Tracts for the 
 Times." 
 
 Is a man afflicted with the disease of bigotry, 
 let him trace the progress of religious ideas ; let 
 him muse with Yolney over the ruins of the 
 once magnificent House of the Sun at Baalbec ; 
 let him wander with Layard over the mounds be- 
 neath which time has buried Nineveh's winged 
 bulls ; let him explore the rock chapels of Hin- 
 dostan, desolate now for centuries, or stumble 
 about with Stephens among the sacred monu- 
 ments of Central America, whose history van- 
 ished with the race that used them ; let him en- 
 deavor to find the venerable beliefs of India and 
 
80 THE RELIGION OF BUMANITY. 
 
 Egypt, and to unveil the thoughts that were hid- 
 den within the world-renowned " mysteries " of 
 Greece ; and, seeing how the mightiest priest- 
 hoods have passed away, and the creeds of na- 
 tions been forgotten, he will cease to vex himself 
 about the cobwebs in his neighbor's brain. 
 
 Is he, on the other hand, tormented b}' doubts 
 about Providence, let him take up the narrative of 
 some particular epoch — the story of the Decline of 
 the Roman Empire, the account of the Reformation, 
 of the Thirty Years' War, Carlyle's " History of 
 the French Revolution," and learn from such books 
 that God guides the world with firm hand, al- 
 ways bringing results from causes, and never 
 faihng to raise up the right man at the right 
 hour. 
 
 Does one need peace of mind, there is the de- 
 licious region opened by the writers on natural 
 history, the wonderful economies of trees and 
 plants, the curious structures and habits of ani- 
 mals. Let one visit the Alps with Tyndall, go 
 with Huber among the bees, explore with Mr. 
 White the marvels of the little village of Sel- 
 borne, and the belief will sweetly steal into his 
 mind that the care which watches over beavers 
 and beetles will not desert him, 
 
 For the serious sickness of the mind, for 
 chronic despondency aud deep-seated sorrow , fo 
 loneliness and bereavement, nothing is at once 
 
BIBLK 81 
 
 SO soothing aud so stimulating as biography — the 
 lives of great and good men. These are scrip- 
 tures indeed ! See from them how little a space 
 one sorrow makes in life. See scarce a page, 
 perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, 
 and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond 
 it ! You thought the wing was broken : it was 
 but a featlier that was bruised. See what life 
 leaves behind it when all is done — a summary 
 of positive facts far out of the regions of sor- 
 row and sufTeriug, linking themselves to the be- 
 ing of the world. Read, you who bear about a 
 life-long burden ^vhich you cannot speak of and 
 which no sympathy will aid you to bear — read 
 Talfourd's " Final Memorials of Charles Lamb," 
 and see how sweetly, patiently, thankfully a gen- 
 tle nature can drink a cup bitterer than death. 
 Who can speak of discouragements and griefs 
 in the presence of a man like Frederick Robert- 
 son or a woman like Charlotte Bronte ? AVho 
 can despair of human nature while reading the 
 biography of Fowell Buxton or oi Blanco White 
 or of the Baron Bunson ? Works like these are 
 not numerous, the less, therefore, is the difficulty 
 of finding them when required. The}' stand 
 out from the mass of ephemeral literature like 
 evergreens amid trees that have dropped their 
 leaves, on the ground at the first chill of the aii- 
 tumn. Whole gardens of buttertiy literature per- 
 
82 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 ish anuually as their single season of popularity 
 passes away. Books of mere entertainment, 
 books which give a momentary sensation of 
 pleasure to idle minds, communicating thoughts 
 that engage attention for a few hours, from a 
 few persons ; books of luxury ; books of amuse- 
 ment ; sentimental tales and verses that charm 
 with a pleasing but superficial emotion ; books 
 of polemics and passion flutter and buzz for a 
 moment and are forgotten ; they neither teach, 
 correct, instruct, nor console : the books that do 
 this are eternal. 
 
 When pastor Kobinson addressed the Pil- 
 grims, on the eve of their departure in search 
 of religious freedom, he expressed his conviction 
 that more light would break yet out of God's 
 word. It was a great saying for the time. But 
 a greater saying is given to more modern lips, 
 the expression of a faith that more word will 
 bread out of the light, and that this word will 
 be discovered outside of the heathen and chris- 
 tian scriptures, outside of all so-called bibles, in 
 the mass of those noble literatures which at 
 once give expression to the holiest moods of the 
 mind and nourish them. 
 
iY. 
 
 CHRIST. 
 
 '' I ""HE question for cliscusion now is that of 
 -*- the Christ ; not the Christ of Christianity, 
 that has been talked threadbare, but the Christ of 
 Humanity. God is : that we hold Avith supreme 
 conviction as the central truth of all religion. God 
 exists : that, also, we cling to as a pillar of truth. 
 He expresses himself in the marvellous symbolism 
 of the visible universe ; nature is his manifes- 
 tation. He expresses himself in the loftiest pro- 
 ducts of the human mind ; these we call bible, 
 the written word. Further and more completely 
 he expresses himself in the form of living attributes 
 or qualities, in the form of character. He re- 
 veals himself in human shape and personahty, 
 takes en the aspect of man, — as the theologians 
 say, becomes incarnate ; not an articulate word 
 merely, but an organized being. This has always 
 been felt to be the necessary term of the divine 
 manifestation. Humanity is the highest known 
 form of organized existence. The head of the 
 created universe is man ; the supreme power cul- 
 minates in him ; and the soul of man is his hu- 
 
81 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 manity, his pure human quahty, not his intellect, 
 his genius, his imagination, but his moral char- 
 acter, the sum of his sentiments, dispositions, 
 purposes, will. The race has demanded a deity 
 with affections ; heart and flesh cry out for a 
 living God who sympathizes with human kind, 
 dwells among them, teaches, guides, consoles 
 them, bears their burdens, shares their sufferings, 
 heals their diseases, removes their infirmities, 
 blesses them, serves them, forgives their sin, prom- 
 ises them felicity, opens the way for them to 
 paradise ; a God who by his teaching confirms 
 truth, by his conduct vindicates justice, by his 
 example shows the intrinsic beauty and the price- 
 less worth of virtue ; a God who represents, illus- 
 trates, glorifies the traits that belong to all men 
 and women simply as human beings, without re- 
 gard to condition or endowment ; who is not so 
 much a man as Man. 
 
 Hence the behef in incarnations that prevails 
 and has from time immemorial prevailed wher- 
 ever men have put their thoughts and feelings 
 into the form of religion. In the imaginative 
 faiths of India, these incarnations were numerous. 
 Every faith has had at least one. Buddha is 
 the Christ, the god-man of Buddhism ; Zoroaster 
 and Confucius occupied tliis place in the sys- 
 tems that bear their names. The Hebrew faith 
 had inspired men, teachers and prophets who 
 
CHRIST. 85 
 
 came as near being incarnations of Deitj as tlio 
 severe Jeliovism of Israel would permit ; Christi- 
 anity turns to Jesus as its Christ, its Word made 
 flesh, the only begotten of the Father. Even 
 Mohammedanism, that driest of rehgions, allows 
 Mohammed to occupy a corresponding place in 
 its barren theology. 
 
 But this iucaruate deity is never regarded as 
 an ordinary man. No single specimen of hu- 
 manity will represent him. The god-man is always 
 described as prodigious, supra-huDiau, supra-na- 
 tural, breaking through the confines of individual 
 personality at every point. We read that when 
 Buddha was born, " The Holy King, the Grand 
 Being, turning his eyes towards the East, regarded 
 the vast host of angels, Brahmas and Devas, Yom 
 and Yakhas, Asuras, Gandharvas, Suparnas, Ga- 
 rudas and men ; and they rained flowers and ofier- 
 ings upon him and bowed in adoration, praising 
 him and crying, ' Behold the Excellent Lord to 
 whom none can be compared, to whom there is 
 none superior.' Then, in order, he turned to the 
 other points of the compass, and from each re- 
 ceived the same adoration ; having thus regarded 
 the whole circle of the heavens, he turned to the 
 north, and, gravely marching seven paces, his 
 voice burst forth in the glorious words : ' I am the 
 greatest being in the world, excelling all in the 
 world. There is none superior to me, there is 
 
86 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 none equal to me. This is my last generation. 
 For me there will be no future birth into the 
 world.' Then the ten thousand worlds quaked, 
 the universe was illumined with an exceeding 
 bright light," etc. The storj of Zoroaster is made 
 up of similar marvels. Of the prosaic Confucius 
 it is written by an ardent disciple ; " He may be 
 compared to heaven and earth in their support- 
 ing and containing, their overshadowing and cur- 
 taining all things ; he may be compared to the four 
 seasons in their alternating progress, to the sun 
 and moon in their successive shining. He is the 
 equal of Heaven. Call him the ideal man, how 
 earnest is he ! Call him an abyss, how deep ! 
 Call him heaven, how vast ! " The legends say 
 that in the night when Mohammed came into the 
 world, seventy thousand palaces of rubies and 
 seventy thousand palaces of pearls were built in 
 paradise. A light whose resplendence glorified 
 all Arabia issued with him from his mother's 
 bosom. When he was three years old, two angels 
 opened his side, took out his heart, pressed from 
 it the black drops of sin, and set within him the 
 light of prophec3^ Mohammed saw before and 
 behind ; his saliva sweetened the brine of the 
 ocean ; his drojjs of sweat were like pearls ; his 
 body cast no shadow in moonlight or sunshine ; 
 no insect a2)proached his person. It is related 
 of Jesus that he was born of a virgin ; a star 
 
CHRIST. 87 
 
 leaves its station in the heavens to indicate his 
 birthplace ; kings lay gifts at his feet ; angels 
 tell the news to shepherds, filling the air with 
 their songs and making the wintry moonlight 
 glisten with their shining wings. The pole of 
 heaven stood still, says an Apocryphal writing, 
 the birds shuddered ; sheep in the pasture 
 stopped ; all movements in men and beasts were 
 arrested. Before the wondrous infant, domestic 
 cattle and wild beasts feU down and worshipped ; 
 trees bowed their fruit-laden tops ; idols tumbled 
 from their pedestals ; robbers took to flight ; 
 malignant things were innocent ; the laws of 
 space and time were suspended for his conve- 
 nience ; The God-man was not to be thought of 
 as an ordinary mortal. He was immense, enor- 
 mous ; out of all proportion to the rest of his 
 kind. If you attempt to pour the ocean into a 
 vessel, you must make the vessel large. 
 
 Look at the attributes of the Christ of our 
 theologians. He is described as eternal, omni- 
 present, omniscient, omnipotent, unchangeable, 
 sinless; he is an object of worship, superior to 
 men and angels. He is, though not in the su- 
 preme sense, creator and preserver of the world, 
 of the spn-itual world the highest Lord ; life- 
 giver, mediator, priest, saviour, bestower of bless- 
 ings, forgiver of sins, final judge and rewarder. 
 He is called Son of God, equal with God, di- 
 
88 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 vine. He is all but confounded with tlie infi- 
 nite and absolute Being. The ingenuity of 
 thought has been tasked to the utmost to state 
 the distinction between him and the Father. 
 
 That this language describes no historical per- 
 son should not need to be said. No individual 
 who ever lived, or ever will live, fills out the 
 measure of this portraiture. Jesus certainly did 
 not. His life was that of a simply human be- 
 ing ; his historical career was natural ; his char- 
 acter abounded in deliciously human traits ; he 
 was subject to physical infirmities, hunger, thirst, 
 fatigue ; he professed ignorance on critical occa- 
 sions ; he showed himself unacquainted with 
 matters that enlightened men of his generation 
 knew ; his predictions did not all come to pass ; 
 he suffered in his mind and feelings ; he was 
 often lonely and depressed ; he sought the calm 
 of solitude ; he prayed with an evident sense of 
 need ; he lived much in his afiections, resting in 
 the love of very inferior men and women ; he 
 shrunk from death and wrestled with the agony 
 of it so fearfully that his sweat is described as 
 big with drops of blood. 
 
 The attempt to put Jesus and the Christ to- 
 gether has been made with distinguished ability 
 and desperate persistency, but it never succeed- 
 ed. By keeping the weak points of the argu- 
 ment out of sight, by breaking down the dis- 
 
CHRIST. 89 
 
 tinctions between the Gospels, and assuming 
 tlie genuineuess of the Gospel of John ; by mis- 
 reading and misinterpr-eting texts ; by accepting 
 as true all the wonderful things reported and 
 making them look more wonderful than they 
 are in the narrative ; by surrounding with an at- 
 mosphere of mystery points in themselves ob- 
 vious ; by carrying over to the historical Jesus 
 the impressions that theology had formed of 
 him, and reading his life by the light of pure 
 speculation — in a word, by assuming their whole 
 case as proved, and merely reaffirming it while 
 seeming to demonstrate it, men like Dr. Bush- 
 neir and de Pressense construct a \evy plausible 
 argument, which crumbles to pieces on the first 
 intelligent perusal of the New Testament. The 
 Christ of the Christian theology is not the Jesus 
 of the Gospels, but a purely ideal person, a con- 
 ception, an imagination, an intellectual vision, a 
 splendid spiritual dream. The Christ of Paul, 
 who started the conception, was not a man, but 
 the man, nor tliC man only, but the ideal man, the 
 possible man, the spiritual man, that is the soul 
 of humanity. Goethe says of Shakespeare's Ham- 
 let, " He is an oak-tree planted in a porcelain 
 vase." To try to crowd the attributes of the the- 
 ological Christ into the persouahty of the histor- 
 ical Jesus, is to plant a whole forest in a porce- 
 lain vase. 
 
90 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Nothing less than all the humanity there is in 
 the race meets the conditions of a doctrine of in- 
 carnation. A perfected humanity would not 
 more than express the Absolute in the form of 
 qualities ; a perfected humanity, comprising a 
 world of living men and women regenerate and 
 happy ; and surely nothing less than all the com- 
 pleted humanity there is will furnish anything ap- 
 proaching to a relatively adequate expression of 
 it. Indeed, when enthusiasts like Mr. Beecher 
 speak of Christ they describe a person who is 
 more than all living men and women put to- 
 gether. Let us say that the Christ of humanity 
 is the human clement in mankind / not mankind 
 exhaustively considered ; not the whole human 
 race, as distinguished from the brute creation, in- 
 cluding all who are in the human form ; not the 
 unorganized portions of the race, if there be any 
 such ; not the insane, or the wholly demoralized 
 and dehumanized, if such there be ; but the hu- 
 man portion of mankind, those of whatever na- 
 tion, clime, fashion of religion or degree of civil- 
 ization, of whatever personal endowment and so- 
 cial condition, of whatever age, temperament, 
 mingling of disposition, turn of mind, quality of 
 genius, bent of pursuit, who in any degree or af- 
 ter any kind represent the qualities that charac- 
 terize the social being. As all literature is not 
 bible, but only the literature that somehow bene- 
 
- CHRIST. 91 
 
 fits the rational man, instructing, inspiring enno- 
 bling, comforting, resting, recreating, beguiling 
 him of his cares, strengthening him in good re- 
 solves and gentle feelings, so only that portion of 
 mankind which is the medium of helpfulness 
 and Ijlessiug can be reckoned as manifesting the 
 qualities that embody the divine being. I do 
 not say which these portions are ; they are cer- 
 tainly not to be specified by any known titles or 
 distinctions, they are not to be indicated by any 
 technical signs. Possibly they include all living, 
 human creatures ; for who will undertake to say 
 that any single human creature is totally desti- 
 tute of humanity, that any single human crea- 
 ture is not in some way or degree serviceable 
 to his kind ? I only drop the remark that if 
 there be any such, the incarnation has not taken 
 place in them. Jesus put the publicans and 
 harlots before the scribes and pharisees ; Huma- 
 nity does not exclude them ; it excludes none 
 whom bonds of kindness make part of their 
 kind. Comte, with the contempt for mankind 
 that marks his system, says : " Mere digesting 
 machines are no real part of humanity. You 
 may reject them and supply their place by ani- 
 mals that lend to man a noble aid. "We should 
 not hesitate to look on many dogs, horses, oxen, 
 as more estimable than certain men." But I 
 make no discrimination here. I should be sorry 
 
92 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 to think that there were auy mere digesting 
 machines ; but if there be any, there is no big- 
 otry in declaring them to be no part of human- 
 ity, regarded in this noble aspect. That the 
 whole race is not yet humanized, seems plain 
 from the power still possessed by the elements 
 we call inhuman. The kingdom of God is by no 
 means established yet, the " Christ " is not " all 
 in all." Until the diviner forces in mankind 
 shall have brought the less divine up to their 
 level, the incarnation will be incomplete. 
 
 Paul talks of " building up the body of Christ," 
 and says, " Ye are the body of Christ, and each 
 one of you is a member." He is addressing those 
 Jews, Greeks, Romans, freedmeu, slaves, men and 
 women who are united b}' faith in Christ : the rest 
 are excluded. They may become members, they 
 have the capacity for membership, but they are 
 none till they share this mystic sympathy ; so the 
 religion of humanity says, "Ye are the body of 
 humanity," meaning those whom the human ele- 
 ment makes one 
 
 Of late years we have been accustomed to think 
 and speak of mankind as one great being. The 
 conception is not new ; two hundred years before 
 Christ, a Roman poet made one of his characters 
 exclaim : " I am a man, and nothing human is 
 foreign to my sympathies," thus acknowledging the 
 common bond of kindness that makes of human 
 
CHRIST. 93 
 
 kind a fellowship. Two liuudred years ago Pas- 
 cal wrote : " The whole race of man, through all 
 the ages, is to be considered as one man who ever 
 exists and who continually learns." At the close 
 of the last century, Lessiug wrote his celebrated 
 essay on_the " Education of the Race," and Her- 
 der produced his " Outlines of a Philosophy of 
 the History of Man," in which .he traced the 
 course of humanity as if it were an individual 
 placed on the earth by an unseen hand, taking 
 on new forms and pursuing new objects as it 
 passes from country to country and from age to 
 age, enlarging its sphere, multiplying its energies 
 and activities, pressing forward to higher and 
 nobler states, and achieving by degrees the vic- 
 tory of truth, beaut}^ and goodness. The poet 
 sings,— 
 
 " For man is one, 
 And he hath one great heart. 'Tis thus we feel 
 With a gigantic throb, across the sea. 
 Each other's rights and wrongs : thus are we men." 
 
 But Paul anticipated the whole doctrine in his 
 glorious language addressed to the Corinthian 
 Christians : " As the body is one and hath many 
 members, and all the members of this one body, 
 however many, are one body, so also is the Christ. 
 For by one spirit we are all baptized into one 
 bod}', whether we be Jews or Gentiles, bond or 
 free. For the body is not one member but many. 
 
94 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand 
 I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the 
 body ? The eye cannot say to the hand, I have 
 no need of thee ; nor the head to the feet, I have 
 no need of you." The great difference between 
 the apostle and ourselves is here : while he makes 
 the bond of union between the members to be 
 faith in the individual Christ, we make it consist 
 in fidelity to the human Christ, to the humanity 
 which is the Christ. His Christ was not so much 
 an individual as a community ; all Christians 
 composed the organized form. Our Christ is not 
 so much a community as an element that is the 
 soul of many communities. 
 
 Humanity thus described is an individual, — ^just 
 as Paul said that Christendom was an individual. 
 It has a single line of conscious being. It grows ; 
 it passes through stages of progress ; it matures 
 with time ; its faculties increase in power and 
 number ; its acquisitions accumulate ; it gathers 
 a common fund of knowledge, experience, wis- 
 dom, character, as it toils on. It has intelligence, 
 feeling, reverence, duly proportioned and mingled. 
 Its members suffer and enjoy, labor and gain, 
 strive and conquer together as one person. The 
 people actually living on the planet are linked 
 together by tens of thousands of interests of every 
 conceivable kind, from the ordinary material in- 
 terests that are involved in their physical existence 
 
CHRIST. 95 
 
 to the more complex interests implied in the word 
 " Society," and then again, by interests of a purely 
 intellectual and spiritual nature, in which they 
 share as rational, moral, and religious beings, who 
 desire truth, long for justice and aspire after im- 
 mortality. They have the same general senti- 
 ments, variously colored by locaHty and climate, 
 but in no wise essentially differing ; mind and 
 heart are composed of the same stuff. Their 
 moral constitution is homogeneous ; kindness 
 everywhere is kindness, justice is justice, honor is 
 honor, and love is love. The grand beliefs are 
 substantially the same fi'om age to age. The 
 common humanity declares its presence and power 
 in innumerable forms of mutual pitifulness and 
 help, in great waves of compassion rolling across 
 the civilized world toward some distressed point, 
 as Chicago or Crete or Persia, in an immense 
 feeling of responsibility which has a seat in every 
 conscience and rivets every soul to every other 
 soul. 
 
 The unity is organic and vital. It holds the 
 morally living together ; it connects the living 
 with the generations of the dead who have left 
 their deposits of power in the multiphed ?eous 
 that have gone, and with the generations of the 
 yet unborn, who in the long ages to come shall 
 enter upon, continue and complete the labors un- 
 dertaken. The toils, the rewards, the conquests 
 
96 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 are partaken bj all alike. Other men labored, we 
 enter into their labors ; we labor, others shall 
 enter into ours. Every gift is common. 
 
 The conception of this unity is as distinct as 
 was that of Paul when he spoke of the one body 
 in Christ of which all believing souls were mem- 
 bers. It is as distinct as is the conception of the 
 Roman Catholic Church, which contains the ut- 
 most diversity of conditions, gifts and characters, 
 all the extremes of the human lot, and yet calls 
 them one body by virtue of professed allegiance 
 to her head. 
 
 This Christ of Humanity is even more distinct 
 as a personality than the Christ of Christendom, 
 for of that no clear conception can be formed. 
 We cannot imagine an individual who fills all 
 space, lives through all time, has a local residence 
 yet is everywhere, is in the literal sense a piirson, 
 with personal feehngs, interests, thoughts and 
 purposes, and yet is absolutely impersonal towards 
 the dwellers on the earth. The idea is full of con- 
 tradictions. But the Christ of Humanity is, at 
 least, no dream, no intellectual chimera, no theo- 
 logical hypothesis. He is a fact which everj'thing 
 we possess and are bears witness to. Histor3^ is 
 his autobiography ; literature is his effort to utter 
 himself ; painting and sculpture attest his feeling 
 of beauty ; philosophy and science are the bloom- 
 ing of his reason ; the stages of civilization are 
 
CHRIST. 97 
 
 the deep foot-tracks lie has left on the surface of 
 the planet ; the great religions demonstrate the 
 scope, quality and fervor of his soul ; society, that 
 vast, continuous, spreading organization, that 
 mighty web of interests, institutions, codes, hab- 
 its, practices, proves how real, permanent, persist- 
 ent his energy has been. This Christ is at once 
 visible and invisible ; visible in actual form of 
 living men, invisible in the shadowy recesses of 
 antiquity, which once throbbed with life as in- 
 tensely as our present does. He can be thought 
 of as in heaven and at the same time as on earth ; 
 on earth you can see and touch him, we are part 
 of him ourselves ; in heaven, for there, in their 
 serenity, are assembled the innumerable company 
 who rest from their labors. The Christ of Christ- 
 endom is a great assembly of powers, personified 
 in a single man. The Christ of Humanity is a 
 single power distributed among a multitude of 
 men. 
 
 See how perfectly the Christ of Humanity, the 
 Christ who is the human in Humanity, fills out the 
 idea and discharges the function of the Christian 
 Christ. He satifies our conception of an eternal 
 being, for we ^sm assign to him no beginning and 
 we can prophecy for him no end. Time is only 
 one of his ideas. There were ages on ages when 
 the manifestation of him was exceedingly dim and 
 doubtful, when he existed only in possibihty, but 
 
98 THE RELiaiON OB HUMANITY. 
 
 SO lie did exist, a capacity and prophecy of some- 
 thing undeveloped. He is omnipresent, for there 
 is not a spot of earth where he does not make 
 himself felt ; the past, the present and the future 
 are one in his consciousness and experience ; 
 through memory, activity, hope, he lives in them 
 all at once. He is omniscient, for he possesses 
 all the knowledge there is. He is omnipotent, for 
 he has the resources of all power. Unchangeable 
 he is, save with that heavenly changeableness in 
 which is no mutability, but only a progress from 
 glory to glory ; unchangeable in essence though 
 infinitely diversified in form. This Christ, hke the 
 other, which is the symbol of him, is sinless ; for 
 the law of his perfection is in himself, and, of 
 course, he cannot transgress it. He is higher than 
 the angels, for they are but the vanished forms he 
 has thrown off ; he gives to the angels their angel- 
 hood ; the glory they shine in he creates. They 
 are, in fact, but the splendid reflections of his own 
 being from the cloudy heights of the mountain- 
 tops. 
 
 The Christ of Humanity has a legend as com- 
 plete as that written in the New Testament. His 
 birth is veiled in mystery ; he seems not to have 
 been born as we are. Whence he came none can 
 tell, but in his coming kings and shepherds, angels 
 and oxen are alike interested. He touches all 
 conditions with an equal sympathy ; he is the 
 
CHRIST. 99 
 
 common property of mankind. He bad his ob- 
 scure, lowly period. Ho consecrates himself ; he 
 has reactions of doubt and misgiving ; he wrestles 
 with the tempter in the wilderness, is companion 
 of the rocks, the hot sands and the impure crawl- 
 ing creatures that swarm in all lonely places. He 
 summons the better spirits to his aid ; they comfort 
 him. These desert passages cover whole epochs 
 in his experience — years, scores of years, when the 
 exhaustion of the moral forces seemed complete, 
 when the brute powers apparently had the ascend- 
 ency over the " son of man," He -is transfigured 
 on the mount as he holds communion with the 
 celestial forms of thought that float in glory in 
 the upper regions of his mind. The inward voice 
 comforts and cheers ; the heavy clouds float aM'ay 
 like white doves, and he comes back to his un- 
 congenial earth to make the powers of disease 
 and insanity flee away before him. Ho suffers 
 from the pain of thankless toil ; he sorrows under 
 misunderstanding, abuse, desertion ; he has his 
 agonies in Gethsemane when he seems to be 
 abandoned by all men, forsaken even by his own 
 diviner self, and he weeps such tears as are said 
 to have poured from Jesus' eyes ; they drench 
 wide spaces and long reaches of literature with 
 their bitter drops; every tribe of civilized men 
 has books, shelves of books, saturated with tins 
 anguish ; it is the groan of human nobility in its 
 
100 THE RELIGION- OF HUMANITY. 
 
 once SO frequent hours of desolation. It is per- 
 secuted, beaten, crowned with thorns ; how many 
 times this lias been done the stories of martyr- 
 dom tell, the histories of reformers staggering 
 under their crosses, of discoverers and prophets 
 with bleeding brows ; he gives up his life ; he is 
 the great brotherhood of confessors and martyrs, 
 among whom the choicest spirits are numbered, 
 who sacrificed all that was dear to them rather 
 than desert their convictions or abandon the cause 
 of truth that was entrusted to them. This Christ 
 verily rose from the dead, not once, but many 
 times ; for humanity cannot die, but gains new 
 vigor from all attempts to crush it. It is glorified, 
 exalted, to be an object of adoring contemplation, 
 set high in heaven amid heavenly things, ranked 
 with supreme creative powers, worshiped as what 
 indeed it is, — the source of moral inspiration. 
 
 The narrative of the New Testament, touching 
 but strange as the story of one individual, is sub- 
 lime when read as the legend of humanity, the 
 history of the moral nature in all individuals, the 
 history of the human quality, the saving quality, 
 in all mankind. 
 
 Is there any office ascribed to the Messiah of 
 Christendom that the Christ of Humanity does 
 not perform? Of what is to us " the world," the 
 world of society, the civilized world, the world of 
 interests, of politics, government, household and 
 
CHRIST. 101 
 
 family concerns, art, culture, literature, religion, 
 lie is literally the croator ; without hiui nothing of 
 it all would exist. Of all this world of interests 
 he is the preserver ; for it is his perpetual influ- 
 ence that keeps them in motion. Ho is the in- 
 cessant regenerator ; for, unless unfailing supplies 
 of human energy were furnished, the forces that 
 gladden, cheer, improve, mature, and perfect the 
 social world would cease to play, and a retrograde 
 motion would at once set in. 
 
 This Christ is the Judge — and in how true, how 
 literal a sense ! Not a judge who sits aloft on a 
 throne by the side of the Absolute God ; who has 
 open before him the record of all human actions 
 from the beginning ; who summons to his bar the 
 spirits of the dead, confronts them with their 
 offences, reads to them their doom, and consigns 
 them to their retribution or their reward ; not a 
 judge who will hold a grand assize at the last day, 
 and sentence the races of mankind according to 
 a law he has himself established. This judge, 
 the official judge of the popular theology, is merely 
 a symbol of the true judge whose throne is in the 
 moral convictions of the sensitive, educated, ex- 
 perienced portion of the race, whose standard is 
 the mature moral sense of the time, whose book 
 is the ever-open record of events, whose recording 
 angel is the pen of tlie historian, the accusing 
 memory of friend or foe, the denunciation of out- 
 
102 THE RELIGION OF HUilANITY. 
 
 raged sentiment, the whisper of scandal, the buzz 
 of gossip, the haunting testimony of conscience, 
 the unwritten confession of guilt, whose execu- 
 tioner is the public opinion of the best, the con- 
 demning judgment of the living heart. 
 
 Humanity, not any individual member of it, is 
 the final judge. The great Bar is the organized 
 conviction of right, so far as it has become per- 
 fected in the course of time. The best conviction 
 there is judges. The New Testament itself de- 
 clares this. Jesus says, " He hath given him au- 
 thority to execute judgment also because he is the 
 son of man:'' that is, because he is human, and 
 the human alone can judge the human. All 
 beings must be judged by their peers, — angels by 
 angels, and men by men, — for the reason that 
 one's peers alone comprehend the situation, share 
 the experience, and can estimate the exact quality 
 of the offence. The judgment of men is accepted ■ 
 as the judgment of God. At the bar of history 
 the greatest and best stand and plead, and the 
 verdict given is supposed to be recorded approv- 
 ingly in heaven. From that verdict it is difficult 
 to get an appeal. It often stands unchallenged 
 for centuries ; it sometimes acquires the force of 
 an absolutely irreversible judgment, which the 
 common voice demands shall stand in the name 
 of moral truth, in the name of humanity. It may 
 be modified by the historian's research. The dis- 
 
CHRIST. 103 
 
 eovery of new facts or of new interpretation? may 
 cause a revision of the sentence, and candid men 
 may, by dint of labor, succeed in obtaining 
 another decision, but the new verdict will be 
 passed by the same tribunal that pronounced the 
 first, namely, the human conscience, the enlight- 
 ened moral sense of mankind, and, as before, it 
 will be deemed ratified by the authority that sits 
 above. In our imaginations we, like the poet 
 Dante, consign to hell those whom we think mis- 
 creants, and give place in heaven to those whom 
 we applaud as well-doers : and this we must do, 
 for the voice of humanity, not necessarily the 
 voice of the people, but the voice of the moral 
 sentiment in the people, is regarded as the voice 
 of God. When the scribes and pharisees howled 
 at Jesus, and called him blasphemer because he 
 pronounced a man's sins forgiven, he replied, 
 " Know then that the Son of man hath power o)i 
 earih to forgive sins." Of course he has ; that is 
 to say, he has power to declare sins forgiven, to 
 speak the word of absolution, to assure the of- 
 fender that his fault is not treasured up against 
 him. 
 
 The efi'ort to obtain human approval of conduct 
 is incessant, it is the only effort made. If we 
 stand well with those who represent to us the 
 noblest human qualities we are satisfied ; our 
 heart is at rest ; wc have no fear of the hereafter. 
 
104 THE RELIGION OF RUMANITY. 
 
 If but one whom we revere and love acquits us 
 freely, on a full view of the evidence holds us 
 blameless, we care not what the multitude of the 
 uninstructed and passionate say ; the single, in- 
 telligent, earnest, competent, judicial voice is the 
 voice of the Christ, the voice of Humanity, the 
 voice of God. And if that voice of friend or cen- 
 sor be adverse, though the air rings with the 
 plaudits of the populace, and our own self-love 
 resents and protests, we cannot help feeling that 
 the face of heaven is averted from us. Humanity 
 pardons, whether it speaks through a single voice 
 to which our deeper nature responds, or through 
 the voices of many. Humanity condemns, whether 
 passing sentence in the name of public opinion, 
 or in the name of an honored neighbor. Christ, the 
 Judge, sits not on the clouds, he stands on the 
 solid earth ; he is not waiting for us to put off our 
 bodily integuments and go to him ; he looks us 
 straight in the eye, and speaks into our very ears. 
 The Christ of Humanity is the Saviour, the 
 physician of bodies and souls. He cures our 
 sicknesses, expels our demons, strengthens our in- 
 firmities, works miracles of licaling. He restores 
 sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf ; he 
 makes the lame walk ; he cleanses the defiled ; he 
 quickens the dying, raises the dead ; he opens the 
 prison-house, gives liberty to the captives, lightens 
 the burdens that press on the poor and misera- 
 
CHRISTr 105 
 
 ble. Since the begimimg of time he has toiled 
 terribly to teach the ignorant, recall the erring, 
 reclaim the wicked, stir the dull mind, soften the 
 hard heart, awaken to life the dormant soul. He 
 has taught in cities, towns, villages, on hillsides, 
 from fishing-boats, beneath marble porticoes and 
 temple. roofs, under the blue canopy of the sky, 
 reasoning with philosophers, remonstrating with 
 bigots, preaching to simple men and women. He 
 has set a steadfast example of temperance, chas- 
 tity, truth, pity. He has gone into the wilderness 
 in search of stray sheep; he has pursued the 
 moral leper into his desolated haunts among the 
 graves ; he has spent himself, worn himself out, 
 literally died in poverty and outward wretched- 
 ness in order that the mission of brotherly love 
 might be accomplished through him. He is the 
 glorious company of the philosophers ; he is the 
 noble array of reformers and philanthropists ; he 
 is the holy band of the wise in heart who counsel 
 warn, admonish and console the world. 
 
 There have been Christians who held that their 
 Christ was very God, the sole and absolute Deity, 
 that beside and beyond him was no other god- 
 head, the godhead being all taken up and ex- 
 hausted in him ; they compressed the whole trin- 
 ity into his j)erson. The Church declared this 
 view to be heresy, and condemned it. There are 
 those, Augusto Comte at the head of them, who 
 
108 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 liold that their Christ of humanity is very God, all 
 the God there is, that the Grand Man exhausts 
 the conception of absolute Being. But this view 
 is thus far pronounced heresy by the leaders of 
 philosophic thought. The Christ of Christendom 
 is not regarded as being the Eternal Father ; he 
 may be co-eternal with him, co-equal with him, a 
 full and clear reflection of him, an express image 
 of him, l)ut he is not identical with him. The 
 godhead would not be complete without him, and 
 yet he is not the godhead. The moon's reflection 
 on the surface of the lake is not the moon. 
 
 Humanity, taken in its most comprehensive 
 sense, is but a reflection after all of deity. We 
 can, without a severe strain of mind, imagine its 
 total destruction. It lives, so far as we know, on a 
 single planet, one of the least glorious of the 
 solar system. It is not inconceivable that, in the 
 course of countless ages, the planet, with all that 
 inhabit and inherit it, may be blotted out of space. 
 Would the destruction of the human species in- 
 volve the destruction of the first cause of the uni- 
 verse ? Would the career of tl^e world bo brought 
 to a sudden termination and the order of things 
 be at once dissolved ? The human race is still at 
 the mercy of the cosmic forces ; a considerable 
 change in temperature, malaria in the atmos- 
 phere, failure of crops, pestilence, sweeps man- 
 kind oli' by tens of thousands. Do these fright- 
 
CHRIST. 107 
 
 ful catastrophes jeopardize in the smallest degi'ee 
 the interest of the vast creation, do thej weaken 
 the creative elements or drain of their vital power 
 the laws of evolution under whose superintend- 
 ence and beneath whose active control the all of 
 things goes on porfectiug itself through the mil- 
 lions of generations ? It is fair to regard Human- 
 ity as the incarnate deity of mankind ; but the 
 decease of mankind would not cause faintness in 
 the perfect being whose lineaments mankind may 
 reflect, whose laws mankind may organize and 
 illustrate, but whose possibility mankind can 
 scarcely be. supposed to exhaust. 
 
 Between the Unsearchable One and imperfect 
 beings, the Christ of Humanity perpetuall}' medi- 
 ates, passing down to the low places the light of 
 regenerating influence, leading up the weak and 
 timid souls to the mountain-top whence they may 
 behokl diviner forms and hear more celestial 
 voices than come to them in tlieir ordinary lives. 
 He touches both extremes ; his earthly lot asso- 
 ciates him with lowliness and poverty, his charac- 
 ter allies him with translated and immortal spirits. 
 The true Christ reaches all heights and sounds all 
 deeps. He eats with sinners and communes with 
 Moses and Ehas. There is a stain on his mortal 
 birth, yet he dwells in heaven. 
 
 That humanity needs a Christ will not here be 
 argued ; we may take its own word for that. It 
 
108 THE RELIGIO:^ OF HUMANITY. 
 
 professes ever to have one, though he be but the 
 attenuated shadow of a theological dogma. It 
 shudders at the thought of being left without one, 
 and lashes itself into spasms of rage against those 
 whom it suspects of a design to take its Christ or 
 even its figment, its dim, vaporous dream or fancy 
 of a Christ,, away. The denial of the Christ is 
 held to be the last impiety ; it seems to be a 
 denial of all that is wise and true in the world. 
 People cannot exaggerate the bereavement they 
 should be in without him. They who fancy that 
 this feeling is in great measure affected are proba- 
 bly deceived : it has all the appearance of being 
 genuine and profound. They who think it is the 
 artificial product of theological education are per- 
 haps mistaken. The theology may quite possibly 
 have been a product of the feeling ; the need of 
 the Christ may have called into being «the philo- 
 sophy of the Christ. 
 
 But if this were so, the need must have been for 
 a real Christ, a true incarnation in flesh and blood 
 living among men, and this Christ could have 
 been no other than the greatest souls among 
 themselves, the best they knew, whether that best 
 were near them or far otf. These they transfigured 
 and translated ; their name they conjured by ; in 
 their name they worshipped. The Christ was 
 pi-ecious for what he represented, rather than for 
 what he was. Ho glorified common qualities ; he 
 
CHRIST. 109 
 
 set the seal on principles that all share ; he made 
 illustrious the spirit of goodness that has its lowly, 
 retired shriue in every heart ; he placed the can- 
 dle of the individual conscience by the side of the 
 sun, and set each sparkle of humanity in the fir- 
 mament as a star. He is the symbol of that 
 essential human nature which is the Messiah 
 cradled in the bosom of every man. 
 
V. 
 
 ATONEMENT. 
 
 nnHE ministry of religion, whether evangehcal 
 -■- or otherwise, is a ministry of reconcihation, 
 — reconciliation between whom or what ? AVhat 
 are the two things that stand over against one 
 another, and between which it would make 
 jjeace ? The older, and still the prevalent, mode 
 of thinking puts the antagonism thus : Separation 
 between man and God ; opposition of nature to 
 the supernatural ; contlict of the material with 
 the spiritual ; a gulf dividing this AvorLl from the 
 next ; the two dooms, — salvation and damnation, 
 hell and heaven. The chasm was one that divided 
 the finite from the Infinite, and it cut its way 
 sheer from the primal origin and essence of being, 
 down through every department of thought and 
 life ; parting off into two definite portions the 
 spii'itual, moral, social, personal interests (jf man- 
 kind ; cleaving in twain cares and pleasures, mer- 
 cantile pursuits and trivial amusements ; setting 
 man at variance with himself along the whole line 
 of his existence ; making his experience a war- 
 fare ; opening a cross-road at every step of his 
 
ATOXEMEXT. Ill 
 
 temporal career, and at the end of it showing a 
 parting of the ways in the direction of everlasting 
 life or everlasting death. Thus, from man's or- 
 igin to his endlessness, the imagination disclosed 
 a succession of guKs which only wings of the 
 spirit could traverse. It has been the business of 
 late years to fill up these gulfs. The gulf between ' 
 God and man is filled by conceiving man as, on 
 one side of his nature, divine ; and God as, on one 
 side of his nature, human. There is a province, it 
 is said, where God and man meet, without the aid 
 of intercession. He is not far from every one of 
 us, and may be found by all that seek him. We 
 in our better hours recline upon his bosom and 
 inhale his peace. If we do not meet him in the 
 workshop or the street, the fault is ours. If we 
 do not live in companionship with him, it is not 
 because we cannot, but because we will not. 
 There is no chasm : there need, therefore, be no 
 bridge. 
 
 The gulf between nature and the supernatural 
 is filled by extending the realm of the uatui-al till 
 it includes all the phenomena that come under 
 our iutollectual cognizance. The natural we sa}-, 
 is the orderly, the regular, the beautiful, the per- 
 fect. The natural man is the good m;\u. The 
 natural and the spiritual man are one. Is it said 
 the " naturiU " is that which is under law '? Every 
 tliiiig is under law. There are laws of thought 
 
112 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 and feeling : the Supreme Holiness is bound : tlio 
 First Cause is necessary. To be released from 
 law is to be outcast, not free. The gulf between 
 matter and spirit is filled by making matter the 
 organ of spirit ; spirit the impelling force, matter 
 the means of manifestation ; spirit the intelligent 
 cause, matter the pliant instrument ; spirit the 
 active principle, matter the passive substance, — 
 the two necessary to balance, complete, and use 
 each other. Spirit without matter, an unorgan- 
 ized, diffusive power ; matter without spirit a non- 
 entity. Instead of a gulf betwixt the two needing 
 to be escaped, a connection between the two so 
 close as to be indissoluble. 
 
