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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
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 MEMOIR AND 
 
 ittel iDngfelloto. 
 
 by 
 
 Rev. 
 
 LETTERS. Edited 
 
 Joseph May. 
 
 With a Portrait. Crown 
 
 Svo, 
 
 gilt top, $1.50. 
 
 
 
 
 ESSAYS AND 
 
 SERMONS. Edited 
 
 by 
 
 Rev. 
 
 Joseph May. 
 
 With a Portrait. Crown 8vo, 
 
 gilt top, $1.50. 
 
 
 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & 
 
 CO. 
 
 
 Boston and New York. 
 
 
 

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SAMUEL LONGFELLOW 
 
 ESSAYS AND SERMONS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JOSEPH MAY 
 
 MINISTER OF THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA 
 
 One God, the Father of all ; who is above all, and through all, and in alP 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (E&e KtoermHe Press, Camfcrtoge 
 
 1894 
 
 %o s YssS^v 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 2- W]lfU 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The Essays here collected have all been pub- 
 lished before. That on " The Unity and Univer- 
 sality of the Religious Ideas " appeared in the 
 volume entitled " Freedom and Fellowship in Re- 
 ligion," issued in 1875 by the " Free Religious 
 Association of America," with whose ready consent 
 it is republished. 
 
 The other three are all from that invaluable 
 magazine of religion and intellectual freedom, in 
 which Mr. Longfellow took great interest, " The 
 Radical," edited for a number of years by Mr. Sid- 
 ney H. Morse, who likewise gives the freest per- 
 mission for reprinting these papers. 
 
 Of the Sermons, about half have appeared before 
 in print ; but it is felt that those who have known 
 them will especially welcome them in this perma- 
 nent form. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow, indeed, left surprisingly few com- 
 plete manuscripts of his discourses. He would 
 seem to have destroyed very many. But it evi- 
 dently became his habit, somewhat early in his 
 professional life, to write out his sermons only par- 
 
IV PREFACE 
 
 tially. To this cause is due an occasional abrupt- 
 ness of style in some of the discourses here printed. 
 Large portions of others which remain are only 
 memoranda, often consisting of single words or 
 phrases, by which he was guided in extemporaneous 
 delivery. From the imperfect materials thus avail- 
 able it would not have been possible largely to in- 
 crease the present collection. 
 
 J. M. 
 Philadelphia, April 15, 1894. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Theism i 
 
 The Unity and Universality of the Religious Ideas 31 
 
 Natural and Spiritual • . . .74 
 
 Some Radical Doctrines 87 
 
 SERMONS. 
 
 The Word Preached in 
 
 A Spiritual and Working Church .... 129 
 
 The Doctrine of the Spirit 146 
 
 Parting Words 173 
 
 Sermon at the Dedication of the Parker Memorial . 195 
 
 Truth 221 
 
 Obedience 234 
 
 " We know in Part " 246 
 
 Love to God 258 
 
 The Limitations of Life 271 
 
 The Surprises of Life 288 
 
 Who is God ? 300 
 
 What is Man? 312 
 
 Prayer 325 
 
 The Home 338 
 
 Life, not Death 354 
 
 Images of God 363 
 
 " He giveth His Beloved in Sleep " 376 
 
 Stayed on God 393 
 
ESSAYS 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 THEISM 
 
 I plead for our knowledge of God. There is a 
 growing tendency in the scientific and philosophic 
 world to set aside this name and thought. Dr. 
 Buchner declares that " the more natural science 
 advances in its research, the more it learns to recog- 
 nize that nothing is created, and that nothing is 
 destroyed, but that all rests in an eternal and self- 
 sustaining circle, in which every commencement is 
 an end." And Mr. Agassiz, whom Dr. Buchner has 
 regarded as quite too much given to "preaching," 
 says, " Until some limit to natural causes is found, 
 there is no place in a scientific discussion, as such, 
 for the consideration of the intervention of a Crea- 
 tor." Mr. Huxley, though regarding materialism as 
 a fatal plunge which " may paralyze the energies 
 and destroy the beauty of a life," yet declares the 
 immense convenience in physical studies of using 
 the materialistic terminology, and proclaims the 
 " gradual banishment from all regions of human 
 thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity." 
 
 In all this we need, perhaps, see no more than 
 the desire to keep the fields of human thought free 
 from embarrassing intermixture. There need be no 
 
2 THEISM 
 
 conflict between natural science and theology, if it 
 be recognized that they lie in different planes, and 
 work with different instruments to different ends. 
 And there will be no antagonism, if physical science 
 does not claim to cover the whole ground and use 
 the whole instrumentality of knowledge ; and if the- 
 ology ceases to identify itself with certain obsolete 
 traditions and false notions of God's relations to 
 nature, and no longer insists upon limiting our natu- 
 ral knowledge of divine things to evidences of God's 
 being and character gathered from the outward 
 world. 
 
 Natural science lies in the plane of sensible phe- 
 nomena, and uses for its instruments the senses and 
 the understanding, — that "faculty judging accord- 
 ing to sense," which perceives, explores, arranges, 
 and generalizes the facts of the sensible world. In 
 this plane, with these instruments, it cannot find 
 God, simply because He i$ spiritually discerned. 
 You cannot know the fragrance of a rose by your 
 eyes. You cannot discover a star with an ear-trum- 
 pet, nor find the beauty of a landscape with a sur- 
 veyor's chain ; nor can you detect the loveliness of 
 Mozart's melody, or the passionate mystery of Beet- 
 hoven's harmonies, by chemical analysis. To each 
 knowledge its own end and instruments. Each hu- 
 man faculty is adequate and valid for its own objects. 
 
 One would not give up his belief in the spiritual 
 and wonderful beauty of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, 
 though all the chemists and astronomers and physi- 
 ologists in the world should say that they could see 
 nothing but paint and canvas in it. And you need 
 not abate in the least your belief in God, though in 
 
THEISM 3 
 
 all Humboldt's volumes only twice do you find Him 
 named. 
 
 It does not follow, of course, that He is not be- 
 lieved in because He is not named. 
 
 Side by side with this tendency of science, we 
 find certain systems of philosophy reaching similar 
 results. The positivist philosophy finds in outward 
 nature nothing but phenomena, their coexistences 
 and successions ; no cause, no purpose, no law, no 
 force even, only movement and invariable relations 
 of sequence. Further, it finds in humanity nothing 
 above humanity, or that looks beyond it. Its Su- 
 preme Being is only the aggregate of the race. The- 
 ology, to. it, is a superannuated notion. " The gods, 
 and God, extinguished, humanity remains." An- 
 other philosophy of which Mr. Herbert Spencer is 
 the best known advocate, while declaring that we 
 must believe God to be, denies to us any access to 
 Him, any knowledge of what He is ; pronouncing 
 it to be " alike our highest wisdom and our highest 
 duty to regard that through which all things exist 
 as the Unknowable." 
 
 I speak for our knowledge of God ; for our ability, 
 not only to know that He is, but in some true meas- 
 ure to know what He is. Not by our senses, not by 
 our understanding, do we know Him, for they are 
 inadequate to find Him ; but by faculties as native, 
 as trustworthy, and leading to results as certain. 
 
 The senses and the understanding can, indeed, 
 find in the sphere of outward nature only facts and 
 their sequence. The idea of Cause is given by the 
 mind alone. The ideas of Force, of Purpose, of 
 Will, are given by the mind. So are the ideas 
 
4 THEISM 
 
 of Unity, of the Absolute, the Eternal, the Infinite. 
 All these ideas originate in the human soul ; they 
 are not sensations, nor deductions of the under- 
 standing, but intuitive suggestions of the spirit. 
 
 Again : outward nature gives us the actual ; and 
 the naturalist finds an immense and most interest- 
 ing field of research in finding out what is, and just 
 what is. To that lies his fidelity ; and to that all 
 must be subjected. But the ideal, the haunting ideal 
 of a better than is, of a Perfect, — whence is that ? 
 From the mind itself: from that creative imagina- 
 tion which is one of man's chief spiritual endow- 
 ments, a native faculty of his soul. The artist's vis- 
 ion and the poet's imagery, the inventor's dream 
 and the reformer's plan, humanity's heaven, beyond 
 earth or upon earth, — what are these all but the 
 assertion of a necessity in man's nature, that will 
 not let him rest in what is, or in its repetition ? 
 What are they but strivings after, not what is, but 
 what might be, and ought to be ? Yes, what is this 
 mysterious sense of what we call beauty, the thrill 
 and sweet delight of our recognition of something 
 assuredly quite different from the sense's perception 
 of forms and colors, or the understanding's explana- 
 tion of material structure, — what is it but a spiritual 
 perception, which we can only feel and name, but 
 cannot explain ? 
 
 Further yet : there is a grander thrill, a nobler 
 joy, which kindles us in the contemplation of a deed 
 of moral nobleness ; the glow with which we witness 
 or read of moral heroism, of self-sacrifice to another's 
 good, of martyrdom to truth, of devotion to duty. 
 This moral sentiment, which confronts with its 
 
THEISM 5 
 
 royal assertion of right all the allurements of pleas- 
 ure and comfort and applause, all the calculations 
 of prudence and all the plausibilities of policy, and 
 embraces pain, solitude, struggle, and death, in the 
 strength of its own supreme necessity and worth, — 
 what is it but a primal element of the soul, utterly 
 beyond the perception of the sense or the estimates 
 of the practical understanding ? For is it not plain 
 that any mere calculations of self-interest, however 
 enlightened, or any forecasting of results of happi- 
 ness to one's self or others, are still, in quality, an 
 utterly different thing from the idea of right ? Self- 
 interest we may waive, and happiness forego ; but 
 this sense of sacred obligation, of the ought, which 
 makes duty the sublime thing it is, we cannot set 
 aside without the sense of violating a law higher 
 than ourselves. 
 
 Again : there is a very powerful sentiment in our 
 nature, that of benevolence, unselfish love, — a very 
 different thing from physical or passionate love. Its 
 very essence is self-forgetfulness, disinterestedness. 
 And, springing from no aim of self-gratification, it 
 seeks as its end no mere gratification or indulgence 
 of others, but their best good. As powerful an im- 
 pulse as duty, and more genial and tender, it floods 
 the world with good-will. The results we may see 
 with our eyes and cakulate with our understanding ; 
 but the love itself springs from no calculations ; it 
 "passeth understanding" and is only spiritually 
 discerned. 
 
 Once more : there is an idea of holiness and sanc- 
 tity which is different from all which I have named, 
 though it may associate itself with them all. And 
 
6 THEISM 
 
 attached to this is the sentiment of reverence, one 
 of the noblest emotions of our nature, a humility 
 that in itself exalts ; which whoso is wanting in 
 wants one crowning grace of his manhood. 
 
 Lastly : there is in us a sentiment of wonder and 
 of awe, aroused by the sublime, by the mysterious 
 and the inexplicable. 
 
 These great ideas of cause and power ; of the 
 Absolute, the Infinite, the Perfect ; these great sen- 
 timents of love, right, beauty, sanctity, awe, — all 
 belong to the spiritual nature of man ; and the 
 capacity for them constitutes him a spiritual being. 
 The characteristic of all of them is that they are 
 primal, intuitive, spontaneous. They are not infer- 
 ences, but perceptions. They cannot be analyzed ; 
 for they are not results of any aggregation of details, 
 but are primitive and simple. They do not come in 
 at the end of any argument of the logical faculty. 
 They are not deductions, but postulates. The truths 
 they reveal are truths of the spiritual reason, not 
 of the practical understanding. And they have 
 this characteristic, that they are self-evident. By 
 which I do not mean that every human being rec- 
 ognizes them consciously ; but that, if they are seen 
 at all, they are seen by their own light, are their own 
 proof. They are native and original to the spiritual 
 constitution of man, and under certain circumstances 
 spring up involuntarily in his consciousness. 
 
 These ideas all point to and culminate in the idea 
 of God, the highest and sublimest idea of which hu- 
 man reason is capable ; around which gather all 
 these noblest sentiments I have named. This is an 
 idea primitive and spontaneous in the human soul. 
 
THEISM 7 
 
 The idea of God is the idea of a Unity behind 
 and through all the diversities of phenomena ; of 
 an Absolute, which is the substantial ground of all 
 things changing ; of an Infinite, which is the source 
 of all things finite ; of Essential Cause and Uni- 
 versal Creative Force. It is the idea of absolute 
 reason, of perfect wisdom, of absolute right, of per- 
 fect justice, of absolute good, of perfect love, of the 
 supreme beauty, of the supreme sanctity, the ineffa- 
 ble mystery, of the highest object of reverence and 
 awe, of love and trust. 
 
 This idea of God is awakened in the human soul 
 by whatever in the natural or the moral world moves 
 us profoundly ; in its ruder and lower forms by what 
 inspires terror, as the tempest and the earthquake ; l 
 or by mere wonder, as in magic or so-called miracle ; 
 in its purer forms by the vision of order, grandeur, 
 beauty, truth, righteousness, holiness, love. 
 
 But thus far I have only shown the existence of 
 certain ideas in the human soul. How do we know 
 that there is any Reality out of ourselves correspond- 
 ing to these ideas ? 
 
 I answer that we are so constituted that, when 
 these ideas spring up in our mind, there springs up 
 with them, necessarily, the sense of the reality of an 
 object from which they originate and which they 
 
 1 When Alexander Humboldt says, describing the terrific scene 
 of the Caraccas earthquake, that the church bells began to toll, but 
 it was no human hand, but the hand of God, that sounded them, the 
 statement seems to me as unspiritual as it is unscientific. Better 
 were the words of the young Goethe, after hearing a sermon upon the 
 earthquake at Lisbon : " The preacher might have known that no- 
 thing which could happen to a mortal body could harm an immortal 
 soul." 
 
8 THEISM 
 
 present. And we call these ideas intuitions, because 
 there is involved in the experience of them this 
 sense that they are perceptions of an object upon 
 which they directly look. 
 
 In other words, we know this objective reality of 
 divine things through our instinctive faith in the 
 trustworthiness of our faculties and their percep- 
 tions. 
 
 If we are deceived in this, then we have no means 
 of knowing anything whatever ; since all that we 
 know must be known through our faculties and 
 through our confidence in the trustworthiness of 
 those faculties. The scientist sets out with this pos- 
 tulate, that his powers of observation and compari- 
 son, his senses and his understanding, can be relied 
 on. If they cannot, no knowledge of the outward 
 world is possible. This faith is involved in all he 
 does. And he takes it without proof, as a self-evi- 
 dent certainty. 
 
 Still further : the very existence of an outward 
 world is known only by this faith. We think that 
 we see and touch the outward world ; and I believe 
 we do. But the metaphysician can easily show us 
 that all we are really conscious of is certain impres- 
 sions and sensations in ourselves. Nevertheless, we 
 are so constituted that with those subjective sensa- 
 tions there springs up, involuntarily and necessarily, 
 the sense of a real objective world corresponding to 
 them, and from which they proceed. 
 
 And that is just what I said about our spiritual 
 perceptions and a real spiritual object corresponding 
 to them, and from which they proceed. 
 
 There have been mystics, absorbed in the con- 
 
THEISM 9 
 
 templation of spiritual things, who have denied any 
 real existence of the outward world and called it an 
 illusion. There have been men, absorbed in the 
 contemplation of outward things, who have denied 
 the existence of any spiritual world, and declared 
 that God, soul, right, beauty, immortality, were but 
 words for fancies and illusions. 
 
 But all sound, practical men believe that they see 
 and touch a veritably existing world of matter, and 
 that the faculties by which they deal with it in the 
 carrying on of their outward life are trustworthy. 1 
 And all spiritually-minded men believe in the reality 
 corresponding to the ideas of truth, right, and good ; 
 to the idea of God as the ground of truth, right, and 
 good ; because they instinctively trust in their spir- 
 itual faculties. And in both cases experience justi- 
 fies the trust. Not that in either we are infallible. 
 Not but that our senses sometimes deceive us, and 
 our practical judgments sometimes lead us wrong ; 
 but on the whole, rightly used, they can be relied 
 upon. Not but that our spiritual perceptions some- 
 times lead us astray ; but on the whole, rightly used, 
 they can be trusted to lead us aright. 
 
 In other words, our native faculties are adequate 
 to their purpose, and their perceptions are valid ; 
 
 1 Professor Huxley says, indeed, " After all, what do we know of 
 this terrible ' matter ' except as the name for the unknown, hypothet- 
 ical cause of states of our own consciousness ? " A scientist may 
 say this in his speculative moments. But how long will it be pos- 
 sible for him to go on with his study of nature if he really believes 
 that he is dealing, not with actual existences, but only with states of 
 his consciousness ? He could not do it for a day, not for an hour. He 
 must believe in the existence, out of his own mind, of the carbon, the 
 atom, the fibre, the cell, the protoplasm. 
 
IO THEISM 
 
 and the more completely adequate and valid in pro- 
 portion as they are developed by healthy use in their 
 appropriate direction. 
 
 It is, then, in behalf of our spiritual nature and our 
 spiritual faculties that I plead for our knowledge of 
 God as real. Our spiritual reason testifies of Him ; 
 our moral sense declares Him ; our sacred affections 
 bear witness to Him. Imagination makes Him 
 known in his beauty. Reverence bends before his 
 majesty, his mystery, and his sanctity. Thus, with 
 consenting voice, in the heavens of the soul do rea- 
 son, conscience, and heart declare their knowledge 
 of God. And if the human spirit images God from 
 itself, it is because it is itself made in his image. 
 
 So, I say, we know God. 
 
 Not, of course, with the same kind of knowledge 
 as that with which we know the material world, but 
 with a knowledge as sure ; not with the same kind 
 of certainty, but with a certainty as satisfying. I do 
 not say that we comprehend Him, but that we truly 
 apprehend him. We know Him "in part." But 
 that part is the beginning of a continuous know- 
 ledge of Him, advancing with our spiritual growth. 
 
 Of course, if you insist, with a modern school in 
 philosophy, upon confining the term " knowledge " 
 to that which is obtained by the senses and the 
 scientific understanding, then, indeed, God is not 
 " knowable." And if that strict meaning be agreed 
 upon, let its definition be kept in view, and we will 
 seek another word. We will say that we apprehend 
 God, perceive God, have access to Him ; that He is 
 revealed to us by faith. But then we must under- 
 stand that faith is a ground of certainty. Paul 
 
THEISM 1 1 
 
 defines it as the evidence or assurance of things 
 not seen. Goethe calls it the " immediateness of 
 divine feeling." 1 It is an assurance on sufficient, 
 but interior, grounds. 
 
 But I see no reason why we should not, at least 
 until these definitions be settled, use the word 
 " knowledge " in its ordinary sense of rational appre- 
 hension, and say we know God ; only remembering 
 how it is that we know Him ; by what high faculty 
 of the soul. 
 
 But not only do we know God in the sense of 
 knowing that He is. 
 
 If that were all that were possible for us, I sup- 
 pose we should be thankful for that. If our belief 
 that we know more be but a delusion, we must be 
 willing to let it go, though half our life seem to go 
 with it. For it must always, in the end, be best 
 for us to know and accept the truth about anything. 
 And we must thank the hand that tears even a 
 cherished error from our mind. No error can be 
 good for us when we are able to know the truth for 
 
 1 This is the passage : " Strictly considered, I can know nothing of 
 God but what the very limited horizon of sensible perceptions on this 
 planet affords ground for, and that, on all points, is little enough. 
 Hereby, however, it is by no means asserted that by this limitation of 
 our observations on outward nature limits are likewise set to our faith. 
 On the contrary, the case may easily be that, by the immediateness 
 of divine feeling in us, knowledge must necessarily appear but a 
 patchwork. There are primary phenomena," he adds, " which in their 
 divine simplicity we ought not to distrust or disparage by useless 
 inquiries, but leave to reason and to faith. Let us endeavor to press 
 forward courageously from both sides. Where knowledge falls short 
 or appears inadequate, we must not contest with faith its rights. As 
 soon as we set out from the principle that knowledge and faith are 
 not given to destroy each other, but to supply each other's deficiencies, 
 we shall come nearer to an accurate and ri^ht estimate." 
 
12 THEISM 
 
 which it stands, or in the way of which it stands. 
 We can always bear the truth. 
 
 But I am persuaded that it is no delusion when 
 we have believed that we knew God, not only to be, 
 but to be infinitely wise, good, loving, just, beau- 
 tiful ; to be the very essence of wisdom, goodness, 
 love, justice, beauty. I am persuaded that it is not 
 a delusion when we have felt, in our moments of 
 goodness, love, justice, and spiritual beauty, that we 
 were very near to Him and He to us, even that He 
 was dwelling in us. Witness the glo'w that flows 
 like warm life-blood about our heart when we hear 
 but the reminiscence of such experiences. Witness 
 the chill and the desolation and sense of loss with 
 which we hear ourselves denied that access to Him. 
 Witness that inextinguishable longing of the human 
 soul to know God, and feel Him not afar off, testi- 
 fied to in the whole long history of mediators, inter- 
 cessors, revealers, which human need has constructed 
 to bridge the chasm and bind itself to God, when its 
 creeds have taught Him to be remote, inaccessible, 
 or alienated. Only so can the heart be satisfied. If 
 God be hidden from us, a Christ is made his mani- 
 festation. If He be inexorable, a loving Jesus, or 
 tenderer Mary Mother, is made to fill his place. If 
 He be inaccessible to our prayer, the intercession 
 of saints is sought. If we have no native faculty 
 of knowing Him or his will, a book revelation is 
 proclaimed. If He be hopelessly far away, hosts of 
 disembodied spirits will men seek, to learn their 
 duty and find the spiritual guidance they need be- 
 yond themselves. 
 
 History tells us that the periods of unbelief in God 
 
THEISM 13 
 
 have been precisely those most infested by supersti- 
 tions and prodigies and incantations. When the 
 true God is taken away, men cling to anything that 
 may connect them with the spiritual world. The 
 spiritual nature, defrauded of its right, seizes the 
 nearest counterfeit. Nor can even the companion- 
 ship of the wise and good of earth satisfy that secret 
 aspiration which yearns beyond the earth. And, 
 sufficient as the soul is to itself, it yet cannot live 
 alone. 
 
 But here some one may say to me, — and I will 
 here meet the objection, — almost all Christians will 
 tell us that they feel the very same chill and sense 
 of loss and desolation of which we speak when we 
 take away from them the " Christ " on whom they 
 lean. Of his nearness they feel the same need and 
 the same persuasion that we feel in regard to God ; 
 he is their only reliance, and the sweetness of his 
 presence is their strength and their consolation and 
 their peace ; through him alone they have hope of 
 forgiveness, access to heaven, and assurance of im- 
 mortality. Yet we pronounce their faith an error 
 and a delusion. Why is not the witness of their 
 hearts to Christ as trustworthy as the witness of 
 ours to God ? If they are mistaken, why may not 
 we be ? 
 
 I answer that certainly I claim no infallibility, and 
 that any positiveness of statement on my part is only 
 the expression of sincere conviction of what I hold 
 true. But I am confident that no error has kept any 
 strong or lasting hold upon human minds unless it 
 represented a truth higher than itself. It has been 
 that truth, so dimly seen as to be erroneously ex- 
 
14 THEISM 
 
 pressed, to which the heart has given its allegiance ; 
 and that truth, being higher, larger, contains all that 
 was good in the error, and more. What a devotee 
 of Christ, of Mary, has prayed to, has clung to, was 
 a spiritual power and love higher than, yet akin to, 
 himself ; that is, God. And when I bid him give 
 up the idol (eidolon, image) Christ, it is that he 
 may find the true, invisible God whom Christ has 
 imaged to him ; that he may find Him, not through 
 his representative manifestation, but in himself. It 
 is He that has been hearing his prayers ; why not 
 address them to Him ? It is He that has answered 
 them ; why not hear his voice ? Has he, from child- 
 hood on, been saying daily his prayer, "Our Father 
 who art in heaven, " and never believed that the 
 Father could receive it ? Every time, he ended it 
 with no mention of intercessor through whom it was 
 offered, or master as whose disciple he proffered it, 
 and has he never believed that it could so reach 
 Him? He may have fondly thought that he could 
 "see more of heaven reflected in the eye of Jesus" 
 than he could find elsewhere. But let him look up, 
 and lo ! in his own eye the whole blue heaven is 
 mirrored, and he sees face to face. He has clung to 
 the hand of Jesus ; if I unclasp it, it is that he may 
 touch the Father's hand, and, folded in his embrace, 
 and looking into his face, know at last in whom he 
 has trusted. For it was He that was with him, and 
 with whom he talked, though he knew Him not. 
 He was never inaccessible to him, never unwilling or 
 unable to hear him, forgive him, 1 redeem him. 
 
 1 By forgiveness we are to understand, not removal of penalty, 
 but healing and restoration, and assurance that penalty is redemptive. 
 
THEISM 1 5 
 
 Quite otherwise is it when one would take from 
 me as a delusion my faith that I can know God, and 
 in some true sense and measure know what He is 
 and find Him near to me. There is no higher truth 
 for which I can exchange that faith, and of which 
 it was the imperfect and erroneous expression. To 
 give me humanity is to give me less. To give me 
 myself, and my ideal as the image of my own possi- 
 bilities, is to give me a lower, not a higher. If it be 
 true, indeed, I will accept it and bear it as best I 
 may, as I can bear all losses. But if it be not true — 
 I thank God for the assurance I have that it is not ; 
 that, when my heart yearns upward for a divine love, 
 and an assurance meets it of an answering love, it 
 is really embosomed in an unspeakable divine ten- 
 derness ; that this loving-kindness and tender mercy 
 of our God is not left merely to be sought for and 
 inferred from the multitude of outward blessings, 
 and the manifold sources of happiness afforded in 
 surroundings of our life ; but is experienced, as we 
 experience the highest human love, not through 
 what it does for us, but in its own living presence. 
 Not the proofs of love, but the love itself, is it that 
 my heart feels in answer to its uplifted longing; 
 and with all its unspeakable comfort, cheer and 
 strength and sweetness and peace. 
 
 And when, in some hour of doubtful or difficult 
 duty, my moral sense, my conscience, has sought to 
 know the right, or to be nerved to faithfulness to the 
 right, and, looking beyond itself to Him, the Infinite 
 Justice and Perfect Righteousness, has found itself 
 illumined and invigorated, helped to see clearly and 
 to be true, come what might, I do not believe that it 
 was a delusion. 
 
1 6 THEISM 
 
 And when the mind, searching after truth, baffled 
 and struggling, but pursuing, like one making his 
 way through forest and thicket towards the light of 
 mountain-summits beyond, has found itself suddenly 
 freed into the light of a great truth seen to be an 
 everlasting law, and thanks God in its joy for the 
 revelation, it has not been mocked in the thought. 
 Light was waiting us as we sought the light, and it 
 was from beyond ourselves that it came. In such 
 moments we always feel that the truth which is free- 
 ing and exalting us is not anything of our own crea- 
 tion or possession. Our reason has communicated 
 with the depths of the Universal Reason, has looked 
 upon the Eternal Truth, and has received his inspi- 
 ration and revelation. 
 
 And when, in presence of nature's majestic beauty 
 or gentler loveliness, the imagination is kindled into 
 awe or stilled into peace, and we feel a sense of an 
 invisible and supernal beauty, a spirit in nature, 
 which makes the scene so sublime, so fair, — 
 
 " The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The inspiration and the poet's dream," — 
 
 it is not idly that the name of God springs to our lips 
 or our thought, — the name and the thought of Him 
 " who out of his own beauty maketh all things fair." 
 But this is not only our individual experience, 
 which might be an idiosyncrasy, which, if it were 
 peculiar to ourselves, we might suspect to be unreal. 
 Those to whom we speak of it say, So I have felt, 
 so I have thought. Multitudes upon multitudes of 
 witnesses, from far-off times and distant regions, add 
 their testimony. It is wellnigh universal. Saint and 
 
THEISM 1 7 
 
 reformer and prophet and philosopher and martyr 
 and poet and artist, and men of genius in all times, 
 have declared that a power beyond themselves moved 
 them, and spoke or worked through them. And 
 humbler men, in quiet, homely ways, have testified 
 to the visits of the Spirit in their heart. 
 
 And, in all times, men who have not claimed this 
 as their own experience or deemed it possible for 
 themselves, have yet believed it true that others, as 
 prophets, were inspired of God. 
 
 It is conceivable that all this belief, all this assur- 
 ance, springing up in the minds of men of such dif- 
 ferent race and culture, in so remote and separated 
 times, can be without foundation ? No doubt men 
 have often made mistakes about their own and others' 
 inspiration ; but all of this cannot be a mistake, all 
 a delusion. There was some ground for their errors. 
 For, as I cannot believe that, if there were no God, — 
 whatever mistaken notions men may have had about 
 Him, — men could by any possibility have almost 
 universally conceived of Him, so if He were not 
 accessible to man, and if man were not accessible 
 to Him, I do not see that the idea of his presence, 
 communion, inspiration, indwelling, could ever have 
 sprung up in so many minds, or in any mind. I ad- 
 mit the abundant false notions about God, and about 
 his relations to us, in past ages and in our own, in 
 heathendom and in Christendom, — gross and crude 
 and wicked and foolish conceptions. But I summon 
 even these to witness on my side ; to testify to the 
 reality of the ground-idea of God and his communion 
 with us ; that ground-idea and central truth which 
 they so poorly expressed, but which, with all their 
 
1 8 THEISM 
 
 grossness or folly, they could not extinguish, and 
 without which they could not have existed. 
 
 If we call this contact with God inspiration, and 
 its results revelation, it has been customary to regard 
 it as confined to a few persons especially selected 
 by the divine volition as the channel of illumination 
 and communication, and supernaturally (that is, 
 miraculously and not under any constant law of the 
 spirit) endowed or possessed. The speech, or re- 
 ported speech, of these men is counted the speech 
 or word of God. As such, it is declared to be infal- 
 lible, or virtually so ; the divine rule of faith and 
 practice ; not to be questioned, not to be judged ; 
 authoritative, without appeal. If any man will know 
 the truth or the will of God, there it is recorded ; 
 let him read and obey. 
 
 The objections to this theory are obvious from 
 any spiritual point of view. The Theist declares 
 inspiration and revelation to be the action of a con- 
 stant force, under a constant law; that is, under 
 fixed conditions (as all forces must be in an orderly 
 or God-governed universe). The difference between 
 the spiritual mind and the external mind is one of 
 kind. But the difference between a prophet and 
 any spiritually-minded man is only one of degree, 
 depending entirely upon the degree in which the 
 conditions have been fulfilled. For the germs of 
 spiritual-mindedness are in every human soul, how- 
 ever undeveloped, else no inspired teacher could 
 convey a spiritual truth to it. Try to convey what 
 sight is to a blind man, and you will see that this is 
 true. The responses which reason, heart, or con- 
 science make to the prophet's word are but the 
 
THEISM 19 
 
 springing to life of the inborn germ. They are the 
 opening of an eye whose nerve is made for sight. 
 How native to us always seems a new truth ! There 
 is no need to call the extraordinary gift superhuman 
 or miraculous. There is no more familiar fact in 
 the world than this of extraordinary men, — men of 
 genius we call them ; men so happily constituted, 
 and so faithful to their gift, that their faculties play 
 with unobstructed freedom in some special direc- 
 tion, so that in poetry or science or art they tran- 
 scend their age. You cannot compute the time and 
 culture that would be needed to bring the average 
 mind or average imagination up to them, even to the 
 full comprehension and enjoyment of them. Yet 
 we do not think there is anything superhuman or 
 miraculous about them. They have only in supreme 
 degree qualities which all men have in lower degree, 
 at least in possibility. Is there any reason why it 
 should be otherwise in the sphere of religion ? Spir- 
 itual superiority, spiritual supremacy even, if that 
 could be established, — do these any more implicate 
 a superhuman and a miraculous ? In view of this, 
 nothing, it seems to me, can be more futile and ir- 
 relevant than the question so often triumphantly 
 asked, If Jesus was but a man, how is it that none 
 equal to him has since appeared ? 
 
 But, in truth, I hesitate to speak of him ; be- 
 cause I wish to say only the exact truth. And what 
 means have we of knowing the exact truth about 
 him ? What can we know of him except that he 
 must have been a man, and that he was the centre 
 of a vast religious movement which envelops us ; a 
 movement, however, which by no means originated 
 
20 THEISM 
 
 with him, and which came to include in its complex 
 progress many powerful influences beside his. I 
 do not now insist upon the uncertainties which 
 modern criticism has thrown about the authorship 
 and contents of the Gospels. I do not dwell upon 
 the elements of myth, Messianic conception, and 
 doctrinal tendency, which have been shown to be 
 contained in them. I speak only of what is admitted 
 by all. We have not a single written word of his. 
 Nay, we have but three or four words that profess 
 to be reported as he spoke them. 1 What we have 
 are confessedly fragmentary reports of his words 
 written down from memory and tradition many 
 years after the events, and in a language different 
 from that in which he spoke. Even the original 
 reports we have not ; only later copies of them, 
 differing among themselves. Finally, the immense 
 majority of Christians have access only to a transla- 
 tion of these copies. So that we stand at three or 
 four removes from those words of Jesus which are 
 declared to be the supremely authoritative words of 
 life. Is it strange that a Theist should hesitate in 
 according them such authority as his words, seeing 
 no ground whatever for believing that they have 
 been miraculously preserved from the natural effects 
 of this multiplied tradition ? Is it strange that he 
 should think it easier to know what is true than 
 whether Jesus really said it ; to know what is right 
 than whether Jesus did it ; and should accord to any 
 
 1 Such, for instance as " talitha cumi," in the account of the rais- 
 ing of the daughter of Jairus; where, by the way, though he is rep- 
 resented as saying distinctly, " She is not dead," yet the whole 
 Christian church asserts that she was dead and was miraculously 
 brought back to life. 
 
THEISM 2 1 
 
 words attributed to Jesus only the value which his 
 own mind, heart, conscience can find in them ? 
 And this in no spirit of rejection, still less of defi- 
 ance, but simply in fidelity to the truth ? Is it 
 strange, in short, that when he is bidden to come to 
 Jesus he should answer, Jesus is no longer here ; I 
 could only go to some imagination of him — to his 
 portrait, as Francis Newman says ? But God is 
 here. To Him will I go. He has the word of life 
 for me. And that word abideth forever. Then, for 
 the time-honored and time-worn watchword, " Christ 
 and him crucified," I would substitute, God, and 
 Him infinitely near. 
 
 " For he is not far from any one of us," said Paul. 
 " God dwelleth in us," wrote the Augustan poet, 
 Manilius, and the Christian John. " Not even our 
 own thoughts are so nigh," said the German mystic, 
 Tauler. " Nearer to our souls than our bodies are," 
 wrote William Law. 
 
 When we remember that He is spirit and that we 
 are spirits, we comprehend how that can be. By our 
 spiritual nature we have access to Him, and He to 
 us. That is the mediator and revealer, the God-in- 
 man ; for in the highest action of our spirits we can- 
 not distinguish between the human and the divine. 
 In those exalted and mysterious moments, we and 
 our Father are one, as the mingling waters when the 
 ocean floods the river with its rising tide. 
 
 There are two ways by which this access of our 
 souls to God and this responsive inflowing are ac- 
 complished, of which I shall briefly speak. 
 
 The first is prayer. 
 
 It may or may not be spoken in words. The 
 
22 THEISM 
 
 prayers spoken in words are, we all know how often, 
 an offense to the spiritual sense, such utterance of 
 hardened formulas, of petrified phrases, such mum- 
 mies of piety, dead so long ago. So irrational, so 
 impious, save for some good intention, we wonder 
 that God can have patience with them and does not 
 cry out from the skies, " Be still ; and know that I 
 am God." But I do not think that He hears them. 
 Those rattling words cannot pierce to the realm of 
 spirit where He is. But, again, a spoken prayer, 
 our own or another's, may be such an outgoing of 
 the spirit that it shall quicken the slumbering heart 
 and lift up the fainting thought, and wing our affec- 
 tions into the heaven behind the veil. The essence 
 of prayer is aspiration, the yearning and seeking and 
 desire of the soul. Then it matters not what words 
 are uttered — all words of prayer are symbols ; they 
 are forms of feeling, not of criticism ; not the mathe- 
 matician's exactness, but the poet's freedom, belongs 
 to them. And the highest result and reward of the 
 conscious prayer is the unconscious, the perpetual 
 frame of trust and reverent humility before God, 
 which is the prayer without ceasing. We err if we 
 think prayer to be alone or chiefly petition, the ask- 
 ing for this and that. It is the cry of the spirit for 
 help in time of need ; but chiefly it is the heart set- 
 tling itself to rest in the divine sympathy. It is the 
 conscience bathing itself in the divine righteous- 
 ness. It is the will nerving itself by contact with 
 the divine energy. It is meditation and contempla- 
 tion and communion. It is the spontaneous out- 
 burst of joy. It is said of Theists that they do not 
 pray. Very likely they do not " make " so many 
 
THEISM 23 
 
 prayers. One of their number, I think, expressed 
 her regret that it was so ; and a Liberal Christian 
 added the comment, " Ah, if theism would but pray, 
 and so become a religion ! " But the orthodox Chris- 
 tian makes the same charge against the liberal, 
 pointing to infrequent family prayers, prayer-meet- 
 ings, and the like. Yet the orthodox Protestant need 
 not boast ; the Roman Catholic prays more times 
 than he ; has his church open every hour of every 
 day for the devout ; prays to the Virgin and a multi- 
 tude of saints, as well as to God and Christ. Do 
 you remember what Luther's wife, Catharine, said, 
 " How is it, Martin, that when we were Catholics 
 we prayed so often, and now so seldom ? " 
 
 Let us remember that many prayers may not be 
 mucJi prayer. There is a measure of quality as well 
 as quantity. Surely there can be nothing in the 
 faith in God, and Him infinitely near, that can hin- 
 der prayer in the spiritual sense. But the Theist's 
 prayers must be different from another's. He will 
 not ask God to give him the things he should get 
 for himself, nor to do for him what he ought to do 
 for himself, or to do for the world what it is men's 
 work to do for it. But he may ask for help to see 
 his duty and do it faithfully to himself and others ; 
 and the calm thought of the serenity of Infinite 
 Wisdom, and the breadth and depth of Infinite Love, 
 and the steadfastness of the Infinite Will to good 
 may clear his mind to see, and quicken his heart to 
 feel, and his will to do. And, for answer to prayer, 
 this powerful influence of having touched the In- 
 finite will satisfy him. He will not expect God to 
 occupy himself in an individual and special manner 
 
24 THEISM 
 
 with him. The individuality and the specialty are 
 on the human side. When I go out under the open 
 sky in one of these clear, radiant days, and breathe 
 in the invigorating air, I do not wish that the air 
 should be seeking me. It is searching me through 
 and through. I joy in the sunshine, but I do not 
 wish it to be selecting me to direct its warmth upon. 
 Enough that I bathe in the light, the air, the warmth, 
 and am filled by them as they are bountifully spread 
 for me as for all. So it is with the truth, the love, 
 the strength, the peace of God. They are for me 
 because they are for all. 
 
 I do not think that God gives us things in answer 
 to our prayer. To true prayer He gives somewhat 
 of himself, which enables us to get the things, or to 
 do without them. 
 
 If we are inspired by God when we seek Him, 
 it is that we inspire Him, — breathe Him into our 
 spirits. Few men, the physiologist will tell us, 
 breathe full breaths of the vital air. How few souls 
 breathe full breaths of the Divine Spirit ! 
 
 The second access to God is through obedience, 
 — the doing his will. Of this, too, I might say that 
 it is rather his access to us. And I must say, in 
 brief, that whenever we are putting forth our wills 
 in the direction of his will, — that is, in doing right 
 and doing good, — then his will with its divine energy 
 reinforces ours and acts through us. It does so, 
 whether we are conscious of it or not ; just as surely 
 as, if you direct your telescopic tube in the line of a 
 star's light, that light penetrates it ; just as surely 
 as, if you suspend a piece of iron in the line of the 
 magnetic currents, it becomes a magnet ; just as 
 
THEISM 25 
 
 surely as, if you build a wall upright, the force of 
 gravity holds it firm. And remember that God's 
 will is not a single volition or series of volitions, 
 but a constant force, a perpetual, unbroken energy 
 of good, everywhere pressing for entrance through 
 human wills to sustain, redeem, and perfect the cre- 
 ation. 
 
 There is a notion which was prevalent among 
 mystics in former ages, and has been revived in a 
 certain shape in our own time ; I mean the notion 
 that inspiration is best obtained through passivity of 
 our own minds and wills. Not into the vacated mind 
 and heart does God come, or any high spirit ; but 
 into the active mind and heart. Even our medita- 
 tion must be a contemplation, not an idle reverie. 
 Not the crucifixion of our will does He ask, as 
 devotees have taught, but the active consecration of 
 our will. God must need a strong will to work his 
 purposes, not a broken one. It must be a will, in- 
 deed, turned away from all self-indulgence and every 
 form of self-seeking. But when, endeavoring to do 
 God's will, we are most self -forgetfully absorbed in 
 that work, and most filled with Him, then we are 
 most ourselves ; our obedience is our perfect free- 
 dom. Tennyson has well expressed it in the familiar 
 lines : — 
 
 " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." 
 
 For to man as a spiritual being is given the privi- 
 lege of conscious voluntary obedience to the divine 
 law, found to be also the law of his own being. This 
 privilege he owes to the freedom of a will separate 
 from God, though not separated from Him ; a free- 
 
26 THEISM 
 
 dom of whose reality we are conscious, while we are 
 equally conscious of its limitations. 
 
 The materialistic Pantheist may lose God in na- 
 ture ; the mystical Pantheist may lose man and na- 
 ture in God ; the Theist finds God in man and in 
 nature, and beyond them. 
 
 For when a man has thus found God in himself, — 
 in his own spirit and through his own spirit, and in 
 true and holy men, — he may go out into nature, 
 and he will find it full of his presence, his power ; 
 though he would never find that presence in outward 
 nature till it had first been found in human nature. 
 He will find God not superintending the world from 
 afar, but moving it from within, close to every atom, 
 in all forces, which will be seen to be but forms of 
 the one universal cosmic force, which He is. The 
 majestic, all-encompassing, all -penetrating sweep of 
 that force is his creative will in nature ; his will, 
 not, as I said, a series of separate volitions, but an 
 immanent energy. Its tides flood every cranny of 
 the universe. God is in the sky and the sea ; in the 
 constellations and the grain of sand. He is in the 
 sunshine and the tempest ; in the blossoming clover 
 and the falling rain. Wherever his power is, He is. 
 Wherever is beauty, He is. Wherever is life, He is. 
 Wherever is beneficence, He is. What is hard and 
 maleficent in nature is only so much as is not yet 
 completely created and filled with his purpose of 
 love. 
 
 But it is only as cosmic force, of life, order, unity, 
 and beauty, that we find God revealed in the 
 outward world. In the soul of man, alone, He is 
 revealed in his grander moral aspects. There alone 
 
THEISM 27 
 
 He is revealed as person. For there He is revealed 
 as thought and purpose, as love and righteousness ; 
 and these are qualities of person and not of thing. 
 So, though conceiving of God as the infinite, all-per- 
 vading spirit in the world of matter and of mind, we 
 still say He, not It. 
 
 Of the presence of God as providence in human 
 affairs, I have left myself little space to speak. The 
 Theist finds this presence in continuous order, and 
 not in interrupting miracle ; in perfect law, not in 
 supplementing interference. This providence is, to 
 him, not special intervention, nor yet mere general 
 superintendence, but perpetual and universal saving 
 presence. He discovers a law of progress and evolu- 
 tion leading on toward perfection for the individual 
 and the race. All human freedom, though real 
 within its limits, is held within the control of this 
 supreme will of good. We may not be able, in 
 human events, to distinguish between God's will and 
 the sum or resultant of human wills. But we know 
 that the human wills that have aimed at justice and 
 good have been workers for God. In the late strug- 
 gles of our country's new birth, we have been led to 
 see most impressively a will of justice above human 
 wills, which yet acted through them ; the working of 
 divine forces which included the human. In these 
 years of intense experience how many souls have 
 met God face to face, and known Him, as never 
 before, in the inspirations of duty and in the revela- 
 tions of self-sacrifice for ideas ! I see that a move- 
 ment is making among some well-meaning but nar- 
 row-minded persons to get inserted into the national 
 constitution a formal recognition of God. But, in 
 
28 THEISM 
 
 the amendments which insert justice into that con- 
 stitution, God is put into it far more truly than if 
 his name alone were blazoned on its every page. 
 
 Thus I have tried to speak of our knowledge of 
 God. That knowledge, I have tried to show, is not 
 a perception of the senses, but a vision of the soul ; 
 not a deduction of the understanding, but a convic- 
 tion of the reason. Not the astronomer or the phy- 
 siologist speaks with authority here, but the saint. 
 We gladly accept every illustration of the divine 
 methods which physical science offers ; but the 
 primal proof of divine being is within. We will- 
 ingly modify our modes of speaking about God, and 
 his ways in nature, in conformity with every new 
 discovery of fact or law ; but we do not yield to 
 physical science what that science never gave — 
 the central idea of God. And the philosophy which 
 does not accept the experience of the saintly soul, 
 the intuitions of piety, and the inner facts of the re- 
 ligious sentiment, does not cover the whole ground. 
 It may prevail for a while, and do a good work in 
 disabusing men's minds of superstitions ; but it will 
 not keep a lasting place. 
 
 On a theme so high, all words must be little more 
 than suggestions. Not analysis, but living experi- 
 ence, is the key. Enough if I have touched some 
 spring in our common spiritual experience which 
 may have opened to any, more clearly, the grounds 
 of faith in that truth of truths without which life, 
 though full of good, would yet be shorn of its finest 
 glory, — the illumination of the divine presence. 
 
 Enveloped in that presence, we move ; quickened 
 by that, we live ; invigorated by that, we work ; em- 
 
THEISM 29 
 
 bosomed in that, we rest. " Ourselves from God we 
 cannot free " — always so near to us that we are 
 never lonely or unprotected ; never so close to us 
 that we are stifled or hindered. As the light, the 
 air, the electric forces, press closely round our 
 bodies, and enter in to mingle with them, yet with 
 no sense to us of constraint, but only of invigoration 
 and freedom ; so God, the Spirit, closely enfolds 
 and stirs within our soul, life of our life, spirit of our 
 spirit, life and spirit of the universe. 
 
 For as the light and air and electric forces, though 
 enfolding and dwelling in us, come from far above 
 us, and reach far beyond us ; so, He, the Infinite 
 Spirit, while encompassing us, and dwelling in us, 
 yet far transcends us. No human soul, if it lives, is 
 altogether without Him ; no human soul is large 
 enough to contain or fully express Him, for all are 
 contained in Him. 
 
 Have you sought after God, searching for Him 
 through the vastness of visible space, or amid the 
 perplexities of human existence, or by the analysis 
 of the understanding, and has your mind come back 
 baffled and disheartened ? Lo, in the snowflake or 
 the spring flower at your feet He awaited you ; in 
 every law of nature you were trusting Him ; in 
 every noblest thought of your mind, in every sacred 
 feeling of your heart, in every high ideal of your im- 
 agination, in every pure enthusiasm for beauty and 
 for goodness, in every sacrifice of visible to invisible, 
 of outward comfort to inward principle ; in every 
 simple doing of duty, in every familiar act and ser- 
 vice of unselfish love, He was revealing himself. 
 Not only in the twilight musing, but in the plain 
 
30 THEISM 
 
 daylight of daily work faithfully performed, He has 
 been with you. In every victory of good over evil, 
 you have met Him. In every just and holy man or 
 woman who has touched your life to higher issues, 
 you have seen Him. You have talked with Him in 
 the way, and broken bread with Him at the table. 
 Your words may fail, when you would speak of 
 Him ; but your soul cannot fail to acknowledge 
 Him. 
 
 March, 1872. From The Radical. 
 
THE UNITY AND UNIVERSALITY OF 
 THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 The old definition of Catholic truth was, " Quod 
 semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," — what has 
 been believed in at all times, in all places, and by all 
 men. 
 
 It would be easy to catalogue the diversities of 
 the religious conceptions, the moral practices of dif- 
 ferent times, places, nations, and to emphasize the 
 contradictions, until it might seem, as some indeed 
 believe, that there is no truth attainable by man, — 
 nothing but notions and opinions, fancies, errors, 
 and superstitions, perpetually changing, and alike 
 futile ; till it might seem, as many believe, that no- 
 thing but a miraculous intervention from heaven 
 could at last reveal the truth and the way, and bring 
 any order out of this chaos. I do not believe either 
 of these conclusions. And it is my undertaking, in 
 this paper, to show a unity and universality of truth 
 existing in spite of all these diversities and under 
 them all ; to show the element of truth existing 
 beneath all errors and superstitions. I take the 
 errors and superstitions, not to refute, but to bear 
 testimony to, the reality of the truth they have so 
 poorly, yet so really, represented. These are the 
 witnesses. Superstition declares an impulse in man 
 to religion. Idolatry establishes the inborn im- 
 pulse to worship. Polytheism reveals the native in- 
 
32 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 stinct in man to conceive of mysterious power above 
 man and nature. Necromancy involves a belief in 
 immortality. These are the rude beginnings, the im- 
 perfect, sometimes monstrous growths. But where 
 there was all this smoke, there must have been some 
 fire ; where there was all this manifestation, there 
 was something seeking expression. That something 
 was Religion ; man's native sense of somewhat within 
 him and beyond him other than the visible ; the 
 sense of the unseen and infinite and perfect haunt- 
 ing him, now in rude and incoherent dreams, now 
 in clearer vision ; but from which he could not free 
 himself. He tried to name it, and he stammered. 
 He tried to reach it, and he stumbled. But still 
 it stirred within him, and would not let him alone. 
 Still it shone before him, and beckoned him on. 
 That, in spite of all unintelligible and absurd be- 
 liefs, in spite of all burdensome and monstrous and 
 cruel practices, in spite of all tyrannies of priestcraft 
 and church authority, nearly all nations of men have 
 remained religious, is to me a most striking proof 
 of the reality and indestructibility of the religious 
 element in man's nature. 
 
 We must keep in mind the distinction between 
 essence and form, between a ground-idea and the 
 outward conception in which it shapes itself. The 
 conception varies as the idea works itself out in 
 greater or less clearness and force. 
 