 The gulf between this world and the next is 
 filled by throwing both into one ; by making life 
 one continuous whole ; by abolishing the grave as 
 a receptacle of consciousness, or a goal of proba- 
 tion, or a check to advance, and running all the 
 lines of moral experience straight through it; 
 grading the pit into which the body plunges, and 
 setting on either side of the dark valley the watch 
 lights of hope, that sparkle on, far as the eye can 
 see, lighting the one unmistakable road that leads 
 to universal blessedness all the souls of men. 
 
 In similar wise disappears the gulf between 
 finite and infinite. The finite, we say, has its in- 
 finite possibilities. The human is not shut in by 
 a wall. Its horizon line recedes as its being ex- 
 
ATONEMENT. 113 
 
 pands. This mortal puts on immortality, tliis 
 corvuptihh puts on incorruption. The infinite is 
 the moral, the spiritual, the perfect. But the 
 finite tends to these, and, following its tendency, 
 reaches them. 
 
 In these few words, so few as to be unintelligi- 
 ble possibly, we try to indicate the work at- 
 tempted by the intellectual energies of our gen- 
 eration, — the work undertaken by science and 
 philosophy, by ethics, politics, art ; in a word, by 
 inteUigence using all the means that thought and 
 experience place at its command to abolish the 
 separation between things human and things 
 divine. 
 
 The apparent result is the cessation of a 
 ministry of reconciliation. There is nothing, 
 apparently, to reconcile. The atonement is 
 not to be made ; it was made from the begin- 
 ning. Tlie atonement is laid in the nature of 
 things. The cry therefore is, that the prophet 
 shall give up his ghost of a mission ; that the 
 preacher shall abandon his mere tradition of a 
 calling, shall put an end to his pantomime of ges- 
 ticulation, and earn his living as other men earn 
 theirs. For the pulpit, we are told, there is no 
 place : take it away. A gentleman had running 
 through his grounds the Middlesex Canal. It 
 divided his garden from a very beautiful grove of 
 trees, which was a favorite retreat in the summer 
 
114 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 time. Being a man of wealth, he spanned the 
 canal with a stone bridge elegant to behold. After 
 a time the railroad superseded the canal. The 
 waters were drawn off. The bed was filled in, 
 planked over, covered with corn-fields ; but the 
 bridge still stands where it did. It serves no pur- 
 pose as a bridge ; it is easier to walk over the 
 even ground than it is to climb its steep arch ; it 
 occupies good soil for planting ; it withdraws 
 from use a quantity of granite ; it is by no means 
 ornamental ; and its incongruity raises a smile, 
 not always inaudible, in the passers-by. So, to 
 the apprehension of many, stands the pulpit, now 
 that the dividing gulf is drj^, — a needless relic of a 
 past dispensation, doing nothing that hterature, 
 the book, the magazine, the newspaper, do not 
 accomplish a great deal better ; and, by its stand- 
 ing . where it does, casting a tacit reproach, and 
 bemg an actual hindrance to these. 
 
 Let us consider if this is a fair statement of the 
 whole case. Is the ministry of reconciliation 
 ended? Are the gulfs all filled up? Let us ad- 
 mit that certain maps of them have been rendered 
 useless ; that the charts of the old engineers have 
 become obsolete ; that ancient estimates of their 
 character, dimensions,, and depth have been dis- 
 credited ; that their names have become unintel- 
 ligible. But has the ancient ravine itself been 
 abolished? If it has been, the ministry of recon- 
 
ATONEMENT. 115 
 
 ciliation lias been abolished ; if it lias not been, 
 that miuistiy remains, and it becomes lis to con- 
 sider the way in which it shall be discharged. 
 
 To my apprehension, the gulf, the essential 
 gulf, the only gulf that is worth practically con- 
 sidering, is the gulf betwixt the animal and the hu- 
 man eloaents in man. You may describe it under 
 the old nomenclature, if you will. Call it a gulf 
 between the creature and the Creator, between 
 the temporal and the eternal, between the finite 
 and the infinite, between the worldly and the 
 heavenly life, between the flesh and the spirit, you 
 will not convey a stronger impression of its reality 
 or its character than you do when you call it a 
 gulf between the animal and the human in his 
 constitution. 
 
 The real facts of life are unaltered by time. 
 There has been no change in the substance of 
 things. The structure of the miud and the ma- 
 terial of experience remain as they were. The 
 interpretation of hfe vary. The realiiies of fife 
 are immutable. The data to which the older 
 divines appealed in justification of their jniuistry, 
 are still before us. Human existence is full of 
 them ; human nature taems with them ; and an 
 earnest glance discloses them to us in a form as 
 solemn and startling as that which moved once 
 to cries and tears. 
 
 It is enough to hint at these things, I cannot 
 
116 TIIE RELIGION OF HUMANTTT. 
 
 describe them. Ignorance, weakness, imbecility, 
 letliarg}', stupor, vice, stubbornness, turpitude, lie 
 in monstrous heaps upon our civihzation ; and the 
 wind of passion, which is always blowing in gusts, 
 now and then catches them, whirls them in the 
 air, stifles us with their dust, and covers us with 
 their rubbish. Terrible surprises lurk in the 
 moral atmosphere. A little congealed vapor in 
 winter is driven before the soft air ; while we 
 sleep, the light particles of snow fall by myriads. 
 A muffled army of invasion, they take possession 
 of the earth ; we wake in the morning to find our- 
 selves blockaded, — the streets impassable, lines of 
 railroad buried beneath avalanches ; mechanical 
 power, steam power, is set at defiance ; the irre- 
 sistible legions of the travelling public are held 
 under arrest : the lord of the planet battles for 
 existence with snow-flakes. 
 
 So in the moral world about us are stored the 
 elements of terror. Of a sudden they gather, they 
 drive upon us ; the virtue of man buft'ets them in 
 vain. The obstinacy of the dark power is what 
 appalls us. This animal element, this crude ele- 
 ment of passionatencss, — by whatever name you 
 will call it, — this dumb, chaotic, portentous force, 
 sweeps over us, and bears down feeling, purpose, 
 determination. Better than volumes of divinity, 
 the daily papers present the argument for a kind 
 of inertness in the moral world. 
 
ATONEMENT. 117 
 
 The story of the warfare between the powers of 
 light and the powers of darkness is as new as it is 
 old. Every earnest man and woman is conscious 
 of it. Paul's terrible language — "That which I 
 do, I disavow ; what I would, I do not ; what I 
 hate, I do " — is hardly too strong to describe the 
 pressure of inability that is upon individuals and 
 society. A vast burden of powerlossness weighs 
 will and purpose down ; a rigid limitation sets 
 bounds to our effort. We see so much farther 
 than we reach, we perceive so much more than 
 we can do, we confess so many obligations we 
 cannot meet, we are aware of so many duties 
 we cannot discharge ! Our purpose faints behind 
 our desire ; our thought gropes after our dream ; 
 our determinations are determined. We know 
 that things are wrong ; but we cannot get a con- 
 viction that they are wrong, and so we go on 
 doing them with a fatal facility that makes us feel 
 ourselves creatures of destiny. Blundering and 
 impotent, we push on, hoping that somehow 
 things will come out right, but haunted by a des- 
 perate feeling, that, if tiicy do, it will be in spite 
 of ourselves. 
 
 Now these, I apprehend, are the old facts out 
 of which the old theory of a dislocated world was 
 constructed. This passion, this prejudice, this 
 inertness, this perversity, this incapacity, this old 
 man of the sea, sitting astride of our shoulders, 
 
118 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 suggested the thing that was called the " Old 
 Adam " in us. What is it if it is not the old 
 Adam, — precisely that and nothing else? It is 
 the immaturit}^ of mankind ; it is the crudeness of 
 human nature ; it is the heavy bulk of the raw 
 material which we have not organized ; it is the 
 mud of the pre-Adamite world clinging to our 
 feet ; the preceding centuries huddle their infirmi- 
 ties on our backs ; their ideas infest our minds ^ 
 their practices entangle our footsteps ; their judg- 
 ments nestle in the meshes of our law ; their lusts, 
 violences, dishonesties, mingle with our feelings. 
 Their influence is akin to that of demoniacal pos- 
 session. To it we may trace all, or nearly all, the 
 social enormities that curse us. A great many 
 things we do that are lawless, or worse ; yet it is 
 not we that do them, but this force of unsubdued 
 animalism that is in us. Is it to be wondered at, 
 that,, in ages of ignorance, when human reason 
 was unable to take scientific views of things, men 
 cried out for an Expiator to lift off an incubus 
 that was too dreadful to be carried ? 
 
 But to call for an Expiator would be vain. No 
 expiation will servo. It is inheritance we sufler 
 from, not guilt ; undevelopmeut, not depravity ; 
 infirmity, not sin. The struggle is between his- 
 tory and possibility ; the loant of humanity and 
 the promise of humanity ; the beastliness we have 
 uot outgrown, and the saintlincss we have not ap- 
 
ATONEMEXT. 119 
 
 propriatecl. And wo are to end tho conflict, not 
 by throwing ourselves iu agony upon the merits 
 of a Redeemer, but by throwing ourselves enthu- 
 siastically upon the virtue of our rational powers. 
 It is here that the ministry of reconciliation 
 comes in. Its office is to pass men over the gulf 
 that yawns Mween the lower and the higher self; to 
 rescue humanity from passion to principle ; to re- 
 deem it from selfishness into self-love ; to coun- 
 teract the brutal traditions of sensuality and hate 
 by the beautiful prophecies of sacrifice and broth- 
 erhood. The preacher represents the human na- 
 ture in men as the supremo element in them, and 
 for the interests of that human nature he stands, 
 as a distinct interest, never to be compromised. 
 The diflerence between the developed and the un- 
 developed man, the cultured and the uncultured, 
 the human and the bestial, while in one sense it 
 is a difference of more or less, is in another sense 
 a contrast of oppositcs. There are no gulfs be- 
 twixt men, we say, only differences of level. 
 But a difference of level makes Niagara. At 
 tho top of the precipice, laughing lovers sit on tho 
 grass, admiring the rainbow ; at the bottom boils 
 tho caldron of death ; and between top and bot- 
 tom there is no inch of space where existence is 
 possible for a moment. 
 
 A difference of more or less ! You take shi]) in 
 New York, and sail out on the Atlantic. You 
 
120 11IE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 pursue a level course. There is no clip or plunge, 
 save as the waves lift or depress the vessel's 
 prow. On and ou jou go ; overhead the constel- 
 lations, around the monotonous plain of waters : 
 night and day, for weeks and weeks, you go on. 
 At length you come to port on the other side of the 
 globe. It seems to you that, were your vision long 
 enough, you might look back and see the city you 
 started from. Not unless you can look round the 
 planet or through it. Between you and home is 
 the solid globe. It was only a question of miles, 
 more or fewer ; but here you are setting the soles 
 of your feet against those of your friends in 
 Broadway, and pointing your heads in opposite 
 directions. More or less makes the antipodes. 
 
 Look at the ideas that lie in groups on the sur- 
 face of the religious world. Mark their distribu- 
 tion among the difierent sects. There seems to 
 be no line of radical separation between them. 
 They are shared by the various churches. Some 
 have more of this, others more of that, — more or 
 less of depravity ; more or less of the Christ ; 
 more or less of insjiiration ; more or less of grace 
 through usage or rite ; more or less of authority 
 conceded to book or confession ; more or less of 
 duration to punishment, or of destination to bliss. 
 The question is one of shading. So it appears ; 
 bidjt is not as it appears. When Luther put off 
 from Kome, he had no thought of going far. His 
 
ATONEMENT. 121 
 
 successors looked but a little way beyond Luther. 
 Their successors pushed ou the line of advance, 
 nothing being further from their purpose than a 
 final departure from the ancient landmarks. So 
 sect followed sect, each modifying slightly one or 
 more of the original beliefs, but each persuaded it 
 was keeping every essential article ; each, in fact, 
 convinced that it brought the essential article out 
 into the light. So cliurch follows church, and party 
 party ; all holding fast by the same tradition, all 
 taking their bearings from the same star, all con- 
 sulting the same charts, all studying the same 
 authorities in navigation, all sailing under the 
 same Hag, heading for the same port, carrying the 
 same freight of souls. Universalism came, Uni- 
 tariamsm, Liberalism, — all using the same forms, 
 all observing the same sacraments, all reading 
 the same Bible, all making the same ascriptions 
 in prayer and hymn. There were successive de- 
 2)arlnrcs, but no visible gulf. There were innu- 
 merable shades of opinion ; but uo sharp line of 
 division was evident, cutting Christendom in two. 
 But look beneath the surface, and there it is ! As 
 they sailed round the globe, these timid naviga- 
 tors found the antijMch's, and now stand greeting 
 each other with the soles of their feet, their eyes 
 straining at opposite quarters of the heavens. 
 For while the old church stood on the dogma of 
 human depravity, the new church stands ou faith 
 
122 THE RELT&ION OF EUMAXITr. 
 
 in human ability. The old church planted itself 
 on the idea that men must be miraculously saved 
 from hell ; the new church plants itself on the 
 idea that 'men must distance hell by reason. The 
 old church bowed the soul to an institution ; the 
 new church makes institutions the creatures of 
 the soul: And between these two groups of prin- 
 ciples a gulf is fixed, so deep and wide that they 
 who stand on one side cannot see those who 
 stand on the other. 
 
 In society people look much alike : save in 
 some little peculiarities of feature, walk, mien, 
 manner, mood, there is not much apparent differ- 
 ence. They profess about the same average opin- 
 ions, applaud about the same class of sentiments, 
 approve about the same courses of conduct. Hu- 
 man nature, we hear people say, is about the same 
 all over the world. The differences between men 
 arc simply differences of more or less. And yet 
 it needs no keen observer to note certain very 
 plain distinctions as between people who live as 
 if the ivorld ivere made for them, and people Avho 
 live as if they icere made for the ivorld. One prin- 
 ciple bids a man to live /or himself ; another prin- 
 ciple bids a man live for others. The principles 
 stand to each other as light and darkness, — in 
 ceaseless opposition. They writhe together, day 
 and night, in every soul. 
 
 We hear and see a great deal of the extremes 
 
ATONEMENT, 123 
 
 in human condition and character. They are in- 
 deed astonishingly, overwhelming in their extent. 
 Humanity has its head in tlio heavens and its 
 feet in the mire. Its soul dwells with the augels, 
 its senses grovel with the beasts ; it prays on the 
 mountain-tops, and wallows in the pit. In its 
 heart are the eight paradises and the correspond- 
 ing hells. Imagination will hardly scale the serene 
 heights where it communes with the Eternal, im- 
 agination will hardly pierce the gloomy abysses 
 where it mingles with unclean things. 
 
 The gulf that all see is the gulf that yawns be- 
 tween the extremes of human condition, between 
 the rich who lay the world under contribution to 
 gratify their desire, and the poor who cannot 
 command a crust to support their life ; between 
 the well who feel existence to be a boon, and the 
 sick to whom it is an agony ; between the happy 
 whose being is. flooded with daily sunshine, and 
 the wretched who dread the breaking of the dawn ; 
 between the high in station who look down on 
 whole orders of their fellow-creatures, and the 
 obscure whom even the insiguiticant and the un- 
 privileged look down upon. The contemplation 
 of these vast differences sickens the heart and 
 depresses faith ; the suffering that, springs from 
 them saddens the earth ; the bitterness and hate 
 and strife they engender make acrid the thoughts 
 of the reflecting and the feelings of the good. 
 
124 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 And yet tlie distance between these extremes in 
 human condition seems to vanish away when we 
 consider the distance between the extremes of 
 human character. Think of the man who is per- 
 fectly self-contained, even, calm, steadfast, whose 
 desires are all subordinated to reason, whose 
 passions always serve, whose clear intelligence 
 never loses sight of supreme truths, whose will 
 never swerves from lofty principles, wliose faith is 
 never dim, whose hope is never clouded, whose 
 joy is never disturbed by fear or disappointment, 
 whose moral powers work with the precision and 
 smoothness of a perfect mechanism, and then 
 think of the man who is not self-centred at all, 
 who is not self-respecting, who is barely self-con- 
 scious, who is the sport of his desires, the victim 
 of his passions, who never uses reason, knows not 
 what principle may be, never casts a thought 
 above, never throws a prudent anticipation for- 
 ward, never gazes seriously within, but drifts and 
 rolls and tumbles and is beaten up and down by 
 every chance wave that strikes liim. Think of 
 the man who lives in and for others, who is con- 
 tinually giving himself out with a generosity that 
 has no limits, a kindness that is never chilled, a 
 disinterestedness that has no after-thought ; a phi- 
 lanthropist such as we can all think of ; and then 
 think of the man who lives in and for himself, 
 with a grossness of appetite, a greediness for 
 
ATONEMENT. I25 
 
 gain, an insatiableness of ambition that holds no 
 right sacred, no person inviolable, no condition 
 , respectable; a man who plunders and steals, and 
 gorges himself, utterly heedless of the misery he 
 creates, the ruin he causes, the wrong he commits 
 the grief, the despair, the brutality he occasions! 
 Thmk of the difference between a Borromeo and 
 a Borgia, between a John Howard and a James 
 Fisk ! It is the difference between heaven and 
 earth; it is the difference between heaven and 
 hell. 
 
 And yet this gulf, this deep, bottomless, moral 
 abyss, is generally concealed from view. Being 
 internal, it is uuperceived. They who dwell on 
 either briuk may be unaware of its existence. 
 They who dwell on the lower edge of it are very 
 seldom conscious of it. Self-satisfied, complacent, 
 lapped in their vanity, absorbed by their sensa- 
 tions, they may be, and often are, wholly ignorant 
 of the moral condition of others, and wholly un- 
 suspicious of any superiority on the part of saint 
 or philanthropist. A gulf exists, not tilled up, not 
 bridged over, not seen across. Not only is there 
 no atonement,— no at-one-ment,— no reconcilia- 
 tion, no intercourse, no accord, there is no sus- 
 picion that such a thing is needful, possible, or 
 desirable. 
 
 It may happen, however, that one of these peo- 
 ple on the lower edge of the chasm may catch a 
 
126 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 glimpse of a sliiniug form on the other side. He 
 takes up the biography of a noble person ; ho 
 hears a tale of heroism ; he meets a kindling 
 character ; he is touched, thrilled by a searching 
 word or a splendid deed, and strange emotions 
 seize him. Like a beggar suddenly thrust into a 
 company of ladies and gentlemen, he feels his 
 clothes, sees his nakedness and is ashamed ; a 
 sense of meanness and foulness and squalor comes 
 to him for the first time ; his rank corruption is 
 offensive to his own soul ; he loathes, despises, 
 hates himself ; covers his face with his hands, and 
 tries to slink off. A desire is born in him to make 
 himself more decent outside and inside, that he 
 may be fit for the company of this exalted person. 
 He exaggerates possibly both his own unworthi- 
 ness and the other's worth. Tlie apparition seems 
 that of an angel, a demi-god, and he sinks to the 
 earth, like a base, sinful creature who needs com- 
 plete renewing before being qualified even for the 
 glorious one's pity. 
 
 Something like this was experienced by the 
 people on whom the vision of Jesus broke. The 
 manifestation of a soul so spotless white, so saint- 
 ly and at the same time so sweet, so pure yet so 
 pitifnl, so true and so tender, so lofty and withal 
 so lowly, so free from all taint of sensuality and 
 so compassionate towards the sensual, so heaven- 
 ly-minded yet so earnest, so contemplatiye yet so 
 
ATONEMENT. 127 
 
 practical, so spiritual and all the while so human, 
 troubled, yes, convulsed the thoughtless, easy, 
 self-satisfied minds of those who came across it. 
 The demons of the tomb cried out when he came 
 near; guilty passion poured forth its avowal in 
 his presence ; turpitude bewailed its blackness 
 and wept itself faint at his feet ; fii-es of aspira- 
 tion began. to burn; bitter drops of penitence 
 began to fall. A sudden consciousness of infirm- 
 ity deepening into sin was begotten, and started 
 the great wave of experience that rolled over the 
 first two centuries and left its traces on every con- 
 tinent of the human mind. 
 
 Paul was one of the first to interpret this ex- 
 perience and to show a way by which the terrible 
 sense of sin might be appeased. Pointing to the 
 sinless Christ, dwelling on his loneliness and con- 
 descension, appealing to his voluntarily assumed 
 suffering and sorrow, insisting above all on his 
 humanity, which all, even the poorest, the lowest, 
 the guiltiest shared with him, he cried : Believe 
 in him, have faith in the reality of this goodness, 
 have faith in your possible participation in it, and 
 the gulf between you will shrink till it disappears: 
 you will be invigorated ; your old nature will be 
 taken away, a new nature will be bestowed ; fear 
 will give place to hope, sorrow to joy, hatred to 
 charity. The ancient woe of the world, aliena- 
 tion, bitterness and death will cease, the broken 
 unity of the race will be restored. 
 
128 THE RELIOIOX OF EUMANITT. 
 
 I have been describing the genesis of the doc- 
 trine of the Atonement, the reconciliation of the 
 sensual man with the spiritual, the atonement of 
 the animal in human nature with the angel. 
 
 The Christian theology dramatized this exist- 
 ence, put it into mythological form. Jesus repre- 
 sents the supreme purity of the Eternal. Over 
 against him in violent contrast, in black opposi- 
 tion in fact, stands the human race, corrupt, de- 
 praved, helpless, unable to make a motion towards 
 its own felicity, abandoned to misery, doomed to 
 perdition. Jesus, the Christ, the Lord of heaven, 
 the ideal man, the pure spirit of humanity, leaves 
 his serene heights, descends from his pinnacle of 
 glory, grapples this disconsolate humanity by the 
 heart-strings, touches it, melts it with his sympa- 
 pathy, wins it, invites it, persuades it, softens it, 
 breaks its heart, compels it to confess kindred 
 with him, drags out the possibilities of good that 
 had lain dormant till they had weU nigh perished, 
 restores ideally, and leaves them to restore act- 
 ually, the union that was indispensable to their 
 life, and returns to the place Avhence he came to 
 pour down a steady influence which shall in time 
 draw the extremes of humanity together, and 
 effect a perfect society where before no society 
 had existed. 
 
 The allegory is as beautiful as it is bold, but it 
 is an allegory. Taken literally as describing a 
 
ATONEMENT. 129 
 
 coDclition of things, as recording a historical fact 
 or a series of facts, it is as wild as the legendary 
 tales of the nativity. But taken practically, it 
 covers and symbolizes truths that <3auuot safely 
 be neglected. As a dogma or a group of dogmas 
 it falls to pieces at a touch ; the attempt to ex- 
 plain it demolishes it ; none have so effectually 
 expressed its contradictions as its friends ; but as 
 a piece of imagination it pictures things of deep 
 experience. Let us try to ascertain what these 
 are. 
 
 Manldnd present hideous extremes of condition 
 and character, and yet in mankind no interval 
 breaks the unity ; no abyss sunders the cord or 
 swallows the identity. Sage and simpleton, saint 
 and sinner, are of kin. The ideal man touches 
 both extremes of condition, is at home among all 
 experiences, sympathizes with all character. In 
 the Christ all are taught that they are ideally, and 
 may be actually, one. There is a fellow-feeling, 
 unrecognized perhaps, but deep and instinctive, 
 that grapples the elements of the race together 
 with living bonds. Inasmuch as the extremes 
 affect each other, they meet. England's pauper- 
 ism tells on England's queen. The squalor of 
 Rome loads the atmosphere which the vicar of 
 Christ inhales. The richest man on the Fifth 
 Avenue is in daily peril from the festering, rotting, 
 poisoning poverty that breeds contagion in his 
 
130 TIIE BELIOION OF IIUMANITT. 
 
 tenement-liouses, and nurses the demon of fever 
 in damp cellars and noisome yards. There is not 
 a philosopher whose mind does not suffer in its 
 texture and delicacy from the mass of ignorance 
 that sinks whole continents of intelligence beneath 
 its foul waters. The saint's prayer struggles 
 through the vapors that infest the moral atmos- 
 phere, and make it too thick for blithesome aspi- 
 ration. The reformer's ardor is weighed down by 
 the inertia of undeveloped conscience, and the 
 love of the philanthropist sighs and gasps from 
 the inhumanity he is never himself in contact 
 with, yet never can escape from. New York 
 shudders at the mention of cholera working on 
 the Bosphorus, and the tidings of convulsions on 
 the Pacific coast make its state insecure. 
 
 Humanity has but one life, breathes but one 
 atmosphere, draws sustenance from one central 
 orb. To be reconciled with humanity, to feel the 
 common pulse, is life ; to be alienated from hu- 
 manity, to have no share in the common vitality, 
 is death. The slightest material separation is felt 
 disastrously. 
 
 Let one withdraw but a short distance from 
 the centre of humane civilizing influence, let one 
 go but a few miles out of the reach of easy inter- 
 course, unless he be possessed of uncommon men- 
 tal resources, or of a genuine love of nature and 
 the pursuits of country life, he suffers fi'om the 
 
ATONEMENT. 131 
 
 want of incessant contact witli his kind or class • 
 he has attacks of ennvi, becomes restless or dull' 
 Let lnm go further still, out of the reach of news- 
 papers, books, and sympathetic fellowship throu-h 
 the church or society, and the effect is still mo're 
 disastrous; the mind slumbers, feehng becomes 
 slow and heavj, interest slackens and narrows 
 the mnge of ideas contracts, the higher operations 
 of intelligence cease, a species of animahsm 
 begins o affect the spirit; there is an unmistaka- 
 ble tendency backward and downward. Let him 
 retire to a still greater distance ; let him go quite 
 out of reach of his kind, where he cannot com- 
 niand the ordinary supphes of life, and it is with 
 the utmost difficulty that he continues in exist- 
 ence ; he must dispense with clothing, have no 
 cover for limbs, feet or head, subsist on such 
 herbs, berries, and roots as the ground produces 
 spontaneously; for he has no tools of labor no 
 gun, no fish-hook, no snare, no weapons; he can- 
 not plunder the wild beast of his skin, and, un- 
 less nature provides him with a hairy coat, he per- 
 ishes. Your Swiss Family liobinson is a self-help- 
 ing community, with all the resources of humanity 
 stored up in a miraculous bag. Your Kobinson 
 Crusoe has with him the fine results of civiHza- 
 tion, IS himself a community of trained abilities, 
 and calls humanity to his side in the shape of a 
 x»lan Friday; the ship in which he was wrecked 
 
132 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 was a magazine of human powers which came to 
 his rescue and support ; he is only apparently 
 and temporarily alone ; the vital cord of industry, 
 temperance, skill, trained intelligence, strong 
 moral purpose, holds him to his allegiance, spans 
 the gulf that separates him from his far-off kin- 
 dred, and like the oceanic cable transmits to him 
 the pulsation of the powerful, full-blooded hu- 
 manity to which he belongs. 
 
 Should a man, like one I knew, refuse to share 
 the common burden of expense by deliberately 
 and stubbornly declining to pay his taxes, he 
 being abundantly able to do it, the consequences 
 would be immediately felt in the cessation of those 
 offices of assistance and maintenance that are in- 
 dispensable to the life of a community. He would 
 be a self-banished outlaw, having no claim on the 
 protection Mdiich society guarantees to its mem- 
 bers, no right to call on the policeman, no title to 
 appeal to the courts, no power to enforce his law- 
 ful dues from others, no pledge to give to others 
 that will make them willing to trust him. The 
 tradesman may decline to deal with him, having 
 no legal security against his dishonesty ; the la- 
 borer may refuse to work for him, except for 
 money paid down in advance ; he might be robbed 
 and the community would not care ; though he 
 were annoyed and maltreated and abused, he 
 would have no redress : he has broken one of the 
 
ATONEMENT. 133 
 
 ties, one of tlie conventional ties, it may be, that 
 link him with the common lot, and the process of 
 active decomposition takes place. 
 
 Benedict Arnold betrayed a national trust, and 
 instantly was deceased as an American. It was 
 in vain that he spoke of the aflfection he still 
 held for his country ; his country held none for 
 him. It was idle for him to write to General 
 Washington of " a heart conscious of its own rec- 
 titude : " his flight to the enemy proved that he 
 knew such an assertion would be met with deris- 
 ion. The very enemy to which he deserted did 
 not believe him, but made him know by repeated 
 insults, by continual manifestations of disgust and 
 horror, and by abandonment to utter obscurity, 
 that he had forfeited the respect of his fellow 
 men. He was cast forth as a branch, and with- 
 ered. 
 
 An animal individuahsm sets up its title to do 
 not what it ought, but what it chooses ; to enact, 
 not its duty but its whim. It will make as many 
 drunkards as it pleases ; it will ruin as many as 
 it finds agreable to ruin at the gambling table ; 
 it will convulse the finances of the country by self- 
 ish and fraudulent tricks in speculation ; it will 
 flout the marriage-bond, and have a fresh hus- 
 band or a fresh wife once a week if it be so in- 
 clined ; it will parade all manner of indecencies 
 of thought and conduct before the public gaze, 
 
134 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 and will coolly justify them on the ground that 
 it is nobody's business but its own. But it is 
 everybody's business, and that it is everybody's 
 business becomes at once apparent from the stern 
 sentence of moral excommunication which is pro- 
 nounced, and no sooner pronounced than carried 
 into effect ; society disowns those who thus inso- 
 lently set up for themselves. There is a noble 
 individualism that discards conventional usage 
 of fashion, that will not conform to the superfi- 
 cial habits of the world, but all the more ac- 
 knowledges allegiance to the laws of justice, 
 truth, honor, reason, to the higher humanity ; 
 this kind of individualism confesses its depend- 
 ence and the need of keeping that dependence 
 close and radical ; its roots are struck deep down 
 in the primitive soil, and bring thence perpetual 
 supplies of vigor ; it is like a forest tree that in- 
 deed stands alone, but which through its mul- 
 titudinous fibres searches the ground for food, 
 and keeps itself in most vital sympathy with the 
 all-quickening planet. Such individualism is 
 most cordially human. But the animal individual- 
 ism I speak of, which is simply a base hunger 
 for pleasurable sensations, bears its professors 
 down to lower and lower strata of society, and 
 leaves them at last among the swine, gJadly fill- 
 ing their bellies with the husks that swine do eat. 
 They become by-words of scandal, synonyms of 
 
ATONEMENT. 135 
 
 reproach. They are sundered from all saving 
 and fructifying intercourse ; their upper faculties 
 decay one by one ; the power to appreciate fine 
 examples is lost ; they are sloughed off like a 
 useless shred of skin. 
 
 Even the failure actively to serve humanity by 
 some kind of industry, kindness, helpfulness, hu- 
 man pitifulness and good will, is visited by the 
 same condemnation. Indolence weakens the vital 
 bond of mutual service, and entails a correspond- 
 ing feebleness of impulse, faintness of will, and 
 dreaminess of purpose. Faculty ebbs away, self- 
 respect declines, and existence trickles along in 
 very shallow channels. Vice more fatally kills 
 the root of moral power than it saps the physical 
 force. The drunkard's body may outlast the cen- 
 tury, but it will be half that time a tomb. The 
 frame of the debauchee may brave the wear and 
 tear of dissipation for threescore years and ten, 
 but long before that his soul will have ceased to 
 molest it. The dust may hold together, but the 
 spirit will have fled. Humanity has no interest 
 in the man, and there is for him no help. 
 
 Salvation is in the Christ, says the Church. Sal- 
 vation is in the human Christ, the Christ of hu- 
 manity, say we. It is a salvation by Faith and 
 also by Works ; faith incorporating the indivi- 
 dual with society through sympathy with the 
 principles by virtue of which society exists, and 
 
136 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 works making that incorporation compact and 
 solid through some positive contribution of ser- 
 vice rendered to one or more human beings, ser- 
 vice according to ability as respects kind and 
 degree, service of hand, thought, feehng or pur- 
 pose ; service done publicly or privately, openly 
 or secretly, matters not, service perpetual or inci- 
 dental, continuous or intermittent, as occasion 
 determines ; it is all good and saving, so it be 
 done sincerely, done in kindness, done in the 
 spirit of humanity. ) A cup of cold water in the 
 name of a disciple, that is, given in pure human 
 kindness, will not lose its reward. " He who has 
 done it unto the least of these has done it unto 
 me." It is not the deed, it is not the object : it 
 is the spirit that identifies the greatest and the 
 least. The humblest part of the body belongs to 
 the noblest part by virtue of an organic connection. 
 The spirit of humanity is all. We must once 
 more lay stress on that. The Christ is human. 
 He is not a Pharisee, a Sadducee, a priest : he is 
 a man. Incorporation with a branch of humanity 
 will not suffice ; the individual must stand well, 
 not with his order, class, guild, clique, with any 
 fragment of the human heart and conscience, but 
 with the whole. The general heart absolves ; 
 the common conscience justifies. The caste spirit, 
 under the most attenuated form, is detrimental 
 to moral health. This man lives iu his family. 
 
ATONEMENT. 137 
 
 lives there loyally and affectionately, but lives 
 there only. He loves his wife because she is his 
 wife ; his children because they belong to him ; 
 his home because it is the private retreat of his 
 idle, self-indulgent hours. To all outside he is in- 
 different and cold ; the interests of the commu- 
 nity at large are nothing to him ; the moral con- 
 dition of the society about him gives him no con- 
 cern ; he rejects politics, he hates the word 
 " reform," he disengages himself fi'om the bonds 
 of sympathy which his fellow-beings impose on 
 each other, and lives in entire devotion, and in all 
 but entire isolation. Even his interest in his 
 family is not human. The humanity of his wife 
 and children, their moral culture, the state of 
 their interior dispositions, the quality of their 
 affections, does not concern him. Another man 
 lives in his profession and the technicalities of it. 
 However devoted he may be to its interests, — and 
 the more devoted he is to its interests as a jdj-o- 
 fession, the more he loses of his humanity, — the 
 professional garb, manner, mode of speech, sepa- 
 rate him from his kind ; professional pride, envy, 
 jealousy, affect his mind injuriously. The lawyer 
 who is only an attorney, the physician who is 
 merely a doctor, the minister who forgets in his 
 cloth the wide sympathy that is more than all 
 churches and creeds and holy men, is so far de- 
 funct. Wealth furnishes untold, inestimable ad- 
 
138 THE RELIGION OF RUMAXITY. 
 
 vantages to its possessor ; the wealthy class is an 
 indispensable part of the community. An ingeni- 
 ous critic contended that the Christ could not have 
 been so very poor, because a gentleman invited 
 him to dinner, and he wore a seamless coat which 
 none but the wealthy could aflord. To belong to 
 the wealthy class is a privilege ; but he who prides 
 himself on belonging to this class, who holds its 
 class interests peculiarly sacred, protects them 
 against the encroachments of the moral senti- 
 ment, bribes legislators to support them, takes 
 j)aius to hold aloof from people who are not rich, 
 flaunts his opulence in the face of the world, and 
 cares not who suffers, so long as he and his flourish, 
 — this man is many degrees removed from his 
 kind ; he has much to do before he can be con- 
 sidered reconciled with those he plunders and 
 outrages. 
 
 It was said lately again, that before there can 
 be refinement of spirit, grace of bearing, gentle- 
 ness and suavity of disposition, there must be an 
 aristocracy ; that aristocracies alone have pro- 
 duced ladies and gentlemen. This is what the 
 Southern people said of themselves, and what 
 their Northern^ parasites said of them, before the 
 war. Much was told of their elegance, their deli- 
 cacy of sentiment, their fine instinct of propriety, 
 their social dignity and breeding. Yes : these 
 qualities were all there, but, being qualities pecu- 
 
ATONEMENT. 139 
 
 liar to a caste, they were esseutially inhuman. 
 Those Southern people, along with these qualities, 
 and as the reverse side of them, had and openlj ex- 
 hibited dispositions of coldness, pride, contempt, 
 cruelty, that were even shocking to contemplate ; 
 they boasted of qualities that cut them off from 
 their kind ; tliey plumed themselves on their in- 
 dolence, their luxuriousness, their superiority to 
 the vulgar herd of workers and tradesmen ; they 
 cherished disorganizing feelings ; they fomented 
 destructive passions ; their theory of society was 
 that of barbarians ; for honesty they read honor, 
 and the symbol of honor among them was the 
 pistol. They Avere the most ornamental people 
 in America, certainly, the most sleek and glossy 
 and insinuating ; but the backwoodsman in Maine 
 was a better specimen of human nature. 
 
 The largest section of humanity does not con- 
 tain the human. A nationality is not big enough. 
 The patriot who is nothing but a patriot, a Ger- 
 man, Frenchman, Enghshman, American, is less 
 than the simplest man who respects his fellow- 
 being without further qualification. The good 
 Samaritan of the parable, with but two pence in 
 his pocket, was nearer the Christ's heart than the 
 whole band of stormy patriots who had their ban- 
 ners all ready to unfurl in the cause of the soldier 
 king. The passion of patriotism keeps occasions 
 of discord open ; it multiplies them, and exults in 
 
140 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 the aggrandizement of its own state at the expense 
 of its neighbors ; it counts the profits it may de- 
 rive from foreign disaster and foreign war. It is 
 essentially inhuman. 
 "^^^ The problem of atonement is to reconcile the 
 opposite extremes of humanity by creating in all 
 men faith in the human elements that are in them 
 all. The atonement is not completed when the 
 Christ has done his part. It is then only made 
 possible ; its conditions are given, nothing more. 
 The reconciliation is efifected when men do their 
 part. But to make them do their part is the diffi- 
 cult point, to beget in them faith and love. Ac- 
 cording to theologians the sacrifice of Christ met 
 the preliminaries, nothing more. It made the 
 atonement possible. If he had done the whole 
 the old Antinomian Universalism would be justi- 
 fied which claimed that all were of necessity 
 saved, because Christ died for all. The sufferings 
 of the divine man are the ground of reconciliation, 
 but the ground must be occupied. The higher 
 powers have done their best : it remains for the 
 lower powers to respond. So far as heaven is 
 concerned the atonement is complete; ideally, 
 the reconciliation is effected ; practically, a very 
 large part of the work is yet to be done. 
 
 Christian divines are still laboring at the task 
 of impressing upon mankind in general the neces- 
 sity of being spiritually incorporated with their 
 
ATONEMENT. 141 
 
 Christ, of taking the hand he extends to them 
 and rushing into the arms he spreads open to 
 take thoni in. They dilate with enthusiasm on 
 liis goodness, his condescension in leaving his 
 heavenly seats to help them, his kindness to 
 mortal distress, his patience with infirmity, dull- 
 ness, and guilt, his pity for sufieriug, his compas- 
 sion with sorrow, his graciousness in accepting 
 the most humiliating earthly conditions, his mag- 
 nanimity in defending the weak cause, his devo- 
 tion in dying, his sacrifice in giving up his very 
 life for a race which only the utmost charity 
 could induce him to regard with even so much as 
 mercy. The story of his superhuman, his al- 
 together heavenly loveliness, is told over and over 
 again, with endless exaggeration and touching 
 eloquence, is pressed home Avitli all the force of 
 cumulative appeal, in the hope that insensible, 
 callous, stupid, vicious, abandoned men and 
 women will at length be reached and penetrated, 
 convinced and subdued by it, that the heart of 
 sin will be broken, and the sick-souled, penitent 
 prodigal be brought home. Faith in the effect of 
 this presentation has been unqualified. Take it 
 where you will, the church said, do it justice, 
 press it home upon the harlot, the murderer, the 
 blasphemer, the atheist, and it will do the work 
 of regeneration. The story has been told so often 
 that everybody has heard it, and never Avill it be 
 
142 THE UELIGION OF HUMAmTT. 
 
 told more pleadingly. The effects have in a 
 measure followed. They still follow. Conver- 
 sions have been made — are made yet — where the 
 heart is quite simple, and the way to it unimpeded. 
 But the atonement is far enough yet from being 
 accomplished. The Christ of the church is fading 
 into remoter distance day by day, his figure is 
 becoming smaller and smaller in proportion to 
 the modern world, his voice is less distinctly heard 
 amid the din of affairs, his magnetic influence is 
 more and more losing hold of a society immersed 
 in business and distracted by a thousand interests. 
 As a single person, he has not power to command, 
 convince, or persuade. We can regard him now 
 only as a symbol of that noble, heaven-born, celes- 
 tial humanity which is always at work endeavor- 
 ing to subdue the world to itself. 
 
 This humanifi/ is the suffei'ing Christ. It is he 
 that teaches, toils, sorrows, pities, bears the buf- 
 fet, submits to the scourge, carries the cross, glo- 
 rifies the golgothas. As with the Israelites, the 
 Messiah, " without form and comeliness," " de- 
 spised and rejected of men," " the man of sor- 
 rows acquainted with grief," was not an individual, 
 but the little united band of faithful Jews, so with 
 us, the Christ who initiates the work of reconcili- 
 ation between the extremes of mankind is the 
 loyal company of the servants. It is they who 
 live and die in hope to bring the race back to its 
 
ATONEMENT. 143 
 
 unity, and so effect a reconciliation between the 
 lower elements and the higher. Earnest men will 
 one day speak of the need of this atonement, and 
 of the efforts of this Christ to complete it, as 
 powerfully and pathetically as Paul or Augustine 
 spoke of the need of reconciliation with their 
 Christ and the benignity of their Lord from hea- 
 ven. 
 
 The apparatus of the atonement has been in 
 some good degree completed. The outward appli- 
 ances, the enginery, the mechanism, we see at 
 work. Social arrangements have attained a con- 
 siderable perfection. Modes of intercourse and 
 communication are multiplied and organized. 
 Networks of iron rails weave states together. 
 Numerous lines of steamships keep up incessant 
 concourse between the most distant shores. The 
 telegraph annihilates time and space. Trade con- 
 solidates interests. The influences of law and 
 civility are felt in all places. International trea- 
 ties extend international obligations. The aspir- 
 ation is everywhere towards luiity. But suppose 
 that this species of aspiration were far more 
 nearly satisfied than it is, would the problem of 
 atonement be solved ? Will any amount of ma- 
 chinery, any amount of apparatus and appliance, 
 be a substitute for the moral element, or perform 
 the part assigned to it in the organization of sOt 
 ciety ? Will railways convey us to heaven ? Will 
 
144 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 submarine cables serve as moral heart-strings? 
 Will the interlacing of interests create a holy 
 family, or the full recognition of the truths of so- 
 cial science establish practically the kingdom of 
 God ? Has not emotion, feeling, sympathy, faith, 
 still a great work to do ? Is the contagion of 
 earnestness to pass for nothing ? In a word, is 
 the moral element to be wholly ruled out, and is 
 an enlightened selfishness to take the place of the 
 spiritual laws, displacing the bibles by some 
 " Poor Eicliard's Almanac," and ruling out the 
 prophets, exemplars and saints in favor of pohti- 
 cal economists and boards of trade ? It may be 
 so ; but I, for my part, still cling to my faith in 
 moral forces. I am persuaded that they work 
 outwardly from the centre, and that, but for them, 
 the very machinery we devise would not have been 
 invented. 
 
 For back of all these appliances, and through 
 them, works that ancient power, divine, human, 
 that power of earnest longing and love of which 
 Jesus is an illustration, and of which the " Christ " 
 has been the symbol. The old myth of a god 
 descending to the earth is full of suggestion still. 
 For, if we consider a moment, we are amazed to 
 see with what steady power, what tireless patience, 
 what implacable good-will, the pure elements of 
 human nature work, and have from the beginning 
 worked, to improve the condition and redeem 
 
ATONEMENT. 145 
 
 the state of mankind. The history of every in- 
 vention is a story of almost incredible toil and 
 consecration. Not the great exemplars of kind- 
 ness merely, not only the world-renowned philan- 
 thropists, reformers, teachers, founders of faiths, 
 missionaries, discoverers, prophets, martyrs to 
 high ideal truth, men of genius, men of faith who 
 have become centres of regenerating power, but 
 the patient toilers and discoverers of every kind 
 compose the company of the redeemers. Comtc's 
 Positivist Calendar devotes each day in the month 
 to the name and memory of one of these sa- 
 viours, copying the saints' days of the Eoman 
 Church. What a list of names it is, and what a 
 store of energy and creative force it suggests ! 
 Thirteen months of days, and for every day a 
 working man! The calendar of the church is 
 thin and bloodless beside it. The lives of the 
 saints make very dull reading, dry, monotonous, 
 exaggerated, fantastical, repulsive, a tiresome 
 pounding on a single string, which has little 
 resonance and less music ; but these Hves are 
 rich in sympathy and variety. Study the history 
 of the steam engine, the magnetic telegraph, the 
 sewing machine ; go into the roots of the matter, 
 trace the line of the discoverers, improvers, per- 
 fecters, back to the beginning ; see what crosses 
 they bore, what deserts they wandered in, what 
 stripes they endured. Take up the biographies 
 
146 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 of Watt or Fulton, of Morse or Stephenson or 
 Elias Howe, — they are romances of single-lieart- 
 ecluess and denial. Our simplest tool and most 
 familiar instrument of service cost the precious 
 life-blood of one or more men, the latchet of 
 whose shoes we are unworthy to unloose. Every 
 improvement in labor-saving machinery, every 
 plan of social organization, every effort at the re- 
 arrangement of civil or pohtical conditions, every 
 attempt at a re-adjustment of interests, every en- 
 deavor to reform an abuse, remove an obstruction, 
 correct a mistake, mend a law, alter a custom, 
 remedy an evil, has cost the very best life there is 
 in humanity ; experiment on experiment, failure 
 on failure, discouragement on discouragement, 
 sorrow on sorrow, the bruising, bleeding, break- 
 ing of the sweetest hearts that beat. There have 
 been hundreds of Gethsemanes, scores of Cal- 
 varys. You may make your heart burn any day 
 by dipping into the experiences of the men and 
 women who have done but a small share in the 
 work of overcoming the obstacles that lie in the 
 way of reconciliation. The legend is not written 
 in the New Testament, it is written in numberless 
 books and pamphlets, reports, magazines, news- 
 papers, tliat every one can read ; the air is warm 
 with touching appeals which, if they could be 
 heard, would soften the hardest heart. 
 
 If the day-laborei' could recognize and feel the 
 
ATONEMENT. 147 
 
 beneficence of the minds that mvcnted the labor- 
 saving machinery that he dreads and destroys as 
 an enemy, his bitterness of hate would subside, 
 and he would cease to fly in the face of his best 
 friend. If the artisan, forgetting the apparent 
 discord between himself and the man who em- 
 l)loys him, could be made to appreciate the accu- 
 mulated treasure of patient heroism expressed bj 
 that hated word " Capital ;" if the unlettered could 
 be brought to understand the ineffable tenderness 
 involved in the sciences and literatures which 
 wear such an awful aspect to them ; if the vicious 
 could have their eyes opened to the benignity of 
 the virtue they are daily outraging and crucify- 
 ing ; if the criminals could be induced to regard 
 the law that watches, restrains, punishes them, as 
 the redeeming thing it is ; if the sinful could have 
 it borne in upon them that the social order they 
 regard as their persecutor, their tyrant, their tor- 
 mentor, is in truth their best friend — that the 
 very tenderness of heaven is in it, that their tur- 
 pitude and baseness is that of a child that 
 should strike its mother, — the tough old heart 
 would begin to throb and bleed again. The ob- 
 servation of life shows that people are still much 
 more governed by their feelings than by their in- 
 terests, and surely the materials for working on 
 the feelings are here abundant enough. If one 
 tenth part of the pains were taken to use them 
 
148 IRE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 properly that have been taken to make effectual 
 the sufferings of Jesus, the power of consecrated 
 ht'e would be felt on an immense scale, and con- 
 versions would increase in sincerity as Avell as in 
 number. Every good man does something after 
 his kind to abolish hate, mitigate suffering, as- 
 suage sorrow, confirm nobleness. Every useful 
 man is a reconciler ; every true, honest and j)ure 
 man is a minister of peace ; all sacrifice is atoning 
 sacrifice, for it helps to draw together the alien- 
 ated. 
 
 All atonement, says the church, is by blood. 
 " Without blood is no remission." The Eedeem- 
 er shed his blood on the cross, and the followers 
 of the Redeemer have in all ages borne their 
 crosses, leaving bloodj^ foot-tracks on the soil of 
 history. And blood answers to blood ; the god 
 dies in order to effect his junction with the wicked 
 world ; wickedness dies in order to effect its junc- 
 tion with the god. The blood-ofiering, voluntari- 
 ly or involuntarily, is the law. Judas expiates 
 his sin by self-murder ; the criminal pays his for- 
 feit on the gallows ; the man of violence meets 
 with violent death by accident, poison or the dag- 
 ger ; the apostate people perish by war ; the na- 
 tion that has shed innocent blood of Coolies or 
 Africans must pour out the blood of its own chil- 
 dren at Antictam and Gettysburg. 
 
 This is the church doctrine. "What shall we say 
 
ATONEMENT. 149 
 
 of it ? This : atonement is by blood, but not by 
 the shedding of it ; rather by its saving and puri- 
 fication. Phlebotomy is no more to be applaud- 
 ed in theology than in medicine. Infusion, not 
 effusion, is the word. Blood means life ; it is the 
 symbol of love, exuberance, joy. But life and 
 love and joy are all augmented by sharing. The 
 more you spend them the richer you are. The 
 sacrifice of Jesus was simply the voluntary, glad 
 outpouring of his fullness, and all sacrifice is of 
 the same quality. The crucifixion of Jesus in 
 history was an untoward interruption of his life- 
 bestowing career, a cessation of his loving influ- 
 ence, the stoppage of his regenerating heart- 
 beats, Judas would have better expiated his 
 fault by living to mend it. The murderer would 
 make more complete atonement by useful labor. 
 Reconciliation is effected by co-operation of ser- 
 vice. Set the blood flying in this way ; make 
 all people feel that they are of " one blood," and 
 the true at-one-meut will be finished. Let the 
 cross mean, not the painful surrender of life, but 
 its glad overflow ; wipe from the altar the spots 
 of gore, wash white the priest's bloody robes, pu- 
 rify the halls of divinity with disinfectants to re- 
 move the cadaverous smell, revise the theological 
 death-code, purge the vocabulary of its ghastly 
 words, disenchant the emblems, lay stress on the 
 sympathy not the suffering, and the old problem 
 will receive a new solution. 
 
YL 
 
 POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 ]\ /TR. LECYK, at the close of bis powerful and 
 ■^^^ eloquent book on Rationalism in Europe, in 
 which he traces with conscious superiority and 
 hardly concealed triumph the progi'ess that reason 
 has made in the fields of practical and speculative 
 thought, and celebrates with pride the successive 
 victories of intelligence over ignorance, prejudice, 
 and superstition, falls into a strain of sadness as 
 he reflects on the moral tendency of the very 
 principle whose power he has so successfully 
 vindicated. He regrets the decay of the old 
 heroic ethics, the decline of the spirit of enthu- 
 siasm, the departure of the grand virtues of dis- 
 interestedness, magnanimity, sacrifice which dis- 
 tinguished the otherwise barren periods of histo- 
 ry, and declares that in the course of our intel- 
 lectual progress we have lost spiritual qualities of 
 priceless Avorth. He deplores the mercenary, ve- 
 nal, prosaic character of our modern utilitarian 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 151 
 
 age, the feeble action that men of genius or faith 
 exert on the masses, the intimate connection be- 
 tween a philosophy founded on sensation, and a 
 morality based on vulgar conceptions of interest. 
 There is a touching eloquence in siicli a confes- 
 sion from such a man, so clear, consistent and 
 brave ; and coming from such a man, it compels 
 us to hearken to it. It may be true, though we 
 doubt, that the nobler ethics are disowned ; that 
 the lofty virtues of self-denial, generosity, magna- 
 nimity, loyalty to principle, devotion to high ideal 
 aims, are passing into disrepute ; that " Com- 
 mon Sense," as it is called, in other words, the 
 consideration of immediate personal interest, is 
 taking the place of the fine inspirations of elder 
 time. 
 
 Earnest people say they see this, and grieve 
 over it ; regard it, if not with anxiety, at least 
 with concern. 
 
 In our large modern world these fine qualities, 
 always rare, are not conspicuous ; in our altered 
 world they are more than overbalanced by the 
 quahties that characterize a commercial age. 
 But it would be easy to enumerate examples of 
 the grandest tj'pe of character in our own age and 
 even in our own matter-of-fact land, and the re- 
 spect paid to them, the enthusiasm they inspire, 
 the influence they exert, is evidence that the 
 qualities they embody have not lost their hold on 
 
152 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 maDkind. The standard of character among those 
 who recognize a standard is as high as it ever 
 was, and there is no sufficient ground for feariug 
 that it will be lowered. Mr. Lecky's apprehen- 
 sion springs perhaps from a sentimental element 
 in his constitution which at times seems to be 
 morbid. He must have forgotten, when he wrote, 
 men and women in Italy, Germany, England, 
 who were keeping fresh the finest traditions of 
 classical and of Christian heroism ; he could not 
 have remembered that such as they, were, even 
 in the choicest classical epoch, and in the pecu- 
 liar " ages of faith," the distinguished exceptions 
 to the common rule. 
 
 But were what Mr. Lecky says perfectly true, it 
 does not follow that the alleged moral doctrine 
 ensues from the increase of the rational princi- 
 ple. For when that principle shall have been 
 clearly understood, and shall have fiually tri- 
 umphed, it is fair to suppose that it will restore 
 whatever may seem to have been lost, and vrill 
 do complete justice to the whole nature of man. 
 When men act rationally, if they ever do, they 
 will act nobly. When they act in full view of all 
 reasonable considerations, not in partial view of 
 the few considerations that he immediately about 
 tliem, they will rise to a loftiness of motive and a 
 dignity of conduct that will quite match the an- 
 cient standard in elevation, while surpassing it in 
 
POWER OE 3I0RAL INSPIRAJION. 153 
 
 reasonableness. But that time is far enough 
 from having arrived yet. They who Hve rational 
 lives are the few. Few are they who take any 
 but the lowest view of interest. Reason is thus 
 far excessively weak as compared with passion. 
 The animal instincts are still so strong as to re- 
 quire perpetual curbing. We see daily exam- 
 ples of the extreme difficulty that even able men, 
 favorably situated, elegibly cu'cumstanced, well 
 endowed, responsibly placed, with encourage- 
 ments and incitements to virtue all about them, 
 have in controlling and subduing their inclination 
 to do dishonorable things ; daily examples of the 
 hopelessness of the struggle between judgment 
 and instinct ; between reason, honor, affection, 
 duty, and some degrading vice like intemperance 
 and licentiousness. It is so hard to hold ra- 
 tional considerations in mind at all, for any length 
 of time, so very hard to hold them against the 
 weakest opposing force, so all but impcjssible to 
 hold them against the desire for pleasure or pro- 
 fit when it sets in strong upon even fairly-bal- 
 anced minds, that it must be very long indeed be- 
 fore the average of mankind will submit to this 
 mental, ideal, purely invisible and impalpable 
 control. Reason has its development yet to 
 gain. Even the simplest knowledge of the sim- 
 plest laws, the laws of physical health for m- 
 stance, the laws of relationship between obvious 
 
154 THE liELIGJON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 interests and familiar groups of circumstance, 
 comes very slowly and is ver}- slowly diffused. 
 The knowledge that co-ordinates facts, rests on 
 wide generalizations, covers long reaches of time 
 and space, is much rarer ; its progress is hardly 
 appreciable ; its spread can scarcely be traced ; 
 its influence is too small to be estimated. And 
 yet on the increase, nay, on the prevalence of 
 this, the maintenance of purely rational morality 
 must depend ; so long as this is absent, so long 
 as the impulsive, passionate element is supreme, 
 so long will some special inspiration to noble 
 sentiment in action be necessary. Passion can 
 be resisted by passion alone, impulse must be 
 set against impulse, desire must counteract de- 
 sire, feeling umst operate against feeling ; a tide 
 of enthusiasm must swell and overbear the tides 
 of appetite. And in an age like ours, whence shall 
 this enthusiasm come ? 
 
 We must look for it still from religion, and in 
 order that religion may produce it, there must be 
 some new interpretation of its great teachings. 
 
 Hitherto in Christendom the source of moral 
 inspiration in the multitude of mankind has been 
 the personal Christ. High spirits have drawn 
 from higher springs. Some exalted souls in and 
 out of Christendom have been filled and fed from 
 the perennial fountains of their own abounding 
 hearts. Their beautiful visions have been inte- 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 155 
 
 rior ; on the throne of their private conscience sat 
 their inspiring deity. But the multitude of man- 
 kind have looked for moral support to the 
 Christ alone. Let us never fail to appreciate 
 the significance, or to do justice to the weight of 
 that conception. It was a saving conception, a 
 source of moral regeneration for centuries. Let 
 us place it before us for a moment, and consider 
 the elements of its power. 
 
 The vision of an absolutely sinless character ; 
 this was the first element of a human being, 
 circumstanced and conditioned like other human 
 beings, sharing the ills of their mortality, like 
 them exposed to poverty, hunger, fatigue, and 
 whatever else miserable people in miserable 
 times have put upon them, yet sweetly, patiently 
 uncom})Luningly, gratefully bearing it all; wounded 
 without crying, deserted without hating, tempted 
 without falling, his life a perpetual rebuke to 
 all the rest of his fellow men, a niiracle of human 
 character yet made of the same stufl;" that the 
 cheapest human characters are made of ; a 
 standing reproach and a standing glory to the 
 race; shaming the worst, illustrating, confirming, 
 immortalizing the best that humanity is capable 
 of ; this was the first element of power in this mar- 
 vellous conception ; an imaginative conception, 
 mainly, an ideal as we say, but somehow so art- 
 fully associated, so intimately identified, in fact, 
 
156 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 with an historical person that its entire reahty 
 was not, could not be, doubted. 
 
 This being, so transcendently fine, so godlike, 
 so exempt from mortal responsibility, it would 
 seem, lives, toils, dies, not in the pursuit of riches 
 or power or fame, but that the lost of his kind, 
 those with whom he could have no natural sym- 
 pathy, those who must have been disagreeable, 
 repulsive, loathesome to him, might be rescued 
 fi'om their worse than wretchedness. He sets an 
 example not of goodness merely but of disin- 
 terested, devoted, self-sacrificing goodness. The 
 lesson of his character and career is not " do 
 as you would be done by," but "do as human- 
 ity prompts," " live for others," cast every form 
 of selfishness aside, never think of yourself at 
 all, not even of your spiritual self, not even of 
 your soul, but give up all you have and are to 
 the well-being of your fellow creatures. Make 
 no account of suffering ; reckon death as nothing 
 in consideration of their need. " The son of 
 Man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." " Being in the form of God, he made 
 himself of no reputation, took on himself the form 
 of a servant, humbled himself, and became obe- 
 dient unto death." This is the second element of 
 power. 
 
 One more step, and a most important one. 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 157 
 
 This being was not presented to mankind as a 
 historical person, who lived indeed, but in the re- 
 mote past ; who was visible, but through the mist 
 of ages ; who toiled, and wrought, and suffered, 
 but hundreds of years ago ; who died, but had 
 long been in peace. He was presented as a still 
 existing, a still living, feeling, workmg, sympa- 
 thizing person, glorified but compassionate, hea- 
 venly but present, sitting at the right hand of God, 
 but none the less watching with interest deep as 
 ever the conduct of those for whom he bled — the 
 perpetual Saviour, the constantly thoughtful, anx- 
 ious, encouraging, rebuking, regenerating Christ. 
 Let that thought sink in. 
 
 Finally, and in this point the whole conception 
 culminated, this being was thought of and be- 
 lieved in as the Judge who at the last day 
 would mount his throne, collect the nations 
 around him, summon individuals one by one to 
 his bar, place their lives before them in full re- 
 view, pass sentence on them according to their 
 obedience or disobedience to his Law, and con- 
 sign them over to their merited doom. 
 
 This Christ, I beg it to be remembered, was 
 no dogma, no fancy, no speculation, but an 
 image made palpable by every device of art. He 
 was painted in fresco and on canvas ; exhibited 
 in his agony and his triumph ; in his humiliation 
 and his glory ; he was carved in wood and 
 
158 IHE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 stone, and set up, iu places of resort, at the cor- 
 ners of the streets, by the roadside, iu all wild 
 and in all charming spots, in public buildings, 
 churches, halls of state, in private houses too, 
 where he could be seen at all hours of the day ; 
 and these visible representations of him kept be- 
 fore the eyes of men precisely those traits that 
 most strongly excited their moral emotions. Mu- 
 sic conveyed to the ear the same impressions 
 that art made on the eye. The mass was a dra- 
 ma as effective and touching as the great masters 
 of sound could produce. Ritual forms and cere- 
 monies, altar services, prayers, confessions, creeds, 
 conspired to keep ever in mind the image of the 
 suffering Saviour. 
 
 Is it surprising that such a conception, should 
 have produced an extraordinary effect ? That it 
 produced no more is the wonder. Not its suc- 
 cess in creating virtues of the heroic type, saint- 
 ly virtues like those of St. Francis or St. Charles, 
 but its failure to make such virtues more com- 
 mon than at anj^ time they were, is the matter for 
 amazement. How could people who had such a 
 conception as this before them, who believed 
 themselves watched by such holy eyes, who knew 
 that they must one day look straight into them, 
 who had the hope of that heaven-bestowing 
 smile, or the anticipation of that eternally with- 
 ering frown — how could people whose hearts were 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATIOK 159 
 
 thus directly and searcbingly appealed to, fail to 
 be generous, noble, self-denying, self-sacrificing ? 
 What prevented magnanimity from becoming the 
 law of average existence ? The mental insensibil- 
 ity of the age prevented : the hardness, crude- 
 ness, brutality of the western world prevented. 
 They were bloody ages, inconceivably bloody 
 and brutal ; ages of cruelty, despotism, violence, 
 barbarity unspeakable. The men were moral 
 pachyderms. No ordinary rifle-ball would pene- 
 trate their tough leathern hides. Moral ideas 
 had to be rubbed into them with vitriol, burned 
 in with caustic. They had to be told that their 
 sins crucified Christ afresh every day, and even 
 then they would not repent, for the rush of their 
 savage life carried away completely, as by a boi- 
 sterous flood, the obstacles that the priests were 
 able to oppose to it. Their moments of reflec- 
 tion were like the cold gleams of the sun that 
 shine fitfully through the cloud-rifts on a cheer- 
 less November day. They do not warm the earth, 
 and they make more terrible the gloom of the 
 sky. 
 
 To this conception of the Christ is due any con- 
 spicuous virtue for a thousand years and more. 
 But that conception for some centuries now has 
 been steadily fading away. With the decline of 
 Romanism it has declined. Protestantism has 
 been impaiiing its force from the beginning. It 
 
160 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 took away the carved statue ; it destroyed the 
 bloody crucifix ; it removed the pictured can- 
 vas ; it left no visible sign or emblem of the be- 
 ing men had worshii^ped. It talked about him, 
 indeed ; preached about him, dogmatized about 
 him, made mental pictures of him, set him up in 
 the shrine of thought. But the shrine of thought 
 is neither kept open nor inviolate in uncultivated 
 minds ; mental pictures are seldom vivid, and 
 they rapidly lose color ; the perpetual preaching 
 fatigues ; the continual talking and dogmatizing 
 dulls the edge of the intellectual tools. Protes- 
 tantism never did for the mind what Romanism 
 did for the eye, it could not, for it lacked the 
 materials ; it made no account of the sensuous 
 element which predominated, and great account 
 of the mental faculty, which was dormunt. A 
 more fatal step than, this Protestantism took 
 when it introduced the principle of reason and 
 went to work undoing all that faith tried to ac- 
 complish. The mind questioned the truth of the 
 conception the soul was worshipping. The New 
 Testament story was read, pondered, discussed. 
 Criticism came in, the paint was washed off 
 the image, the pigments scrajDed from the can- 
 vas. The difference between the historical Je- 
 sus and the mythological Christ was discovered ; 
 the spell was broken ; the inspiration was gone. 
 No longer does the image of the Christ sway 
 
POWER OF MORAL IXSFIRATIOK IGl 
 
 the heart of Christendom or rule its conscience. 
 That is too plain for argument. The churches 
 are full of Christians on whose moral natures that 
 once venerable and beautiful conception has no 
 effect whatever. They do not feel the searching 
 glance, they do not dread the future presence. 
 He is not a living presence any more, but a 
 doubtful, dismembered, half-discarded dogma to 
 which no argument gives the semblance of re- 
 ality. Their worldly lives catch no glory from 
 the clouded and rapi Uy westering sun. 
 
 But it is the symbol, not the reality that has 
 disappeared. The real Christ remains, and pos- 
 sesses all the attributes that were ascribed to 
 the being whom Christendom adored. The true 
 humanity we have tried to set before us is 
 the Christ — the organized human elements, the 
 quality whereof our consciousness reveals to us, 
 the power whereof history and observation dis- 
 close. This Christ possesses all the virtues. 
 They are born of it. Jesus was one of its illus- 
 trations ; the heroes and saints are the flashing 
 out of its individual traits ; the philanthropists 
 are its active sentiments. 
 
 This Christ does indeed, as we have seen, live, 
 labor, suffer and die for mankind, setting a thou- 
 sand examples of divine goodness. He dies dai- 
 ly, for no day passes without its history of hero- 
 
162 THE RELIGION 01 HUMANITY. 
 
 ism, enacted perhaps before our own eyes, at 
 all events within our ken. 
 
 This Christ is Hving, he lives always ; he is the 
 same yesterday, to-day and forever, in every re- 
 spect the same, onl}^, if possibly ampler in spirit- 
 ual gifts — wider in sympathy, richer in love, ten- 
 derer in feeling, mightier in purpose, sweeter in 
 compassion than ever. He is the present lord, 
 really present in the flesh and not merely in the 
 spirit. 
 
 This Christ too, as has been said, is the Judge 
 whose day is every day ; -whom w^e must meet 
 and do meet, before whose bar we stand hourly 
 and are ranked either with the sheep or the goats. 
 
 Now why should not this conception have the 
 same force with the other one that has played 
 its noble part and had its victorious day, but 
 has now left its seat of power ? It is more real, 
 more tangible, capable of as vivid a presentation 
 to sentiment, feehug and conscience. Bring the 
 moral nature close up against this conception and 
 it cannot fail to receive a quickening thrill. For 
 wrong-doing of whatever description under the 
 form of vice or crime, social iniquity or broad 
 inhumanity, implies a total unconsciousness of 
 this living spirit of goodness, whether as exis- 
 ing potentially in the heart of the wrong-doer 
 or as existing actually in the lives of noble men 
 and women. Its disbelief is essentially in this 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 163 
 
 humanity that the Christ sjmboHzes. The worLl 
 is full of evil doers, and of evil doers who wear the 
 garb of saintliness, who are sound in all points 
 of belief, can quote proof texts by the score and 
 argue down infidehty past answer ; but the world 
 has not j^et seen a single wrong doer, whatever 
 his type of transgression, who beheved in the sanc- 
 tity of his own simplest human relations. Nay, 
 more than this, it has been observed that piety, so 
 called, the ordinary piety of the Christian, by 
 drawing the feelings away from these simple 
 human relations, has left the door open to evil 
 doing of almost every kind. The heart, gushing 
 over with giief at the sorrows of an ideal man, 
 has forgotten to pity real men : the conscience, 
 exhausting itself in efforts to discharge its fan- 
 cied duty towards a being who sate behmd the 
 clouds, has neglected its actual duty towards the 
 being that sits on the door-step. Few have 
 been more godless than some who have given 
 themselves entirely to God ; few more christless 
 than many who have been exceedingly jealous 
 for the glory of Christ ; few more inhuman than 
 those who have exalted Jesus to the skies. It 
 is, I believe, an unquestionable truth that the 
 most insidious and demoralizing kind of vice 
 has been introduced into society and organized 
 there and justified by people who had just passed 
 or were about passing through a period of re- 
 
364 THE RELIOION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 ligious excitement, during which their affections 
 were wound up to a pitch of ecstasy. In the 
 name of rehgion they loosened the bonds of 
 society ; in the name of God they desecrated 
 his temple ; on pretence of keeping the perfect 
 law of Christ they inaugurated a state of things 
 that common people might characterize as vile. 
 
 Some forget the sanctity of human relations 
 because their sentimentalism takes them high up 
 into the clouds, and some forget it because their 
 bestiality drags them far down into the mire. 
 In either case the forgetfulness of this human bond 
 is the cause of their evil doing. The breaking 
 in on their minds of a conviction which the New 
 Testament itself lifts to the rank of a religious 
 belie i" would come like a revelation from heaven. 
 Were this simplest of convictions to spread 
 through our community now, that almost cant 
 phrase, "The enthusiasm of humanity," would 
 represent a feeling of the deepest and most over- 
 powering description — a feeling that would carry 
 people easily to heights of moral attainment such 
 as the heroes of Christendom exemplified. Could 
 this conception be put vividl}' before men, as it 
 might be put by such eloquence as has more than 
 once in Christian history swept multitudes away 
 on the tides of enthusiasm, the chips and use- 
 less timbers and old stranded hulks that Une the 
 coast and choke up the river beds and block the 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRAIION. IGo 
 
 bays of society abroad and at home, would be 
 floated away or rescued for use ; animal passion 
 would receive a check. If some one could stop 
 the throng of people whose idle, aimless, purpose- 
 less, vagabond existence is the danger, the misery, 
 and the horror of our cities, and say to them : 
 " Stay one moment and bethink you of what you 
 are doing ; you are throwing yourselves away ; 
 that perhaps is a small matter ; if you could 
 only die and be well rid of, the loss would be 
 slight ; it might be a nuisance well abated. If 
 you were so many animals rooting in the mud, 
 unconnected by sympathy with those about you, 
 unrelated by organic ties to those before and after 
 3'ou — so that you went down alone — causing no 
 ripple on the surface of the community — there 
 might be little to say. Then drink on, gorman- 
 dize, indulge, play the fool to the top of your 
 bent; be a brute, and go the way of the brute. 
 The sooner you kill yourself and make room for 
 better men the better. But here it is ; you are 
 not alone ; you are not unrelated ; you are not 
 your own master ; in doing violence to yourself 
 you do violence to a great many beside, and 
 among them are the people who are trying to save 
 you at their own great expense. One may strike 
 at his own life and say : " Well, what of it ? I 
 don't care, my life is of no consequence ; I am 
 tii-ed of it ; let it end when and as it will, so it is 
 
166 THE EELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 gay while it lasts. The future is too far off to 
 disturb me ; as for the immortal life, I know 
 nothing about it ; hell is an old woman's fancy, 
 heaven a young man's dream." Could we only 
 say then to such a one : " Very well, let that go ; 
 but, my friend, see this. In going down into the 
 grave, you carry more than a miserable carcass 
 back to its dust. You carry all that might have 
 been a useful, happy man ; the support, perhaps, 
 of others ; the ornament, possiblj^ of a circle ; a 
 source however humble, of influence and cheer. 
 The blow you strike falls heavily on some whom 
 3'ou may see or may not see, but whom your every 
 movement affects as the light of a caudle affects 
 every particle of matter in a room, or the stone 
 thrown into a lake affects every mile of the coast- 
 line. Look back on the long chain of those who 
 have gone before you, who have given you what 
 they had, and who have unconsciously staked on 
 you a portion of their hope. Look forward at the 
 long chain of those who are to come after you, 
 whose existence will in some mysterious manner 
 bear the trace of yours. Look about you, on 
 your kindred, your friends, your mates, the com- 
 panions of your work or your leisure, the mem- 
 bers of your circle or profession, fellow-citizens, 
 fellow-men, before whose eyes 3'ou walk, into 
 whose ears you speak, whose opinions you mod- 
 ify, whose motives you affect. By help of obser- 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 1G7 
 
 vation, reflection, imagination, memory, call these 
 about you, a brotherhood of fellow-creature>!, a 
 vast family-circle, rich in sympathies, affections, 
 mutual responsibilities, cares, duties ; put yourself 
 in this line ; stand within this company ; then do 
 the base, the dishonorable, the inhuman thing, if 
 you can. Drink if you can, knowing that you are 
 dropping poison into these fresh veins ; gorman- 
 dize if you can, knowing that you are loadmg 
 down the already too heavily-weighted intelli- 
 gence, and clogging the already gasping will ; be 
 .incontinent if you can, knowing that you may be 
 planting ineradicable disease in your children yet 
 unborn ; be false if you can, knowing that your 
 lie tears the fine web of mutual contideuce that 
 holds communities together ; be dishonest if you 
 can, knowing that your fraud unsettles the very 
 basis of obligation and brings great houses with 
 a crash down upon humble roofs that slielter un- 
 suspecting families whose little all perhaps Avas 
 committed to hands they trusted would help them 
 and not destroy ; be cruel if you can, knowing 
 how in this world gentleness is the one most need- 
 ed grace ; be tyrannical and oppressive if you 
 can, knowing that by so doing you break the 
 divine order of society which rests on the equal 
 rights and prerogatives of the human ; be profane 
 if you can, knowing that your blasphem}- shocks 
 and insults the reverence whose holy awe gives 
 
1G8 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 solemnity to all liuman feeling ; be idle and ewe- 
 less if you cau, knowing that inertness and reck- 
 lessness derange the action of those agencies on 
 which the social health depends ; be extravagant 
 if you can, knowing that you waste others' liveli- 
 hood, if not your own, and excite the appetite for 
 luxury in people who cannot afford to gratify it ; 
 be stuhhorn, morose, and hitter if you can, knowing 
 that you spread a gloom over precisely the spots 
 that need to be sunniest, the spots where tired 
 men and women stop to repose and gladden 
 their hearts, and where the innocent children 
 sport in their joy." 
 
 What an inducement does not this simple 
 thought of the human kinship afford to the culti- 
 vation of sweetness and light ! I truly believe 
 that if it could be made familiar and vivid, it 
 would have a wonderful power to paralyze the 
 evil arm, and steal the evil, mind away, stationing 
 on either side of each living man and woman, an 
 angel of terror or of trust, that would prevent any 
 from stmying far to the right hand or to the left. 
 It should be more powerful over hard, and coarse, 
 and brutal minds than the conception of the 
 Christ of the Christian Church ever was, or from 
 the nature of the case could be. For he was not 
 seen, except with the mind's eye, nor touched, ex- 
 cept as a carved image, or a painted picture. His 
 actual suffering was matter of old histor}', and 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATIOX. 169 
 
 liis present need was less than nothing. But this 
 Christ brushes against us in the street ; nay, haa 
 his abode in our own home. His cry we hear, 
 though we stop our ears to shut it out ; his suffir- 
 ing we see, though we do not pause to look, but 
 pass hurriedly by on the other side. 
 
 Modern philosophy reveals a law of social de- i 
 velopinent that has a very intimate bearing on ^ 
 this question of moral inspiration. I refer to the 
 law of evolution, tlio nature and sco])e whereof 
 liave been demonstrated past peradventure, and 
 illustrated past the poipt at which further expo- 
 sition is required. This law simply rivets the 
 members of the human family together, making 
 links of gold of the airy sentiments that were 
 supposed to bo ephemeral. In view of this law 
 of evolution which makes of society an increas- 
 ing organically developing creature, the signifi- 
 cance of the moral element becomes very impres- 
 sive. This significance hes in its rendering so- 
 ciety self-developing, self-organizing, self- evolving. 
 It compresses all power within the compass of 
 human attributes, makes the race its own provi- 
 dence, its own reformer and saviour. Hitherto 
 providence has been thought of as superhuman. 
 The source of moral power has been considered 
 as standing outside of the race, and sending down 
 inspiration into it. Hence the responsibiUty of 
 human progress rested with God. It went on as 
 
170 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 fast as lie willed, and no faster ; when he willed, 
 it stopped ; when he willed, it was turned aside ; 
 he " raised up " deliverers, helpers, guides, sa- 
 viours, and it was quite proper to wait till he saw 
 fit to give them commission. If things went 
 right, he had his tribute of praise ; if they seemed 
 to go wrong, men submitted as they could, charg- 
 ing themselves with the perpetration of some 
 nameless guilt, trying to appease the divine dis- 
 pleasure, but never investigating their own con- 
 duct, never taking hold to improve their own es- 
 tate. In this view of things, it was impossible to 
 convince people of their responsibility. The 
 blame could alwaj-s be thrown upon God, and as 
 he was blameless, all powers were virtually held 
 innocent. An impression of moral fatalism dead- 
 ened the action of conscience. Bad men and 
 good men alike said they could not help it. Weak 
 men and strong men placed themselves in the same 
 category, and allowed themselves to be rolled and 
 tumbled along, pulled to and fro by invisible 
 strings, a prayer occasionally breaking the silence, 
 a cry to Jesus for pardon and compassion pierc- 
 ing the firmament, to be succeeded again by dumb 
 submission impotent complaint. 
 
 To all this the discovery of the law of evolution 
 puts an effectual stop. All the impelling powers 
 are now seen to be concentrated in the race, a live 
 organism, which grows by the use of its own 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPITIATIOX. 17J 
 
 faculties. If it fails to ^row, it is through its own 
 fault alone. Whether there shall be peace or war, 
 rule or misrule, purity or corruption, justice or in- 
 justice ; whether national treaties shall hold or 
 not, whether repubHcanism shall succeed or fail, 
 whether the State shall be loyal or disloj'al, 
 whether the city shall be governed by its higher 
 or its lower class, whether the streets and sewers 
 shall be sources of health or disease, whether 
 pestilence shall be invited or warned off, whether 
 virtue shall strengthen the citizens or vice shall 
 weaken them, are questions that men ml^st answer 
 for themselves. There is no higher tribunal be- 
 fore which they can be candied ; there is no super- 
 human or extra-human will by which they can be 
 dealt with. If things go well or ill rests with 
 those who are commissioned to make them go. 
 
 This idea restores to man his moral faculties, 
 gives him once more the stimulus to effort, be- 
 stows on him the right of indignation, and the 
 privilege to praise. "Who helps the evolution on, 
 and who retards it ? They who help it on help 
 everything on ; every member feels the thrill, 
 every particle tingles with the glow. They who 
 retard it keep everything back, cause depression 
 in all parts of the system, and deaden the 
 springs of life. All the healthily active are bene- 
 factors, whether they do much or little, organize 
 a state or regulate a household, invent a sewing 
 
172 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 machine or faithfully use one, reform the institu- 
 tions of a cit}' or lead sweet and simple lives, 
 negotiate a treaty or keep their private faith ; 
 found a system of education or successfully rear 
 a single child. 
 
 If done beueatli these laws, 
 E'en servile labors shine. 
 
 All the morbidly and unhealthily active are male- 
 factors, whether they do much or little, kill a man 
 or corrupt a principle, steal from a treasury or 
 debase a sentiment, betray a trust or trifle with a 
 feeling, waste others' lives by recklessness or 
 waste their own lives by idleness. The springs 
 of action are so delicate that a hair may dis- 
 turb them. We can understand the passionate 
 impatience with wrong-doers that they feel who 
 have conceived this idea in all its force ; we can 
 comprehend their abhorrence, their denunciation, 
 their furious assaults on the people who thrive on 
 the lower appetites of their fellow creatures, the 
 pimps and panders and drunkard-makers, the 
 knavish politicians, the demagogues who batten 
 on the miseries of their countrymen. And we 
 can understand the enthusiasm with which bene- 
 faction is hailed whenever it is recognized — the 
 public and general beneficence, which touches no 
 private need in special, but seems to work for the 
 substantial good of mankind at large. In cele- 
 
POWER OF MORAL INSPIRATION. 173 
 
 brating a great achievement like the liberation of 
 a state, the pacification of a nation, the abolition 
 of an evil like slavery, men betray the instinct of 
 humanity, which gives them common cause with 
 the redeemed. 
 
 It is true that these feelings are apt to be 
 carried to excess. Both the indignation and the 
 praise are often extravagant, overdone in ex- 
 pression, if not misdirected in their object. The 
 bad are not so bad, nor are the good so good 
 as they are painted. The benefactors and the 
 malefactors get confounded. The wrong heads 
 are broken, and the wrong heads are crowned. 
 But these evils are incidental and correct them- 
 selves. Those who have been in the habit of 
 thinking that God kept caldrons boiling and 
 sulphur pits smoking for people whose only fault 
 was ignorance or torpor, and had gardens of peren- 
 nial flowers to crown people whose only merit was 
 being piously born and credulously inclined, can 
 scarcely be expected to become all at once rea- 
 sonable when they themselves are the judges and 
 the executioners. Fanaticism does not so easily 
 die out. False standards of judgment and false 
 standards of doom, exaggerated sentiments and 
 overstrained passions, will be the rule for many 
 a day; fire-brands will be flying about indis- 
 criminately and garlands will be promiscuously 
 distributed. There will be a good deal of mock- 
 
174 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 thunder and lightning, individual reformers will 
 assume to be omniscient and will undertake to 
 deal damnation round the land, modestly taking 
 for granted that their seat is on the white throne 
 and that their tongue's edge is the dividing 
 sword. But it is the tendency of faith in the 
 law of social evolution to reduce this excessive 
 excitement within reasonable limits. For ev- 
 olution proceeds slowly, step by step, and the judg- 
 ment-seat is not in heaven above our heads, 
 but on earth at the rear limit of possible attain- 
 ment ; and men must be taken for what they are, 
 not for what they shall become ; men cannot be 
 judged to-day as they will be a thousand years 
 hence. 
 
 For the rest, the purpose in the long run 
 excuses the mistake. The sympathy, the wish 
 to do something, the admitted feeling of re- 
 sponsibility, the hope, the endeavor to improve 
 the working machinery of society, the recog- 
 nition of the fact of a general movement on- 
 ward, along a broad highway towards certain 
 definite results, the clear conviction that some 
 tilings assist the movement and that other things 
 retard it — all this, with the pure moral iulluence 
 that goes along with it, reduces the incidental 
 error of the rational reformer to small dimensions. 
 If the law of evolution — that and no private 
 fancy or passion of his own — is his studj' and 
 
POWER OF MORAL IXSPIRATIOK 175 
 
 his guide, his moral pressure will impel men 
 forward more than his errors of apprehension 
 will keep them back. There is no danger that 
 the law will work out its results too fast. 
 