 The diversities, however great, need not disturb 
 our faith in unities of idea. But the diversities have 
 been much exaggerated. The unity is found again 
 and again, not merely in the underlying idea, but in 
 the very expression of the truth. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 33 
 
 The great religious ideas are these : God, Duty, 
 Benevolence, Immortality. And these are universal 
 ideas. They have been believed in all times, in all 
 places, by all peoples. You cannot travel so wide 
 but you will find temples, or the ruins of temples, 
 altars, worships. You cannot read so far back into 
 the history of men, but you will find men thinking 
 of God, praying to Him, trying to do right, loving 
 their kind, looking beyond death to follow the souls 
 of their friends into an unseen world. The forms 
 which these ideas have taken have differed, and do 
 differ ; depending upon national character, upon 
 race, climate, degree of civilization ; sometimes 
 buried under superstitions, sometimes coming out 
 in simple forms and clear thought ; clothed in one 
 form of words in the imaginative and dreamy East, 
 in another in the practical West. In all ages, too, 
 and peoples, the more enlightened have held the 
 popular faith under a different aspect from the 
 ignorant. In all ages and peoples, there have been 
 individual men who have been above the level of 
 their time, superior to the limitations of their race 
 in a degree, though never entirely free from them ; 
 men of finer organization, wiser mind, more sensitive 
 spiritual perception, keener moral instincts ; lofty 
 and saintly souls, who have striven to draw brother 
 men away from superstition to truth, from baseness 
 to virtue ; to awaken them to a more living faith in 
 God, duty, immortality. These men have been rev- 
 erenced as prophets, have counted themselves sent 
 of God. They have been looked upon as his spe- 
 cial messengers. About them generally, after their 
 death, the reverence of their fellows, the imagination 
 
34 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 and wonder of men have gathered legends of mira- 
 cles ; have attributed to them supernatural birth and 
 supernatural powers ; have believed them incarna- 
 tions of a descended God, or have raised them to 
 demigods, and worshiped them. 
 
 The first great religious idea is the idea of God. 
 It is the idea of a mysterious Power superior to man, 
 — creative, retributive, beneficent. With this idea 
 the mind of man has always been haunted and pos- 
 sessed ; and growing intelligence has not destroyed 
 it, but only modified and elevated the forms of it. 
 The idea is germinal in, and native to, the reason 
 of man ; but his understanding, sentiment, and fancy 
 have embodied it in many varying conceptions. We 
 trace its presence and unfolding through the forms 
 of Fetichism or Idolatry, Sabeism or Nature-wor- 
 ship, Polytheism, Monotheism, to pure Theism, the 
 conception of one universal infinite Spirit, whose 
 immanent presence is the perpetual life of all things, 
 whose infinite Personality includes and inspires all 
 persons, while it transcends them; the "one God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and 
 in all/' 
 
 Behind all idolatries and image worship there has 
 always been a sense, more or less fully recognized, 
 of an Invisible which they represented ; and the 
 more intelligent have declared them to be only sym- 
 bols, a condescension to the senses and imagination. 
 Thus an English missionary relates that, standing 
 with a venerable Brahman to witness the sacred 
 images carried in pomp and cast into the Ganges, he 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 35 
 
 said : " Behold your gods ; made with hands ; thrown 
 into a river." "What are they, sir?" replied the 
 Brahman ; " only dolls. That is well enough for the 
 ignorant, but not for the wise." And he went on 
 to quote from the ancient Hindu Scripture : " The 
 world lay in darkness, as asleep. Then He who 
 exists for himself, the most High, the Almighty, 
 manifested himself and dispelled the gloom. He 
 whose nature is beyond our reach, whose being 
 escapes our senses, who is invisible and eternal, — 
 He, the all-pervading Spirit, whom the mind cannot 
 grasp, even He shone forth." x 
 
 In like manner, wherever Polytheism has pre- 
 vailed, there has been a vague sense of unity accom- 
 panying it and growing clearer with growing intelli- 
 gence. One of the gods comes to be regarded as 
 supreme, and the others to be but his ministers or 
 angels. The Jehovah of the Jews appears at first to 
 have been conceived of as not the only God, but the 
 special god of their nation, superior to the gods of 
 the other nations. Thus, even in Homer, we find a 
 tendency to gather up into Zeus, as centre and 
 source, all the functions of the other divinities ; 2 a 
 tendency which afterwards developed into the faith 
 expressed in the magnificent Hymn of Kleanthes. 
 The Egyptians believed in a "first God; Being 
 before all and alone; Fountain of all." A very 
 ancient inscription upon the tomb of Mentuhotep 
 speaks of "Turn, the one Being, the great God, 
 existing of himself, Creator, Lord of all gods." 3 In 
 
 1 Laws of Mann, i. 5, 7. 
 
 2 Denis, Histoire des Theories et des Idees Morales, i. 7. 
 8 From the translation of Lepsius. 
 
36 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 the " Rig Veda," the most ancient collection of Hindu 
 Hymns, we read: "They call Him Indra, Mithra, 
 Varuna, Agni ; — that which is One the wise call in 
 divers manners." And again: "The poets make 
 the beautiful-winged, though He is One, manifold 
 by their words." : So the later " Bhagavad Gita" 
 speaks of "the Supreme, Universal Spirit, the Eter- 
 nal Person ; divine, before all gods, omnipresent ; 
 Creator and Lord of all that exists ; God of gods, 
 Lord of the Universe." 2 And the " Vishnu Purana " 
 says : " The one only God, the Adorable, takes the 
 designation of Brahma, Vishnu, or Siva, accordingly 
 as He creates, preserves, or destroys. He is the 
 Supreme, the giver of all good." 3 The Aztecs of 
 Mexico, with their more than two hundred deities, 
 recognized one supreme Creator and Lord, whom 
 they addressed in their prayers as " the God by whom 
 we live," " omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts 
 and giveth all gifts," "without whom man is as 
 nothing," "invisible, incorporeal; one God, of utter 
 perfection and purity." 4 So the ancient Peruvians 
 had their " Creator and Sustainer of Life ; " the 
 American Indians, their Great Spirit, " Master of 
 Life;" the Scandinavians, their "All-father." 
 
 In the Masdean, or Zoroastrian, belief, Ormuzd 
 (Ahuramazda) is spoken of as " omniscient, omnipo- 
 tent, and omnipresent ; formless, self-existent, and 
 eternal ; pure and holy ; Lord over all creatures in 
 
 1 Rig Veda (b. c. 1500), i. 164, 46; and x. 14, 5. See Miiller, 
 Chips, i. 29. 
 
 2 Bhagavad Gita, chapter x. 
 
 3 Wilson's translation, i. 41, 43. 
 
 4 Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, i. 57. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 37 
 
 the universe ; the Refuge of those who seek his 
 aid." He is invoked as "the Creator, the glorious, 
 majestic, greatest, best, most fair, mightiest, wisest, 
 highest in holiness ; who created us, who keeps us." x 
 And where the forms of polytheistic mythology 
 occupied the popular mind, the intelligent and phi- 
 losophic have always regarded these as but shapes 
 of the fancy, and taught a pure doctrine of the unity 
 and spirituality of God. Xenophanes, as Aristotle 
 relates, casting his eyes upward to the heavens, 
 declared the One his God. He condemned the 
 prevalent mythologies and the notions of God in 
 human figure, and severely blamed Hesiod and 
 Homer for their scandalous tales about the gods. 
 He taught that "there is one supreme God among 
 beings divine and human. . . . He governs all 
 things by power of reason." The Pythagoreans 
 taught the unity of God, and compared Him to a 
 circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circum- 
 ference nowhere. " There are not different gods for 
 different nations,'" wrote Plutarch. "As there is 
 one and the same sun, moon, sky, earth, sea, for all 
 men, though they call them by different names ; so 
 the One Spirit which governs this universe, the 
 Universal Providence, receives among different 
 nations different names." 2 "There is but one God, 
 who pervades all," writes Marcus Aurelius, the 
 Roman emperor. 3 "In all this conflict of opinions," 
 says Maximus Tyrius, "know that through all the 
 
 1 Avesta, Yanca, i. 1, 2. Bleeck's translation. Zoroaster was 
 born b. c. 589. 
 
 2 Cited by Denis, ii. 224. 
 
 3 A. D. 121. Thoughts, vii. 9. 
 
38 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 world sound one consenting law and idea, that there 
 is one God, the King and Father of all, and many 
 gods, the children of God. This both the Greek 
 and the Barbarian teach." And again he says, "I 
 do not blame the variety of representations : only 
 let men understand that there is but one Divine 
 nature ; let them love one and keep one in their 
 thoughts." 1 
 
 Upon a temple at Delphi was the inscription EI, 
 Thou art. And upon this Plutarch writes : "We 
 say to God : Thou art ; giving Him thus his true 
 name, the name which belongs alone to Him. For 
 what truly is ? That which is eternal, which has 
 never had beginning by birth, never will have end 
 by death, that to which time brings no change. It 
 would be wrong to say of Him who is, that He was 
 or will be, for these words express changes and 
 vicissitudes. But God is. He is, not after the fash- 
 ion of things measured by time, but in an immovable 
 and unchanging eternity. By a single Now He fills 
 the Forever. For Deity is not many, but that which 
 is must be one." 2 
 
 Again, after denying the fable of the birth and 
 education of Zeus, Plutarch says : " There is.nothing 
 before him ; he is the first and most ancient of be- 
 ings, the author of all things ; he was from the begin- 
 ning ; too great to owe his existence to any other 
 than himself. From his sight is nothing hid. . . . 
 Night and slumber never weigh upon that infinite 
 eye, which alone looks upon the truth. By him we 
 see, from him we have all which we possess. Giver 
 of all good, ordainer of all which is and which hap- 
 
 1 Dissertations, 38. 2 On the WordYX, 17, 19, 20. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 39 
 
 pens, it is he who gives all and makes all. In him 
 are the beginning, the end, the measure, and destiny 
 of everything." 1 
 
 We are sometimes pointed to Buddhism as an in- 
 stance of a religion without a God. That its primitive 
 teaching was such I suppose must be admitted ; 
 perhaps it was a reaction from the excessive devo- 
 teeism or the corrupted worship of the Brahmans. 
 But it was not long before the Buddha himself be- 
 came an object of worship. And there is ample 
 evidence that in our day the three hundred millions 
 of Buddhists are not without a belief in God. In a 
 Buddhist tract we read : " There appears in the law 
 of Buddha only one Omnipotent Being. . . . He is 
 a Supreme Being above all others ; and, although 
 there are many gods, yet there is a Supreme who is 
 God of the gods." 2 Hue relates a conversation with 
 a Thibetan Lama, who said to him, " We must not 
 confound religious truth with the superstitions which 
 amuse the credulity of the ignorant. There is but 
 one sole sovereign Being who has created all things. 
 He is without beginning, and without end ; He is 
 without body, He is a spiritual substance." 3 And 
 Schlagintweit says, " In face of all these gods, the 
 Lamas emphatically maintain monotheism to be the 
 real character of Buddhism." And again he speaks 
 of a chief Buddha, Adi Buddha, called " Supreme 
 Buddha," "the Being without beginning or end," 
 
 1 Cited by Denis, ii. 225. Plutarch was born a. d. 50. 
 
 2 Upham's Sacred Books of Ceylon, iii. 13. In some of the tracts 
 of this volume the existence of a Supreme Being is denied. Buddha 
 died b. c. 548. 
 
 3 Journey through Tartary, Thibet, etc., i. 121, 122. 
 
40 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 "the Supreme Intelligence, God above all." 1 So 
 that evidently the statement, "that a third of the 
 human race have lived and died without a belief in 
 God," is altogether too strong. 
 
 With the idea of God we find united the idea of 
 providence, beneficence, and friendly care toward 
 man. And from this, joined with a perception of a 
 moral likeness between Him and man, sprang natu- 
 rally in the heart and mind of men the conception 
 of his fatherhood. This thought of God as our Fa- 
 ther is often represented as the peculiar revelation 
 of Jesus. But it was known and taught long before 
 and far beyond Christianity. We find the name of 
 Father familiarly given to the Supreme in India, 
 Greece, and Rome. 
 
 Thus we read in the "Rig Veda:" "May our 
 Father, Heaven, be favorable to us. May that Eter- 
 nal One protect us evermore. We have no other 
 Friend, no other Father." "The Father of heaven, 
 who is the Father of men." 
 
 " Father of gods and of men," says Hesiod of 
 Zeus. And " Father of gods and of men," echoes 
 Homer; and again, "Zeus, most great and glorious 
 Father." " Father omnipotent " is Virgil's phrase, 
 and " the Father." In Horace we find, " Father and 
 guardian of the human race ; " " the Parent who gov- 
 erns the affairs of men and of gods ; " " the Father." 
 Plutarch declares that " Zeus is by nature the Father 
 of men ; and the best men he calls his sons." 2 " He, 
 the glorious Parent, tries the good man and prepares 
 him for himself," writes Seneca. 3 "God, of all 
 
 1 Buddhism in Thibet, page 108. 2 Apophthegmata. 
 
 3 De Providentia, i. 6. Seneca was born a. d. 3. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 41 
 
 things which are Father and Maker, more ancient 
 than the sun ; whom no voice can express, no eye 
 behold," says Maximus Tyrius. And Epictetus, " If 
 what philosophers say of the kinship between God 
 and men be true, . . . why should not a man call 
 himself a citizen of the universe? why not a son of 
 God ? . . . Shall not having God for our Maker, Fa- 
 ther, and Guardian free us from griefs and alarms ? " 
 And again, speaking of Heracles, he says, " He 
 knew that no human being is an orphan, but that 
 there is a Father who incessantly cares for all. For 
 he had not merely heard it said that Zeus is the Fa- 
 ther of mankind, but he esteemed and called him 
 his own Father, and in thought of him performed all 
 his deeds." 1 
 
 Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, says that " he who re- 
 gards the whole universe as his country feels bound 
 to seek the favor of its Father and Framer ; " 2 and 
 again, " God, whose most fit name is Father ; " and 
 "One Creator, one Father." 3 And in the Talmud 
 we read : " Every nation has its special guardian 
 angels ; Israel shall look only to Him. There is 
 no mediator between those who are called his chil- 
 dren and their Father which is in heaven." "As 
 long as Israel is looking up to its Father which is 
 in heaven it will live." " If we are called servants 
 of God, we are also called his children." 4 In every 
 synagogue in Judea and Galilee were recited at each 
 service these sentences of prayer : " Be Thou mer- 
 
 1 Discourses, i. 9 ; iii. 24. 
 
 2 De Monarchia. Philo was born A. D. 27. 
 
 3 Confusion of Languages, 33. 
 
 4 London Quarterly Review, October, 1867. 
 
42 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 ciful unto us, our Father, for we have sinned." 
 " Most merciful Father, pardon us." " Bring us back, 
 O our Father, to the keeping of thy law." And 
 daily in the temple was spoken the prayer, " Bless 
 us, O our Father, all even as one, with the light of 
 thy countenance." 1 
 
 ii. 
 
 The second great religious idea which I named is 
 the Moral Idea ; the idea of Right, of Duty ; and 
 the sense of the obligation of the Virtues. I call 
 this religions ; I know it is often called " only 
 moral.'" But if by moral be meant anything deeper 
 than mere custom or habit or external good behav- 
 ior ; if it go down to principles and laws felt to be 
 of a creation and an obligation superior to human 
 will, — then we are in the realm of the invisible, the 
 eternal, in the realm of religion. Therefore I call 
 righteousness an essential part of religion. To some 
 men, who have little of devout sentiment, or who 
 have speculative difficulties about belief in God, or 
 in a God, morals or righteousness is the substance 
 of their religion ; and, if it gives a sacred sanction 
 and an immutable ground of nobleness to their lives, 
 it is truly a religion. To the devout mind, the sen- 
 timent and idea of right become identified with the 
 will of God. Obedience to the law of our own being 
 is obedience to his law ; his service is therefore 
 perfect freedom, and finds its sacred sanction in like- 
 ness to Him. 
 
 We ought not to be surprised to find that the 
 idea of right and wrong has been universal among 
 1 See Prideaux and Lightfoot. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 43 
 
 men. That is but saying that men have always been 
 men ; have always had consciences, as they have al- 
 ways had senses, affections, language, society. We 
 ought not to be surprised that the virtues of justice, 
 honesty, veracity, purity, have been inculcated and 
 practiced under all forms of religion. Yet there are 
 those who, on account of superficial diversities and 
 differences of development, deny any universality in 
 the moral ideas. They point, for instance, to the 
 immoralities attributed to the gods in some of the 
 polytheistic mythologies. But the wiser men in 
 these nations disbelieved and denounced these 
 fables. Thus we find Plato in his " Republic," at 
 great length, blaming Hesiod and Homer for attrib- 
 uting low morals to the gods, and declaring the 
 falsity of such notions. 
 
 But even among those who currently believed 
 these things of the gods, the practice of them was 
 not justified or approved among men. There was 
 thought perhaps to be a different law for the Im- 
 mortals, or only their own will. Just as, in Chris- 
 tendom, God's mere will is thought to be for Him 
 the only law of right. In Christian churches it is 
 currently taught that He may justly do what in man 
 would be monstrous cruelty. God is believed to 
 spend eternity in burning alive those of his chil- 
 dren who have disobeyed Him, or who have only not 
 accepted his conditions of salvation ; or in subject- 
 ing them to tortures of which burning alive would 
 be a faint symbol. But the same act would not for 
 a moment be justified, or be judged as other than 
 monstrous cruelty, in a man. In the decadence of 
 Rome, it became a fashion for the dissolute young 
 
44 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 men to take the names of the several gods, and 
 addict themselves to their special vices ; but, of 
 course, in that there was no serious belief of any 
 kind. And precisely in these periods of corruption 
 we find the wiser and better men lamenting the 
 prevalence of vices, inveighing keenly against them ; 
 in the name of religion urging a pure morality, en- 
 deavoring to awaken the sense of personal virtue, 
 and working reforms in morals and manners. v 
 
 But it is urged that practices condemned by the 
 conscience of one time and religion have been 
 approved or commanded by that of some others. 
 Doubtless these diversities in the application of 
 moral judgments have existed, and do exist, accord- 
 ing as the moral sense has been more or less enlight- 
 ened and cultivated. I am not declaring the absolute 
 uniformity of the moral, or the religious, conceptions 
 or practices of men ; only the virtual universality 
 and essential unity of the idea. Doubtless the 
 diversities exist. But they have been exaggerated. 
 And the difference is often on the surface, in the 
 form of the act, and not in its quality or motive. 
 Thus human sacrifices, so prevalent in primitive 
 worships, are held up as instances of sanctioned 
 cruelty. So they would be for us ; and always they 
 mark, of course, a low state of religious and moral 
 perception. But they were never offered in a mo- 
 tive of cruelty. A religious feeling overrode the 
 natural sentiment of humanity ; that sentiment was 
 sacrificed in what was erroneously deemed a higher 
 feeling, as in the tale of Abraham offering his son. 
 Moreover, under the practice of human sacrifices lay 
 the true idea of offering to God that which was most 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 45 
 
 precious. Doubtless the young men who, among the 
 Aztecs, were every year selected and prepared for 
 the bloody rites of the god counted it a glory to 
 be so consecrated, and went to the "teocalli " with 
 something of the exalted sentiment with which a 
 youth devotes himself to death in his country's 
 defense. But the same religions which enjoined 
 these bloody offerings to their gods enjoined among 
 men the obligations of kindness and humanity. 
 The Christian church proclaims daily the acceptable- 
 ness to God of the great Human Sacrifice, pictures 
 the body torn upon the cross, and dwells with ear- 
 nest iteration upon the efficacy of the blood shed on 
 Calvary, and its necessity to appease the wrath of 
 God. But it inculcates at the same time on men 
 pity, compassion, and justice. A sincere but mis- 
 taken religious sentiment blinds it to the essential 
 cruelty and injustice involved in God's acceptance 
 of such a sacrifice as it depicts. 
 
 With all the differences, then, in the culture of 
 the moral sentiments, and in the application of moral 
 judgments, we are justified in declaring the univer- 
 sality of the moral idea. In no age or people has 
 anything been approved because it was unjust, or 
 that was seen at the same time to be unjust. More 
 than this : we find, in widely different nations and 
 times, the continual recurrence of the same moral 
 injunctions, the inculcation of the same virtues. 
 
 In the " Vishnu Purana," a Brahmanic scripture, 
 we read : 1 — 
 
 " The earth is upheld by the veracity of those 
 who have subdued their passions, and, following 
 1 Translation of H, H. Wilson, vol. iii. 
 
46 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 righteousness, are never contaminated with desire, 
 covetousness, or wrath." " The Eternal makes not 
 his abode in the heart of the man who covets an- 
 other's goods, who injures any living creature, who 
 utters harshness or untruth, who is proud in his 
 iniquity, and whose thoughts are evil." 
 
 " Kesava [a name of God] is most pleased with 
 him who does good to others, who never utters 
 calumny or falsehood, who never covets another's 
 wife or another's goods, who does not smite or kill, 
 who desires always the welfare of all creatures and 
 of his own soul, whose pure heart takes no pleasure 
 in the imperfections of love and hatred. The man 
 who conforms to the duties enjoined in the Scripture 
 is he who best worships Vishnu [God] ; there is no 
 other way." 
 
 "The duties incumbent alike on all classes are 
 the support of one's own household, marriage for 
 the sake of offspring, tenderness toward all crea- 
 tures, patience, humility, truth, purity, freedom from 
 envy, from repining, from avarice, from detrac- 
 tion." 
 
 " Know that man to be the true worshiper of 
 Vishnu who, looking upon gold in secret, holds 
 another's wealth but as grass, and directs all his 
 thoughts to the Lord." "The Brahman must look 
 upon the jewels of another as if they were but peb- 
 bles." 
 
 The five commandments of the Buddhist religion, 
 which dates six centuries before the Christian era, 
 and counts among its adherents more millions than 
 any other church, are these : i. Thou shalt not kill. 
 2. Thou shalt not steal. 3. Thou shalt not commit 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 4? 
 
 adultery, or any impurity. 4. Thou shalt not lie. 
 5. Thou shalt not intoxicate thyself with drink. 1 
 
 I need not occupy space with quotations of moral 
 precepts from the ethical writings of the Greek and 
 Roman philosophers. A single sentence of Aris- 
 totle sums them up : "In all times men have praised 
 honesty, moral purity, beneficence. In all times 
 they have protested against murder, adultery, per- 
 jury, and all kinds of vice. No one will dare main- 
 tain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it." 2 
 So we find in Cicero, " The true law is everywhere 
 spread abroad ; it is constant eternal. It calls us to 
 duty by its commandments ; it turns us away from 
 wrong-doing by its prohibitions. We can take no- 
 thing from it, change nothing, abrogate nothing. 
 Neither the Senate nor the people have the right 
 to free us from it. It is not one thing at Rome, 
 another at Athens ; one thing to-day, to-morrow an- 
 other. But eternal and immutable, the same Law 
 embraces all times and all nations. There is one 
 Being alone who can teach it and impose it upon 
 all ; that is, God." 3 
 
 This same religious sanction of right-doing we 
 find in various writers, urged with the motive of 
 likeness to God. "God is just," says Plato, "and 
 there is nothing that resembles Him more than the 
 just man." 4 " The temperate [virtuous] man is dear 
 
 1 Upham's Sacred Books of Ceylo?i. Sometimes five other com- 
 mandments are added. 
 
 2 Topic VIII. x., cited by Boutteville, La Morale, page 542. So 
 Plato : " He who commits injustice is ever more wretched than he 
 who suffers it." Gorgias, Bonn's translation, i. 177. Plato was born 
 B. c. 430. 
 
 3 Cited by Denis, Theories Morales, ii. 16. 
 
 4 Thecvtetus, Rohn, i. 411. 
 
48 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 to God, for he is like Him." 1 . Zeno taught that 
 "men ought to seek after perfection ; for God is 
 perfect." 2 Epictetus says that he who would please 
 and obey God must seek to be like Him. " He must 
 be faithful as God is faithful ; free, beneficent, noble, 
 as God is ; in all his words and actions behaving as 
 an imitator of God." 3 " Love mankind ; follow God," 
 wrote Marcus Aurelius. 4 
 
 There is a celebrated moral rule which is called 
 the Golden Rule of Christianity. Confucius, some 
 five centuries before the Christian era, was asked, 
 "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of 
 practice for all one's life ? " The master replied, " Is 
 not reciprocity such a word ? What you. do not wish 
 done to yourself, do not to others." 5 Thales, first 
 of the Greek philosophers, taught : " That which 
 thou blamest in another do not thyself to thy neigh- 
 bor;" and Isocrates : "Thou wilt deserve to be 
 honored if thou doest not thyself what thou blamest 
 in others." 6 " Let no one treat his brother in a way 
 he would himself dislike," is a Sabean maxim, pre- 
 served by El Wardi. In the fourth chapter of the 
 so-called "apocryphal" book of Tobit, 7 among many 
 other excellent precepts, we read, " Do to no man 
 what thou thyself hatest." In the Jewish Talmud, 
 also, we find, " Do not to another what thou wouldst 
 not he should do to thee ; this is the sum of the 
 law," given as one of the teachings of the Rabbi 
 
 1 The Laws, Bohn, v. 140. 
 
 2 Cited by Boutteville, page 531. Zeno was born b. c. 300. 
 
 3 Discourses, ii. 14. 
 
 4 Thoughts, vii. 31. 
 
 5 Legge, Confucian Analects, xv. 22, 
 
 6 Cited by Boutteville, page 533. 7 Circa 175 B.C. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 49 
 
 Hillel, who died when Jesus, according to the com- 
 mon reckoning, was ten years old. 1 
 
 It is not merely external rules, nor outward good 
 conduct alone, that we find inculcated in these uni- 
 versal morals. The wise and good in all times have 
 looked within the heart for the motive and quality 
 of right action. Confucius continually urges the 
 "having the heart right." "I keep pure my 
 thoughts," says a Parsee hymn. And throughout 
 the Zoroastrian scripture "good thoughts" are 
 always joined with "good words and good works." 
 " Seek to converse in purity with your own pure 
 mind and with God," says Epictetus. " The first 
 and highest purity is that of the soul." And he 
 warns his disciple that he should not even look 
 upon the wife of another with an impure thought. 2 
 So Ovid: "It is not by locks and bars that a wo- 
 man ought to be guarded, but by her own purity ; 
 she who does not sin only because she is unable has 
 really sinned ; her heart is adulterous." 3 And Juve- 
 nal : " He who in the silence of his own thought 
 plans a crime has upon him the guilt of the deed." 4 
 "The good man," says Cicero, "not only will not 
 dare to do, he will not even think what he dares not 
 proclaim." 5 " Keep thy divine part pure," writes 
 Marcus Aurelius ; and again, " Look within ; within 
 is the fountain of good." "That which is hidden 
 within, — that is the life, that is the man." 6 
 
 So we shall not be surprised to find that not only 
 
 1 London Quarterly Review, October, 1867. 
 
 2 Discourses, ii. 18; iv. n. 3 Cited by Denis, ii. 124. 
 4 Satires xiii. v. 209. 5 De Officiis^ iii. 19. 
 
 r ' Thoughts, iii. 12 ; viL 29 ; x. 38. 
 
50 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 the conspicuous virtues are inculcated by the so- 
 called " heathen " teachers ; the lowly and the pas- 
 sive have their place and commendation. " Who- 
 ever wishes to be happy," says Plato, " must attach 
 himself to justice, and walk humbly and modestly in 
 her steps. He who lets himself be puffed up with 
 pride, devoured by ambitious desires, and thinks he 
 has no need of master or guide, God abandons him 
 to himself. He ends by destroying himself." 1 " Do 
 what you know to be right without expecting any 
 glory from it," is given as a saying of Demophilus, 
 the Pythagorean ; and " Keep thy life hid," is said 
 to have been one of the great maxims of the Epicu- 
 reans. " Dear to all hearts is he whom lowliness 
 exalts," is a Persian saying; 2 and another, "Make 
 thyself dust to do anything well." " He who knows 
 the light, and yet keeps the shade, will be the whole 
 world's model," said Lao-tze ; and again, " He that 
 humbles himself shall be preserved entire, — that 
 is no vain utterance." " To attain God, the heart 
 must be lowly," is a Hindu maxim. " Patience and 
 resignation are the one road ; Buddha has declared 
 no better path exists," says a Chinese scripture. It 
 has even been objected that Buddhism unduly exalts 
 the " passive virtues." "Who is the great man? 
 He who is strongest in the exercise of patience, he 
 who patiently endures injury," is a saying attributed 
 to the Buddha himself. In the Brahmanic " Vishnu 
 Purana," " Tenderness toward all, patience, humil- 
 ity," are named among the "duties incumbent on 
 all." 
 
 1 Cited by Boutteville. 
 
 2 This and the following sentences are from Conway's Sacred An- 
 
UXITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 5 I 
 
 Humility is said to have had only an ignoble 
 meaning with the Romans, but Epictetus, 1 who may 
 have learned the lesson as a slave, recommends to 
 his disciple to " train and perfect his will, and ren- 
 der it noble, free, faithful, humble." And elsewhere 
 he says, " Such will I show myself to you, faithful, 
 modest, noble, tranquil, since Olympian Zeus him- 
 self does not haughtily lift his brow." In his im- 
 perial palace Marcus Aurelius could say to himself, 
 " Take care that thou be not made into a Caesar. . . . 
 Keep thyself simple, good, pure, . . . kind, affec- 
 tionate." Again, " Make thyself all simplicity." 2 
 He everywhere praises modesty, and commends the 
 " sweetness " and " patience " of Antoninus. " The 
 more exalted we are, the more lowly we ought to 
 walk," said Cicero. 3 In the Talmud we read, " He 
 who humbles himself will be lifted up ; he who ex- 
 alts himself will be humbled." " He who offers 
 humility before God and man shall be rewarded as 
 if he had offered all the sacrifice in the world." And 
 again, " He who gives alms in secret is greater than 
 Moses." 4 So Seneca wrote, " That which is given 
 to infirmity, to indigence, to honest poverty, ought 
 to be given in secret, and known only to those who 
 are benefited by it. . . . Such is the law of benefits 
 between men, — the one ought to forget at once 
 what he has given, the other never to forget what he 
 has received." 5 And Plutarch, "The virtuous man 
 
 1 Discourses, i. 4 ; ii. 8. 
 
 2 Thoughts, vi. 30 ; iv. 28. 
 
 3 De Officiis, i. 26. Cicero was born B. c. 106. 
 
 4 London Quarterly Review, October, 186- . 
 
 5 De Beneficiis. 
 
52 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 buries in silence his good deeds." " All thinking 
 beings," says Marcus Aurelius, " have been made 
 one for the other ; they owe patience one toward 
 another." " 'T is against nature to cherish ill-will 
 to him who is your neighbor, your kindred, your 
 brother." 
 
 in. 
 
 And so we strike upon the sentiment of benevo- 
 lence, the virtue of disinterestedness, the idea of 
 Brotherhood. We shall find the inculcations of 
 Love as widely spread as those of Justice. While 
 inhumanity has always existed in the world, and 
 selfishness and cruelty are certainly not yet outgrown, 
 in all times there have been protests against them 
 from the lips of the good, from the better heart of 
 man. Always there have been kindness, forgive- 
 ness, charity, and the inculcation of them. Those 
 sweet waters have flowed ever from the perennial 
 springs in the heart of man and of God, to refresh 
 even the most desert places. " He who injures any 
 living creature does it to God," says the " Vishnu 
 Purana ; " " He is most pleased with the man who 
 does good to others ; who bears ill-will to none." 
 " The Brahman must ever seek to promote the 
 good of others, for his best riches are benevolence 
 to all." " He who feeds himself, and neglects the 
 poor and the friendless stranger needing hospital- 
 ity, goes to hell." " He who eats his food without 
 bestowing any upon his guest eats iniquity." The 
 Pythagoreans taught that the old ought to treat the 
 young with benevolence ; and men to be kind to 
 children, remembering that childhood is especially 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 53 
 
 dear to God. We must bear one another's burdens, 
 they said, but not lay burdens on any. Justice, 
 they said, is the beginning of political equality, but 
 brotherly love is the completion of it. If disputes 
 or anger arose between any of his disciples, their 
 master taught them to be reconciled before the sun 
 should go down. 1 Iamblichus tells us that " Pytha- 
 goras taught the love of all towards all." 2 In 
 Confucius we find these notable words : " My doc- 
 trine is simple and easy to understand. It consists 
 only in having the heart right, and in loving one's 
 neighbor as one's self." 3 And when one asked him 
 about benevolence, he answered, " It is love to all 
 men." 4 "We are by nature inclined to love men," 
 says Cicero. 5 " Take away love and benevolence, 
 and you take away all the joy of life." 6 " Kindness, 
 justice, liberality, are more in accordance with our 
 nature than the love of pleasure, of riches, or even 
 of life." And he quotes with approval the maxim 
 of the Stoics, that " men are born for the sake of 
 men, that they may naturally benefit one another." 7 
 " What good man, what religious man, will look 
 upon the sufferings of others as foreign to him ? " 
 writes Juvenal. 8 " Is there a better sentiment than 
 compassion ? " says Ouintilian, " or one whose source 
 
 1 Denis, i. 15, 16. 2 Boutteville, page 381, note. 
 
 3 Pauthier's translation, page 130. He declares his version to be 
 exact. Legge renders more verbosely and prosaically : "To be true 
 to the principles of our nature, and the benevolent exercise of them 
 to others." The two Chinese words, he says, mean literally centre- 
 heai't and as-heart. Analects, iv. 15. 
 
 4 Analects, xii. 22. 5 De Legibns, i. 15. 
 
 6 De Amicitia. 7 De Officii s, iii. 5 ; i. 7. 
 
 8 Satires, xv. 131. 
 
54 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 lies more in the most venerable and sacred princi- 
 ples of nature ? God, the author of all things here 
 below, wills that we should help one another. . . . 
 If I have given bread to a stranger in the name of 
 that universal brotherhood which binds together all 
 men under the common Father of nature, would it 
 not be a good deed to have saved a soul ready to 
 perish ? " 1 Menander, the Greek dramatist, has 
 these beautiful sentences : " To live is not to live 
 for one's self alone. Let us help one another. Let 
 us learn to have pity upon the sorrows of others, 
 that they may with cause have compassion upon 
 ours. Help the stranger, for thou mayest one day 
 be a stranger. Let the rich man remember the 
 poor ; for the poor belong to God." 2 
 
 "Will you not bear with your brother," cries 
 Epictetus, " who has God for his Father, his son as 
 thou art, of the same high descent ? " 3 Notice this 
 religious motive urged for brotherly love. And 
 again, " Will you not remember over whom you bear 
 rule, that they are by nature your kindred, your 
 brothers, offspring of God?" — speaking of slaves. 
 Epictetus had himself been a» slave. The poet 
 Terence, who had known the same hard experience, 
 had plucked from it the same flower of sympathy 
 for his fellows. His sentence, " I am a man, no- 
 thing human can I count foreign to me," has become 
 almost a proverb. Menander, before him, had said 
 in almost the same words, "No man is a stranger to 
 me, provided he be a good man. For we have all 
 the one and the same nature, and it is virtue alone 
 
 1 Cited by Denis, ii. 156. 2 Menander was born B. c. 342. 
 
 3 Discourses, i. 13. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 55 
 
 which makes the true kindred." So Marcus Aure- 
 lius : " The good man remembers that every rational 
 being is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is 
 according to man's nature." " We are made for 
 cooperation ; to act against one another, then, is 
 contrary to nature." " We are created especially 
 for the sake of one another." "It is the proper 
 work of a man to be benevolent to his kind." 1 
 
 The doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man has been 
 declared to be found in Christian teaching alone. 
 It is difficult to find it in the Gospels ; the single 
 sentence usually quoted having reference only to 
 the small company of Christian disciples. Paul 
 states it in one passage : " God has made of one 
 blood all the nations of men." But the idea was 
 already familiar to the heart and mind of good men. 
 Denis, in his learned and interesting work on the 
 " Moral Theories and Ideas of Antiquity," from 
 which many of my quotations have been gathered, 
 says that "Diodorus proposed to himself to write a 
 universal history on the ground that men everywhere 
 belong to one family." Plutarch speaks of "that 
 admirable republic imagined by Zeno, the founder 
 of the Stoic sect," which shows us "that all men 
 are our countrymen and fellow-citizens ; " and he 
 adds that " Zeno left this description as the dream 
 or imagination of equity and of a philosophic repub- 
 lic ; but what he taught, Alexander realized. Con- 
 ceiving that he was sent of God to unite all to- 
 gether, he formed of a hundred diverse nations one 
 single universal body ; mingling, as it were, in one 
 cup of friendship the customs and laws of all." 2 
 
 1 Thoughts, iii. 4 ; ii. 1 ; viii. 56, 26. 2 De Fort. Alexand. 
 
$6 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 "The love of mankind," — " caritas generis hu- 
 mani" — is Cicero's beautiful phrase; 1 and the ex- 
 pression "the fellowship of the human race" often 
 recurs in his writings. 2 " A man must believe him- 
 self born not for himself, but for the whole world," 
 writes Lucan ; and he foretells the time when " the 
 human race will lay aside its weapons, and all nations 
 will love each other." 3 " We are members of one 
 great body ; nature has made us kindred . . . and 
 implanted in us mutual love," — these are the words 
 of Seneca. 4 
 
 But this is not all. We find among the writers 
 of "heathen " antiquity, not merely the inculcation 
 of kindness, compassion, benevolence ; these find 
 their highest expression in the doctrine of forgive- 
 ness of enemies. No doubt we find the lex talionis ; 
 the Greek ^Eschylus, with his " evil for evil," 
 matches the Hebrew " eye for eye." But it was 
 also a Hebrew proverb, " If thine enemy hunger, 
 give him bread to eat ; if he thirst, give him water 
 to drink." 5 The Pythagoreans taught that if, in 
 the state, the law recompensed evil with evil, pri- 
 vate men ought, on the contrary, to injure none, 
 but to support patiently wrongs and insults. 6 Pit- 
 tacus, one of the seven wise men of Greece, taught 
 that clemency is preferable to vengeance, which 
 brings remorse; that "it is better to pardon than 
 to punish;" and said, "Do not speak ill of your 
 friends ; no, not even of your enemies." So Cleo- 
 bulus said that " we ought to be kind to our friends, 
 
 1 De Finibus. 2 De Officiis, i. 44 ; iii. 6. De Amicitia. 
 
 3 Pharsalia, ii. ; v. 38. 4 Epistolce, 95. 
 
 5 Proverbs xxv. 21. 6 Denis, i. 14. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS $y 
 
 to make them more than our friends ; and to our 
 enemies, to make them our friends." Confucius 
 thought that we " ought to repay injuries with jus- 
 tice, and unkindness with kindness ; " * and his coun- 
 tryman Lao-tze had said, " The wise man avenges 
 his injuries by benefits." 2 Plato reports Socrates 
 as saying, " Neither ought one who is injured to 
 return the injury, as the multitude think, since it 
 is on no account right to do injustice. It is not 
 right, therefore, to return an injury, or to do evil 
 to any man, however we may have suffered from 
 him." 3 In later times Cicero teaches a similar les- 
 son. " Let us not listen," he says, " to those who 
 think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and 
 believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is 
 more praiseworthy, nothing more marks a great and 
 noble soul, than clemency and the readiness to for- 
 give." 4 And Valerius Maximus, the Roman histo- 
 rian, says still better : " It is more beautiful to over- 
 come injury by the power of kindness than oppose 
 to it obstinacy and hatred." 5 In Seneca and Epic- 
 tetus, the like sentiments are found. Marcus Au- 
 relius compares the wise and humane soul to a spring 
 of pure and sweet water, which, though the passer-by 
 may curse it, continues to offer him a draught to 
 assuage his thirst ; and, even if he cast into it mire 
 and filth, hastens to reject it, and flows on pure and 
 undisturbed. 6 This recalls the equally beautiful 
 image in the Oriental scripture of the sandal-tree, 
 
 1 Analects, xxv. 36. 
 
 2 Tao-te-king (translation of Stan. Julien), ii. 73. 
 
 3 Crito y Bonn, i. 38. 4 De Officiis, i. 25. 
 
 5 iv. 2. 6 Thoughts, viii. 51. 
 
58 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 which, in the moment when it falls before the wood- 
 man's stroke, gives its fragrance to the axe which 
 smites it with death. 
 
 I cannot better close this part of my subject than 
 by quoting that fine passage from Epictetus where 
 he draws the picture of the true " Cynic," as he calls 
 him, as men now say the true " Christian." " The 
 Cynic must fence himself with virtuous shame. . . . 
 He must purify his soul. . . . He must know that 
 he is a messenger sent from Zeus to men to teach 
 them of good and evil. . . . He must tell them the 
 truth, without fear. . . . He must consult the Di- 
 vinity, and attempt nothing without God. . . . He 
 will needs be smitten, yet he must love those who 
 smite him, as being the father, the brother, of all. 
 . . . When he rebukes, he will do it as a father, as 
 a brother, as the minister of the Father of all. . . . 
 He must have such patience as to seem insensible 
 and like a stone to the vulgar. . . . Instead of arms 
 and guards, conscience will be his strength. For 
 he knows that he has watched and toiled for man- 
 kind, that he has slept pure and waked purer, and 
 that he has regulated all his thoughts as the minis- 
 ter of Heaven." x 
 
 I am tempted to add as a companion picture that 
 which Marcus Aurelius draws of the good man. 
 " He is as a priest and minister of the gods ; devoted 
 to that divinity which hath its dwelling within him ; 
 by virtue of which the man is uncontaminable by 
 any pleasure, invulnerable to every grief, inviolable 
 to every injury, insensible to all malice; a fighter 
 in the noblest fight, dyed deep with justice, accept- 
 
 1 Discourses, ii. zz. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 59 
 
 ing with all his soul that which the Providence of 
 the Universe appoints him. He remembers also 
 that every rational being is his kinsman, and that to 
 care for all men is in accordance with the nature of 
 man." 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 The last great Religious Idea which I named is 
 that of Immortality, or the continued life of the soul 
 after the body's death. 
 
 It may surprise those who have been brought up 
 in a different view, but I believe it to be the simple 
 fact, that no truth of religion has been more uni- 
 versal than this. In all ages of which any history 
 has come to us, in nearly all nations of which we 
 have any trustworthy account, we find this faith ; 
 not a hope merely, not "one guess among many," 
 but a confidence, a practical assurance, a faith to 
 live by and to die by. Hardly a people so savage 
 but some traces of it are discoverable ; none so 
 civilized that they have outgrown it ; an essential 
 element in all religions. Superstitions and foolish 
 fancies about it in plenty, no doubt ; but revealed 
 through them all the central idea, the inner belief. 
 From the wisest and best in different ages and 
 nations the clearest statements of faith in it. No 
 doubt, rude nations have had rude conceptions of it ; 
 no doubt, as nations grew more advanced the old 
 mythologies about it lost their hold, and were dis- 
 carded even with ridicule as unworthy the belief of 
 thinking men ; and some men with the going of the 
 fables lost their faith also in the idea. But in those 
 
 1 Tkoztgkts, iii. 4. 
 
60 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 very times some of the wisest and best men sought 
 to rescue the faith and establish it on a deeper 
 basis. The idea survived the form which it had 
 cast off. 
 
 Caesar tells us of the ancient Gauls, that, " to 
 arouse their courage, by taking away the fear of 
 death, the Druids preach that souls do not die." 2 
 And Pomponius Mela says that they believe " that 
 souls are eternal, and that there is another life." 2 
 And Valerius Maximus confirms the statement : 
 " They are persuaded that the souls of men are 
 immortal." 3 
 
 In later times, Spanish conquerors go to Mexico 
 and Peru, and find the faith in immortality, as in 
 God, already there. 4 Roman Catholic missionaries 
 visit India, China, Thibet, and find it there; go 
 among the North American Indians, and find it 
 there. Dr. Livingstone, the English missionary, 
 penetrates into the interior of Africa, and brings 
 home this report : " There is no necessity for begin- 
 ning to tell even the most degraded of these people 
 of the existence of God, or of a future state, these 
 facts being universally admitted. . . . On question- 
 ing intelligent men among the Bakwains as to their 
 former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of 
 a future state, they have scouted the idea of their 
 ever having been without a tolerably clear concep- 
 tion on all these subjects. . . . They fully believe 
 in the soul's continued existence apart from the 
 body, and visit the graves of relatives, making offer- 
 
 1 De Bello Gallico, vi. 14. 
 
 2 De Situ Orbis, \\. 2. 3 ii. I, 10. 
 4 Frescott, Conquest of Mexico, i. 62, 89. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 6 1 
 
 ings." 1 There are travelers, indeed, who report 
 tribes that have belief neither in immortality nor in 
 God. If it be so, we must regard these as excep- 
 tional instances, where the native human faiths are 
 yet undeveloped. 
 
 The Jewish Scriptures of the Old Testament con- 
 tain only faint intimations of a future life. This is 
 the more remarkable since the belief was so strongly 
 held in Egypt at and before the time of Moses. 
 Perhaps the beliefs of their oppressors were hateful 
 to them. Be this as it may, we find the immortality 
 of the soul clearly taught in the " apocryphal " books 
 of Alexandrian-Jewish origin. It seems also to have 
 been brought back by the Jews from their contact 
 with the Persians in the Babylonian captivity. 
 Certainly before the advent of Christianity it was 
 the common belief of the nation, except among the 
 sect of Sadducees. At least the doctrine of the 
 "resurrection from the dead" was so. 
 
 Probably the oldest existing record of man's faith 
 in a future life is the ancient Egyptian " Book of the 
 Dead," or " Funeral Ritual." Its chapters are found 
 inscribed on mummy cases, or written upon rolls of 
 papyrus within them. It is believed to date as far 
 back as two thousand years before the Christian era. 
 It might well be called the Book of Life, for it is full 
 of an intense vitality; and this vivid sense of life 
 shines through all that is obscure, strange, and ex- 
 travagant in its details. It recounts the experiences 
 of the human soul after death ; its passage in the 
 mystic boat through the land of darkness to the 
 blessed fields ; its trial in the " Hall of the Two 
 
 1 Missionary Travels +n South Africa, pages 176, 686. 
 
62 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 Truths " (or the " twofold judgment ") before Thoth, 
 the Lord of Truth, and the forty-two judges, to each 
 of whom it declares its innocence of the offense he 
 specially sits to condemn ; the placing its heart in 
 the balance against an image of Righteousness ; the 
 declaration of its innocence ; its passage through 
 the initiatory trials to the Blessed Land and the 
 presence of the god Osiris, its Father, in the 
 eternal " dwelling-place of the prepared spirit." I 
 quote some passages from this remarkable book. 
 " The osiris [that is, the soul, taking the name of its 
 father god] lives after he dies. Every god rejoices 
 with life ; the osiris rejoices with life as they re- 
 joice. Let the osiris go; he passes from the gate, 
 he sees his father, Osiris ; he makes a way in the 
 darkness to his father ; he is his beloved ; he has 
 come to see his father ; he has pierced the heart of 
 Set [the Evil Spirit] to do the things of his father 
 Osiris ; he is the son beloved of his father. He 
 has come a prepared spirit. . . . He moves as the 
 never-resting gods in the heavens. . . . The osiris 
 says, ' Hail Creator, self-created, do not turn me 
 away, I am one of thy types on earth. ... I join 
 myself with the noble spirits of the Wise in Hades.' 
 . . . ' O ye lords of truth, I have brought you 
 truth ; I have not privily done evil against any 
 man ; I have not been idle ; I have not made any to 
 weep ; I have not murdered ; I have not defrauded ; 
 I have not committed adultery; I am pure, I am 
 pure.' . . . Let the osiris go ; he is without sin, with- 
 out crime ; he lives upon truth ; he has made his de- 
 light in doing what men say and the gods wish ; he 
 has given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 63 
 
 clothes to the naked ; his mouth is pure, his hands 
 are pure. . . . His heart goes to its place in the 
 balance complete. . . . The Father of the spirit has 
 examined and proved him. He has found that the 
 departed fought on earth the battle of the good 
 gods, as his Father the Lord of the invisible world 
 had commanded him. . . . O God, the protector of 
 him who has brought his cry to thee, he is thine, let 
 him have no harm ; let him be as one of thy flying 
 servants. Thou art he, he is thou. Make it well 
 with him in the world of spirits." 1 
 
 In the Hindu Vedas we find also the faith in im- 
 mortality. Yama, the god of the dead, " waited, en- 
 throned in immortal light, to welcome the good into 
 his kingdom of joy." There were "the homes he 
 had gone to prepare for them," " where the One Be- 
 ing dwells beyond the stars." 2 " Where there is 
 eternal light, in that immortal, imperishable world 
 place me," sings a Vedic burial hymn. " Where the 
 secret place of heaven is, . . . where life is free, 
 . . . where joy and pleasure abide, where the de- 
 sires of our desire are attained, there make me im- 
 mortal." 3 " Let him depart," says another, " to the 
 heroes who have laid down their lives for others, — 
 to those who have bestowed their gifts on the poor." 
 And in the later Brahmanic scripture, the " Vishnu 
 Purana," we read, "He who speaks wisely, moder- 
 ately, kindly, goes [after death] to those worlds which 
 
 1 See Birch's translation of the " Book of the Dead," in Bunsen's 
 Egypt's Place, etc., vol. v. 
 
 2 Rig Veda, x. See S. Johnson's Oriental Religions, " India," page 
 128. 
 
 3 Rig Veda, ix. 113, 7, cited in M. Miiller's Chips, i. 46. 
 
64 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 are the inexhaustible sources of happiness. He who 
 is intelligent, modest, devout, who reverences wis- 
 dom and respects his superiors and the aged, goes 
 to the highest heaven." " He who feeds himself, 
 and neglects the poor and friendless stranger, goes 
 to hell." 2 So in the " Bhagavad Gita : " " There is 
 another invisible, eternal existence superior to this 
 visible one, which does not perish when all things 
 perish. Those who attain this never return. This is 
 my supreme abode." 2 
 
 Buddhism teaches the same doctrine. " There is 
 undoubtedly a life after this," says a Buddhist tract, 
 " in which the virtuous may expect the reward of 
 their good deeds. . . . Wicked men, on the con- 
 trary, are after death born into hell, as animals. If 
 they have done any good deed in their lifetime, they 
 are after a long time released from punishment, and 
 born into the world again as men. If they abstain 
 from evil, and do good, they may reach the state of 
 felicity, a place full of joy and delight. Judgment 
 takes place immediately after death." 3 
 
 Beyond all the heavens, into which in turn the 
 good are born in their ascending course, Buddhism 
 (as well as Brahmanism) presents a state which is 
 the object of all devout aspiration, — the final re- 
 ward of the highest devotion and virtue. It is called 
 Nirvana. Some writers have insisted that it means 
 annihilation. But others, equally learned, interpret 
 it, with far more probability as it appears to me, to 
 be merely the end of the soul's transmigrations, the 
 
 1 Wilson's translation, iii. 121, 144. 
 
 2 Thompson's translation, page 60. 
 
 8 Upham's Sacred Books of Ceyloti, iii. 158. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 6$ 
 
 cessation of the re-births into the pain and trouble 
 of this world ; not annihilation, but perfect rest, ab- 
 solute peace. 1 
 
 The religion of Zoroaster taught to the Persians 
 the same great truth. It promised to all who should 
 faithfully keep the law of God, in purity of thought, 
 speech, and act, " when body and soul have sepa- 
 rated, the attainment of paradise in the next world ; " 
 while the disobedient " after death will have no part 
 in paradise, but will occupy the place of darkness 
 destined for the wicked." 2 
 
 In Greece, where there were no sacred books, no 
 "holy scriptures" as such, but where the poets and 
 the philosophers were the religious teachers of the 
 people, we find no less the doctrine, and the popular 
 belief, of Immortality. This popular belief, founded 
 on the pictures which the poets' fancy had painted, 
 is familiar to all. Hades, the world of spirits ; the 
 Judges, Minos, ^Eacus, and Rhadamanthus ; Tarta- 
 rus, the abode of darkness and punishment ; the 
 Elysian fields, blooming with asphodel, radiant with 
 perpetual sunshine, where parted friends meet again, 
 "where life is ever sweet, and sorrow is not, nor 
 winter, nor any rain or storm." Sophocles puts into 
 the mouth of the dying Antigone the strongly cher- 
 ished hope that she should be welcomed by her 
 father, her mother, her brother, in that other world. 3 
 In Pindar we read, " An honorable and virtuous man 
 
 1 See S. Johnson's Oriental Religions, page 619 ; and Midler's 
 Introduction to his translation of the Dhammapada. 
 
 2 Avesta : Spiegel, i. 171 ; cited by Alger, Doctrine of Future Life, 
 page 136. 
 
 3 Antigone, 897. 
 
66 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 may rest assured as to his future fate. The souls of 
 the lawless departing this life suffer punishment. 
 But the good lead a life without a tear, among those 
 honored by the gods for having always delighted in 
 virtue." 1 One of the golden verses of Pythagoras 
 is this : " When thou shalt have laid aside thy body, 
 thou shalt rise freed from mortality, and become a 
 god of the kindly skies;" as we should say, "an 
 angel." "Those who have lived in justice and 
 piety," says Plutarch, " fear nothing after death. 
 They look for a divine felicity. As they who run a 
 race are not crowned till they have conquered, so 
 good men believe that the reward of virtue is not 
 given them till after death. Eager to flee away from 
 the body and from the world to a glorious and 
 blessed abode, they free their thoughts as much as 
 in them lies from the things that perish." And 
 again : " Not by lamentations and mournful chants 
 ought we to celebrate the funeral of the good man, 
 but by hymns ; for, in ceasing to be numbered with 
 mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner 
 life." 2 
 
 For the thoughts of Plato upon this question we 
 turn of course to his famed book, " Phaedon." Under 
 the form of a report of the conversation of Socrates 
 with his disciples just before his death, he gives his 
 Master's ideas, or his own, upon the immortality and 
 future state of the soul, with the arguments by which 
 the conclusions are reached. These arguments, 
 long, curious, and elaborate, can have little weight 
 with us ; but the conclusions are definite and plain. 
 