 Is it said that we are the passive as well as the 
 active agents of evolution, that the law trundles 
 us along whether we will or no ; that brakes are 
 as important as engines ; that vice plays its part 
 as well as virtue, indifference as well as zeal ; tor- 
 por and turpitude as well as enthusiasm and hero- 
 ism, and so moral distinctness are obhtcrated ? 
 Let it be replied that the engines are as impor- 
 tant as brakes, and rather more so, seeing that 
 brakes are secondary and engines primary, and 
 that the train itself acts as a perjDetual brake ra- 
 ther more than sufficient in ordinary cases, ex- 
 cept where there is necessity for a sudden stop, as 
 in the law of evolution there never is. The natu- 
 ral inertia is check enough ; I hear Judas plead his 
 merit, arguing that he should be blessed instead of 
 execrated, because but for him the world might 
 have been defrauded of the benefits of the redeem- 
 ing death. The plea is not accepted. There was 
 plenty of weight in the scale against Jesus 
 without his. No man ever deliberately assumed 
 the position of brakesman who was qualified for 
 the position of engineer. They who elect at all, 
 elect to be among the helpers, not among the 
 Lindercrs. They who have humanity in view, 
 
176 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 have in view its progress. Wlietlier reason or 
 feeling be strongest in them ; whether as philo- 
 sophers they watch the gradual march of im- 
 provement and lend their aid calmly, or whether 
 as sympathizers they enter keenly into the 
 miseries that afflict mankind, and work earnest- 
 ly to remedy them, the finest inspiration comes 
 from the thought that the march of improvement 
 may be hastened, that the miseries may be allevi- 
 ated. The thought is no less convincing to the 
 head tlian it is kindling to the heart ; it seizes on 
 philosophers like Stuart MiU and Herbert Spen- 
 cer equally with enthusiasts like Victor Hugo 
 and Joseph Mazzini ; on minds like Thackeray 
 as powerfully as on minds like Dickens. It be- 
 gets a heroism of reform, a devotion of philan- 
 thropy among members of the English aristocra- 
 cy, and men of the working-classes. It appeals 
 with the force of religious conviction to the peo- 
 ple who have forsworn religion ; to secularists 
 like Holyoake and positivists like Bridges. Near- 
 ly all the moral enthusiasm of our times bears 
 the stamp of this belief. The popular phrase 
 " The enthusiasm of humanity " implies it ; a 
 phrase that is open to criticism on several grounds, 
 and is particularly objectionable as leading the 
 mind away from reasonable considerations, and 
 suggesting the reproduction, under another name, 
 of the inconsiderate passion for Christ that led 
 
POWER OF MORAL IXSPIRATIOK 177 
 
 SO many astray. Sacli enthusiasm is a thing to 
 be deprecated, but its existence, or the attempt to 
 call it into existence, proves the strength of the 
 idea we have been developing in its ethical di- 
 rection. That there is danger in it has been illus- 
 trated by no one as startlingly as by August 
 
 Comte. , • 1 f 
 
 In Comte's opinion the Golden Eule is detec- 
 tive in being egotistical in spirit. " Whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do unto you ! " Self re- 
 ference then is the ethical principle ; self gratifica- 
 tion the ethical motive.^ _ The "Religion of Hu- 
 manity " demands, in his judgment, a human law, 
 by which selfishness shall be under every form re- 
 buked. This law the French philosopher express- 
 es in the formuUi, " Live for others." According 
 to him, self-abnegation must be as complete as it 
 ever was in the ages of Faith. " All honest and 
 sensible men," he says, " of whatever party, should 
 agree by a common consent to discard the doc- 
 trine of rights. Positivism recognizes only du- 
 ties." There is the old fanaticism again ; the one- 
 sided, one-legged principle, that cannot walk or 
 even stand upright, to escape from the evils of 
 selfishness. He abolishes the principle of self- 
 love ; he annihilates individuality, that the ex- 
 cesses of individualism may be abated. It is Uke 
 killing the man to avoid the distant danger of his 
 perishing by disease. But mdividualism is as 
 
178 THE RELIGTON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 precious as imiversalism ; suicide is no more re- 
 spectable tliau murder. Not egotism, not altru- 
 ism, but, to mate another abominable word, rela- 
 tivism. The relation between the two is the mo- 
 mentai-y thing to be considered. The beauty of 
 the law of evolution lies in its power to secure 
 both. By its graduation, its slowness, its ever 
 steady march, its lirm conditions, its demand for 
 thoughtfulness, carefulness, judgment, it discour- 
 ages the heat of passion, and for enthusiasm sub- 
 stitutes earnestness, for fanaticism fidelity. It 
 keeps the individual in his place, and holds him 
 to his duty there, and decrees it the most solemn 
 part of his duty to make strong and bright the 
 special link in tlie human chain which he repre- 
 sents. The Golden Rule has the merit of recon- 
 ciling perfectly self love and brotherly love — the 
 ego and the new ego. It makes self love the basis 
 of charity and charity the interpreter of self love. 
 But the Golden Rule is defective in that it makes 
 personal feeling the criterion of moral duty. A 
 safer rule than Compte's would be " Live for the 
 whole ;" live so that the relation between you and 
 others may remain unbroken ; that the currents or 
 active sympathy may How evenly on ; that your 
 life may fit firmly into its frame, and deposit its 
 contribution just where it belongs. Do your best 
 according to intelligence and ability, as the min- 
 ute hand does its best in the clock. Neither self- 
 
P WER OF MORAL INSPIRA TION. 179 
 
 isb nor nuselfisb, but meeting tbe requirements 
 of botb by fiJebty. Tbe more eacb makes of 
 bimself tbe more be contributes to tbe wbole. 
 Tbe more be contributes to tbe wbole tbo ricber 
 be becomes bimself. 
 
vn. 
 
 PEOVIDENCE. 
 
 THE being of God implies providence. Through 
 providence we feel our way back to being ; 
 the indications of care point to the care-taker. 
 The notion of providence is as universal as the 
 notion of Deity. " All things are full of Provi- 
 dence," said the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The 
 Hebrew Scriptures celebrate providence in every 
 form of speech. Historian, poet, moralist, pro- 
 phet, song -writer, delight in expressing in charac- 
 teristic way their conception of the divine super- 
 intendence. The Jewish people themselves are 
 considered in their history and literature as fur- 
 nishing the most convincing proof of it. Provi- 
 dence is the theme of the bible. Jesus says : 
 " Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without 
 your Father." The poets, ancient and modern, 
 prose writers too, bear witness to the general, 
 we may say, the instinctive belief in a great Care 
 over the world of things and men. It may be 
 doubted whether the belief is ever absent from 
 
PROVIDENCE. 181 
 
 the liuuiau mind, or can ever be eradicated. 
 Walt Whitniau, in his strange fashion, but with 
 more than his usual power, lifts up the psalm to 
 providence in his " Faith Poem." 
 
 I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the 
 
 world is hxteut in any iota of the world ; 
 I do not doubt there are realizatious I have 
 
 no idea of waiting for me through time 
 
 and through the universe. 
 I do not doubt that temporary afifairs keep on and 
 
 on, millions of years ; 
 I do not doubt that the passionately wept deaths 
 
 of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of 
 
 young women, and the deaths of 
 
 little children are provided for ; 
 I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malignance are pro- 
 
 \'ided for ; 
 I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen 
 
 anywhere, at any time, is provided for, in the inheren- 
 cies of things. 
 
 This is the language of faith. Faith sees no 
 difficulty in supposing a foreseeing, forecasting, 
 forefeeling deity ; indeed it cannot rest in any 
 other. Faith wants a bosom to lie upon, a hand 
 to touch, a divine form to embrace, a celestial 
 countenance smiling or pitying, a heavenly eye 
 glaucing kindness or dropping tears. But the 
 intellect hesitates to authenticate the assertion. 
 As Diderot said : " The lesson is in Hebrew ; the 
 heart can comprehend, but the mind stands too 
 
182 THE RELIGION OF UUMAXITY. 
 
 low for yision." Henry Alabaster reports a 
 dialogue with a moderu Buddhist who argues 
 thus : " The Brahmins and other believers in God 
 the Creator believe that he makes the rain to fall 
 that men may cultivate their fields and live ; but 
 it seems to me that if it were so, he would of his 
 great love and mercy make it fall equally all over 
 the earth, so that all men might eat and hve in 
 security. But this is not the case. Indeed in 
 some places no rain falls for years together ; the 
 people have to drink brackish water, and cannot 
 cultivate their lauds ; besides, a very great deal 
 of the rain falls on the seas, the mountains, the 
 jungles, and does no good to man at all. Some- 
 times too much falls, Hooding the towns and vil- 
 lages, and drowning numbers of men and animals ; 
 sometimes too little falls iu the plains for rice to 
 be grown, while on the mountain tops rain falls 
 perpetually through seasons wet and dry." Faith 
 in providence has to meet severe shocks when 
 thus confronted with facts enormous in magnitude 
 and almost numberless in kind ; unfed hunger, un- 
 clothed nakedness, unsheltered weakness, unpro- 
 tected gentleness, unconsoled sorrow, wasted pro- 
 ducts, squandered life. The vindications of prov- 
 idence in the usual sense, overlook these apparently 
 uncared for wildernesses of the world, and fix 
 their attention on some particular spot where the 
 divine thoughtfulness has seemed to break visibly 
 
PROVIDENCK 183 
 
 forth ; some iudividual experience ■wLieli has 
 been peculiarly favored ; some striking instance 
 that seemed to reveal the guiding hand. 
 
 An eminent Christian writer, to make the mat- 
 ter plain, suggests that providence steadily keeps 
 the Christian religion in view. " It is not the na- 
 tions," he says, " but the Church that God has 
 cherished as the apple of his eye. Towards 
 Calvary, for thousands of years, all the lines of 
 history converged, and now, for other thousands 
 of years, to the end of time, will the lines diverge 
 from Calvary till the kingdoms of this world 
 have become the kingdoms of our Lord." This 
 explanation, which seems to be quite satisfactory 
 to the orthodox divine, implies that the deity is 
 orthodox, and is chiefly interested in the preva- 
 lence and establishment of evangelical doctrines. 
 
 But was not the Canaanite a child of God ? 
 Is not the Turk a man ami a brother ? By what 
 title does one religion monopolize providence in 
 behoof of its own members ? And when Roman- 
 ist and Protestant quarrel over thc.'ir respective 
 claims to the divine forethought, can anything bo 
 more ludicrous than the assumption that either 
 has the exclusive use of God ? A care that ex- 
 tends to less than all humanity an equal kindness 
 is certainly not heavenly. A partial providence 
 — Semitic, Aryan, Mongol, Gallic, Slavic, Teuto- 
 nic, Celtic, Saxon, Anglo-American — is none. No 
 
184 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tutelar deity is God. A providence that gives to 
 Prussian King William the victories he fights for, 
 that throws its dice with the heaviest battalion, 
 is considerably less than human or even Euro- 
 pean in its scope. Is providence to be credited 
 with the terrible military system of Prussia, or 
 with the crafty statesmanship that struck the bell 
 when the hour of war had come ? 
 
 The conversion of Paul is claimed as a clear 
 proof of immediate providence in human affairs ; 
 but the Jew might say that the providence rather 
 showed itself in the bonds, imprisonment, ship- 
 wreck and bloody death that befell the apostate, 
 and were the doom pronounced by heaven on his 
 crime, — th-e conversion being iucontestably a per- 
 version. Luther took as a special providence in 
 his own behalf his singular escape from the light- 
 ning bolt that struck down the companion who 
 walked by his side. But what would his com- 
 panion have said had the other man been blast- 
 ed ? Or what did the friends of the companion, 
 who perhaps were Eomanists, say to it ? Does 
 providence care so much more for Luther than 
 for another, that it matters not if the other be 
 shrivelled, so Luther be saved ? A friend with 
 much earnestness repeated to me the story of a 
 remarkable deliverance from death. He had en- 
 gaged passage on a steamer from San Francis- 
 co to New York. On the day before sailing, a 
 
PROVIDENCE. 185 
 
 strong mental impression — a sudden foreboding of 
 evil — induced him not to go in the steamer, and 
 he staid behind. The steamer sailed. Between 
 San Francisco and Acapulco the boiler burst. 
 The vessel sunk and a great many people per- 
 ished. What shall we say of the providence that 
 saved one not particulai-ly valuable life and al- 
 lowed a score of lives at least as valuable to be 
 lost ? Did a special providence impel the others 
 to embark ? Many a steamer narrowly misses 
 collision with the iceberg, and the passengers 
 give thanks for thoir miraculous deliverance from 
 death. The Arctic comes along at the fatal mo- 
 ment and rushes into the frozen monster's em- 
 brace. Why should the one vessel keep the 
 deadly appointment with the ice-mountain, and 
 the rest keep their friendly appointments with the 
 shore ? Why should God have selected that par- 
 ticular ship for destruction ? If it be a provi- 
 dence that rescues this boy from drowning when 
 the Sunday excursion-boat is capsized by a sud- 
 den squall, it is a providt-'uce that drowns his 
 comrade. If there be a providence in the safe 
 arrival of one railway train, there must be a pro- 
 vidence in the pitching of the next one down an 
 embankment. Could we prove that all the people 
 in the first train were saints, and all the people in 
 the lust train were sinners — that all the saved were 
 orthodox Christians, and all the mangled and 
 
185 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 slain were heretics, infidels and atheists ; did it 
 appear that the saved thenceforth led better lives 
 — there would be a clue to the providential cliar- 
 acter of the event. But this never can be sho^-u. 
 The saints are as often lost as the sinners ; the 
 sinners go on siuuiug as gaily after the deliver- 
 ance as they did before. 
 
 A providence without intention is no provi- 
 dence ; if the intention completch' eludes discov- 
 ery, it is impossible to tell what or where the 
 providence is. Care imphes thoughtfulness, and 
 acknowledged care implies thoughtfulness mani- 
 fest and appreciated. A capricious and imperfect 
 providence does not meet the demand either of 
 intelligence or faith : and providence seems capri- 
 cious and imperfect, unintelligent and purposeless, 
 as soon as our eyes are lifted from the immediate 
 occasion that interests us to a general survey in 
 which others besides ourselves are comprehended. 
 
 To say that providence is incomprehensible 
 is no answer, for that merely puts questioning 
 off. If it is utterly incomprehensible, nothing can 
 be aflSirmed or denied of it ; we cannot even say 
 that there is any syich thing. Some clue to it, 
 some key, some hint of its method, aim, purpose 
 a segment however srnall of its circle, must be 
 given before the baldest idea of it can be formed in 
 the mind. The divine foresight must have some- 
 thing in view, the divine forethought must contem- 
 
PROVIDENCE. 187 
 
 plate an object : the diviuo feeling must tend 
 towards definite end, else affirmation conceruin'Z 
 them is out of the question ; and whether we 
 take a broad survey of things about us, or we 
 run our thought over long reaches of space or 
 time, our clue is completlj lost. 
 
 Mr. Beecher says : " All the events of hfe are 
 precious to one that has this simple connection 
 with Christ of faith and love. No wind can 
 blow wrong, no event be mistimed, no result dis- 
 astrous. If God but cares for our inward and 
 eternal life, if by all the experiences of this hfe, 
 he is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, 
 nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every 
 sorrow sliall be but the setting of some lumin- 
 ous jewel of joy." Yes, but that " if !" Can it 
 be shown that God does care for our inward 
 and eternal life, that all the experiences of this 
 life are preparing for its disclosure ? Are men 
 really nobler for their sa tiering, sweeter for their 
 sorrow, finer for their discipline, richer for their 
 losses, more heavenly minded for their earthly 
 disappointments and defeats ? If they are, why 
 do they not show it '? If they are not, what be- 
 comes of the providence '? God must certainly 
 accomplish what he purposes ; and if he purposes 
 to make men and women christians and saints 
 that will be evident to all eyes. Our faith and 
 love will be part of his ordinance. It will not be 
 
188 lEE RELIGION 01 HUMANITY. 
 
 for us to bring the transmuting efl&cacj that is to 
 convert evil into good. He that provided a Sa- 
 viour for human sin, must he not also provide 
 hearts to give the Saviour welcome ? To say 
 that we must furnish the strange alchemy that 
 turns the baser metals into gold, is saying that we 
 are the providences, that the universe is but raw 
 material, which we are to work over as the shell- 
 fish work the sunshine millions of miles off into 
 the iridescent lines of its pearly coating ; as the 
 lily works into its convolutions the currents that 
 circulate in the air. 
 
 Thus logic and observation beat the personal 
 and special providence off the ground. The con- 
 ception of an infinite Being, Avho picks out states, 
 tribes, individuals, for peculiar favors ; who 
 looks in flowering bushes for a stroUing Moses ; 
 waits beneath the orange groves of Damascus for 
 a soul-tormented Paul ; watches the moment 
 when a hot-tempered Luther shall be found walk- 
 ing with a single comrade ; loosens the rail at the 
 precise instant that a special train passes ; pushes 
 down the iceberg in season for this or that 
 steamer ; a conception of God as Eomauist, or 
 Calvinist, or Unitarian, Theist, or Pantheist, is too 
 irrational for philosophy. The aspect of a world 
 incomplete, unregulated, unblessed, a world in the 
 throes of struggle, unable as yet to find the thread 
 of its own destiny, is discouraging to this idea. 
 
PROVIDENCE. 189 
 
 Tho religious man cannot believe that the un- 
 known and unknowable one is a polemic or a sec- 
 tarian. Tho philosopher gives up the theory of 
 final cause as inapplicable to a system regulated 
 by universal and impartial laws. The man of 
 practical understanding cannot believe that a 
 world so full of wants is cared for in detail by a 
 perfect intelligence. 
 
 Faith, however, falhng back on fine generalities, 
 refuses to abandon the problem, and science comes 
 to the aid of Faith ; not of " the faith " of any 
 church or sect, but of rational faith. Every indi- 
 vidual reading of providence is dismissed as irre- 
 levant, but tho order of providence is asserted. 
 The dispersion of the clouds reveals the firma- 
 ment ; the removal of the scaffolding shows the 
 proportions of the edifice. The whole universe, 
 from mollusc to man, from star-dust to society, 
 fi-om the rolling and tumbUug of tho primeval fire 
 mist to the revolutions in States, from the trans- 
 mutation of carbon into diamond, to the transmu- 
 tation of vice into virtue, is shown to be an or- 
 ganism, every part of which belongs to every 
 other part — a living, breathing, growing system, 
 slowly evolving itself, expounding, developing, 
 with a precision and symmetry that finds its sym- 
 bol in the unfolding structure of the rose or the 
 forest tree. In this organism everything has its 
 allotted place. It oould not but be where it is, 
 
190 THE RELIGIOIf OF HUMANITY. 
 
 or as it is. It was foreseen and fore-determined. 
 • Every pain, every sorrow, every failure, every suc- 
 cess, every mistake, every just calculation, every 
 false step, every true step, the thoughts, feelings, 
 speculations, determinations of men, efforts, 
 checks, impulses forward, draggings backward, 
 actions, reactions, the ebb and the flow of moral 
 purposes, the flash and sparkle of spiritual foun- 
 tains, the sinking of water in the spiritual wells, 
 everything comes by law, everything is under a 
 divine necessity, strong as the ancient heavens, 
 yet so tender that it will not brush the bloom 
 from a rose leaf a minute before its time, or break 
 the bruised reed with overweight. 
 
 Let there be no more talk of chance. The 
 language of Tennyson is not too strong : 
 
 ' ' That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God has made the pile complete ; 
 That not a worm is cloven in vain, 
 
 That not a moth with vain desire, 
 
 Is shrivelled in a useless fire, 
 Or but subserves another's gain." 
 
 Not a sparrow fallcth to the ground without a 
 cause for its broken wing or failing breath, a 
 reason for its inability to use the inexhaustible 
 buoyancy of the living air. There is a reason 
 why this man takes the particular steamboat or 
 
PROVIDENCK 191 
 
 train, why the boy gives the fatal twist to the 
 rudder of his sail-boat, why this especial buf- 
 falo turns on the grand-duke Alexis, and is 
 killed, why this partridge of all others is snared, 
 why this member of the school of fish is caught 
 in the net, why this particular beetle or butter- 
 fly furnishes a specimen to the entomologist. 
 The leaves of the aspen, the needles of the pine 
 tree, are all numbered. The divine mathematics 
 are inappreciable yet even by the calculus that 
 predicts the movements and reckons the weight of 
 an imcriscovered star ; but who doubts that the 
 laws of mathematics hold good in the unsurveyed 
 fields of creation ? 
 
 There is no such thing as luck. Luck is simply 
 imtraced and thus far untraceable law. I once 
 knew a man with whom all things went awry. 
 Notwithstanding his utmost forethought and 
 pains, fortune never came to him. The train was 
 never on time ; the steamer always made the 
 long passage ; if a colhsion occurred, he was 
 there ; stocks invariably fell the day after his in- 
 vestment ; his venture always miscarried ; markets 
 were up when he had to buy, and down when he 
 must needs sell; his gold was ever becoming 
 lead ; his diamond was ever being transmuted into 
 carbon. What was the matter it was impossible 
 to conjecture. There was a microscopic speck of 
 dust in the machinery ; some thie screw in the in- 
 
192 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 accessible heart of the engine was loose ; there 
 was too much oil or too little, or oil of the ^VTOug 
 kind. An indiscernible streak of disability ran 
 through the man's mental structure and made it im- 
 possible for him to touch the handle or find the 
 key. He could not adjust himself to his condi- 
 tions. His neighbor had no such difficulty. Good 
 things came to him unasked ; advantages waited 
 on him and begged to be accepted ; fairies did his 
 work while he slept ; he never met with accidents ; 
 was always at the right place at the right time ; 
 whatever ho touched turned to gold. It was un- 
 accountable. He was not educated or trained ; 
 he had no fine ambition ; he lazed idly about ; 
 hated work ; loved pleasure. But these defects, 
 these moral vices, did not seem to throw him out 
 of the grooves of success, or render him less a fa- 
 vorite of the stern, unbending, remorseless neces- 
 sity, which is the justice of deity. A deep organic 
 instinct of sympathy, though he did not know 
 it, and could not have understood the terms that 
 described it, guided him to his point. 
 
 It would sometimes be a relief to think that 
 there is such a thing as chance — that there is 
 another power playing among the affairs of the 
 world, traversing the dread highways now and 
 then, and breaking a path through the impenetra- 
 ble thickets of law. It would be a relief to feel 
 that there is a small crevice through which an eye 
 
PROVIDECEN. 193 
 
 of love may shoot a glance or drop a tear upon a 
 pitying face. There is too much providence, we 
 sometimes feel. The world is such a mass of 
 thought that there is no room for tJiinklng ; such an 
 ocean of purpose that there is no room for will- 
 ing ; sucli a torrent of tendency that there is no 
 volition ; such a compact system of acting and re- 
 acting that there is no opportunity for caring ; 
 such a maguiticent arrangement of means and 
 ends., causes and effects, needs and supplies, that 
 the loving feeling has not an inch to move in. 
 The personal disappears ; j^ou cannot even hear 
 the " rattle of the golden reins that guide the fiery 
 coursers of the sun. "; 
 
 The complaint of too much providence is as bit- 
 ter as the complaint of no i)rovideuce at all. A 
 special providence, not the providence that is the 
 same to everybody, and therefore special to none, 
 is the demand ; evidence of immediate thought 
 of living will, of thoughtful, pitying love. 
 
 It is hero that the human providence comes in. 
 The human providence supplements the divine. 
 It is the divine care applied. The human provi- 
 dence is as far as it goes a special providence, and 
 the special providence is human. Man is the 
 directly thinking, purposing, willing, loving Gotl. 
 There is just as much active personal care in soci- 
 ety as there is human care. It is only through 
 human qualities that we guess at divine. The at- 
 
194 THE RELiaiON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tributes of GoJ are but a reflection on the skies of 
 the attributes of men ; and according as we think 
 of these, shall we think of those. The hope that 
 God will be better to us than men are, is simply 
 the hope that human qualities will vindicate them- 
 selves in the future ; but at present God seems no 
 better to us than men seem ; for the quality of 
 men, such as they are — are the only organized 
 moral forces we know. Our ideas of justice, good- 
 ness, kindness, tenderness, compassion, have not 
 been given to us ready made, dropped into us from 
 some heavenly source ; they have been sown by 
 ages of effort, and poor, infrequent, fluctuating 
 and precarious though they be, are the best repre- 
 sentatives we have of celestial powers. Where 
 outside of the human family do we find practical 
 sentiments of pity, or gentleness, or forgiveness ? 
 We may read them into the aspects of nature. 
 The poet speaks of the general beneficence of the 
 sunshine ; of the wide benignity of the rain ; but 
 he only carries over to the celestial phenomena 
 his personal feeling. The sunshine has no senti- 
 ment of good will towards the landscape or the 
 farmer ; the clouds do not care whether their rain 
 falls on the salt sea-shore or the poor woman's 
 vegetable |-)^:itch. We impute a sweet intention 
 to the laws that hold the world together ; but 
 they are unconscious of it. We give the morning 
 Htars their song ; we furnish the speech which day 
 
PROVIDENCK 195 
 
 utters to day, and declare what wisdom night 
 sboweth to night. But for man there would in- 
 deed be no voice nor language, their speech 
 would not be heard. " In reason's ear they all re- 
 joice, " It is the ear that interprets, yes ! that 
 frames the joy. 
 
 So far then as there is direct foresujld, fore- 
 thougld, forefeeling, it is human. We cannot go 
 behind the veil, we cannot look beyond om* own 
 faculties. 
 
 If now we glance at the resources of provi- 
 dence, the actual supplies that are used for succor, 
 benefit, consolation, we find that they are alto- 
 gether human-earned, possessed, accumulated by 
 men. The food that satisfies hunger, the cloth- 
 ing that protects against cold, the wood for the 
 winter's fire, the fire that burns the fuel, are 
 all of human provision. The raw material is 
 given, but one may perish in the midst of our 
 abundance of raw material. Tons of wool ou 
 sheeps' backs would be useless without shears 
 and looms ; acres of the cottou plant would be 
 valueless without the factory ; forests of timber 
 would be unavailable without the woodman's axe ; 
 rivers of water would be of no use witlunit bucket 
 or well ; oceans of inflammable gas would be in- 
 operative without flint and steel and the wit to 
 strike them together. The ministry of labor, 
 experiment, invention, this purely human min- 
 
196 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 istry goes before any and all supply of human 
 necessities. The farmer, the hunter, the fish- 
 erman, the botanist the chemist, the great army 
 of explorers, experimenters, naturalists, are the 
 agencies of the divine good will. Providence 
 works in the mill, toils in laboratories, sweats 
 over the problems of social science, builds and 
 excavates and dredges and bridges, and does its 
 best to diminish the evils that infest mankind. 
 The being that works hitherto and always is 
 God, and the being that works hitherto and al- 
 ways is man. 
 
 The chief special agency of providence is 
 wealth. Without wealth labor would cease, and 
 the fruits of labor would not be forthcoming. 
 The race would slowly die out and nothing would 
 save it. Now wealth is peculiarly a human 
 creation. The desire of it, the love of its pos- 
 session, the eagerness to acquire it, the passion 
 for keeping it, the means of increasing it, the 
 institutions that make it effective are also hu- 
 man. Wealth does not drop from the skies ; it 
 is not picked up on the ground, it is earned, 
 created, by the industry and thrift of men. 
 Where there is no wealth, there is no provi- 
 dence. If we could suppose a community in 
 which there were none but poor men, no ac- 
 cumulated means, no gathered fruits of toil, 
 providence it would be found, abandoned the care 
 
PROVIDENCE. 197 
 
 of that community. The people who gather or 
 who hold from others' gathering this accumu- 
 lation of resources, are, to the extent of that accu- 
 mulation, providence. Carlyle says somewhere : 
 he that has sixpence is master of the world to 
 the extent of sixpence. With equal truth we 
 may say : he that has sixpence is father of the 
 world to the extent of sixpence. To that extent 
 he provides for the needy, feeds the hungry, 
 clothes the naked, employs the idle, beats off 
 the gaunt wolf Want, ministers to the sick, the 
 sujfferiug, the dying. This sixpence tiickles a 
 thin silvqr stream over the fields of toil, sets 
 mill wheels turning, cheapens food, oj^ens iron 
 mines and coal mines, floats merchant vessels 
 and keeps full the channels of intercourse 
 through which flow the regenerating currents of 
 power. 
 
 Though the ricli man be a miser, he is none 
 the less, though uuiutentionally, a providence. 
 Though he gives no mite to the poor, though 
 he spends no dollar on institutions of public 
 beneficence, though he encourages directly no 
 industry, buys nothing to speak of at the shops, 
 still ho can no more help the ultimate ef- 
 fect of his accumulation than the cloud can help 
 the discharge of its vapor in rain, or the sun the 
 streaming forth of its beams, or the atmosphere 
 the pressure of its density. The miser could not 
 
198 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 wholly neutralize the power of liis providential 
 agency, even if he buried his gold in an earthen 
 pot, unless, indeed, the pot were so hidden that it 
 could not be discovered. But if he invests it, as 
 in these modern days he is pretty sure to do, (for 
 the race of subterranean misers is about exhaust- 
 ed,) if he lends it out at interest to men who want 
 to use it for the practical wants of society, it is 
 at work all the time ; it has a part in the develop- 
 ment of new industries, in the employment of idle 
 hands, in the achievement of great public works 
 of general utility. It has a part in feeding many 
 families, in supporting institutions of beneficence, 
 in preventing sickness, lengthening the term of 
 human life, promoting friendly relations among 
 classes of people he had never heard of. He is 
 a benefactor in spite of himself. While profess- 
 ing utter indifference to the want and suffering of 
 the poor, cursing the beggar perhaps who comes 
 to his door, turning a deaf ear to every ajjpeal for 
 charity, he may be dropping fertility on the distant 
 prairies, and employing nurses in foreign hos- 
 pitals. 
 
 Though the rich man be a spendthrift, he can- 
 not wholly help being a providence, in as far as 
 his wealth is concerned. He may not support the 
 most desirable class of people, but he supports 
 somebody. His sunshine may fall upon the evil, 
 but that, according to the New Testament, is no 
 
PROVIDENCE. 199 
 
 condemnation ; and if bis rain is sent to the un- 
 just, we have the word of Jesus that its office may 
 be heavenly. It is a good providence that helps' 
 caterers and cooks, wine merchants and confec- 
 tioners, dancers and lawyers, horse-breeders and 
 carriage-builders, for all these people are men ; 
 they have families to be provided for, children to 
 be reared, doctors' bills to pay. It is not for us 
 to determine what people have a right to live. 
 God lets them all live. The talent may be a very 
 small one, the service rendered very insignificant, 
 but it is entitled to its reward. Nobody can be 
 quite sure that he does the best thing with his 
 money, and though we believe that the high-toned 
 uses are the best ones, and that conscience, noble- 
 ness, good will, kindness, have the duty as well as 
 the right to make channels for the living stream, 
 it cannot well be questioned tluit some people 
 would do quite as wisely if they let the water run 
 according to its own sweet will, and did not try 
 to direct it accortUng to their own misjudgment. 
 Too much pui*pose is sometimes as bad as too 
 little. Many a rich man thwarts his providence 
 by excessive volition, being so very anxious lest 
 his possessions should not go rightly, tli;it he 
 makes them go just where the natural laws would 
 forbid. It is dangerous to try to control too ab- 
 solutely what so many have an interest in, and 
 more than one good man, Avith the best intentions 
 
200 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 to serve as a providence to his kind, lias, through 
 ignorance, diverted his wealth from its most ef- 
 fective and beneficial uses, more palpably than the 
 spendthrift, who has let it run through his fingers 
 and find its way by natural channels into society. 
 I am speaking, of course, of the money, not of 
 the men, of the material, not of the moral in- 
 fluence. The man with a generous purpose is a 
 providence, where the man without a purpose is 
 none. He ministers to the moral world, which 
 the other serves not at all, but rather disorganizes. 
 His rain and sunshine fall upon fields which 
 the other neglects, or sows with tares, fields that 
 produce, or should produce, the noble harvests of 
 thoughtfulness, accountability, prudence, honor, 
 and good will. But regarding the wealth alone, 
 that will always feed somebody, and somebody to 
 whom nature has given the right to be fed. 
 
 At all events, whether wisely distributed or 
 unwisely, the distribution of all gifts is in human 
 hands. Immediately, God distributes nothing. 
 The almoner of ail bounty, as well as the accu- 
 mulator of all bouut}', is man. The vast and va- 
 rious instrumentalities that supply mental neces- 
 sities from bodily food to spiritual consolation, are 
 in origin, plan, arrangement, mechanism, opera- 
 tion, human and human only. Man devised them, 
 and man carries them on. Associations for the 
 rehef of poverty and miserj-, hospitals, asylums, 
 
PROVIDENCK 201 
 
 houses of refuge, dispensaries, homos, schools, 
 sisterhoods and brotherhoods oi' mercy, orders of 
 nurses, physicians, consolers — in short, whatever 
 from the earliest times till now has been medi- 
 tated or achieved, thought, said or done to meet 
 the occasions of mental need, has been in every 
 respect human. No superhuman finger has ever ap- 
 peared in it. Heart gifts come from -the human 
 heart ; soul gifts from the human soul. It is man 
 that oflers friendship, sympathy, compassion, pity, 
 counsel, help. Man succors, and man soothes. 
 The prayer that uplifts, the conversation that 
 quiets, the word that streugtiiens, the speech that 
 reveals eternal beauties, alike proceed from human 
 lips. It is man who lifts the burden of sorrow, 
 care, or guilt, stills the heart, relieves the con- 
 science, gives peace to the soul. This human 
 providence has labored hard and patiently to 
 meet every conceivable exigency. It is very 
 wide, it is very powerful. It goes into the gloom- 
 iest places, it attacks the most discouraging 
 problems. It is without fear or disdain ; there 
 is no bound to its thoughtfulness, no limit to its 
 generosity, no stint to its good will. Its prompt- 
 ness and ingenuity and fertility of resource are 
 wonderful. It will do things so delicatel}', Avith 
 such modesty, such lightness of touch, such quick- 
 ness of feeling, such nimbleness of intuition, 
 that few suspect its agency, and the most are 
 
202 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 persuaded that a special care from above inter- 
 venes. 
 
 George Muller and Charles Spurgeon, both 
 Euglisbmen, are persuaded that the Christ in 
 heaven supports their great orphan asylums in 
 response to their prayers. They are not, of course, 
 so wild as to imagine that the shoes and stock- 
 ings visibly descend from heaven, that bread and 
 butter rains down, like the Hebrew manna in the 
 night time, that a celestial Santa Clans, whose 
 visits are not confined to the Christmas season, 
 puts caps on the children's heads, or that angels 
 drop charities which, on touching the ground, be- 
 come barrels of fine flour. They know that the 
 flour is ground in a mill, that the stockings are 
 woven on a frame, that the shoes are made by a 
 cobbler, that the supplies are duly paid for in 
 shillings and pence and are brought to the door 
 in a cart ; but the kind disposition that prompted 
 the donations, the considerate thought of the or- 
 phans — this, they believe, is sent into human 
 hearts in answer to their prayers. Such a theory 
 comes with a sufficiently good grace from men 
 who hold the natural depravity of human nature, 
 and are forced to ascribe every gentle emotion to 
 their ascended Christ ; but such sensible, ration- 
 al folks need not go so far in search of a provi- 
 dence so simple. That kindly people should hear 
 of an earnest work that was doing in their neigh- 
 
PROVIjDEXCE '203 
 
 borhoofl, particularly when it made such pre- 
 tensions, is not surprising ; that they should take 
 an interest in it is just what might be expected ; 
 that they should be moved by their, hearts to 
 help it on is by no means a marvel. More ex- 
 traordinary things than that have been done hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of times by this wide-awake, 
 prying, gossiping, good natured, kindly, meddle- 
 some spirit in men which delights in doing out 
 of the way, far-fetched, eccentric, often indiscreet 
 and foolish deeds of aflfection. Nothing more 
 than human S3iupathy aided by human wit or 
 witlessness is required to explain all that is 
 done, or ever has been done to meet the touch- 
 ing sad occasions of human experience. Wher- 
 ever there is help there is a human shape. 
 There may be guardian angels — who has a 
 right to deny it ? but if there are they are sim- 
 ply human beings of nimbler foot, greater leis- 
 ure, of ampler knowledge, Avho apply human rem- 
 edies rather more deftly than spirits in chui'lier 
 flesh can do. 
 
 We are all providences to more or fewer. 
 Job said of himself, "I delivered the poor that 
 cried, and the fatherless, and him that had no 
 helper. The blessing of him that was ready to 
 perish came upon me ; and I caused the wid- 
 ow's heart to sing for joy. I was eyes to the 
 blind and feet was I to the lame ; I was a 
 
201 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 father to the poor, and the cause I knew not 
 I searched out." Of how many another might 
 precisely those words be said ! of what ordi- 
 narily good man may not some of them be 
 said. The kind father is a i^rovidence to his fanv 
 ily, the tender mother is a providence to lier 
 children, friend is providence to fi'iend, the em- 
 ployer is providence to those he employs, the 
 mistress is providence to her servants. Who is 
 so lowly as not to be providence to others of 
 human kind? Ever}' good act is providence ; 
 removing a stone from the path is providence ; 
 sweeping a crossing is providence ; hfting one 
 who lias fallen is providence ; putting a wan- 
 derer in the right way is providence ; answering 
 intelligently a question is providence ; returning 
 a pleasant look is providence, giving a cup of 
 cold water may be a saving providence. 
 
 No providence is so human that it is not divine ; 
 no providence is so divine that it is not human. 
 The most signal providences have a man behind 
 them. The providence in the discovery of the 
 American continent was the indomitable hope in 
 the bosom of Columbus, and that hope was born 
 of the spirit of adventure and discovery that per- 
 vaded the century and the land that gave him life. 
 A whole group of divinities had their Olympus in 
 that royal breast. No gem of the ocean could 
 long elude the search of that searching hand. 
 
PROVIDEyCE. 205 
 
 This was the foresight that opened another world 
 to what was then the greatest power on the 
 planet. The providence that guided the May- 
 flower, with its Httle company, across the wintry 
 ocean — was the determination of those few men 
 and women to face all jierils and brave death 
 itself rather than not tind a home where their 
 souls might be at peace. Tlieir faith was their fore- 
 sight ; the seeds of the harvest that was to feed 
 the future New England and to sustain moral 
 life at the extreme confines of the continent 
 Avere stored up in the granaries of those trusting 
 bosoms. The providence that brought on our 
 civil war was the conscience of the North which 
 forbade the utter sacrifice of liberty and resented 
 the last insult of its foes ; and the providence 
 that brought the civil war to an end was the 
 constancy of the national wiU. Had that fal- 
 tered, the dice of God would have decided against 
 us. In the fullness of time " the man appears, 
 the word is spoken, the deed is done : for in 
 the fullness of time the man is nurtured, the 
 word articulated, the deed meditated and pre- 
 pared for. "As thy day so shall thy strength 
 be," for strength is nurtured and trained by days 
 of thought and endeavor, and at the proper 
 moment, under the requisite strain, the thought 
 culminates, the endeavor succeeds. 
 
 We complain of the inequalities of providence 
 
206 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 but we must remember that providence, being hu- 
 man in special agency, though divine in spirit, 
 shares the imperfection of its ministry. It has 
 also the incompleteness of humanity. Defective 
 it is and must be, because man is defective ; iuor- 
 ganized it is and must be, because man is inor- 
 ganized. Human justice is all the justice there is ; 
 consequently justice is but partially rendered. 
 With human kindness and pity, such as they are, 
 we must for the moment be satisfied, for they are 
 all the kindness and pity we have. The infinite 
 love finds as yet no human expression, which is 
 only saying in other words, that it finds no intel- 
 ligent expression at all. From age to age it has 
 been organizing itself more and more efiectively 
 in society, but it is very far yet from an organi- 
 zation, complete, harmonious, effectual. The pro- 
 cess of evolution still goes on. Resources are ac- 
 cumulating ; the application of them is becoming 
 nicer, finer, fairer, day by day. The day will 
 surely come when all needs will be satisfied, from 
 the lowest to the highest, and the care we dream 
 of and sigh for will be seen in the waste places, 
 seeking and saving the lost. 
 
YIII. 
 MOKAL IDEAL. 
 
 REBUKING bis disciples for their absurd am- 
 bition to get the best places in his king- 
 dom, Jesus dropped one of those searching re- 
 marks that pack a philosophy into a paragraph. 
 He said, " Ye know that they which are appointed 
 to rule among the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
 them ; and their great ones exercise authority 
 upon them. But it must not be so among you ; 
 but whosoever will be great among you shall be 
 your minister ; and whoso of you will be the 
 chiefest, shall be the servant of all." The differ- 
 ence between two moral standards or ideals is 
 here indicated with a precision that leaves no- 
 thing to be desired. Among the Gentiles, that is, 
 amoug the Greeks and Eomans in general, among 
 the western nations the type of greatness and 
 goodness, too, is the hero. He was the best 
 who raised himself most above his fellows — 
 who excelled in force, valor, wit, cunning, per- 
 suasion, beauty, in whatever quality made him 
 
208 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 master o\ev liuman beiugs. The mastery was the 
 merit. Prometheus, who outwitted Zeus, stole 
 the fire from heaven, and, chained to Caucasus, 
 bore the fierce tearing of the vulture's beak. 
 Hercules, who killed the lion, slew the hydra, sub- 
 dued the boar, cleansed the Augean stables, cap- 
 tured the Cretan bull, dragged Cerberus from the 
 infernal regions ; Perseus, who killed the Gorgon, 
 and rescued Andromeda from the dragon, were 
 deified and worshipped as models of prowess and 
 patterns of success. They and their worshippers 
 were of the race that believed in the individual, 
 and cultivated the utmost possible attainment of 
 self-reliance, self-will, self-exaltation. 
 
 Over against the hero stands the saint. Over 
 against Hercules stands Jesus, who " came not to 
 be served, but to serve ; and to give his life, that 
 the many, the multitude, the man might be ran- 
 somed." He recommends and exhibits the utmost 
 possible attainment of self-abnegation. He is the 
 image of meekness, the model of patience. He 
 makes no effort to aggrandize himself ; he runs 
 away from the crown — every crown but the crown 
 of thorns ; ho is dumb before Pilate ; he submits 
 uncomplainingly to the scourge. He would not 
 break the bruised heart, though it was the guilti- 
 est, by another word of rebuke ; he would not 
 quench the smoking flax of the flickering con- 
 science by a single droj) of discouragement. He 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 203 
 
 washed his disciples' feet He had no shame in 
 talking -with the outcast, or in keeping company 
 with such as were of no account. His peculiarity 
 ■\vtis an ever-present sense of the rights and claims 
 of others. He had humanity constantly in mind. 
 Out of humanity he spoke ; in humanity he lived. 
 The individual with him was but member of a 
 family, one of a brotherhood. The race from 
 which he sprung believed in the power and the 
 destiny of race. The thouglit of race was all in 
 all to them. Their ideal man was the man who 
 best represented his race, did the most to exalt it, 
 carried its peculiar qualities to the highest point 
 of eminence. We have a description of him in 
 the 53rd chapter of Isaiah : " Ho Avas wounded 
 for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities ; 
 the chastisement of our peace was laid on him, 
 and by his stripes we are healed." Even David 
 owed his fame not to his strength, or beauty, or 
 kingliness, but to his recognition of the destinies 
 of Israel. 
 
 In Jesus this sentiment of solidayHi/, of the 
 organic unity among mankind, of mutual de- 
 pendence and inter-dependence culminated. In 
 him it was supreme. He always appeared as the 
 representative of humanity, the " Son of Man." 
 "When he bade the adultress go and sin no more ; 
 when he told the Magdalen to depart in peace, 
 for her sins were forgiven her, he spoke not as 
 
210 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 from himself, but in the name of the humanity 
 that he merely voiced for the occasion. When he 
 launched his invective at the Pharisees, and over- 
 whelmed the Scribes with his scorn, it was with 
 no individual feeling of anger, but with a mighty 
 conviction that the conscience of the nation, the 
 heart of the people, the soul of equity and kind- 
 ness found utterance through his lips. " Say 
 what you will against the Son of Man," he cried, 
 " and it shall be forgiven. But he that speaketh 
 against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven.'' 
 " It is not I that speak." He claimed authority 
 on the ground that he better than any enunciated 
 the sentiment and declared the will of the Lord's 
 people. " Of my own self, I can do nothing : as 
 I hear I judge." 
 
 This image the Christian church set up for the 
 admiration of mankind. The lists of personal 
 virtues in the earliest hterature of the church, all 
 bear testimony to the same kind of excellence. 
 Paul enumerates as the fruits of the spirit : " love, 
 joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, 
 faith, mildness, self control " — and as their oppo- 
 sites : fornication, covetousness, maliciousness, 
 backbiting, pride, disobedience, implacableness, 
 unmercifuluess. He plants his peculiar virtues on 
 the same ground that Jesus took : soUdarity, 
 membership in one another. " Let every man 
 speak truth with his neighbor ! " Why ? Be- 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 211 
 
 cause truth-tellinf^ is in itsolf admirable ? Not 
 because " Ye are members one of another." He 
 recommends charity as '* the bond of perfectness." 
 He is never weary of dwelHng on the organic unity 
 of the behevers, their membership in one body, 
 their spiritual partnership in one another, as 
 the final argument against pride, self-assertion, 
 assumption of superiority. " Let the same mind 
 be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he 
 was in the form of God, did not think that our 
 equality with God was a thing he ought greedily 
 to grasp at, but made himself of no reputation, 
 and took on himself the form of a servant. 
 
 This moral ideal — the ideal of the saint, th 
 church of Rome adopted and exalted. The hero 
 was dropped. No sooner had it taken possession 
 of the imperial city of Rome than it proceeded to 
 substitute the idea of the god become a man, for 
 the idea of the man become a god. The statues 
 were removed or rebaptized ; a cross, the sign of 
 self-crucifixion, was planted in the middle of the 
 vast arena where emperors celebrated their vic- 
 tories and gladiators fought with lions. It placed 
 the image of the Christ on the spot where before 
 had stood the image of Jupiter ; the saint praying 
 for his murderers displaced the Hercules teasing 
 the Nemnean beast ; the virgin with her babe in 
 her arms filled the niche once occupied by the 
 proud Diana or the disdainful Juno. The gods 
 
212 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 and goddesses of the pagan world : Mars, the god 
 of war ; Mercury, the god of traffic and cunning ; 
 Bacchus, god of revehy ; Minerva, Venus, Ceres, 
 were all supplanted by apostles, evangelists, mar- 
 tyrs, saints, who represented the very opposite 
 qualities, peacefuluess, temperance, simplicity, 
 purity, faith, aspiration. 
 
 The fidelity with which the church of Eome ad- 
 hered to its model was wonderful. It accejoted 
 none who did not conform to the conditions. It 
 would not be bribed or persuaded or menaced into 
 compliance with the pagan standard. It refused 
 to accept the heathen ideal under any disguise. 
 The saint was always the person who surrendered 
 his private will. Humility, meekness, patience, 
 these were the qualities she ever meant to canon- 
 ize, and she never purposely canonized any others. 
 The candidate for saintship might be a person of 
 no outward consideration, of no social rank or 
 degree ; he might be a slave, a beggar, a negro ; 
 no matter. If he was proved to have possessed 
 these qualities he received the crown and was 
 lifted to the holy seat. The candidate for saint- 
 ship might be a person of the highest position, 
 rich, noble, great in fame. He might be a prince, a 
 crowned king, a priest, cardinal, nay, a pope ; no 
 matter. If he was not proved to have possessed the 
 saintly virtues he did not receive the saintly name. 
 The two most famous popes in history, Gregory 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 213 
 
 VIT. and Innocent III. the two gi'oat vindicators of 
 Komisli supremacy, are not enrolled in the list of 
 saints ; for saints they were not. Humility and 
 meekness, simplicity and devoutuess, were not their 
 virtues ; and though the church owed everything to 
 their indomitable courage, their towering pride 
 and their far-reaciiiug diplomacy, all these servi- 
 ces availed nothing to class them where they did 
 not belong. There was here no distinction of per- 
 sons whatever. There was one rule for all alike. 
 All must tread the narrow way into life. Humil- 
 ity made all kings. Pride made all subjects. In 
 its earthly policy the church was worldly minded 
 to a degree that would have scandalized a ruler 
 like Pericles or an emperor like Marcus Aurelius. 
 She truckled to power ; was haughty when it 
 suited her purpose, and crafty when craft was 
 convenient. But in her final verdict on character 
 she was true to her master. She would allow only 
 the heavenly to go to heaven. 
 
 I do not say that she presented her moral 
 ideal in its noblest or completest form, round 
 and full, with no fine quality omitted or out of 
 place. This she certainly did not. Her model 
 was artificial and one sided. She allowed no 
 saintliness outside of her own pale, claiming to 
 possess a strict monopoly of the gospel graces ; 
 and in logical accordance with this rule of 
 limitation, she refused to admit that these 
 
214 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 graces were in any sense or in any degree an 
 outgrowth of human nature, the fruit of spon- 
 taneous spiritual activity, the natural product 
 of prayer and effort. She claimed the sole right 
 to manufacture them by her own machinery. 
 Is it any wonder that they had the stiff, hard, 
 angular, mechanical, done-to-order look that such 
 products always have ? They were not " virtues," 
 because the vir was left out of them ; they were 
 not " graces," for ungracef illness was their char- 
 acteristic. The one thing the Romish saint 
 lacked was the one thing that one cannot lack and 
 live, — blood. He was a sapless, nerveless being. 
 His humility was humiliation, his meekness was 
 meanness, his patience was passivity, his sub- 
 mission was subjection, his aspiration was breath- 
 lessness. He cherished no anger, for he had no 
 spirit. He loved the taste of dirt. It was easy 
 for him to forgive his enemies — for he did not 
 know what it was to love his friends. He set- 
 tled the whole question by making himself no- 
 thing. A sad, woebegone creature, without wants 
 or satisfactions, shy, joyless, dull in mind and 
 feeling, formal and austere, a creature of rules, 
 with a rope round his waist and a whip in his 
 closet, his eyes cast down or lifted up, never 
 directed straight before him, never looking frank- 
 ly into other men's eyes, never studying curious- 
 ly the surrounding world. We see the same 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 215 
 
 type now in the hitleous-lookiug men and wo- 
 mou we meet in the street, priests or sisters of 
 Mercy, who think that by abdicating humanity 
 they resemble the Son of Man, 
 
 "With Protestantism a new spirit came in, or 
 rather an old spirit revived. Protestantism was 
 simply the reappearance of the old heathen world 
 under a new shape. The revival of Greek and 
 Roman letters brought it in, and with the revi- 
 val of Greek and Roman letters came the spirit of 
 Greek and Roman independence, the spontaneous, 
 exuberant, passionate spirit, the spirit of inqui- 
 ry, of innovation, protest, reform, revolution, the 
 spirit that has made the new world. The mor- 
 al ideal felt the force of this spirit early and 
 showed signs of modification beneath it. Other 
 elements began to appear ; humility, meekness, 
 patience, submission, peaceableness were not all 
 in all. There were bonds to be broken. There 
 was a despotism to be thrown ofi', a manhood 
 to be vindicated, a mind and heart and soul to 
 be set free. Passive qualities would no longer 
 suffice ; the negative side of human nature must 
 be supplemented by the positive side. There 
 was a reaction in favor of movement ; though 
 the word "progress" was not spoken, the breath 
 of progress was abroad and all who breathed at 
 all inhaled it. The hero came once more to 
 honor. Savonarola, one of the chief inaugura- 
 
216 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tors of the new era, stood midway betwixt tbo 
 old and the new, combining the spirit of both. 
 He was a mixture of hero and saint ; Protes- 
 tant and Romanist in one ; a reformer and a 
 behever ; an agitator and a conservative ; a de- 
 fier of the Pope and a devout subject of the 
 papacy. 
 
 Luther, his great successor, the man in whom 
 the new spirit became incarnate, was a hero, 
 no saint. He said of himself that he was " rough, 
 boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike, born 
 to light innumerable devils and monsters, to re- 
 move stumps and stones, to cut down thistles 
 and thorns, and to clear the wild woods." Lu- 
 ther was a warm-blooded man, affectionate, 
 friendly, kind, jovial, brimming over with hu- 
 mor, addicted to broad jokes, fond of nature 
 and music, alive to all passionate delights. He 
 had a vast deal of human nature in him, of all 
 sorts, and he was not over careful to suppress 
 it. He seemed the soul of self-assertion and self- 
 reliance. He may have been as meek as Mo- 
 ses, but he was no meeker. His declaration at 
 the conference of Worms, " No one can be com- 
 pelled to act against his conscience. Here I 
 stand ; I cannot act otherwise ; God help me. 
 Amen !" was the shout of a hero to his hosts. 
 " The song with which he entered Worms, fol- 
 lowed by his companions, was," says Heine, " a 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 217 
 
 true war song. The old Cathedral shook again 
 at tlie strange sounds, and the ravens were dis- 
 turbed in their nests on the top of the towers. 
 This hymn, the Marseillaise of the Keformation, 
 has preserved to this day the tremendous ener- 
 gy of its expression, and may some day again 
 startle us with its sonorous and iron-girt words." 
 There was not much meekness in the saying, 
 "I- would make one bundle of Pope and Car- 
 dinals, and fling the whole into our little ditcli of 
 the Tuscan Sea ; such a bath, I pledge my word 
 and back it with Jesus Christ as security, would 
 cure them." There was not much of the temper 
 of the peacemaker in the declaration, " the (in^ 
 surgent) peasants deserve no mercy, no toler- 
 ation, but the indignation of God and man." 
 " The peasants are under the ban both of God 
 and the Emperor, and may bo treated as mad 
 dogs." 
 
 And yet the stout soldier did pay sincere tribute 
 to the evangelical standard. He fought not for 
 himself, but for what he felt was the cause of God 
 and man. In that cause ho forgot himself. In 
 that cause he was ready to die. In the conference 
 at Worms he said : " I confess that I have been 
 more rough and violent than religion and my 
 gown warrant. I do not give myself out for a 
 saint. It is not my life and conduct that I am 
 discussing before you, but the doctrine of Jesus 
 
218 TEE RELiaiON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Christ." Again : " It was my flock ; the flock en- 
 trusted to me by God. I am bound to suffer 
 death for them, and would cheerfully lay down 
 my life." " I myself no longer know Luther, and 
 wish not to know him. What I preach comes not 
 from him but from Jesus Christ. Let the devil 
 fly away with Luther, if he cnn. I care not, so 
 long as he leaves Jesus Christ reigning in all 
 hearts." " For me I neither am nor wdsh to be 
 master of any one. I and mine will contend for 
 the sole and whole doctrine of Christ who is our 
 only master." Here was genuine humility and 
 submission. Luther put tons of weight on his 
 feeling to keep it down ; at times he took him- 
 self to task for being too patient. He set himself 
 earnestly and sincerely in the background. He 
 fought no private battle, and rebuked himself 
 when it seemed to hiin that he might be putting 
 himself to.o conspicuously forward. He was under 
 law ; he served a master ; he made himself of no 
 account, for that master's sake. " I am only a 
 man; I can but defend my doctrine after my 
 divine Saviour's example, who, when smote by 
 the servant of the high priest, said to him : " If I 
 have spoken evil bear witness of the evil." "I 
 pray you leave my name alone. Who is Luther ? 
 My doctrine is not mine. I have not been cruci- 
 fied. St. Paul would not that any should call 
 themselves of Paul nor of Peter, but of Christ; 
 
MOliAL IDEAL. 219 
 
 how then does it befit me, a miserable bag of dust 
 and ashes, to give my name to the children of 
 Christ?" If the saint be one who surrenders 
 his will to the supreme will, then was Luther a 
 saint, and the more a saint that he surrendered 
 his will voluntarily, and was not pinched or 
 starved or scourged into submission ; the more a 
 saint that he went over to God with banners fly- 
 ing and trumpets blowing, not as a prisoner with 
 shackled limbs and eyes cast down to the ground. 
 The moral ideal receives a new coloring at his 
 hands, but it is not perverted. The standard of 
 Jesus is thrust up into the sunlight, and flung out 
 freely to the winds, and carried into the bloody, 
 dusty fight, but it is the same standard still. 
 
 In these modern days of ours, the disposition is 
 to take the standard down and furl it up and lay 
 it away. Another order of moral qualities is 
 coming to honor. If it were the ancient order, 
 illustrated by Prometheus, Hercules, Perseus, we 
 need not find fault with it, because these heroes 
 served humanity* after their fashion. The new 
 standard is the heroic with the heroism left out. 
 If it were only that for humility we have self reli- 
 ance ; for meekness, self assertion ; for patience, im- 
 patience ; for resignation, restlessness ; for submis- 
 sion, revolt ; for aspiration, ainbition ; for disinter- 
 estedness, an enlightened selfishness, we could 
 find cause for partial satisfaction : for self rchance 
 
220 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 may be reliance on the nobler selfhood, which is 
 truth, purity, honor; self assertion may be a vin- 
 dication of fine principles ; impatience may be un- 
 willingness to bear unjust oppression ; restlessness 
 may be discontent with a meaner lot than is de- 
 creed ; revolt may be moral protest against iniqui- 
 tous arrangements ; ambition may be a noble hun- 
 ger of the mind ; and enlightened selfishness may 
 be a reasonable and kind regard for a general 
 welfare. But unfortunately we are not always 
 allowed to put on the commonly eulogized qual- 
 ities such generous interpretations. It is the 
 lower self that is uppermost. The individual has 
 his own interest, not that of his fellow creatures, at 
 heart ; the reliance is on smartness, cunning, too 
 often on impudence; the assertion is insolent; 
 the impatience, passionate ; the restlessness, hot 
 and heedless ; the revolt, unthinking ; the ambi- 
 tion, rude and presumptuous ; the selfishness, not 
 by any means enlightened, but coarse and blind, 
 vulgar and brutal — animal for the most part. The 
 self means the table or the clothes, money, place, 
 power. 
 
 The moral ideal of average America is success, 
 and it sanctifies the qualities that secure it. The 
 popular man is the best man, and the best 
 man is the " smart man " — the audacious, the 
 quick witted, the swift and unscrupulous ; the man 
 of ready resources, ingenious methods, bold coun- 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 221 
 
 tcnauce, the man who can get the ear of the pub- 
 lic, and gather people about him. Tweed's popu- 
 larity excused, in many minds, his robberies, 
 risk's magnificence was compensation for his 
 thefts. Success justifies the preacher who so far 
 forgets the Master in himself, that he cannot even 
 tell who the Master was. Success justifies the 
 refonner who makes the reform a stepping- 
 stone to office. Success justifies the politician 
 Avho says that in politics as in war all is fair. 
 Success justifies in trade, monopoly oppression 
 underselling to ruin a competitor. It is failure 
 that declares against a project, not want of prin- 
 ciple. The members of the various " Rings " act 
 on accepted rules of business, and only carry out 
 the rules more audaciously than the ordinary 
 men. The rule is, to get all one can, honestly if 
 possible, but to get all one can. The Evangelical 
 virtues do not rank high in the forum, or on the 
 street. To look out for number one is neither 
 saintly nor heroic. To keep the hand open 
 when there is something to get, and shut when 
 there is something to give, is not following the 
 example of Jesus. To watch your advantage, 
 and make all possible gain from your neighbor, is 
 not strictly according to the Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 I cannot quite agree with my excellent friends, 
 that if each one looked out well for himself all 
 
222 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 would be well looked out for, tliat consideration 
 for others is a weakness. If we were individuals 
 this would be true. It would be true with the 
 clause that, being individuals, the prosperity of 
 the whole is necessary to the growth of each one. 
 But the popular interpretation defines the creed. 
 It is not as the single philosopher or separate 
 citizen reads it, but as the average man reads it ; 
 and as he reads it, it stands condemned, for he 
 reads it with the eyes of his animal covetousness 
 and greed ; he construes it according to his love 
 of pleasure, or of power, or of notoriety ; he ac- 
 cepts it as a license to make gain howsoever he 
 can from his neighbors, to outshine them, to over- 
 ride them, to enrich himself at their expense, to 
 make them dependent on him, witnesses and ser- 
 vants of his glory. The individualism of the com- 
 mon sort of men in our communities consists in 
 an entire disregard of the rights and claims of 
 others, save in so far as by conceding them he 
 can aggrandize himself. He serves for popularity ; 
 he flatters for praise ; he gives for favor ; he is 
 public spirited when he can obtain by it the pub- 
 lic voice ; he is generous when the object has 
 the general sympathy, and when munificence will 
 bring a munificent reward. 
 
 In our communities everything- encourages this 
 kind of individualism ; tlie free opportunity, tho 
 open chance, the unlimited competition, the near- 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 223 
 
 ness of the prizes, the proximity of the common 
 goal, the demand for activity, the ueed and the 
 power of money, the accessibihty of all places 
 and trusts to him who carries the golden key. 
 It is not strange that in America the moral ideal 
 should be low, that it should become lower and 
 lower under stress of competition and strain of 
 ambition. That the " Evangelical " standard, as 
 it is called, should be completely neglected, put 
 out of sight, put by as an obsolete and useless 
 thing ; that the heroic standard should be laughed 
 at and rejected as impracticable, is not surprising. 
 But it is none the less lamentable. For in our 
 commuuities, too, as in all communities, the bond 
 of humanity is strong. Society in America has 
 to submit to the same eternal laws that regulate 
 society in England and Europe. Americans, like 
 Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Israelites, are 
 members one of another, and the recognition of 
 this fact is even more vital in a country where 
 the fact, not being presented to us by institu- 
 tions, forms, and symbols, must be borne in mind 
 by each citizen for himself. Elsewhere the con- 
 ception of humanity is throned and crowned ; 
 here each must enthrone and crown it for himsell 
 In other lands every man must, in some manner, 
 submit, conform, humble himself, keep within 
 limits ; if not self-contained, he is contained ; 
 containment is a necessity j there are bounds 
 
224 THE RELIGION OF UUMANITY. 
 
 he cannot pass over, rules he must observe, 
 dignities he must respect. Our condition is the 
 nobler — the more privileged, but it is the more re- 
 sponsible and the more dangerous. 
 
 Even religion does not help here as it does 
 elsewhere. For 'not only have we no established 
 church, which stands for unity in the highest 
 plane of humanity, and, secure in its national 
 position, can emphasize with authority the grand 
 virtues and duties of the religious character and 
 life, putting the practical elements foremost, keep- 
 ing speculative questions in the background, mak- 
 ing the individual sensible that he is a member of 
 a grand, consolidated body — ancient, dignified, 
 illustrious, gathering into itself the noblest ele- 
 ments of manly and womanly character. Religion 
 with us is a group of sects, each struggling for 
 existence or preeminence, each profoundly inter- 
 ested in its dogma, each exalting the virtues of 
 loyalty to its cause, and making sectarian fidelity 
 a prime element in the devout character. The 
 sect represents a jagged fragment of humanity, 
 not a rounded whole, however small ; and the 
 moral ideal it holds up is anything but beautiful, 
 glorious, or inspiring, lieligion witli us does not 
 keep in remembrance the simply human facts on 
 which the moral standard rests, but a little mound, 
 a separate heap or pile of facts, on which a sec- 
 tarian fiag may be planted, but on which no edi- 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 225 
 
 fice can be reared. The consequence is, that 
 qualities quite other than " evangelical " are cele- 
 brated as Christian qualities ; sometimes the very 
 reverse of humility, meekness, generosity, sym- 
 pathy, unselfishness, aspiration, brotherly-kind- 
 ness. We should be accused of injustice if we 
 said that religion in its coarse popular forms ac- 
 cepts the "smart man " as its model, and counts 
 him best who contributes most to tlie success of 
 his church. 
 
 No individualism or cliqueism has a fine moral 
 ideal. The tall column must have a broad base. 
 The tall tree has wide-spreading roots. No the- 
 ory of self-culture, self-development, solitary self- 
 perfection results in noble attainment. There 
 must be wholesome and abundant soil. Such 
 theories end in daintiness, superciliousness, exehi- 
 siveness, intellectual or aesthetic pride, literary 
 conceit, sentimeutalism, moral dilettanteism, mo- 
 ral eccentricity, not infrequently moral turpi- 
 tude, the end, self-development, being held to jus- 
 tify a cruel disregard of others' feelings, a cruel 
 trifling with others' rights and aftections. The 
 bitterest examples of heartlessness have been ex- 
 hibited b}' men and women who have set out on 
 this narrow by-path towards individual perfection. 
 Like the boy who shouted " Excelsior," in Long- 
 fellow'? famous poem, as he climbed the Alpino 
 steep, he perished in the snow. Jesus says, " Be 
 
226 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 ye perfect, even as your Fatlier in heaven is per- 
 fect ;" — but in the same breath he declared that 
 the Father in heaven showed himself perfect in 
 showing himself a Father, by identifying himself 
 with his family, by causing his sun to rise on the 
 evil and on the good, and sending rain on the just 
 and on the unjust. 
 
 The first touch of genuine humanity awakes 
 from their long slumber the evangelical virtues. 
 We have but to think of our bond of brotherhood 
 with our kind, and once more the fruits of the 
 Spirit are seen to be — love, joy, peace, long-suf- 
 fering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self- 
 control. Let one consider soberly his place in the 
 nation whereof he is a member, or even in the 
 large community whose life he immediately shares; 
 let him consider the many who are better, wiser, 
 more earnest, more faithful, more useful, than he ; 
 let him consider how much more than he can pay 
 he owes, how little of all he possesses he earns, 
 and the result of his consideration must be hu- 
 mility. None are proud save those who never 
 compare themselves with others ; and they that 
 might advance the best claim to be proud are the 
 first to disavow it. 
 
 Let one consider the comparative effects of vio- 
 lence and gentleness, forgetting if he can, and as 
 he may, his own momentary impulse of anger 
 towards an injurer. Let him fairly take into ac- 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 227 
 
 count tlie circumstances and conditions ; lot liim 
 estimate the bond of kindness at its full value, and 
 judge calmly of the means by which it may best 
 be preserved unbroken, and he will perceive that 
 meekness is more reasonable as well as more noble 
 than revenge. He will see that " violence is par- 
 tial and transient, gentleness universal and con- 
 stant ;" that " to bear and to pardon is the wisdom 
 of hfe." 
 
 Let one consider the unavoidable slowness of 
 all progress ; the necessary condition of ignor- 
 ance, stupidity, dullness, in which the mass of 
 mankind still live ; the inherited and quite uncon- 
 trollable passions ; the predominance of appetite 
 over judgment, and of impulse over reason, in all 
 but the very few ; the ages long that wisdom and 
 truth and justice have waited for their recognition ; 
 and patience will seem to be one of the most self- 
 evident of virtues. Whoso reflects on the long 
 suffering of the divinest attributes will scarcely 
 plume himself on his power to wait his few min- 
 utes more or less. 
 
 The rule of order in society as among the stars 
 is obedience to the law that arranges, combines, 
 organizes, controls, impels. The planet must not 
 leave its track ; the individual must not fall out of 
 the line of providential development. The man's 
 track is harder to find than the planet's ; but never 
 in the spirit of revolt, only in the spirft of obedi- 
 
228 THE RELIGION OF UUMAXITY. 
 
 ence can it be found. " Let every soul be subject 
 to the higher powers," said Paul. We say, 
 " Amen," only demanding surety that the powers 
 are higher, and not merely look so, or are sta- 
 tioned so. The higher powers are such as organ- 
 ize society ; they are justice, kindness, truth, equity, 
 love. All powers that do not represent these are 
 lower powers, though they be imperial. 
 
 Society preaches contentment, for it prescribes 
 the limits within which the man must remain. 
 Society preaches disinterestedness, for it compels 
 us to feel that the wealth of existence is in its 
 sympathy, and sympathy in community of feeling, 
 and community of feeling is impossible unless all 
 share. There is no circle if a link drops out. So- 
 ciety preaches peacefulness for there can be no 
 society without it. Society preaches faith, for its 
 members live by faith — faith in one another, faith 
 in the common end and object, faith in the one 
 law they all obey. Society preaches self <;ontrol, 
 for that is the power that keeps every wheel in its 
 place. Society preaches 303% for joy is the main- 
 spring of healthfulness, the fountain of refresh- 
 ment, the electrifying and regenerating spirit. 
 The religion of humanity will restore the Beati- 
 tudes to their rank in spiritual regard. It will say 
 once more : " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
 their opinions and modest receptiveness will bring 
 them \\ealth. Blessed are they that mourn, for to 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 229 
 
 them the resources of consoling sympathy will be 
 revealed. Blessed are the meek, for theirs shall 
 be the brotherhood of the gentle, the pure, the 
 saintlike. Blessed are they which do hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, for they shall be made 
 strong with justice. Blessed are the merciful, for 
 they shall increase and share the blessings of 
 mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for about 
 them shall breathe the atmosphere of heaven. 
 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall have 
 the joy of helping to make the earth a home. 
 Blessed are they who suffer for their fidelity to the 
 principles of equity and kindness, for in them 
 these principles become potent and kingly ; great 
 shall be their reward in the fact that the ruling 
 powers will be more heavenly." 
 
 A discerning man has said : " Whatever is 
 worshipped and loved m this world is comprised 
 under two heads — our idea of God and all pos- 
 sible excellence is resolvable into these — Power 
 and Beauty." Beligion teaches, the rehgion of 
 humanity, like every other, that the power to curb 
 demonstration is greater than the power to let it 
 out. The anvil bears up with far mightier force 
 than the hammer bears down, but the hammer 
 has all the motion, and makes all the noise. The 
 Macedonian phalanx — solid, impenetrable, silent, 
 slow-moving, with firm lances and short swords, 
 conquered the hordes of Asia. Wellington's pa- 
 
230 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tient lines won Waterloo. It was the force that 
 received the charge, not the force that made it, 
 that gained Gettysburg. Pilate, the representa- 
 tive of the Roman Empire, ordered Jesus to cru- 
 cifixion, but confessed himself defeated by wash- 
 ing his hands and disavowing responsibility for 
 the innocent blood. The demonstrations of Sa- 
 vonarola and Luther came short of their convic- 
 tions. They said less than they felt. Their 
 strength was in their power of endurance ; the 
 patience with which they waited, the silence in 
 which they meditated, the loneliness with which 
 they prayed, the meekness with which they for- 
 bore, the constraint they imposed on themselves, 
 till constraint was no longer possible. The study 
 of any great life reveals the fact that power has 
 been accumulated, gospel-fashion, by patience, 
 obedience, submission, long suffering, the disci- 
 pline of denial and control. The vapor gathers 
 itself up in clouds before a drop of rain falls ; 
 the farmer likes the shower more than the cloud. 
 The demonstration of power is more popular than 
 the })ower. The quahties of the hero stir the 
 blood. The blast of the trumpet is kindling. 
 The flag, the uniform, the martial step, the dash, 
 the shout, catch the senses and thrill the nerves. 
 Courage, audacity, fearlessness of everytljing that 
 causes fear — even man and God-defying fearless- 
 ness, the temerity of Satan, lays us under a spell 
 
MORAL IDEAL. 231 
 
 that bewitches while it domorahzes. But this 
 is iUusion. The fact remains and it will remain, 
 and it will be more and more acknowledged that 
 the passive power takes pre-eminence and prece- 
 dence of the active. There was no world till the 
 fire-mist was condensed. 
 
 And beauty, the moral type of it, will ever 
 hold its own. The room in the Dresden gallery, 
 "where stands the Sistino Madonna alone, is al- 
 ways filled with visitors, men and women, from all 
 parts of the world. They sit enchanted before the 
 celestial vision of purity, sweetness, patience, ten- 
 derness ; the mild glory wherefrom St. Barbara 
 turns her face away for a moment, outshines all 
 the splendors of the royal gallery, all the splen- 
 dors the visitors possess or dream of, all the gauds 
 they wear. The silence is scarcely disturbed by 
 a whisper, never by a loud voice. The people en- 
 ter and depart as if the place were a temple ; 
 many sit there by the hour, and more than once 
 I saw tears start from the gazing eyes and roll 
 down worn faces, unchecked. 
 
 Was the picture so beautii'ul, and would a lov- 
 ing picture like it be less so ? would a character 
 enchant less than a painted canvas ? Tlie art- 
 ists despair of painting a face that should be 
 worthy of Jesus. Art still is faithful to the best 
 tradition, and celebrates in its ideal forms the 
 qualities the world has never ceased to worship 
 
232 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 and never learned to imitate. The modern ad- 
 miration of what are not quite justly called the 
 " feminine virtues, ' is a sign that the grace has 
 not departed, even though the virtues be some- 
 times miscalled, and very often misinterpreted. 
 Let art continue to hold high its moral id.eal of 
 beauty. Let religion continne to lay stress on the 
 qualities it has of old revered. Let humanity be 
 persuaded that those qualities are its strength. 
 Build on them what splendid edifices you will ; 
 add culture, grace, accomplishment, the refine- 
 ment that charms, the knowledge that enriches, 
 the aspiratioi'i that perfects ; the more beauty the 
 better, if beauty be made the finishing grace. 
 
IX. 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 " QTRANGE ! " said one of our finest tliink- 
 ^ ers, perhaps our finest, as if in soliloquy — 
 " strange that the barrel-organ man should ter- 
 minate every tune with the strain of immortal- 
 ity." The remark calls up a world of thought, 
 which we have no disposition to analyze. The 
 suggestion of mechanical fatalism in the phrase 
 " barrel-organ," as applied to a human being, 
 coupled with the admission of a steady eternal 
 prophecy, makes us wish he had said a word 
 more to explain how a bold spiritual faith could 
 proceed from a machine. Perhaps the deep mind 
 was turning the question over, and musingly 
 dropped a hint of the problem, having no hint 
 of a solution to offer. This is the problem, the 
 solution whereof is yet far off. How is it that 
 mankind always and everywhere, with few and 
 scattered exceptions, perhaps with no absolute 
 exceptions — how is it that man as man, the race 
 
231 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 * 
 
 of man, dreams of immortality, insists that under 
 one form or another he shall not, cannot die ? 
 
 For this is the general anticipation. Man- 
 kind, it may be broadly asserted, has universal- 
 ly cherished faith in immortality under some 
 form. The form is often crude, fantastic, gro- 
 tesque ; sometimes so uncouth as to be revolting, 
 sometimes so attenuated as to be hardly recog- 
 nizable, sometimes so eccentric and whimsical 
 as not to merit the name of belief, still, the ap- 
 prehension is present. A strict definition great- 
 ly limits the domain covered by the historical 
 faith ; but if wo make allowance, as we should, 
 for mental crudeness and grades of uudevelop- 
 ment, the universality of the faith, opinion, guess, 
 anticipation, dream, whatever it be, must be 
 practically conceded. Not that the doctrine of 
 annihilation has never been taught ; it has been, 
 but it is at least doubtful if it Avas ever held in 
 an absolute f(u-m. It may be questioned wheth- 
 er the doctrine can be held in an absolute form, 
 whether it is tenable or thinkable. Can the 
 thinking being think of himself as not thiukiug ? 
 Can the sensitive being fancy himself insensi- 
 ble? We can believe in the annihilation of oth- 
 ers ; can we believe in the annihilation of our- 
 selves ? Looking on a lifeless body, it is easy to 
 feel as if all the life that had been associated 
 with it was extinct; indeed it is not easy to 
 
IMMORTALITY. 235 
 
 feel otherwise. But can one imagine himself 
 to be utterly extinct? Annihilation therefore 
 may be an opinion, but it can hardly be a fixed 
 conviction ; it may be a doctnne, but it can 
 hardly be a firm faith. Faith must have some- 
 thing to cling to ; it cannot stand fixed in noth- 
 ing, and annihilation is nothing. Hamlet tries 
 
 his thought on it : 
 
 " To dio: — to sleep, — 
 No more : aud, by a sleep, to say we eud 
 The lieart ache aud tbo thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
 Devoutly to be wished. To die, —to sleep,— 
 To sleep ! perchance to dream ;— ay, there's the nib." 
 
 Sleep is not death, though, it wears a faint si- 
 militude to it, and yet sleep is the only parallel 
 of death we have. 
 
 The materialist, while doing his utmost to 
 prove immortality impossible, while affirming 
 that " thought is a motion of matter," that 
 " thought stands in the same relation to the brain 
 as bile to the liver," that "the brain is the 
 sole cause of spirit," that "with the decay and 
 dissolution of its material substratum, the spirit 
 must cease to exist," still preaches the persisten- 
 cy of force, its indestructibility, its continual 
 passage and perpetual transformation. Noth- 
 ing, he says, dies or can die ; modes of exist- 
 tence change and pass, but force endures ; at- 
 
236 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 oms and powers mock at the mutations of death ; 
 nothing is lost. Heat may be only a mode of 
 motion ; feeling, thought, moral purpose, may be 
 but modes of motion ; the phenomena of con- 
 science, aspiration, will, may be but illusions of 
 relation and continuation : but whatever they are, 
 they are imperishable. Though but ripples on 
 the surface of a lake, they never cease ; though 
 but agitations of the atmosphere, the invisible 
 waves flow on evermore, giving their movement 
 and never quite subsiding. The consciousness 
 that holds the mental powers in association for 
 a time may be loosed, but whatever force there 
 is, passes undiminished on. Here is a kind of 
 immortality, an impersonal, unconscious, ele- 
 mental kind, to be sure, carrying no hearty 
 cheer, suggesting no individual promise, but it 
 is something different from utter annihilation, 
 the exact opposite of that in fact — utter and in- 
 exhaustible vitality, the indestructibility of qual- 
 ities, the perpetual rejuvenescence of powers. 
 Modern science indeed cannot accept cessation. 
 It knows no dead matter. It knows no matter 
 in the ancient sense, and therefore it knows no 
 death. 
 
 Above this class of so-called materiahsts, for 
 whom no kind name has been discovered but for 
 whom that name is inappropriate, are those 
 who preach an immortality in the race ; preach 
 
IMMORTALITY. 237 
 
 it — I use that word designedly, for their teaching 
 has the warmth the earnestness of men who 
 speak under force of moral conviction. This is 
 the doctrine of Comte, after whom the relig- 
 ion of humanity has been mis-named. The in- 
 dividual perishes, as a conscious person- ; he con- 
 tinues to hve in the race as an influence, and 
 the race hves in him. The race is the immor- 
 tal being, man is immortal, not men. " The 
 social existence of man really consists much 
 more in the continuous succession of generations 
 than in the solidarity of the existing genera- 
 tion," and the successive generations owe their 
 continuance to the onward pressure of the in- 
 dividuals who rise and disappear hke successive 
 undulations of the sea. The cora,l insect be- 
 queaths its tiny wall of limestone to the slow- 
 ly rising reef. The human frame gains solidity 
 and maturity as it passes through stages of de- 
 composition, its component particles dying that 
 others may succeed to them in the structui'e. 
 Death carries away the generation that has done 
 its work, and makes room for another whose work 
 is before it. Each is richer than the preceding 
 by all that the preceding has achieved, and will 
 bequeath augmented treasures to that which will 
 come after it. The race is an organization, and 
 the individual men and women are the celU' 
 that discharge their momentary function and 
 
238 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 are then dismissed. Tlie race is not to be com- 
 pared to an ocean, tlie component parts where- 
 of are tossing billows or foam-flakes flashing in 
 the sun ; it should be likened rather to a forest 
 tree, that assimilates and transmutes the ele- 
 ments that enter into its structure. The idea 
 is simple and intelligible. It has the merit of 
 perfect clearness and of perfect demonstrability. 
 It is true beyond a peradventure. 
 
 It is an idea that has exercised considerable in- 
 fluence in history ; probably no single idea has 
 possessed a larger amount of rital power. With 
 the Jews the doctrine of immortality in this form 
 had great sway, as well in the older as in the later 
 epochs of the nation. Some have questioned, rash - 
 ly perhaps, whether any other doctrine than this 
 was entertained by that branch of the Semitic race. 
 The Pharisees certainly had a developed doctrine 
 of personal immortality, and traces of a distinct 
 theory are found before their day. But the per- 
 sonal existence after death M'as not the most at- 
 tractive feature of the national hope even with 
 them. The Hebrew apparently knew no hearty 
 existence apart from organization. The disem- 
 bodied life was hardly worth calling life ; the dis- 
 embodied spirit was a ghost rather than a being. 
 The under world whither the dead repaired was a 
 gloomy abode of shadows, which dimly hovered 
 about, aimless, pointless, with spectral haUuciu- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 239 
 
 ations, instead of thoughts. Their condition was 
 rather one of supended animation than of life. 
 The smallest possession on this side of the grave 
 was worth more than the greatest on the other 
 side. The Pharisee's hope of resurrection was hope 
 of restoration to his terrestrial existence. His 
 messianic felicity was to be on earth ; he was to 
 have his body again, and be with his friends. This 
 was the exclusive privilege of Israel. The follow- 
 ers of Jesus entertained the same expectation. 
 Their master prayed that the kingdom might 
 come on the earth. The millennial reign was 
 looked for as a prolongation under happy auspi- 
 ces of the earthly human estate, with all physical 
 conveniences and delights. The heavenly Jerusa- 
 lem was solid, with walls of jasper and gates of 
 pearl. 
 
 The Hebrew was vital ; he believed in things ; 
 his praj'er was for length of life, and for male chil- 
 dren who could perpetuate his line. Death and 
 childlessness he abhorred. Die he must ; it was 
 the general doom ; but dying, he was consoled in 
 thinking of the children and grandchildren and 
 great-grandchildren who inherited his posses- 
 sions, his name, his courage and his faith. The 
 book of Deuteronomy puts on record a law that " if 
 brethren live together, and one of them die and 
 have no child, the wife of the dmid shall not 
 marry outside to a stranger ; her husband's bro- 
 
240 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 ther shall take lier to wife, aud the first bom 
 whom she beareth shall succeed to the name of 
 his brother which was dead, that his name be not 
 jjut out of IsraeL" The losing of his name from 
 Israel was the loss of place in his line, the for- 
 feiture of standing in the nation ; the breaking 
 of the connection between the individual and the 
 great era that was coming. This idea was Jesus 
 confronted with by the Sadducees, who denied 
 the resurrection, but held to the faith of immor- 
 tality in the race. The book of Ecclesiasticus, by 
 some supposed to be a Sadducean writing, clearly 
 taught this doctrine. " There be that have left a 
 name behind them, that their praises might be re- 
 ported, and there be that which have no memo- 
 rial, who are perished as though they had never 
 been, and are become as though they had never 
 been born, and their children after them. The 
 former have been merciful men, whose righteous- 
 ness has not been forgotten. Their seed standeth 
 fast, and their children for their sakes. Tlieir 
 bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth 
 for evermore. The people will tell of their wis- 
 dom and the congregation will show forth their 
 praise. The inheritance of sinners' children shall 
 perish, and their posterity shall have perpetu- 
 al reproach." " Have regard to thy name, for 
 that shall continue with thee above a thousand 
 great treasures of gold." " A good life hath but 
 
IMMORTALITY. 241 
 
 few days ; but a good name endureth forever." 
 The Hebrews found their heaven on earth in a 
 god-fearing and god-favored Hfe. 
 
 A beHef that animated a race hke the He- 
 brews, so vital, tenacious and energetic, so over- 
 charged with enthusiasm, is not to be spoken of 
 hghtly, as if it was the last resort of philosophy 
 driven to desperation. It may be lacking iu sen- 
 timent, in poetic beauty, refinement, delicacy, but 
 it certainly is not spectral. It is at all events vas- 
 cular and vigorous. If not spiritual, in the ordi- 
 nary sense, it is heartily human. 
 