 1 Second Olympic, cited by Alger. 
 
 2 Cited by Denis, ii. 225, 263. 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 67 
 
 As a thoughtful and conservative writer has well 
 said, "The reasoning of Socrates in favor of im- 
 mortality is far from clear, but not so his faith in 
 immortality itself." 1 We find accordingly such 
 sentences as these : — 
 
 "Can the soul which is invisible, and which goes 
 to a place like itself excellent, pure, invisible, to the 
 presence of a good and wise God (whither, if God 
 will, my soul almost must shortly go), — can this soul 
 of ours, being of such a nature, when separated from 
 the body be immediately dispersed and destroyed, 
 as the many assert ? Far from it." "When, there- 
 fore, death approaches a man, the mortal part of him, 
 as it appears, dies ; but the immortal part departs 
 safe and incorruptible, having withdrawn itself from 
 death." "The soul, therefore, is most certainly im- 
 mortal and imperishable, and our souls really exist 
 in the world of spirits." "Those who shall have 
 sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy [reli- 
 gion] shall live without their bodies, received into 
 more beautiful mansions." After a long and minute 
 description of the circumstances and scenery of the 
 future state, he adds: "To affirm positively that 
 these things are exactly as I have described them 
 does not become a man of sense ; that, however, 
 either this, or something of the kind, takes place with 
 respect to our souls and their habitations, this 
 appears to me to be most fitting to be believed, since 
 the soul is evidently immortal." " For the sake of 
 these things we should use every endeavor to acquire 
 virtue and wisdom in this life ; for the reward is 
 noble and the hope is great." "A man ought, then, 
 
 1 Rev. Ichabod Nichols. D. Q., Horns with Evangelists, page 90. 
 
68 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 to have confidence about his soul, if during this life 
 he has made it beautiful with temperance, justice, 
 fortitude, freedom, and truth ; he waits for his en- 
 trance into the world of spirits as one who is ready 
 to depart when destiny calls." " I shall not remain, 
 I shall depart. Do not say, then, that Socrates is 
 buried ; say that you bury my body." 
 
 Cicero tells us that the Stoics believed in a con- 
 tinued life after death, but not in an endless immor- 
 tality. His own faith has been thought to have 
 been variable, or at least his expression of it ; though 
 I think that with him, as with Plato, the "if" is 
 often of argumentation and not of doubt ; and, with 
 Lecky, I find in his writings " a firm and constant 
 reference to the immortality of the soul." " As an 
 eternal God," he says, " moves the mortal world, so 
 an immortal soul moves our frail body." 2 And, again, 
 " The origin of souls cannot be found upon this 
 earth, for there is nothing earthly in them. They 
 have faculties which claim to be called divine, and 
 which can never be shown to have come to man 
 from any source but God. That nature in us which 
 thinks, which knows, which lives, is celestial, and 
 for that reason necessarily eternal. God himself 
 can be represented only as a free Spirit, separate 
 from matter, seeing all things, and moving all things, 
 Himself ceaselessly working. Of this kind, from 
 this nature, is the human soul." " Although you do 
 not see the soul of man, as you do not see God ; yet, 
 as from his works you acknowledge Him, so from 
 memory, from invention, from all the beauty of 
 virtue, do thou acknowledge the divine nature of the 
 
 1 Somnium Scipionis, 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 69 
 
 soul. It cannot be destroyed." 1 He represents the 
 aged Cato as exclaiming, " O glorious day when I 
 shall remove from this confused crowd to join the 
 divine assembly of souls. For I shall go to meet not 
 only those great men of whom I have spoken, but 
 my own son Cato, for whom I have performed the 
 funeral rites, which he should rather have rendered 
 to me. His spirit has never deserted me; but de- 
 parted, looking back upon me, to that place whither 
 he knew that I should soon come. If I have borne 
 his loss with courage, it is not that my heart was 
 unfeeling ; but I have consoled myself with the 
 thought that our separation would not be for long." 2 
 
 With these words of undying affection and faith, 
 I bring my quotations to a close. 
 
 How beautifully sound these consenting voices 
 from East to West, from century to century, utter- 
 ing the great Beliefs of the human race. Into what 
 a " large place " they summon us out of all narrow 
 limits of sect and church, even beyond Christianity 
 itself, into that great and universal Church of the 
 race, whose unity is the unity of the spirit, whose 
 fellowship is the brotherhood of great faiths, sacred 
 principles, and spiritual ideas. One Truth, one 
 Right, one Love, one immortal Faith ; the Reason, 
 the Conscience, the Heart of man, in all times and 
 under all skies, essentially identical ; and over all 
 one God and Father of all, giving to all his inspira- 
 tion and his revelations as they are able to receive ! 
 
 The passages which I have gathered into this paper 
 are but a scanty gleaning from a broad and rich 
 field. Of course, a good deal of a less interesting, 
 
 1 Tusc. Qincst. i. - Cato Major, 
 
7<D UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 less elevated, even opposite, character may be gath- 
 ered from the like sources. But its existence does 
 not invalidate what I have presented. I have made 
 no claim for entire uniformity, but only for a virtual 
 universality in the great ideas. I do not say that 
 every man has believed, but that among all peoples, 
 and in all times of which we have account, these 
 beliefs have existed ; that they perpetually recur, 
 indicating a natural gravitation of the human mind 
 toward them ; that they are the common property of 
 the human race, and not the exclusive possession of 
 any special people or religion. The soul of man, 
 human nature, bears these ideas and sentiments of 
 God, of Right, of Love, and of Immortality as cer- 
 tainly, as naturally, as generally, as the earth under 
 all climes produces plants and trees. Superficial 
 variations, of place, climate, race, culture, we find ; 
 but we find essential unity of idea. 
 
 We have been reading some verses from the 
 Scriptures of the Universal Church, — man in his 
 religious relations. This is the Broad Church, 
 which not only stretches beyond barriers of sects, 
 Romanist or Protestant, but reaches as wide as the 
 world of man. It is as ancient as it is broad. It 
 has a past which far antedates that from which we 
 are so frequently warned or entreated not to sever 
 ourselves. Its antiquity does not stop with Judea 
 eighteen hundred years ago, but reaches centuries 
 beyond. This is the birthright Church of man. It 
 is founded on the rock of man's spiritual nature, 
 " normally and forever God's Revealer." Its com- 
 mon thought is in that ground-idea of God which lies 
 back of all the various conceptions of God. Its 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS J l 
 
 common life is in that mysterious disposition, that 
 native and irrepressible tendency toward the invis- 
 ible and the infinite, that universal sentiment of rev- 
 erence and of dependence upon a superior Power, 
 Goodness, and Right, which make man to be, by 
 force of his nature, in all time and place, a religious 
 being. Overarching all, like the universal sky ; en- 
 compassing and inspiring all, like the universal 
 air ; vitalizing and informing all, like the universal 
 electric force ; binding and drawing all, like the uni- 
 versal attraction and gravitation, this idea of God, 
 of his love and his law, this religious conscious- 
 ness, unites earth's millions in the humilities and 
 aspirations of prayer ; it moves them to deeds of 
 benevolence and justice; it charms them ever with 
 the ideal of a better world, a perfected society, a 
 kingdom of God upon earth, a heaven of immor- 
 tality beyond. It creates always its prophets and 
 preachers, men of keener conscience, intenser en- 
 thusiasm for truth and right ; always its saints, men 
 of tenderer piety, deeper inward life, profounder 
 spirituality ; always its reformers, seeking to awaken 
 men from dead forms to living faith and righteous- 
 ness ; always its martyrs, bearing the reproach of 
 truth and the cross of suffering humanity ; always 
 its heretics, questioning all traditions, demanding 
 light and liberty; always its radicals, protesting 
 against superstitions and mythologies, and breaking 
 down idols. " Before these vast facts of God and 
 Providence," says an English writer, "the difference 
 between man and man dwarfs into nothing. These 
 are no discoveries of our own with which we can 
 meddle, but revelations of the Infinite, which, like 
 
72 UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 
 
 the sunlight, shed themselves on all people alike, 
 wise and unwise, good or evil ; and they claim and 
 permit no other acknowledgment from us than the 
 simple obedience of our lives and the plainest con- 
 fession of our lips." 
 
 Religious is a higher and broader word than 
 Christian ; and so is human. Jewish, Brahman, 
 Buddhist, Parsee, Mohammedan, — these, too, are 
 churches of the One Living God, the Father of all. 
 With advancing light, thoughtful men in all of them 
 will come out of what is peculiar and special in each, 
 and so local and temporary, into the broad ground 
 of universal, spiritual religion, which is Piety, Right- 
 eousness, Humanity ; that belief in God and in man 
 which is the creed of all creeds. 
 
 If ever in the isolation of our individualism we 
 are ready to envy the churchman his sense of mem- 
 bership in a great body of brave and consecrated 
 men and women, whose lips have uttered for cen- 
 turies the same sacramental words, then may the 
 better thought come to us, that we are indeed, if we 
 will, members of this and of a yet grander company, 
 from whom the churchman cuts himself off. For 
 he, after all, is the schismatic. Look beneath names 
 and words, and feel the life of the invisible, spiritual 
 host of all righteous, true, heroic, saintly souls, made 
 ours, if we are in sympathy with them, not by any 
 external organization, but by a spiritual law. Its 
 sacramental words are God, Duty, Love, Immortality. 
 These, written in many tongues upon its banner, 
 have given vigor to more hearts and met more eyes 
 lifted unfaltering in death, than any one church or 
 one religion can count within its pale. This is the 
 
UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 73 
 
 Eternal Gospel ; this the true Church Catholic ; the 
 Church not of Rome, nor of England ; the Church 
 not of Buddha, nor of Moses, nor of Christ ; but of 
 God and Man. 
 
 1875. From Freedom and Fellowship in Religion. 
 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 In recent discussions, not yet ended, in which the 
 words natural and supernatural often occur, some 
 preliminary definitions might have been of use, and 
 still may be. 
 
 There are two meanings of the word nature in 
 common use. The first is, — and this is what we 
 generally mean by it, — the outward, material world. 
 In this sense, we distinguish God, Man, Nature ; we 
 speak of the beauties of Nature, of the laws of Na- 
 ture. In this sense, nattcral becomes synonymous 
 with material or physical, as when we speak of the 
 natural sciences. In this sense, by Natural Religion 
 is meant such knowledge of God as is obtained, or 
 supposed to be obtained, from the study of the phy- 
 sical world. 
 
 The second meaning of nature is the original con- 
 stitution of things, or of any thing or being. In this 
 sense we speak of human nature, of the Divine Na- 
 ture. Natural now becomes synonymous with native 
 or normal ; that which grows out of the original con- 
 stitution, or is in accordance with the essential law, 
 of any thing or being. It is in this sense that we 
 say that religion is natural to man, meaning that its 
 germs lie in his original constitution, the orderly 
 development of which will certainly bring him, and 
 have brought him, to religious ideas. In this sense it 
 is that we say that Christianity is a Natural Religion, 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 75 
 
 meaning that it grew out of the native relations 
 of the human spirit with God; that it was a normal 
 growth, and not a special interpolation or miraculous 
 interposition. 
 
 Corresponding to these two meanings of Nature 
 and Natural, we have two meanings of supernatural. 
 In the first case, supernatural is synonymous with 
 supcrsensuous, or supermaterial, as when Coleridge 
 says, "The spiritual is eo nomine supernatural." In 
 this sense, we say that all Religion is supernatural ; 
 meaning that it cannot be discovered by the senses, 
 or the practical understanding of man, but is revealed 
 only in his spiritual nature ; that it springs from his 
 relation to a higher than the outward world. In the 
 second case supernatural is synonymous with mirac- 
 ulous. In this sense it is customary to speak of 
 Christianity as a supernatural revelation ; meaning 
 that it is something out of the uniform line of law, 
 something beyond the reach of the native human 
 powers, something introduced into humanity in an 
 unparalleled way, "a special interpolation into the 
 current of human history." In this sense the dis- 
 believers in the miracles of the New Testament are 
 said to " deny the supernatural in the Gospels," and 
 are called anti-supernaturalists. 
 
 Now I suppose the ambiguity of meaning in these 
 words has sometimes led to misunderstanding be- 
 tween "old school " and "new school," "Conserva- 
 tive" and " Radical." And it would help matters if 
 the sense in which they are used in any particular 
 case were always made clear. I do not mean that 
 the difference between the parties is only a differ- 
 ence of words, for it is not ; it is a difference of ideas. 
 
y6 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 There happens, however, a curious twist. Those 
 who use natural in the first sense use supernatural 
 in the second. When they speak of Natural Reli- 
 gion, they mean the religious ideas derived from out- 
 ward nature ; but when they declare Christianity to 
 be supernatural they do not mean inward or super- 
 material, but miraculous. On the other hand, those 
 who use natural in the second sense use supernat- 
 ural in the first. We say that all Religion is nat- 
 ural ; that is, that it is the growth of man's original 
 native powers and relations. But we say that we 
 believe all religion (including Christianity) to be 
 supernatural, because it is beyond the reach of the 
 senses and the understanding working in nature, 
 and is revealed from above into man's spirit. And 
 we declare that we believe more in the supernatural 
 than those who call us anti-supernaturalists, because 
 we believe spiritual revelation to be perpetual and 
 universal, and not confined to a few men in one age 
 and corner of the world. 
 
 Perhaps, however, we should do our part toward 
 clearness if we should, however reluctantly, give over 
 the use of the word supernatural to the Miraculist. 
 For we are now more earnestly engaged in urging 
 the naturalness of religion ; its ground in human 
 nature, and in the original relations of the human 
 with the Divine Nature. Our work is to proclaim 
 the sacredness and trustworthiness of man's native 
 moral and devotional faculties, and their sufficiency, 
 in connection with the normal aid of the Infinite 
 Spirit, to account for the Bible and all holy Scrip- 
 tures, for Jesus and all saints, prophets, and sons of 
 God. 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL J 7 
 
 For man, the head and sum of this creation, pos- 
 sesses not only the material organization, the chem- 
 ical and vital properties of the lower orders of crea- 
 tion, in more subtle and fine degree, and the animal 
 senses and the animal soul of the brute races, in- 
 cluding that faculty of understanding, reasoning, 
 memory, and instinctive affection which these races 
 manifest in the conduct of a life immersed in the 
 world of outward Nature ; but he has another order 
 of faculties, an added sphere of perceptions and 
 powers, — the spiritual, connecting him with the 
 world of spirit. This is the sphere of universal ideas, 
 of absolute truths, of eternal principles, of sacred 
 sentiments. 
 
 Here, in man's spiritual nature, is the faculty of 
 Reason, which not by the processes of sensible ob- 
 servations, or the logical inference of the practical 
 understanding, but by inward, direct perception, 
 has cognizance of these ideas, truths, and principles ; 
 has the conception of Unity, Law, Cause ; of Infinite 
 and Perfect. 
 
 Here, in man's spiritual nature, the Conscience 
 or moral sense has the conception of an absolute 
 Right and its obligations ; something quite beyond 
 the calculated prudence and utilities of the under- 
 standing. 
 
 Here, the Spiritual Affections are kindled to the 
 love of, the yearning for, the devotion to, the per- 
 fect good ; a love which, when directed toward hu- 
 man objects, transforms the mere instinctive bodily 
 love, which seeks only for their outward comfort, 
 into a passion for spiritual qualities, that seeks their 
 noblest good. 
 
yS NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 Here are the energies of the spiritual Will ; that 
 power of faith which, in confident surrender and 
 obedience, lives from these ideas and sentiments, 
 makes them vital principles of conduct ; with them 
 overcomes the world, conquers the senses, overrules 
 the estimates of the practical understanding, dis- 
 places its expediencies, prudencies, and policies, 
 accomplishes the things that the outward man de- 
 clares imprudent, impolitic, and impossible. 
 
 Here, Imagination transfigures nature with an 
 ideal beauty, or builds her new heaven and new 
 earth of things beyond experience and " not seen as 
 yet." 
 
 Here, Wonder explores that Mystery of the Invis- 
 ible which to the senses and the understanding is a 
 blank abyss, or a dead wall ; but to the spirit is as 
 the transparent darkness of midnight skies, under 
 which she stands not fearful, but sublimely uplifted. 
 
 Here, Reverence, in rapt and exalted humility, 
 enters the holy of holies, bends, and adores. 
 
 Here spirit meets Spirit ; God is named, is known, 
 is received, is obeyed ; an inspiring life, an indwell- 
 ing law. 
 
 Here man knows himself the son of God, by the 
 spirit of the Father which dwelleth in him. Not 
 mine nor Thine ; all Thine is mine ; and mine Thine. 
 I in Thee, Thou in me. The Father in him speak- 
 ing the word, doing the work. He and the Father 
 one. 
 
 For this spiritual nature in man is the true son of 
 God; "born not of corruptible seed, but of incor- 
 ruptible ; not of blood, or the will of the flesh, but 
 of God ; " made in his image, capable of receiving 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 79 
 
 of his fullness ; Immanuel, God with us. It is the 
 manifestation of God to man ; for the human spirit 
 is the only form in which we can see what God is. 
 It is the word of God to man, for in it his truth 
 speaks, his will works, the perpetual prophecy and 
 revelation. God hath committed all judgment to it, 
 for in it the conscience proclaims his moral law, 
 and stands forever accusing or excusing. And as 
 it is Judge, so is it Redeemer, through the Divine 
 powers and life which are communicated through 
 it, consecrating the outward. It is the Reconciler 
 and Mediator between God and man, for in it are 
 God and man united in one ; since in the highest 
 moments and action of the spirit it is impossible to 
 separate between the Divine and the human. 
 
 Is the dream too bold ? Is the claim too presump- 
 tuous ? Nay, we will not refuse our birthright. 
 Rather with humble but joyful confidence we will 
 take up the old words, " Behold what love the Fa- 
 ther hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
 the children of God." " Sons of God, and if sons, 
 then heirs, joint heirs with Christ." "For as many 
 as are led by the Spirit of God, the same are sons of 
 God." " That ye may be filled with all the fullness 
 of God." " One God and Father of all, above all, 
 through all, in you all" For " if we love one another, 
 God dwelleth in us." Or we may remember still other 
 words : "lam the light of the world." " Ye are the 
 light of the world." "The works that I do, ye shall 
 do also, and greater, because I go to the Father." 
 "My Father and your Father, my God and your 
 God." " And when the Comforter, which is the 
 Spirit of Truth, shall come, he shall lead you into all 
 truth." 
 
80 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 This great truth of the sonship of the spirit in 
 man has been shadowed forth and kept alive by the 
 dogma which asserts it of one man. But as that 
 dogma virtually denies it of all others, even as a 
 possibility ; as it teaches a remote and alienated 
 God, and a human nature fallen and utterly disa- 
 bled ; as it virtually denies the humanity of Jesus, 
 by making him the absolute God ; as even in the 
 churches which teach the Fatherhood of God and 
 the purity and dignity of human nature, Jesus is 
 still set apart from humanity as official and miracu- 
 lous Mediator, Lord, and King, and made a demi- 
 god, a mythological personage, neither God nor 
 man, — it is not too much to say that the prevalent 
 doctrine of " Christ," whether in the Orthodox or 
 the Liberal churches, has become a hindrance rather 
 than a help to men's spiritual growth. 
 
 Rightly interpreted, indeed, what is that life of 
 Jesus but an assertion of the spiritual possibilities 
 of man, and of God's intimate and indwelling pres- 
 ence in the spirit of man ? What was his heart's 
 desire but to bring men to the Father, not to stand 
 forever between them and Him ? 
 
 And yet of that life we cannot venture longer to 
 speak without a reservation. For who can know 
 certainly what that life was ? We have a record ; 
 but who can know how nearly it corresponds to the 
 deed actually done, to the words actually spoken ? 
 The life is long since ended ; the witnesses dead ; 
 the documents are not authenticated. No free and 
 competent critic accepts them as fully historical. 
 To destroy that claim was easy. But out of the 
 fragments, who is competent to reconstruct the 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 8 1 
 
 reality ? What are all these recent attempts but 
 proofs that such historical reconstruction is no 
 longer possible ? Each selects, arranges, interprets, 
 quite arbitrarily, according to his individual ideal. 
 Thus we get the life of Jesus at third hand. Beau- 
 tiful, noble, sacred, vividly human. But the child's 
 question recurs, — Is it true? One thing is plain, 
 that it can no longer be personal authority to us in 
 belief or conduct. It is always easier to know 
 whether a thing be right, or a doctrine true, than to 
 know whether Jesus did or spoke it. What then ? 
 Another superstition gone, sacred and precious as 
 was the superstition of the Deity of Jesus. And 
 tender hearts are pained, as they were pained when 
 that was denied ; and timid ones tremble as they 
 did then, lest Christianity and religion were under- 
 mined. Another idol shattered — that the true God 
 may be revealed. And while men cry, " Ye have 
 taken away my Lord," a voice answers, " It is ex- 
 pedient for you that I go away, else will not the 
 Spirit come to you." Another superstition gone, 
 another idol shattered. And what remains ? An 
 ideal of human excellence and sanctity ; words of 
 moral and spiritual truth, which our highest nature 
 recognizes. And while these remain so recognized, 
 they remain to judge us and to redeem us. God 
 and the human soul remain. Is that so little ? Is 
 it not all? God, the Spirit, unspeakably near to 
 us, " nearer to us than our own bodies are." Man, 
 a spirit, capable of knowing, loving, receiving Him. 
 Are we lost because we are left alone with our 
 Father? 
 
 His children we are, not by adoption, but by birth. 
 
82 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 For, as I said, this spiritual being, and son of God, 
 is by birth in every man as a germ, as a latency, as 
 a capacity. Every man becomes a conscious son of 
 God, in proportion as he consciously lives in and 
 from his highest nature. 
 
 What it is we all know in part. Not one of us 
 but has had the experience that has revealed it to 
 us, if we knew how to name it, — this life of God 
 in the soul, this birth of the son of God in the flesh. 
 
 Whenever, in answer to prayer, some great 
 strength and peace have filled our hearts, which 
 nothing outward could explain or justify ; some 
 great tranquillity in the midst of anguish, some great 
 energy in difficulty, some great gladness in sorrow, 
 some great light in darkness ; coming to us, we 
 knew not how, but only knew that it came, and felt 
 it to be from above ourselves, — then God came to 
 us ; the experience was an experience of spiritual, 
 of eternal life. It was an inspiration and a revela- 
 tion. 
 
 When, in answer to noble right-doing, there has 
 been given to our conscience an energy of righteous 
 purpose, the invigoration of a vital principle of jus- 
 tice, — then God has come to us, and the experience 
 was an experience of spiritual, eternal life ; it was 
 an inspiration and a revelation. 
 
 When, in answer to our earnest seeking to know 
 the truth, that we might do the will of God, there 
 has been given to our reason the clear vision and 
 strong conviction of some truth which we felt must 
 be forever true, — then God has come to us ; the 
 experience was an experience of spiritual, of eternal 
 life ; it was an inspiration and a revelation. 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 83 
 
 In saying that inspiration is open to all, I do not 
 mean to say that every man's every notion, opinion, 
 whim, fancy, is a revelation from God. But I say 
 that his clear convictions of truth, his earnest per- 
 suasions of right, his profound and exalted feelings 
 of inward power, peace, and joy, — that these are 
 revelations of God to him ; and that he is bound to 
 receive and obey them as such. I do not say that a 
 man will receive inspiration from God by passively 
 surrendering himself to be possessed by whatever 
 may enter his vacated mind and will ; but I say that 
 the energetic exercise of our highest faculties will 
 bring us to the cooperating, quickening, illuminating 
 presence of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 I do not say the revelations thus made are infal- 
 lible ; but I say they are authoritative for the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Infallibility is not for man ; but authority is for 
 him, and firm conviction, entire faith, and the grow- 
 ing approximation to the absolute truth. 
 
 I must state, further, my conviction that no other 
 revelation than this is possible to man. No inspired 
 prophet or teacher can make a revelation to us, ex- 
 cept as his words awaken our reason to have direct 
 perception of the truth which was in his ; awaken 
 our conscience to have a direct sense of the obliga- 
 tion of the law which he proclaims. Nothing is 
 truth to man, no matter by what divine voice it be 
 spoken in his ear, except it become such a personal 
 perception and conviction. Till then it is but tradi- 
 tion and memory ; like talk of color to a blind man, 
 only words ; a lesson learned by rote, an outward 
 rule and regulation, possibly, but not a vital redeem- 
 
84 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 ing principle, not the truth which makes us free. 
 And only because the germs of all truth lie in the 
 spiritual nature of every man, as child of God, can 
 any of God's messengers reveal his truth, his will. 
 As God has sowed the earth broadcast with germs 
 of vegetable life, so He has sowed the world of souls 
 broadcast with germs of truth. 
 
 The starting into life of such a germ is the re- 
 sponse of the soul to an inspired utterance, and is to 
 that soul the authentication of the inspiration ; the 
 witness of the Spirit which we have in ourselves. 
 
 I know how much is made of the external proof 
 of truths by means of miracles, even to declaring 
 them to be the only possible way of authenticating 
 a revelation. Against this time-honored statement 
 the spiritual nature of men protests, claiming that it 
 is its function to perceive truth, as it is that of the 
 eye to see colors. 
 
 This sphere of man's spiritual nature, as it is the 
 sphere of spiritual experience, is also necessarily that 
 of spiritual science or Theology. The central idea 
 of Theology, the being of God, is possible only to it. 
 The scientific observer of the outward world, using 
 his senses and his practical understanding, which are 
 the appropriate organs of his science, can find no 
 God in Nature. The Positivist is right in saying 
 that he discovers in the outward universe no Infi- 
 nite, no Spirit ; no Law or Cause, even ; but only 
 phenomena and an invariable sequence. All those 
 ideas come from another source. But the Positivist 
 is not right in saying that they are pure hypotheses, 
 and have no reality corresponding to them. Obser- 
 vation and reasoning will not find God ; but the 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 85 
 
 spiritual nature of man declares him. And the man 
 who has found God in his own quickened spirit may 
 afterwards go into nature and trace everywhere rev- 
 erently his methods of working in that outer sphere. 
 
 And as the study of this inner life is Theology, 
 so the life itself, the life of God in the human spirit, 
 is Religion. And when I say the life of God in the 
 spirit of man, I mean no figure of speech whatever. 
 I use the words in their directest sense. When 
 we exercise our bodies in Nature, we all know what 
 invisible forces, chemical and vital, of light, of elec- 
 tricity, and the like, flow into us, working in blood 
 and nerve and tissue, to heal and invigorate, becom- 
 ing actually incorporated with our frames, living and 
 working in and through them. Just so truly, when- 
 ever we exercise our spiritual faculties, do spiritual 
 forces from beyond us enter, quicken, invigorate, 
 become incorporated with our spirits. So God lives 
 in, works through us. If a man opens his eyes, the 
 light comes in ; if he expands his lungs, the air flows 
 in. We cannot turn our reason toward Truth, or our 
 conscience toward Right, or our affection toward 
 Good, or our will toward the doing of either, but 
 that the omnipresent spirit of Truth, of Righteous- 
 ness, of Love, of Power, — and that is God, — flows 
 into them. 
 
 They become channels of his energy, and are rein- 
 forced from beyond themselves. It is ourselves, but 
 something more than ourselves. Perfectly natural, 
 already familiar is this. Only we want to give it the 
 right name. Religious men in all ages have rightly 
 named it. Those who read their words fancy it was 
 something peculiar to them, something miraculous 
 
86 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 perhaps, not knowing that they themselves have had 
 the same experience. " The Father who dwelleth 
 in me, doeth the works." " If we love one another, 
 God dwelleth in us." 
 
 I spoke of this spiritual nature as an original capa- 
 city. We come inlo full possession of our spiritual 
 powers, as of our bodily powers, by exercise. And 
 the exercise of unused limbs may be painful and 
 must cost effort and sacrifice of momentary ease. 
 Not by influence alone, but by effort and sacrifice, 
 is the spiritual life developed within us. By a res- 
 olute choice of the higher, and a resolute putting 
 aside of the lower, whenever they conflict ; by a de- 
 votion of the outward and material to the inward 
 and invisible ; by giving up a bodily advantage to 
 secure a spiritual integrity by living for ideas and 
 principles ; by making sacrifice of money, position, 
 fashion, popularity, external power, to truth and 
 duty, — these are the daily appointed ways of gain- 
 ing the higher life. Whatever loosens the power 
 of outward things over us, and our dependence on 
 them ; whatever lifts us to a nobler thought and 
 action, — these we are to welcome, as too often we 
 shun them. For by them we enter into Life. 
 
 We are not called upon to leave life, but to con- 
 secrate and ennoble life. We are to infuse, from 
 spiritual sources, a spiritual element into its ordi- 
 nary details, by meeting and performing them under 
 the inspiration of conscientious faithfulness, of cheer- 
 ful self-denial, of generous thoughtfulness of other's 
 good. And so we are to convert them all into chan- 
 nels of divine ideas and of God's good-will to men. 
 
 March, 1867. From The Radical. 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 The first doctrine of Natural Religion is that 
 religion is natural to man. 
 
 The first doctrine of Spiritual Religion is that man 
 is a spiritual being. 
 
 These are the root-ideas, the radical doctrines of 
 that natural-spiritual religion of which we are saying 
 something to you here on these Sunday evenings. 
 
 We shall find, I think, the root of any system of 
 theology in its doctrine of man. It might seem as if 
 its doctrine of God would be the basis. But it is not 
 really so, I believe, in our experience, though it may 
 be in our systems. Rather, a man's views of God 
 will be found, if we look closely, to grow out of his 
 view of man. The conception of God is the ideal of 
 human qualities conceived of as superhuman, infinite, 
 perfect. 
 
 What the common doctrine of man is you all well 
 know. " Poor fallen human nature ! " That is the 
 phrase. Utterly disabled, and of itself incapable of 
 any good, and wholly inclined to evil — you know 
 what the creeds say. An ancient legend, wholly 
 unauthenticated, is declared to be divinely dictated 
 history. The first created man and woman, created 
 pure and upright, created in the image of God, cre- 
 ated all that any man or woman can ever, by the 
 grace of God and the costly sacrifice of God become, 
 almost as soon as created, sin utterly and irremedi- 
 
88 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 ably ; sin, not in the indulgence of any base pas- 
 sion, but simply in the desire for knowledge ; sin, 
 not in the commission of anything in itself wrong, 
 but by an act in itself indifferent, only forbidden by 
 the arbitrary will of God. In a moment their purity, 
 their uprightness are utterly lost, their immortality 
 effaced, their nature and destiny changed. That is 
 not the worst of it. The whole race falls in their 
 fall ; the whole race is utterly lost ; the whole race 
 becomes mortal ; human nature is changed. Hence- 
 forth and forever, by the sin of that one man and 
 woman, every man and woman that is born into the 
 world is born depraved, tainted, corrupt, alienated 
 from God, unable of themselves to know and love 
 Him, subject to his wrath, and doomed to eternal 
 torments. After a time, by a miraculous flood, God 
 sweeps the earth clean of this evil brood. But it is 
 in vain, for He saves one family ; and that is enough 
 to transmit the fatal leprosy. The deadly taint is 
 passed down ; spreads and grows with the growing 
 race. At last, after many centuries, God's compas- 
 sion is moved to send a Saviour. He himself, or a 
 portion of Him, descends to earth, is incarnated in a 
 Hebrew child, dies a violent death to save the world. 
 But it is again in vain. Only a few of earth's multi- 
 tudes even hear of these conditions of safety and 
 redemption ; of those who hear, but few accept. 
 And even this does not avail. Individuals are saved, 
 but human nature is not redeemed. Even the 
 redeemed individuals transmit the diseased nature, 
 and with that every child in Christendom is born, as 
 well as in heathendom. The best and the worst are 
 alike under this curse. All alike, by virtue of their 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 89 
 
 human nature, disabled, ruined, lost ! Their highest 
 virtues, most noble and generous sentiments, justest 
 deeds, kindest affections, — all tainted, all incapable 
 of pleasing God, as well as their basest passions ! 
 Their righteousness is but filtjiy rags. Human na- 
 ture, as human, is evil. The human mind, as human, 
 has no knowledge of God. The human heart, as hu- 
 man, is hostile to Him. The human will, as human, 
 is disobedient to his law. " One thing is plain," 
 said an intelligent, amiable, and educated clergyman 
 to me not long since, "that the first voluntary moral 
 act of a child will certainly be evil." 
 
 I have tried to state fairly this doctrine, the 
 received doctrine in the Christian church ; taught as 
 Religion ; the assent to it made the very first step 
 in the religious life. " I can only feel remorse for 
 the sins I have knowingly committed," wrote Dr. 
 Beecher's son to him. But his father wrote him back 
 that that was not enough, and pleaded earnestly with 
 him to feel the sinfulness of his nature, and its lost 
 state without a Redeemer. You know the attempt 
 of another son of his to justify the doctrine by a 
 hypothesis which honors his heart, but not his rea- 
 son. I have heard still another son publicly throw 
 the whole doctrine overboard. 
 
 What I have to say of this doctrine now is simply 
 that it is not true. As from some distressing and 
 hideous nightmare, a man has but to shake himself 
 or be shaken awake, has but to open his eyes, and 
 the frightful phantom is no more. Man is 7/0/ fallen. 
 The race is not in ruins ; human nature is not de- 
 praved, either totally or substantially. It has as 
 much original good in it as it has of " original sin." 
 
go SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 No need of spending time in explaining or justify- 
 ing the doctrine, its how or its why. The question 
 is of the fact. Does any man in his right mind be- 
 lieve that he has no good in him, that his honest 
 endeavors to do right ^.re wicked in the sight of God ? 
 Did any man ever see a totally depraved man ? Or 
 if he did, did he take him as a fair specimen of his 
 neighbors ? Did he not call him a monster and not 
 a true man ? The doctrine wants common sense. 
 
 The only element of truth I can find in the popu- 
 lar doctrine of original and inherited sin is the fact 
 of the transmission of physical qualities and moral 
 tendencies from parent to child. In this way, no 
 doubt, evil tendencies — tendencies to excess and 
 perversion, that is, — are inherited and born in many 
 a child. So a sin perpetuates itself, and the sins 
 of the father are visited on the children. This is a 
 truth of most serious significance, and makes the 
 parent's responsibility for the child's character begin 
 before its birth. But the transmission of evil ten- 
 dencies is but half the truth. By the same law, 
 good is equally transmitted ; a fact full of encour- 
 agement and hope ; one which the common doctrine 
 entirely overlooks. And the taint never reaches to 
 human nature, but only to individual character. No 
 human capacity is destroyed by it ; only the develop- 
 ment of capacity made more difficult. 
 
 I say, then, man is not fallen. There is no histor- 
 ical ground for the fact, no need of the theory. He 
 is imperfect. He does not need to be restored, but 
 perfected. There is evil enough in the world ; sin 
 enough. But there was never a time, when there 
 was less. And never a time, I believe, when there 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 9 1 
 
 was so much good in the world as now. In place of 
 the fiction of a Fall of Man, let us declare the truth 
 of the Rise of Man. 
 
 A germ with an impulse of growth and law of 
 development, that is what science finds universally 
 in physical nature. Germs of reason, conscience, 
 spiritual faculty, with an upward tendency, an im- 
 pulse of growth, a law of progressive development, 
 are what we shall find in human nature. From 
 lower to higher, human thought, feeling, institutions, 
 civilization have from the first been advancing ; not 
 uninterruptedly, not rapidly, not always visibly ; but 
 surely. From imperfection toward perfection is the 
 march. We must take large periods to see it, some- 
 times. The outward world is not in ruins, but in 
 building. And human nature is not in ruins, but in 
 growth. 
 
 The original constitution of man contains the ele- 
 ments of all the good that is in the world ; of all the 
 truth, the justice, the love, the holiness, of all the 
 religion, in a word. These are neither the remains 
 of a primeval holiness destroyed, nor the fragments 
 of an original revelation lost, nor the product of a 
 power specially interpolated. Whatever a man may 
 become by the grace of God, that he has the native 
 capacity of becoming. Human nature is not under 
 a curse, but under a blessing, — a blessing of native 
 capacity and inborn law of growth. 
 
 Thus our theology bases itself upon faith in man. 
 It declares his native faculties to be adequate, good, 
 and trustworthy. It declares the original idea and 
 law of human nature to be perfect. That idea the 
 race has never lost, but is slowly realizing and carry- 
 
0,2 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 ing out. And a man is perfect in proportion as he 
 carries out the original idea of his nature, and is 
 obedient to the law of his being. There is no fac- 
 ulty, or propensity, or instinct, or passion in human 
 nature that is evil in itself. Every one is good in 
 itself, intended for a good purpose, and productive 
 of good as it is legitimately exercised. What we 
 call evil passions are only good passions carried to 
 excess, or misdirected or unbalanced. Anger, for 
 instance, in its evil form, is but the excess of an in- 
 stinct needed for self-protection, or for the defense 
 of the right, and has its pure form in high moral 
 indignation against wrong, a tremendous motive 
 power toward the removal of evil. The lust which 
 fills our communities with degradation, disease, and 
 misery is but the excess or misuse of an instinct 
 in itself innocent, and in its right use productive of 
 the highest human good, in the continuance of the 
 race and the sacred joys of the family. Education, 
 then, not eradication, is the need of human nature. 
 Education ; including exercise, culture, enlighten- 
 ment, inspiration, control. 
 
 I never heard that anybody ever doubted the ade- 
 quacy, the trustworthiness, of the human senses, and 
 those faculties which connect us with the outer 
 world. Not but what our senses sometimes deceive 
 us ; but on the whole, rightly and fairly used, every- 
 body believes they will not mislead, and they do not. 
 Nor does the existence of blind men, or deaf and 
 dumb men, lead anybody to doubt that sight and 
 speech and hearing are natural to man. So every- 
 body belives in the trustworthiness of his practical 
 understanding ; of his reasoning power, of his com- 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 93 
 
 mon sense ; of the faculties by which he carries on 
 his business, and gets his living, and sees the force 
 of an argument, the reasonableness of a course in 
 affairs. Nor does any existing amount of mistakes, 
 of bad logic, or of contradictory conclusions lead 
 any one to doubt that a practical reasoning faculty 
 belongs to the constitution of human nature ; may, 
 if fairly used, be safely trusted ; and will prove on 
 the whole sufficient for its ends. And the more 
 thoroughly it is educated, the more sufficient. With- 
 out such conviction, trust, faith, we could not move 
 a step in the affairs of outward life. 
 
 Just in the same way, the man of natural science 
 puts confidence in the trustworthiness of his observ- 
 ing faculties, in his senses and perceptions. His 
 scientific knowledge could not move a step, could 
 not even exist without it. All his knowledge rests 
 upon that postulate that the senses and mental fac- 
 ulties connected with them are trustworthy. He 
 cannot prove it. He takes it for granted, for he is 
 so made that he must. Are there no mistakes in 
 scientific inquiry ? Are observers perfectly agreed ? 
 Are no reports inaccurate, no theories found unten- 
 able ? Nevertheless, the man of science knows that 
 he may trust the scientific faculties, and that, fairly 
 used, they will in the end lead to the sufficiently 
 sure knowledge of scientific fact. 
 
 It is only when we leave the sphere of the senses, 
 and the practical understanding which conducts sci- 
 entific observation and the practical affairs of life, 
 that men begin to doubt the trustworthiness of their 
 natures. 
 
 But as soon as they come to the higher part of 
 
94 SOME RADICAL- DOCTRINES 
 
 man's nature they do doubt ; yes, and deny. For 
 his outward life, it is agreed, man is well provided 
 with faculties perfectly fitted for their end. But for 
 his higher life ; for what is of infinitely more im- 
 portance to his present welfare, to his lasting good, 
 to his true happiness, — here it is believed God has 
 left him unprovided. It is admitted to be of vital im- 
 portance that a man should know what is just and 
 right, and everlastingly true and beautiful and good ; 
 that he should know God, and his infinite power, 
 and his perfect law, and his tender Fatherhood ; 
 that he should know his own immortality and in- 
 finite destinies. And yet for this all-essential know- 
 ledge, man's nature, it is taught, is unprovided with 
 organs to perceive, with faculties to know ; or those 
 that he has are so imperfectly fitted for their end 
 that of themselves they will either lead him directly 
 astray, or leave him to wander in doubt and uncer- 
 tainty. In a word, it is commonly taught that man 
 has in his native constitution no trustworthy spirit- 
 ual faculties. He has no moral sense and spiritual 
 reason which can serve in his deepest needs, as his 
 eyes, and his hands, and his practical sense serve 
 him in his outward life. 
 
 Now, that this doctrine should be held by those 
 who believe in total depravity, or original sin, is nat- 
 ural and consistent. Of course, a fallen nature can- 
 not be trusted to lead aright, and must guide men 
 straight to the pit. If men in that case are to know 
 the divine law of righteousness, prophets miracu- 
 lously inspired must be sent to reveal it. If they are 
 to see God, He must himself come down to earth 
 and take form before them. If they are to know his 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 95 
 
 will, it must be written in a book by his dictation. 
 I do not dwell upon the frightful disparity between 
 the disease and the remedy, the dreadful insuffi- 
 ciency of the supplement. A whole race in ruins 
 and hopelessly lost, and a few prophets sent to one 
 small nation ; a Redeemer manifested for three short 
 years in one small corner of the globe. Whole na- 
 tions and whole generations of men, who never hear 
 of either ; and, at last, one book, sole repository of 
 God's truth, and will, and a few hundred mission- 
 aries to convey it to earth's millions ! 
 
 Has the Father and Saviour of all treated men in 
 that way ? 
 
 But what shall I say of those whose brighter and 
 truer theology rejects this superstition of total de- 
 pravity and original sin ? The theology which pro- 
 claims the dignity and purity of human nature still 
 continues to deny the adequacy and trustworthiness 
 of the moral and spiritual faculties in human nature. 
 Or it continues to hold doctrines so inconsistent with 
 this as to amount to a denial. Ah ! I fear that in 
 pulling up and throwing away the old doctrine some 
 of the roots have been left. The rejection of man's 
 disability has not been radical enough, nor the asser- 
 tion of man's dignity and grandeur radical enough. 
 Unitarians and Universalists continue to supplement 
 his disability with a superhuman Bible, a superhu- 
 man " Christ." They still speak as if man, left to 
 himself, could have no knowledge of God except the 
 faint notion he could derive from the outward world. 
 They still declare that man has no certainty of im- 
 mortality except for the resurrection of Jesus ; still 
 assert that, outside of Christianity, men have had no 
 
g6 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 faith in a future life, only a " guess " at it. One, 
 even, in declaring that he could not comprehend 
 how this could continue to be asserted in face of the 
 plainest historic facts, must add, " Yet clear as is 
 the declaration of natural religion upon this truth of 
 immortality, and undoubting as is my conviction in 
 my best moments, I am not ashamed to confess that 
 when I stand beside the empty tomb of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, and hear the voice, ' He is not here, he is 
 risen,' I feel an assurance that natural religion could 
 never give." But has he ever stood there, or ever 
 heard that angel ? Was he not confounding a fancy 
 with a fact ? Must not, in the nature of things, the 
 testimony of a miracle, granting it to have happened, 
 be confined to those who actually witnessed it ? " 
 
 And so the Bible continues to be spoken of as the 
 record of a supernatural revelation, its texts quoted 
 as the unanswerable and final authority in moral 
 and spiritual truth. The inspiration of the prophets 
 of Palestine was miraculous, or virtually so ; their 
 names cannot be mentioned in equal connection 
 with Confucius, Zoroaster, Plato, without a shock to 
 " Liberal " sensibilities as well as " Orthodox." God 
 is believed to have been with them as He is not with 
 men now, and the claim to present inspiration, iden- 
 tical in kind with theirs, is counted as visionary and 
 presumptuous. 
 
 " When mankind was a child, God led him by the 
 hand ; when he was a youth, God walked by his 
 side ; but when he had become a man, God gave 
 him his book, and retired behind the veil of his 
 works." Men listen to such words as these without 
 feeling how really irreligious they are. 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 97 
 
 So, Jesus, as a superhuman, miraculous Christ, is 
 set forth as the only true access that man has to 
 God ; a prayer is thought defective that is not 
 offered through him, or in his name, or for his sake; 
 a sermon is unsatisfying that does not enforce its 
 truths by his word or example. He alone is our 
 Saviour, our Redeemer, Mediator, Way to God. No 
 man can come to God except through him. 
 
 "But," some one asks, — " But did not Jesus him- 
 self say that?" What he is recorded to have said 
 is, " No man cometh to the Father but by me," not 
 " no man can come, or ever did come, or ever shall 
 come, but by me." He may have meant that there, 
 in Judea, when he spoke, he was the only teacher 
 who could really bring men to the Father. I cannot 
 be sure of what he meant. Or sure of what he said. 
 But of this I am sure : that when I go directly to 
 my Father in prayer, I find Him near to my soul, 
 with no one between me and Him. 
 
 If we are to have a true scientific theology, we 
 must use the scientific method. First, free our- 
 selves from prepossessions, then try to find and 
 state the facts just as they are. 
 
 Now what is the fact about human nature ? 
 What do individual experience and historical obser- 
 vation teach us ? This : — 
 
 That man has in his original constitution certain 
 spiritual faculties, which are as much a part of his 
 nature as his bodily faculties, or his practical under- 
 standing. These spiritual faculties are as well fitted 
 to their end, are as adequate to their purpose, as the 
 senses or the understanding to theirs. They are as 
 trustworthy in their sphere. And their sphere is 
 
98 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 the perception of ideas, of absolute truths, of eternal 
 principles, of spiritual realities, of things invisible, 
 everlasting, divine. These faculties not only belong 
 to human nature ; they are its special characteris- 
 tic ; they are the human ; they are the man. In his 
 bodily organization man belongs to the animals, is 
 but the most highly organized of them. I believe 
 the anatomist cannot find anything in his body 
 which does not exist among the brutes. Nor is 
 man differenced from them by the possession of 
 the practical understanding or animal mind, those 
 mental faculties which are occupied with the care 
 of the body. For we have given up the idea — have 
 we not ? — that brutes have only physical sensibility 
 and instincts. We see in them the manifestations 
 of reasoning and comparison, and adapting of means 
 to ends, and memory, and hope, and affection ; all, 
 however, relating to the body. But having these 
 faculties in common with them, man has others by 
 which he transcends them ; a higher range of powers 
 into which they do not enter. For we have no indi- 
 cation in them of any perception of ideas, of univer- 
 sal truths, of absolute principles, of the infinite, the 
 perfect, the holy. These are the grander prerog- 
 atives of man. These are the human. These first 
 make their appearance in him. By these man is 
 allied to beings above him, not to those below him. 
 By these he is a spiritual being and son of God. 
 
 Intuitive reason, the moral sense, ideality, love 
 and reverence for the invisible, faith, — these are 
 the spiritual faculties in man. His outward life 
 does not require them, and has no adequate use for 
 them. They often hamper and embarrass it, de- 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 99 
 
 mand sometimes its sacrifice. They point to and 
 give him assurance of an invisible, an immortal life ; 
 a life over which the accidents of time and death 
 have no* power ; a life in divine ideas, in eternal real- 
 ities, in noble endeavors, in self-sacrificing generos- 
 ities, in heroisms and devotions, and sacred aspira- 
 tions. This higher life the senses cannot compass, 
 nor the practical understanding justify ; but it glo- 
 rifies and ennobles and hallows the outward life by 
 infusing into a secret divine principle, and a sacred 
 sense of God's presence and purpose and law. I 
 think the Positivist is right, and speaks the last 
 word of physical science in this direction, when he 
 says that he finds no God in nature, — not even the 
 Great Cause of all things, — but only phenomena 
 and their orderly succession. These are all that the 
 faculties which the scientist uses are fitted to dis- 
 cover. Observation and reasoning will not discover 
 or prove Him. Only the spiritual nature of man 
 declares Him. The physical scientist may also be 
 a religious, a spiritually minded man ; then indeed 
 he will discern everywhere in outward nature the 
 secret Presence, the one Force, the Almighty ; yes, 
 and the All-Loving and the All-Fair. Then he will 
 reverently trace the working of the Divine Law, the 
 methods of God's ways in the visible universe. But 
 unless he has found God in his spirit and by his 
 spirit, he will never find Him by searching nature. 
 There is no logical induction from the visible to the 
 moral. We know thought and will, we know justice 
 and benevolence, only by having experienced them 
 in ourselves. And if in the contemplation of nature 
 or the study of its wonders, the sense of God springs 
 
100 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 up powerfully within us, it is not that nature gives 
 the idea, but only that it awakens a thought or feel- 
 ing that lay germinal within us. Nature may be the 
 occasion, but it is not the origin, of religious ideas. 
 