 Are we sure that this belief is not operative 
 now, though not publicly professed or intehigent- 
 1}' entertained ? What are they thinking of who 
 toil to perpetuate themselves among men, after 
 they shall be deceased ; who joyless, parsimo- 
 nious, self-denying, labor to build up and be- 
 queath to their heirs great fortunes that shall af- 
 ter a fashion preserve, keep together, mass, and 
 project far into the future their power of fore- 
 thought, industry, dominion over things and men, 
 stretching their sceptre, as it were, over realms of 
 future activity when their skeleton hands shall 
 have drojiped away into dust ; who put the re- 
 sults of a long, hard, penurious, obscure, unpriv- 
 ileged life into some institution, hospital, orphan- 
 asylum, library, gallery of art, museum, school of 
 design, with which their name shall be connected, 
 
24'J 2EE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 through which future generations shah gratefully 
 bear them in mind, and by means of whicli they 
 shall exert a power of untold and unconjcctured 
 extent over many hundreds of their fellow-crea- 
 tures ; who found families which shall be but the 
 nobler extension of themselves ; make discover- 
 ies the utility and reputation whereof shall give 
 them posthiunous renown ; write books they hopo 
 are destined to live in literature when their au- 
 thors are no more ; paint pictures, as Turner did, 
 less for money than for future distinction ? A 
 very powerful motive with men is ambition ; but 
 ambition is seldom satisfied without a contempla- 
 tion of the future. Love of fame is a strong in- 
 centive, and love of fame always has reference to 
 an immortality on earth. Fame is impersonal. It 
 is probable that a greater number of strong 
 minds are set working by the hope of such an im- 
 mortahty than by the hope of any personal feli- 
 city in another state. 
 
 Is it urged that this doctrine may be a good 
 one for the strong and great, but must be very 
 unsatisfactory to the weak and small ? an excel- 
 lent doctrine for a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Laplace, 
 a Dante, a Milton, a Michael Angelo, or a Rafaelle, 
 but a poor one for Stnith and Jones. The objec- 
 tion would be fatal if the immortality in question 
 were an immortality of fame ; but against an 
 immortality of intiueuce it has no force. The 
 
IMMORTALITY. 213 
 
 multitude of the Smiths and Joneses, the milhons 
 of mankind are of more moment to the accumu- 
 hiting Hfe of the race than the few great philoso- 
 phers, poets, and painters Avhom men celebrate. 
 There are tens of thousands of families in the 
 United States that never heard of Plato, or Shake- 
 speare, or Columbus, but children are born and 
 reared there, domestic life is kept sweet, constancy- 
 is preserved, morals inculcated, religion taught, 
 goodness illustrated, and the force of virtue ex- 
 tended. The sources of power are here. It is 
 the mass of character that determines human 
 condition and decides human destiny. The emi- 
 nent are not necessarily the useful ; the famous 
 are not necessarily the beneficent. Whoever leads 
 a good life, sets a good example, establishes a 
 well-conducted family, rightly orders a home, 
 worthily rears children, honestly pursues a re- 
 spectable calling, is temperate, frugal, chaste, 
 makes the most precious of contributions to his 
 kind. The great people owe the qualities that 
 distinguish them to little people. The mightiest 
 trees spring from the common ground. New 
 York gets its supply of water not from the queenly 
 Hudson that pours a silver flood from the North 
 to the sea, but from the insignificant Croton, 
 which never floated a ship, whose banks are 
 adorned with no villas, whoso praise no poet erer 
 sang. 
 
2M THE BELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 In humble families the memories of parents 
 and kindred are cherished us devoutly as they are 
 in kings' houses, or in nations' legends. Children 
 live in those that gave them birth, though none 
 but they knew them. The world M'ould be badlj 
 ofl', indeed, did its progress depend on its Platos 
 and Aristotles, its Bacons and Newtons, its Dantes 
 and Shakespeares, its Angelos and Rafaelles. The 
 multitude of mankind never indkectly felt the 
 touch of their influence. The simplest qualities 
 of character are worth to the race more than all 
 art, and poetry, and philosophy. The plain 
 New England farmer, by the help of his prudent 
 wife, rears a family of sons whose virtue is of 
 infinite value to their country in its time of peril. 
 Their work done, they retire from the field, be- 
 queathing their life to their sons, who prove val- 
 liant servants in their time. The line runs on 
 for two or three generations, ploughing straight 
 furrows in a crooked world. Of the New Eng- 
 land farmer, little or nothing is known ; but that 
 he survived his dust, spoke and guided and 
 swayed after he was dead who will deny ? 
 
 Say what we will, the dead reign over us — not 
 the mighty dead only, whose power is in institu- 
 tions, literatures, laws, customs, and social ideas, 
 but the forgotten dead, whose blood is in our veins. 
 The dead not only outnumber the living, they 
 outweigh them. The living are the shadows, 
 
IMMORTALITY. 2-15 
 
 tlie dead are the substance. The living make 
 the motions, the dead work the wires. The 
 hviug are the masks, the dead are the beings. 
 They shape our features, color our skin, eyes, 
 hair. We think their thoughts, enact their wills, 
 continue tlie exercise of their dominant activities. 
 They fight for us when we are tempted, or they 
 drag us down when we are weak ; they move us 
 to pity, or harden us to hate. "We are as puppets 
 in their shadowy hands. They are a destiny ! 
 Some strong-natured ancestor tyrannizes by his 
 vice over generations of his descendants, shoot- 
 ing the arrow of destraction through their vitals, 
 giving them cups of poison to drink which they 
 have made the refusal of impossible. Again, 
 some sweet-souled progenitor acts the part of a 
 guardian angel towards sons and daughters in 
 long succession, who feel the spu'it so near that 
 they seenl to bo in conscious communication 
 with it. 
 
 The souls of the dead, though they be uncon- 
 scious, lurk in bur dwellings. All houses where ju 
 men have lived and died, are haunted houses, says 
 the poet. Our frames are haunted houses. The 
 chambers and secret closets of the mind are haunt- 
 ed. We see the spirits, though the spirits do not 
 see us. We feel them, though they are insensible 
 to us. Our lives are in their hands, though their 
 hands are thinner than air. 
 
246 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Yes, this immortalitj in the race is a very real, 
 a most affecting and impressive thing. It is life 
 of the most vital description ; Hfe, the living 
 whereof worthily should be most inspiring ; the 
 living whereof unworthily should be terrifying, 
 for it soon passes from our control, and falls into 
 the track of moral law, which is moral predesti- 
 nation. 
 
 Is it still urged that this doctrine of immor- 
 tality is unsatisfactory ; that there is no real 
 human immortality, which is not personal ; that 
 the only kind of immortality which any one is 
 specially interested in defending, is one in which 
 identity survives death and preserves its con- 
 sciousness through all changes ? 
 
 But there is nothing inconsistent with this be- 
 lief in the doctrine we have been considering. 
 Every argument for personal immortality has all 
 the force it had before. In fact the thought of an 
 organic connection with the race is the thought 
 that more than any other gives dignity to the pri- 
 vate hope. The trunk of the oak tree guarantees 
 life to the leaves and twigs. It was faith in the 
 immortal destiny of Israel that emboldened the 
 individual Hebrew to believe in his own. He 
 shared the imperishableness of his root, and felt 
 assured that when Israel was restored, lie would 
 be. '* As in Adam all die, even so in Christ sliaU all 
 be made alive," writes Paul the Pharisee : " I am 
 
IMMORTALITY. 2A7 
 
 the vine, ye are the branches." " Because I live, 
 ye shall live also," says the Logos-Christ of the 
 fourth gospel. " No man liveth to himself, and no 
 man dietli to himself," says Paul again, his mind 
 full of the thought of solidarity. Surely no indi- 
 vidual would think of claiming immortality for 
 himself on private grounds. He has no roots that 
 reach down through the world. Detach him from 
 the deep traditions of his kind ; pluck up his stem 
 from the common earth and set it down in a sep- 
 arate pot of clay, and the thought of his surviving 
 the winter of death is absurd. Alone in his isola- 
 tion, sharing no collective life, supported by no 
 enclosing Sympathies, his decease is inevitable. 
 All his moral qualities imply brotherhood ; his af- 
 fection, his hope, his aspiration. It is the univer- 
 sal hope, the general desire, the unanimous wish, 
 the common persuasion of tlie ages that embol- 
 dens any one, the wisest and the best, to entertain 
 the anticipation of rescue from the wreck of mat- 
 ter. The dream that would be wild for me, by 
 myself, becomes less irrational when cherished 
 heartily by millions of my race. On the strength 
 of such multitudinous aspiration I may ventiu'e to 
 aspire. 
 
 The assault that has carried outwork after out- 
 work of the popular credence has not yet reached 
 the citadel of human conviction. The grave of 
 Lazarus has not been found empty. The resui'- 
 
248 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 rection body of Jesus has been fading into sliadow 
 of late years, and now is attenuated to an appari- 
 tion ; the supposition that it may have been even 
 a spectre is dissolving, and giving place to the no- 
 tion that it was perhaps an optical illusion, a 
 fancy, or a wish ; chemistry has reduced the cor- 
 poreal part to vapor, past resurrection. Philoso- 
 phy has made havoc among arguments that had 
 been reUed on for hundreds of years. The idea 
 that the soul is conscious of its own immortality, 
 the theory that immortahty is a natural instinct, 
 an ineradicable prophecy divinely implanted in 
 the human mind and guaranteed by the promise 
 of the eternal, an unquenchable desire, an impera- 
 tive demand, an inalienable claim that God has 
 created and on his honor must satisfy, — these opin- 
 ions have been dissipated by the searching analy- 
 sis of thought, and they whose belief in immortal- 
 ity rested on them, go disconsolate. But the tes- 
 timony of the race to the validity of the great hope 
 is not sensibly shaken by this displacement of ar- 
 guments and withdrawal of props. The faith au- 
 thenticates itself, not the bad masonry of its over 
 rash supporters. It vouches for nothing but the 
 main current of o])inion, and adopts nothing that 
 does not strike in with that current. 
 
 The belief of the Spiritualists is conclusive for 
 those that hold it. They are undismayed by the 
 assaults of skepticism on the popular strongholds 
 
IMMORTALITY. 249 
 
 of faith ; ratlier rejoice apparently in tlieir down- 
 fall, having, they are persuaded, something far 
 better, the direct evidence of the senses. They 
 take no interest in the oftbrts of idealists to ground 
 their conviction on the spiritual phenomena of the 
 mind, being rather disposed to side with those who 
 discredit the tine prophecies of the soul, in the in- 
 terest of a more stable argument. If spiritualism 
 stands its ground and holds its own, the contro- 
 versy is at an end. But Spiritualism is still on the 
 defensive so far as the cultivated community is 
 concerned. The decisive battle-field is not found. 
 The victory is not by any general admission won. 
 On each fresh issue the ground is drawn. Both 
 sides confidently anticipate triumph, and neither 
 side obtains it. The hosts of Spiritualism number 
 their tens of thousands, but they do not march 
 under one leader, or swear fealty to the same 
 cause, or shout the same war-cry. They are en- 
 camped on different plains. Among them are able 
 and eminent men ; men of great ability and high 
 eminence, weighty in character and name ; but 
 they do not constitute a compact body, nor repeat 
 a uniform creed, nor testify to an identical expe- 
 rience, nor bear with united force on one com- 
 manding point, nor agree on how much or how 
 little is demonstrated. Dr. Garth Wilkinson says 
 candidly, " I have long been convinced by the ex- 
 perience of my life as a pioneer in several hetero- 
 
250 THE liELIGION OF IIUMASITY. 
 
 doxies which are rapidly becoming orthodoxies, 
 that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or 
 given in the affections and intuitions, and that dis- 
 cussions and inquiry do little more than feed tem- 
 perament .... My whole soul, perfectly unconvinci- 
 ble by the other side, knows this for me, and floods 
 me with the power of it every hour. Others are 
 built from the opposite convictions and do vast 
 material good works in consequence, and can wait 
 to turn over the next leaf, till they die."* 
 
 And so it is. They believe to whom it comes. 
 The conviction is private and personal, not from 
 report but from experience. Spiritualism makes 
 its converts one by one. Its power is not that of 
 a massive general conviction, possessed of in- 
 stinctive inherent force, populations and ages 
 being welded together by it, and by long ha- 
 bit, exercising it and being exercised by it. It is 
 nothing like the Roman Catholic belief in angels, 
 a belief stated, formulated, defined, promulgated 
 by authority, officially interpreted and made the 
 basis of reUgious instruction for a thousand years, 
 till it has come to be almost a belief of humanity. 
 Before it can obtain a moral power like this over 
 men, Spiritualism must have been for several 
 generations the professed belief of great commu- 
 nities ; line after line must have been born into it 
 
 * Letter to the Committee of the London Dialectical Socie- 
 ty. See Report, p. 234. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 251 
 
 and reared in it ; it must have worked its way 
 into the coustitiitiou of the miud, taken secure 
 possession of thought, become one of the necessary 
 faiths, as it were, a faith too famihar to be dis- 
 cussed, too natural to be doubted. If this time 
 ever comes there will be no more investigations, 
 no more committees of inquiry appointed by 
 learned societies, no more labored arguments, 
 no more conversions ; the doctrine will simply 
 be taken for granted on the strength of moral 
 assurance, by force of unquestioned tradition. 
 Until this time comes. Spiritualism, however, 
 convincing and satisfactory to those who receive 
 its revelation, cannot command the assent of the 
 uninitiated. Its power as a great human faith is 
 not established. That comes not Avith mere 
 numbers, but with what we call force of numbers ; 
 the compact moral weight of numbers collected, 
 continuous, cumulative, comprehensive, sweeping 
 along with them the masses of mind and cha- 
 racter. 
 
 Thus far, the oul}' faith that humanity accepts, 
 and has pledged itself to, is the faith in per- 
 sonal persistence after death. The modes of that 
 existence it does not pronounce on, but the exis- 
 tence itself it steadily prophesies through many 
 voices, the commanding voice of priest, prophet, 
 philosopher, the timid but earnest voices of the 
 believing people. The weight of the tradition 
 
252 THE EELiaiON OF HUMANITY. 
 
 bears on this point, and the strength of it con- 
 sists in the habitual faith mankind have in the 
 substantial realitj and permanency of their intel- 
 lectual and moral being. This faith remains un- 
 shaken. The foremost men of science neither af- 
 firm nor deny, but simply say they do not know. 
 They cannot prove, and they cannot disprove ; 
 their methods are uusuited to such an investiga- 
 tion, and they abandon it ; the future life is be- 
 yond their province ; at the extreme limits of 
 the palpable domain they stand with bended 
 head ; the spiritual facts their instruments do 
 not touch. Tyndall says : " The passage from 
 the physics of the brain to the corresponding 
 facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted 
 that a definite thought and a definite molecular 
 action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do 
 not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently 
 any rudiment of an organ which would enable us 
 to pass by a process of reasoning from one phe- 
 nomenon to the other. Were our minds and 
 senses so expanded strengthened and illuminat- 
 ed as to enable us to see and feel the very mole- 
 cules of the brain ; were we capable of follow- 
 ing all their motions, all their groupings, all 
 their electrical discharges, if such there be, and 
 were we intimately acquainted with the corres- 
 ponding states of thought and feeling, we should 
 be as far as ever from the solution of the prob- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 253 
 
 lem, * How are these physical processes connect- 
 ed with the facts of consciousness ?' The chasm 
 between the two classes of phenomena would 
 still remain intellectually impassable. Let the 
 consciousness of Love, for example, be associat- 
 ed with a right-handed spiral motion of the 
 molecules of the brain, and the consciousness 
 of Hate with a left-handed spiral motion ; we 
 should then know when we love that the mo- 
 tion is in one direction, and when wo hate, 
 that the motion is in the other ; but the why 
 would still remain unanswered."* 
 
 This passage expresses the general conviction, 
 more or less intelhgent, of mankind. Here faith 
 sits intrenched. From this posture it is not to 
 be driven. Within this stronghold it feels safe. 
 In an unreflecting age the position may look 
 weak ; in an age of immense material activity, 
 it may seem of no real account ; in an age when 
 intellectual power is dissipated on a great diver- 
 sity of practical enterprises, it may even seem to 
 be abandoned, empty of occupants, deserted by 
 its own defenders ; but every reaction from a 
 period like this brings out tlie strength of the po- 
 sition with prodigious force. The citadel of a 
 fortitied town is quite unnoticed in time of 
 
 • Tyudiill's address to the British Association for the Ad- 
 vancement of Science, on "The Physical Forces and Thought." 
 (Report, XXXVni., for the year 1868.) 
 
254 THE RELTQION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 peace. It stands aloof from the places of busi- 
 ness and pleasure ; its moat is dry ; the grass 
 covers its casemates and breastworks ; the chil- 
 dren play on its harmless ramparts ; the com- 
 mon citizen is scarcely aware of its existence. 
 But let an enemy approach, it swarms with men, 
 the long guns show their teeth, the armory is 
 stocked with weapons, the magazines deliver 
 ammunition, and the town knows where to look 
 for safety. An extreme intellectual subtlety thinks 
 to capture this citadel of faith by ingenious par- 
 allels, by deep processes of sapping and mining. 
 M. Hyppolite Taine criticises the statement of 
 Prof. Tyndall in the quotation just made, and 
 by a singularly ingenious analysis tries to bridge 
 over that impassable chasm by showing that the 
 two seemingly different orders of facts are but 
 two different aspects of the same order of facts, 
 " the one single event being known to us in two 
 directly contrary ways.""* 
 
 The faith of mankind holds itself responsible 
 for no fancies or vagaries, however gravely or 
 piously put forth. M. Taine may be right ; the 
 dart he lets fly at the heart of the mystery may 
 reach its aim. But suppose his conclusion ac- 
 cepted by the small class of thinkers belonging 
 to his school ; until the bulk of mankind join 
 that school ; until men cease to live in their pri- 
 
 • Taine's " Intelligence," Book IV., Ch. 2. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 255 
 
 vate feelings or their social sympathies, in their 
 affections and hopes ; until they cease to consult 
 the witness of their moral nature, cease to be- 
 lieve that there is a moral nature, then will they 
 go on making the same affirmation and uttering 
 the same prophecies. 
 
 Paul's doctrine of the spiritual body — Avhich 
 was not original with Paul, seeing that it was 
 current in his nation — the doctrine which was 
 taken up and elaborated by Swedenborg and is 
 one of the cardinal doctrines of the New Jeru- 
 salem Church, may be unassailable from the sci- 
 entific side. If there be such a body made of 
 fine ethereal substance, completely organized in 
 all its parts, in human form, with eyes ears 
 brain and features, a spiritual heart beatiug 
 in its chest and propelling spiritual blood through 
 spiritual arteries, spmtual lungs breathing a 
 spiritual atmosphere* — if there be such a body, 
 the essential, inmost form using the material 
 form as a means of manifestation, and laying it 
 by when it has no more use for it — it must elude 
 all known methods of st^arch, just as the secret 
 of hfe does, or the nature of force. We cannot 
 prove its existence, but we cannot prove its non- 
 existence ; and if such a belief had on its side 
 the weight of a uniform and unanimous tradition, 
 
 • Giles's " Lectures on the Nature of Spirit, ancTon Man as 
 a Spiritual Being." 
 
25G THE liELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 oriental and occidental, Asiatic, European, Greek, 
 Roman, Teutonic, instead of being, as it is now, 
 the fanciful notion of a small and peculiar sect, 
 it would stand quite unappalled before the threat- 
 ening advances of science. That it has no such 
 weight of authority in its favor is apparent to 
 all. It is an eccentricity, a Uttle side eddy in the 
 grand movement of the moral tradition, interest- 
 ing certainly, curious, pleasing to fanciful minds, 
 but standing in no depth of human soil. 
 
 The movement of moral tradition confines it- 
 self to the tract of moral experience. It is not 
 a speculative movement across a speculative 
 field ; it is a moral movement over a moral 
 field. It is a movement of internal experience. 
 It makes small account of special arguments, 
 for or against ; it is not checked by local 
 doubts or misgivings, by considerations of pri- 
 vate demerit, unworthiness, or insufiiciency ; it is 
 not turned aside by mental vagaries ; it rushes 
 on, bearing skepticism of all kinds away as the 
 Hudson bears away the piles of chip and straw 
 that accumulate at points along its course. Com- 
 mit yourself fairly to the stream, and your arri- 
 val among the islands of the lovely bay is cer- 
 tain. 
 
 AVliat can you do with the idealist who plants 
 himself sturdily on the facts of the moral na- 
 ture, simply stands there, affirming the .validity 
 
IMMORTALITY. 257 
 
 of his spiritual being, and uttering prophecies 
 from the height of his hope? You cannot dis- 
 lodge him ; you cannot refute him ; you cannot 
 pretend he is not there. You may launch at 
 him your bold assertion, an equally bold as- 
 sertion he will launch back at you. You may 
 call him a visionary, he will call you a ma- 
 terialist ; you may call him a poet, he will call 
 you a proser ; you may call him a dreamer who 
 lives in ecstasy, he will call you a delver who 
 lives in a ditch. He says : " I fall back on my 
 hope. My hope is my argument. It is a note 
 of hand which needs no endorser. My con- 
 stitution to aspire to endless being is evidence 
 which no miracle can strengthen. Make out 
 hope a part of your nature, no accident or 
 whim, but an angel He despatches, and the 
 case is won. The soul is an immortal princi- 
 ple. It is an indestructible essence. It is part 
 and parcel of the Divinity it adores. It can no 
 more die than he can." " We are conscious 
 of durability as a quality, if not of future dura- 
 tion as a fact." " We ask for evidences of faith. 
 Faith is the evidence." " Spirit is its own proof, 
 which no rarefaction of matter can reach." " If God 
 could make me out of a shell, he can make an 
 angel out of me. If my body be a resurrec- 
 tion from the grave of a trilobite, something 
 finer than enters its own tomb may come out. If 
 
258 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 clay has mounted into my soul, how high shall 
 my soul mount?" This sounds very much like 
 rhapsody, but it is merely the rhapsodical form 
 of a common-place persuasion. They that live 
 in their affections will not believe that they are 
 perishable. Tennyson cannot feel that his friend 
 is gone. The mother who puts her child in the 
 ground has a persuasion of the organic vitality 
 of the bond that unites them, which no argu- 
 ment will dispel. It may be feeling, but feel- 
 ing is the larger and stronger part of nature, 
 and it insists on being heard. 
 
 Even had keen philosophic thinkers aban- 
 doned psychology to the phj^siologists, and given 
 over the task of maintaining the validity of 
 the facts of the moral consciousness, the card- 
 inal faith would hold ; for as that faith was 
 never born of reasoning, so it will considerably 
 outlast reasoning. But philosophy has by no 
 means surrendered its position. Powerful think- 
 ers in France, Germany, England and America, 
 minds well acquainted with the conditions of the 
 question, familiar with scientific achievements and 
 pretensions, contend manfully for the old ground 
 and concede no inch to their adversaries. These 
 men work on the line of tradition in the race. 
 When that tradition shall be exhausted, and an 
 opposite one acquire an equal validity, then the 
 volume of faith which supports individual con- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 259 
 
 viction will strike into new channels and carry 
 minds along to new conclusions ; until then the 
 drift will set towards the eternal sea. To the 
 beUevers in the doctrine of evolution, faith in 
 personal immortality becomes exceedingly dim 
 and difficult. The notion of soul germs being 
 discarded, and the assumption of a spiritual na- 
 ture attested by consciousness being disuiissed, 
 he is at a loss to find a ground upon which to 
 build a hope. If the human soul or intelligence 
 be but the last term in a process of develop- 
 ment that has been going on in the lower or- 
 ders of creation, an aspiring fountain whose 
 water has been percolating through layers of 
 primeval rock, and is filtered by passing over 
 sand and gravel, ho is puzzled to find the pe- 
 culiar quality that may endow it with immor- 
 tality, or to conjecture how and when such pe- 
 culiar quality was imparted. He is deeply 
 troubled that he cannot put his finger on the 
 instant in human delopment when man began to 
 have an independent personality. Is every an- 
 imal immortal by virtue of the latent intelligence 
 it manifests? If not, at what particular stage 
 of its development does intelligence become 
 possessed of the privilege '? Whence the modern 
 man's claims to a destiny unshared by " the 
 men of those developing ages who may have 
 perished like ants that swarm in the pathway 
 
260 TEE RELIGION OF EUMANITY. 
 
 of feet ? " The presumption is, that no such 
 claims can be reasonably advanced, that the 
 necessary condition of homogeneousness in the 
 mental quality through all its gradations is 
 fatal to it, that unless a finer analysis of the 
 rational mind shall prove it different in kind 
 and not in degree only from mind partially ra- 
 tional, as in the lower races, or quite irrational 
 and rudimental, as in quadrupeds and birds, 
 the root of immortality is torn up. 
 
 Of. course, under the working of the law of ev- 
 olution, man may develop into a higher crea- 
 ture, but this higher creature vaW succeed the 
 existing man, as the existing man succeeds the 
 less perfect tj'pes of animals. The species will 
 have the benefit of the unfolding, not the indi- 
 vidual. Our progeny will be nobler, but we 
 shall be no more than we are. Tlie humanity 
 of a thousand seons hence may walk the gold- 
 en streets, and tread the floors of topaz and 
 chrysolyte, but we shall be stages in the " altar 
 stairs that slope through darkness up to God." 
 The believer's sole hope of disentanglement, and 
 escape from the coil of creation into individual 
 continuance, lies in the possibility that some 
 seraphic qualitj' ma}' be discovered sitting in 
 the place where the dead body was laid, or flit- 
 ting away from the inanimate frame, or per- 
 chance lurking in the recesses of the living mind. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 261 
 
 The doctrine of evolution is not perfected yet, 
 and as to the philosophy of evolution, we are 
 but on the edge of it. The presumptions are 
 threatening, but as yet they are not fatal ; con- 
 jecture is not certainty. 
 
 The vital conviction of mankind is satisfied 
 with itself thus far. It makes no apologies, and 
 few explanations. Its attempts to account for its 
 own existence are not successful ; its arguments 
 are commonly weak ; its reasonings are so futile 
 that they hardly bear their own weight. You 
 can beat down its guard, and pierce it with deadly 
 wounds, but it will rise with " twenty mortal mur- 
 ders on its crown," and push skepticism from its 
 seat. The more wo look into the origin of the 
 behef in conscious immortality, test the supports 
 on which it has been made by its defenders to 
 rest, sift the materials that compose it, scnitinize 
 the characters of the people who entertain it, 
 measure the reach of the anticipation by the 
 minds that cherish it — in a word, sound the rea- 
 sonableness^ of the hope, the more we wonder 
 that it should ever have been fostered, that it 
 should ever have taken root. To hold such a 
 belief seems the height of audacity. The visible 
 proofs against it are so numerous and so strong, 
 the improbabilities are antecedently, in the multi- 
 tude of cases, so overwhelming, and especiall}' in 
 the case of those who hold it most stubbornly, 
 
262 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 that its mere existence becomes one of the prob- 
 lems of history. The audacity of the belief 
 favors it ; its wildness is its guarantee. Were it 
 more reasonable, it would be more questionable. 
 As the race grows older, more experienced, more 
 thoughtful, the faitli seems to lose little of its 
 vitality. The problem retains its interest for the 
 best minds and hearts. It takes on different 
 forms, assumes new phases, presents new aspects, 
 seizes on new materials for its sustenance, but still 
 retains the allegiance of men of all conditions, 
 grades of culture, orders of faculty. It is, appa- 
 rently, still a cardinal faith. 
 
 It asks no special defence, and is self-preserving. 
 It gave birth to Spiritualism, not Spiritualism to 
 it ; and it does as much to preserve SiDiritualism 
 from the perils that gather about it, perils of de- 
 lusion, imposture, rant, and cant, witlessness and 
 fanaticism, which set thoughtful minds against it, 
 as Spiritualism does to preserve it from the dan- 
 gers of skepticism and denial. Men are spiritual- 
 ists, not because their faitli in immortality was 
 dead, but because it was alive. As a rule, it Avould 
 seem the skeptics in regard to immortality de- 
 nounce Spiritualism as an imposture. It has given 
 origin to the strangest phantasies — witches, fairies, 
 demons, phantoms, and apparitions ; but these, 
 in proportion to their strangeness, attest its power. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 263 
 
 They are the frantic efforts to grasp what is in- 
 tangible. 
 
 If there be a rehgion of humanity, a rehgion 
 that rests its authentication on the basis which 
 humanity furni.shes, draws from humanity its in- 
 spiration, consults humanity for its principle, 
 adopts, on the whole, the confession that human- 
 ity has most persistently made ; if there be a 
 religion of humanity as distinct from a science of 
 humanity, it must make account of such organic 
 beliefs as this, and use them for humanity's wel- 
 fare. Let science keep them, as far as possible, 
 within the limits of warranted evidence ; let phi- 
 losophy purge them of superstition — make them 
 sober, chastened, reasonable ; the time is yet far 
 distant when science will overthrow them, or phi- 
 losophy take the place of them in the huinau 
 heart. It is the office of religion to keep them 
 alive, to give them the broadest interpretation, to 
 let their sunlight fall fairly upon the lields of the 
 moral being, to make then* animating power felt 
 in all motives to effort, improvement, and eleva- 
 tion. The more we feel the power of the univer- 
 sal moral conviction, the more we believe. The 
 more we identify ourselves with that conviction, 
 the more we have assurance. '* Great hopes are 
 for great souls," Martineau teaches. " The noble 
 mind beheves in destiny, and admits no doom," 
 Bartol declares. Let us add that the greatest 
 
26i TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 souls are great through their humanity, and be- 
 queath their great hopes to it ; that the noble 
 minds are so only as they express humanity ; 
 then* nobleness falls back to enrich the common 
 soil from which they gre\r, and in which every 
 plant and flower of faith has its root. 
 
X. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 '' I ^HE title of this chapter foreshadows its idea. 
 -*- If conscience needs educating it is not the 
 thing that divines have given it out to be. It is 
 not an infalUble oracle, " an inward judge," '* the 
 voice of God in the soul," " the heavenly witness," 
 " the eye of God in the breast," " the unerring 
 loadstone, 
 
 " Which though it trembles and lowly lies, 
 Points to the path marked out for us iu heaven." 
 
 An infallible oracle needs no instructing ; the 
 voice of God needs no articulating ; the eye of 
 God needs no brightening. The figure of the 
 magnetic needle, which must be isolated and 
 watched, guarded against foreign attractions, the 
 seductions of the neighboring metal, the local cur- 
 rents of electricity that play around the ship, and 
 can be depended on only when kept true to the 
 magnetic meridian, is beautiful and fascinating 
 as poetry, but inconclusive as argument ; for the 
 existence of the magnetic meridian is known as a 
 fact ; the properties of the magnetic needle have 
 
266 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 been ascertained by the incessant observations of 
 three hundred years ; the flow of the magnetic 
 current has been watched by the keen eyes of sci- 
 ence under all conditions, in all jjarts of the globe. 
 But the existence of the spiritual needle is the 
 very thing in dispute ; its meridian has never 
 been marked down, and the currents of tendency 
 it must fall in with in order to be true are as yet 
 untraccd. The results of scientific experiment in 
 one of the most carefully examined departments of 
 physics cannot so easily be transferred to the ac- 
 count of the soul. No figures are less trustworthy 
 than figures of speech. 
 
 Let us not make light of the majestic unities of 
 conscience. Let us rather hasten at once to em- 
 phasize them before another word is said. They 
 roll through history like the tremendous surf-beats 
 on the shore. Pain and pleasure, shame and 
 praise, guilt and innocence, remorse and approval, 
 go hand in hand around the globe. Stand up and 
 shout, be just, truthful, brave, pure, self-denying, 
 beneficent ; stand up and say " ought," and you 
 hear the echoes come thundering back from 
 the gleaming summit of the Athenian acropolis, 
 from the seven hills of ancient Home, from the 
 mountains round about Jerusalem, from the pyr- 
 amids of Egypt, from the mounds beneath which 
 Nineveh is buried, from the gloomy crags of 
 ISinai, the snowy peaks of the Himalayas ; with 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 267 
 
 one voice the tribes of men respond. The sweet- 
 hearted I'euelou says : " The man has not yet 
 been on the earth wh6 could succeed in establish- 
 ing over himself or others the maxim that 
 it is nobler to be treacherous than to be sin- 
 cere ; to be wrathful and vindictive than to be mild 
 and beneficent. The interior and universal mas- 
 ter everywhere and always enunciates the same 
 truths." The skeptical Hume responds : " In how 
 many circumstances would an Athenian and a 
 Frenchman of merit certainly resemble each oth- 
 er? Fidelity, truth, justice, courage, temper- 
 ance, constancy, dignity of mind, these you have 
 omitted, only to insist on the points in which they 
 may by accident differ." We must not forget 
 however that there is another side. 
 
 There are moral discords as well as moral har- 
 monies. The needle does not always point to the 
 same star. The conscience of the young man fol- 
 lows impetuously the flood of feeling ; the con- 
 science of the man in middle life points towards 
 the top of ambition, power, success : in old age 
 it points to prudence as the goal of right. The con- 
 science of the misguided lad, O'Connor, bade him 
 waylay and threaten the British Queen ; the con- 
 science of the British public demands that O'Con- 
 nor be imprisoned and beaten with rods ; the 
 conscience of a certain class of social savam re- 
 proaches Christendom for wasting so much time in 
 
268 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 trying to save the rubbish of humanity ; the con- 
 science of the philanthropist reproaches him if the 
 smallest fragment of humanity is suffered to per- 
 ish ; the conscience of the inquisitor commanded 
 him to burn the stubborn heretic ; the conscience 
 of the heretic kept him immovable in his stubborn- 
 ness ; the conscience of Mazzini made him a con- 
 spirator ; the consciences of the kings and priests 
 made them hunters of conspiracy ; the con- 
 science of Mr. Garrison constrained him to stir 
 up war against the slave power ; the conscience of 
 the Governor of Massachusetts constrained him 
 to treat Mr. Garrison as a pest of society. In 
 all these cases conscience is arrayed against 
 conscience. The eye saw different objects ; the 
 voice uttered contradictory opinions ; the ora- 
 cles delivered inconsistent judgments. Against 
 the Catholic Fenelon %ve can quote the Cath- 
 olic Pascal ; and against the skeptic Hume 
 we may offset the skeptic Montaigne. Pascal 
 writes : " We see scarcely anything just or un- 
 just that does not change quality in changing 
 climate. Three degrees of higher latitude over- 
 turn all jurisprudence. A meridian decides the 
 truth ; fundamental laws change in a few years ; 
 right has its epochs. Theft, incest, infanticide, par- 
 ricide, all have had their place among virtuous 
 actions. Justice is what is established." And 
 Montaigne responds : " What sort of truth is that 
 
TRE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 269 
 
 which mountains limit, which beyond their range 
 is a he ?"' The theory of the integrity and univer- 
 sahty of conscience receives a sore wrenching from 
 facts and statements Kke these. The}' suggest a 
 doubt whether there be any such facuUy as con- 
 science, any such endowment as a moral sense. 
 
 Fancy has a fine liabit of personifying the ope- 
 rations of mind. Memory makes records on her 
 tablets ; imagination spreads her wings and soars 
 away into the empyrean ; contem])lation sits in 
 her watch-tower ; meditation broods in the twi- 
 light ; conscience holds solemn assize. " When it 
 comes night, and the streets are empty, and the 
 lights are out, and the business and driving and 
 gaiety are over, and the pall of sleep is drawn 
 over the senses, and the reason and the will are 
 no longer on the watch, then conscience comes 
 out solemnly, and walks about in the silent cham- 
 bers of the soul, and makes her survey and her 
 comments ; and sometimes sits down and sternly 
 reads the records of a life that the waking man 
 would never look into, and the catalogue of crimes 
 that are gathering for the judgment. And as 
 conscience reads and reads aloud and soliloquizes, 
 you may hear the still, small, deep echo of her 
 voice, reverberated through the soul's most secret, 
 unveiled recesses." An impressive pulpit sen- 
 tence, but a fiction of the fancy, if there ever was 
 one. Such personification of the mental faculties 
 
270 THE RELIGIOX OF HUMANITT. 
 
 is out of date. Conscience is a metaphysical en- 
 tity, a name. Is what we call " conscience " any- 
 thing else than the sum of our moral impressions ? 
 And is it not itself the product of education ? 
 Let us take a hint from etymology. 
 
 Conscience : conscio, the knowledge of things 
 together, the knowledge of things as related, the 
 knowledge of relations. Conscience and conscious- 
 ness have the same root, and were once used 
 interchangeably. Thus Milton, in his sonnet : 
 
 ' ' What supports me, dost thou ask? 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them, overplied 
 In liberty's defence." 
 
 And Hamlet : 
 
 " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." 
 
 Consciousness is perception of the relations be- 
 tween our own thoughts ; conscience is percep- 
 tion of the relations between one's self and others. 
 Consciousness notes internal relations, conscience 
 external. If no common relations are confessed 
 no common rights or duties are admitted, conse- 
 quently no conscience is felt. The absolute des- 
 pot has no conscience in regard to his subjects ; 
 the slaveholder has no conscience toward his 
 slaves; the savage has but a dim crepuscular 
 conscience. Conscience is local and nrofessional. 
 
TUE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE 271 
 
 TliG trader's conscience holds him answerable for 
 every failure to take advantage of his neighbor in 
 a bargain, and smiles on his fidelity or infidelity 
 to " business principles ;" the lawyer's conscience 
 approves of every act done in the interest of his 
 client, and tortures him for every failure to make 
 a point against opposing counsel ; the politician's 
 conscience drags him up to the bar of party ex- 
 igency and makes loyalty to the candidate the 
 standard of rectitude ; the conscience of the sec- 
 tarian applauds the falsehood that blackens other 
 creeds, and has no rebuke for the craftiness of 
 the Jesuit, or the scorn of the dogmatist ; his 
 cause is the cause of Christ, and all means that 
 advance that cause are justified. Bobert E. Lee 
 obeyed his Virginian conscience, though it bade 
 him violate his soldier's oath ; Eobert Anderson 
 obeyed his soldier's conscience, though it bade 
 him abandon his State ; and both died professing 
 their consciences clean. This man's " conscience 
 towards God," does not reproach him in the least 
 for overcrowding his tenement houses, receiving 
 rents from gamblers and prostitutes, " cornering " 
 gold or grain, " watering " stock, or weakening 
 securities. That man's " conscience towards 
 men," gives him full absolution for all his offences 
 against Sabbath proprieties and devout customs. 
 
 Conscience reports fidelity to social relations. 
 Before social relations were recognized, conscience 
 
a72 THE RELIQIOJ OF HUMANITY. 
 
 could uot Lave existed. All written records tes- 
 tify to its existence, its power, its wide prevalence, 
 its admitted authority, its consent of judgment. 
 But the written record is recent ; man was ma- 
 ture, disciplined, educated, before he committed 
 aught to writing. A papyrus, supposed to be the 
 oldest Scripture extant, translated in one of our 
 popular magazines, " Old and New," implies al- 
 ready an advanced stage of civilization. What 
 asons of experimental morality must have pre- 
 ceded its age ! "What myriads of attempts at so- 
 cial adjustment found voice in its sentences ! Are 
 they in unison with other great Scriptures ? They 
 have the same origin. Do the moral results coin- 
 cide ? The process by which they were arrived 
 at were the same. The identity of the experiences 
 explains the identity of the conclusions. 
 
 The sanctions of conscience cluster about three 
 points : the security of life, the security of pro- 
 perty, the security of the home. These three 
 things are of universal moment, and of indestruct- 
 ible validity. First of all, life must be safe from 
 open and secret attack ; men must be able to 
 count on their con,tinuance from day to day, to 
 go and come without peril, to reckon confidently 
 on their to-days and to-morrows ; hence mutual 
 imderstandings, arrangements, compacts, cove- 
 nants, rules, and principles looking towards that 
 end. It was at a comparatively recent date that 
 
Tim EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 273 
 
 luen, iu the centres of civilization, went unarmed ; 
 the laying aside of weapons proved that men 
 understood each other well enough to dispense 
 with them. In the barbarous period which pre- 
 vailed in the best society two hundred years ago 
 and prevails now along our own border, it was 
 understood that all attacks should be made iu 
 open day, and face to face ; the general conscience 
 condemned the secret foe ; the moral sense was 
 strong enough to guard man against assassination. 
 Now it is strong enough, as a rule, to guard all 
 people against assault. The social sentiment in- 
 culcates respect for life, care for its preservation, 
 tender provision for its security, economy iu sav- 
 ing even its small fragments. Numerous proverbs 
 express the common feeling. The sentiment per- 
 vades even the uninstructed classes. There is 
 forming a solid mass of conviction that will pre- 
 sently render unnecessary all preparation for per- 
 sonal defence. 
 
 Next in importance to the securit}' of life, is the 
 securit}' of property. Until one can call what he 
 has his own, can have and hold his earnings, can 
 keep accumulate and use the fruits of his toil, 
 no society is possible ; education iu honesty be- 
 gins with the fact of possession. The thief, after 
 the murderer, is everybody's foe. Efforts to keep 
 him at a distance, to drive him out, to exterminate 
 him began early. In advance of anything like 
 
•274 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 mutual agreement ou the subject of mine and 
 thine, they who had something to lose made war 
 on those who had nothing and were presumed to 
 be covetous of their neighbors' goods. The rich 
 man was on his guard against his rich neighbor ; 
 the rich men as a class were in league against the 
 poor ; poverty was confounded with crime, the 
 distinction between them is not yet generally 
 made ; legislation was once emphatically, is even 
 yet decidedly, in the interest of property. In 
 England, not so long ago, the property of the -rich 
 man was held of more account by the state than 
 the life of a poor man. The task of promoting 
 mutual understandings, creating general convic- 
 tions, establishing universal principles of honest 
 dealing among the different classes of people is 
 very slow and tedious. The discovery that 
 honesty is the best policy is challenged in some 
 quarters theoretically ; its practical acceptance is 
 quite limited. A fine conscience of honesty that 
 reckons and discharges all dues, that will adjust 
 on principles of honor the relations between those 
 who have and those who have not, that will give 
 to each his own, to the artisan and the day hiborer, 
 the African and the Chinaman, that will place wo- 
 men in the category of persons, and make it mo- 
 rally obligatory to respect every atom of posses- 
 sion — how long will it bo before society is edu- 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 275 
 
 cated to that? How long before the average 
 couscieiice enunciates that ? 
 
 The third point, domestic peace, the security of 
 family rehitious, the inviolabihty of the home, is 
 equally with the other two of universal signiti- 
 cance, and the process by which it is attained is 
 from the nature of the case in all generations and 
 among all people precisely the same. The line of 
 discipline is never changed, the character of the 
 experiments is never altered, the result is therefore 
 iu every case identical. Social life depends on the 
 security of the family relations. This must be 
 provided for at once. Hence the laws against 
 adultery, fornication, incest, the stigma fixed on 
 domestic infidelity, the guilt associated with the 
 attempt to break up domestic peace ; hence the 
 sanctity attached to the marriage contract, the 
 gradual formation of the sentiment of modesty, 
 chastity, the study given to the problem of the 
 " social evil " and to the causes and remedies for 
 excessive passion ; hence the indignation which 
 burns whenever the purity of society is threatened 
 by wild theories or disorderly lives. It is no won- 
 der that the proverbs of all nations are unanimous 
 on this subject, that after so many thousands of 
 years the moral experience should have l)ecome a 
 moral nature. 
 
 But this moral nature is not coextensive with 
 humanity by any means ; it does not run through 
 
276 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 society ; it lies in strata here and there ; it is local 
 in larger or smaller districts. The education of 
 conscience has nowhere reached its height ; dis- 
 honesty, unveracity, impurity, violence are nowhere 
 abolished completely, are nowhere totally con- 
 demned. There are in the best society permissi- 
 ble frauds on servants and strangers, allowable 
 falsehoods which serve as oil to make the social 
 wheels turn smoothly, sanctioned indecencies and 
 harshnesses deemed indispensable to order. The 
 moral sense, in spite of the friction and polishing 
 of centuries, is still in the rough where it should 
 be most refined. In Lfondon, Paris, Berlin, New 
 York, Boston, the finely cultured are the few. 
 The more delicate harmonies of conscience are 
 heard by small audiences. No existing community 
 IS founded on unveracity, violence and frauds, but 
 no community exists that is quite free from these 
 disorganizing elements. Nowhere is the educa- 
 tion of the conscience finished ; nowhere has ex- 
 perience produced its perfect result ; no state is 
 all through civilized ; no society is homogeneous. 
 Society advances slowly after the manner of a 
 grand army between whose vanguard and whose 
 rearguard every description of humanity is inclu- 
 ded. Foremost go the engineers and surveyors, 
 picked men, alert, sagacious, temperate, patient, 
 tireless, with eyes open, brains busy, neiwes steady, 
 will under control, discipline perfect. Next come 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 277 
 
 the leaders, broad in understanding, wise, thought- 
 ful, considerate, firm of purpose, having at heart 
 the interests of all parts of the host. Then fol- 
 low the solid masses of infantry, under the law of 
 superior will, orderly because trained, each man 
 in his allotted place, the morals of each depeudiug 
 on the steadfastness of the whole. Behind these 
 again, straggle and swarm the crowd of sutlers 
 and scullions, thieves, adventurers, sharpers, 
 beggars, harlots, the scourings of the cities, bohe- 
 mians, nomads, two-legged wolves and hyenas, 
 representatives of Babylon, Rome, Canaan, of the 
 horrid ages of bitterness and blood, the Arabs, 
 Huns, barbarians of the older world not yet exter- 
 minated, people wild, unprincipled, untaught, crea- 
 tures of lust that live by plunder and have no ac- 
 quaintance with the rudest elements of the moral 
 law — such as those have no conscience, the mere 
 word has no meaning to their ears. 
 
 Had the education of conscience proceeded 
 in accordance with natural laws, had it been an, 
 education in actual facts, in actual social rela- 
 tions, had it kept pace with the development of 
 civilization, the voice would be much louder 
 and more commanding' than it is. But local 
 schools have taken up the work, fanciful con- 
 ditions have been substituted for genuine ones, 
 theories of human relations have taken the 
 place of human relations, people have been 
 
278 THE RELIGION- OF HUMANITT. 
 
 taught to accommodate themselves to a fantas- 
 tic world, and the result is what we see. The 
 priests in India declared that every woman 
 who burned herself on the funeral pile of her 
 husband should enjoy his companionship in 
 Paradise for the space of 35,000,000 of years ; 
 the woman who did not thus burn herself, should 
 have no place in Paradise. Hence it became 
 a matter of conscience in India, for women to 
 immolate themselves with the corpses of their 
 husbands, and all efforts on the part of IjLo- 
 hammedan emperors and English governors 
 general to abolish the foolish and unnatural 
 custom, were resisted as assaults on the moral 
 sentiment of the people. The notion was arti- 
 ficial and fantastical, but it educated the con- 
 science of millions of people for several hundred 
 years. 
 
 The Romish church taught that error in re- 
 ligion consigned the unbeliever to penal fires, 
 and that, in order to save multitudes from the 
 hideous doom and the disease which entailed 
 it, the heretic should be apprehended, tried, 
 and, if convicted, burned at the stake. Hence 
 it became the conscientious duty of devout 
 Catholics to aid in consigning their unbelieving 
 neighbors to the flames. The fiction was mon- 
 strous, but it educated in barbarity the con- 
 sciences of people whoso natural disposition 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 279 
 
 was mild, aud made them do deeds wliich, had 
 they obeyed the instincts of their hearts, they 
 would have abhorred. 
 
 In the behef that he should save the natives 
 of Hispaniola from extermination and the heath- 
 en Africans from hell. Las Casas, most benev- 
 olent of men, initiated the slave trade which 
 is the detestation of. the modern moral sense. 
 
 The Young Men's Christian Association ot 
 New York, persuaded that knowledge is dan- 
 gerous to orthodoxy, and that science imperils 
 souls, voted that the " Popular Science Monthly " 
 should be excluded from their reading-room. 
 They could not do otherwise ; their theory of 
 the universe forbade. The theory was very ab- 
 surd ; it had not a scrap of reason in its favor, 
 it was a mere fiction, and a borrowed fiction 
 too ; but it educated the consciences of several 
 hundred admirable young men, who, did they 
 live according to the laws of society, would 
 laugh at it as superstition. 
 
 Conscience will not attain to its normal growth 
 till these local and artificial schools are abolished. 
 Even now excellent people justify Abraham in 
 offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice at the bid- 
 ding of tlie Lord. They do not perceive that the 
 duty of preserving carefully a lad like that, of 
 nurturing him, teaching him, fitting him for his 
 place at the head of his tribe, the duty imposed 
 
280 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 bj natural affection as well as by a chief's respon- 
 sibility, was such a bidding of the Lord as no- 
 thing on earth or in heaven can gainsay. They 
 do not consider that what the patriarch regarded 
 as a bidding of the Lord was merely a notion, a 
 fancy, a presentiment, a vision of the night, and 
 that the ancient man was really submitting his 
 conscience to the impression of a dream. Con- 
 sciences cannot thrive on theories ; they must 
 have facts, actual facts, working human relations ; 
 not the facts of personal feeling, of j)rivate emo- 
 tion or sentiment, not prejudices, traditions, or 
 inward convictions, but solid, tangible, human 
 concerns and interests, that are involved in all 
 human dealings, and are equally dear to all who 
 live in the social world. Such facts are infinite in 
 number and complexity ; they are matted thickly 
 together ; they compose the substance of all hate 
 and love ; their fineness is so extreme as to make 
 them invisible to any but the keenest eyes, and 
 impalpable to any but the most delicate touch ; 
 they reach all the way from common utilities to 
 subtle courtesies and amenities ; from every-day 
 customs to rarest heroisms and chivalries ; from 
 the ordinary dealings of material affairs to the 
 intercourse of friendship and the heavenly sym- 
 pathies of human beings. The homeliest of them 
 fall in the way of the most careless observer . 
 
THE EDUCATION OF COXSCIENCK 281 
 
 the most ethereal of them oulj seraiDhic eyes can 
 see. 
 
 The deepest moral sayings, maxims, proverbs, 
 precepts are bat keen interpretations of these so- 
 cial facts by minds whose swift intuitions report 
 phenomena in advance of the common apprehen- 
 sion. An English naturalist being shown the 
 solitary tooth of an extinct animal, pronounced, 
 amid the derision of his companions, the opinion 
 that it belonged to a ruminating quadruped of 
 great size. The tooth must have been set in a 
 large jaw, the jaw must have belonged to a large 
 head, the neck must have been long and of im- 
 mense power to sustain so huge a weight, and to 
 sustain the whole in conformity with the laws of 
 organic structure, there must have been at the 
 fore-shoulders a prodigious hump, a pile of mus- 
 cle. Taking a piece of chalk, ho drew on a black- 
 board a picture of the animal that no man had 
 ever seen. Not long afterwards the skeleton of 
 the creature was dug up in a cave, and in every 
 particular it justified the naturalist's description. 
 How did Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins get at his se- 
 cret ? It was not by guess or conjecture ; no an- 
 gel disclosed it to him ; he had no intuition of it 
 implanted in his mind. His trained thought sim- 
 ply ran to and fro along the lines of analogy, and 
 anticipated the necessary action of creative law. 
 Nature justified his unerring scent. 
 
282 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 So proplietic minds have discovered afar off 
 the moral principles which were hidden from the 
 men of their generation, and have reported them 
 to the world. When Solomon says : " The rob- 
 bery of the wicked shall destroy them ;" " He 
 that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity ;" " He that 
 walketh uprightly walketh surely ;" — when Isaiah 
 says : " Woe unto thee that spoilest when thou 
 wast not spoiled, and that dealest treachery when 
 they dealt not treacherously with thee ;" — when 
 Paul says : " We know that all things work to- 
 gether for good and them that love God ;" " What - 
 soever a man soweth that shall he also reap ;" 
 they reported the results of the world's mora^ 
 economy as they came to their intuition. Ordin- 
 ary eyes did not discover them ; it did not appear 
 on the surface that the wicked failed, that the up- 
 right were secure in person and possession, that 
 the unjust were caught in their own snare, that 
 all things conspired to help the devout, that the 
 law of compensation cleared up every straw as it 
 went along. To the average mind this is folly ; to 
 the superior mind it is necessary truth, simple de- 
 claration of fact, announcement of the necessary 
 order "of things. The proverb that " Honesty is 
 the best policy" enshrines the belief that honesty 
 is inherent in the constitution of the world, that the 
 creation is organized on that plan, that the work- 
 ing scheme of providence assumes that principle. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 283 
 
 It is a magnificent declaration, but we must read 
 between the lines of history and behind the phe- 
 nomena of experience to verify it. The surface 
 facts do not reveal it ; it is not true in the daily 
 course of events ; people who are destitute of in- 
 sight must take the saying on faith, and more faith 
 is required than the multitude possess. " Justice," 
 says an old Persian book " is so dear to the Eter- 
 nal that if at the last day an atom of injustice were 
 to remain on earth, the universe would shrivel like 
 a snake-skin to cast it out forever." Where did 
 the unknown seer learn that deep and awful les- 
 son? Was it the fancy of a visionary mind, a 
 dream, the wild conjecture of a distempered orien- 
 tal brain ? Was the thought supernaturally impart- 
 ed or wrought into the original texture of the moral 
 constitution, hidden from the rest of mankind, ob- 
 vious only to him ? Was it not rather a swift infer- 
 ence from what had already transpired in history 
 of the divine decrees ? a lo.w voice, audible to none 
 save the most sensitive ear, from the ages of an- 
 guish despair and blood, from innumerable battle- 
 fields, from the vast plains of desolation where im- 
 perial cities had once stood, from the grass-cov- 
 ered mounds that buried kingdoms of iniquity out 
 sight. Tlic old Persian, as he sate with bowed 
 head at the end of Time's long whispering-gallery, 
 caught the last d} iug confession of the genera- 
 
284 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 tions, and breathed tliat awful sentence into the 
 ear of his own age. 
 
 The experience of humanity begets the con- 
 science of humanity. The moral sentiment is not 
 so much the product of inspiration as of transpi- 
 ration. Moral truth has not beea so much com- 
 municated to the world, as extracted from the 
 world. This is the guarantee of its permanence, 
 the pledge of its indestructibility. It stands on 
 the everlasting rock of experience ; it has behind 
 it all the past ; it has been tried in the crucible of 
 the ages. 
 
 It is said that " the feeling of utility would con- 
 fine men strictly within the limits of the average 
 utility of any age. Each generation would come 
 to a mutual understanding of the things that 
 would be safe to perform. The instinct of self 
 preservation would be a continual check to the 
 heroism that dies framing its indictment against 
 tyrannies and wrongs. The great men who fling 
 themselves against the scorn and menace of their 
 age could never be born out of general considera- 
 tions of utility or sympathy. This theory is unable 
 to give any satisfactory explanation of the moral 
 condition of such men as Woolman and John 
 Brown ; of any brakeman or engineer who coolly 
 puts himself to death to save a train ; of Arnold of 
 Winkelried, who gatlicred in his breast a sheaf of 
 Austrian spears, and felt Swiss liberty trample over 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 285 
 
 him and tbrongli the gap." It may be quite true 
 that " the theory that the moral sense was slowly 
 deposited by innumerable successions of selfish 
 experiences " will not account for the deeds of 
 sacrifice that sparkle in the dust of the highway 
 of human progress. Thus crudely stated, the the- 
 ory will account for nothing but the average low 
 development of mankind, which, by the wa}', can 
 hardly be accounted for on the theory of innate 
 moral sentiments. This rough statement omits the 
 momentous consideration that the moral experien- 
 ces of mankind in the mass arc but the clumsy 
 wholesale attempts to arrive at the perfeo^t compre- 
 hension of social laws, and makes no allowance 
 for the power of remarkable minds to see further 
 than their contemporaries, or for the power of high- 
 ly gifted natures to act on quite other than vulgar 
 principles. What right have we to limit the scope 
 of any great law ? The witty essayist says : 
 " Sympathy that was spawned by the physical cir- 
 cumstances of remote ages could never reach the 
 temper of consideration for the few against the 
 custom of the many. You could no more extract 
 heroism from such a beginning of the moral sense 
 than sunbeams from cucumbers." But does not 
 the human embryo pass through all the lower sta- 
 ges of development on the way to his own ? Has 
 not his organization been worked out from quad- 
 ruped, fish and reptile ? Is not the human brain 
 
286 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 of Shakespeare and Goethe the last result of innu- 
 merable experiments on nervous structure from 
 the crawling worm and the flying bird onwards? 
 Can we explain why the soil of a small territory on 
 the Khiue valley produces the Johannisberg 
 grape ? The duke of Argyll thought he had found 
 a fatal objection to the law of natural selection in 
 the splendid decorations of birds. " Mere orna- 
 ment and variety of form," he says, " and these for 
 their own sake, is the only princij^le or rule with 
 reference to which creative power seems to have 
 worked. A crest of topaz is no better in the strug- 
 gle for existence than a crest of sapphire. A frill 
 ending in spangles of the emerald is no better in 
 the battle of life than a frill ending in spangles of 
 ruby. A tail is not affected for the purposes 
 of flight whether its marginal or its central feath- 
 ers are decorated with white." Yet observation 
 and experiment have shown that the duke of Ar- 
 gyll is mistaken, that the law of natural selection 
 does run out into these exquisite applications, 
 that the humming-birds do put on their gorgeous 
 panoply of azure and emerald that they may come 
 out conquerors in the battle of life. Mr. Darwin 
 has even proved that flowers deck themselves more 
 gloriously than Solomon and perfume themselves 
 more deliciously than Thebe's queen, that they 
 may the more successfull}- engage in the struggle 
 for existence. If the law of self-preservation will 
 
THE EDUCATION OF CONSCIENCE. 287 
 
 give to the butterfly its brilliancy and to the lily 
 its whiteness, why should not the same law, working 
 out the safety and felicity of man, bestow the daz- 
 zling qualities of the hero tiie sweet fragrance of 
 the philanthropist and the transparent purity of 
 the saint ? 
 
 Let the effort at complete adjustment of so- 
 cial relations be sincere and consta.nt, and the 
 education of conscience will be as even as it 
 will be rational. The natural method is the 
 beautiful method. It is false education that makes 
 the false conscience, partial education that makes 
 the partial conscience. The narrow conscience 
 of the sectarian, the unscrupulous conscience of 
 the trader, the furious conscience of the fanatic, 
 the technical conscience of the advocate, the 
 accommodating conscience of the politician, the 
 austere conscience of the magistrate, the timid 
 conscience of the conservative, the official con- 
 science of the churchman, is the product of 
 an artificial school. A return to nature would 
 correct all this tendency to vagary, which en- 
 dangers safety perverts equity poisons honor 
 makes truth impossible and tears kindness in 
 pieces. Come back to the obvious facts of na- 
 ture that lie in the path we tread in. Let each 
 be faithful to his relations such as they are. 
 Let each keep firm and polished the links in 
 his short chain. He that is faithful in that 
 
288 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 which is least, is faithful also in much. The law of 
 gravitation is the same for the rain drop, as for 
 the solar sj^stem. The rules of trigonometry 
 are the same for measuring the distance of the 
 moon as for measuring the height of a tower 
 on a hill-top. He that has a perfectly sound 
 conscience towards a single human being, has 
 a perfectly sound conscience towards all hu- 
 man beings ; he that has a conscience void of 
 offence towards his neighbor, may be sure there 
 is no break in the chain that connects him with 
 the eternal law. 
 
XI. 
 THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 
 
 AT the close of the Bible description of cre- 
 ation, it is said that God looked on all 
 that he had made, and pronounced it very good : 
 — a recognition this, that the soul of things was 
 Goodness. Till experience had startled men in- 
 to self-consciousness, and observation had shown 
 them the moral ughness of the world they lived 
 in, this simple faith remained undisturbed. The 
 notion of a Fall must have occurred to them at 
 a comparatively late period, long after their 
 personal and social Eden had been broken up, 
 and the accompanying idea of Satan was an ad- 
 mission that the innocent faith of the children 
 of humanity had gone. When the stage of his- 
 tory was narrow, and the scenes of existence 
 were few, and social life was simple, and hu- 
 man interests were grouped together in limited 
 communities and on a petty scale ; when there 
 was no geography or history, and the least pos- 
 sible intercoui'se between States, evil may well 
 
290 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 have seemed a manageable thing, an instrument 
 in the hands of God for the discipHne of his 
 children, owing its character to the will that 
 used it. Tims it was regarded by the early 
 Hebrews. Jehovah employed evil as his scourge, 
 made himself wholly responsible for it, assumed 
 its paternity. In the most ingenuous way the 
 Lord God is spoken of as causing noisome beasts 
 to pass through the land and make it desolate, 
 as bringing a sword into the land and pouring 
 out his fury on it in blood, or sending a pes- 
 tilence into it. He putteth out the candle of 
 the wicked ; he distributeth sorrows in his an- 
 ger ; ho hardens the heai't of those he would 
 destroy ; he seals with the spirit of deep sleep 
 the eyes of prophets rulers and seers ; he 
 causes the prophets to prophesy falsely, and 
 dreamers to dream vain dreams, that he may 
 test tlie peo})le's faith in him. Sickness, cal.am- 
 ity and death are his ministers. Is there evil 
 in the city, He cries, that the Lord hatli not 
 done ? 
 
 But this child-like view of the matter could 
 not last long. Knowledge comes with observa- 
 tion experience and reflection ; there is some 
 apprehension of the width and complexity of 
 the human world ; moral phenomena increase in 
 number and weight ; questions multiply ; diffi- 
 culties accumulate ; the simple explanations of 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IX EVIL. 291 
 
 the provincial break down ; evil bccomci? too 
 massive a thing to bo hauJlod by the feeble 
 wits of villagers ; it drops away from the grasp 
 of the Lord of Israel, and becomes to thought, 
 a separate world with a ruler of its own, — Sa- 
 tan. " Lo this I have found," says ono of the 
 later of the Old Testament books, " that God 
 made men upright, but that they devised many 
 witty inventions ;" and a later book still, " The 
 AVisdom of Solomon," says " God created all 
 things that they might have their being, and 
 the generations of the Avorld were healthful, and 
 there was no poison of destruction in them, 
 nor any kingdom of death on the earth. But 
 ungodly men called it upon them by their works 
 and words." " God created man to bo immor- 
 tal ; but through envy of the devil, death came 
 into the world, and the}' that hold on his side 
 find it." 
 
 From this time on, evil has been regarded as 
 a power, a dominion preside4.l over by a daemon- 
 ic force, malignant in its disposition, cruel in 
 its methods, hateful in its ends and processes ; 
 an enemy of God and men, engaged ceaselessly 
 in eti'orts to thwart, baflle, and bring to naught 
 the designs of the beneficent Father of Man- 
 kind. There were those hopeful enough to be- 
 lieve that the benignant power would come out 
 victorious at last ; some eveu dared to trust 
 
292 THE RELIGION OB HUMANITY. 
 
 that tne devil would be converted ; many ao- 
 cepted on faith the assurance that the works 
 of the malignant power might be overruled for 
 the benefit of the faithful, who clung to the 
 m.erits of Christ and had confidence in the vic- 
 torious efficacy of the cross. But that evil it- 
 self was anything but what it seemed to be, a 
 dark, cruel, inimical thing, a spot, a poison 
 drop, a deadly element in the economy of the 
 universe, few venture'd to believe, at least with- 
 in the circumference of Christendom. 
 
 The modern world has received a better faith ; 
 from what quarter it is not easy to tell, from 
 many quarters probably — from the purer religious 
 sentiment which is always soaring above the 
 clouds and revelling in the deep blue of the in- 
 ner skies ; from the spiritual worship which will 
 have none but a spiritual, that is a serene, 
 transcendent deity ; from the higher philosophy, 
 which can not brook the conception of a di- 
 vided discordant universe ; from observation, 
 which shows evil to be evanescent • from re- 
 flection, which gives assurance that it must be 
 so ; from science, which discloses unity, and 
 sympathy between all orders of phenomena ; 
 from fi-esh energy, progress, achievement, which, 
 pushing steadily against all the forms of evil, 
 finds them movable and removable ; from the 
 spirit of reform, which delights in the discov- 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 293 
 
 ery that the world can be fashioned anew, and 
 ■which gains stiinukis and courage from tlie 
 resistance it encounters, sharpening its battle 
 blade against the steel that opposes it. It was 
 Shakespeare who struck out the happy phrase 
 that gathers up in a fine sentence all this new 
 faith and feeling, condensing into half a dozen 
 words, as was his wont, a whole system of phi- 
 losophy. King Henry V., on the eve of Agin- 
 court, enters with two of his lords, like him 
 anxious about the issue of the next day's tight. 
 The king's spirit is greater than his fortune. 
 The desperate condition of his forces he sees. 
 
 " Gloster, tis true that we are in great danger, 
 The greater therefore should our courage be. 
 Good morrow, brother Bedford ! God almighty ! 
 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would mou observiugly distill it out ; 
 For our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers, 
 Which Ls both healthful and good husbaudiy : 
 Besides they are our outward consciences 
 And preachers to us ixll, admonishing 
 That we should dress us fairly for our end. 
 Thus may we gather honey from the weed 
 And make a moral of the Devil himself." 
 
 Again, in another play, the exiled duke in the 
 forest of Arden, exclaims : 
 
 " Hftth not old custom made this life more sweet 
 Thau that ol painted pomp? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 
294 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, — 
 
 The season's difference — as, the icy fang 
 
 And churlish chiding of the Winter's wind. 
 
 Sweet are the uses of adversity 
 
 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous. 
 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ; 
 
 And this our life , exempt from public haunt, 
 
 rinds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 
 Sermons in stoaes, and good in everything." 
 
 A sweet expression of tlie faith that good 
 comes out of evil ; and if good comes out of 
 evil, good must be in it, the water in its desert, 
 the fountain in its rock. If evil ministers to 
 good, if good is the upshot and issue of it, 
 then good is the soul of it ; the tendency and 
 intent of it is good. It is part of the ministry 
 of Providence, a feature in the divine arrange- 
 ment of things. Shakespeare but voices the in- 
 stinctive faith of mankind in regard to physical 
 evils. Hunger, thirst, cold, exposure, hardship, 
 peril, are, he says, the ministers of manhood. 
 Personal evil most assuredly is. Sickness puts 
 us on the study of health ; pain compels us to 
 discover reliefs and ameliorations ; fracture and 
 decay instruct us in the arts of reparation ; 
 courage is born of suffering and deprivation. A 
 brave young man on the very edge of his ca- 
 reer meets with the misfortune of the utter loss 
 of an eye, through an accident. The loss seemed 
 an irreparable calamity. The youth was passion- 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IX EVIL. 295 
 
 ately devoted to a pursuit wliicli demanded per- 
 petual use of strong eyesiglit, and it was feared 
 not merely that a noble face would be disfig- 
 ured, but that a useful career would be cut 
 short. But he will not so look on his calam- 
 ity. It has even, he declares, been a gain to 
 him. It has not impeded seriously the pursuit 
 of his profession, and it has turned towards him 
 a degree of interest he could not otherwise 
 have claimed or hoped for, while it has deepened 
 within h'lm the qualities of courage and faith, 
 which are more precious than any outward 
 good. 
 
 The graver evils that men dread and shun tes- 
 tify to the same truth that evil contains an elixir 
 that is meant for healing. No evil is more univer- 
 sally regarded as such than poverty. It is the 
 evil all men dread in proportion as they under- 
 stand it. To multitudes it is the sum of all evils : 
 it is hunger, nakedness, cold, squalor, obscurity, 
 deprivation, lonehness, weakness, sickness, joyless- 
 ness, lask of pleasure, want of opportunity, failure 
 of development, closing of the gates of advantage. 
 But the only school in which men learn to escape 
 and overcome poverty is poverty. It is the pain 
 of poverty that drives men as by whip and spur 
 to the far-ofi" ditlicult fields where wealth is. Civ- 
 ilization is the child of poverty. All useful arts, 
 comforts, luxuries, arc born of povcrtv. Loudon 
 
29G TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 and New York draw sustenance from this exliaust- 
 less breast. If poverty, in some relative shape, 
 should cease, modern society would languish for 
 want of motive. It is the fear of poverty, the de- 
 sire to get out of it, the passion to ieave it behind, 
 the terror of falling back into it or into some de- 
 gree of it, that scou.rges on the flagging energies of 
 mankind, multiplies their inventions, quickens 
 their faculties. The poor, it is said, are all who 
 labor. How long would any labor if they ceased 
 to desire more than they have ? 
 \ Conflagration is an evil, but the burned city 
 rises from its ashes in new beauty. Famine is a 
 dire evil, but it teaches scientific agriculture, rota- 
 tion of crops, the economy of the soil. Pestilence 
 is an evil of hideous proportions, but without it 
 the resources of hygiene would remain undevel- 
 oped, and the laws of health would be unknown 
 and unapplied. Disease is an evil, but the bene- 
 ficent science of medicine owes its mature accom- 
 plishments to it. Each form of agony creates its 
 cure ; each tortured nerve starts a healing instru- 
 ment into existence. Bad government is an evil 
 of vast magnitude and bitter effect, but the inesti- 
 mable blessings of good government are due to the 
 efforts of trampled humanity to extricate itself 
 from the nets which despotism weaves and sj^reads. 
 Crime is an evil, but without its unwilling aid laws 
 would never approximate to justice. Vice is an 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 297 
 
 evil, but virtue takes occasion from it to show its 
 colors aud traiu its powers. This is trite wisdom, 
 but trite wisdom is demonstrated wisdom ; wis- 
 dom made sound and smooth by attrition, and 
 there is no harm in giving it a higher polish by 
 more attrition. 
 
 The Son of Man, we are told, was perfected 
 through sutfering. The Son of Man, that is hu- 
 manity, not ea^h individual ; each individual is 
 not, though many individuals are ; but the race, 
 the Son of Man is. And this suffices to establish 
 the rule ; this demonstrates the general purpose ; 
 this indicates the universal law. It is the rule 
 that seeds put into the ground shall fructify ; mil- 
 lions do not, but the harvest on a thousand fields 
 makes us oblivious of their destruction. It is the 
 rule that children who are born of sound parents 
 shall live ; thousands do not, but the augmenting 
 populations pass silently by the Rachels weeping 
 for their lost ones, and march majestically past 
 the graves where the untimely dead are sleeping. 
 The general experience attests the general princi- 
 ple, and the general principle vouches for the 
 universal principle. The soul of good may not be 
 discernible in everything that befalls, but it is plain- 
 ly discoverable in the broad facts of evil. 
 
 In what has been said thus far we have but 
 touched on the familiar doctrine that evil is a min- 
 ister to good, that good may be extracted fi'om it 
 
298 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 by faith and patience and valor ; that good 
 holds evil in its grasp and forces healing juices 
 from it by pressure. But we are justified in push- 
 ing our investigation a step further. We are jus- 
 tified in maintaining not merely that evil is over- 
 ruled by good, that good may be extracted from 
 it, that good is in it as a hidden elixir, but that good 
 is the beginning of it, the originator and maker 
 of it, its causing soul. 
 
 The symbol of evil is the venomous serpent, 
 with glittering eye and shining crest and jewelled 
 skin sliding insidiously through the grass, grace- 
 ful, beautiful, deadly. Is it not a confession that 
 men saw in evil a soul of good, that they took the 
 serpent as their symbol of wisdom, of life, of eter- 
 nity, that they even accepted it as the emblem of 
 salvation ? the deceiver one with the Saviour ? 
 The naturalist tells us that through that form as 
 through all other unsightly repulsive forms of snake, 
 saurian, monster, the creative thought pushes its 
 way onward to its noblest organizations. The 
 snake is a glittering bridge across a chasm. The 
 creator does not leap from point to point in his royal 
 passage from chaos to cosmos. He slides, creeps, 
 flies, rides on the beetle, swims with the fish, 
 skims the air with the bird, tramps thunderingly 
 on with the elephant, ranges with the lion and the 
 tiger, avails himself of chips and straws for boats, 
 and whatever form he makes or uses becomes at 
 once sanctified by the touch of his hand or foot. 
 
TEE SOUL OF GOOD IX EVIL. 299 
 
 The ugly reptile is sacred and beautiful because 
 lie has aided the Almighty iu his progress towards 
 perfection. The divine purpose found him indis- 
 pensable. He is in his place as servant of the su- 
 preme benehcence. He passes the soul of good- 
 ness on. The primal love it was that called the crea- 
 ture into being, and fitted him into his proper nook. 
 And in the chain of gold every link is golden. Even 
 the snake is a gliding, inarticulate whisper of the 
 wood. The m^-stic name shiues in hieroglyph on 
 his glittering scales. The part the serpeni is fabled 
 to have played in the Garden of Eden associates 
 him at once with the supreme creative purpose 
 that comprehended centuries and a world. He is 
 the tempter, but he tempts to wisdom and insight 
 into the secret of life. The serpent said unto 
 the woman : " Ye shall surely not die, for God 
 doth know that in the day ye eat of the fruit of 
 the tree, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall 
 be as gods, knowing good and evil." The serpent 
 suggested the promise of fortune, science, art, cul- 
 ture, civilization ; he was the instrument of pro- 
 gress in material and moral things. The woman 
 hstened to him and persuaded her husband to eat. 
 They ate and the promise was kept. Their eyes 
 were opened. Eden was forfeited, but the heav- 
 enly Jerusalem was built. The first sin was the 
 first triumph of virtue. The fall was the first step 
 forward. The advent of evil was the dawn of in- \ 
 
300 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 telligence, discernment, enterprise, aspiration. 
 Eden was the scene of humanity's birth, The 
 tempter was Lucifer — the bringer of hght. 
 Thus even in him is something proplietic of salva- 
 tion. The fault of Adam was disobedience to spo- 
 ken law ; but disobedience to arbitrary spoken de- 
 cree, to unreasoning command, what is that but in 
 essence obedience to the unspoken command of 
 intelligence, and what is that but the soul of good- 
 ness ? 
 
 Theodore Parker said this startling thing 
 about crime : that the increase of crime marked 
 the progress of humanity. What he meant was 
 not that all crime was beneficent, that crime 
 was not an evil, that criminals as a class were 
 benefactors of society, that every time men 
 broke through law they broke a prison and is- 
 sued into worthier life; that the petty thief, the 
 bold robber, the midnight house-breaker, and 
 assassin laid society under a debt of grat- 
 itude. Such doctrine would make law an evil. 
 He meant that the resistance to temporary and 
 arbitrary enactments revealed the power to which 
 men owed their deliverance from personal thrall- 
 doms. All breaking of law, even the noblest, 
 is crime, and he was thinking of that noblest 
 infraction which emancipates intelligence and 
 gives scope to justice, the passionate rebellion 
 of animal desire against moral restraint being 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 301 
 
 for the moment forgotteu. He Lad iu mind 
 such criminals as Cromwell, and Washington, 
 and the host of social and religious reformers 
 who have burst the gates of brass and rent the 
 bars of iron iu sunder, and who iu their time 
 were pronounced criminals by the authorities 
 that Avould have fettered mankind. The spirit 
 that actuated such as these was the spirit of 
 faith, courage, hope, aspiration, the regenerating 
 spirit iu all time. The minor criminals who 
 break the laws that curb their grossness and 
 would constrain them to goodness are left out 
 of the account in considering the grand move- 
 ment by which law is purified and authority 
 widened and equity enlarged. There is even 
 in these, perhaps, less of the soul of evil than we 
 commonly imagine ; they do not always mean as 
 dangerously as they behave, and often they act 
 under the pressure of motives which though 
 mistaken are not malignant. I dare not say 
 that in the lower criminal classes, a discerning 
 eye may not discover at last traces of a soul 
 of good, strangely misshapen and distorted, 
 darkened by want of instruction, perverted by 
 cross currents of wild passion, but still to its 
 own apprehension appreciable and justifiable. 
 They too may be, sometimes as we know are, 
 actuated by feelings of resentment not against 
 any laws they ought to obey, "but against enact- 
 
302 Tiffi RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 ments and arrangements that seem iniquitous. 
 They look on themselves as emancipators after 
 their fashion, not in the grand way of Crom- 
 well and Washington, the way that leads to 
 immortality, but in an humbler way that leads 
 at best to a little more comfort, better bread for 
 their hunger — a tighter roof to protect them 
 from the storm. 
 
 Among the gross evils that stand out in dis- 
 gusting prominence in the record of social ex- 
 perience, there are few that may not be traced 
 back to a sound, sweet root of goodness. The 
 evil of self-immolation occurs to us, wide-spread, 
 hideous, oppressive. Much of it has disappeared 
 from our view forever. We do not see the 
 Yogi crawling painfully across the country, sit- 
 ting in agonizing postures in the very eye of 
 the sun, or swinging himself over blazing fires ; 
 we know nothing of devotees cutting themselves 
 with knives, or pillar saints sitting on the top 
 of columns, or flagellants scourging themselves 
 along the streets, or ascetics fasting till the flesh 
 is all wasted from their bones. What we do 
 see is men and women emaciating their minds 
 within their bodies, perching themselves high 
 up ou dogmas that lift them in intellectual 
 squalor above the communion of their fellow 
 men, whipping their souls with unnecessary 
 doubts and fears, starving their afi"ections, and 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 303 
 
 crawling tlirough life in abject misery. The 
 phenomenon is tbo same in all parts of the 
 Avorld, and the thing expressed by it is the 
 same. And what is the thing expressed? Is 
 it not this, that men will undergo any torture 
 for that which to them is sacred ? Through 
 these pains and penances they seek peace. They 
 are in love with something that to them is infi- 
 nitely more precious than bodily ease, a pleas- 
 ure of life, private distinction, fame, power, so- 
 cial eminence, or even culture and growth of 
 their mental faculties. They are crying for 
 what they think light ; they are creeping towards 
 the kingdom they have dreamed of ; they are 
 pinching themselves the better to pass through 
 the strait and narrow way that leads to life. 
 The soul of goodness in this dreary fact of 
 physical and mental disfigurement, is aspiration 
 after bliss, a soul the dignity and sweetness where- 
 of should be the more evident, the more ghastly 
 its struggles into expression. 
 
 Through much of man's cruel treatment of 
 his brother the same soul shines. It irradiates 
 the shocking ceremonies of human sacrifice. 
 The victim chosen for immolation, led in solemn 
 procession to the altar, laid thereon with holiest 
 rites and slain with the consecrated knife, was 
 the purest, the sweetest, the fittest for heaven 
 and the nearest to it akeady. The rite was one 
 
304 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 of dismissal of the holiest to the holiest seats. 
 The victim was regarded as a privileged person, 
 his selection an honor, his fate a blessing. He 
 was sent up as a messenger to the pure gods 
 who were supposed to be ready to receive oDe 
 so nearly akin to themselves. He was tLe best 
 gift humanity had to oifer ; their tenderest ex- 
 pression of affection ; their living human pray- 
 er. It was thus they touched godhead with 
 their humanity, lifting it into the light of the 
 happy ones, lodging it as it were with their own 
 hands in its predestined home. 
 
 An interpretation equally generous and equally 
 just may in the same spirit be put on that other 
 frightful fact of history, religious persecution. 
 That is a dismal story of wrong, sorrow and cru- 
 elty, a story of evil under almost every form, a 
 story of poverty, exile, bloodshed, of ruined in- 
 terest, desolated homes, ravaged fields, burned 
 cities, slaughtered multitudes. The worst of it 
 has been told, and will never be repeated, but the 
 end of it has never been reached yet, nor will it 
 be for many a hundred years. Religious persecu- 
 tion is still an evil of no small magnitude, an 
 evil temporal, social and spiritual, touching nearly 
 the most sensitive relations of mankind. Yet the 
 soul of this evil too was Faith. In no period 
 have the persecutors been deeply at heart haters 
 of their kind. Some whose zeal was most con- 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 305 
 
 suming, whose record was the reddest, were earnest 
 noble, God-fearing, even kindly men. Philip II., 
 the most ferocious of them all, would have ab- 
 horred himself could he in his breast have de- 
 tected a single spark of pure inhumanity. They 
 were simply enthusiasts and fanatics of faith, 
 grim and desperate lovers of souls. Their wrath 
 was the " wrath of the lamb." One idea pos- 
 sessed them all, that to have the right faith, to be 
 of the Lord's own, to get admittance into the 
 celestial kingdom, to enter into hfe, was worth 
 more than all things else, was a boon cheaply 
 purchased at the cost of money, comfort, home, 
 country, life itself. And to this was added an- 
 other idea, that they who possessed this privilege 
 were bound by duty to then- own souls to bring 
 others into it by all the means at their command. 
 With the soundness of their reasoning I have 
 at present no concern. Its results are its best 
 refutation. What I wish to note now is the 
 hidden motive that impelled them, and to lift it 
 out of the rank of motives that degrade into the 
 rank of motives that dignify and exalt. The body 
 of persecution was and still is loathsome to con- 
 template. But the soul of it was pure. Say, if 
 j-ou will, that the faith itself was a misfortune, that 
 had men believed less intensely, ha-d they cherished 
 a less intense *' love of souls," the world would have 
 been spared vast accumulations of woe, that the 
 " love of souls " was a deplorable disease, that 
 
306 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 such zeal for tlie Lord was a madness, and 
 therefore evil was the soul of evil ; I reply that 
 the consequence cannot in this way condemn the 
 cause. A sparkling spring may undermiae a 
 dwelling ; a fresh mountain torrent may overflow 
 a valley ; as the ruin does not condemn the rivulet, 
 as the .rotted harvest does not reflect on the 
 mountain torrent, neither does the ravage of the 
 sword and flame pollute the sweet fount of as- 
 piration which, misled through mischievous chan- 
 nels, have spread desolation through society. 
 
 The discussions about slavery previous to the 
 last decade, disclosed the fact that this institution 
 owed its origin, in part at least and in no incon- 
 siderable degree, to causes rather honorable than 
 otherwise to human nature, to a disposition to 
 save life, to economize labor, and to add to the 
 cumulative force of social power in the great fam- 
 ilies that were the centres of growing communi- 
 ties. The slave was made an integral part of the 
 household, was incorporated in fact into the 
 strong living organization which alone in primi- 
 tive times represented civility and law. The slave 
 was included in the family. " The tie which 
 bound him to his master was regarded as one of 
 the same general character with that which united 
 every other member of the group to his chieftain." 
 It was a rude efi'ort at organizing labor, at consol- 
 idating society. There is clear evidence that to 
 
TUE SOUL OF 00 OB IN EVIL. 307 
 
 be reduced to slavery was, in ancient times, con- 
 sidered a privilege ; it meant mercy, protection, 
 care, an introduction into a calmer lot, a guaran- 
 tee of human rights, a dim recognition of respon- 
 sibility and worth.* Every instructed American 
 knows that religious zeal had more to do than 
 greed or contempt Avith the introduction of the ne- 
 gro to this continent. He was brought hither 
 in Christian pity to see the mysteries of the king- 
 dom ; mysteries indeed he found them, myster- 
 ies of another kingdom whose ruler was the 
 Prince of Darkness. But it was not the Prince- 
 of Darkness that opened to him the gates of the 
 new world. It was the Prince of Peace who 
 brought him to the threshold, but could not keep 
 him under the protection of his hand. 
 