 And always a moral manifestation is a higher 
 manifestation of God than any physical phenome- 
 non can be. A human deed of moral heroism, of 
 self-devoted love, of sacred enthusiasm, is a perfecter 
 revelation of God than the magnificent spaces of 
 astronomy, or the vast eras of geology, or the won- 
 ders of microscopic beauty and skill. 
 
 The great ideas which his spiritual nature reveals 
 to man are the ideas of God, of duty, of unselfish 
 love, of immortality. And all these are spiritually 
 discerned. The faculties which know them are, if 
 fairly exercised, perfectly adequate to acquire that 
 knowledge and are perfectly trustworthy. To doubt 
 that is the true unbelief. To hold that God has 
 given us senses and understanding, and that these 
 are adequate to their work and our needs ; and to 
 doubt that He has given us moral and spiritual fac- 
 ulties, or that these are adequate to their work and 
 to our infinitely higher needs, and must be supple- 
 mented by the imperfect and uncertain intervention 
 of miracle, — this is nigh to Atheism. 
 
 In the full conception of God culminates all the 
 revelation of the spiritual faculties in their highest 
 exercise. 
 
 The reason gives the idea of the infinite Wisdom, 
 the eternal Truth. The moral sense gives the idea 
 of perfect Justice ; the spiritual affection gives the 
 idea of love ; the spiritual will gives the idea of infi- 
 nite Power ; the spiritual imagination gives the idea 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 101 
 
 of infinite Beauty. Beauty I say. This is not often 
 spoken of as a divine attribute. But if beauty be 
 not in God, how can it be in nature, how can it be 
 in the human soul ? It cannot exist there any more 
 than truth, power, love, justice, without pointing to 
 its existence, in perfect degree, in Him from whom 
 comes the creation and the spirit of man. Thus it 
 is that the spirit in man knows and reveals the 
 Spirit above man. 
 
 If now, any one ask, — and the question may hon- 
 estly be asked, — granting that these ideas be in 
 man, how do we know that there is any reality be- 
 yond man corresponding to them ? I can only say 
 that a necessity of man's nature compels him to 
 refer these ideas to a reality beyond himself as their 
 ground and origin. In regard to the outward world, 
 we have cognizance of only sensations and percep- 
 tions in ourselves ; but we are so made that we 
 cannot help referring them to an existence out of 
 ourselves, and by a necessity of our constitution we 
 believe, though we cannot prove, that an outward 
 world does exist, corresponding to the idea we have 
 of it in ourselves. In both cases it comes back to 
 the trustworthiness of our nature, and if we do not 
 believe in that, we cannot believe in anything, not 
 even in our unbelief. 
 
 Again, does any ask, How, if these moral and 
 religious faculties be inherent in man, can you ex- 
 plain that all men are not morally virtuous, that all 
 men are not religiously devout ? the answer is, of 
 course, that a faculty may exist in man and yet not 
 be used ; that capacities which men alike possess 
 are in different degrees developed. And the like 
 
102 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 answer must be given to the objection derived from 
 the diversities of religious belief and moral notions 
 in different nations and ages ; beliefs often mon- 
 strous, notions often gross. These are but the re- 
 sult of different degrees of development. But the 
 fact remains, even established by these anomalies, 
 that everywhere and in all times man has had some 
 idea of God and some idea of right and wrong ; and 
 nothing can so simply and completely explain that 
 as the existence in his native constitution of a spir- 
 itual faculty, a capacity for knowing God and his 
 law. 
 
 The conceptions or forms which this idea will 
 take depend upon the state of those who shape 
 them. A rude, sensuous people, or man, will have 
 rude and sensuous conceptions about God ; will take 
 a stick or tree, a rudely cut stone, to represent Him. 
 Another, more spiritual, will find in nature's grand- 
 est object, the sun, his symbol. Another will seek 
 in idealized human forms, carved in marble, the 
 outward expression. And when men have come to 
 conceive of God under human attributes, the more 
 feebly spiritualized will take what is outermost in 
 man and least worthy, and will figure God in human 
 shape, with human organs and human passions on 
 a majestic scale ; will believe Him to be angry, to 
 be vindictive, to be appeasable by sacrifices, to be 
 changeable, repenting of what He has done ; to 
 govern the world by edicts and interferences ; to 
 come and to go, to be now present, now absent. 
 This is the prevalent conception in Christendom. 
 
 But the more spiritually minded a man becomes, 
 the more he will drop one after another of these 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 103 
 
 external conceptions, holding to them for a while, 
 perhaps, as figures of speech, but freeing himself 
 more and more from them, and framing his concep- 
 tions more and more by what is spiritual in man, 
 his images by what is invisible in nature. The more 
 a man, by living spiritually, knows himself to be a 
 spirit, the more clearly he knows that God is The 
 Spirit. He no longer thinks of Him as an individ- 
 ual being in any way apart from the universe. But 
 as an all-pervading, an all-including, an all-quicken- 
 ing Life ; a really omnipresent Thought, and Love, 
 and Will ; not individual, yet personal, because 
 thought and love and will are qualities of persons 
 and not of things. He no longer thinks of God as 
 having once made the world, and now superintend- 
 ing it, and occasionally intervening by his messen- 
 gers ; but as the informing and including Spirit 
 which momently and forever puts forth the universe ; 
 working in every atom, through every force, the one 
 Force of which all natural forces are expressions. 
 His laws are not written in statute books, but framed 
 into the organization of things. His providence is 
 not a special intervention, but a perpetual will to 
 good, which makes that no real, lasting harm can 
 come to any. His will is not a series of separate 
 volitions, but a full, steady, all-moving, all-conquer- 
 ing stream of energy, unwearied and unceasing. 
 His love is not an individual affection selecting and 
 especially directing itself upon individuals, but an 
 atmosphere in which all are embosomed, and which 
 our individual heart feels whenever we seek it. 
 Thus is God inexpressibly near, for from spirit all 
 barriers of space and time are removed. 
 
104 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 But, highest experience of all, there comes a time 
 when man, in high spiritual mood, feels God — the 
 Spirit — more than near. In some hour of high 
 thought, when a great truth flashes upon his reason ; 
 in some still hour of communion or agony of prayer, 
 when a great peace fills his heart ; in some noble 
 moment of self-sacrifice or right-doing, when duty 
 has grown clear to his conscience ; when a quicken- 
 ing energy has exalted his will and warmed his heart, 
 — then he has felt the assurance, glad, overpowering, 
 uplifting, unspeakably sweet and beautiful, that that 
 which was moving within him, exalting, yet calming, 
 was more than himself ; that the God whom he had 
 reverenced with such awe has entered into his spirit 
 an indwelling, inspiring presence. This love was 
 God's love. This justice God's justice. This truth 
 God's truth. This peace God's peace. 
 
 One cannot speak many words of such experience. 
 It is the experience of saintly men in all time. It is 
 the experience of every soul in its saintly moments. 
 Then we cry, " Hast Thou been always thus with 
 me, and have I not known Thee ? " Then we learn 
 that the Spirit that stirred us so powerfully in these 
 rapt moments is every hour working in a thousand 
 familiar ways around and within our souls, — as the 
 electricity, which concentrates in the blinding glory 
 of the storm, is all the time working, kindly and 
 vivifying, about and within our bodies. 
 
 Finally, does any one ask, If in ourselves we 
 have the consciousness of God and of the divine 
 law, what need of prophets, of bibles, of " Christ " ? 
 What need, indeed ! That is not the question. The 
 question is, Man being by nature religious, how could 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 105 
 
 there fail to be prophets, bibles, redeemers ? How 
 could this nature fail to express itself in speech, in 
 writing ? How could it fail to be in some men more 
 intense, more earnest, more full, more vivid in its 
 utterance, more profound and enduring in the im- 
 pression it should leave behind in the world ? No 
 need, indeed, of supplementary, special and miracu- 
 lous intervention to do that which was already pro- 
 vided for from the beginning. But much need that, 
 in unbelieving ages, when men were absorbed in the 
 outward, and skeptical of the inward life, prophets 
 gifted with moral insight and spiritual life should 
 seek to arouse and quicken their faith in God, duty, 
 love, and immortality. The same need exists now, 
 and the same supply exists to meet it ; for God and 
 man are the same they ever were, and their relations 
 the same. Great the need in all ages — and truly 
 in this age — to break up men's petrified worship of 
 the past which they glorify with a superstitious halo, 
 building the sepulchres of its prophets and worship- 
 ing its closed books, that they may excuse them- 
 selves from the solemn duty of the present, and those 
 sacrifices by which alone divine inspiration can be 
 received. Great the need to declare to them the 
 grandeur and sacredness of the present and its 
 opportunities of inspiration. Great the need to 
 recall them from idolatry of the dead to true rever- 
 ence for the living, — above all for the living God. 
 There is nothing in bibles, Persian, Hindoo, or He- 
 brew, which human nature cannot explain. Their 
 errors are certainly human ; the grand truths which 
 irradiate them are equally human, and none the less 
 divine for that. Redeemers, manifestations, incar- 
 
106 SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES 
 
 nations of God, all nations and ages have needed 
 and have had ; first living men ; then mytholo- 
 gized into demi-gods, into gods. Not otherwise has 
 it happened with him whom Christendom worships ; 
 Jesus of Nazareth, to the Orthodox, a god ; to the 
 Liberals, a mythologic demi-god ; to them who are 
 spiritual, a brother man who needs no more than 
 human nature and its native capacities to explain all 
 he was and did. Human, — but remember all of 
 divine that human means, since the human soul is by 
 its nature open to the inspiration and indwelling of 
 God. 
 
 What Jesus was, and what he did, indeed, we can 
 never exactly know. Thus much, at least, I think 
 is proved by these many attempts to reconstruct his 
 life on a historic basis, — that we no longer have 
 the means of constructing it with any certainty. 
 The great good they will do will be to accustom 
 men to look upon him as perfectly human. So 
 Jesus steps down from the pedestal upon which he 
 has unwillingly stood, while priests waved their 
 censers, and hid him in the sacred smoke. He 
 walks among men, and they feel the warm, familiar 
 clasp of his hand, and reverence him the more that 
 they adore him the less. And he says to them : 
 "Sons of God, cease these idolatrous praises of me ; 
 there is none so good as you deem me, save one, 
 that is God. Cease to say of me things which you 
 do not know to be true, for simple truth is the high- 
 est honor you can give me, and I am but a mortal 
 man as yourselves. Know that your ideal of me is 
 but the ideal of your own possibilities. Strive to 
 
SOME RADICAL DOCTRINES loy 
 
 be true to those, and you shall find God as near to 
 you as He was to me. Yea, the Father shall dwell 
 in you, doing greater works than I have done, and 
 shall never leave you alone, because you shall always 
 do the things that please Him." 
 
 The first doctrine of spiritual religion is that man 
 is a spirit ; and the second is that God is the Spirit. 
 
 And so are God and man at one. 
 
 May, 1867. From The Radical. Originally read as a lecture at 
 the Parker Fraternity Rooms, February 24, 1867. 
 
 
SERMONS 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 The word preached. — Hebrews iv. 2. 
 
 The institution of preaching, whatever may be 
 said of its present want of power or of the inade- 
 quacy of the results it produces, — and, doubtless, 
 a good deal may be said with truth, — has not yet 
 vacated its claim to exist. However poorly the pul- 
 pit may do its work, it still has a work to do. It will 
 not cease to have a work to do so long as the incom- 
 plete and disordered condition of the world fills it 
 with sin and sorrow, — so long as breaking hearts 
 need consolation, and burdened spirits strength, 
 and darkened minds light, and fallen souls redemp- 
 tion. It will not cease to have a work to do so long 
 as the pressure and fever of material activities is 
 continually drawing men away from the recognition 
 of their spiritual relations and needs ; so long as 
 purely temporal interests and aims absorb the ear- 
 nestness that should be devoted to the attainment of 
 the eternal life within ; so long as merely external 
 standards of action and success take the place of 
 spiritual estimates ; so long as selfish maxims and 
 practices are rife and current, deadening men's con- 
 sciences to the duty owed to their neighbor. It has 
 a work to do so long as luxury intoxicates and en- 
 feebles, and sensuality maddens and destroys. It 
 has a work to do so long as violence and revenge 
 
112 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 organized into national custom, and injustice and 
 inhumanity legalized into cherished institutions, ren- 
 der men callous to the eternal claims of the Christian 
 law of love, — the divine and highest law of justice 
 and mercy. It has a work to do so long as hells of 
 vice and infamy yawn black and terrible in the 
 midst of our fairest communities, unheeded by pre- 
 occupied eyes. 
 
 So long, in brief, as the Living God is unknown, 
 or forgotten, or defied ; or believed to be afar off, or 
 practically set afar off, so long the pulpit has a work 
 to do. So long as the spirit of love and brotherhood 
 which Jesus lived and died to teach is yet unlearned, 
 and God's kingdom, for which he labored, not yet 
 come, the Christian pulpit has a work to do, and 
 need not abdicate its functions, and will not become 
 obsolete. 
 
 Therefore may we well build new pulpits and con- 
 secrate new walls to echo with the sound of " the 
 word preached." 
 
 A strong, calm voice above the din of worldliness 
 and strife, a clear, unfaltering tone amid the delud- 
 ing voices of selfishness and sin, still let it to men 
 and nations proclaim the Love of God and the Love 
 of Man as the sum of the Law. Still let it send home 
 its appeals to the conscience, speak its heavenly 
 peace to the broken-hearted, its divine strength to the 
 weary and heavy-laden, its faith to the despondent, 
 its redemption to the sinful. Still let it show forth 
 the true objects of life, the things that are worth 
 living for ; still point out to men the evils that may 
 justly provoke their indignation ; and the good works 
 that should enlist their sympathy and their toil ; still 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 113 
 
 strive to make the soul recipient of the life of God, 
 and to bring on the coming of God's reign of truth, 
 justice, and love, of harmony and joy in the world. 
 
 One thing is certain, — that the pulpit cannot 
 hope long to stand unless it has a work to do. It 
 cannot hope long to stand among us by prescription, 
 or any supposed divine appointment. It is already 
 stripped of much of its peculiar privilege and pres- 
 tige ; let them go ; I wish they were all gone. It 
 must make good its right to be, by showing itself 
 a reality ; then it cannot be shaken. It is better, 
 infinitely better, that it, and the man in it, should 
 stand on their own veritable worth and character ; 
 be venerated for only what of genuine sanctity they 
 have, and not upheld by prescription, custom, or 
 complaisance. 
 
 Alas for the pulpit that does not do its work, — 
 that breaks no bread of life, but offers only husks. 
 If the pulpit be occupied by a formalist, with his 
 perfunctory routine of stereotyped commonplaces, 
 unvivified by one gleam of personal experience, with 
 its rites, " whose dry creaking formality no heart 
 warms ; " if the church that should be filled with the 
 presence of a living Christ be but his empty tomb, 
 with no reminiscence of him but the cast-off linen 
 clothes, we need write no scornful inscription above 
 its doorway ; it is its own saddest epitaph. If it be 
 invaded by the sectarian who shuts up the kingdom 
 of heaven ; or the bigot who poisons the glad waters 
 of life with his own uncharitableness ; if it lend it- 
 self to the schemes and mould itself to the fashions 
 of worldliness, preaching smooth things for true 
 things ; if it descend to become the ally of wrong, 
 
I 14 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 and drug a nation's already torpid conscience with 
 stronger opiates, — it deserves only contempt and 
 neglect. 
 
 It is not to be overlooked that the pulpit has of 
 late years, and among ourselves, been assailed by a 
 searching criticism. And the conscientious reformer 
 has uttered his severe protest against its deadness 
 and faithlessness, and shaking off the dust of his 
 feet against it has gone out into the wilderness. 
 
 It is charged, on the one hand, that the pulpit 
 is the discourager and enemy of free thought ; that 
 it discountenances free inquiry ; that, professing the 
 doctrine of private judgment, it is opposed to its 
 free exercise ; that it anchors itself to obsolete the- 
 ologies ; refuses new light ; is suspicious of new 
 doctrine ; and holding up its infallible Church, or 
 infallible Creed, or infallible Bible, deters any who 
 would question them by the cry of infidel and here- 
 tic. Or, again, that it has been timid and feared to 
 speak out its belief or its doubts. 
 
 On the other hand, it is charged with being faith- 
 less to humanity ; that like the Pharisees of old it 
 has tithed mint, anise, and cumin, and omitted 
 justice and mercy ; has devoured widows' houses, 
 and for a pretense made long prayers ; that it has 
 been silent upon great wrongs, afraid or unwilling 
 to speak plainly of popular sins ; that it has been the 
 defender and bulwark of injustice and oppression; 
 at least their abetter by timid acquiescence of faint, 
 undecisive speech. 
 
 The force of such charges can only lie in their 
 truth. To a considerable extent, and with noble and 
 increasing exceptions, they have been true. They 
 
THE WORD PREACHED I I 5 
 
 are not to be met by recrimination, nor even by 
 a mild rebuke of their intemperance of statement. 
 They are to be met and disposed of only by the 
 pulpit's heartily identifying itself with all progress ; 
 by its throwing aside all unworthy reserves and 
 fears, and not tolerating only, but welcoming all 
 free thought and inquiry ; and by its declaring a 
 cordial sympathy with the main principles and aims 
 of practical reform. 
 
 This it is bound to do as the servant of truth, 
 humanity, and God. Its position and its language 
 upon these points must be clear and unmistakable. 
 It must give its cordial encouragement to all earnest 
 search for truth, however the stability of cherished 
 doctrine may be threatened. It must give its can- 
 did and hopeful consideration to every endeavor to 
 apply the principles of Christianity to the removal 
 of misery and wrong ; to every attempt to organize 
 and embody the Christian principle of brotherhood. 
 
 Then the reformer will not long retain his antag- 
 onism. He will gladly come back to the church, 
 which will include him and his work, and calm his 
 heat, while he deepens his earnestness, in the quiet 
 atmosphere of her prayers. He will go serene and 
 strong and patient, in the constantly renewed 
 thought of the long-suffering, always working God. 
 
 The pulpit, indeed, is not the place for theologi- 
 cal discussions or criticism. These belong to the 
 schools and to books. It has to do with the results 
 attained and their practical, moral terminations. It 
 has to make statements of theological doctrine al- 
 ways, as Jesus did, in relation to life. But it must 
 fearlessly accept the genuine results of inquiry. It 
 
Il6 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 must not present a theology which contradicts clear 
 facts of science or of human nature. It must not 
 teach a bibliolatry which shuts its eyes to the plain- 
 est dictates of common sense, or puts itself in an- 
 tagonism to reason and conscience, — to the living 
 word of God in the soul. 
 
 Nor is the pulpit the place for discussing all the 
 details of reform. But it must be quick to feel all 
 injury done to man, and must state strongly the ap- 
 plication of Christian principles to the condemnation 
 and removal of existing evils. It must not be silent 
 when a great wrong like slavery, in our country, is 
 causing untold misery, lowering the moral tone of 
 the community and involving all in its meshes. Or 
 when intemperance, supported by social customs 
 and men's selfish cupidity, is making its terrible 
 havoc ; brutalizing bodies and demoralizing souls ; 
 desolating homes and crowding prisons. Or, when, 
 side by side with the growing wealth of our cities, 
 there is growing a permanent pauperism, its awful 
 shadow, the home heathenism, shame of our Chris- 
 tendom. Or, when the very system on which this 
 wealth is accumulated is founded upon an un-Chris- 
 tian principle, organizing competition and antagonism 
 instead of cooperation and brotherhood. The poli- 
 tician and economist may regard these questions 
 solely in their material bearings ; the pulpit must 
 show their religious and moral, their Christian and 
 humane side. It must not avoid them through fear 
 of agitation, or through love of peace. It must show 
 men how to treat them with earnestness and fidelity, 
 yet with justice and charity, too. 
 
 All this work the pulpit can do without neglecting 
 
THE WORD PREACHED WJ 
 
 its more constant work of refining and sanctifying 
 the interior life ; awakening the individual conscience 
 to self-discipline ; strengthening the heart to meet 
 private trials ; and inculcating that spirit which illu- 
 minates the home and, by religious faithfulness, 
 glorifies the humble works that lie along the path 
 of daily life. It need not " lose its humanity in its 
 philanthropy." 
 
 I am not sure of the entire justice of the com- 
 plaint sometimes made by the reformer, that the 
 pulpit does not, as it should, take the lead in reforms, 
 — that is in the literal and visible sense. I do not 
 urge the point that, from the very pulpit long since 
 disowned, and disowning, the reformer first heard 
 those blessed Christian truths of love and justice 
 which he now seeks to apply ; and that the seed 
 then sown unconsciously led on to the harvest. But 
 there may be impelling power that does not literally 
 lead. Idly in your harbor swings the ship, her sails 
 vainly spread to catch a breath from the dead calm 
 air that leaves them drooping in heavy folds. In 
 vain, from the distant port, golden dreams beckon 
 her on ; in vain the smooth sea spreads out its 
 unbroken pathway before her; she does not move. 
 But, lo ! a stir ; the canvas flaps and swells ; a 
 breeze has sprung up behind ; it fills up the slant 
 and scooped sails, and bears the good ship swift and 
 glad across the sea. Walking through some vast 
 machine-shop, amid its endlessly circling bands, the 
 complicated and swift-revolving wheels, the unrest- 
 ing movement to and fro of a hundred machines, 
 before whose quiet chisels the iron yields like wax, 
 you look in vain for the beginning of the motion, till 
 
Il8 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 in a small chamber in one corner they show you the 
 stationary engine which is the originating power, 
 the pulsing heart, of the whole. It does not leave 
 its place, but it sends its energy to the remotest 
 wheel. 
 
 The pulpit, in a certain sense, is by the necessity 
 of its position, conservative ; but it need not be so 
 in any other than a good sense. It is this, partly 
 because it is an institution ; and partly because it 
 is connected with a worship. These things may 
 limit it ; but they need not limit it injuriously. On 
 the whole, I think them a help rather than a harm. 
 Its permanence, if it be not allowed to diminish its 
 life, gives to the pulpit a cumulative power. Its 
 association with the acts of worship is its peculiar 
 advantage. Again and again, with needed repeti- 
 tion and recurrence, it presses home its influences, 
 and under favorable conditions. It approaches men 
 in their best mood. It allies itself to the power of 
 personal character and private friendship. It speaks 
 in an atmosphere of prayer, withdrawal, devout 
 emotion. It speaks a higher than personal word. 
 Hence, it can speak from a vantage ground upon 
 what are called " exciting topics," subjects elsewhere 
 complicated with the strife of partisan politics, with 
 personal interests, and material results. Here they 
 can be treated in the light of principles ; spoken of 
 by lips that have just been trembling with prayers, 
 and heard by minds composed by the thought of 
 God. 
 
 For if the pulpit be by its position conservative, 
 it is by its aim radical ; since it confessedly aims at 
 nothing less than the entire uprooting of evil and 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 1 19 
 
 evils, at the complete conversion and regeneration 
 of the world. Perhaps, then, we cannot find a bet- 
 ter expression than to say that its peculiar office is 
 mediation. 
 
 I know that facts may not seem always to sup- 
 port this theory of reform preaching and hearing. 
 But if offense come, the pulpit must be careful that 
 the "woe " be not justly uttered against itself. It 
 is not bound to take for granted that there is an 
 antagonism between itself and the hearers on these 
 matters. It were better to suppose — is it a too 
 violent supposition? — that the hearers would like 
 to see clearly their duty in the case. Sometimes 
 the preacher seems, in bracing himself to the utter- 
 ance of what may be unwelcome truth, to assume, 
 unconsciously, an even pugilistic attitude. It is bet- 
 ter to be pugilistic than supine, if that were the al- 
 ternative. But it is not the alternative. The truth 
 must be uncompromisingly spoken. But there 
 may be mediation without compromise. The plow- 
 share, too, is as uncompromising as the sword ; 
 and the seed is a better symbol for the pulpit 
 than the bullet. Yet even the serene, mediating 
 Jesus found the truth a sword in an evil generation. 
 And the generation is not yet passed away in 
 which the mildest utterance of unpopular truth 
 may sever brother from brother and pastor from 
 people. Alas for him by whom the offense cometh ! 
 Even if he be only the man who is " as much op- 
 posed as any one" to some evil "in the abstract." 
 As if evil ever existed in the abstract ! As if the 
 abstract, or essential principle, did not always exist 
 in the institution ! As if the very work of the pul- 
 
120 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 pit were not to induce men to convert their abstract 
 belief into practical action ; their abstract virtue into 
 daily life ! 
 
 Then if the considerations I have presented be 
 of force, the pulpit will retain its place. It will not 
 be superseded by the lyceum or the press. Though 
 these are great instrumentalities, too. I joyfully 
 welcome their advancing influence. I am thankful 
 when I find the popular lecture or the newspaper 
 made the vehicle, as they ought to be, of moral 
 and religious truth — of Christian estimates. I am 
 cheered when I see them thus recognizing the 
 greatness of their position, and throwing their wide 
 influence on the side of God and humanity. I 
 claim no monopoly of religion from the pulpit. I 
 know that the wells that quench men's thirst are 
 not filled merely by the waters that run down from 
 church roofs. And while all the evil that darkens 
 the world cannot be charged to the pulpit's faith- 
 lessness, neither can the good which irradiates the 
 darkness be attributed to its influence alone. 
 
 Thus I believe, against all criticisms, that the 
 pulpit has a work to do — if it will but do it. That 
 it is a living power in. society — if it but have life. 
 That it is a conserving salt in the world — if it do 
 not lose its savor. 
 
 Therefore I am glad that pulpits — free pulpits 
 — should be multiplied ; and more and more the 
 word be preached. 
 
 The word. 
 
 What a mystery is a word, — a movement of the 
 lips, a vibration of the air, no more. Yet see it call 
 the swift crimson of shame to the face, or blanch it 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 121 
 
 with fear ; see it light up the glazed eye of despair ; 
 beat down the defiant lids of villainy ; bring floods of 
 assuaging or repentant tears ; see it hush multitudes 
 into stillness, or sway their surging emotions ; see 
 cowards grow fearless, and kings tremble before it ; 
 and thrones crumbling, and nations new-born, and 
 strong-based and towering wrongs wavering and un- 
 dermined before its vibration. What a mystery is a 
 word ! Because it is the image and person of the 
 soul ; thought articulate ; intoned emotion ; spirit 
 uttered, and put forth. 
 
 " In the beginning was the Word." The divine 
 energy went forth, flashing and throbbing athwart 
 the chaos, which assumed polarity and began to ar- 
 range itself into form. And as the Word sounded 
 on, order after order of being sprung up in ever more 
 perfect form. The creation is not yet completed. 
 Still the Word sounds on, perfecting the outward and 
 the moral world. Still in outward nature the stormy 
 winds, his messengers, are fulfilling that Word ; and 
 still in human hearts and societies and institutions 
 new thought and life lead on to a perfect creation. 
 Still the divine energy, which is order, which is good, 
 is displacing, harmonizing, organizing, regenerating 
 the chaos, which is disorder, which is evil. Still, 
 " in all ages, entering into holy souls it makes them 
 to be children of God and prophets ; " and " to as 
 many as receive it, it gives power to become sons of 
 God." And still, while creation groaneth and trav- 
 aileth, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of 
 God, that Word sounds on, throbs on. Through hu- 
 man hearts and lives and lips ; through temptations 
 in the wilderness and Calvary's cross ; through 
 
122 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 prophets' tongues, and reformers' labors, and martyrs' 
 fiery deaths ; through thundering providences and 
 silent destinies ; through prayers and tears, and 
 toils and self-sacrifices ; nay, through errors and 
 failures and sins and strifes ; through wars and ru- 
 mors of wars, the primal Word sounds on, completing 
 his creation, and fulfilling his eternal will. 
 
 "In all ages"? — then in our age ; "to as many 
 as receive it " ? — then to us, if we receive it. To 
 us the Word is nigh ; even in our hearts. Then let 
 us reverently seek it, listen to it, obey it, and yield 
 ourselves to work with and for God. 
 
 Not in vain will the word be preached if it be his 
 word. 
 
 But we read — and our own experience would 
 teach us if we did not read — that the word preached 
 does not always profit, not being mixed with faith in 
 those that hear. 
 
 The inefificacy of preaching is not all to be laid at 
 the preacher's door. I care not how great a claim 
 you make upon him, that he should be living and 
 earnest. It is all just. But I make the same claim 
 upon the hearers, that they be so too. I care not 
 how strenuously you urge that the preacher should 
 speak from a spirit pure from uncharitableness, nar- 
 rowness, or partisanship, free from unworthy timidi- 
 ties. I make the same claim upon the hearers. And 
 justly. For if there be not willingness, receptive- 
 ness, desire on their part, the most angelic eloquence 
 must often fail. Jesus could not touch those who 
 wrapped themselves up in worldliness, prejudice, and 
 self-righteousness. The spring rain of yesterday, 
 which started the fields into living green, and pur- 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 12$ 
 
 pled the garden mould with violets, fell on the rock, 
 the sand-bank, the trodden pavement, — and they 
 are barren as before ! 
 
 How true it is that, by a spiritual law, only to him 
 that hath can be given. How true it is that we 
 receive but what we give, or what we are. That our 
 spiritual condition makes for us, almost, the outward 
 world ; creates for us really the world in which we 
 live. Let a number of men be looking together at 
 the same landscape — what a different landscape 
 they see. To one it is a farm ; to another, house- 
 lots ; to another, sporting-ground ; to another, a 
 beautiful picture ; to another, a symbol of spiritual 
 truth. One sees in it so much wealth that might 
 be added to his own ; another, so much means for 
 relieving the wants of others ; the sorrowing eye 
 sees it cold and sad ; the joyful heart finds its own 
 radiance repeated there. " To the pure, all things 
 are pure;" the polluted mind turns all things to 
 corruption. The hopeful spirit finds in darkest 
 events some encouragement ; the distrustful turns 
 the most cheering to despair. 
 
 How true it is that "our own spiritual state opens 
 or shuts the soul to the entrance of divine messen- 
 gers." The word that to the worldly, external man 
 is dull, unheeded, and meaningless, to a seeking and 
 receptive spirit is power and life. The truth that 
 to the thoughtless or self-satisfied is weariness, is to 
 a waiting mind light and inspiration ; to the yearn- 
 ing heart consolation and peace. The word that to 
 the Pharisee was offense came to the Publican as 
 hope and redemption. 
 
 The promise is to those that ask and seek. The 
 
124 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 man who lives for material and outward things, who 
 has never known what it is, with bitter shame, to 
 mourn for sin and shortcoming ; to struggle against 
 inner weakness or outward temptation ; whose heart 
 has never throbbed with a spiritual aspiration, a 
 longing for a living faith and a child-like trust ; who 
 has never yearned for a personal experience of God's 
 presence, for a power to overcome evil and live a 
 true life, — how can it fail to be to him unmeaning 
 words when the preacher speaks of spiritual realities ; 
 of the eternal life within ; of the power and peace of 
 prayer ; of an indwelling God ; of the grandeur of 
 duty and self-sacrifice ? 
 
 The mere critic, who comes to enjoy finely-turned 
 sentences, brilliant word-painting, elegant oratory ; 
 the intellectually curious, who comes to hear some 
 novelty of speculation ; the sectarian or polemic, who 
 comes to get his theological combativeness pleas- 
 ingly excited ; the listless, who comes to have his 
 feelings played upon ; the indifferent, who comes to 
 get the credit of conforming to a respectable cus- 
 tom ; the self-righteous, who comes to set an exam- 
 ple, not having himself any need, — these may get, 
 possibly, what they seek. 
 
 They cannot hope to get — for they have not 
 sought — spiritual quickening ; clear sight of duty ; 
 strength to conquer temptation ; noble purposes ; 
 consciousness of immortality ; sense of God's pres- 
 ence ; the Christ-like temper ; a wider and more 
 active humanity. 
 
 But the seeking spirit ; the asking mind ; the 
 longing heart, that has learned from experience its 
 need of a living ministry of truth ; has learned that 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 1 25 
 
 it " could not stand except in the strength of an 
 Almighty arm," — how will it convert to life the 
 simplest-spoken words ? While the pampered appe- 
 tite, that is not hunger, is discontented without its 
 rare and frequent dishes, which are not food, the 
 genuine hunger of want finds sweetness and nour- 
 ishment in the plainest loaf, if it be but bread. 
 
 If, then, you ask, and it is a question worth seri- 
 ous asking, how these Sunday services in which you 
 are constantly engaging, and this ministry of the 
 word preached, may be made genuine and profitable 
 to you ; how you may get from them all the good 
 they are capable of affording; I know of but one 
 answer : Bring to them a seeking spirit, a feeling 
 of your personal need of moral and religious life. 
 Bring to them the earnest desire to know the truth, 
 that you may live by it ; to know the duty, that you 
 may do it. 
 
 Bring this spirit, this sense of need, this desire, 
 and you can hardly fail to find these services a real- 
 ity ; you will make them such. 
 
 Bring this, and the plainest preaching will hardly 
 be dry to you. You will, at least, find nourishment 
 in the devout emotions of the prayer and hymns ; 
 and the familiar sentences of the Bible will have 
 an ever fresh and deepening significance, and be to 
 you consolation and strength. 
 
 Bring this, and you will listen with freedom and 
 candor to views however opposite to those you may 
 have entertained. 
 
 Bring this, and you will be slow to take offense, 
 though the word preached run counter to your pre- 
 judices, condemn your cherished idols, or call up for 
 
126 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 judgment sins in which you may, yourself, be in- 
 volved. 
 
 Bring this, and you will bear with the preacher, 
 though he be not always prudent or judicious ; 
 though in view of some enormities he should express 
 an unmeasured indignation. 
 
 Bring this seeking spirit ; this sense of personal 
 need ; this desire to know the truth that you may 
 know the duty ; bring this life, and how it must 
 needs kindle the preacher's heart, and put fire on 
 his lips ! How could it fail to encourage his search 
 for truth, and deepen the purpose of his life, to feel 
 such a response ; to stand in such a charged atmos- 
 phere ; to know that they to whom he ministered 
 long not to be confirmed in some cherished system, 
 but with reverent, yet fearless courage to explore 
 the infinite realms of divine Truth ; and to submit 
 themselves in trustful obedience to the divine Law. 
 
 But, friends, if through our fault, this word 
 preached, with its lessons and its prayers, its weekly 
 recurring mission to our souls, be not to us a reality, 
 be not a quickening ministry ; if we come and go 
 unmoved and unredeemed; if we get no deepened 
 sense of the worth of the soul, the nearness of God, 
 the true aims of life ; if we are stirred with no nobler 
 determination to put away sin and live for God, to 
 put away selfishness and live for others' good ; if 
 we make no growth in holiness, purity, self-control, 
 fidelity to conscience, in the Christian temper and 
 likeness to Jesus, — then what a fearful record these 
 recurring weeks are laying up against us ; what 
 a heavy responsibility for opportunity neglected, 
 wasted, misused ! Angels of God, their earnest 
 
THE WORD PREACHED 127 
 
 pleadings fall in vain upon dulled ears, or is rejected 
 by preoccupied minds. Apostles of Christ, their 
 searching persuasions are put off to a more conven- 
 ient season — and when will it come ? 
 
 Friends, I have come here to fulfill among you, for 
 a while, the ministry of the word preached. If it be 
 but for a season, let it be none the less for us a 
 reality. I would gladly, if I may, open to you some 
 new vision of truth ; some wider aspects of faith and 
 duty ; some deeper significance in old and familiar 
 words ; more gladly yet help to quicken in your 
 souls a deeper religious life. I would gladly, if I 
 may, so speak to you of spiritual things, that they 
 shall seem to you the great realities ; to speak to you 
 of the eternal life, that it shall seem to you not far 
 separate from the present and outward life, but lying 
 ever close beside it, and within it, interwoven with 
 it, permeating it, and shaping it ; to speak to you of 
 God, that He shall seem to you living and near ; an 
 encompassing law, an embosoming love, an indwell- 
 ing life and power and peace; seen by purity of 
 heart ; received by prayer and obedience. I would 
 gladly present to you the vivid image of Jesus, that 
 he may be to you "a quickening spirit," a redeeming 
 friend. I would speak to you of duty as a noble 
 motive ; of right as a thing worth living for and suf- 
 fering for ; of self-consecration to serving God by 
 doing good to men as the great object of life. I 
 would gladly strengthen and enlarge your sympathies 
 with all progress in the truth, with all humane ef- 
 fort, with all honest endeavors to apply Christian 
 principle to the removal of error, misery, and sin, to 
 establish on earth liberty, justice, love, and joy, and 
 make the kingdom of God actual among men. 
 
128 THE WORD PREACHED 
 
 I will endeavor to speak to you with freedom and 
 sincerity. I beseech you to listen in a spirit that 
 loves truth better than cherished prejudices or be- 
 liefs ; than personal ties or interests. 
 
 As I walked, a stranger, through your beautiful 
 streets, and looked upon strange abodes and strange 
 faces, I wondered which of them would become 
 familiar to me. Into which of these homes, I thought, 
 shall I go as a friend, and leave, perhaps, some ben- 
 ediction of peace ? As I met the young men hasten- 
 ing to their work, or business, or pleasure, to whom 
 of these, I thought, may it be my privilege to sug- 
 gest a loftier aim ; a religiousness of purpose that 
 shall make life no less active and cheerful, but more 
 manly, true, and worthy ? As I saw the children 
 bounding from their schools — whom of these, I 
 thought, may I help to lead into the arms of Jesus, 
 into the bosom of the Father ; whom of them help to 
 train to work with Christ for the establishing of the 
 kingdom of heaven and earth ? 
 
 Were such thoughts only fancies and dreams ? 
 Are they not possibilities ? May they not be reali- 
 ties ? Then even these brief summer months may 
 not fail of their harvest. 
 
 Brooklyn, April 23, 1853, on entering into a new place of worship. 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 The household of God ... an habitation of God, through the 
 Spirit. — Ephesians ii. 19, 22. 
 
 The whole body, fitly joined together, according to the effectual 
 working, in its measure, of every part. — Ephesians iv. 16. 
 
 The original meaning of the word church is con- 
 vocation or assembly. The very term implies some 
 common idea or purpose. It represents something 
 more than a mere aggregate of persons such as in- 
 dividual and separate errands may bring together at 
 any hour in the crowded streets of a city. It im- 
 plies, I say, a common, uniting thought or feeling 
 or aim ; and if this be permanent, there results a 
 common spirit and life which form an organic 
 whole. We limit, however, the word church to 
 that unity whose central idea is a religious one, — 
 the idea of God. The Mohammedan church, the 
 Parsee Church, the Buddhist Church, the Christian 
 Church, are each that society whose common life is 
 in those forms of the religious idea which each 
 derives from him whom it regards as its founder, 
 and whose thought and influence it perpetuates. 
 Through and above all these churches exists that 
 universal Church of the race — man in his religious 
 relations — which is founded on the ground-idea of 
 God that lies at the root of all the various concep- 
 tions of God ; whose common life is in that myste- 
 rious disposition, that irrepressible tendency toward 
 
130 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 the invisible and the infinite, that universal senti- 
 ment of dependence upon a superior Will, that con- 
 sciousness of God, which make man to be, by force 
 of his nature, in all place and time, a religious be- 
 ing. Overarching all, like the universal sky ; en- 
 compassing and inspiring all, like the universal air ; 
 vitalizing and informing all, like the universal electric 
 force, this idea of God, this religious consciousness, 
 unites earth's millions in the attitude of prayer. 
 Whenever it becomes vital in any human soul, it in- 
 vests a citizen of the spiritual world, it initiates a 
 member of the heavenly society. Every heart-throb 
 of aspiration and devout reverence, every struggle 
 to surmount the limits of the actual and the material, 
 every sacrifice and martyrdom for the eternal and 
 invisible, for right, truth, and good, — these attest the 
 common life, and are the sign of the spiritual bro- 
 therhood. The oldest books and the most foreign 
 tongues record my personal experience of this hour, 
 and my inmost emotion comes to me matched in 
 traditions beyond the circle of books. 
 
 Modern philosophers have invented the term soli- 
 darity to express the idea of a common life of the 
 human race, distinct from the life of its individuals. 
 To this common life all individual lives are contrib- 
 utors. No life is isolated ; but each is influenced 
 by, bound to, dependent on, each other. So the race 
 grows as the individuals and generations pass away. 
 So each age inherits the thought, attainment, culture 
 of the previous one, and transmits its own to its 
 successor. So the past survives in the present, and 
 the present prepares and makes possible the more 
 perfect future. So are all human souls and desti- 
 nies bound into one. 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 131 
 
 The same idea in the religious sphere is expressed 
 by the unity of the Church. It is this that the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church claims for itself and promises 
 to its members. It holds, and makes them sharers 
 of, a general spiritual life, transmitted only through 
 itself. They are not only recipients of the divine 
 grace that resides in its sacraments, but sharers in 
 the virtue of its saints and martyrs. I have some- 
 times felt that amid the isolation of our individualism, 
 I could envy the churchman his sense of membership 
 of a great body of brave and consecrated men and 
 women. I could appreciate the strength and impulse 
 it might be to him to feel that he was one of such a 
 host, and to look back and around upon the long line 
 of those who had marched under the same banner, 
 the sight of whose folds had nerved so many hearts 
 for victory, and lighted up so many eyes filming in 
 death. But then the thought has come to me, 
 " You are indeed, if you will be, a member of this 
 and of a yet grander company. These are yours, 
 and more too, from whom the Romanist cuts him- 
 self off. Look beneath names, and feel the life of 
 the invisible, spiritual host, of all brave, true, heroic, 
 and saintly souls, made yours if you are in sympa- 
 thy with them, not by an external organization, but 
 by a spiritual law. No keys are upon its banner, 
 but only the cross ; no name save that of God ; 
 and these have given vigor to more hearts, and met 
 more eyes lifted unfaltering in death, than any one 
 church can count within its pale." Friends, let us 
 accept this thought, and find in it strength and in- 
 spiration ; feel the glory of such ancestry and such 
 kindred ; accept the inheritance and the responsi- 
 
132 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 bility of transmitting it enlarged. If there is any- 
 thing in you of heroism, of fidelity to duty, of love 
 of truth, of consecration, of devotedness, of the 
 martyr spirit and the saintly soul, it binds you to 
 every brave, faithful, true, and holy spirit that has 
 lived, or is living, in the flesh. This life of God in 
 your soul is the same life that dwells in theirs, and 
 transmits a divine power. The heart-throb with 
 which you read their prayers, their words of noble- 
 ness, their acts of self-sacrifice, is the pulse that 
 assures you that the electric circuit is complete, and 
 embraces you, too, and invigorates. As the rich 
 chords from a consenting choir are not merely the 
 sum and affluence of the separate tones, but each 
 tone is itself made firmer and purer by the influence 
 of the rest, so your voice is no more feeble, being 
 solitary against the wrong and in behalf of the 
 right. You are not left to work, pray, contend, 
 overcome, alone. Be true, and, like the prophet, 
 you are surrounded with horsemen and chariots of 
 fire, whom the timid and sense-bound cannot see. 
 Be noble, and thousands as noble and nobler environ 
 
 you. 
 
 " Ever their phantoms rise before us, 
 Our elder brothers, but one in blood ; 
 By day and night they lord it o'er us, 
 With looks of beauty and words of good." 
 
 This is the true sacramental host of God's elect ; 
 the cloud of witnesses ; the glorious company and 
 noble fellowship. This, the true Church Catholic. 
 
 But, leaving this wide and attractive theme of 
 the Church universal, spiritual, invisible, I pass on 
 to speak of the more limited thing we call a church. 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 1 33 
 
 such as we are founding here. For I hope that this 
 society is to be a church and not an audience merely. 
 And a church I define to be a society of men and 
 women and children, associated by a religious spirit, 
 and for a religions work. 
 
 I wish to lay stress upon this word religious. 
 
 A church must justify its existence by this, that 
 it holds as its special thought — not its exclusive 
 possession, but its special thought — the idea of 
 God. This it is to apply over the whole domain of 
 life. With this it is to meet all private needs and 
 confront all public emergencies. By this it is to 
 try all spirits, tempers, and aims ; by this to judge 
 all customs, institutions, laws. This makes the 
 church's position to be (as I said to you of the pul- 
 pit's) one of high mediation, at once conservative 
 and radical, because this idea of God is at once the 
 most conservative and most radical of ideas. "Re- 
 maining in himself, He passes through all things, 
 making them evermore new." His immutable Per- 
 manence is the ground of all our faith and all our 
 prayers : his regenerating Immanence, the inspira- 
 tion of all our effort for the triumph of good over 
 evil, the coming of Heaven among men. So the 
 church is religious. Its work is to make vital the 
 thought of the living and infinitely present God, in 
 the life of its members and of society. " Exceeding 
 broad " it is — this religion, this eternal life of souls 
 bound to God in the sense of his intimate presence 
 and the consciousness of sonship. It is a piety that 
 includes morality and humanity, as man is included 
 in God. No dreamy aurora of mystic reverie ; nor 
 altar-fire of periodic ceremonial ; nor rare lightning 
 
134 ^ SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 of retributive remorse, declaring and restoring a lost 
 equilibrium ; nor hearth-flame of domestic affection, 
 and serving domestic needs, — not these alone, but 
 more : an all-encompassing and quickening sunlight, 
 lighting every human work ; an inner vital heat, 
 moving every motion ; the circulating currents of 
 the Divine Spirit. This life of God every church is 
 to receive and manifest ; therefore I lay stress on 
 the word religious. 
 
 And again, I wish to emphasize the word spirit, 
 as distinguished from doctrine and form. Some 
 creed or system of opinions about religion is almost 
 universally the centre around which our churches 
 are gathered ; or else some rite. Now, I do not 
 deny that similarity of opinion is a bond of union. 
 We are drawn to those who think like ourselves. 
 But it is not the strongest or deepest bond. It is 
 easily overridden by spiritual sympathy, or annulled 
 by the want of that. Neither do I mean to under- 
 value correct opinion as making clear the way to 
 right feeling and right action, though quite as often 
 right feeling and action will lead to correct opinion. 
 Nor do I deny their value to religious rites. But a 
 unity sought in uniformity of belief, or of ritual or 
 organization, is but superficial. Nor can it be per- 
 manent unless it destroy freedom and growth, and 
 with them life. We must look deeper for the bond 
 of living and abiding unity. And we shall find it 
 where it has always existed, amid the diversities of 
 belief and organization, and under all their strifes, — 
 in that unity of spirit which is alone the bond of 
 an enduring peace. This unites, while creeds and 
 forms sunder, and shut off as many as they shut in. 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND IVOR KING CHURCH 135 
 
 Alien intellects are brethren here, and walls vanish. 
 Therefore I emphasize the word spirit. 
 
 Again, I wish to lay special stress upon the word 
 work. Associated, I said, for a religious work. I 
 doubt whether this be at all the prominent idea in 
 our churches. Men join a religious society with the 
 idea rather of receiving than doing. To secure 
 some personal outward benefit from the connection, 
 perhaps ; or to secure a personal enjoyment or good 
 from the preaching ; or to secure a personal salva- 
 tion in the future ; or because they are taught to 
 think it a duty, or the appointed proof of faith. 
 And they pay their contribution or tax of money in 
 return for the possession of their pew, or of their 
 share of whatever benefits may accrue. But the 
 desire to be of help to others, to join others in doing 
 good, to make the association with them a means of 
 enlarged action ; the willingness and sense of obliga- 
 tion to contribute themselves, their talents, ener- 
 gies, possessions, attainments, to the effective work- 
 ing power of the body, — how many are there who 
 think of this ? And yet it seems to me that nothing 
 short of this can make a real church. Only this can 
 be such a " body " as Paul speaks of, — " fitly joined 
 together, and compacted by that which every joint 
 supplieth, according to the effectual working, after 
 its measure, of every joint ; " only this can be a 
 redeeming power in a community and the world. 
 Nothing would be so sure to keep life in a church 
 as its making itself a working church. Nothing 
 would be so sure to keep it filled with the Spirit. 
 Nothing would so bind its members together, no- 
 thing so surely tend to make them think alike, if 
 
136 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 that be desired, as uniting in common labors. It 
 seems to me that a church has no right to be, unless 
 it can thus make good its claim. The world has a 
 right to put to it the question of the Jews: "What 
 sign showest thou, that we may see and believe 
 thee ; what dost thou work ? " It has a right to 
 expect from it wonders of feeding and healing and 
 restoration. 
 
 It seems to me that, whenever a new church is 
 formed, the angels in heaven ought to sing again, 
 Now shall there be peace on earth, and good-will 
 among men. And God should say, Now is my 
 kingdom nearer, and my will more truly to be done 
 on earth. And Jesus should rejoice in spirit and 
 cry, Behold, new laborers for the harvest ; now shall 
 men learn to love God with all their heart and 
 strength, and their neighbor as themselves. And 
 old prophets' hearts should be stirred anew, as they 
 proclaim, Now shall men beat their swords into 
 plowshares, and deal their bread to the hungry, and 
 undo the heavy burdens, and give justice to the 
 fatherless, and break every yoke. 
 
 It seems to me as if, whenever a new church is 
 formed, earth's suffering, sinning, wronged, and per- 
 ishing ones should lift their heads, and a new hope 
 light up their eyes, as they cried, You will help us, 
 you will save us ; in the name of the God you say 
 is our Father, the Christ you say is our Redeemer. 
 And all good men's hearts should be gladdened; 
 and earth's tyrants and tempters, and plotters of 
 wrong, and framers of unjust laws, should cower and 
 tremble, as before a new moral force rising up to 
 conquer them. Is it so ? I will not doubt that 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 1 37 
 
 every church does something to this end. But the 
 whole creation still groaneth in pain, waiting for 
 the manifestation of the sons of God. 
 
 To work with God, and for God, then, should be 
 the great and consecrated aim of every church; to 
 make its associative life contribute to the accom- 
 plishing somewhat of the divine purpose ; to lend 
 its aid to redeeming the world from its sins, its 
 wrongs, and its wretchedness ; to reforming the age 
 and the community from its special evils, and unjust 
 thoughts and institutions ; to advancing its spiritual 
 elevation and moral purification. In short, every 
 church should work for the coming of the kingdom 
 of heaven, the reign of justice and unselfish love, of 
 freedom and peace, and holiness and brotherhood. 
 
 Jesus organized no formal church. He was too 
 earnestly intent upon quickening the dead souls 
 around him into life, and awakening them to a vital 
 consciousness of God, to have time or thought of 
 outward forms and organizations. He trusted to 
 the power of influence, and left his life in the world 
 to take form in obedience to special needs. And it 
 has done so. But these forms have been, and con- 
 tinually will be, broken up and reformed by the 
 floods of the spirit ; which continually, as in Jesus, 
 sets men free from the bondage of the ritual and 
 technical, into the liberty of the spiritual and univer- 
 sal religion. 
 
 We bear the name Christian, partly because we 
 are in the direct line of descent from those who first 
 bore it ; partly because it represents to us, in its 
 conection with Jesus, that form of the religious idea 
 and spirit which we feel to be the highest and 
 
138 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 truest. But we use it not as if it were the name of 
 a sect, but as synonymous with religious, in the 
 broadest sense of that word. 
 
 A Christian church is one which has received the 
 idea and the spirit of Jesus, and which offers its 
 glad consecration to fulfilling the work which was 
 dear to his heart. And what was that idea ? It 
 was the Fatherhood of an encompassing and indwell- 
 ing God ; the Sonship and Brotherhood of Man. 
 And what was that spirit ? It was the spirit of con- 
 secrated service, which came " not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister," to " do the Father's work 
 while it was day." And what was that work ? 
 " He hath anointed me to preach good tidings to 
 the poor ; to heal the broken-hearted ; to proclaim 
 deliverance to the captive ; and recovery of sight to 
 the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised." 
 
 The question, then, of every one entering a Chris- 
 tian church should be, How shall I gain, and help 
 others to gain, this religious idea, this religious 
 spirit, in order that we may thereby be able to carry 
 on the work of God, to which Jesus devoted himself ? 
 For if the idea of God have really become vital 
 within us, bringing us a sense of his indwelling 
 Presence, it cannot end in reverie, but must be an 
 inspiration to action. And if the spirit of Jesus have 
 really touched and quickened our souls, it must have 
 moved them to be doing good. 
 
 And now, friends, can we not be such a church 
 here ? — united by a religious spirit, for a religious 
 work ? With God's help, we will. 
 
 We will take for our basis not a creed, but the spirit. 
 We will agree to differ in our theological opinions 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 1 39 
 
 and beliefs, while we will strive, in a common love 
 of the truth, after higher and clearer views of it. 
 Eelieving that only through freedom can the truth 
 be reached, we will put no shackles on any, nor place 
 any obstacle, even of coldness or suspicion, in the 
 way of freest thinking. And regarding this freedom 
 as more precious than uniformity of belief, we will 
 make it more prominent than any doctrine. We 
 will assume no responsibility for opinions, and im- 
 pose none. We may hold the most widely differing 
 beliefs about the nature of God's being, while we 
 strive together to deepen our reverence and love for 
 Him, to yield a more complete obedience to his 
 law, and win a profounder consciousness of his pres- 
 ence and his peace. We may hold, as we now do, 
 different views about Jesus, but we will be united by 
 a common reverence and love for his spirit, and find 
 in his life, however regarded, redemption from our 
 sins, and quickening to our piety and our humanity. 1 
 Then, again, we will unite ourselves here, not for 
 forms, but for work. We shall not discard forms. I 
 trust we may gather about us much that, through 
 beauty and symbolic suggestion, may touch our 
 hearts to strains of reverence and purity. We shall 
 not discard forms. The order of our Sunday exer- 
 cises of prayers, and hymns, and preaching is a form. 
 
 1 And here let me repeat my wish, that the name of our church 
 were one that indicated this position of freedom, rather than one 
 founded on a theological doctrine. Not that I am anxious to escape 
 any reproach that may possibly attach to the name Unitarian, nor 
 because I desire to sever myself from those who bear that name, but 
 because I wish to be joined to all who prize freedom above opin- 
 ion ; truth above any attained expression of it ; the spirit above 
 the letter. 
 
I40 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 We do not propose to omit the rites of baptism and 
 the communion. But we will not regard any forms 
 as essential or obligatory. We will not place them 
 above, or on a level with, the spirit and the life. We 
 will not regard church-going, and water-baptism, and 
 the partaking of bread and wine as duties, like speak- 
 ing the truth, and doing the right, and serving our 
 neighbor. These ritual forms shall be to us helps 
 to the spirit and the life, expressions and quickeners 
 of feeling, good for all who can be so helped by 
 them, but binding upon none. They do not consti- 
 tute a church ; it uses them. I can understand why 
 Jesus, though desiring to be baptized himself, yet 
 baptized none ; and whatever direction he may have 
 given to his immediate disciples, I find no command 
 for me, or that my conscience recognizes as of per- 
 manent obligation. And when I transport myself to 
 that upper chamber so near to Gethsemane and Cal- 
 vary, I see the anguish and the love of that hour 
 transfiguring, at the moment, the paschal bread and 
 wine, but I see no institution of a rite ; I hear no 
 word of any beyond that circle of friends so soon to 
 need every help to their faith, nor any tone of com- 
 mand, but only the accents of an affectionate request. 
 I doubt not those disciples saw ever after a new 
 meaning in the bread and wine they ate. Those 
 who came after them observed a rite, yet as privilege 
 rather than obligation, and found in it a bond of union 
 amid outward persecution. At last authority and 
 superstition seized it and made it a proof of faith ; a 
 channel of else-denied grace ; the burden of a law 
 such as Paul rejoiced that Christ had freed him from ; 
 and a trap to consciences. We shall find in the rite, 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 141 
 
 made free to all, a commemoration, a service of the 
 feelings, which will be only what suggestion and as- 
 sociation can make it to be, — precious and helpful 
 to some, binding upon none. Not imposing obliga- 
 tions we were else free from, but able to remind us 
 of those we are always under. Bringing us near in 
 thought and spirit to One in whose companionship 
 it is always good to be ; and ever significant to us of 
 that brotherhood after which we long and labor. So 
 regarded, I cannot but think this rite would be good 
 to many who now disregard it as of no value beside 
 the efforts of practical Christianity in which they are 
 engaged. Well to enter at times into its shrined quiet 
 as into the aisles of the silent, storied cathedral from 
 the crowd and work of the streets; or into those 
 mountain wood-paths which lead our feet to no labor 
 and end at no poor man's door. For any mere form 
 I have not a word to say ; but a form need not be a 
 mere form. It may be informed by that which shall 
 after be a power of work. 
 
 And so we come back to our aim, to what, I hope, is 
 to be the aim of this church, this society of men and 
 women and children, united for a religious work. 
 So that whoever shall join us shall ask, first of all, 
 " What is there for me to do ? " So that the young- 
 people, from the beginning, and as they grow up, 
 shall feel that they are entering into a circle where 
 service is the ruling spirit ; and in whose organiza- 
 tion they shall find the companionship offered, and 
 the way marked out, and the channel provided, for 
 all their willingness to do good; so that that willing- 
 ness may not die out, but be strengthened into will 
 and purpose and habit. 
 
142 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 For, I think, there is often more of this willing- 
 ness, and even desire, to do good than we know of. 
 It needs that the church should offer in its organi- 
 zation some definite channels through which it may 
 act, and the stimulus of companionship. 
 
 Let me offer a sketch of the work which I sup- 
 pose might be done by a church, — by this church. 
 I arrange it under three heads : — 
 
 I. Culture of the religious spirit. Under this 
 head should be : ist. The regular meetings for pub- 
 lic worship. To these all should contribute, of 
 their money, since money is needed, liberally, accord- 
 ing to their means, as to a ministration which they 
 believe to be good for themselves, their families, the 
 community. Those who are rich should give gen- 
 erously, nor for themselves alone, but for their 
 poorer neighbors, that none may be debarred these 
 religious benefits on account of the cost ; and these 
 contributions, under whatever name or form they 
 are collected, should be regarded as gifts and not as 
 purchase-money. Those who have, should give 
 their voices and musical culture to the hymns and 
 choral service. All should give their attendance 
 and interest, and the contribution of their engaged 
 and devout feelings. 2d. Meetings for religious con- 
 versation, reading, devout exercises. 3d. Religious 
 rites, especially the communion, of which I have 
 spoken above. 
 
 II. Religious education. Under this head come : 
 ist. The Sunday-school, a most important means 
 and opportunity of doing good, demanding fidelity 
 and self-denial, faith, affection, and personal conse- 
 cration. 2d. Classes of adults for the study of the 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 1 43 
 
 Bible, and of theological doctrines and questions of 
 religious philosophy. 3d. Meetings for the cultiva- 
 tion of religious music. 4th. A church library. 5th. 
 Printing and distributing books and tracts. 6th. The 
 instruction of poor and neglected children. 
 
 III. Religious beneficence and philanthropic action. 
 Under this head would be: 1st. Meetings for the 
 consideration of such questions as pauperism, drunk- 
 enness, slavery, war, crime and punishment, labor, 
 and all movements of practical reform. 2d. Practi- 
 cal action in behalf of these movements. 3d. 
 Monthly contributions to benevolent purposes. 4th. 
 Visiting and working for the poor, visiting prisons, 
 watching with the sick. 
 
 So much of organization there should be in these 
 different departments as might be needed for effi- 
 cient action. An organization which would not in- 
 terfere with, but would stimulate and aid, individual 
 action. Each person should select some one or more 
 of those departments of action to which he was 
 specially attached or fitted, and engage in it in com- 
 pany with others interested in the same direction. 
 For this purpose, committees, classes, associations 
 should be formed, and these would offer the ready 
 channel for whatever desire and willingness to work 
 might be awakened in any. 
 
 This is a rough sketch of what I think the work 
 of a church should be. I have marked out no more 
 than is quite practicable, I believe. Something of it 
 is done in all churches. I know not how much of it 
 we may accomplish here ; but, only let there be the 
 desire and the aim ; only let every one bring his 
 talent, his means, acquirements, willingness, as con- 
 
144 A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 
 
 tributions to the general life and effective working 
 power of the whole, and we shall be sure to do some- 
 thing. Something that God will accept as true wor- 
 ship and service, and man be the happier for. Then 
 we should not fail to be a living, because a working, 
 church. A church free, spiritual, actively benev- 
 olent, sympathizing with all great hopes and humane 
 movements. Would not this be, indeed, a "house- 
 hold of God ; " whose light was the Father's smile, 
 and whose law the Father's will, and the Father's 
 abiding presence its inspiring life ? Would it not be 
 worthy to bear the dear name of Jesus ? In building 
 up here such a church, how gladly would I help you, 
 and be helped by you. For you must do it, — not I 
 alone. 
 
 The occasion justifies and demands a more per- 
 sonal word before I close. 
 
 Remember, friends, and do not let me forget, that 
 I am here to serve you. Do not fail to give me the 
 opportunities. Let your urgency keep alive my 
 faithfulness. If ever in hours of doubt and unbelief 
 you have longed for a friend whose faith might 
 strengthen yours ; if ever, baffled and perplexed in 
 the search of truth, you have longed for guidance; 
 if, amid vague aspirations and hopes and desires after 
 religious life and moral earnestness and true fidelity, 
 you have yearned for a sympathy that might give 
 definiteness and direction and vigor to your fleeting 
 emotions and unfixed aims ; if amid moral weakness, 
 indifference, or deadness, you have felt the need of 
 one to arouse you with the clear word of duty ; if, 
 amid a life of frivolity and surface, you have felt a 
 restless sense of dissatisfaction and longed to hear 
 
A SPIRITUAL AND WORKING CHURCH 1 45 
 
 sincerer, deeper words, and reach down to realities ; 
 if, enslaved by unworthy habit, you have needed a 
 brotherly encouragement to nerve your weakened 
 will to set itself free ; if, in the darkness and loneli- 
 ness of sorrow, you have needed one whose experi- 
 ence could comprehend yours, and assure you of the 
 hidden light to be revealed in the cross, and lift your 
 trembling, shattered heart to fix itself on God ; and if, 
 in any of these needs and experiences of life, I can 
 help you, believe that it will be my truest satisfaction, 
 as it is my most earnest desire. I dare not promise 
 that I can always meet these needs. I know how 
 often I shall feel my own insufficiency. But I know 
 that behind and above me is God, an infinite strength, 
 light, love, peace ; a guide and keeper, and defender 
 and inspirer. To Him we will go together, and He 
 will hear our prayers. 
 
 Brooklyn, October 30, 1853, on assuming the pastorate. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in you all. — Ephesians iv. 6. 
 
 These are Paul's grand words. Here we have his 
 Unity, his Trinity, his Pantheism. And no one has 
 risen or penetrated to the essence of religion, it seems 
 to me, who has not risen or penetrated from a formal 
 and mathematical Unity, from a scholastic Trinity, 
 from a material or metaphysical Pantheism, to some 
 thought as large and central as this of Paul's. 
 
 One God ! We must hasten to pronounce, with 
 reverent and earnest emphasis, this word ; to enun- 
 ciate this thought, as if we would blazon it all over 
 these walls. It is the only j ustification of their being 
 built. It would glorify them, were they the barest 
 that could be builded. It would justify every amount 
 of richness that might be brought to adorn them in 
 the unstinting feeling that devotes the best to the 
 highest. 
 
 But in vain, friends, shall we inscribe the name of 
 God upon these walls, if it be not written in our 
 hearts. In vain would be the most studied plainness, 
 if there were not simplicity and sincerity of soul. 
 In vain the costliest enrichments of beauty, if the 
 spirit of unselfish devotion were not there. In vain 
 the lowly roof, if the spirit of humility be absent ; or 
 the lofty tower, if there be no spiritual aspiration. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 147 
 
 In vain the ceremonial of dedication, if there be no 
 reverent consecration of ourselves and our possessions 
 to divine uses in the scenes of daily life. In short, 
 if this external do not in some sort represent our 
 sincere thought and feeling, if the outer temple be 
 not a form of the temple of God in us, then it is 
 nothing, and worse than nothing, — a pretense and 
 a ruin. 
 
 But it is not that, friends ; we know it is not. 
 However imperfect, and at times inoperative, our 
 faith in God may be, it is real. It is not simply some 
 traditional notion ; it is not merely custom, or a 
 sense of respectability or propriety, that has led us 
 to build this house. It is because we have felt a 
 need of God, and have learned and know that there 
 is a supply to that need. It is because we have felt 
 the need to deepen that knowledge, to intensify that 
 experience, in every way to open, and nourish, and 
 keep alive the sense of God. Because we have found 
 in ourselves a spiritual nature, which in the thought 
 of God and its kindred thoughts finds its life and 
 power and joy. Because we have found in prayer, 
 and in religious meditation and instruction, real and 
 mighty sources of peace and fidelity, and moral en- 
 largement, and power to withstand and conquer. 
 Because, in short, there is a whole world other than 
 the outward and visible world, and superior to that, 
 and we want to know more and ever more of this 
 inner world, its hopes and sustainments and satis- 
 factions ; and we want our friends and our children, 
 and many, many, in coming years, whom now we 
 know not nor have seen, to have an opportunity of 
 doing the same. 
 
I48 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 You build a house and make it as handsome as 
 you can, not because you cannot live elsewhere, but 
 because you want for yourselves and your children a 
 pleasant home. And you build a church, and make 
 it as lovely as you can, because you believe that 
 through the powers of suggestion and association, 
 and the gathering and clustering of feeling and 
 imagination, you can here worship and learn, — not 
 more sincerely, indeed, than elsewhere, but more 
 happily and more perfectly. 
 
 Religion is man's consciousness of God. Theology 
 is man's theory of God. What men have felt in 
 their deepest moments of exaltation, what they have 
 seen in their highest upliftings and clearest openings 
 of thought, what they have learned in their most 
 faithful doing of righteousness, they try to state in 
 words ; and that statement is their doctrine or phi- 
 losophy of religion, — their theology. Most churches 
 are founded on some system of theology. The dif- 
 ficulty is that these systems are not drawn out of 
 the highest thought, the profoundest feeling, the 
 most earnest experience, of those who promulgate 
 them ; but are traditions, utterances of a past age, 
 consolidated into creeds and made obligatory. Those 
 to whom they are taught are not permitted to test 
 them by their correspondence to their highest rea- 
 son, conscience, and spiritual nature, but are bidden 
 to receive them on bare authority of some ancient 
 church, council, assembly, or book. 
 
 And this is just as true of the Protestant churches 
 as of the Roman Catholic. The only difference is, 
 that while the Protestant churches proclaim the lib- 
 erty of private judgment, they do noX. grant it, except 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 49 
 
 under penalties that amount to prohibition ; while 
 the Roman Catholic Church has at least the merit 
 of consistency. Believing that free, individual in- 
 quiry may be fatally dangerous, she refuses it to her 
 children. Doubtless, in both cases, many take what 
 is not granted. 
 
 We do not believe that free inquiry is dangerous. 
 We believe it to be the right, and the privilege, and 
 the duty of every man. Believing this, we put no 
 limitation to it. We urge it ; we have confidence in 
 its safety ; we are not afraid of its consequences. 
 We nowhere draw the boundary line. We ask only 
 that the spirit be sincere, and desire that it be rev- 
 erent, and not scoffing. 
 
 There is no consistent, half-way position, it seems 
 to me, between the Roman Catholic doctrine of the 
 absolute authority of the Church over the individual 
 soul and the Transcendental doctrine of the absolute 
 authority of the individual soul to itself. For one, 
 I do not for a moment hesitate which position to 
 take. " Better an outlaw than not free ; " for only 
 through freedom can the truth be reached. And 
 truth is seen by any man only through his own con- 
 victions. What is in these is truth ; what is in his 
 memory is tradition. No error is fatal. The seek- 
 ing soul never wanders hopelessly, never wanders 
 alone. Made for truth, if it obeys its own law in 
 freedom, it gravitates certainly toward the truth, 
 even if slowly. And let us remember that the truth 
 is always seeking us, as we seek the truth. Then 
 down with the bars and the walls ! off with the 
 chains ! proclaim liberty to all to think and to inquire ! 
 Esteem nothing so sacred but this right is as sacred ! 
 
150 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 Accept all the perils and pains of freedom in view 
 of its overwhelming advantages and privileges ! Bear 
 gladly its cross and its reproach ; nor fear the com- 
 pany into which it brings you, though they be very 
 publicans and sinners in the eyes of all the Pharisa- 
 ism of the land ! 
 
 When Protestantism unmoored from the Estab- 
 lished Church, it set itself upon a longer voyage than 
 it dreamed. That voyage is not yet ended ; nor will 
 it be, while the world lasts. Lovest thou not the 
 rocking and darting of the ship, the keen freshness 
 of the air, the roll of the water, the whirr of the 
 gale ? — Go back, then, to thy cloister, and fall asleep 
 under the shadow of great names ! But leave to us 
 the glad delight of ever fresh discovery, ever new 
 exploration. Our home is on the deep, yea, the deep 
 of God ! Bends not the sky above us with its stars ? 
 Can we outsail them ? Guides us not the ever true, 
 if trembling, needle within ? Can we ever go where 
 it will quite lose its polarity ? Nowhere in God's 
 universe ! 
 
 It is related that when the sailors, who went with 
 Columbus on his first voyage, for the first time per- 
 ceived the variation of the needle, and that it no 
 longer pointed to the north star, they were struck 
 with panic and dismay, and supposed that this their 
 only guide had lost its power to lead them. But it 
 had not. And we — do we side with Columbus or 
 with the timid sailors? You will not leave your 
 island, which you have wandered round and round, 
 have meted all its landmarks, and know every hill 
 and tree and rock. You will not leave your solid 
 ground of things established for that cloud on the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 151 
 
 horizon. We go, and find the cloud a mighty conti- 
 nent ! 
 
 Under the guidance of this freedom, we seek an 
 expression of the thought of God and his relations 
 to man. 
 
 " One God and Father of all, who is above 
 all, and through all, and in you all." 
 
 We must hold God to be One. Whether from the 
 consciousness, amid all distractions, of his own es- 
 sential unity, or from some other cause, man can 
 rest only in the idea of one God. Philosophers de- 
 clare this idea to have always existed vaguely behind 
 every form of polytheism, and show that the race in 
 its religious thought has, from the first, been tend- 
 ing towards monotheism. Nothing short of the 
 most entire and absolute unity in our idea of God 
 can solve, it seems to me, the problem of the world. 
 Nothing short of that can wing our prayers with 
 undisturbed assurance. It is not a question of more 
 or fewer. It is not enough to give up the twelve 
 gods of Pagan Rome, and keep the three of Christen- 
 dom, whom it calls One, but by no effort of the 
 mind can, when it prays, conceive of as one. It is 
 not enough if we cannot better solve the problem of 
 evil than after the old Persian fashion, but must con- 
 tinue to divide the sovereignty of the universe be- 
 tween two Gods, — a good God and an evil God ; and 
 make the evil God so nearly almighty that he con- 
 tinually thwarts and defeats the will of the good 
 God, and ends by carrying off into the tortures of 
 perpetual slavery more than one half of his children. 
 Against every form of Polytheism, Tritheism, and 
 Ditheism, regarding them all as crude and altogether 
 
152 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 inadequate attempts to state the problem of God, 
 we must continue to assert his simple absolute Unity, 
 and hold fast to that. That alone can reconcile 
 all things. That alone can give us repose. Such a 
 God alone can we pray to, or obey with unfaltering 
 assurance, amidst all the distractions of our exist- 
 ence. One Power, one Truth, one Right, one Love, 
 one God and Father of all ! Of manifestation, not 
 two or three, but innumerable, modes ; of being, 
 one, absolutely one. 
 
 But here I must say that a merely numerical unity 
 is not enough. It is not enough, with the Deist and 
 many Unitarians, to have the idea of God as One, 
 merely through being a single individual, though 
 immeasurably greater than all other beings, and su- 
 preme above all as their Creator, Governor, and 
 watchful Father. If God be but thus a single indi- 
 vidual, however great, then we can but say, There 
 might be many Gods, only there is but one. We 
 ask a higher, a grander Unity than this. A God who 
 is One because He so fills all that there is no room 
 for any other. Such a Unity can exist only in pure 
 Spirit ; and we must put off from our conception of 
 God all limitations of individuality before we can 
 come to the true conception of his infinite personal- 
 ity. Our spirits teach us of spirit ; and our spirits, 
 if we trust them, will, out of their very limitations, 
 rise to the idea of an Unlimited and Infinite. It 
 does not suffice that we put away the child's or the 
 poet's conception of God as a venerable man, an- 
 cient of days, with flowing snow-white beard, speak- 
 ing in the thunder, walking on the wings of the 
 wind, and in the lightning flashing his unsleeping 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 153 
 
 eye. It is not enough that we cease to believe Him 
 to have literal hands and feet. It is a refined idola- 
 try still, if we continue to think of Him as using, 
 like a man, successive thoughts, directing a special 
 and definite will to minute and separate ends ; with 
 a purpose and providence occupied in managing de- 
 tails and arranging plans, and affections selecting, 
 and directing themselves to, individual objects. The 
 ever so immensely Finite is not Infinite ; and though 
 we cannot from our conception put off all finiteness, 
 let us do so as much as we can. Let us think of 
 God as the all-pervading Life, the all-embracing 
 Energy, which lives at every point, and wherever it 
 lives is Thought, and Love, is Spirit, and so is Per- 
 son. Let us conceive of Him as the Unity which 
 contains all things, as a great idea contains all the 
 details of thought which may be evolved from it ; as 
 the artist's imagination flashes forth a whole which 
 includes all the separate parts which his fancy and 
 his hands must successively and laboriously make 
 visible. And though, in speaking of God, we can- 
 not put off from our language its necessary inade- 
 quacy, yet if we seek for physical representations of 
 him, let us take the most subtle and unconfined of 
 material things ; not this dense human body, but 
 rather the flowing, pervading, embosoming atmos- 
 phere, the sweet, diffusive, penetrating light, or those 
 yet subtler, vitalizing forces of nature which flow 
 around and through us all, on such a radiant day as 
 that which has just set. But even here we must not 
 mistake our figures of speech for the reality which 
 they only hint. Better in the highest action and ex- 
 perience of our souls seek to know, as there only we 
 
154 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 can begin to know, how and what God is ; or best 
 of all, perhaps, content ourselves with saying in a 
 word, God is, and in that Infinite Presence merge 
 all specialities. 
 
 "One God," — thus One, — and yet " Father of 
 all." Father, because He is Thought, and Love, 
 and Will, akin to our souls by a paternity which we 
 know, because we are thought, and love, and will. 
 Made in his image, our reaching affection feels his ; 
 yet feels it not as something limited, peculiarly di- 
 rected upon us, but as something infinite, in whose 
 warm atmosphere we, with all, are embosomed. 
 Yes, Father of all ; of the good and of the wicked, of 
 the just and of the unjust ; who asks obedience only 
 for his children's good ; whose long-suffering and 
 redeeming love their wanderings can never exhaust 
 or alienate ; who wills not that one of his little ones 
 should perish, but to all eternity seeks and saves the 
 lost. Yes, Father of all ; not Jews alone, — his chil- 
 dren and chosen people, — nor yet Christians alone ; 
 but all races and nations of mankind, of every name ; 
 under every sky, in every age. All, as they looked 
 upward from the seen to the unseen, groping with 
 more or less clearness of intelligence after a higher 
 than themselves, have worshiped, under many 
 names, the One and same, because the only, God. 
 And all their prayers, whether offered to Allah, Fo, 
 or Brahma, or Jehovah, or Jove, or Manitou, have 
 alike been heard of Him who cares not for names, 
 but seeth the thought of the heart. Men are accus- 
 tomed to call this thought of the Fatherhood of God 
 the special new revelation of Jesus Christ. But 
 this, like the doctrine of immortality, was known and 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 55 
 
 spoken of long before Christianity, and far beyond it. 
 We do not honor and strengthen Christianity when 
 we claim it as a specialty ; we more honor and 
 strengthen it when we show its universality and 
 correspondence with the general yearnings of the 
 thought of the race. What is special in a religion 
 is most likely to be what is formal and transitory. 
 What is universal is eternal. We shall best inter- 
 pret Christianity if we regard it as a mightier and 
 purer flood of the streams which have been from the 
 beginning, are now, and ever shall be. 
 
 " One God, who is above all." The reverence 
 of men always looks up to a God above. This is 
 their first thought of God ; and it is their abiding 
 thought, never to be outgrown. Even the specu- 
 lative atheist, who chooses to call himself atheist 
 because he cannot prove a God by his senses or un- 
 derstanding alone, or because he cannot accept the 
 prevailing notion about a separate and individual 
 being called a God, still may believe in a moral law 
 which is obligatory upon him and upon all men, yet 
 which he did not make nor any man make ; and in 
 believing this he believes in God, though he may 
 not choose to use that name, for he believes in a 
 spiritual power that is above all. So even he justi- 
 fies that sentiment which in all ages has led men to 
 look upwards from the earthly and the seen, and in 
 all ages, the wide world round, has bent earth's mil- 
 lions in the attitude of prayer. Grand is the self- 
 reliant trust of a man in himself ; but grander is the 
 reverence which, in a humility that is at the same 
 time an exaltation, acknowledges a power superior 
 to man. Noble is the freedom which refuses sub- 
 
156 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 mission to every arbitrary authority ; but nobler is 
 the obedience which voluntarily offers itself to a law 
 which it freely feels to be divine. Mighty is the 
 energy that throws itself on the unaided force of its 
 own resolve ; but mightier is the power which con- 
 tinually reinforces and purifies its will by consecrat- 
 ing it to the Supreme. 
 
 " Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 
 
 Of course when I speak of God being above all, I 
 do not mean that He is so in the sense of being 
 upon a throne far away above the skies, or anything 
 like that. At every point it is necessary to combat 
 those literal mythological notions of an individual 
 God existing in shape and place ; for so powerful is 
 the influence of language, that not children only, but 
 intelligent, grown people, in great numbers, — nay, 
 I should think in the majority, — still hold to some 
 more or less vague form of this conception of God. 
 But God, the Spirit, is above all in the sense that 
 He is greater than all. He, the Infinite, contains 
 and embosoms all. He, the Absolute, is the ground 
 and being of all ; without whom nothing would be, 
 in whom all things are, and from whom all things 
 continually proceed. He is above all, in that He is 
 mightier than all, and rules all, even as He makes 
 all. He holds all things, and the ongoings of things, 
 all men, and the thoughts and purposes of men, 
 completely environed in his eternal purpose, which 
 was from the beginning, and is forever, one and 
 unchanged. He holds us and our little freedom, 
 even as the mother's embracing but unconstraining 
 arms hold in their circle the little stumbling feet of 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 57 
 
 her child taking his first steps alone. He is above 
 all ; and what man can do, in his little freedom, by 
 sin, and selfishness, and ignorance, to thwart Him, 
 is no more than a babe's finger can do to stay 
 Niagara. He is above all, and He is never thwarted, 
 — no, not for a moment, — nor his law ever broken. 
 It may seem as if it were ; but the most hideous 
 wickedness of the tyrants, the enslavers, the cor- 
 rupters and slayers of men, does no more thwart or 
 break his law than you would put back the rising of 
 the sun to-morrow morning by putting back the 
 hands on the town clock. 
 
 We all of us remember how, a few years ago, the 
 " great atheism " went from end to end of this land, 
 which declared that there is no higher law for man 
 than constitutions and the acts of legislators and 
 congresses. We know how the astute and eloquent 
 statesmen ridiculed the idea of the supremacy of the 
 conscience above legislation. We remember how 
 ministers preached submission from the text, "The 
 powers that be are ordained of God," and how they 
 bade us bow down and crush all our own native 
 sentiments of humanity and justice beneath the 
 tyranny of a wicked law. We know what has come 
 of it. Terror and dismay in hundreds of homes, 
 broken and dispersed ; in free States men seized 
 and by forms of law robbed of their hard-bought lib- 
 erty ; righteous men fined and imprisoned ; Kansas 
 usurpations, Senate outrages, Dred Scott decisions, 
 Lecompton Constitutions, attempted revival of the 
 slave trade, — these have come of it. And endless 
 compromise and servility. But, thank God, not 
 these alone. Resistance and rescues ; a great and 
 
158 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 noble uprising and flaming forth of the old spirit of 
 liberty ; the setting aside of timid and compromis- 
 ing and apologetic men ; protest and agitation that 
 will not end till liberty is proclaimed through all the 
 land. God's law was not broken then, though defied. 
 His great purposes of freedom will be fulfilled, spite 
 of partisans and priests. 
 
 The reverence of the human soul not only places 
 God above the earth, its denizens, and its destinies, 
 but men of great reverence, lost in contemplation of 
 his grandeur, majesty, and infinity, above the com- 
 prehension of finite minds or the statement of finite 
 lips, are in danger of supposing that a world like 
 ours, and beings like ourselves, must needs be far 
 beneath his interest. How can such a being give 
 a moment's thought to a spot like this earth, and to 
 concerns so petty as these human strifes, struggles, 
 sorrows, and joys ? But the religious soul cries out 
 with Paul, not only " above all," but "through 
 all." God is not remote, but infinitely near. So 
 long, indeed, as we think of Him as a separate 
 individual being, then all that we add to our concep- 
 tion of his greatness, loftiness, and majesty removes 
 Him from us, and us from Him. Again, therefore, 
 I must urge that we exchange this idea for a more 
 spiritual one. Again I must declare that God is 
 Spirit, and being Spirit, his infinity includes all 
 things. He is above all, in that He is greater than 
 all ; but He is greater than all, by including all that 
 is less than He. He includes all, not even by being 
 outside of all, as the circumference includes the 
 circle; but He includes all by being " through all," 
 even as the ocean includes every straw that floats 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 59 
 
 upon its bosom, and is filled with its moisture ; even 
 as the sunlight includes every atom that floats in its 
 radiance and is pervaded with its heat. So, to com- 
 pare spiritual things with material, the Infinite Spirit 
 is above, beneath, around, and through all. 
 
 We never can comprehend the omnipresence of 
 God until we exchange the idea of the presence of 
 all things to God for that of the presence of all 
 things in God, and then of the presence of God in 
 all things. No individual can be so present ; only 
 Infinite Spirit. 
 
 Experimental science discovers in nature no God ; 
 for that science is concerned only with phenomena ; 
 and there is no passage from the phenomenal to the 
 real, from matter to spirit. Neither the senses nor 
 the understanding, which are the organs of natural 
 science, can bridge this chasm. Men seem to sup- 
 pose that if they can refine matter enough, it will 
 pass into spirit; but it is not so. Nature is a form 
 of spirit, but not a degree of it. In the infancy of 
 the race, the minds of men, unaccustomed to com- 
 plicated chains of cause and effect, refer every un- 
 usual or startling phenomenon directly to the agency 
 of Deity or spirits. But as intellectual culture ad- 
 vances, nature is explored, her secrets extorted, her 
 effects arranged and made familiar ; mysteries dis- 
 appear, and God is put farther and farther off. Then 
 a philosophy arises, which says, " Do not be super- 
 stitious ; God is not in the thunder and rain ; it is 
 only electricity, oxygen, and hydrogen. God is not 
 on earth ; He is in heaven, far away above the 
 skies ; from thence He surveys and regulates this 
 wonderful machinery which He created in six days, 
 
l6o THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 six thousand years ago. Mark the wonderful adap- 
 tation, the curious contrivance ; none but a God 
 could have made it. And a God governs it by his 
 laws ; but He is not in it, any more than Watt is 
 in the steam-engine he constructed, or Franklin in 
 the printing-press he used. He only superintends 
 it. Now and then only, in some emergency, He 
 interposes specially and breaks his laws, that man 
 may know that He exists and has made the laws. 
 God is in the world only by his laws and by his 
 occasional messengers. ' He is present among us 
 only as a merchant of Boston is present in New 
 Orleans by his agent.' Do not be superstitious ; 
 God governs by second causes." 
 
 Then another philosophy comes, and, reasoning 
 more logically from the same premises, says : " How 
 do you know, then, that there is a God at all ? 
 Your world-machine is wonderful and curious, I 
 allow ; but I see nothing Infinite in it. It is beauti- 
 ful and elaborate, but I do not see the Perfect in it ; 
 it gives us comfort, but it gives us pain ; it feeds 
 us, but it starves us ; it warms us, but it freezes 
 us ; we live, but we die, too. I do not see the All- 
 Good. Hold to what you know and can see. Leave 
 your theology, your metaphysics. Science stops 
 with phenomena ; of causes, of forces, we can know 
 nothing, — of first, or final, or efficient causes; our 
 business is with facts, and their laws, which are 
 only invariable relations of succession. Do not you 
 be superstitious, but rest upon the firm ground of 
 the positive." 
 
 But we are not left to this alternative. We need 
 not accept either the old theological, or metaphysi- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT l6l 
 
 cal, nor yet the new positive philosophy. There is 
 another philosophy founded on the spiritual intui- 
 tions of man, whose word Paul uttered when he 
 said, " God, above all, and God, through all." The 
 laws of nature, it declares, are but the uniform 
 methods through which the forces of nature act ; 
 the forces of nature are but one Force, one Power, 
 — the Almighty God himself. He does not from 
 a remote heaven superintend the movements of the 
 world. He is not outside of it, but at its centre, 
 moving through every atom and fibre of it. He is 
 not a refined form of matter, but matter is a form 
 of Him. He is not divided against himself, and 
 therefore his constant, immanent forces appear in 
 the form of law. Observation and reasoning will 
 not find Him ; but the spiritual nature of man de- 
 clares Him. The universe is not a machine which 
 He once created, and retired to contemplate and 
 superintend. He is always present in it, always 
 creating it ; the Life of all life, the ever-present 
 Cause of all motion. Creation has not ceased. 
 God keeps no Sabbath. He did not rest on the 
 seventh day, as Moses said ; but, as Jesus said, He 
 is working until now. Yes, working at every point 
 of his universe, unwearied, unresting, and unspent. 
 And to-day, here in Brooklyn, the rose-tree in your 
 window, the ivy on your wall, these flowers of your 
 green-house, live, and leaf, and blossom by as im- 
 mediate and direct an impulsion from God as that 
 which caused the earth to bring forth its first blade 
 of grass, or its first herb bearing seed. 
 
 Again I must say, such a God as this can be only 
 Spirit. No individual God could be so present 
 
1 62 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 through all ; only a Spirit everywhere, a present 
 Love, a present Power, a present Mind. 
 
 Soon will the spring be here ; and as we wander 
 out to drink in the tender quickening influences 
 we shall feel all around, above, and beneath, new 
 life; swelling in the buds and down at the roots of 
 the grass ; living in the air, sparkling in the waters 
 of the bay, thrilling in our veins ; and that life will 
 be the life of God. And when the summer months 
 come, and we go and lie down beneath the shadow 
 of the great hills, or in the aromatic air of the pine 
 woods, we shall find the stillness filled with a breath- 
 ing and palpitating life ; and that life will be the 
 life of God. We shall see the landscape we look 
 out upon to be not a painted surface, but an out- 
 growth from the Spirit, — from that God " who out 
 of his own beauty maketh all things fair." 
 
 Oh, with what sacredness does this thought of 
 " God, through all," invest the world ! We walk 
 amidst miracle. Every spot is holy ground. The 
 distinctions of sacred and profane disappear. No- 
 thing is common or unclean. How noble ought 
 our lives to be in such a world ! How religious our 
 daily work ! For in that work, amid the materials 
 and fabrics which supply the daily toil and activi- 
 ties of men, we are working and dealing among 
 materials and fabrics whose very atoms are held 
 together by the present power of God. How sa- 
 credly sincere and severely honest ought our work 
 and our dealing to be ! 
 
 And this thought shows us, also, that this is not 
 a cursed and fallen world, but only an imperfect 
 world. What seem its desolation and its ruins are 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 63 
 
 but the Builder's rubbish and unplaced blocks. Its 
 wildernesses have not been, but are to be, the gar- 
 dens of the Lord. 
 
 But are we to accept this more spiritual philoso- 
 phy in regard to outward nature, and go no farther ? 
 Can we possibly stop here ? Shall these mute, 
 impercipient, material forms, subject to continual 
 change and decay, be informed by the Spirit ; 
 and shall we for a moment hesitate to believe and 
 declare that God must much more dwell in his 
 loftier work, his nobler manifestation, the human 
 soul ? No ; but with reverent joy we utter Paul's 
 concluding words, " and in you all." Yes, in us ; 
 O friends ! poor, and weak, and unworthy as we are, 
 yet in us, in these spiritual natures of ours, God 
 can, and will, and does enter and dwell. Made in 
 his image, to the world of spirits like ours it is given 
 to be a perfecter manifestation and revelation of 
 God than all the multitudinous forms of the lower 
 universe can be. I know what metaphysicians may 
 say about the absolute incommensurateness of the 
 Finite and the Infinite. But I turn to the saints, 
 and I hear their devout prayers speak of a conscious 
 and most intimate union with God. I turn to the 
 lofty souls who, through breathing numbers, or 
 melodies, colors, marble, or words, have entranced 
 the world, and I hear them declaring that in their 
 higher creations they are overmastered by a power 
 beyond their will. I turn to the reformers and the 
 martyrs, and I hear them proclaim that the word 
 they speak is not their own ; the strength by which 
 they endure is not their own. I turn to the private 
 experience of us all, and ask if we have not felt, 
 
164 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 whenever in our highest moments of thought, of 
 duty, or of prayer, some great truth or principle, or 
 energy, or peace, has flashed into our reason, quick- 
 ened our conscience, moved our will, filled our hearts, 
 — whether we have not always felt that it was no 
 creation of our own, but rather something that has 
 entered us, — within us, and yet from above us ? 
 
 Now, from these facts of consciousness we are 
 justified in declaring the spiritual nature to be a 
 divine and supernatural element in the original con- 
 stitution of the human soul. In the words of the 
 old mystic, Tauler, " The eternal Word is as nigh to 
 us inwardly as the very principle of our being ; so 
 that not even man himself, his own thoughts, nor 
 aught that can be named, or said, or understood, is 
 so nigh, or planted so deep within him, as the eter- 
 nal Word is in man." Planted there a germ, but it 
 has eternity to develop in ; it remains but a germ 
 for so many, for so long ; but in eternity is destined 
 in every soul to grow out to its perfection. 
 
 Through this spiritual nature man is child of God, 
 the Father. As child of God he shares his nature, 
 is of the same substance with Him, — "consubstan- 
 tial," as the old theologians used to say, — is there- 
 fore capable of being inspired by Him, of being 
 possessed by Him, dwelt in by Him. It is not true 
 that there is an impassable gulf between God and 
 man, never bridged over but once in the world's his- 
 tory. But the spiritual nature of man is, of itself, 
 an inlet from God. His soul is, we may say, a little 
 gulf, hemmed in with its limitations, its finiteness, 
 all round. And we, on these waters of our soul, put 
 forth our effort of thought and will, and in every 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 65 
 
 direction we find ourselves stopped ; until at last we 
 come to a space where they open out into the infi- 
 nite ocean ; we burst through there, and are borne 
 up and out upon its mighty tides. 
 
 Of course, again, only a spiritual God, not any 
 individual God, could ever thus enter in and be- 
 come part of our souls. Our relation with God is 
 in no sense mechanical, but purely vital. The truth 
 which flashes on our reason, the justice which kin- 
 dles in our conscience, the love which glows in our 
 hearts, the energy which animates our wills, — these 
 are the influxes of God into them. I might say 
 the influx of God's Spirit ; but people think God's 
 Spirit is something other than himself, some agent 
 that passes between Him and us. I can see no 
 difference between God's Spirit and God himself. 
 Nor between man's spirit and man himself. And 
 in our highest spiritual action the divine and the 
 human are not distinguishable. 
 
 " If we love one another, God dwelleth in us," 
 said the Apostle. But it is equally true, that if we 
 are just to one another, God dwelleth in us. Truth, 
 justice, love, spiritual beauty, — these are, in their 
 essence, God himself. And by so much as we have 
 of essential truth, justice, love, spiritual beauty in 
 our souls, so much we have of God. 
 
 To certain forms of this influx, and in certain 
 persons, it has been customary to apply the terms 
 inspiration and revelation. The limitation, it seems 
 to me, is entirely arbitrary. Wherever God's Spirit 
 is, there is inspiration ; and wherever truth is opened 
 to any mind, there is revelation. 
 
 "In all ages, entering holy souls," Wisdom, the 
 
1 66 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 Divine Spirit, the eternal Word, has made them, 
 and " makes them, Sons of God and prophets." 
 Revelation, inspiration are perpetual ; for God is 
 not dead, and cannot die, nor is He changed, nor 
 can He change. "The spiritual consciousness of 
 man is normally and forever the revelation of 
 God." The differences are only in degree and 
 direction, not in nature. As the light perpetually 
 presses upon all objects, and seeks entrance every- 
 where, and will come in at whatever window is open, 
 — nay, if but a cranny or pin-hole be there, will 
 come in as much as it will suffer, — so God's beauty, 
 truth, right, power are continually pressing for en- 
 trance into all souls in the universe, and as much 
 enters each as it will allow. But as the light that 
 enters is affected by the quality of the window it 
 passes through, — whether that be white or colored, 
 pure or crusted with dirt, — so is it with the light of 
 God shining into human souls. It always partakes 
 of the individual qualities of the men it comes 
 through, and yet, all the while, the Truth is one as 
 God is one. 
 
 Thus inspiration is never an arbitrary thing. It 
 strictly follows its law. Wherever the conditions are 
 fulfilled, and in proportion as they are fulfilled, the 
 inspiration follows. And these conditions, so far as 
 they are in our power, are prayer and obedience, — 
 seeking and using. " Aspiration ; conspiration ; in- 
 spiration ! " Whenever, in trustful seeking, we, the 
 humblest of us, open our souls toward God, his 
 light, his power, his peace come to us. But more 
 than that ; whenever we put forth the energy of rea- 
 son, heart, and conscience, in the direction of God's 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT l6j 
 
 purposes, seeking to do his will, then his will, his 
 energy, his purpose flow into, and act through us. 
 A true consecration is not a denial, a destroying of 
 our wills, but a voluntary offering of our wills, with 
 all their energy, for God to work through. And so, 
 not only into devout praying, but into every simple 
 act of honest living, God flows. 
 
 Friends, this is thoroughly Christian doctrine. 
 Jesus declared that it was the Father dwelling in 
 him that did his works. It was literally true that 
 God was in him, and no figure of speech whatever. 
 In him we recognize a soul that by native purity 
 and spirituality, and by voluntary consecration and 
 obedience, was opened, unclogged and transparent 
 to the inflowing and transmission of the Eternal 
 Light. His spirit, quickened of God, was in turn 
 a " quickening spirit " to the souls of men ; and is 
 so still. In this way he was mediator, though not 
 sole mediator; son of God, though not the only son 
 of God. So he was a centre of spiritual forces, of 
 eternal life, which, propagated from soul to soul of 
 quickened men, and mingled with other influences, 
 all mediatorial of the everlasting Spirit, have reached 
 and enfold us. Thus he is head of the invisible, 
 spiritual church of Christendom ; though he founded 
 and organized no visible, institutional church. But 
 his inspiration was not peculiar in its nature ; was 
 special only in its degree and quality. It was not 
 arbitrary, but came from obedience to conditions. 
 "The Father hath not left me alone," he said, " be- 
 cause I always do the things that please Him." But 
 he refused to be worshiped, declaring that " there is 
 none good but One, that is God." And he told his 
 
1 68 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 disciples that his Father was their Father, his God 
 their God, who was ready to come and abide in them, 
 if they loved and obeyed. He never claimed any 
 nature other than theirs, other than ours ; any help 
 to which they, and we, have not access. What was 
 actual in him was possible to all souls, after their 
 quality} He told his disciples that they should do 
 "greater things" than he was doing. And they, 
 their spiritual natures quickened by contact with his, 
 saw, for the first time, what they were capable of, 
 and in devout joy cried, " Behold, what manner of 
 love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should 
 be called sons of God " — " partakers of the divine 
 nature" — "filled with all the fullness of God." 
 Christianity, if it means anything, means this : the 
 possibility of a vital, intimate union of God with the 
 human soul. 
 
 But it is true of the moral world, as of the outward 
 world — the race is not fallen, but undeveloped. It 
 is not in ruin, but in building. God is working in the 
 one to imparadise it through human enterprise and 
 through human hands. And in the other, through 
 human faith and conscience and effort, to bring 
 the perfect society, — the kingdom of heaven upon 
 earth. For " the world shall be delivered from the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of 
 the sons of God." And that it may be, it is only 
 "waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God." 
 Waiting for men who, through consecration and 
 obedience, shall know and prove themselves to be 
 such. 
 
 1 " There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit," says Paul, 
 i Cor. xii. 4. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 1 69 
 
 It is interesting to remark how every awakening 
 of fresh religious life in the world has begun with 
 the proclamation of this central, vital truth, the es- 
 sence of all religion, — the proclamation of a living 
 God, a present Spirit ; not a technical personage, 
 supplicated to perform a narrow and technical work ; 
 not a Holy Ghost, — a pale shadow and phantom of a 
 God who once walked and talked with men, but has 
 long since departed ; but a real presence, an eman- 
 cipating, inspiring, working presence of God himself. 
 Wherever this has died out of the faith of men, its 
 place usurped by the tradition of a Spirit that has 
 been, of a God " retired behind the veil of his works," 
 of inspiration foreclosed and prophecy shut up in a 
 book ; then, when worship has become routine, and 
 life profane and irreligious, some new prophet has 
 been stirred to utter anew the old eternal word, 
 God is ; God lives ; now, here, within you, He 
 moves, He speaks ; to-day if ye will hear his voice ! 
 So the Wesleys spoke to men's hearts of a present 
 salvation, and sang of " Him who dwells within." So 
 George Fox turned from the smouldering altars and 
 empty lanterns of an established and petrified church, 
 and laid as a living coal upon men's hearts the truth 
 of the Inner Light. And so every great movement 
 of moral reform begins with the proclamation of 
 God's law written in the conscience and of a present 
 judgment. 
 
 And to-day, friends, if we would have life in our 
 churches, if we would stay this flood of material- 
 ism, this demoralizing prevalence of dishonesty and 
 compromise, and kindle anew the dying flame of 
 faith in human rights, we must preach, first and last, 
 
170 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 the Holy Spirit that is, the Living God, who has 
 to do with the affairs of men as intimately now and 
 in this as in any past age or land ; whose word our 
 highest thought is ; whose will is found in our high- 
 est sentiment of right, which we must not dare to 
 disobey ; a God whom we must not attempt to leave 
 out of anything that we do ; who is infinitely near, to 
 inspire, to redeem, and judge us now; from whose 
 presence we cannot go, for that presence is in us 
 and in all ; the central, pervading, and encompass- 
 ing Force — yes, and the embosoming Love, the 
 inworking Justice — condemning and bringing to 
 naught all that is not of his Spirit and after his 
 law ; saving, establishing, giving victory and eternal 
 life now to whatever is his own. 
 
 And without faith in just this, as no figure of 
 speech, as no fanaticism, but as a reality, a healthy, 
 natural, experienced reality, there can be no vital 
 religion. So long as it is doubted and denied ; so 
 long, and in so far as, it is not preached, and heard, 
 that there is a Holy Spirit here and now, who is 
 nothing less than God himself, — so long will there 
 be dearth in our churches, dishonesty and selfishness 
 in our trade, corruption in our politics, injustice and 
 inhumanity in our legislation. Our prosperity will 
 be hollow and rotten, our nation doomed. 
 
 O friends ! what a possibility does this thought of 
 God " in us all " open before our minds. Confronted 
 with that possibility, how do our actual lives stand 
 humbled, rebuked, and ashamed ! We might be 
 God's true, faithful, inspired sons ; pure, unselfish, 
 tranquil, and courageous ; and we are — Let con- 
 science fill the blank ! 
 
THE DOCTRINE OE THE SPIRIT Ijl 
 
 Yet, let us hold fast to the faith in this possibility, 
 as ours still, fall as often and as much below it as we 
 may. Not by despairing of himself, but by coming 
 to himself, the prodigal son returned to his father's 
 arms. 
 
 Thus I have tried to speak to you of the " God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in you all." But truly I feel, with Tauler, that 
 "these things are so sublime and glorious that it is 
 better to seek to experience them than to speak 
 thereof." 
 