 Of the evils that weigh heavily on our society, 
 none, confessedly, is more grave than the com- 
 prehensive and bitter disability of woman. It is 
 felt in all classes, in every department, and in 
 nearly all relations. It is national, social, domes- 
 tic, personal. It is felt in the paralysis of the per- 
 son and in the crippling of the lot. It is felt nega- 
 tively, in the loss of opportunity, and positively in 
 the obstruction of energy. Woman groans under 
 it ; man suffers from it, all the more terribly if he 
 does not groan. To depict the nature of the evil 
 is unnecessary here, for it is known to all. It is 
 
 • (See Deuterouoiuy xs.,10,etc., Maine's '* Ancient Law," 
 p. 15&-8.) 
 
308 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 unnecessary to describe its extent, for that too is 
 no secret to those who care to see. I have no dis- 
 position to exaggerate either, nor am I in the 
 smallest degree inchned to underrate either. A 
 great writer * saj'S : " The wife in England is the 
 actual bondservant of her husband. She vows a 
 life-long obedience to him at the altar, and is held to 
 it all through her life by law." " She can acquu-e 
 no property bat for him ; the instant it becomes 
 hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto 
 his." " No slave is a slave to the same lengths, 
 and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is." 
 " However brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately 
 be chained to, he can claim from her and enforce 
 the loAvest degradation of a human being." " This 
 is her le*gal state, and from this state she has no 
 means of withdrawing herself." That is a fearful 
 picture, and is a just one taking the legislator for 
 artist. Custom, no doubt, softens it in many of its 
 features. American custom, probably, softens it 
 more than English. But suppose in its darkest 
 colors it be accepted. Suppose all to be true that 
 the most zealous champions of woman's rights and 
 the most impassioned delineators of her wrongs 
 allege ; must we therefore jump at the conclusion 
 that this huge accumulation of misery and iniquity 
 had its primal origin in violence and fraud ? Must 
 we say, with the great writer just quoted, that 
 " the inequality of rights between men and women 
 
 * (J. S. Mill, " Siibjcction of Womcu," p. 54r-55. 
 
TEE SOUL OF GOOD IX EVIL. 309 
 
 has uo other source than the law of the strongest ?" 
 tliat "in the case of women, each individual of 
 the subject class is in a chronic state of bribery 
 and intimidation combined ?" that " all men, ex- 
 cept the most brutal, desire to have, in the woman 
 most nearl}' connected with them, not a forced 
 slave, but a wilUng one, not a slave merely but a 
 favorite ?" and that " therefore they have put 
 everything in practice to enslave their minds?" 
 Must we agree that " the great mass of influence 
 over the minds of women having been acquired, 
 an instinct of selfishness made men avail them- 
 selves of it to the utmost as a means of holding 
 women in subjection ?" 
 
 The deepest students into this melancholy his- 
 tory bring back a more cheerful report of their 
 discoveries. They assure us that the real root of 
 all this bitterness was not bitter ; that the tyranny 
 complained of was the tyranny of a crude, rough, 
 unintelligent but still well-meaning kindness. 
 They tell us that " tlie relation of a female to the 
 family in which she was born, was much stricter, 
 closer and more durable than that which united 
 her male kinsman," the woman in rude times of 
 strife and pillage and lust, " having no capacity to 
 become the head of a new family, And the root of 
 a new set of parental powers." In an age when 
 guardianship was needed, hers was a condition of 
 perpetual guardianship, necessary to preserve her 
 purity and to secure for her a social position. 
 
310 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Her family were her protectors ; her family be- 
 came responsible for her. Her father's authority 
 was her shield, his power her defence, his wealth 
 her provision. Insult to her was affront to him ; 
 wrong to her brought down his "vengeance. She 
 was rooted in the family, could not detach herself, 
 could not be detached, for in passing from the 
 guardianship of parents she passed into the guar- 
 dianship of a second parent. Her husband luas in laio 
 her father.'^ It was in his capacity of father that he 
 acquired rights over her person and property. She 
 was not his slave, but his daughter, his own blood 
 as it were, part and parcel of himself. The worst 
 injustices, the worst indignities against women, 
 had this kindly root. Polygamy was in its origin 
 a gracious provision against helplessness ; whole 
 centuries lie between the evil and its origin ; the 
 root of it is so deep under the ground that none 
 but the keenest sighted naturalists suspect it. 
 But if it is there, its existence proves that what- 
 ever reforms may be needed now, no reproach can 
 be cast on the original feeling from which the 
 present iniquities have sprung. It is only indi- 
 rectly and in a secondary way that the}' reflect on 
 the primitive impulses of human nature ; it is only 
 remotely that they bring into disrepute the laws 
 that control the progress of the world. If in 
 things most evil there is a soul of goodness, our 
 faith in the moral constitution of things is justi- 
 
 * Maine's "^\jicieiit Law," p. 147-149. 
 
THE SOUL OF GOOD IN EVIL. 311 
 
 fied. Tlie most astounding problems cease to be 
 appalling. We can feel that mankind have been 
 groping after improvement ; that they have done 
 what was in them as thej saw and knew ; that 
 they sought the true and good, as they understood 
 them, and through the only means within their 
 reach. "We feel that our duty consists in carrying 
 out the original intention, not in thwarting it, in 
 strengthening the creative principle, not in erad- 
 icating it. 
 
 That the soul of goodness is in every case hid- 
 den might be expected. Certainly it is ; all roots 
 are hidden ; the root of evil more deeply than 
 any. In some cases it is so well concealed as 
 to be thus far undiscoverable. But faith assures 
 us that it will be discovered in due time. Though 
 of the soul of things little is known, enough is 
 known to create a buoyant confidence in the 
 sweetening, saving powers of society ; a confidence 
 that breaks out in the familiar expressions, " It is 
 all for the best ;" " It will all come out right in 
 the end ;" " Ever the right comes uppermost." 
 That confidence has its root in a faith which rests 
 serenely on the constitution of human nature, and 
 assumes a principle of perpetual renovation work- 
 ing at the core of things ; a faith that stills the 
 troubled sea of existence and causes doubt, fear, 
 sorrow and the agony of disbelief to " vanish like 
 evanescent waves in the deeps of eternity and tho 
 immensity of God." 
 
XII. 
 
 THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN EKEOR. 
 
 TN the New Testament the spirit of evil and the 
 -*- spirit of falsehood are one. Satan is the father 
 of lies. Jesus says to the unbelieving Jews : " Ye 
 are of your father the devil ; he was a murderer 
 from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, 
 because there is no truth in him. When he 
 speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is 
 a liar, and the father of it." Paul speaks of the 
 " working of Satan with all power and signs and 
 lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deceit." 
 " Who is a liar," asks John, " but he that denieth 
 that Jesus is the Christ ? He that denieth the 
 Father and the Son is Antichrist." " Many de- 
 ceivers are come into the world, who confess not 
 that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a 
 deceiver and an antichrist." And again in Reve- 
 lations : " And he laid hold on the dragon, that 
 old serpent, which is the devil, and cast him into 
 the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a 
 seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH /-V ERROE. 313 
 
 no more." These early believers, in the simplicity 
 of their faith, cannot persuade themselves that 
 one who differs from them m opinion can be sin- 
 cere They who are not disciples are knaves. 
 They who teach other doctrines are impostors. 
 Heresy and falsehood are synonymous terms. 
 As their own belief became clear and firm, a feei- 
 iu- of iufalhbility accompanied it. The disciples 
 wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Sa^ 
 luaritans who rejected tiie Master. They were of 
 another party, therefore they were of the devil 
 This sense of certainty, this utter conhdence of 
 spiritual assurance, may indicate remarkable ex- 
 altation of mind, but it is accompamed with a 
 remarkable disagreeableness of temper. ihe 
 habit of looking on one's opponents as bars is 
 conducive neither to goodness nor to truth. iiU 
 dogma becomes pretty well formed, it is never 
 done ; but after it has become pretty well formed 
 it is always done. The first Christians regarded 
 all faiths save their own, especially what they 
 called Gentile iaiths, what we know to have been 
 the faiths of the keenest minds of their age, as m- 
 spirations of the devil. A legend of St. John re- 
 lates that, on one occasion, seeing Cermthus a 
 noted heretic, enter a public bath, he waited the 
 inmates to flee for their lives, for the bm ding 
 would surely fall on the false pretender Thirty 
 years ago, Mahomet was always called the im- 
 postor " He still is caUed so by zealous Chris- 
 
314 THE RELIGION OF HUMAKITY. 
 
 tiau writei'S. In the generations immediately sub- 
 sequent to his career, the Arabian prophet was 
 lield in horror by the Church as the "Adversary," 
 the fatlier of hes himself. He was cursed as a 
 false god, to whom human sacrifices were offered. 
 Our ugly words, " buffoonery " and " mummery " 
 are supposed to derive from the nicknames given 
 to him. Three hundred years elapsed before he 
 was honored with so harmless a name as false 
 prophet, impostor, heresiarch. It was magnani- 
 mous in Dante to assign him an honorable place 
 in hell among the great sowers of discord. Or- 
 cagna, a celebrated painter who lived nearly a 
 century later, introduced him into his picture of 
 Hell on the wall of the Pisan Campo Santo, 
 along with Averroes and the antichrist, the 
 three roasting in flames, as despisers of all re- 
 ligion. In the middle ages, Mahomet was re- 
 garded as a sorcerer, a debauched wretch, a thief, 
 a spiteful cardinal who invented a new religion 
 in order to avenge himself on his colleagues who 
 would not make him pope. There was no limit 
 to the abuse that was heaped on the prophet's 
 name ; and all because he was not a Christian. 
 He was no believer, therefore ho was a liar. 
 
 The Komish missionaries in India finding 
 there a religion in many respects resembling their 
 own, were confident that the devil was trying to 
 bafile them by a counterfeit of the true faith. 
 Here were fine spiritualities, noble moralities, lofty 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. 315 
 
 worships which owned no indebtedness to their 
 church. Of course they Avere delusions of Satan. 
 Had the Buddhist worshippers called themselves 
 Christians, their behefs would have been welcomed 
 as inspirations from above ; as they did not call 
 themselves so the}' were denounced as instigations 
 from below. Their beauty was their bane. 
 
 It is the fashion to speak of the religious of the 
 East as tissues of error and superstition, their 
 good points being concealed, their bad points 
 being magnified ; their truth being qualified, 
 their error being exaggerated. The zealous Pro- 
 testant polemic still denounces the Church of 
 Home as a mass of imposition. Its priests aro 
 hypocrites, its theologians are dishonest attorneys, 
 its teachers are abettors of fraud, its devotees are 
 either dupes or knaves. The furious "liberal" 
 cannot allow sincerity to the preachers of trinity, 
 deity of Christ, vicarious atonement, depravity, 
 eternal perdition. Honest men, they think, can- 
 not believe such nonsense. They must be either 
 deceived or deceivers. And the judgment is 
 handed down from sect to sect. Error is anti- 
 christ ; and everything is error which we do not 
 assent to. Infallibilit}- is the claim of each petty 
 sectary, and infallibility will put hundreds under 
 the ban. Strange, that people should be content 
 with uncertainty where uncertainty is both need- 
 less and dangerous, and should demand certainty 
 where certainty is neither possible nor wise. But 
 
316 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 SO it is. Thousands are satisfied not to know 
 their own minds who are indignant at being sup- 
 posed unacquainted with the inmost mind of God. 
 They know nothing and are happy m knowing 
 nothing respecting the constitution of society, the 
 laws of government, or the proper regulation of 
 families, but the secret administration of the uni- 
 verse is familiar to them as their nursery rhymes. 
 "Why their neighbors or their neighbors' children 
 behave as they do, is a mystery they despair of 
 solving, though a moment's reflection would solve 
 it ; but why the Almighty does as He does is 
 plain. Of practical information regarding things 
 of hourly importance they possess and seek to ac- 
 quire little ; but the ultimate causes of things are 
 revealed, and the supreme First Cause they are 
 shocked to find any hesitating about. It does 
 not trouble them to be in the dark as to the issues 
 of to-morrow, but they are in agonies of despair 
 if the least misgiving cross their minds as to the 
 condition of the soul after death. Is this an evi- 
 dence of the greatness of their being, their affi- 
 nity with divine things, the firmness of their 
 hold on eternal realities, the upspringing force 
 of their spiritual nature ? or is it a proof of men- 
 tal dreaminess ? or is it a habit of intellectual 
 pride and stubbornness ? Whether it be one of 
 these, or all, or neitheu', it has led to sad misinter- 
 pretations of thought, and melancholy injustice to 
 thinkers. 
 
TEE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. 317 
 
 Here, for instance, is the general and severe 
 condemnation of doubt wliicli we have heard 
 from our infancy, and hear on all sides now. 
 Beware of doubt, is the warning given to young 
 and old. Wrestle with it, pray against it, avoid 
 it, turn the mind in other directions, fortify 
 yourself against its assaults, shun all who ques- 
 tion, cultivate the society of such as implicitly 
 believe. Tennyson is thought to have said a 
 very strong thing when he penned the hues : 
 
 '* There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, thau in half your creeds." 
 
 Of course there does. In honest doubt there 
 lives more faith than in all the creeds. In /lonest 
 doubt is all the live faith that exists. The creeds 
 express the satisfied doubt of past ages. The 
 doubts contain the possible creed of ages to come. 
 All beliefs came from doubt. Christianity was 
 born of doubt ; Romanism was boru of doubt ; 
 Protestantism was born of doubt ; Universalism 
 and Unitarianism were born of doubt ; Science 
 was boru of doubt ; hteraturos, arts, economics, 
 theories of government, principles of reform, 
 schemes of education, are born of doubt. The 
 spirit of truth manifests itself in the form of 
 doubt. In doubt, the intellectual faculties are 
 seen pressing beyond the lines of acquu-ed know- 
 ledge into the realm of unexplored truth. Doubt 
 is the evidence of Uve mind. The creeds mark 
 
318 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 the point which mind has reached and where 
 mind rests. Doubt is the tinghng of new "vitali- 
 ty in the brain, the movement of fresh waves of 
 spiritual power. 
 
 Fairly understood, all mind is live mind. Mind 
 is vital. Immobile mind has ceased to be mind. 
 Intellect, in its normal action, is creative, not 
 destructive ; it ever builds, it never pulls down. 
 The child's passion to break in pieces its pretty 
 toy used to be quoted as an evidence of the de- 
 pravity of its nature ; it is now regarded as a 
 sign of awakening intelligence ; it wants to know 
 why its doll cries, why its lamb or horse moves 
 when wound up. The larger child wants to know 
 why the sacraments are deemed sacred ; why the 
 Bible has lived so long ; what makes people re- 
 vere as they do priests and holy buildings. He 
 desires to know how the skies are supported, 
 and pulls down the scaffolding of Ptolemj- to hud 
 out. He desires to know what the earth is made 
 of, and sweeps off the rubbish of tradition in or- 
 der to get at it. He desires to know what the 
 soul of man, of which so much has been said, 
 really is, and he waives off the priests that for- 
 bid his laying hands on it. 
 
 This is our attitude ; it is an attitude of en- 
 tire faith. We believe that there is a soul of 
 goodness in things evil ; we believe that there is 
 a soul of truth in things erroneous. We be- 
 lieve that since the mind of man has been 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. 319 
 
 awake, it has been seeking light, has abhoiTcd 
 darkness, has worked its way steadily and by the 
 power of an inherent instinct towards a true solu- 
 tion of the problem of its destiny, has incessant- 
 ly raised questions, aud has tried passionately to 
 find answers to them. We believe something 
 more than that all error contains some particle 
 of truth ; wo believe that all error embodies a 
 soul of truth ; that it was born of a wish to dis- 
 cover the truth, and owes whatever hold on man- 
 kind it has, to its success in giviug to the spirit of 
 truth a temporary form. We believe that the 
 most hideous beliefs were an effort on the part of 
 their makers to state some fact or indicate some 
 law ; and the more hideous the doctrine, the more 
 pathetic the story of the mind out of whose ex- 
 perience it came. Nor will it bo difficult by-and- 
 by, as knowledge matures, to lay bare the intel- 
 lectual motives that have sprung the strange faiths 
 of men into being. Let me by a few common 
 examples illustrate the method and the certain- 
 ty of this process. 
 
 The Unitarians regard the dogma of Trinity as 
 a plain, palpable, self-evident error. A person, 
 they say, cannot at the same instant be three per- 
 sons and one person. The trinity excludes the 
 nutty, the unity excludes the trinity. The doc- 
 trine is a mathematical puzzle, held in defiance of 
 reason, in spite of scripture, even against the de- 
 mand of spiritual faith, and is defended by a per- 
 
320 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 verse ingenuity tliat is resolute at all hazards to 
 make out a case ; as the keystone of a theolo- 
 gical system, it must be justified, and the holders 
 of the system do their best to justify it ; but its 
 only supports are sectarian obstinacy and secta- 
 rian ingenuity. Thus reasons the monotheistic 
 Unitarian, failing to perceive that the doctrine of 
 trinity was intended to establish the proper per- 
 sonality of God. The doctrine historically ap- 
 prehended was apparently an attempt to state 
 the belief that God was in the world and at the 
 same time out of it, that the universe was divine, 
 but did not exhaust the divine, that there was an 
 essential unity in the whole creation, a complete 
 accord between the creation and the creator, but 
 that the two were not confounded. The Father 
 represented the infinite, endless, unexhausted, in- 
 exhaustible capacities of Deity. The Son repre- 
 sented the organized and organizing power that 
 expended itself in creation. The Spirit repre- 
 sented the continuous movement of power, the 
 ceaseless intercourse, the perpetual action and re- 
 action between the two. The doctrine was an at- 
 tempt to reconcile theism with pantheism, unity 
 with diversity, the Semitic with the Aryan prin- 
 ciple. Its purpose was therefore to establish, 
 not to weaken the divine personality. Call it a 
 rude device, but no better has been yet discovered 
 by theology. 
 
 Unitarians again regard as an error the doc- 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IX ERROR. 321 
 
 trine of the deity of Christ. That one should be 
 at once God and man seems to them a contradic- 
 tion in terms ; if man then not God ; if God then 
 not man ; infinite or finite, one or the other ; to bo 
 both at once is out of the question. God and man 
 are, says the Unitarian, the opposite poles, the ex- 
 treme terms of thought. God cannot compress 
 himself within the limits of a human form ; no hu- 
 man form will hold the spiritual contents of God. 
 The doctrine originated in error, has been main- 
 tained by error, and is held in the spirit of dog- 
 matism which is the spirit of error. It is possi- 
 bly a repetition of the oriental fancies about incar- 
 nation which stole into the West by way of Alex- 
 andria, and was adopted along with the doctrine 
 of angels and demons and other wild imaginations 
 of the East. The ordinary Unitarian finds diffi- 
 culty in believing that honest minds can entertain 
 an opinion so repugnant to enlightened common 
 sense. But if we look deeper we perceive that the 
 early believers felt an essential identity of their 
 nature and the divine. Thej' felt as religious men 
 have always felt, as devout minds feel now, that 
 there was a point where the divine and the human 
 met and mingled ; that when God expressed him- 
 self perfectly, it must be in the form of humanity ; 
 that when man rose to his full s})iritual stature he 
 took on heavenly attributes. They were con- 
 scious of a divinity within them ; they were com- 
 pelled to think of divinity as having a human 
 
322 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 heai't in its bosom. Are not finest qualities equally 
 characteristic of the human and the divine ? The 
 love of purity and truth, reverence for justice, 
 sympathy, compassion, the soul of holiness, the 
 heart of pity, are they not common to both ? God 
 is most godlike Avhen he shows justice, compas- 
 sion, forgiveness. Man is most manlike when 
 he -exhibits the same. In love of that beneath 
 them both are greatest. In moments of exalta- 
 tion pious souls seemed to lose the sense of limita- 
 tion in the absorbing nearness of the supreme be- 
 ing ; in their hours of humility they seemed to 
 float on the bosom of the boundless sea ; in their 
 moments of aspiration they launched out on a sea 
 of light. God was all in all. This consciousness 
 of intimacy between man and deity, struggles af- 
 ter expression in the doctrine of the deity of 
 Christ. The typical man was God. The revealed 
 God was ideal man. Too modest to affirm this 
 truth of all mankind, too timid to claim it for any 
 but the very best, the Christians confined the priv- 
 ilege to one, but that one stood for all, vindicated 
 the truth for all, was the symbol to which all could 
 look, the demonstration to which all could appeal. 
 The statement it conveyed was clumsy and is obso- 
 lete ; but the truth is one of the grandest ever en- 
 tertained by mankind. 
 
 The doctrine of Eden and the fall of Adam 
 fi'om a perfect estate is now considered an error 
 ■well nigh exploded. We are assured by natural- 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR 
 
 323 
 
 ists that the ^vllolc story of Eden is a fancy. The 
 first earth, we are told authoritatively, was a wil- 
 derness, not a garden. How could there be a gar- 
 den without a gardener? How could thei^ be a 
 garden without horticultural skill and taste ? i le 
 garden and the happy people in it will come by 
 and by through scientific cultivation and the arts 
 of civilized man. The wilderness has not blos- 
 somed yet, 1. coTT 
 It is getting to be a commonplace now to say 
 that the narrative in Genesis is an allegory ; and 
 if it is, what then? Hay not an allegory 
 convey a truth, or at least, an effort to reach a 
 tmth "^ The doctrine of Eden and the Fall was an 
 endeavor to put into words the feeling that a state 
 of poverty, want, misery, conflict, is not the nor- 
 mal state of man ; that the normal state of man 
 is one of innocence, contentment and peace ; 
 that man is not truly himself when a slave to his 
 animal wants, the creature of his circumstances 
 degraded by fears and crashed by sorrows ; bu 
 that man is truly himself when free from toil 
 and care, upright, calm and happy. The vision o 
 a golden age and a perfect manhood hovered 
 therefore before earnest minds. They could not 
 anticipate it in the future; that required more 
 vi-or and hopefulness than they possessed, more 
 command of their circumstances, more assurance 
 of progress ; and so they did the only thing they 
 could, they pictured it in the past as a memory. 
 
324 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 They looked backward as we look towards oiu: 
 childhood and imagine heaven as lying about our 
 infancy. We call it an error, and so I believe it 
 was and always is. Childhoods were never so 
 blissful as old folks imagine. Children are not so 
 much happier than men and women are, and si»ch 
 happiness as they have is childish. The golden 
 age is yet to dawn. We dream of the good time 
 coming, as the children of the race dreamed of 
 . the good time gone. The dreams differ. Ours is 
 the more hopeful, theirs is the more pensive. Ours 
 is the dream of expectancy ; theirs was the dream 
 of regret. Ours is the dream of courage ; theirs 
 was the dream of fatigue. Ours is a dream of 
 conquest ; theirs was a dream of defeat. But 
 both dream, and the dreamer in either case is a 
 being haunted by the notion that a state of pov- 
 erty, want, misery and struggle is not his normal 
 state. 
 
 Is any error more apparent than the doctrine 
 of total depravity ? It declares that, our first 
 parents sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. 
 They being the root of aU mankind the guilt of 
 this sin was imitated and the same death in 
 sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their 
 posterity. This is horrible. But did the first 
 conceivers of it rejoice in the dismal view of 
 humanit}' they were holding ? Did they delib- 
 erately choose to entertain such ideas of them- 
 selves ? Were they cynics or misanthropes ? 
 
TUE SOUL OF TRUTH TX ERROR. 325 
 
 Did they think 4;his the worst possible world ? 
 Did the spirit of mischief and deceit possess 
 them and comj:)cl a faith so abhorrent to all 
 conceptions of equity and so opposed to the 
 testimony of human experience ? That can 
 hardly be. They must have had something in 
 their minds that struggled for voice. What was 
 it, but the fact that man is limited, constrained, 
 incapable, imbecile, that he cannot at the mo- 
 ment do what he would, cannot break his bonds, 
 restrain his passions, eradicate his vices, put 
 away his infirmites, lift off the burden of his 
 social evils, make himself and the world in an 
 instant just what they should bo ? What is it 
 but the fact so intimately connected with this, 
 so closely a part of this, that the men of the 
 one generation inherit from the generations that 
 have gone before, and that this inheritance 
 is largely One of pain, weakness, and sorrow? 
 This is a fact we cannot deny or overlook, or 
 banish from memory. It stares us in the face 
 every hour. It is more palpable, more appall- 
 ing in magnitude, more organically knit to the 
 texture of things than our remote ancestors 
 could perceive, only they, as it seems, dwelt 
 more upon it, were more staggered by it, and 
 wrestled more fiercely with it than we. How 
 they wrestled with it, appears in this strange, 
 uncouth dogma that the first man in falling from 
 his high estate dragged after him the whole 
 
326 THE RELIGION OF UUMANITT, 
 
 Ime of liis descendants, planting in them the 
 seeds of deadly desires, and committing them 
 ages in advance to disobedience, crime, and 
 guilt. It is a problem that we have not fully- 
 solved yet. AVe have given new names to the 
 facts, calling them crudeness and imperfection, 
 but we have not altered them. We have set 
 the law of transmission in a new light, regard- 
 ing it as a principle of progress instead of re- 
 --trogression, but we have not annulled it. Our 
 solution is wiser, but the problem remains as it 
 was, nor is our determination to vanquish it a 
 whit more earnest than was that of the elders. 
 Our search, if more successful, is no more reso- 
 lute or keen. 
 
 The doctrine of election presents a hateful 
 aspect to the modern mind. How was it pos- 
 sible, we ask, for men to believe that God 
 picked out a certain number of people for bles- 
 sedness and a certain number for misery, with- 
 out the smallest reference to character or merit 
 on their part, without explanation or apology 
 on his own, but simply because, in his inscru- 
 table and arbitrary purpose, he saw lit to do 
 so '? loving Jacob and hating Esau, though Esau 
 was every whit as deserving as Jacob, and, ac- 
 cording to the human view, worthier of esteem, 
 and extending that love that hatred to genera- 
 tions of men and women, never giving them 
 the option of their birth, or offering them a 
 
THE SOUL OF TBUTII IN ERROR. 327 
 
 chance to alter their destiny ? The doctrine 
 us presented in the Protestant confessions out- 
 rages every sentiment of the heart and every 
 principle of reason. But here too we may eas- 
 ily discover the effort of sincere minds to get 
 some light on the most mysterious questions 
 that existence presses on attention. Even 
 thoughtless persons are startled sometimes by 
 strange freaks of destiny, signs of arbitrary ca- 
 price in mortal affairs, the action as of some 
 occult principle that makes naught of justice. 
 They call it " luck," " chance," " misfortune," 
 and there leave it. But earnest intellects can- 
 not leave it there ; the arbitrary element in fate 
 bewilders and appalls them. They see, as it were, 
 some demon playing with God's dice, and en- 
 joying the sport. One race is born to perpet- 
 ual servitude, another to perpetual mastery. 
 One tribe is set in the very front rank of prog- 
 ress, favored by all winds, lighted by all the 
 constellations, sunned by all the heavenly orbs, 
 another is placed far in the rear, buried in^ 
 deep valleys, sunk in morasses, held in tlirall- 
 dom by nature, with no opportunity of convert- 
 ing a single element to friendly uses. One 
 child is born physically perfect, and grows up 
 to the fullest use of its powers in a world of 
 beauty, delight and privilege ; another conies into 
 life a cripple, and is doomed to suffering, disa- 
 
328 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 bility, wretchedness in a world wliere every- 
 thing hurts and hinders. 
 
 One is born to wealth and social position, and 
 all that we mean by advantage. Gifted, his pow- 
 ers are enriched by travel and commerce with the 
 opulent minds of his own and other ages ; irn- 
 gifted, his ordinariness is covered up by position, 
 or atoned for by joy. Another is born to poverty, 
 obscurity, and deprivation. Gifted, his powers 
 run to waste from want of culture, or torment 
 their possessor with hopeless dreams of unattain- 
 able fame ; ungifted, he gets no taste of the 
 world's bounty — not so much as a glimpse at its 
 glory. One is born amid circumstances discour- 
 aging to worthy efibrt, amid people of vicious 
 character and life ; another is welcomed to pre- 
 cepts of virtue and examples of excellence. More 
 perplexing and staggering to the ordinary mind 
 is the familiar fact that some inherit tendencies to 
 goodness from their parents, they hunger after 
 righteousness, principles of truth and honesty, as- 
 •piratious toward the pure and saintly life, are 
 destined as it were to be exemplars of excellence, 
 benefactors of their fellows, beloved and honored ; 
 while some of the same social rank, perhaps off- 
 spring of parents equally virtuous and careful, 
 possibly of the same parents, suck up from the 
 blood of a remote ancestor the black drop of 
 moral disease, the low appetite, the base lust, the 
 mania for theft or murder ; and, unwilling, writh- 
 
TEE SOUL OF TRUTH IX ERROR. 329 
 
 ing victims, often, of guilt not their own, become 
 a weariness to themselves, a curse to their fami- 
 lies, a nuisance to society, and a disgrace to their 
 kind. 
 
 These are frightful facts, open to all men's ob- 
 servation. Tiiey hint at a mysterious law of elec- 
 tion, operating in circumstance and inherited dis- 
 position, the track whereof has never been traced. 
 We are unable to explain these things ; we can- 
 not account for them scientifically, or work them 
 into a philosophical scheme of the world, or re- 
 concile them with the rule of a just and merciful 
 God. The rational solution of them is abandoned 
 by the mass of mankind, who have neither the 
 feeling nor the intelligence to grapple with ques- 
 tions so appaUing. The minds that started the 
 doctrine of election could not lose them from 
 view, or forget them, or give over the attempt to 
 explain and justify them. Their method was sim- 
 ple and rude, not at all nice, delicate, or scientific. 
 They cut the knot they were unable to untie, and 
 failing to dig the heart out of the mystery, 
 bowed their own hearts beneath it. Their re- 
 course was artless. Finding the facts unmanage- 
 able, they just collected the whole shocking mass 
 of facts together, and fiung it upon the broad 
 shoulders of the upholder of the universe. Let 
 the responsibility rest there, with the supremely 
 just and wise ; and let men stand with bended 
 head before the inscrutable will that can no more 
 
330 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 be questioned or challenged than it can be altered. 
 If these humble theologians exhibited no wonder- 
 ful genius for philosophy, they exhibited a wonder- 
 ful power of trust, an awful confidence in the Al- 
 mighty, which proved them possessed, if not of 
 cunning brains, still of indomitable hearts. 
 
 Let us now approach in the same spirit that 
 most horrible of all beliefs ever invented or en- 
 tertained by men, the belief in an eternity of 
 torture for the wicked. For the last fifty years 
 and more the belief has been dying out of the 
 actively professed credence of Christendom, and 
 is now virtually discarded by intelligent evan- 
 gelical minds. In the extreme form under 
 which it was preached by Jonathan Edwards 
 and divines of his school in the last century 
 and stated in church catechisms, it is frankly 
 pronounced an error. Conscience protests against 
 it in the name of outraged justice ; the heart 
 cries out against it in the name of pity ; phi- 
 losophy hoots at it in the name of reason ; 
 judgment refuses to listen to it in the name of 
 common sense. It is customary in our days to 
 accuse those who bring it up to the discredit 
 of Calvinism, of willful exaggeration. The charge 
 is just only as applied to modern believers. It is im- 
 possible to overstate the hideousness of the 
 doctrine as presented by authorized creeds, 
 and defended once by famous teachers. "What 
 then ? Was it an inspiration of the devil, a 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IX FliBOIi. 331 
 
 suggestion of Satan, a lie of the arch deceiver ? 
 Did the men who inventetl it purpose to insult 
 the deity, or to bring the divine order into dis- 
 repute ? Were they savages with hearts full of 
 malignity, or fiends, who exulted in the thought 
 of milhons of liuman creatures groaning in in- 
 tolerable torments for ages without end ? The 
 mind refuses to entertain such a wild idea. 
 They were men, as anxious as we arc, more 
 ULixious than we are probably, to pluck out the 
 moral secrets of Providence, men who loved 
 c\iildren and friends, and wished to repose in 
 faith on the holy kindness of the eternal. They 
 were no more heartless or cruel than the best 
 of us, but they ivere more deeply impressefl loith 
 the hafc/ulness of guilt than we are. They were 
 more in the habit than we are of measuring 
 guilt by supreme standards, judging it by abso- 
 lute laws, setting it in the light of the Christ's 
 clear eye, and contemplating it as an affront 
 on the serene majesty of heaven. The world to 
 them was poor and small ; life was short and 
 fleeting ; existence was not in itself a boon ; 
 they were accustomed to pain, suffering, the ty- 
 ranny of despotic powers ; their temporal goods 
 were precarious ; their secular relations were in- 
 cidental. They lived in their souh. The divine 
 hohness and sweetness, the inestimable gift of 
 a saviour, the unmerited graciousness of the 
 Son of God iu giving himself up as a sacrifice 
 
332 TEE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 for the sins of mankind, the amazing promises 
 of peace here and bliss hereafter held out by 
 the church to the meanest of mankind, the un- 
 purchased, unpurchasable glory- of an unending 
 heaven were subjects of unceasing meditation. 
 And as meditation brought them home, the ut- 
 ter ingratitude and turpitude of the vicious 
 and wicked seemed too abominable to deserve 
 the least consideration. Simple justice pro- 
 nounced the sternest doom. They belonged 
 among the fiends, and were even lower than 
 the fiends as having sinned against a more 
 amazing goodness. They were chaff fit only to 
 be thrown into the fire and burned ; unfortu- 
 nately, being made of spiritual stuff they must 
 burn forever. As Draco, the Athenian lawgiv- 
 er, when asked why, in his code, he fixed but 
 one penalty, — death — to all grades of offence, 
 replied, because the smallest crime merits death, 
 and there is no severer punishment for the 
 greatest, so these fanatics for God's righteous- 
 ness included all transgressors in the same ver- 
 dict of holy wrath. 
 
 And had they no encouragement to do this, 
 in the fearful law of compensation which they 
 saw as clearly as we do and comprehended as 
 little, a law that brings down on every fault 
 and foible a weight of penalty out of all pro- 
 portion apparently to the transgression ? The 
 sweep of this awful law that looks anything 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. 333 
 
 but kiud and pitiful to our ejes, liad early 
 made an iini)ressioa on the minds of sensitive 
 men, and crowded their imaginations with im- 
 ages of fear. The ancient books of the East, 
 Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, are 
 full of it, and in those books the master minds 
 of theology were nurtured. 
 
 It was not strange that, in a less sentimental 
 ago than ours, the doctrine of endless torment 
 for the wicked should have grown out of all 
 this observation and all this experience. Least 
 of all is it strange that it should have been 
 shaped into complete form by the holiest, pur- 
 est, sweetest and devoutest souls. It was the 
 way the saints had of interpreting the counsels 
 and vindicating the sanctity of God. If any 
 souls were ever inspired by a loyal love of the 
 truth, theirs were. That a man like Jonathan 
 Edwards could have written and preached his 
 frighttul sermon, " Sinners in the hand of an an- 
 gry God," so divine a person proclaiming so 
 devilish a message, is one of the marvels of 
 psychology. But that he did it, is proof that 
 in this dreary and now widely repudiated error 
 there was a soul of truth. The sooner the gro- 
 tesque error perishes, the better for all men. It 
 will perish the sooner as the soul of truth in it 
 is encouraged to reconstruct opinion on rational 
 grounds. 
 
 And if, in such hateful forms of error as these, 
 
334 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 the soul of truth is discernible, it should be pos- 
 sible to discover it under modern forms of error, 
 which we deplore. Materialism we regard as an 
 error, and a dreadful one ; a fatally one-sided 
 statement of the case it deals with, cheerless to 
 the heart, darkeuing to the mind, discouraging to 
 the soul. But Materialism is, at bottom, a well- 
 meant endeavor to render justice to the organiza- 
 tion, hitherto neglected. It wishes to give to or- 
 ganized matter its dues, and if in this noble en- 
 deavor it overreaches its point, and makes organ- 
 ization everything, destroying and sinking the 
 mentality of mind, this is the inevitable partiality 
 of other systems. Few men see truth in all its 
 aspects ; very few see it in its opposite aspects. 
 Spiritualism is as one-sided as Materialism. 
 
 There is a soul of truth in Atheism. The 
 Atheist wishes to vindicate the prerogative of 
 natural law; to demonstrate the natural order, 
 the perfect sequence and consistency of the 
 world, the sufficiency of the universe as consti- 
 tuted for all the ends of its constitution, the need- 
 lessness of interference with established condi- 
 tions, the full enwor-lding, so to speak, of the crea- 
 tive mind. Hence Ixis antipathy to the popular 
 conceptions of God as a being of special plans 
 and purposes, a God who must needs arrange 
 and rearrange the running machinery of creation, 
 who can be moved by prayer, or who must resort 
 to occasional expedients to prevent catastrophe to 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IX ERROR. 335 
 
 liis projects. Wliat is called God, says the Athe- 
 ist, I kuow uot. He is beyond my reach and 
 ken. Law I believe in, and Beauty, and Order, 
 and Justice, and Goodness. Creation teaches me 
 these ; the ideals of them stand continually before 
 my thought. But what I am concerned that all 
 shall know and be convinced of, is that the uni- 
 verse itself is a whole body of divinity, a com- 
 pact, and to all practical purposes an infinite 
 system of elements and powers, marvellously ad- 
 justed to each other, and fully capable of working 
 out ends vast in scope and glorious in design. 
 There is the soul of truth in the Atheist ; a soul 
 great enough to excuse graver errors than he falls 
 into, and to relieve his name from the reproach 
 that heresy haters have fastened upon it. 
 
 A soul of trutli in things erroneous. Surely 
 there is one, " would men observingly distill it 
 out." To do this gracious work will be the task of 
 many minds for many years. But the task is 
 begun ; it has already proceeded far, and the re- 
 sults of it are felt in more hopeful views of man's 
 ultimate destiny. It is a glorious thing to believe 
 that a soul of truth has from the beginning been 
 active in the race ; that while error abounds, 
 while in fact nothing but error exists, since truth 
 is but partial, iu another sense nothing but truth 
 exists, since error testifies to the presence of truth, 
 is indeed but truth in the making. To believe 
 that the mind of man is ever pushing towards 
 
336 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 light, though it may never reach its source. To 
 be sure that while " our little systems have their 
 day," they cease to be, only because their " bro- 
 ken lights" must give way to clearer senses, such 
 a belief makes all systems positive, all creeds re- 
 spectable, all confessions honorable. It abolishes 
 enmity between schools ; it suggests a brotherhood 
 of believers ; it brings East and West and North 
 and South together in bonds of peace ; makes voi- 
 ces formerly discordant and quarrelsome ring in 
 unison ; and proclaims aloud the symplionies of 
 faith. The s}- mphonies of faith, I say, not the in- 
 difference of creeds ; the identity of the thinking 
 principle, not the equal value of its results. It is 
 the soul of truth that is venerable, not the thing 
 erroneous ; the questioning mind, not the inco- 
 herent answer. The beliefs are arrested thoughts, 
 let them go ; the thought that cannot be arrested, 
 let that pass on. 
 
 The old polemics stand henceforth rebuked. 
 To the bloody strife in the arena of theology will 
 succeed the emulous race on the course of truth. 
 The business oif<jhtiri<j error by denying the soul 
 of truth in it is over. The business of supplant- 
 ing error by new force of the soul that made it, 
 is started. The errors are dismissed by their own 
 more enlightened author. They only are to bo 
 condemned who perpetuate the error because it 
 was true once. These are the antichrists, the ene- 
 
THE SOUL OF TRUTH IN ERROR. 337 
 
 mies of faith ; these haviug lost sight of the soul 
 of truth, are entitled to uo consideration. Tiiey 
 hold error in the spirit of error. Fight that spirit, 
 and the error will disappear. Theological hatred 
 should cease. Ephraim shall not envy Judah, 
 and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. The sincere 
 Protestant should not malign Eomanism, nor 
 the thoughtful Komanist curse Protestantism. 
 Calvin should no longer be a name abhorred by 
 Universalists, nor Athanasius be a name dreaded 
 by Unitarians. Rationalists will no longer put 
 the worst interpretations on the creeds they haye 
 discarded, or denounce as barren superstitions 
 the glim texts of a by-gone day. Sacred writ- 
 ings will be read with more discerning, because 
 more reverent eyes ; justice will be done to an- 
 cient myths, symbols, and monuments which have 
 ceased to be intelligible. It will not be con- 
 sidered honest or decent to deal in the spirit of 
 caricature with plirases or dogmas that seem to 
 modern apprehension outlandish or grotesque. 
 All forms of error, however strange, will be re- 
 garded with tender resppct, as painful endeavors 
 after the truth ; and no forms of truth, however 
 fair to the eye, will be honored with more re- 
 spect than is duo to equally well meant endea- 
 vors in the same direction. There will be no 
 more intellectual superciliousness or spiritual 
 contempt, no more assumption of infalhbility, no 
 
338 THE RELIGION 0^ HUMANITY. 
 
 more claim to authority, no more conceit of 
 final discovery. With mingled pride and hu- 
 mility, earnest minds will address themselves to 
 their task of enlightening themselves and man- 
 kind ; pride, as they look back and see how no- 
 bly intelligence has faced the terrible problems 
 of being ; humility, as they look forward and 
 see how feeble their own efforts are. The great 
 prayer will be for the Spirit of Truth, that shall 
 lead them a little way further towards all truth. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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