 I will only say, if such be our tJieology, let us not 
 rest until it has become our religion ; if such be our 
 idea, let us not rest until it has become our con- 
 sciousness ; until we know, by personal experience, 
 that we are counseled by God, taught of Him, re- 
 deemed by Him, filled with his unspeakable peace, 
 and made strong to do his will. In those moments 
 of anguish and sorrow that come into the lives of 
 all.; in those far more terrible moments of sin, 
 which may come to all, even to the truly good man, 
 who has yet left one unguarded spot ; in those 
 moments of duty when the way seems difficult to 
 find, how great a thing to feel that we have God 
 infinitely near to us, in whom we may find the deep- 
 est and most perfect consolation, redemption, and 
 guidance. In your hours of work and daily business, 
 how great a thing to feel that the holy God is really 
 present in your counting-room, in your workshop, 
 in your caucus, in your legislative halls ; that through 
 human souls, who obey Him, and over those who do 
 not obey Him, He is yet ruling with unbroken law, 
 which is his unbroken presence. He reigns ; in 
 
172 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 nations and communities, in governments and in 
 households. So that nothing can be done in either 
 that is unjust, dishonest, false, selfish, or oppressive, 
 but is at the moment, by that presence of God, 
 judged, and condemned, and doomed to destruction. 
 So that nothing can be done in either that is right- 
 eous, honest, true, unselfish, but what it is taken up 
 into his purpose, approved, saved, and made im- 
 mortal. So that no evil thing is success, and no 
 good thing is failure, seem things as they may. 
 
 Brooklyn, March 2, 1858, at the dedication of the new church. 
 
PARTING WORDS 
 
 At the end of seven years thou shalt make a release. — Deuter- 
 onomy XV. I. 
 
 Seven years ago, dear friends, it was that I came 
 among you ; at first, for a few months' ministry. 
 Then you asked me to stay with you, and, not with- 
 out many doubts, yet also not without many hopes, 
 I remained. And to-day this ministry closes. I came 
 to preach in perfect freedom the truth which makes 
 us free, so far as it should be revealed to my sight 
 and convictions. I came, as you will remember, 
 declaring myself the representative of no sect or 
 denomination, for I wished none to feel responsible 
 for me ; advocate of no established and named sys- 
 tem of doctrine, for I wished freely to inquire with 
 you, and without trammels to speak to you. I have 
 preached in honesty, not holding back any clear 
 conviction, whether likely or not to agree with your 
 own or others. I have respected your freedom, as 
 well as claimed my own, which you have always 
 respected. I have not sought to impose my views 
 of truth upon you, but have always urged you to 
 judge and decide for yourselves ; glad when you 
 frankly told me that you differed from me ; more 
 glad, of course, if you came to views agreeing with 
 mine ; cheered by the frequent and cordial response 
 of many to truths which were dear to me. 
 
 The one great central truth which I have in all 
 
174 PARTING WORDS 
 
 ways and relations tried to urge upon you has been 
 the intimate nearness of the Living God, the Uni- 
 versal Spirit. I have found that my preaching, be- 
 ginning from this, would perpetually come back to 
 it. Whatever topic of thought or life I would unfold, 
 this was found lying at the heart of it. Was it some 
 truth, his being was the ground of it. Was it some 
 duty, his will was the obligation and the power of 
 it. Was it some trial, it was his opportunity ; some 
 grief, it was the opening into his peace. Was it 
 life, it was to walk in communion and service with 
 Him ; was it death, it was to go on with Him to 
 communion and service beyond. This great thought 
 seemed thus to radiate into every direction and path 
 of life, and all paths led back to it. 
 
 Thus it has been the centre of my preaching, — 
 the thought and name of God. Others would put 
 Christ there. I could not put him there, for I found 
 there always a greater than he. 
 
 So I have believed in and taught a God who is the 
 Infinite Spirit. Not a Mighty Being, in magnified 
 and majestic human shape, remote beyond his uni- 
 verse, whose omnipresence means nothing more 
 than the presence of all things to his view ; but the 
 Spirit, the essential, indwelling, and all-penetrating 
 Life, the environing Law, the embosoming Love. 
 I have not taught a Creator, who once created the 
 world in six days, and then leaving it, retired to 
 superintend from afar its ongoing ; but the Spirit, 
 who each day, out of his own thought, right, beauty, 
 power, creates and recreates, by his permanent in- 
 flux, the fair and noble forms of that creation whose 
 days are yet going on from present imperfection to 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 75 
 
 decreed completeness ; till every spot in this our 
 world, and in all worlds, shall be redeemed into the 
 garden of the Lord. 
 
 I have not taught a God who governs the world 
 by general regulations, but One whose laws in nature 
 are but the immediate presence of his Power, mov- 
 ing all things in unbroken Order, — the harmonious 
 methods of the operation of the Spirit. I have not 
 taught a God who governs man by statutes, arbitrary 
 commandments, but One whose moral laws are the 
 very conditions of man's being, the perpetual pres- 
 ence of the Infinite Righteousness, the simple con- 
 ditions of moral order. I have not taught a Sovereign, 
 whose arbitrary decree makes right and wrong, and 
 affixes the reward and penalty, reigning for his own 
 glory ; but a Father who rules by the supremacy of 
 his infinite justice and love, which are the very 
 essence of his being, and who lives to give himself 
 forth in blessing through his universe. I have not 
 taught a Judge, who, on some set day at the end of 
 the world, will summon and sentence the race, but 
 One whose omnipresent Spirit of justice and love, 
 at every moment, judges every thought and act, 
 dooms the evil and saves and makes immortal the 
 good. I have not taught a Providence which over- 
 sees, in a general way, the fate of men, or occasion- 
 ally interferes, specially to save or destroy ; but a 
 perpetual and universal Will to good ; which, allow- 
 ing between its lines a space for man's free agency, 
 yet, unthwarted, undisturbed by the willfulnesses, 
 the ignorances, the improvidences of that human 
 freedom, is everywhere present, with supreme 
 power, to weave them all into the large and final 
 
176 PARTING WORDS 
 
 good of all and of each. I have not taught a God 
 who, at only one point of the world's life, has de- 
 scended to mingle in human affairs, and manifest 
 himself to the world among a single people, in one 
 small corner of the earth, and for a few brief years, 
 incarnated in one only Son ; but I have taught One 
 who, from the first until now, has been manifested, 
 revealed, — incarnated, if you will, — in man, his 
 child; "in all ages entering holy souls;" perpetu- 
 ally inspiring and working in the reason, the con- 
 science, the heart, the will of the race ; of whom, 
 from the first and in brightening degree, man's 
 reason, conscience, love, and will have been the 
 image ; of whom every man is son and representa- 
 tive in proportion to the fullness of his spiritual 
 life, to the completeness of his consecration and 
 obedience. 
 
 It is in contemplations like these that we feel our 
 high and pure possibility. It is in such thoughts 
 and feelings that we are conscious of a spiritual 
 being akin to God, — conscious of our sonship to the 
 Father. Thus quickened and " led by his Spirit," 
 we know ourselves "sons of God," and cry : "What 
 manner of love hath the Father bestowed on us, that 
 we should be children of God ? " 
 
 As child of God, I have always spoken to you of 
 man ; through all his weakness and wandering, still 
 God's child. I have declared him to be this, not by 
 conversion, but by birth, since every man has in 
 him by his native constitution this spiritual being, 
 which exalts him, by virtue of his nature, above a 
 creature, into a son, of God. This spiritual being, 
 with all its divine capacities, may long lie latent, in 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 77 
 
 most men is feebly developed ; it has eternity to 
 grow in, but it can never perish out of a man, since 
 it is the essence of his humanity. In proportion to 
 its fullness does he become a true man ; conscious 
 son of God ; channel of divine influences to the 
 world. This spiritual being in man is the inlet 
 between God and man ; the channel of inspiration 
 and revelation ; the sphere of religion. The great 
 ideas and powers of truth, justice, beauty, love are 
 here revealed ; and they in man are the very pres- 
 ence of God in him. As they come to life in him, 
 he is born into eternal life. The Spirit, which be- 
 fore was above him, and around him, now flows 
 through him, too, and is indwelling God. So much 
 as a man has of truth, justice, beauty, love, living in 
 him, so much he has of God ; so much he has of 
 religion, which is the conscious union of the human 
 spirit with the Divine, — the consciousness of God in 
 man. The religious man, therefore, is the inspired 
 man ; and the response of his spirit is the evidence 
 and authentication of all teachings that claim to be 
 inspired. 
 
 Believing in this birthright possibility in man, 
 and distinguishing between human nature and human 
 character, I have taught the nobleness and goodness 
 of human nature. Its every faculty, its every pro- 
 pensity, I count good in itself, and productive of 
 good in its right exercise. The evil results which 
 are found in human character come from the excess, 
 deficiency, or perversion of some faculty or passion ; 
 from the want of right and harmonious exercise. 
 
 What we call evil passions, then, such as anger, 
 lust, selfishness, are not positive existences in the 
 
1 78 PARTING WORDS 
 
 soul, to be rooted out and cast away. They are the 
 uncontrolled or ill-directed exercise of that which in 
 itself was intended for good. By direct self-govern- 
 ment, by the doing of good, and by the reception of 
 holy influences, human and divine, is the character 
 to be moulded into the true stature of human nature. 
 
 " So build we up the being that we are, 
 Thus deeply drinking in the soul of things." 
 
 So we work out our own salvation, while in answer 
 to our effort God worketh in us. For we cannot put 
 forth our will to good, but immediately by the divine 
 law his will to good begins to flow and act through 
 ours. 
 
 I have, of course, never taught the doctrine of the 
 total depravity and the fallen and disabled condi- 
 tion of man by nature. Neither have I taught the 
 doctrine, common in the Unitarian Church, of the 
 absolute and unsullied purity of man by birth. We 
 cannot fail to see, if we look, that evil tendencies — 
 tendencies to excess, tendencies to perversion — 
 are inherited from generation to generation, a kind 
 of moral disease. The existence of this transmitted 
 evil' is a matter of solemn practical significance. 
 The parent's responsibility for the child begins before 
 birth, back in the parent's character. But it is not 
 sin that is inherited, nor does it involve guilt in the 
 inheritor, although it may make the work of self- 
 discipline and virtue a difficult and, in some cases, 
 a desperate struggle. But then we must remember 
 the other and encouraging truth, that the good is 
 transmitted, is inherited, as well as the evil. So, if 
 from the first sin disease has been inherited, the 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 79 
 
 remedy has been from the first handed down with it. 
 Sin and redemption have gone hand in hand. The 
 evil which has been from man has forever been 
 resisted by the righteousness which has been of 
 God and man. And as the righteousness is of God, 
 it is mightier than the evil which is of man, and will 
 surely conquer it. The evil will be utterly consumed 
 in the ongoing progress of the individual and the 
 race. And this being a spiritual, that is, an eternal 
 law, will extend beyond this life through all the 
 future, till no evil remain, but God, or Good, be all 
 and in all. I do not believe, then, in a Fall of man 
 through one man alone, and a Redemption of man 
 through one man alone. But I believe in many fall- 
 ings of men, and in many Redeemers, all channels 
 of the divine love of Him who is alone the One 
 sufficient Saviour. 
 
 I have ever spoken to you of Jesus of Nazareth as 
 a noble instance of true spiritual manhood. A man, 
 born as all men are, and with no other nature than 
 all men have ; yet born, doubtless, from the holy 
 spirit of a pure and religious mother, born into the 
 great religious ideas and hopes which his nation 
 inherited, even though they had grown so faithless 
 of them, he achieved out of these native endow- 
 ments, by consecration and obedience, a character 
 of noble and sacred proportions. By putting away 
 self-seeking he received the indwelling of God, 
 preached righteousness to his nation, which he 
 strove in vain to save and morally emancipate, and 
 died a martyr to the truth. We have no words of 
 his own writing. The fragmentary memoirs of his 
 life and teachings, written down from memory and 
 
180 PARTING WORPS 
 
 report after an interval of years, contain many 
 mythological elements, the growth of reverence and 
 of the prevalent ideas about the Messiah, whom his 
 disciples erroneously believed him to be, even 
 expecting his return in their own lifetime. These 
 histories, tinged with Jewish beliefs, are all we have ; 
 nor can we be sure, therefore, that we have in any 
 case the exact words of Jesus. We must believe, 
 however, that behind this record was a high and 
 holy life, were high and holy teachings, and the 
 highest and most spiritual words we may believe to 
 have been most surely his. So that enough remains 
 to be thankful for, even if we should sometimes be 
 glad if there were more. I, of course, have never 
 taught the system which places the essential work 
 of Jesus in the world to have been centred in his 
 official, sacrificial, atoning death ; that he came by 
 that death upon the cross to exhibit the wrath of 
 God against sin, to make an infinite satisfaction for 
 the infinite evil of sin, to bear the penalty of sin, to 
 make it possible (that is, to make it just and merci- 
 ful) for God to forgive sin, and so to reconcile God 
 to man, and restore the fallen human race. 
 
 In opposition to this theory, I have taught that 
 God is love, not wrath ; that the sin of a finite being 
 cannot be an infinite evil ; that the death of a finite 
 body cannot be an infinite satisfaction ; that it is 
 neither just nor merciful to inflict upon the innocent 
 the punishment due to the guilty ; that the retribu- 
 tions of sin are mainly interior, and cannot possibly 
 be experienced by a holy being ; are personal, and 
 in the nature of things cannot be transferred ; that 
 it was already, and is always, possible for God to 
 
PARTING WORDS l8l 
 
 forgive his children's sin upon their repentance and 
 reformation ; finally, that there is no proof that the 
 "race" was "fallen" through a federal Adam, and 
 so needed to be restored through a federal Christ, — 
 it being more probable, as I have said, that the race 
 has been, from the first, like the outward creation, 
 imperfect, but advancing towards perfection. 
 
 Nor have I taught, what is a more prevalent 
 theory among Unitarians, that the great and peculiar 
 mission of Jesus was to reveal to the world certain 
 religious truths and certain moral rules, of which 
 the world was, to that time, ignorant. The Father- 
 hood of God ; his essential love and readiness to 
 forgive sin ; the immortality of the human soul ; the 
 retribution and rewards of the future life ; the bro- 
 therhood of man ; the forgiveness of enemies and 
 the love of the neighbor ; to reveal these before 
 unknown truths and rules of conduct is believed to 
 have been God's design and Christ's work. 
 
 But it does not appear that they were before un- 
 known. God is called Father in the Old Testament 
 at least twice ; the idea was not unfamiliar to the 
 Greek and Roman religions ; Paul quotes from a 
 Greek poet the statement of man's sonship. That 
 God is love is the declaration of John, not Jesus. 
 The forgiveness of sins is part of every "pagan" 
 religion. The immortality of the human soul is a 
 universal faith ; is far more distinctly declared by 
 Plato than in any recorded words of Jesus, and is 
 accompanied in all religions with the idea of retribu- 
 tion and reward. The modern doctrine of the bro- 
 therhood of man is nowhere stated in terms by Jesus ; 
 is more distinctly declared by Paul. " If thine 
 
1 82 PARTING WORDS 
 
 enemy hunger, feed him," and " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself," are both in the Old Testament, 
 and the forgiveness of foes is taught in the Oriental 
 religions ; while many of the moral precepts of Jesus 
 can be paralleled in the writings of Jewish and hea- 
 then philosophers. The very manner in which Jesus 
 enunciated his religious truths and moral precepts 
 indicates that he was not announcing them for the 
 first time to a world as yet ignorant. I do not 
 mean, of course, to say, that Jesus did not preach 
 the great truths of religion ; nor do I say that he 
 borrowed them of others. He saw, with original 
 sight, the everlasting stars of truth, which are 
 before the eyes of all pure up-looking men in the 
 great spiritual firmament. And we have received 
 our knowledge of many of these truths first from 
 him ; but other men from other teachers. 
 
 Nor have I taught, as is sometimes said, that 
 Jesus came or was sent, not so much to teach truths, 
 as to set to men the example of a true life ; that his 
 teaching was his life. But if by his life be meant 
 his actions, the incidents of his biography ; if by 
 example be meant deeds done that men might im- 
 itate them, — and this is the usual acceptation of the 
 terms, — then we cannot receive this as the true 
 theory of the work of Jesus. For nothing is more 
 plain than that his example covers but a very small 
 part of the occupations of our life. Scarce ten men 
 in a generation are placed in circumstances to de- 
 mand of them to follow literally the steps of Jesus, 
 and imitate his actions. For the rest he has set no 
 copy. Besides, had Jesus lived with this idea, it 
 would have taken all spontaneousness and reality 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 83 
 
 from his life. Moreover, an imitated virtue is of 
 comparatively little worth. 
 
 If then the special " mission " and " saving work " 
 of Jesus be neither as teacher, exemplar, or sacrifice, 
 in the sense commonly taught, what theory remains ? 
 
 I have taught that the essential work of Jesus 
 was not indoctrination nor exemplification, but in- 
 spiration. He was, to those among whom he lived, 
 and through them to the world, a " quickening 
 spirit." From his fullness of life, he animated and 
 vitalized men's spiritual and moral natures. He 
 was a centre of spiritual force which flowed out, 
 under the law of influence, and saved, redeemed, 
 gave eternal life to as many as drew near to him, 
 seeking and willing. As the sun enters into the 
 oak-leaf, the violet, and calls out their life forces, so 
 the virtue that went out from him entered into their 
 souls, and new forces sprung into life within them. 
 All that was highest, purest, truest, divinest in them 
 was called out; new and nobler aims sprung up; 
 sins fell off ; evil habits loosed their chains ; evil 
 tempers were stilled ; all holiness seemed possible, 
 all sacrifices easy ; God seemed very near, and all 
 men dear. Of this spiritual force we are inheritors, 
 through the law of transmission, being born into it 
 as it has been propagated, in widening circles, from 
 generation to generation of living souls. 
 
 Further, when, as we read the record of his life 
 and his image rises before our imagination, our 
 hearts burn within us in heavenly desires, and our 
 consciences are stirred with nobler motives, and our 
 wills nerved to more generous striving — then a more 
 direct regenerating power is exerted upon us. 
 
1 84 PARTING WORDS 
 
 Further, as Jesus still lives in the spiritual world, 
 and still loves the race among whom he lived, yearn- 
 ing to save them, we believe that all who are in 
 affinity of affection and purpose with him do, in 
 accordance with the spiritual law of that affinity, 
 receive of his spirit. 
 
 It was his interior life, his soul's life, which Jesus 
 gave to the world. And this life, as we believe, 
 was not of the merely mild, passive quality, which 
 has often been supposed, but was full of energy. 
 His piety and his humanity were charged with vital- 
 ity. He died a martyr's death; not passively but 
 actively accepting it. It was the crown of his 
 consecration ; the final and triumphant test of the 
 complete surrender of his will to God's. And so 
 life went forth from that too. 
 
 Such, we believe, was and is the work of Jesus. 
 Not so much to tell men truths as to awaken their 
 spiritual vision to see the truth for themselves ; not 
 so much to lay down rules of moral conduct as to 
 quicken the inner sentiment of right and duty ; not 
 so much to set the copy of a divine life as to give 
 the motive impulse which shall urge men to do 
 their work as faithfully, as devoutly, as self-forget- 
 fully as he did his. 
 
 By so much as you remove Jesus from humanity, 
 in your thought, by just so much you remove him 
 from men's comprehension, and so from their needs. 
 But call him Man, and in that name include that 
 indwelling of God which is the native privilege of 
 spiritual humanity, and you speak plainly the truth 
 which the creeds have been stammering, and throw 
 clear light upon the nature and destiny of all men. 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 85 
 
 Say that Jesus was God manifest, incarnate Deity, 
 if you will ; but do not fail to believe that every 
 consecrated, obedient, illuminated son of man is, in 
 precisely the same sense, in however different de- 
 gree, the same. " Whosoever is led by the Spirit of 
 God, the same is son of God." " God who is above 
 all and in you all" How strange that men should, 
 through all the years, have been reading and repeat- 
 ing these words, and never yet believed them ! 
 
 But if we fall to worshiping Jesus, he still says, 
 Why callest thou me good ? it is not I, but the Fa- 
 ther ; and sends us to the Sun whence he drew light, 
 to the Fountain whence he drank. He lifts men up, 
 and leads them to God ; but he does not stay, as 
 some teach, perpetually between them and Him, sole 
 and permanent channel of the Divine Spirit. But, 
 having placed their hand in the Father's, he goes to 
 seek and bring other wanderers home, and leaves 
 them to gaze, without veil, into the Father's face, 
 and hear, without mediator, his Word. 
 
 How grand and inspiring are the thoughts these 
 views of men suggest to us for ourselves and for 
 others! These seem to me doctrines whose truth 
 ought to make us free. 
 
 With such views of man and of God, and of their 
 intimate relation, my views of life have been cheer- 
 ful and sacred. I have ever urged upon you this 
 sanctity of life in its small as well as its great occa- 
 sions, in its work and its play as well as in its prayer 
 and its sorrow. This world becomes thus one man- 
 sion of our Father's house, full of his beauty and his 
 presence, our childhood's home ; and not an exile, a 
 prison, a hospital, a vale of tears, and journey to the 
 
1 86 PARTING WORDS 
 
 tomb ; not even a mere probation and preparation 
 for another world. Life, a noble opportunity for 
 spiritual and manly growth, and the doing of good ; 
 heaven and its angels close to us, if we will see and 
 hear ; and death but the passing on in the unbroken 
 continuity of our being into a life beyond, whither 
 we carry all of ourselves unchanged into fresh op- 
 portunities and fresh influences. That the life 
 beyond is the simple continuation of the inward life 
 here, I have felt a growing conviction ; the same 
 essential character, the same spiritual laws, the 
 same Man and the same God. But I have had 
 more to say to you of the present life than of the 
 future, deeming it now of more importance. 
 
 There is another point of doctrinal teaching which 
 ought not to be passed over, and which I now dwell 
 upon at more length, because it is about to be a prom- 
 inent point of discussion. I mean the doctrine of 
 our religious books. The Bible, in the Protestant 
 church, holds a very remarkable position. Sepa- 
 rated from all other books ; believed to be not the 
 product of the human reason or religious senti- 
 ment, but a miraculous dictation of the Holy Spirit, 
 it is asserted to be God's only and infallible Word, 
 it is called the perfect rule of faith and practice. 
 To question any statement in it is to be an infidel. 
 To prove any doctrine, a clear text from any part of 
 it is counted all-sufficient. All sects agree to refer 
 their disputes to it as a final arbiter. It is true 
 that there is a modified view, which regards the Bible 
 as being a book intended not to teach science and 
 history, but morals and religion ; and as, therefore, 
 fallible in what it teaches of the former, but infalli- 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 87 
 
 ble, or virtually so, in what it teaches of the latter. 
 It is counted liberal to say the Bible is our only 
 creed. Its religious teachings are called revelation 
 and inspiration, while all other religious teachings 
 are called the results of unassisted human reason. 
 In the liberal churches hymns are sung in honor of 
 the Bible. It is given to the newly-ordained minis- 
 ter, with the charge that he preach it, and nothing 
 which is not in it. 
 
 This is the Protestant idolatry, — this worship of 
 a book, and of its letter. I must call it a supersti- 
 tion, for it is an unintelligent reverence. It is on a 
 par with the equally sincere worship of shrines and 
 images in the Roman Catholic Church. I have not 
 failed to tell you that the doctrine of the infallibility 
 of the Bible will not stand a moment's open-eyed 
 examination. The book does not claim to be an in- 
 fallible and equally-inspired book, written by the 
 finger of God, or at the dictation of the Holy Ghost ; 
 and if it did, of course the claim would not be proof '. 
 Secondly, the Bible is not a book, but a collection 
 of books ; of various and uncertain authorship, of 
 various and uncertain date, of various and often con- 
 tradictory teaching. There is no proof that these 
 writings are other than human writings. The hu- 
 man mind is amply capable of writing all they con- 
 tain, with its observation, judgment, and memory, 
 with its moral sense and its spiritual perception and 
 openness to inspiration. The truths of science, of 
 history, which these writings contain, are certainly 
 within reach of human investigation. Their errors 
 in science, their contradictions and discrepancies in 
 history, are surely human. The morality is not uni- 
 
1 88 PARTING WORDS 
 
 form, is not always of the highest ; often actions are 
 recorded with approval that shock our better sense. 
 These mark the imperfect perception of an earlier 
 age, but surely they cannot be the rule of a more 
 advanced one. We cannot go to the Bible as to an 
 absolutely authoritative source of truth and light. 
 But it does not follow that, believing this, we are 
 bound to " take the Bible out of our pulpit and our- 
 selves with it." We do not reject the Bible because 
 we do not accept it as a sacred whole, but discrimi- 
 nate among its varied contents, and refuse to bow 
 reason and conscience before it. We do not reject 
 it ; for though all I have said is true, yet there is 
 more in the Bible than I have said. It contains pas- 
 sages of loftiest and truest inspiration ; divinest sen- 
 tences of truth, sublimest morality, tenderest piety ; 
 most earnest faith, most quickening proclamations 
 of the divine Law, most touching declarations of the 
 divine Lover Rich beyond all books is it in these. 
 And we have in ourselves the faculties which can 
 distinguish the inspired from the uninspired parts, 
 the truth from the error, namely, that spiritual rea- 
 son, conscience, and heart in us which are the 
 ground and the test of the true, the right, and the 
 good, and whose affirmations are to every man 
 authoritative. That which divinely inspires us, we 
 know by that sign to be itself divinely inspired. 
 For the spiritual man judges all things. These 
 things I have been accustomed to tell you of the 
 Bible ; asking you to use it intelligently, and not 
 superstitiously ; to test its statements in your high- 
 est reason, conscience, and heart ; and to obey with 
 fidelity those sacred laws and truths which your 
 spirit found recorded and enforced in its pages. 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 89 
 
 Such are the leading ideas, which, for these seven 
 years, I have been teaching here. These truths I 
 have preached to you because I counted them — 
 and still count them — God's truths, saving truths, 
 vital truths, truths that shall make you free. These 
 truths I have preached honestly and with freedom. 
 And you have been willing to hear them, though 
 you could not, all of you, always accept them. I 
 commend them anew to you, and beseech you, so 
 far as they commend themselves to you as true, to 
 cherish them, and to stand by them, and bear wit- 
 ness to them here. Above all, I entreat you, cher- 
 ish and stand by the largest, the most entire free- 
 dom of thinking and speaking in theology ; cherish 
 it as the only avenue to the truth. See that you 
 stand fast in your liberty, and be not entangled 
 again in any yoke of bondage. See that you never 
 incur the reproach that " the pilgrims of liberty 
 have become its oppressors." Sad indeed is it to 
 see a "liberal" Christian repeating the very wrong 
 he has complained of in the " orthodox," and deny- 
 ing the Christian name to those who do not believe 
 about Jesus as he does. 
 
 These truths, I say, I have taught here during 
 my ministry with increasing clearness of conviction. 
 But, as a teacher of religion, I have not confined 
 myeelf to teaching truths. For religion is not truth 
 alone, but also piety and righteousness. God, the 
 conscious union with whom is religion, comes as 
 truth to the reason ; but He comes as love and rev- 
 erence to the heart ; as right to the conscience and 
 the will. 
 
 I have, therefore, as a teacher of religion, sought 
 
I90 PARTING WORDS 
 
 continually to quicken in you the spiritual sentiment 
 of piety ; the inward, tender feeling of trust and of 
 devoutness ; the perpetual sense of God's intimate 
 presence not as a speculative truth, but as a felt 
 experience. I have sought to nurture in you the 
 spirit of prayer, of communion with the Infinite 
 Spirit, our Father, that you might know the joy, the 
 peace, and the power of piety ; till it should shed 
 its serenity through the distractions of your life, 
 and its energy through your work, and its cheerful- 
 ness through your sorrows. I have longed that you 
 should know these things, not as a belief only, but 
 as a living and victorious faith. 
 
 And I have always urged upon you righteousness 
 as an essential part of religion. I have wished you 
 to feel the insufficiency of the devoutness which 
 was not an inspiration to right-doing. I have urged 
 you to enthrone conscience, and feel the sacred 
 obligation of duty, and the supremacy of the divine 
 law, as revealed within you ; I have urged honesty, 
 integrity, veracity, as a part of your religion ; and 
 pressed the claim of a high moral standard amid 
 the demoralizations of this exciting life. And not 
 only private morality, but the claims of society, that 
 you should add to its justice, and help its humanity, 
 and aid its reformations ; till that kingdom of heaven 
 be come, wherein their rights shall be given to man, 
 to woman, to child ; to the poor, the tempted, the 
 criminal. 
 
 And I have not failed to urge upon you the claims 
 of national righteousness, without which no people 
 can be free, can be strong, can be truly prosperous. 
 Against the great immorality of our nation, its 
 
PARTING WORDS igi 
 
 great disobedience to the divine law, Slavery. I have 
 not failed to utter my protest. I have urged upon 
 you the critical character of this question among 
 us ; how the liberties and moral life of our land are 
 involved in it ; yes, and the personal manhood of 
 every one of us. Of its barbarism and its despot- 
 ism, I have not failed to speak ; of its frequent and 
 frightful cruelties, and its essential and perpetual 
 injustice ; that I might engage your heart and your 
 conscience to work for the righting of this great 
 wrong, the removal of which would ennoble and 
 aggrandize every part of our country, and let it 
 breathe its first full, free breath. Of the duty of 
 the pulpit in this regard, I have never felt a mo- 
 ment's doubt ; but with me it has been a desire and 
 a privilege, even more than a duty, to speak what 
 was filling my heart and conscience. Nor have I 
 ever seen what right politics in the pews, and com- 
 merce in the pews, could claim to silence the pro- 
 clamation of national righteousness in the pulpit. 
 Some of you have not been able to sympathize with 
 all I have said on this theme ; and some that were 
 with us have, in the exercise of their unquestioned 
 liberty, gone away from the hearing of this word. 
 I would rather they had stayed and been converted. 
 But I wish to say to-day that you have fully re- 
 spected the freedom of this pulpit ; that, through 
 all, no persuasion nor inducement has been ad- 
 dressed to me to do anything else than preach my 
 full conviction of this matter. I am glad and you 
 are glad to-day that I can say this. 
 
 Seven years ago, in my first sermon after my in- 
 stallation, I gave you my idea of a church as " a 
 
I92 PARTING WORDS 
 
 society of men and women and children, united by 
 a religious spirit for a religious work." And I 
 sketched an outline of the work of a church, such 
 as I hoped we should gradually build up here. That 
 it should not have been completely filled up is not 
 strange. But we have done something in nearly all 
 the directions then indicated ; and I trust you are 
 to do yet more. By our religious worship, enriched 
 with every helpful aid of devotion ; by our social 
 meetings ; by our meeting for conversation ; by our 
 Sunday-school ; by our monthly contributions to 
 benevolent objects ; by our printing, or helping 
 others to print tracts ; by our cultivation of religious 
 music as a handmaid to devotion, we have at least 
 made a commencement of good works. 
 
 And now I commend this church, and all these 
 its ministries, to your keeping. Remember that 
 you, and not I, are the church. Cherish it for your 
 sake and its own ; above all, for the sake of the 
 truth, freedom, righteousness it may serve. To you 
 I commit their charge and service in this place. 
 Accept it as a sacred charge, and be faithful. Feel 
 the added call there is now upon you who remain 
 to keep and inspire life in every department. Rise 
 far above persons into the love of ideas and princi- 
 ples. This church has already come to be regarded 
 as representative of the new thought and life of the 
 times, and many eyes look to it, especially among 
 the young. Accept, and be true to the responsi- 
 bility, " not in my presence only, but much more in 
 my absence." I go, but the truth remains. Duty 
 remains. God, the great Friend, Helper, Teacher, 
 Inspirer, remains. " Work out your own salvation 
 
PARTING WORDS 1 93 
 
 with awe, for that which worketh in you is God." 
 Again I say, stand fast in the liberty with which you 
 have been made free, and be not entangled, I beseech 
 you, in any yoke of bondage. Do not fear discour- 
 agements, — we have passed safely through too 
 many. Do not sacrifice to any desire of immediate 
 popularity, — I hope we have all long ago left that 
 desire behind. 
 
 To you, young men and young women, I would 
 say one word. Keep your minds and hearts open 
 to the new thought and life of our time. Your age 
 and your country call upon you to be true to their 
 great ideas, and gladly lend yourselves to the carry- 
 ing on of the great works of justice and humanity, 
 which are set to our time. Ennoble yourselves by 
 devotion to the truth and the right, and by making 
 sacrifices for them. Let every good cause find in 
 you willing helpers. 
 
 And you, children, so soon to be young men and 
 young women, you whom I have loved : love now, 
 and love always, the things that are good and true, 
 just, honest, and lovely. Thus you will love God, 
 who loves you, more than I or any man can. Feel 
 early that you are in the world, as we all are, to do 
 some good, to make some one happier and better. 
 
 And now we have come to the parting of the ways. 
 I offer to you again the hand I held out to you seven 
 years ago, and with its warm pressure I ask God's 
 blessing to be with you. With you here, as often as 
 you shall meet for prayer and thought. With you 
 amid the exposures, and temptations, and opportuni- 
 ties of your daily work. With you in the homes 
 where, for seven years, I have come and gone in 
 
194 PARTING WORDS 
 
 simple friendship ; those homes, where I have laid my 
 hand in blessing on your little children, spoken words 
 of cheer to the sick and dying, opened the fountains 
 of consolation to the lonely and bereaved. These 
 inward influences abide forever in the heart that 
 cherishes them. They, the better part of me, remain 
 with you, though the outward goes away. And I 
 bear with me, not only your good wishes, but all that 
 these seven years of intercourse have wrought into 
 my inmost life. This thought of what abides must 
 lift us far above whatever in this hour speaks 
 of change and loss. And intercourse, even, is not to 
 be broken ; we shall hear and know of each other 
 across the seas and lands. Do not doubt that, what- 
 ever may happen I shall cherish, a warm interest in 
 your welfare. Why, then, should we not part cheer- 
 fully, while I bid you an affectionate farewell, and 
 you wish me a pleasant journey and a safe return ? 
 
 Brooklyn, June 24, i860, on withdrawing from the pastorate. 
 
 The following note was prefixed to this sermon when published : — 
 
 This sermon was, of necessity, written in haste. But the views it 
 contains are not hastily adopted. By the like necessity, it has been 
 printed without the author's revision even of the proofs. I leave it 
 with my congregation as a substitute, in part, for a volume which 
 they had asked for. And perhaps other inquirers maybe helped by 
 its statements. 
 
 Brooklyn, June 29, i860. 
 
SERMON 
 
 AT THE DEDICATION OF THE "PARKER MEMORIAL," THE 
 MEETING-HOUSE OF THE TWENTY - EIGHTH CONGREGA- 
 TIONAL SOCIETY OF BOSTON. 
 
 I greet you upon your gathering in this new 
 and fair home. It is but a change of place, — not 
 of mind or purpose. You lay no new foundations 
 of the spirit. What foundation can any man lay 
 deeper, broader, more eternal than those you have 
 always had, — faith in man and faith in God, whom 
 man reveals ? You build no new walls of spiritual 
 shelter. What other can you ever need than you have 
 always had, — the sense of the encompassing, pro- 
 tecting, and perfect laws, the encircling God ? What 
 better roof could overarch your souls than the rev- 
 erential, trustful sense of the Heavenly Power and 
 Love ; the Truth, Justice, and Beauty that are above 
 us all ; the Perfect which lifts us to heaven, and 
 opens heaven to us and in us, even as in Rome's 
 Pantheon — temple of all the Gods, or of the All- 
 God — the arching dome leaves in its centre an open 
 circle, through which the infinite depths of sky are 
 seen that tempt the spirit to soar and soar, without 
 a bound, farther than any bird hath ever lifted wing 
 or floating air-ship of man's building can ever rise ! 
 What spires and pinnacles could you raise that 
 would point upward better than that ideal within us, 
 
I96 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 that haunting sense of Perfection which forever calls 
 us to a better manhood, and toward which in all our 
 best moments we long and aspire ? What breadth 
 of enlarged space could you open, with hospitable 
 welcome of free place for all who would come, be- 
 yond that entire freedom of thinking, of speaking, 
 of hearing, which have been yours, and your offering 
 to others, for so many years ? Ever since, indeed, 
 you gathered together, resolved that " Theodore 
 Parker should have a chance to be heard in Boston," 
 and formed the Twenty-eighth Congregational So- 
 ciety. Founded in the ecclesiastical independence 
 of that name, you, in coming here, have not to break 
 away from any ecclesiastical organization. Nor do 
 you need now or ever to ask leave of bishop, or 
 approbation of consistory or council, — nor fear the 
 censure of either, — for anything that you may do 
 here, for any one whom you may invite here, for 
 anything that may be said here, for any rite or form 
 or ceremonial that you here may establish or may 
 omit. Springing from such root of sympathy with 
 fair play and freedom of speech, — and especially of 
 thought and speech that were under some ban of 
 heresy, — you have not in coming here had to break 
 away from any traditions of orthodoxy or spiritual 
 constraint. The traditions you bring here are all 
 the other way. It is to no experiment of liberty that 
 you open this place of meeting ; to no untried ideas 
 and principles, but to well-tested ones, which you 
 see no ground to give up or to abate. For ideas and 
 principles you have, — though you are bound by no 
 creed. Bound by no creed, I say, — refusing to 
 proclaim any. Not, however, without individual be- 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 1 97 
 
 liefs, and doubtless with substantial agreement amid 
 your varieties of opinion ; but not imposing your 
 beliefs upon each other, as conditions of fellowship, 
 still less upon any as conditions of salvation. You 
 do not impose them upon yourselves as final ; but 
 hope that they will grow out into something larger, 
 fuller, deeper. You may be afloat ; but you are not 
 adrift. You may not know what new worlds of 
 truth lie before you ; but you know where you are, 
 and in what direction you are going. Beneath you 
 is the deep of God ; over you, his eternal stars ; 
 within you, the magnet which, with all its variations, 
 is yet a trustworthy guide. Your hand is on the 
 helm. The sacred forces and laws of nature encom- 
 pass you. While you obey them you will not be 
 lost. " If your bark sink, 't is to another sea." You 
 cannot go beyond God. 
 
 This great principle of freedom of inquiry, liberty 
 of thought, you bring with you. And may I not 
 say for you that you reaffirm it here ? In using it, 
 it has not failed you, or betrayed you, or harmed 
 you. You have not found it fatal or dangerous. It 
 has not led you into indifference, or into license or 
 moral delinquency. It may have led you to deny 
 some old beliefs, but it has not left you in denial or 
 unbelief. Its free atmosphere has been a tonic to 
 your faith. It has brought you to convictions, — the 
 more trustworthy and precious because freely reached 
 by your own thought, and tested by your own ex- 
 perience, and fitted to your own state of mind. No 
 longer a report, but something you have seen for 
 yourselves. The story is told of a well-known hater 
 of shams, that, a new minister coming into his neigh- 
 
I98 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 borhood, he sought an opportunity of talk with him : 
 he wanted to learn, he said, whether this man knew, 
 himself, anything of God, or only believed that 
 eighteen hundred years ago there lived one who 
 knew something of Him. Is not our faith that in 
 which we have settled confidence, — what we trust 
 our wills to in action ? It is that to which we grav- 
 itate, and in which we rest when all disturbing 
 influences are withdrawn. It is that to which we 
 find ourselves recurring from all aberrations of ques- 
 tioning and doubt, as to a practical certainty. We 
 may not be able to answer all arguments against it, 
 but nevertheless it commends itself to us as true. 
 There is to us more reason for holding to it than 
 there are reasons for rejecting it. So, while belief 
 may be called an act of the understanding, faith is 
 rather a consent of the whole nature. It is, there- 
 fore, more instinctive than argumentative, though 
 reasoning forms an element in it. And it is the 
 mighty power which it is, removing mountains, and 
 the secret of victory, because it is this consensus of 
 thought, feeling, and will, — a deposit of their long 
 experiences, an act of the whole man. It is struc- 
 tural and organic. But it need not be blind or irra- 
 tional. If we must differentiate it from knowledge, 
 I would say that, while we may define knowledge to 
 be assurance upon outward grounds, faith is assur- 
 ance upon real but interior grounds. I repeat this 
 because many people seem to think that faith is 
 assurance without any ground. Now that our faith 
 may be really such as I have described, it must be a 
 personal conviction, from our own thought and ex- 
 perience. And that it may be this, we must have 
 liberty of thinking without external constraint. 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 1 99 
 
 You do not find that this liberty of yours isolates 
 you. Others who count it dangerous, or who dislike 
 the use you make of it, may cut you off from their 
 fellowship. But the liberty which frees you from 
 artificial restraints leaves you open to the natural at- 
 tractions, and over and through all walls and lines 
 you find a large fellowship of sympathy in thought 
 and feeling. The electric instincts of spiritual 
 brotherhood overleap all barriers of creed and or- 
 ganization, even of excommunication. Above all, 
 are you bound by such invisible, deep ties with all 
 the noble company of the heretics and pioneers of 
 thought ; and a noble company it is. For the line 
 of so-called heresy is nearly as ancient, and quite as 
 honorable, as that of orthodoxy. Think of the names 
 that belong to it ! 
 
 Let me say, further, that this liberty of yours — 
 your birthright and sacred charge — is not lawless- 
 ness. You have never felt it to be so. In a universe 
 of law no true liberty can be that. It is not that 
 which has made the soul of man thrill as when a 
 trumpet sounds ; not that to which the noblest men 
 and women have sacrificed popularity, fortune, and 
 life. How foolishly Mr. Ruskin talks about liberty, 
 misusing his eloquent pen ; saying that we need 
 none of it ; and taking for its symbol the capricious 
 vagaries of a house-fly ! Is it a house-fly caprice 
 that has made the hearts of true men leap high and 
 willingly bleed into stillness ; which has been dearer 
 than friend or lover, than ease or life ? Your liberty, 
 I say, is not lawlessness, — it is not whim and ca- 
 price. It is simply the throwing off all bondage of 
 tradition and conformity and prescription and eccle- 
 
200 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 siasticism, — every external compulsion and imposi- 
 tion in behalf of the free, natural action of the mind 
 and heart. It rejects outward rule in behalf of in- 
 ward law. It refuses obedience to outward dictation 
 in behalf of its allegiance to the truth which is 
 within. Thus it rejects bonds, but accepts bounds ; 
 for all law is force acting within bounds, — that is, 
 under fixed and orderly conditions. Your liberty is 
 order, not disorder. 
 
 Your liberty, again, is not rude or defiant. You 
 do not flout authority ; you give due weight to the 
 natural authority of superior knowledge, wisdom, 
 conscientiousness, holiness. But you acknowledge 
 no human authority which claims to be infallible, or 
 to impose itself upon you as absolute ; none which 
 would deny to you the right, or seek to release you 
 from the duty, of thinking for yourself what is true 
 to you, of judging for yourself what is right for you. 
 The opinion of the wisest you will not accept, in any 
 matter that interests you, unless it commends itself 
 to your thought, to your conscience, is justified by 
 your experience. You will not take your religious 
 opinions ready made from pope or synod or apostle. 
 God has given you power, and therefore laid upon 
 you the duty, of forming your own. In that work 
 you will gladly accept all help, willingly listen to the 
 words of the wise and good ; but their real authority 
 is in their power to convince your mind ; and the 
 final appeal is to your own soul. Is inspiration 
 claimed for any, its proof must be in its power to in- 
 spire you. Till it does it is no word of God to you. 
 
 Yet once more : this liberty, won by pain of those 
 gone before, and by your own fidelity, is yours not 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 201 
 
 for its own sake chiefly, not as an end. It is yours 
 as opportunity. It will be a barren liberty if it be not 
 used. What good will the right of free inquiry do 
 to a man who never inquires ? Of what advantage 
 freedom of thought to one who never thinks ? Of 
 what value the right of private judgment to one who 
 never exercises it ? Freedom, I say, is but oppor- 
 tunity. It is an atmosphere in which the mind should 
 expand unhindered in its inbreathing of truth ; in 
 which all virtues should grow in strength, all sweet 
 and loving and devout feelings flower into beauty 
 and fragrance ; in which the character, uncon- 
 strained by artificial bondages, should grow into the 
 full stature of manhood, the full possession and free 
 play of faculty. It is in vain that you have put away 
 infallible church and infallible Bible and official me- 
 diator, and priesthood and ritual, from between you 
 and God, if you never avail yourself of that im- 
 mediate access ; if your soul never springs into the 
 arms of the Eternal Love, nor rests itself trustfully 
 on the Eternal Strength, nor listens reverently to 
 the whispers of the Eternal Word, nor enters into 
 the peace of communion with the Immutable. 
 
 Our freedom is founded in faith, not in denial. It 
 springs from faith in man. The popular theology 
 is founded upon the idea of human incapacity ; ours 
 upon faith in human capacity. We believe, not in 
 the Fall of Man, but in the Rise of Man. We be- 
 lieve, not in the chasm between man and God to be 
 bridged over only by the atoning death of a God, but 
 in a chasm between man's attainment and his pos- 
 sibility, between his lower and his higher nature, to 
 be bridged over by growth, government, and culture. 
 
202 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 We believe that there is more good in man generally 
 than evil. And the evil we believe to be, not a na- 
 tive disability, but an imperfection or a misuse, an 
 excess or perversion, of faculties and instincts whose 
 natural or right use is good. We believe sin is not 
 an infinite evil, but a finite one, — incidental, not 
 structural. Man is not helpless in its toils ; but 
 every man has the elements of good in him which 
 may overcome it, and all needed helps. It is a dis- 
 ease, — sometimes a dreadful one, — but not abso- 
 lutely fatal, since there is a healing power in his na- 
 ture, and in the universe around and above him ; and 
 the excess or misdirection may be overcome by the 
 inward effort and outward influences which shall 
 strengthen into supremacy the higher faculties 
 which rightfully control and direct the lower. We 
 believe in the existence of these higher faculties as 
 original in man's constitution, — reason, conscience, 
 ideality, unselfish love. These are as much a part 
 of his nature as the senses and the animal mind. 
 When rightly used they are as valid, — not infal- 
 lible, but trustworthy. They will not necessarily 
 lead astray, as the popular theology teaches, but 
 probably lead aright. That theology, not having 
 faith in human nature, cannot believe that freedom 
 of thinking is safe for men. Protestantism pro- 
 claims indeed the " right of private judgment," but 
 it is merely the right to read the Jewish and Chris- 
 tian Bible, and to accept unquestioning its declara- 
 tions, bowing natural reason, heart, and conscience 
 to its texts, believed to be the miraculously inspired 
 and infallible Word of God, the " perfect rule of 
 faith and practice." The Roman Catholic Church, 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 203 
 
 far more logical, seeing that private judgment gets 
 such a variety of meaning out of this "perfect rule," 
 declares that an infallible Bible, to be such a rule, 
 needs an infallible interpreter, — namely, the church, 
 or, latterly, the Pope speaking for the church. It 
 therefore logically denies freedom of individual 
 thinking as dangerous. Father Newman, indeed, 
 with amusing simplicity, declares that nowhere is 
 liberty of thought more encouraged than in the Ro- 
 man Church, since, he says, she allows a long discus- 
 sion of every tenet and dogma before it is definitely 
 defined and proclaimed. Yes ; but after? We can 
 only smile at such a pretension. In London, a friend 
 said to me, " I do not see but these Broad Church- 
 men have freedom to say everything that they want 
 to say in their pulpits." I answered, " Perhaps so ; 
 but then they do not want to say all that you and I 
 should want to say." But of what they wish to say 
 or think much must require an immense stretching 
 of the articles to which they have subscribed. I do 
 not speak of conscience, for I will not judge an- 
 other's. But what a trap to conscience, what a 
 temptation to at least mental dishonesty, must such 
 subscription be ! And the liturgy, from which no 
 word may be omitted, though many a priest must 
 say officially what he does not individually believe, 
 — can that be good for a man ? I know what may 
 be said on the other side, but to us it will seem that 
 all advantages are dearly purchased at such cost. 
 The Unitarians, the Protestants of Protestants, in 
 their revolt from Calvinism, proclaimed the right of 
 free inquiry. And, let it be remembered to their 
 credit, they have refused to announce an authorita- 
 
204 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 tive creed. But they have not had full faith in their 
 own principles and ideas. They have hesitated and 
 been timid in their application. They have been 
 suspicious and unfriendly toward those who went 
 farther than they in the use of their freedom of think- 
 ing. They have written up, " No Thoroughfare " 
 and " Dangerous Passing " on their own road. They 
 have now organized round the dogma of the Lord- 
 ship and Leadership of Jesus ; and invite to their 
 fellowship, not all who would be "followers of God, 
 as dear children," but only those who " wish to be 
 followers of Christ." 
 
 I do not forget that in all churches, Romanist and 
 Protestant, there is a spirit of liberty, a leaven of 
 free thought, which is creating a movement in them 
 all, — an inner fire which is breaking the crust of 
 tradition and creed and ecclesiasticism. It shows 
 itself in the Old Catholic movement in Romanism ; 
 the Broad Church in Anglicanism ; the Liberal wing 
 in Orthodoxy ; the Radicalism in " Liberal Chris- 
 tianity." 
 
 But the freedom which in these is inconsistent, 
 imperfect, or unwelcome, with you is organic and 
 thorough. Our faith in it, I said, springs out of our 
 faith in man and God, to which indeed our freedom 
 has led us. We think that man can be trusted to 
 search for the truth without constraint or hindrance, 
 because we think that his mind was made for truth, 
 as his eye for light ; and that to his mind, fairly 
 used, the truth will reveal itself as the light does to 
 his eye. And we believe that in his sincere search 
 he is never unassisted by the Spirit of Truth. We 
 do not say that he will make no mistakes, or that he 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 20 5 
 
 will know all truth all at once. But if a man be 
 earnest and sincere, his mistakes will be his teach- 
 ers ; his errors will be but his imperfect apprehen- 
 sion of some truth. We believe that all truth that 
 has ever come to man, including religious truth, has 
 come through the use of his native faculties ; that 
 this is the condition of all revelation, and ample to 
 account for all revelations. We therefore utterly 
 discard all distinction between natural and revealed 
 religion. We should as soon speak of natural and 
 revealed astronomy, or establish separate professor- 
 ships for teaching them. Newton revealed to men 
 the facts of the universe which his natural faculties 
 discovered, and which the universe revealed to him, 
 using his faculties. Some of these facts were un- 
 known before to the wisest men ; some were only 
 dimly guessed. Did that prove his knowledge 
 superhuman ? Would it be a sensible question to 
 ask, Why, if human reason were capable of discover- 
 ing them, were they not known before ? Yet such 
 questions are asked in religion, as if unanswerable ! 
 We believe that the human faculties are adequate 
 for their end. Among them we recognize spiritual 
 faculties, framed for the perception of spiritual 
 truths, a religious capacity adequate to its end. 
 We find religion — a sense of deity — as universal 
 and as natural to man as society, government, lan- 
 guage, science. You know how the latest and com- 
 pletest investigations into the ancient religions of 
 the world confirm this belief. They show that the 
 great religious ideas and sentiments, of God, of vir- 
 tue, of love, of immortality, have been taught with 
 remarkable unanimity in all these religions. These 
 
206 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 are mingled in all with much that is mythological, 
 unscientific, local, personal, temporary. But they 
 have all contained that which elevated, consoled, 
 and redeemed the souls of men. Under all of them, 
 men have lived the truth they professed, and have 
 suffered and died in its behalf. Most of them have 
 had their prophet, believed to have been the chosen 
 friend of God, sent to communicate his word to the 
 world. He has been worshiped by his followers, 
 glorified with miracle, deified. In view of these 
 facts, it is impossible to regard any one of them as 
 the only, the universal, or the perfect religion. 
 Christianity, therefore, cannot any longer be re- 
 garded as other than one of the religions of the 
 world, sharing the qualities of them all. It has its 
 bright central truths, eternal as the soul of man, 
 elevating, comforting, redeeming. It has its ele- 
 ments of mythology, its personal and local traits, 
 peculiar to itself. What is peculiar in it can never 
 become universal ; what is universal in it cannot be 
 claimed as its peculiar property. The Christianity 
 of the New Testament centres in the idea that 
 Jesus was the miraculously attested Messiah, the 
 King, long expected, of the Jews. " If ye believe 
 not that I am he, ye shall perish in your sins." 
 " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus, the Mes- 
 siah, is come in the flesh, is of God ; every spirit 
 that confesseth not that Jesus is the Messiah come 
 in the flesh, is not of God." " Whosoever shall con- 
 fess that Jesus is the Son of God [that is, the Mes- 
 siah], God dwelleth in him." " Whosoever believes 
 that Jesus is the Messiah is born of God." This 
 was the primitive Christian confession, — the test 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 207 
 
 of belief or unbelief, the test of discipleship, the 
 condition of salvation. Paul enlarged the domain 
 of the Messiah's kingdom to include all of the Gen- 
 tiles who would acknowledge him ; declared that in 
 his own lifetime he should see Jesus returning to 
 take the Messianic throne, and looked to see the 
 time when " every knee should bow, and every 
 tongue confess that Jesus was the Christ," "whom 
 God had raised from the dead, and set at his own 
 right hand, far above all principality and might and 
 dominion and every name that is named." This 
 was the primitive Christian confession. Seeing that 
 it has never come to pass, that it was a mistaken 
 idea, some modern Christians idealize the thought, 
 and say that Jesus is morally and spiritually King 
 among men. But that is not the New Testament 
 idea, which is literal, not figurative. This Messianic 
 idea, in its most literal sense, colors the Christian 
 scriptures through and through. And with it, its 
 correlative idea of an immediately impending de- 
 struction and renovation of the world, which was 
 to accompany the Messianic appearance. A great 
 many of the precepts of the New Testament have 
 their ground in this erroneous notion of the writers, 
 and have no significance or application apart from 
 it. It is such things as these that make it impossi- 
 ble for Christianity, as it stands in the records, to 
 be the universal or absolute religion. Just as like 
 things in Brahminism, Buddhism, Judaism, prevent 
 any one of these, as it stands in its scriptures, from 
 becoming the religion of the world. What is local, 
 personal, peculiar, special in each, is of its nature 
 transient, — the temporary environment and wrap- 
 
208 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 page of the truth. What is universal in each, the 
 central spiritual and moral ideas which reappear in 
 them all, these cannot be called by the name of any 
 one of them. These, it seems to me, are neither 
 Judaism, Buddhism, nor Christianity, — they are 
 religion. 
 
 Religion, — a name how often taken in vain, how 
 often perverted ! but in its true essence what a joy, 
 what an emancipation, what a consolation, what an 
 inspiration ! What a life it has been in the world ! 
 Corrupted and betrayed, made the cloak of iniquity, 
 ambition, selfishness, uncharitableness, and tyranny, 
 it has never perished out of the human soul. A 
 product of that soul, an original and ineradicable 
 impulse, perception, and sentiment, it has shared 
 the fate of that soul in its upward progress out of 
 ignorance into knowledge, out of superstition into 
 rational faith, out of selfishness into humanity, out 
 of all imperfection on toward perfection. In every 
 age, and in every soul, it has been the saving salt. 
 For by religion, I need not say, I do not mean any 
 form or ceremonial whatever, any organization or 
 ecclesiasticism. I mean the Ideal in man, and de- 
 votion to that Ideal. The sense of a Perfect above 
 him, yet akin to him, forever drawing him upward 
 to union with itself. The Moral Ideal, or sense of 
 a perfect Righteousness, — how it has summoned 
 men away from injustice and wrong-doing, awakened 
 them to a contest with evil within them, and led 
 them on to victory of the conscience over passion 
 and greed ! How it has nerved them to do battle 
 with injustice in the world, and kept them true to 
 some cause of righting wrong, patient and brave 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 20O, 
 
 through indifference, opposition, suffering ! And it 
 has always been a sense of a power, and a law of 
 righteousness above themselves, which they did not 
 create and dared not disobey, and which, while it 
 seemed to compel them, yet exalted and freed them. 
 The Intellectual Ideal, the sense of a Supreme 
 Truth, a Reality in things, with the thirst to know 
 it, — how it has led men to " scorn delights and live 
 laborious days," to outwatch the night, to traverse 
 land and sea, in its study and pursuit, to sacrifice 
 for it fortune and society — this also felt to be some- 
 thing above them, yet belonging to them ; something 
 worth living and dying for, and giving to its sharers 
 a sense of endless life ! And the Ideal of Beauty, 
 haunting, quickening, exalting the imagination to 
 feel, to see, to create, in marble, on canvas, in tones, 
 in words, — itself its own great reward. The Ideal 
 of Use, leading to the creation and perfecting of the 
 arts and instruments of human need and comfort 
 and luxury, — every one of them at first only a dream 
 in the brain of the inventor, a vision of a something 
 better than existed haunting his toilsome days and 
 years of self-denial and poverty. The Ideal of 
 Patriotism or of Loyalty, the sense of social order, 
 of a rightful sovereignty, or of popular freedom, — 
 how has it made men into heroes and martyrs, giv- 
 ing up ease and facing death with exulting hearts. 
 The Ideal of Love or Benevolence, that makes men 
 devote themselves and consecrate their possessions 
 to the relieving of human suffering and removing its 
 sources. The Ideal of Sanctity, of Holiness, the 
 vision and the consecration of the saint, the aspi- 
 ration after goodness, that by its inspiration gives 
 
2IO DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 power to overcome passion and control desire and 
 purify every thought of the mind and every feeling 
 of the heart, and mould the spirit into the likeness 
 of the All-Holy. 
 
 All these ideals, differing so much in their man- 
 ifestation and direction, are alike in this, — that they 
 all look to an unseen Better, a Best,- a Perfect ; that 
 this seems always above the man who seeks it, yet 
 at the same time within him, not of his own creation, 
 but governing him by a law superior to his own will, 
 while attracting and invigorating it ; that they all 
 demand a self-surrender and self-devotion, and sacri- 
 fice of lower to higher, and give the power to make 
 that sacrifice ; and that they are their own reward. 
 
 All these ideals — and if there be any others — I 
 include in the idea of Religion. Is my definition too 
 broad ? I cannot make it narrower. It will not seem 
 too broad to you who are accustomed to regard reli- 
 gion as covering all human life. Whatever in that 
 life is an expression of ideal aspiration, is done in 
 unselfish devotion, and in obedience to the highest 
 law we know, is a religious act, is a worship and a 
 prayer. It is a service of God ; for it is a use of our 
 faculties to their highest end, which must be his will 
 for us. It is a contact with things invisible and eter- 
 nal. For these ideals are of the mind, not of the 
 body ; they are of the soul, and must go with it into 
 all worlds. They are thus an element, and a proof, 
 of immortality. 
 
 O friends, is there anything the world needs, is 
 there anything every one of us needs, more than 
 some high ideal, to be kept bright and clear within 
 us by sincere devotion ? Is there anything we need 
 
DEDICA TIOW OF PARKER MEMORIAL 2 1 1 
 
 more than a high standard in character, in aim, in 
 spirit, in work ? We have it in our best moments. 
 But how easily we let it get clouded in the press of 
 cares ! How easily we yield to the temptation to 
 lower it for immediate results ! Is there anything 
 we need more than the elevation of spirit such an 
 ideal gives, the power to rise above annoyance and 
 fret, above low and selfish thought, above unworthy 
 deeds ? How ashamed we stand before that ideal 
 when, because we have not been obedient to its 
 celestial vision, but have too easily let it go, we are 
 betrayed into the temper, the word, the act we had 
 resolved should never betray us again ! What is 
 needed in our politics, in our business — do not daily 
 events teach it to us most impressively ? — but a 
 higher ideal ; a higher standard of integrity ; a high- 
 minded sense of right, which would take no question- 
 able dollar from the public purse ; a sensitive con- 
 science, scrupulous of the rights of others given to 
 its trust ? Then the haste to be rich would cease to 
 be the root of evil that it is, and embezzlements, 
 defalcations, political jobs, and mercantile frauds no 
 longer shock and grieve us with every paper we take 
 up. Oh, the anguish and self-reproach of the man 
 who has involved himself, little by little, in the toils 
 and excitements of temptation, and, accepting a 
 lowering standard of honesty, sinks, till he is startled 
 to find himself fallen into the pit ! 
 
 What is more needed in all our work than a higher 
 ideal of excellence, a higher standard of truth and 
 conscientiousness ? How hard to get anything done 
 thoroughly well, — precisely as agreed upon, and at 
 the time promised ! Most earnestly would I insist 
 
212 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 that every right which the "workingman " can justly 
 claim should be secured to him ; his full share of 
 the product he helps create, and every opportunity 
 for health, recreation, and culture which he will use. 
 But he should remember that faithful performance 
 of ditties on his part will be the best ground for any 
 claim of rights ; he must be careful of the right of 
 others to honest work and honest time in return for 
 fair pay. 
 
 How great is our indebtedness to those great and 
 true souls who have kindled or kept alive within us 
 a loftier ideal ! What an influence in that way has 
 the image of Jesus been in the Christian world ! 
 Many have not seen that what they worshiped or 
 looked up to in him was often simply their own ideal 
 of human excellence, — really not so much derived 
 from him as projected upon him, with little regard 
 to historic fact. But this shows us, still, the power 
 of a lofty ideal within us to lift up, sustain, and 
 redeem. Many, if they were willing to speak frankly, 
 would say that the human excellence of some noble, 
 pure-hearted, spiritually-minded friend, with whom 
 they had walked in the flesh, has been more to them 
 than the image of Jesus. And when we remember 
 that these high ideals have inspired millions who 
 never heard his name, it is plain that he cannot be 
 regarded as their origin. There is one Supreme 
 Ideal of Goodness. "Likeness to God" was the 
 aim of the Pythagorean teaching. " Be ye perfect, 
 as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
 
 All these ideals of truth, righteousness, beauty, 
 use, love, holiness, of which I have spoken as con- 
 stituting, in our devotion to them, true religion, 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 21 3 
 
 unite in the Idea of God. For He is the Perfect of 
 them all, the Spirit or Essence of them all, — the 
 perfect Truth, the perfect Righteousness, the per- 
 fect Beauty, the perfect Love, the perfect Power, 
 the perfect Holiness. That is what we mean by 
 saying " God " — surely nothing less than that. 
 This sublime idea has always, in some shape, haunted 
 and possessed the mind of man. The moment the 
 spiritual faculties begin to germinate in a man or a 
 race, at that moment the thought of God springs up. 
 From our far-off Aryan ancestor, who, on those high 
 plains of Central Asia, looked up to the clear, trans- 
 parent sky, and said thankfully and reverently, 
 " Dyaus-pitar," Heaven-father, — for he knew that 
 the blessing of sunshine and rain came thence to 
 him, and must have felt a mysterious sense of some 
 being invisible in that visible, — down to the child 
 who to-day makes his prayer, " Our Father, who art 
 in heaven," all over the world the reverence of men's 
 hearts, and their sense of blessing and dependence, 
 have uttered the name of God, and joined with it the 
 thought of Father. The conceptions in which men's 
 thought and language have clothed that idea have 
 varied with knowledge and culture. But the central 
 idea of a power and beneficence superior to man, in 
 nature and above nature, has been ever present. 
 Delusions may have gathered about it — but is it a 
 delusion ? Superstitions may have distorted it — but 
 can you count it a superstition ? I count it the great- 
 est of realities. I accept the wellnigh universal ver- 
 dict of the soul of man. I accept the experiences 
 of my own soul. I accept the faith which, whether 
 it be original or an inheritance of accumulated 
 
214 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 thought, is now an instinct and intuition within me. 
 I accept the confirmation of science to the divina- 
 tion of the soul, in its more and more clear affirma- 
 tion of a unity and perpetuity of Force in Nature, 
 and an omnipresence of Law. I accept the testi- 
 mony of saints who, through purity of heart, have 
 seen God and felt Him near, — and more than near. 
 Their highest statement is, " God is Spirit." A 
 distinguished preacher has said — justifying his 
 declaration that Jesus Christ is his God — that he 
 believes it impossible to form the conception of pure 
 spirit. Of course we cannot form any image or pic- 
 ture of it. But we can think it, surely. For we 
 know thought and feeling and will in ourselves, and 
 these have no shape, nor do we confound them with 
 the bodies in which they are manifested. Thought, 
 feeling, will, — these are our spirit, our essential 
 life. God is the infinite Thought, Feeling, Will, — 
 the infinite Spirit or essential Life of the universe 
 of matter and of soul. Our conception of Him must 
 depend, I said, upon our spiritual condition. But 
 I think with every advance in spiritual life and per- 
 ception, we put off more and more of physical and 
 human limitation. Said one to me, the other day, " I 
 think it will be no service to men to undermine their 
 belief in a personal God." Now, thought, feeling, 
 and will are qualities of person, and not of thing, 
 and therefore we may speak of God as the infinite 
 Person. But he meant, as is usually meant, by per- 
 sonality, individuality. For myself, I think it a great 
 gain to give up the conception of God as an individ- 
 ual being, however majestic, sitting apart from the 
 universe, overseeing and governing it, and from time 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 21 5 
 
 to time intervening by special act. I count it a great 
 gain to have reached a conception of Him as pure 
 Spirit, the all-pervading Life of the Universe, the 
 present Power and present Love and present Justice 
 at every point of that universe, — perpetually creat- 
 ing it by his present Energy of good. Present per- 
 petually in the affairs of men, invisibly, restraining 
 evil, righting wrong, leading on to the perfect 
 society. Present really in the hearts and minds and 
 consciences and wills of men, not displacing them, 
 but reinforcing them. " If we love one another, 
 God dwelleth in us," said the inspired writer of old, 
 — surely inspired when he said that. " If a man is 
 at heart just," said the inspired modern, "by so 
 much he is God. The power of God and the eternity 
 of God do enter into that man with justice." How 
 could this be if God be a separate, individual being ? 
 But conceive of him as Being, and the difficulty 
 vanishes. It is no figure of speech, but literally 
 true, that He dwells in holy souls, inspiring and 
 working through Him. " The Father who dwelleth 
 in me," said Jesus. Yes, but in no special or mirac- 
 ulous way ; in the way of the universal law of spir- 
 itual action, as He dwells in all souls that aspire and 
 obey. "Above all, and through all, and in us all." 
 
 Does this conception of God as Essential Life 
 seem to any vague and unreal ? Oh, think again, 
 how substantial are thought, feeling, and will ! The 
 moving powers of the human world setting all the 
 material into action ! How many perplexities of 
 thought, which beset the common view of God as 
 an individual being, disappear under this conception 
 of Him as spirit ! How does it make possible the 
 
2l6 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 thought of his omniscience and omnipresence and 
 providence ! No longer the all-seeing eye, watching 
 us from afar, but the present Spirit, knowing us from 
 within, involved in our thought and our thinking, ■ — 
 the law or order by which we think and feel, the 
 present power by which we act. Spirit can thus 
 encompass us, and flow through us, without oppress- 
 ing us, or hindering our freedom. Do the forces of 
 nature — of attraction, of gravitation, of chemical 
 affinity — oppress us ? We cannot get away from 
 them, but do we not move freely among them ? The 
 air is around us and within us, a mighty pressure, — 
 do we feel the weight of it ? In such sweet, familiar, 
 unconscious ways does God, the Spirit, encompass 
 and dwell within our spirits. How can we flee from 
 that Spirit, or go where it will not uphold and keep 
 us ? Our God besets us behind and before. Our 
 Father never leaves us alone. Modern science, we 
 are told, is rejecting all notion of volition from the 
 material world. The conception of God as Spirit has 
 already done that. For God's will, in that concep- 
 tion, is no separate jets of choice, but an all-filling, 
 steadfast Energy, — a Power living at every point. 
 His will is no series of finite volitions, but an infinite 
 purpose in the constitution of things, — the unchan- 
 ging element in them which we call their law. God's 
 will, therefore, is not in any sense arbitrary. A 
 permanent force, with its permanent laws, from 
 constant conditions it produces constant results. 
 Wrought into the constitution of things and beings, 
 it is there to be studied, known, and obeyed. 
 
 Friends of the Twenty-eighth Congregational 
 Society : Coming at your call to speak to you on 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 2\J 
 
 this occasion of the dedication of your new house, 
 I have not thought it unfitting to the occasion, 
 instead of trying to open to you some new topic, 
 rather to offer you this outline and review of prin- 
 ciples and ideas already somewhat familiar to you. 
 We glance over what has been gained before begin- 
 ning anew our quest. You build here no House of 
 God, but a house for men. A " meeting-house " you 
 call it, — the good old New England name, — not a 
 church ; for is not the church the men and women, 
 not the walls ? You have most fittingly made it a 
 memorial of your first minister. And this in no 
 slavish adulation, and in no slavish following of him. 
 You are not bound to his thoughts. But you can 
 never forget or cease to be grateful to him, many of 
 you, for the emancipation of thought you owe to 
 him ; for the moral invigoration, for the quickening 
 of devout feeling, always to him so precious. 
 
 He was a thorough believer in the liberty of 
 which I have spoken. He believed that it should 
 have no bounds save such as love of truth and good 
 sense and feeling might set to it. And he used the 
 freedom he believed in. And when, in the use of 
 it, he was led to judge and reject some things around 
 which the reverence of the denomination to which 
 he belonged clung, they who had taught him the 
 liberty which he used, with some noble exceptions, 
 — I am sorry to recall it, — to save their credit, 
 proved false to their principle. They lost a noble 
 opportunity. They had always insisted that the 
 essential in Christianity was not belief, but character 
 and life ; now they turned round, and asserted that 
 it was not a spirit and a life, but a belief in super- 
 
2l8 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 natural history. He did not spare them, and hurled 
 at them the arrows of his wit and the smooth stones 
 of his keen logic. He did battle for the freedom 
 which was denied. Men mistook his wit for malig- 
 nity, and his moral indignation for bitterness. But, 
 though he was capable of sarcasm, his heart was 
 sweet and kind, and full of genial sympathies, as 
 those who knew him best, best knew. 
 
 His services to Theology in this country were 
 very great. His work was partly destructive, clear- 
 ing away errors and superstitions, but mainly con- 
 structive. He built up a complete system of theol- 
 ogy, founded upon the native spiritual instincts in 
 man and the infinite perfection of God. Though a 
 vigorous practical understanding was the character- 
 istic of his mind, he accepted this ideal or transcen- 
 dental theory of religion, and, with his clear common 
 sense and terse sentences, interpreted it to the 
 general mind. Though no mystic, he had much 
 devout feeling, and loved to speak of piety, and the 
 soul's normal delight in God. You will never forget 
 the deeply reverential tone of his public prayers to 
 the " Father and Mother of us all." But even more 
 than in piety he believed in and loved and enforced 
 righteousness in every form ; and his great power 
 was ethical. How clear and sure was his sense of 
 right ; a conscience for the nation ; its guidance 
 sought by how many, in public and private duty ! 
 Before its keen glance how many an idol fell ! He 
 liked to be called a Teacher of Religion; and he 
 made it cover all of life. He applied its ideal to the 
 nation, and, finding human slavery there, he threw 
 all his energies into rousing the conscience of the 
 
DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 219 
 
 country to feel its falseness and its iniquity, and to 
 work for its removal. In this cause he rendered 
 you know what noble and devoted service, gaining 
 the sympathies of many who least liked his theology. 
 He gave the weight of his advocacy to every cause 
 of humane reform, pleading for the poor and the 
 perishing classes, for the rights of woman, for tem- 
 perance and purity and peace. 
 
 He has left you a powerful influence and a her- 
 itage of principles and ideas, to whose charge you 
 show yourselves faithful in building this house, that 
 the work he begun may be carried on and fulfilled. 
 The men and the women whom you call to speak to 
 you know that they will have full freedom of speech 
 and hospitable hearing to their most advanced 
 thought. You will expect them to speak to you, 
 not upon theological questions alone, or on the 
 experiences of devout feeling or personal duties, 
 but on all that deeply concerns the welfare of the 
 community ; upon the vital questions of the day, 
 and its present needs ; upon political and social 
 topics ; upon questions of moral reform and humane 
 effort, and rights of man and woman ; upon all the 
 practical applications of ideal thought. All these 
 you will wish discussed, in the utmost freedom, and 
 from the highest point of view. 
 
 But not for speech alone is this house to be used. 
 I cannot but hope that your enlarged space will be 
 used as opportunity for work in various directions 
 of help and good-will. Why should not this be a 
 headquarters of action as well as thought ? 
 
 And now, may I say for you, that you devote and 
 dedicate this house to freedom and to religion ; to 
 
220 DEDICATION OF PARKER MEMORIAL 
 
 truth and to virtue ; to piety, to righteousness, and 
 to humanity; to knowledge and to culture ; to duty, 
 to beauty, and to joy; to faith and hope and char- 
 ity ; to the memory of saints, reformers, heretics, and 
 martyrs ; to the love and service of God, in the love 
 and service of Man. 
 
 September 21, 1873. 
 
TRUTH 
 
 For this cause came I into the world : to bear witness to the 
 truth. 
 
 Pilate said, What is truth ? — John xviii. 37, 38. 
 
 There are always men who are ready to ask, with 
 an idle curiosity, with an interest too superficial to 
 wait for an answer, this question, "What is truth ? " 
 There are always those who are ready to ask it, with 
 a saddened or scornful skepticism, as quite sure there 
 is no answer to be given ; no truth ; nothing but 
 fancies, speculations, notions, opinions, fleeting, con- 
 tradictory, and futile. 
 
 And, thank God, there have always been men, like 
 Jesus, who have seen the truth to be such a tran- 
 scendent, vital, divine reality that they knew it to be 
 a thing worth living, worth dying for. So Jesus 
 could declare the truth to be, no fancy, no delusion, 
 no mere opinion or speculation, but that thing to 
 bear witness to which was the one purpose of his 
 existence, the thing for which he was born. 
 
 " What is truth ? " said Pilate. Some years ago, 
 a maiden came to me, having in her hand a book in 
 which she said she had asked many persons to write 
 their definitions of truth. What I wrote was this : 
 Truth is the reality of things which lies under 
 all appearances ; what they are, and are eternally. 
 Truth is that which is. 
 
222 TRUTH 
 
 In a temple of ancient Egypt, it was once said, 
 there stood a veiled statue with this inscription : 
 " I am that which has been, and that which is, and 
 that which shall be. The Light is my offspring, and 
 no man hath lifted my veil." 
 
 So stands Truth before worshiping man ; and so she 
 speaks to him. Truth shrouded in mystery; clothed 
 in light ; transcending our power to look upon her 
 full and ample proportions. No man has seen her 
 altogether as she is. Yet many a soul, gazing ear- 
 nestly, reverently, has beheld the outlines ; caught 
 here and there a lineament, a feature ; has seen that, 
 when the veil has for a moment been parted, which 
 has excited and enraptured him, and of which he has 
 sought to speak to others. And they have, perhaps 
 gladly, perhaps incredulously, listened to his report. 
 
 No one has ever seen the whole of Truth. And 
 because of that, and of the imperfection of the eyes 
 which have looked, and of the words in which they 
 have reported, the fragmentary reports men have 
 brought back of what they have seen have been so 
 various and seemed so contradictory. But it does 
 not follow, because human philosophies, sciences, 
 theologies, which are these reports, have been so 
 various and fleeting — it does not follow that there 
 is no reality ; but only that men have had imperfect 
 and fragmentary vision of the reality ; and made im- 
 perfect and fragmentary report of it. 
 
 But the yearning that will not be appeased, the 
 inquiry that will not rest, the search that will not 
 stop — these are the perpetual indication that the 
 reality is an eternal reality. These are a perpetual 
 invitation to the utmost powers of the mind. And 
 
TRUTH 223 
 
 man's satisfaction in truth, I suppose, is never to be 
 the satisfaction of entirely comprehending it, the 
 satisfaction of full possession, as in a finished work ; 
 but the grander joy of perpetual attainment yet per- 
 petual seeking ; the grander delight of ever-exciting 
 and inexhaustible exploration, the charm of which 
 shall forever be as fresh as on the first day. 
 
 And so to man seems to be assured, also, the end- 
 lessness of his soul's life, since its work can never 
 be accomplished and ended. Nay, this assurance 
 of immortality comes in a higher way ; not as an 
 inference, but as a possession, with the first great 
 truth, or everlasting principle, which dawns or flashes 
 upon our spirits. In receiving that we have entered 
 into eternity, and feel that the life of that brief hour 
 is a life which cannot perish. For it is the life of 
 God. Surely there is no joy to be named beyond 
 this, — psalms of reverent thanksgiving alone can 
 celebrate it, — that hour of spiritual exaltation when 
 a great truth, a divine idea, an everlasting prin- 
 ciple is revealed within us. It may be in answer to 
 the long and earnest application of the mind to the 
 search. It may be in answer to the uplifting of the 
 heart in prayer. It may be in answer to the conse- 
 cration of the conscience in devoted right-doing. 
 The revelation may be of a truth of science, one of 
 the great laws or thoughts of God in the physical 
 universe, which are as the beams of this, his house ; 
 the guiding lines of the world's plan, the discovery of 
 which shall arrange a thousand before chaotic details. 
 Or it may be a truth of philosophy or theology, a 
 thought of God in the soul, in the spiritual order, a 
 guiding line in the spiritual universe, the discovery 
 
224 TRUTH 
 
 of which shall make clear many perplexities of 
 thought and many mysteries of being. Or it may 
 be a truth of morals and conduct, a principle of 
 right, of justice, of humanity, which shall show us 
 the true path of self-discipline, or the true method of 
 some reformation of society, because it is itself the 
 law and the power of redemption and reformation. 
 Whichever of these it be, it is the revelation of a 
 thought of God within us, and, so far, an incoming 
 of the truth, of the life of God, into our reason or 
 our conscience. Therefore it is exalting and beauti- 
 ful, an unspeakable joy, a true uprising of worship. 
 Then comes a sense of fuller life and larger breath, 
 a sense as of wings. Then it is as if walls fell asun- 
 der and one's narrow cell widened out into illimitable 
 aisles. Then littleness and limitations and weak- 
 ness, for the time, vanish. It is resurrection ; it is 
 new birth ; it is eternal life ! God is with us ; God 
 is in us, and we in Him. 
 
 How surely we feel, in such an hour, that the 
 thought which is freeing and inspiring us, the truth 
 which is revealed in us, is not of our own making, 
 nor do we possess it. It rather possesses us. It is 
 something boundless, upon whose borders we have 
 been privileged to enter. It is a prospect, a light, 
 a mountain-top atmosphere, open to all that can or 
 will climb. For I have used the words inspiration 
 and revelation advisedly in speaking of this experi- 
 ence. Not to one age or to one nation are inspira- 
 tion and revelation confined ; they are the common 
 heritage of humanity, alike in kind, differing in 
 degree. And I will add that when I speak of truth 
 being in the mind as a revelation and inspiration, I 
 
TRUTH 225 
 
 do not, of course, mean words of tradition in the 
 memory, but a personal, living perception of truth. 
 
 But the different revelations or convictions of 
 men, held with equal assurance, you still urge, can- 
 not be equally true. What else could happen, I ask, 
 since these perceptions, these revelations, are not 
 of the full and absolute truth, but fragmentary as- 
 pects of it, and approaches to it ? The statements 
 of truth that the wisest can make, or have made, 
 are but approximations ; true, but not all of the 
 truth. Yet the differences may be easily exagger- 
 ated. We find, for instance, the great central 
 thoughts of piety and morals shining out over all 
 the world and through all generations ; the same 
 essential truths, often in almost identical words ; 
 freeing themselves, as the world goes on, more and 
 more from encumbering accretions of error, and 
 getting to be more and more widely received. 
 
 It seems to me that, among the conditions of 
 truth-finding or revelation, this is one, that whatever 
 of truth or approximation to truth we have attained, 
 we must hold to it with tenacity and assurance as 
 the truth for us and for the time ; must hold to it to 
 live and die by. It seems to me that this fidelity to 
 the conviction of the hour, truth will not dispense 
 with. If a man holds faintly and indecisively to 
 what of truth he has attained, I do not see how he 
 can gain any more beyond. Nevertheless, we must 
 hold it in readiness to give it up the hour that a 
 new or larger truth is revealed. For truth in our 
 minds, our vision of it, is not a finality, but a march. 
 And the moment the word is given, we must strike 
 our tent, without a sigh, though it sheltered never 
 
226 TRUTH 
 
 so securely a rest never so sweet. To-morrow 
 another roof awaits us, or only God's bare sky ! 
 Our march, however, is an ascent. We do not lose 
 what we leave behind ; we only gain a larger pros- 
 pect and outlook, which includes what we have left 
 behind seen in truer aspects and relations, and di- 
 vested of many hindrances and obstructions. Each 
 step, however, must be planted as firmly as if we 
 were to stand there forever ; then each step will be 
 a ground of vantage for the one beyond. We must 
 hold each truth attained with a grasp as firm as if it 
 were never to be unloosed, then it will give us a 
 purchase by which we can swing ourselves higher. 
 
 Of course, this pursuit of truth is not always a 
 straightforward progress, nor a summer morning's 
 mountain climb ; struggle and obstacle and storm 
 and morass often beset it, and terrors lest we be 
 lost. But if the emperor of old could say to the 
 frightened sailors, " Fear not ; who sails with Caesar 
 comes to land," more surely we may say, Fear not ; 
 who sails with Truth — which is with God — comes 
 to land. And if at the first unmooring upon that 
 sea, the motion of the vessel and the tossing of the 
 waves make us fearful, when we get used to it, it 
 becomes an exhilarating delight ; and as the deck 
 grows firm beneath our wonted feet, we tread it 
 with a sense of new freedom and life. Certainly we 
 will not imitate the example of the passenger who, 
 in a storm, lashed himself to the anchor, as being 
 the strongest thing in the ship, — a good type of 
 the ultra conservative. 
 
 Besides this intellectual earnestness, as I may call 
 it, our other condition of finding the truth is moral 
 
TRUTH 227 
 
 earnestness, the desire to use the truth as a means 
 of nobler and truer living, the willingness and pur- 
 pose to live out and live up to the truth we have 
 intellectually attained. " If any man is wishing to 
 do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine." 
 From him who does not use the truth which is 
 revealed to him, the revelation will soon be taken 
 away. By want of moral fidelity, the power of see- 
 ing truth is impaired, the mental vision is dimmed, 
 and men are given over to believe a lie. The ha- 
 bitual wrong-doer loses his perception of the true 
 character of his acts. 
 
 Still another condition of knowing the truth is, I 
 think, the willingness to make some sacrifice for it, 
 to work for it, to suffer for it. The willingness, for 
 instance, to sacrifice preconceived ideas and the 
 pride of opinion ; to sacrifice the comfort of estab- 
 lished and popular beliefs ; to sacrifice, perhaps, 
 friendship and social position and popularity ; the 
 willingness to do something and to give something 
 to sustain and spread the truth we have reached, 
 especially if it is unpopular. 
 
 For if there be this satisfaction and joy that I 
 spoke of in the vision of new and higher truth, there 
 would seem to follow the desire and the obligation 
 to bring others to that joy ; to help the world, or 
 some part of it, or some soul in it, to a share of that 
 satisfaction, of that new life and freedom, which so 
 exalts us. 
 
 For this cause came we into the world, not merely 
 to enjoy the truth, but to bear witness to it. 
 
 No man has rightly ranged his life who has not 
 incorporated this at least among its aims ; who has 
 
228 TRUTH 
 
 not felt that in every truth God has revealed to him 
 He has made him mediator of that truth, and in some 
 sense given him a command to preach and bear 
 testimony to that truth in the world. Yes, and to 
 stand by it and to do something for it; and, as I 
 said, to sacrifice something for it until it be received, 
 and by its reception have made the way for the next 
 step and the next truth, the next revelation. Nor 
 must he be too fearful or too careful lest his truth 
 (so that it be a truth to him and not a mere notion 
 or opinion) should shock or pain the preconceived 
 beliefs of others. That is a healthful shock which 
 sets people thinking. Besides, the new truth which 
 pains some is the very thing that others are needing 
 and longing for. 
 
 Indeed, except with persons of a certain sensitive, 
 indolent, or unsocial turn of mind, the natural im- 
 pulse of men is to impart their ideas. Hence come 
 discipleship, schools of philosophy, parties in politics, 
 sects in religion, associations for reform. Then this 
 has to be guarded against, — that the party, the sect, 
 the society and its interests, should come to be val- 
 ued more than the truth, the idea, for whose sake 
 alone they exist. Then comes the retribution, that 
 (as Coleridge said) he who begins to love his sect 
 or party more than the truth will end by loving him- 
 self more than either. 
 
 The Church, if it stands for anything, stands for 
 the truth. It is apt only to stand for it, and not to 
 move for it. Church establishments have a tendency 
 in conserving the truth, to dry and petrify it ; to 
 become mummy-pits instead of seed beds. How- 
 ever, there is fortunately that law in the constitution 
 
TRUTH 229 
 
 of things which compels them, at the moment they 
 are doing this, to put forth the life that remains in 
 them in the form of heresies. 
 
 And, in this way, theological truth, which in the 
 highest sense is the highest truth, — for what higher 
 service can you render men than to give them a 
 higher and truer thought of God, a higher and better 
 view of man and his destiny ? — in this way, I say, 
 the way of heresies, theological truth has advanced, 
 and is advancing. And the real life of a church 
 (as of a nation) is almost always with its heretics 
 and reformers, with those whom it is wishing to 
 exclude or suppress. The life of an oak-tree is not 
 in its solid core, sturdy as that is with the power of 
 a work well done. But what were once living vessels, 
 transmitting the vital sap, are now hard, wooden 
 fibres, that live only by being surrounded with the 
 fresh sapwood in which now is the tree's life. 
 
 To be among the so-called heretics is, therefore, 
 a good thing and a thing to be desired. It is good 
 because it gives the joy of the freshest aspects and 
 statements of truth, and also because it gives free- 
 dom from the necessity of conformity. 
 
 I do not say that it is a position of ease. Rather 
 it is one of great responsibility, as well as privilege, 
 to be among the organs of the newest inspiration. 
 What consecration, what earnestness it imposes ; 
 what prayer and watching ! It was from very near 
 the cross that Jesus said, "I came into the world 
 to bear witness to the truth." 
 
 To bear witness to the truth in an unbelieving age 
 was to be a martyr to the truth. But it was to be 
 a divine power in the world ; a word of God in the 
 flesh. 
 
230 TRUTH 
 
 " In the beginning was the word." The world 
 began with the forth-going of a thought. Breath- 
 ing, seething, lightening into the chaos, it went 
 forth, and chaos began slowly to range itself into 
 cosmos. 
 
 The word ; the forth-speaking of a thought, an 
 idea, a truth, is the beginning of every new creation, 
 or pulse of creation. It is .the inauguration of every 
 new order of things ; it begins every new messianic 
 reign, every coming of a better time. The darkness 
 never comprehends it ; but always, to as many as 
 receive it, it gives power to become sons of God. 
 
 It is the beginning of the new heavens and the 
 new earth. In slow syllables of years, in words of 
 centuries, God utters his patient speech of truth, 
 through human minds and human lips, as they can 
 learn and utter it. The age looks coldly on ; per- 
 haps persecutes and *slays the speaker ; the race 
 takes to heart the word. 
 
 Every revolution, every reformation, every new 
 religious movement comes through the speech of 
 some man, thoroughly in earnest. Some poor car- 
 penter, it may be, or monk, or shoemaker, or printer, 
 or scholar, faithful to the truth he sees ; speaking 
 out what the minds and hearts of men were needing 
 and yearning for. 
 
 So through "the foolishness of preaching" has 
 the power of God been made manifest. Men talk 
 of truth being propagated by the sword. Drop the 
 " s ; " it is by the word ! Take out the preaching of 
 the Truth from the world, and what would History 
 be and where the progress of the race ? 
 
 Suppose those prophets and apostles, Hebrew, 
 
TRUTH 231 
 
 Christian, Lutheran, Huguenot, Waldensian, Qua- 
 ker, Unitarian, Abolitionist, — suppose that these 
 had kept silence, when arbitrary powers in church 
 and state commanded silence, and threatened penalty 
 and inflicted it — where would the world be now ? 
 
 Oh ! the might of truths held with earnest con- 
 viction, spoken with simple sincerity and unfaltering 
 courage, spoken in love ! But to " speak the truth 
 in love " does not necessarily and always mean to 
 speak it in mildness and gentleness, and so as to hurt 
 no one's feelings or prejudices. Love is power, is 
 energy. It is willing to hurt if so it may heal. To 
 "speak the truth in love" means to speak it disin- 
 terestedly, without self-reference, without malice ; 
 but it may mean to speak it with the terrible power 
 of heaven's pure lightning, that smites and rends 
 the air, not to destroy but to purify it. 
 
 There is no such powerful weapon against error 
 and wrong as the simple truth. The abetters of 
 wrong will, just as long as they can, smother free 
 speech and discussion. 'Tis the natural instinct of 
 self-defense. Let the reformer of wrongs take a les- 
 son from that and remember that the truth, bravely 
 and persistently told, is more powerful than any ex- 
 aggeration. Whatever is overstated must at some 
 time be taken back. Every argument that is not 
 supported by the facts weakens its own side and 
 plays into the hand of the opponent. 
 
 Friends, let us seek the truth, love the truth, 
 obey the truth. Let us be willing, let us be desir- 
 ous, to know and see things as they are. Let us 
 feel sure that it is always better to know the truth 
 about anything whatever than to indulge in any de- 
 
232 TRUTH 
 
 lusion, however pleasant. To know the truth, to 
 trust the truth, to face the truth, to speak the 
 truth, to bear the truth, — this is always the right, 
 the safe, the brave, the best thing. Let us be will- 
 ing and desirous to spread the truth as we see it, to 
 do something for it, to take some trouble, to make 
 some sacrifice, if there is need, to suffer something 
 for it. Let us take to heart the consecration of 
 Jesus, and feel that God has sent us into the world 
 to bear witness in some way to the truth, as it is 
 made known to us from time to time, — or what we 
 earnestly believe to be that truth, — whether in large 
 and public ways or in small and private ways. 
 
 For one law of obligation and of reception, one 
 reward of life, power, and joy, belongs to every form 
 of truth ; belongs to simple veracity or true speak- 
 ing, to simple honesty or true dealing, as well as to 
 apostleship and martyrdom. Whoever in plainest 
 and most commonplace ways is faithful to convic- 
 tion, faithful to sincerity, faithful to principle, has 
 begun to comprehend that power, that life, that joy. 
 
 The mechanic who, from a principle of truthful- 
 ness, does every part of his work well and thoroughly, 
 whether others will know it or not, whether it will 
 bring him more profit or not ; the tradesman who 
 puts away the temptation of a dishonest dime or 
 dollar which all about him take, and scorns every 
 unfair advantage, every art of adulteration or decep- 
 tion, however common ; the poor boy who goes home 
 with a lighter heart and a lighter pocket because of 
 the lost watch, or purse, or knife which he has re- 
 stored to its owner, when he might have kept it him- 
 self ; the little girl who has told the truth which 
 
TRUTH 233 
 
 brought her some punishment or lost her some ex- 
 pected pleasure, — these have all borne witness to 
 the solemnity and supremacy of truth. They have 
 all, in the elevation of spirit which has followed, and 
 the sense of new power within them, entered into 
 the life and the joy of saint, martyr, reformer, and 
 saviour. 
 
 They have all done something toward helping 
 forward the world, toward bringing nearer that king- 
 dom of heaven, that new order of society, that bet- 
 ter time, wherein truth shall have overcome all false- 
 hood and righteousness, all wrong ; that kingdom 
 of God into which, said the seer of the Apocalypse, 
 " Nothing shall enter which maketh a lie." 
 
OBEDIENCE 
 
 All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. — Exodus 
 xxiv. 7. 
 
 Under every form of government obedience is an 
 essential. It may be voluntary, or it may be com- 
 pulsory ; but obedience there must be. If it is not 
 rendered, or cannot be enforced, government is at 
 an end. Anarchy ensues. From autocracy, or one 
 man's rule, to the broadest democracy, or rule of 
 the people; from the government of a despot to 
 the government of laws, this one need runs through 
 all, — obedience. Whatever may change, this must 
 abide. If an unjust government be overthrown by 
 disobedience, it must be because obedience to justice 
 requires the overthrow ; and a new authority and 
 allegiance must be at once established and obeyed. 
 
 Not in civil government alone is this principle a 
 requisite. Wherever numbers are gathered to live, 
 to work together, obedience must exist. You cannot 
 have a factory or a workshop, a bank or a school, 
 without regulations and conformity to them. You 
 cannot have a family or a home without obedience. 
 The only thing you can have without obedience is 
 chaos ; a confusion, a destruction, — you can have 
 these. 
 
 In all these things I have mentioned, and in all 
 others like them, you get the ideal by an obedience 
 
OBEDIENCE 235 
 
 willingly and joyfully rendered to commands in 
 themselves just and beneficent. And perhaps the 
 perfection of the ideal is obtained where the obe- 
 dience has become habitual, organic, and so spon- 
 taneous, and as we say unconscious ; where the 
 ruling power and the ruled are pervaded by one 
 spirit, are of one mind, one heart, one will. 
 
 That this may be obtained, — and before it is 
 attained, — there must be in the rightful authority 
 the power of compulsion, of penalty, and perhaps of 
 expulsion. But that compulsion becomes freedom 
 just as soon as obedience is voluntarily rendered to 
 an authority felt to be just and good. If it is your 
 choice and will to obey, that obedience is liberty, 
 the true and only liberty of the sons of God. 
 
 We live in what we believe to be a God-governed 
 universe. We look up reverently to One Supreme 
 Power and Authority, which our minds, our hearts, 
 our consciences, in their clearest and best moments 
 devoutly recognize and bow before with willing 
 confession and acceptance. This Supreme Power 
 and Authority we come to believe to be worthy of 
 our highest reverence, our fullest confession, our 
 completest obedience, because we believe it to be in 
 itself perfect Justice and perfect Love. This we 
 believe, I say, in our best moments, and whatever 
 may seem in any degree to make against this belief, 
 we ascribe to our own ignorance and short-sighted- 
 ness. And this Supreme Power, because it is Su- 
 preme, claims rightfully our obedience, and because 
 it is just and beneficent should receive our willing, 
 our hearty, our glad obedience, as being our only 
 safety and our true life. 
 
236 OBEDIENCE 
 
 For, further, this Supreme Power, Justice, Love 
 is akin to us in nature, is so like to the highest and 
 best in us, — only far more high and far more good, 
 
 — that we have learned to call it by the dear name 
 of Father! And because of that kinship, because 
 of that likeness which the kinship implies, — the 
 likeness which is involved in the name of Father, — 
 because of that, I say, we know that what He com- 
 mands us can be only what our own souls in their 
 best and highest moments command. His laws of 
 right -doing are. the same laws that our own con- 
 science imposes upon us when it is keen and 
 enlightened. That is what we mean, — is it not ? 
 
 — when we say that the divine laws, God's laws for 
 us, are the laws of our own being. They are put 
 into our being by this divine inheritance, this hered- 
 ity from father to son. " Created, not made," said 
 the old creeds, of Jesus whom they called God the 
 Son; created, not made, we say of the spiritual 
 nature of all men. Not made as, with hands, an 
 artificer makes something outside of himself, as a 
 sculptor makes a statue ; not thus made, but created 
 by the going forth, the emanation, the outflowing of 
 the Divine Spirit, acting indeed through the chan- 
 nels of human ministry, but imparting a life that is 
 more than mortal, which is at once human and yet 
 more than human. 
 
 Man's spirit — his reason, his conscience, his 
 diviner affections, his nobler sentiments — being 
 thus an emanation from God our Father, when we 
 obey what is clearest, highest, best in our reason, 
 heart, and conscience, we are obeying that God in 
 us which is, so to speak, a part or a presence in us 
 
OBEDIENCE 237 
 
 of the God who is so far above us. Above us, yes ; 
 farther than thought can reach or imagination 
 picture or dream ; yet so near us, so unspeakably 
 near, so more than near ; yea, in profoundest rever- 
 ence, yet in sweetest assurance we declare with all 
 saints, dwelling within us ! His law for us, his 
 commands for us, his will for us, written in our 
 very being, in our very make. So that by obeying 
 the inmost law of our nature, by being true to our 
 nature, we are obeying God's law and fulfilling his 
 commands. That is, we are making of ourselves 
 what He made and meant us to be, his noble, 
 worthy, upright, loving, obedient children. 
 
 You must not misunderstand me when I speak of 
 being true to our nature. I do not mean by that 
 doing whatever comes into our minds, doing what- 
 ever our wishes or desires or whims or appetites 
 prompt. A perfected nature might do whatsoever it 
 desired or wished, and do only what was noble, lofty, 
 and pure. By being true to our nature, I mean 
 being true to its capacities, living up to its possibili- 
 ties, making the most and best of it. I mean being 
 true to its law, not to its caprice, and impulse, and 
 passion, and lawless freedom. I mean the living 
 out of our nature in the line of its idea, its best 
 development, the growing up toward a perfect and 
 complete manhood. And that implies self-control 
 and self-government, and the voluntary choice of 
 good and the voluntary abstinence from every excess 
 which is evil. It means the clear recognition of the 
 order oi our nature ; that some things in it are higher, 
 more precious, more eternal than other things ; and 
 that the higher and the more important should be 
 
238 OBEDIENCE 
 
 of supreme interest and should be more carefully 
 looked after and more faithfully pursued. And 
 when we have to choose between the two, — as we 
 so often have to choose, — that we should make sure 
 that we choose the higher and the more lasting. And 
 when we have to sacrifice one to the other, — as 
 we so often have to do, — that we should make sure 
 that we hold by the higher, and let the lower go. 
 
 In our nature, made up of often conflicting ele- 
 ments as it is, before it has become adjusted by dis- 
 cipline, it is the spiritual that has the rightful author- 
 ity over the rest. The spirit commands, and the 
 body is to obey and serve. It is the reason and the 
 conscience and the high unselfish affections that 
 have a right to the throne ; and all the rest should 
 serve. But how often there is rebellion instead of 
 allegiance ; how often there is willful resistance in- 
 stead of willing obedience ! Who can look into his 
 heart, who can look back upon his life, and not re- 
 call some experience of this — with sorrow and with 
 shame recall it ? Sometimes when he has stifled the 
 voice of conscience, has put away or postponed the 
 better impulse ; has chosen the lower instead of the 
 higher pleasure ; has turned a deaf ear or a languid 
 will to the call of duty ; has let some opportunity of 
 doing right or doing good go by unused, through 
 indolence or some one of the many forms of selfish- 
 ness, when he has preferred ease before the taking 
 of trouble, or self-indulgence before self-denial, 
 when, in the comprehensive phrase of the prayer- 
 book, he has "done the thing he ought not to have 
 done, or left undone the thing he ought to have 
 done " ? 
 
OBEDIENCE 239 
 
 In all these things there has been a want of obedi- 
 ence to the divine command, a refusal to do what 
 God bade us to do ; or a doing of that which He 
 forbade ; times when the will asserted not a genuine 
 freedom, but a lawless independence. It was rebel- 
 lion against his rightful authority ; his just and kind 
 rule. And it brings with it sorrow and shame, moral 
 disaster and loss. 
 
 I have seen the look of sorrow that came over a 
 mother's face, the tone of disappointment and pain 
 that filled her voice, as she spoke of a daughter's will- 
 fulness and disobedience. Was the daughter herself 
 happy in that disobedience, in that willful assertion 
 of independence ? There was pain in both hearts. 
 Not only is pain given by disobedience, pain is felt ; 
 for the disobedience is not only to the outward 
 authority, but to the inward sense, which exists 
 where conscience and the better feeling are not 
 smothered, the sense that the willfulness is disobedi- 
 ence to a rightful authority, to the wish and will of 
 & friend. Whatever pleasure may have been hoped 
 for from the indulgence was marred by a secret pain. 
 And that pain could only be healed by penitence 
 and confession. 
 
 There is no peace, no happiness, in a family where 
 obedience is not. I do not speak of the tyrannical 
 will, the domineering spirit which sometimes, in the 
 head of a family or in the head of an institution or 
 government, changes his rightful authority into a 
 despotism. To resist that may be a virtue. " Re- 
 sistance to tyrants is obedience to God," said our 
 forefathers. But I speak of that authority, in the 
 parent or the ruler, whose ground is in superior 
 
240 OBEDIENCE 
 
 knowledge of what is right and best ; the authority 
 founded in justice and true desire for the good of 
 the child or subject. That is the only authority 
 which rules the family of God's children. Our 
 Father is supremely wise, supremely just, supremely 
 kind. His commands seek our best good. And for 
 this reason they claim our complete and our willing 
 obedience ; the acknowledgment of our hearts ; the 
 surrender of our wills. 
 
 Religion teaches us that God is infinitely near to 
 us ; that He, the Spirit, may be an indwelling spirit ; 
 that He seeks ever to become such in every child of 
 his and to rule there as an indwelling spirit, not an 
 external authority. He respects our freedom, which 
 within its narrow limits is real. He gives us choice ; 
 He allows us to learn by mistakes and errors ; He 
 does not arbitrarily compel us. But He never leaves 
 us ; He never ceases to press for entrance into our 
 souls ; He is momentarily waiting to inspire and 
 quicken and empower us. He stands at the door 
 and knocks, He will not force the door. He who 
 might command, entreats ; He pleads that we will 
 let Him in. Let Him in ! Him to whom we ought 
 to joy to open all doors, whom we might well en- 
 treat to come in, were He unwilling ! For his com- 
 ing into the house of any soul is the coming of peace 
 there, of order, of power, of joy, and fullness of life. 
 But the conditions of his incoming, his indwelling, 
 are first our willingness and seeking ; and secondly 
 our obedience. If we do not desire that what is best 
 and noblest and divinest in us should rule in us ; if 
 we do not desire spiritual life and strength, spiritual 
 peace and joy, because we are absorbed in seeking 
 
OBEDIENCE 24 1 
 
 and getting outward things, or in finding the way to 
 indulge some passion, then the Spirit cannot enter 
 our souls ; the rooms are preoccupied with other 
 guests, with bodily appetites and passions, with tem- 
 pers not heavenly, with purposes and aims not di- 
 vine, with selfishness and not with self-surrender, 
 with evil will and not with good will. Then truth, 
 justice, love, holiness; to be true, to be honest, to be 
 benevolent, to be pure and noble, — these are not 
 our supreme wish and aim ; but to be rich, or to be 
 comfortable, or to be amused, or to have our own 
 way ; to gratify some form of self-seeking. God is 
 truth, is justice, is unselfish love, is purity ; He 
 can be welcomed only where these things are wel- 
 comed, and where whatever makes against them is 
 resolutely sacrificed and put away. He will not 
 come where He is not welcomed. He will wait 
 until the soul, taught by bitter experience the hol- 
 lowness and unsatisfaction and weariness of the 
 selfish and lower life, shall begin to yearn for some- 
 thing more satisfying ; shall begin to listen to the 
 voice that still pleads, and forever will plead, in its 
 better self ; to the voice which is God's voice ; and 
 will open the door, and cry in penitence and re- 
 morse, and longing for redemption, Come in, O 
 noblest, dearest Friend, whom I have kept so long 
 waiting ; whom I am not worthy to have under my 
 roof ; come in, if Thou art willing to enter a soul so 
 hardened, so stained, so long ungrateful, so often 
 willful, yet so needing Thee ! Rule Thou in me ; 
 make me Thy servant ! 
 
 But it is not desire only that will bring God to dwell 
 within us — that is but the first opening of the door. 
 
242 OBEDIENCE 
 
 The desire, whether of longing or of penitence, may 
 be but a transient feeling, if it be not made steadfast 
 and abiding by something else. 
 
 And that something else is Obedience. That fixes 
 the desire, the fleeting feeling, into a principle and 
 motive power; that turns prayer into life. Unless we 
 open a channel outward into action, the inward, en- 
 tering channels will become clogged and closed. You 
 cannot get much pure air into a room unless you open 
 a way out and establish a current through. God seeks 
 to enter us that He may flow through us, an efficient 
 working power of good. He lives to act ; He lives 
 to do good. He asks our surrendered wills to work 
 through and with. As we put forth our wills in do- 
 ing something that He wills to have done, that is, in 
 doing something that is right and just and true and 
 beneficent and helpful to the world ; as we put forth 
 our wills in the direction of his will, that will with 
 its energy reinforces and flows through them. 
 
 " Our wills are ours — we know not how — 
 Our wills are ours — to make them Thine." 
 
 It is not, then, a mere passive surrender to our bet- 
 ter feelings which is the avenue of God's entrance 
 into us ; it is not a mere submission to his will ; it 
 is an active surrender, an offering of our powers, our 
 faculties, our affections, and our wills in all their 
 strength to his in-working and through-working, to 
 the doing of his will. In a word, it is Obedience. 
 Without that, our submission might become no more 
 than a passive self-indulgence, a luxury of feeling 
 which some people mistake for the spiritual life. It 
 would soon become spiritual torpor, if not put forth 
 in obedient action. 
 
OBEDIENCE 243 
 
 There are times, indeed, when all we can do is to 
 submit, to bear, to wait. To do that takes all our 
 strength sometimes ; under the presence of heavy 
 sorrows, or of pain, or bodily weakness and disabil- 
 ity. Then it is enough. Then God comes into the 
 heart that is willing to bear, to suffer, to be set aside 
 from action ; comes in as a consoler, a comforter, 
 a strengthener of the heart to bear ; comes in as a 
 cheerful visitor into a chamber of grief or pain, a pres- 
 ence there of uplifting hope, of tranquillity, peace ; 
 and says, " They also serve who only stand and wait. 
 I too, thy God, wait as well as work ; I am patient as 
 well as mighty. In waiting and patience be thou my 
 child. By and by I shall have work for thee to do ; 
 rest now." 
 
 But it is seldom that there is no work to be done. 
 The invalid's chamber is often a busy scene. You 
 think now of some who from the bed have been 
 teachers, not only of learning and books, but of 
 patience and cheerful unselfishness ; have made and 
 carried out plans of beneficence. And to most of 
 us the obedience must be in doing ; and in putting 
 away from our thought, our desires, whatever would 
 hinder us from doing God's will ; or whatever would 
 darken our knowledge of what that will is. For 
 obedience is not only a power, but a light. We learn 
 the way by walking in it. 
 
 I know that sometimes, even when we want to do 
 right, the way is not entirely clear to us. But I am 
 confident that just in proportion as we form the habit 
 of doing the thing that reason, conscience, our high- 
 est affection urge ; in place of that which momentary 
 desire, or mere impulse or passion, or any selfish 
 
244 OBEDIENCE 
 
 motive prompts ; just in that proportion will reason, 
 conscience, and the spiritual affections become keen- 
 sighted and safe guides. How often, when we are in 
 doubt, action alone can decide, either showing us our 
 mistake or justifying our choice ; a warning or a 
 confirmation for the future. 
 
 We have been wont to call conscience the voice 
 of God. We ought to regard reason and the higher 
 affections as equally his voice. Or to believe that 
 his voice speaks through them all, when they are 
 fairly used. When they are fairly used, I say. For 
 you will at once have thought of men who believed 
 they were serving God in doing something which 
 a clear mind perceives was no will of his ; of men 
 whose consciences have driven them to acts of per- 
 secution, cruelty, revenge, murder. God told them 
 to do it, they said, and they obeyed. You will think 
 of Paul verily believing that he was serving God in 
 persecuting the Christians ; of Abraham believing 
 that Jehovah commanded him to slay his own son ; 
 of prophets, in the name of God, commanding the 
 slaughter of women and children in war ; of the 
 assassin of our President pleading a divine inspira- 
 tion for his deed. I can only say that even if these 
 men were sincere, as they all may have been, they 
 did not fairly use their conscience, because they did 
 not enlighten it by reason, and control it by human 
 affections. A man ought to suspect as morbid and 
 diseased a conscience, or any inner impulse, which 
 urged him to a deed of violence or crime. The voice 
 of God and his inspiration must be looked for in the 
 things that are rational, just, and humane ; for He is 
 Wisdom, Righteousness, and Love, and these quali- 
 
OBEDIENCE 245 
 
 ties must be stamped on all his commands. " God 
 does not choose fools as his instruments," said 
 truly that assassin at Washington. Neither does He 
 choose irrational, presumptuous, egotistic, unjust, or 
 inhuman men. 
 
 Obedience to the highest and best thought and 
 feeling in us, — this is the secret of power, because 
 it is recognizing the true sovereignty of our faculties ; 
 and because it brings the co-working and inworking 
 of God, of whose life our highest and best faculties 
 are the channel. Obedience is the secret of light, 
 because it is yielding ourselves to the leading of the 
 highest and best. It is the secret of freedom be- 
 cause it is following the inward law of our nature, 
 which is one with the divine nature, which frees us 
 from the hindrances and bondage of an ill-adjusted 
 spirit. It is the secret of peace, because it is ac- 
 knowledging the divine order, saving us from con- 
 tradictions, and allying us to the sacred calmness 
 and steadfastness of God. 
 
 1882. 
 
"WE KNOW IN PART" 
 
 I listened lately to a course of lectures by one of 
 our leading men of science. Amid all the interest- 
 ing facts stated, amid all the knowledge imparted, 
 came every now and then the confession, " I do not 
 know," " I cannot tell you," " Of this we are entirely 
 in the dark," " Here our knowledge stops." These 
 avowals of ignorance interested me as much, almost, 
 as his assertions of knowledge. Of course, honesty 
 and frankness demand one as much as the other, 
 and both might seem equally natural and easy, if we 
 did not know that they are not so. To say that we 
 know is a satisfaction, and may be a pride. To say 
 that we do not know cannot be a pleasure, and may 
 be a mortification. To those who are looked up to 
 as fountains of knowledge must especially come 
 sometimes the temptation to make themselves ora- 
 cles, to assume a kind of infallibility ; the fear of 
 losing their prestige by any confession of ignorance, 
 and sometimes to cover up with vague words the 
 want of knowledge. 
 
 But if it require courage, as it sometimes must, 
 to say, " I do not know," that courage also secures 
 respect. For its own sake, because it is courage, 
 and because it is truthfulness. And also because 
 we feel, now, that we can put greater confidence in 
 the "I know." 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 247 
 
 It is just as we respect a man who will say, " I 
 was mistaken," or, " I was in the wrong," and even 
 put the greater confidence in him than if he claimed 
 infallibility or impeccability. Unless, indeed, he be 
 so often mistaken, so often in the wrong, as to show 
 that he cannot be generally trusted. 
 
 " The certainty of Science " is a phrase often used. 
 A book might be written on the uncertainties of sci- 
 ence. The facts of nature cannot lie. No, but man's 
 observation of those facts may be inaccurate or im- 
 perfect. Above all, his inferences from those facts, 
 his theories about them, may be plentifully infected 
 with error. The sciolist, the smatterer in science, 
 jumps to hasty conclusions and invests them with an 
 assurance which they have no claim to. He seizes 
 upon some fascinating theory that falls in with his 
 ways of thinking, or with some prejudice of his ; 
 counts it as proved because some man of science has 
 enunciated it as probable or possible ; and proceeds 
 to denounce all who do not receive it as prejudiced 
 and obstinate. The newest and the latest — it must 
 be the truest and best ! But the true man of science 
 holds all theories long in suspense, testing them 
 again and again by careful observation and collation 
 of facts, by verification and re-verification. Nay, all 
 theories that seem established he holds lightly, as 
 willing to give them up should new facts refute 
 them. For he remembers how often physical science 
 has had to give up theories once firmly believed and 
 taught with assurance and with the prestige of great 
 names. He knows that science is progressive, not 
 fixed. He remembers that we know "in part." 
 
 There was a time when the best informed geolo- 
 
248 WE KNOW IN PART 
 
 gists believed that the waters of the earth had been 
 once lifted up above the summits of lofty mountains, 
 because marine shells were found there. But now 
 it is believed that the mountain summits have been 
 lifted up from the ocean bed, bearing with them the 
 shells. The observed facts are the same — the in- 
 ference has changed ; yet the untenable theory was 
 once held with assurance ; the shells were at that 
 height, the waters must have been there ; the logic 
 seemed unanswerable. Bacon declared that Galileo's 
 assumption of the movement of the earth could not 
 be admitted. Newton believed that light consisted 
 of particles shot out from luminous substances, and 
 the doctrine was taught in all text-books as un- 
 doubted fact, on the authority of his great name. 
 When Young ventured to speak of undulations, he 
 was put down, as Tyndall tells us. But now undula- 
 tions are established ; we have waves of light, not 
 rays, and we are not afraid to differ from so great an 
 authority as Newton. He knew more than any in 
 his day in these matters ; but even he knew in part. 
 Every careful scientific man distinguishes between 
 his opinions and his knowledge. His opinion he 
 holds with more or less confidence, according to the 
 fullness and strength of the grounds upon which it is 
 founded ; and he may hold it sometimes with strong- 
 est assurance, by a kind of prophetic instinct, seeing 
 ahead of the proofs, divining with confidence that 
 which is not yet established by experiment, as the 
 skillful chessplayer sees through the game before 
 it is finished upon the board. Still, what is yet 
 opinion he does not put forward to the world in the 
 same way as that which has been fully verified. 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 249 
 
 And we others must always distinguish between 
 opinion and knowledge. The mere opinion of a 
 scientific man is, in his own department, of value 
 and of a certain authority. But we must not receive 
 it or speak of it as something sure and established. 
 An hypothesis, — like that, for instance, of evolution 
 by natural selection and the survival of the fittest, 
 — fascinating as it is, must not be taken up as we 
 take up established fact, for it is still only hypothesis, 
 however ingenious, however probable, however satis- 
 factory — it is not yet by any means proved. We 
 must not speak of it as the latest result of science, 
 but as the latest speculation, an opinion yet to be 
 established by fact. And we must not count all 
 people bigots who do not accept it, or who bring 
 forward arguments against it, for there are argu- 
 ments against it as well as for it, and some very im- 
 portant links in the argument for it are yet missing. 
 
 The value of an hypothesis is this, that it serves 
 as a thread upon which to arrange and coordinate 
 facts ; it is a divining or suspecting of the law which 
 unites them, which crystallizes them into order. It 
 sets men to collecting and studying facts more 
 ardently, on one side and on the other ; it secures 
 the benefits, while it incurs the dangers, of partisan- 
 ship. 
 
 There are those who, seeing these dangers, and 
 themselves, perhaps, little inclined to speculation, 
 believe that science in any department should limit 
 itself entirely to the search for and statement of 
 facts. But this cannot be done. Besides the observ- 
 ing faculties, man has the idealizing faculties, and 
 cannot help exercising them. The two do not always 
 
25O WE KNOW IN PART 
 
 exist strongly in the same person, but they always 
 exist. The mind of man cannot rest contented with 
 knowing the facts. By a native, an irresistible im- 
 pulse it is driven to arrange and classify the facts ; 
 to look beyond them to a law and a principle and a 
 cause. " The thing is so." Yes, but why and how 
 is it so ? How came it so ? What are its connec- 
 tions with other things that are ? What is its pro- 
 cess ? To what does it tend ? 
 
 The best theory is that which is based upon the 
 largest accumulation and most careful observation 
 of facts. Separated from these, theory wanders into 
 fancy and illusion. But fact, on the other hand, 
 unidealized by theory or principle,. remains dry and 
 prosaic and unfruitful. In a picture, the painter 
 must set out from a close study of nature and a rev- 
 erence for her facts ; else he will end only in unreal 
 and unsubstantial fancies and vagaries. But to the 
 actual facts he must add a sentiment of ideality from 
 his own soul, or his picture will be hard and literal. 
 For there is a soul in nature which his own soul 
 must perceive, as well as a fact in nature which his 
 eye must see, and his understanding know, and his 
 hand depict. 
 
 So in any science, whether of physics or morals 
 or religion, with the most accurate and conscien- 
 tious study and acceptance of fact must be united 
 the ideal perception of principle and law that we 
 may have the fullness of truth. For truth is some- 
 thing more than matter of fact. It is the ideal that 
 is within and beyond the fact. Shall I say that truth 
 is born of the marriage of thought and fact, their 
 organic, fruitful union ? Divorce them, and thought, 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 25 I 
 
 alone, runs into unproductive speculation, brain- 
 spinning, and dreams, a wasted force. Fact, alone, 
 remains unvivified and sterile, without force. It 
 simply exists, but does not move. 
 
 If a public reform is to be made in education, in 
 labor ; in the treatment of the poor, of the criminal, 
 the insane ; in sanitary conditions, — a legislative 
 commission may collect the facts. But these, when 
 collected, may be buried in blue book and commit- 
 tee report, and nothing come of them. Some con- 
 science must feci the ideal wrong; some imagina- 
 tion must conceive the ideal right that is to replace 
 it. Some clear mind must see the way, and some 
 warm heart and vivid will make the passage from 
 one to the other. 
 
 Even the most practical and material improve- 
 ment or invention owes its existence to this union. 
 The new plow, or printing-press, or reaping-machine, 
 or car-coupler was an idea, a dream, in some man's 
 mind before it become a fact in wood and iron. It 
 is curious to think of the long ancestry which con- 
 nects an ocean steamer of our day with the hol- 
 lowed tree in which our progenitor ventured upon 
 the waters. 
 
 So the world advances ; and as the more and more 
 nearly perfect invention, art, science, laws, institu- 
 tions, governments, society, come in their turn, that 
 which is in part is done away, having served its tem- 
 porary end. So the new earth descends perpetually 
 out of the heavens — of thought, of idea. And, more 
 and more completely and fully, God, who is the Per- 
 fect, comes to dwell on earth and make his taber- 
 nacle with men. 
 
252 WE KNOW IN PART 
 
 The perfect is God. The ideal of the perfect, 
 the striving after it in the human soul, is its sense 
 of God, is its yearning for Him, is Religion. The 
 religious sentiment is the idealistic sentiment. It 
 is the conception of a better than we see. It per- 
 ceives an Invisible under the visible ; an Eternal 
 under the changing ; a Spiritual under the material ; 
 a Perfect through the imperfect. It discovers in 
 nature not haphazard, but a Unity of Power amid 
 the variety of its forces ; a law of orderly progress 
 as the method of its growth. We name these God's 
 Presence there. 
 
 I was once in a cornpany where the conversation 
 turned upon the efforts of certain religionists to 
 reconcile the letter of the Bible with the statements 
 of science. A man of science who was present 
 remarked upon the futility of the attempt ; for, said 
 he, one of the sides of the question is continually 
 changing. I supposed that he meant biblical inter- 
 pretation. But no ; he meant science. If they 
 should succeed, he went on to say, in making the 
 Scriptures agree with science now, in a few years 
 science would have changed so much that the agree- 
 ment would no longer exist, and a new attempt at 
 reconcilement would be needed. 
 
 But an element of change need not be an element 
 of changeableness, as we understand that word. That 
 is, it may be only an element of progress, of steady 
 and continual advance. We do not call a man 
 changeable who, having set out for a certain city, 
 walks steadily toward it, though his road be a wind- 
 ing one, and though his feet be continually changing 
 their position. 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 253 
 
 It is as true of theology, or religious science, as 
 of any other, that it consists of theory (or hypothesis) 
 and of fact. Only it has heretofore had a very much 
 larger infusion of the element of pure speculation, 
 not proceeding from facts nor verified by them. 
 Certainly a great many accepted theological theories 
 seem to be merely the application of a rigid logic 
 to a purely assumed premise. The Augustinian or 
 Calvinist doctrine of total depravity — could it face 
 the facts a moment ? Are all the men you meet every 
 day really without any good in them, altogether "in- 
 clined to evil, and that continually " ? Did you ever 
 meet one man who had no good whatever in him ? 
 The doctrine of the infallible inspiration of the Bible 
 as God's word — what fact has that to rest upon ? 
 The doctrine of miracles ? of everlasting torments 
 of men dying in sin ? 
 
 As there could be no true physical science till the 
 speculations of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages 
 gave way to the Baconian Induction from carefully 
 observed fact, so there can be no true theology till a 
 like change has taken place in that department of 
 thought. And the facts of theology are the facts of 
 human nature, the experiences of the human soul, 
 and the motives and actions of human life. But, not 
 waiting for all the facts to be gathered in so as to 
 remove all doubt from the understanding, the soul, 
 by its spiritual, prophetic instinct, seeing beyond the 
 proof, divines with certainty that which is not yet 
 fully demonstrated. While the understanding waits 
 for scientific proof, the soul sees by direct vision. 
 And the God who, to the understanding, must re- 
 main an inference, to the spiritual sense is a con- 
 scious Presence. 
 
254 WE KNOW IN PART 
 
 But Theology must not only proceed from fact ; 
 it must be verified by experiment. In other words, 
 it must be tested by use. We must put our theory 
 into practice if we would know thoroughly whether 
 it is true. Else it will wander off into airy, unfruit- 
 ful speculation, and nothing come of it. Our reli- 
 gious meditation, even, which is one avenue of spirit- 
 ual truth, must be balanced by the facts of life and 
 the demands of duty, or it will become dreamy or 
 morbid. A purely abstract conception of duty, even, 
 may be virtually untrue for us, if it be not corrected 
 by a recognition of our limitations and our possi- 
 bility. "Be perfectly good" — the absolute state- 
 ment — must be modified for a while into "Be as 
 good as you can." Ah, that will be found a suffi- 
 cient task! That act of mine — was it as noble as 
 it might have been? That word of mine — was it as 
 unreservedly true and honest ? Was I as generous, 
 as self-forgetful as I know I might be ? Did I put 
 forth all the energy I had to the good deed ? Did 
 I resist the temptation as I might have done ? Did 
 I do fully the good that was in my power ? 
 
 We need continually to remind ourselves of the 
 insufficiency of a religion that is theory and dream 
 but not deed, not organized into life ; just as much 
 as to see the inadequacy of one which is ritual and 
 observance and not inwardly being just and true and 
 good. 
 
 We know in part ; that belongs to our finiteness 
 and imperfection. To remember it ought to make 
 us humble, and careful not to dogmatize, not to in- 
 sist upon imposing an opinion on others. 
 
 We know in part. But that is not to say that we 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 255 
 
 know nothing. The part we do know we may know 
 accurately, if we have used our minds fairly. It is 
 the beginning of a knowledge that will grow. You 
 know a language in part when you have learned its 
 grammar ; if you have done that thoroughly, you 
 have a firm footing for further progress. 
 
 We know in part. You remember what has been 
 said of late of the impossibility of our knowing any- 
 thing of God, save that He is and that He is un- 
 knowable. That we cannot fully comprehend Him 
 is easily admitted. But to know that God is — 
 must it not include this, that there is an Absolute 
 Power and Truth and Right, a Perfect Goodness ? — 
 for that is what we mean by the word God. And 
 this is already knowing much more than that He is 
 unknowable, a mere background of mysterious dark- 
 ness. We know Him in part ; in small part, indeed ; 
 and all our eternal progress may be occupied in 
 knowing more of Him. But the part we do know 
 may be real and the beginning of a knowledge that 
 shall forever grow, the deepest joy of our unending 
 life. 
 
 We know in part. But that part, I say, may be 
 real knowledge. Because we know only in part, and 
 our knowledge is surrounded by a vast sphere of 
 uncertainty and half knowledge, we are not, there- 
 fore, doomed to perpetual skepticism. " If we are 
 not certain of anything, how are we certain that we 
 are not certain ? " Perhaps there is nothing that we 
 completely know, but we do know. Perhaps there 
 is nothing about which the inquisitive intellect may 
 not suggest a doubt. How do I know that I stand 
 here speaking, that you sit there hearing? How 
 
256 WE KNOW IN PART 
 
 foolish to insist upon a definition of " knowledge " 
 which will land us in not knowing our own existence ! 
 We know those things which our rational faculties, 
 rightly used, inform us of. And the validity of 
 those faculties is the unproved assumption, the act 
 of faith, which must be beneath all our knowledge. 
 
 We know in part. But of many things which we 
 do not wholly know we have a practical certainty 
 which suffices us for action. 
 
 We know in part. Not a doom is this, but a per- 
 petual and quickening invitation to make that part 
 ever greater, and win more and more into the sphere 
 of our knowledge. We have a universe to explore, 
 an unlimited life to explore it in. A perpetual and 
 never-ending delight of learning. Lessing said that 
 if God should offer him on the one hand truth, on 
 the other the search after truth, he should take the 
 latter. 
 
 Every Sunday morning as the bells ring the hour, 
 the congregations gather to their several churches, 
 each full of confidence in its special peculiarities of 
 opinion as the truth which the world needs, and 
 must accept, and be saved by. They know in part, 
 though they may mistake that part for the whole. 
 Each, doubtless, makes some contribution to the 
 common stock of thought, and urges something 
 which the others may pass by. Yet the truth lies, 
 most likely, not in what is special to any of them, 
 but in that which is common to all. The represen- 
 tatives of reforms urge each his special movement as 
 supremely important and even all-including. They 
 know in part. But the world gets on by partial 
 movements of partial men, absorbed for the time in 
 
WE KNOW IN PART 257 
 
 one preoccupying thought, whose necessary narrow- 
 ness gives intensity of action. 
 
 Men will go where their sympathies lead them, to 
 hear mainly that of which they are already convinced. 
 Perhaps we should be wise to go to that of which we 
 know the least, or in regard to which we may have 
 prejudice rather than sympathy. If so, we might, 
 with better understanding, have wider charity. For 
 we, too, know in part ; let us never forget this. Let 
 us be hospitable to the new, and not bigoted against 
 the old. Let us be thankful for that earnestness 
 which makes men seek to spread the truth as they 
 believe it ; to right the wrongs which touch their 
 consciences ; to bring their helpful sympathy to the 
 aid of the neglected, the suffering, the fallen ; their 
 knowledge to removing the causes of vice and mis- 
 ery and crime. 
 
 Let us keep our hearts free from indifference, 
 unbelief, contempt. Not by these can we live ; but 
 by the faith that is the spring of earnest effort, by 
 the hope that overcomes discouragement, by the 
 love that beareth all and accomplisheth all, because 
 it is greatest of all. 
 
 We know in part. That limitation we must accept 
 and profit by. We might wish it otherwise — we 
 sometimes do, when our way is not clear. But do 
 we use and live up to the light we have ? Ah, 
 friends, must we not all confess that oftener it is not 
 that we do not know what we ought to do, but that 
 we have not the manhood, the courage, the earnest- 
 ness, the self-denial to do it ! 
 
 We know in part. Let us "do the best we know." 
 That is all that will be required of us. 
 1873- 
 
LOVE TO GOD 
 
 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great command- 
 ment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bor as thyself. — Matthew xxii. 37-39. 
 
 These two commandments are often said to con- 
 tain the essence of Christianity. In the New Tes- 
 tament accounts they are quoted as containing the 
 essence of Judaism. In one of these accounts (that 
 of Luke), they are said to have been quoted by a 
 Jewish teacher of the law, when appealed to by 
 Jesus to say what he thought the most important in- 
 junctions of that law. He selected these two, — one 
 from Deuteronomy, one from Leviticus, as in his 
 opinion containing the two essential ideas of the 
 Jewish religion. Just as Confucius, centuries be- 
 fore, being asked what was the sum and substance 
 of one of the Chinese sacred books, answered, " The 
 sum of the whole book is this : Have no depraved 
 thoughts ; do not even think that which is evil." 
 
 Whether this summing up of the Law was really 
 made by Jesus or made by some Jewish lawyer and 
 only approved by Jesus, we shall never know. For 
 though the incident might have occurred twice in 
 these two ways, it is of course far more probable 
 that it is one incident, which in being handed down 
 from mouth to mouth fell into these two shapes. 
 
 Nor is it important to know which was the true 
 
LOVE TO GOD 259 
 
 account. Either of them shows that Christianity is 
 but a continuation of Judaism ; an " evolution " from 
 it, if you will ; a fulfillment of it, as Jesus said him- 
 self ; not a new religion, but a filling out, a carrying 
 out, of the old religion of his country. Believing 
 himself the Messiah, so long expected, now come, if 
 they could only receive him for such, he taught, as 
 the condition of following him into the blessings of 
 the Kingdom, the best and highest of the moral and 
 devout teachings of the Old Testament ; the essen- 
 tial piety and righteousness ; releasing these from 
 crude and primitive conceptions, freeing them from 
 corruptions and accretions, the "traditions of men," 
 which had gathered about them. This seems to be 
 true evolution, the saving and containing the essen- 
 tial life of a thing and putting it into a more perfect 
 form. It is an instance, as it seems to me, which 
 shows that Jesus had not any idea of establishing 
 a new religion, or a new church, but aimed only to 
 purify and perfect the old. He was, as much as 
 Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He could say that 
 he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel. And it is really owing to Paul that Chris- 
 tianity, in being carried to the Gentiles, escaped 
 remaining a Jewish sect, which the other disciples 
 would have made it. 
 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 mind, and all thy heart, and all thy strength." 
 
 Let me for a moment call your attention to this 
 word love applied to Jehovah in this Jewish Scrip- 
 ture. It is so common to hear that, to the Jews, 
 God was only a terrible, mighty being, who could be 
 approached only with fear ; and that Christianity 
 
260 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 had for the first time taught men to love God. 
 Here, centuries before Jesus was born, the Jewish 
 people were commanded to love their God. And 
 though he was represented often as a jealous, aven- 
 ging, destroying Deity, yet how often in the Old 
 Testament we read of Him as long-suffering, and 
 compassionate, and full of goodness and mercy, and 
 forgiving sins. Men are called upon to fear or rev- 
 erence Him. But in this very book of Deuteronomy, 
 at least eight times is love to God spoken of; and 
 to love the Lord is the injunction of many of the 
 Psalms. 
 
 " Thou shalt love thy God." And what is love ? 
 Is it not a powerful and warm attraction ; is it not 
 a devotion ; is it not to have one often in your 
 thoughts ? Is it not to feel an unspeakable near- 
 ness, an inner sympathy ? Is it not to find fuller 
 life in that presence, and great joy in it, and a beau- 
 tiful peace ? Is it not to wish to please and to serve 
 the one whom we love ? Is it not to be of one 
 mind and one heart and one will ? These things 
 love is, in its human forms ; these things it is in its 
 higher and purely spiritual form when directed 
 toward God. 
 
 To be of one mind, one heart, one will, I said ; 
 and that just corresponds to the words of my text. 
 " Thou shalt love thy God with thy mind." What 
 does that mean ? 
 
 It means first that we must love to think of Him ; 
 that we must make the thought of Him a familiar 
 one ; that we must often turn our mind toward that 
 highest object about which human thought can busy 
 itself. Not that human thought can compass Him ; 
 
LOVE TO GOD 26 1 
 
 but the reason, or thinking power, which is an en- 
 dowment from Him, is capable of forming some 
 approach to knowledge of Him ; and as we use this 
 God-given power, it will bring us to more and more 
 complete apprehension, to more and more worthy 
 idea, of Him. The reason of man, because it is a 
 gift of God, because, to speak more truly, it is a part 
 of Him, his indwelling spirit in us, is able, therefore, 
 in part to know Him. Do not listen, then, to any 
 who disparage or deny the use of reason in religion. 
 Believe that it is your duty to use your reason in 
 religion. For reason is that faculty in man which 
 is a representative of the Divine Mind, which cor- 
 responds to truth in God. And just as a religion 
 which has no warmth of feeling in it is imperfect, 
 just as a religion which is not manifested in life 
 and put forth in right conduct is imperfect, so a 
 religion which is not -reasonable, which is without a 
 basis of clear thought, is imperfect also. Our minds 
 must be satisfied as well as our hearts. 
 
 Now, that our minds may be satisfied, we must 
 try to get as clear and as true thoughts of God as 
 we can ; as clear and as true ideas of his being, his 
 way and methods, as we can ; as clear and as true 
 ideas, for instance, of his nature as the Infinite 
 Spirit ; of his providence, or the ways in which He 
 cares for man, not by occasional and special inter- 
 ference, nor by direct and minute appointments, but 
 by universal and constant presence. 
 
 We must try to get, again, as clear and rational 
 ideas as we can upon prayer, or our access and 
 approach to God, and upon the real way in which 
 God answers prayer, so that we may know better 
 
262 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 what we ought to ask for ; and may have only rea- 
 sonable expectations of what we may obtain, and 
 how we may obtain it. 
 
 To love God with the mind is, then, to desire sin- 
 cerely to get free from all unworthy and supersti- 
 tious ideas and expectations in regard to Him. It is 
 to desire to know, just as nearly as we can, what his 
 ways are, and his methods of action ; his methods of 
 dealing with us, as we say ; that we may accept these 
 and conform ourselves to them. To love God with 
 the mind is to desire earnestly to know the truth 
 about Him, and not to live in any delusions, how- 
 ever comforting and pleasant they may be for the 
 moment. 
 
 For we may be sure that nothing can be so good 
 for us as the truth, or that degree of truth which 
 we are capable of reaching. In that truth, seen as 
 clearly as the best use of our -minds can grasp it, we 
 shall be sure to find all the strength and all the com- 
 fort we need beyond ourselves. However comfort- 
 ing the half-truth may be, be sure that the whole 
 truth will be more comforting when we have received 
 and conformed ourselves to it ; though we have to 
 let the half-truth go upon which we so trustingly 
 leaned, as the boy lets go the life-preserver or the 
 teacher's rope, to find that the water will safely hold 
 him up. 
 
 To love God with the mind, then, is to use the 
 mind with which He has endowed us ; to trust it, and 
 believe that rightly and fairly used it will not lead 
 us astray. It is to use the mind, which God has 
 implanted in us as the faculty of knowing, reverently 
 and carefully and sincerely, as we ought always to 
 use his gifts. 
 
LOVE TO GOD 26$ 
 
 It is, further, to prize all real knowledge of every 
 kind ; to despise sham knowledge, and not to rest 
 content with superficial knowledge. It is to believe 
 that all knowledge of nature and man is in a real 
 sense a knowledge of God. He is manifested in 
 nature and in man ; He has imprinted his laws in the 
 constitution of nature and of human nature. His 
 laws are the laws of nature ; his will is done in so far 
 as we give faithful obedience to the order of nature 
 in our bodily life, and to the order of human nature 
 in our intellectual, moral, social, and spiritual life. 
 
 Finally, to love God with the mind is to feel the 
 sacredness, the divineness of truth ; to be sensitive 
 to every warping or violation of it ; to every form of 
 lie whether in speech or in action. It is to have the 
 courage to put away every form of deception, whether 
 the temptation be to kindliness, or fear of conse- 
 quences, or hope of profit. Things as they are> the 
 reality of things, deeper than appearances, than all 
 pretenses — this is the truth. What arc the exact 
 facts of the case ? This is the important question 
 necessary to be settled before we form any theories. 
 Science, in this, may teach a lesson to religion. 
 The truth of things is the thought of God in things, 
 the element of reality in them ; it is God in them, 
 and that we are to reverence and love above all 
 things else. And wherever we love the truth, honor 
 the truth, make sacrifice for the truth, we are loving 
 God with our minds. 
 
 To love God with our hearts — what does that 
 mean ? We all believe that we know what' that is. 
 To most persons it is the whole of religion. Its true 
 name is not religion, but piety, which, precious though 
 
264 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 it be, is but a part of religion. It is all the feeling 
 that goes out toward God. It is religion as a senti- 
 ment. 
 
 And what a powerful sentiment, what an ardent 
 feeling, what a deep consolation, what a moving 
 passion it has been in the hearts of men and in the 
 world's history, in its various pure and impure forms ! 
 It includes reverence and trust and affection. 
 
 To love God with our hearts is to reverence Him, 
 for reverence is one of the highest feelings of the 
 human heart. It is the very beginning of religion 
 there, the looking up to something higher than our- 
 selves. Reverence not only looks up ; it lifts up. 
 It elevates us ; it is a humility which ennobles us. 
 And the man who has no reverence ; the man who 
 never looks up to something higher than himself ; 
 the man who, therefore, has no humility ; whatever 
 other good qualities he may have misses his best 
 quality, that which crowns all ; and whatever good 
 he may do, his work will fall short of the best, and 
 his character will miss its true refinement, and his 
 influence its highest stamp. 
 
 I am grieved when I find religious reformers, in 
 protesting against or in throwing off religious super- 
 stitions, using rude attacks, flings, and ridicule, and 
 so helping to destroy, not only the superstition, but 
 the reverent and tender feeling beneath it, upon 
 which religion so greatly depends. 
 
 It was said of Emerson, that he took down men's 
 idols in so tender a way that it seemed an act of 
 worship — the idolatry was gone, but the reverence 
 remained unharmed. 
 
 If your hearers are low down, you will not help 
 
LOVE TO GOD 265 
 
 them by becoming low yourself ; you will help them 
 by touching some finer and better feeling in them, 
 and lifting them up by that. There may be humor 
 which is not irreverent, which is allied to tender- 
 ness and seriousness. There is also a humor which 
 is buffoonery, fatal to true devoutness, fatal to rev- 
 erence. So there is a wit which is cold and sharp, 
 and deadly to all true and finer sentiment. 
 
 Again, to love God with our hearts is to trust 
 Him, to confide in Him. And to trust Him is not 
 merely to be sure of his help and support and sym- 
 pathy. It is also to be sure that to obey his com- 
 mandment, to follow his law, revealed in mind and 
 conscience, will always be safe, will always be best. 
 It is to feel that it will always be safe to do what is 
 right and just, to speak what is true and sincere and 
 kind. It is to follow Him where we cannot see the 
 way, upon the dark path of trial and sorrow ; it is to 
 do hard, self-denying duty, listening only to the voice 
 within, which is the voice of God heard before us in 
 the darkening distance ; laying aside all fear in the 
 sense that He is there, in the assurance that He 
 will guard where He hath led. It is to believe that 
 He has better things in store for us than those 
 which He asks us to give up ; an inward and spir- 
 itual, to replace the outward and visible ; a real, to 
 replace the apparent ; an eternal, to replace the 
 transient. 
 
 A part of trust is, indeed, to seek his sympathy, 
 confident of finding it in a true sense, if not exactly 
 in the sense we have been accustomed to expect ; a 
 sympathy that not merely feels for us, but feels with 
 us, which has its ground in the spiritual likeness of 
 
266 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 our nature and his — what we call sonship and 
 Fatherhood. There are two kinds of sympathy : 
 one which so lets itself down to our sorrows as not 
 to lift us up out of them, which weakens us instead 
 of strengthening us ; and the other, a strong whole- 
 some sympathy which, understanding what we suf- 
 fer, seeks to lift us away from it by the suggestion 
 of cheering and invigorating truth. 
 
 What comfort and strength in the trust that is 
 willing to have God know all ; all our weakness, all 
 our temptation, all our sin ; that we have nothing 
 to conceal from Him, but can lay our hearts bare 
 before Him, as we cannot, perhaps, to any earthly 
 friend ; sure that He will know how best to heal 
 us ; know what cautery and knife of remorse and 
 penalty we need, know what tender, soothing hope 
 and encouragement, that we may yet be healed and 
 redeemed. 
 
 What comfort and strength, too, when men have 
 misunderstood us or been unjust to us, in the trust 
 that sends us to God in the confidence that He un- 
 derstands and knows our thoughts and our feelings 
 and our motives, that He will do us justice. How, 
 in our very childhood, with our heart wounded un- 
 der some unjust charge, and too timid or too sensi- 
 tive or too proud to defend ourselves, when we have 
 gone away out of all human sight and opened our 
 heart to God, the sense of his sympathy has con- 
 soled and cheered us and sent us back stronger- 
 hearted, and our tears all dried by that strong and 
 tender hand. 
 
 To love God with our hearts, of course, is to love 
 Him with our affections. It is to love his love, and 
 
LOVE TO GOD 267 
 
 his love is his essence, the inspiration of his power, 
 the director of his justice ; so that his power, his 
 justice are but forms of his love. The heart of 
 God, as the heart of man, is love. Do not ask me 
 to analyze that, whether it be the love of a mother 
 bending over her child's cradle or its sick-bed or 
 its grave ; whether it be the love of the man or 
 woman who lives for others, and most for the most 
 lonely and most needy ; the love that suffereth long 
 and is kind ; the love that envieth not, is not purled 
 up, that hopeth all things, beareth all things, be- 
 lieveth all things ; or whether it be the love of the 
 saintly heart, bowing the head and lifting the soul 
 in sweet, overpowering recognition of the Infinite 
 Love. Oh ! can any one who is not insensible, can 
 any heart which is not of stone, ever think of the 
 unspeakable goodness of God, of his patient love, 
 his forgiving love, his steadfast and abounding love, 
 and the hourly blessings it bestows upon us, without 
 an answering glow ? Surely we are not so heart- 
 less as not to love Him who first loved us ! First 
 loved us ! Yes, long before our minds could frame a 
 thought of Him, or our hearts lift a prayer, his love 
 created us and has borne us in its bosom ever since ; 
 has borne us — and borne with us ! — how long and 
 how patiently and how kindly ! To love God is to 
 feel toward Him reverence, trust, and affection. 
 
 But it is not enough that we have a clear and ac- 
 curate thought of God, an intellectual belief in Him. 
 Important as that is, it is not all. Nor that we have 
 devout affections toward Him, sincere feelings of 
 piety. Precious as these are, they do not cover the 
 whole of religion or of the love of God. They 
 
268 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 need also to be carried into action, to be manifested 
 in the obedient life ; and so the commandment bids 
 us to love God " with all our strength," that is with 
 our active powers. 
 
 We are to love God with our wills and in our 
 lives, as well as honor Him in our thoughts, and 
 reverence and trust Him in our hearts. Mind, 
 heart, and will are to twine the triple cord of com- 
 plete religion. And our religion, however thought- 
 ful, however devout, remains ^complete, our love 
 of God remains imperfect, till it be organized into 
 action and control our deeds. Our God is not an 
 infinite passivity, but an infinite energy — " My Fa- 
 ther worketh," said Jesus ; and our religion, our 
 sense of God, our love of God, must show itself in 
 likeness to Him in this — in working with and for 
 Him, doing the things which He wishes to have 
 done. Sincere love shows itself in imitation, it has 
 been said. Action helps to decide thought and 
 to deepen feeling ; what of truth the mind has 
 thought out in the study, what of good the heart 
 has learned in its chamber of communion, the active 
 powers must carry out. The student of social sci- 
 ence inquires diligently into the evils of society ; its 
 pauperism, its intemperance, its disease, its crime. 
 There is plenty of vague sympathy and kindly will- 
 ingness of feeling in the community, acting blindly 
 and fitfully. Let us do something, says one, and 
 sets to work and organizes the charity, opening wise 
 and working channels for the thought and the feel- 
 ing ; the free reading-room, the coffee-house, the 
 friendly inn, the hospital, the home, the society for 
 protecting abused children, industrial schools, im- 
 
LOVE TO GOD 269 
 
 proved tenements. We cannot all do all things. But 
 we can help many good works of others with visible 
 as well as invisible sympathy. If we cannot put our 
 hands to the special work, we can put them into our 
 pockets, — not to keep them there, but to take them 
 out filled with what may help the workers. 
 
 That man loves God with his strength, or his life, 
 who carries his religion into his daily work and busi- 
 ness ; putting justice and honesty into these ; and 
 charity, kindness, and brotherly love into them. I 
 read in the biography of a business man that he 
 would never engage in any business enterprise 
 which he did not think was beneficial to the com- 
 munity. Surely, whatever is beneficial to man is 
 in accordance with the will of God, who wills good 
 to all, and has put the world into the hands of men 
 that they may work with Him in developing its 
 resources and making it a home for happy and vir- 
 tuous millions. To work with and for God in the 
 service of man is to love God with our strength. 
 
 Such, and so great, dear friends, is this first com- 
 mandment ! Such, and so broad is our religion, 
 our love of God. Mind, heart, and hand ; thought, 
 affection, and will. 
 
 I. The clear, the high, the worthy thought of 
 God ; the using our God-given reason, a part of his 
 image and indwelling in us, in the pursuit of truth 
 and knowledge. 
 
 II. The using and purifying and consecrating of 
 our affections and desires ; trusting God, reveren- 
 cing God, loving the things He loves. 
 
 III. The putting thought and feeling into life ; 
 the doing what He is doing, the doing his will. 
 
270 LOVE TO GOD 
 
 So broad is religion, covering the whole nature of 
 man with the whole nature of God. Mind to mind, 
 feeling to feeling, will to will ! In each of these 
 channels, God's inspiration and his life seek to flow 
 into ours, and build up the complete manhood which 
 is the fullness of God in us. 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 Thus far . . . and no farther ; here shall thy proud waves be stayed. 
 — Job xxxviii. n. 
 
 I think no one can have watched the coming in of 
 the tide upon a beach without having the thought 
 suggested of two opposing powers, one visible, one 
 silent and unseen. 
 
 In from the bosom of the deep comes the long 
 wave, charging up the shore as sure to overwhelm 
 it ; but all at once it pauses, bends, breaks, and 
 retreats, as if stopped by an invisible hand, baffled 
 by a silent word it could not disobey. 
 
 And we know that, however high the succeeding 
 waves may reach, there is a line beyond which they 
 will never go. The very drops of spray which leap 
 or are blown off from the breaking, foaming crest 
 have each their measured and appointed goal. On 
 wave and drop, the grasp of the invisible hand has 
 been laid; to each the silent word has said : "Thus 
 far and no farther." 
 
 It is enough to look upon such a scene and watch 
 the play and conflict of forces, the beauty, and the 
 grandeur ; but in thoughtful mood it soon becomes 
 transfigured into symbols. We see in it an illustra- 
 tion of that Law of Limitation which runs through 
 our human experience ; the Hand which grasps and 
 holds and stays our will ; the "Thus far and no far- 
 ther " which sounds through all our lives. 
 
272 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 For we are all bound in a thousand ways. Fate, 
 destiny, providence, organization, circumstance, laws 
 of nature, laws of mind, — these beset us behind 
 and before and lay their hand upon us. Forces 
 which we did not make and cannot control continu- 
 ally oppose and thwart that force in ourselves which 
 we do create and control — our will. 
 
 In every direction, how soon and surely our effort 
 finds its bounds. There are the limitations which 
 belong to our humanity, shared with our race. We 
 can conceive of superior beings doing things which 
 no man can accomplish, and there may be beings 
 who can do what we cannot even conceive of. We 
 are limited by our individual temperament and or- 
 ganization : one man can think what another can- 
 not, or do a work not within another's faculty. We 
 are limited by our temporary conditions : when we 
 are ill we cannot do what is easy to us when we are 
 well ; we cannot do when we are " out of sorts " 
 what we can readily do when we are in the mood. 
 The speech that flows unstinted and eloquent from 
 the excited thought lags heavy and halting from the 
 unkindled mind. We all know the hours when the 
 picture, the lesson, the letter, the sermon, the handi- 
 work will not prosper. The quickened interest, the 
 warm heart find no difficulty where indifference 
 finds impossibility. 
 
 There are the limits of development and culture. 
 The boy cannot do a man's work ; the sedentary 
 student the feats of the athlete ; the unpracticed 
 thinker the task of the trained reasoner ; the appren- 
 tice that of the master ; the recruit that of the 
 veteran. 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 273 
 
 There are the limits of circumstances. If we are 
 poor, we cannot do what we could if we were rich. 
 If we are obscure and unknown, we cannot do what 
 we could if we were in position of public importance 
 and influence. If we live with those who misunder- 
 stand us or are of uncongenial temperaments, we 
 cannot do as we could if we were among sympathiz- 
 ing friends. There are persons who seem to take 
 away all our powers, and others who kindle and 
 bring them out. 
 
 There are limits from relationships and family 
 ties ; from social influences, customs, and opinions. 
 Our wills are perpetually limited by other people's 
 wills, by their claims, their rights, their convenience. 
 
 I need not go on with the catalogue. It becomes 
 a string of truisms. 
 
 But obvious as the facts are when thus stated, 
 and meeting us constantly in our own experience, 
 yet, as being a law and the inevitable conditions of 
 our life, how often they are not recognized, how 
 often they are not accepted. 
 
 And because they do not recognize them, multi- 
 tudes are — they know not why — restless, dissat- 
 isfied, disappointed, and find life a failure. And 
 because they will not accept them, multitudes are 
 — they know not why — unhappy, and find life a 
 burden. 
 
 Into the much-vexed question of man's freedom as 
 limited by God's supreme will, I do not propose to 
 go, further than to say that we cannot doubt that it 
 is so limited ; and that we cannot believe that it is 
 annihilated. Within the limits the freedom is real. 
 
 Our feet are drawn to the ground by his force of 
 
274 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 gravitation, but they are not fastened there. Our 
 wills through the muscular force can lift them for a 
 short space and for a brief time. 
 
 His law of righteousness binds us unchangeably 
 to the right. But we have power to move ourselves 
 away from it to do wrong. It is, however, but for a 
 space and for a time. Through retribution, suffer- 
 ing, shame, penitence, we come back again, as the 
 drops that darted off into the air from the crested 
 wave all came back at last to earth or sea, shattered 
 but not destroyed. Can our souls go outside the 
 attraction of God's moral law any more than our 
 bodies can go where his law of gravitation will not 
 act? 
 
 One thing that assures us of our liberty, of the 
 element of freedom which is our birthright amid all 
 our limitations, is this, that in no case are these 
 limits sharply defined ; they are expansive and mov- 
 able ; there is a margin. Our physical powers, for 
 instance, do not at once stop short. Between the 
 first sense of fatigue and absolute exhaustion what a 
 range there is ! Death is the absolute suspension of 
 the body's vital powers ; but no one can tell the pre- 
 cise point when death becomes actual or inevitable. 
 The traveler, falling exhausted in the snow, sees 
 suddenly a light, hears the bark of the dog or a 
 cheery human shout. A moment before he could 
 not go a step farther ; now he can go a rod. The 
 Alpine climber gives out utterly, but a parting cloud 
 shows the summit close at hand, and a new energy 
 quickens his exhausted muscles. The delicate wo- 
 man, watching night after night by her husband's 
 sick-bed, unexhausted ; the mother, to save her child, 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 2J$ 
 
 crossing spaces of blazing timber which she could 
 not by any possibility have passed in ordinary states 
 of feeling ; the soldier on his forced march accom- 
 plishing double the day's possibility on half the 
 usual day's ration, — these are instances of what I 
 mean by the range and margin of power. 
 
 Still more do we feel this wide range in the limits 
 of our mental and moral faculties. And though per- 
 fectly conscious of being bounded in these, and so 
 often reaching the apparent end of our ability of 
 thought or feeling, we are yet continually let into 
 experiences which show us that these limits are not 
 rigid. 
 
 Then, in both our bodily and in our mental and 
 emotional powers, there is all the range which comes, 
 as I have suggested, with cultivation, exercise, and 
 growth. 
 
 And this range, this margin, this flexibility of our 
 limits, this absence of rigid fixedness gives us what 
 we need of the impulse and joy of liberty in our 
 lives. If our bounds are not bonds, if our fences are 
 shifting, if on this stage of our life the scenes are 
 movable, and what was but now a wall is the next 
 moment a wide vista of landscape, we can walk more 
 largely, even if we have need to walk circumspectly 
 still. 
 
 But this is not all we want to know : merely that 
 our limits are not an iron bondage. We want to feel 
 that they are a benefit and a help. And this too we 
 shall find. I say we shall find our limits to be in a 
 thousand ways helpful. They hinder and harm us 
 sometimes, I know. But I believe that for one case 
 where they do so, there are a hundred where they 
 are a benefit. 
 
276 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 Take our first and perpetual limit, — the limita- 
 tion of the spirit by the body. What a hindrance, 
 what a burden, it seems to us sometimes ! What a 
 prison house, this body, with its bounds of power and 
 place, with its liability to weariness and pain, with 
 its constantly pressing needs which take so much 
 time and thought, with its appetites, warring against 
 the soul ! How heavily it weighs sometimes on the 
 wings of the spirit, a drag upon the far-reaching 
 thought, the noble will, the enthusiastic feeling ! 
 How often when the " spirit is willing, the flesh is 
 weak," and we long to break its bonds and be free ! 
 
 But another look tells us how much our spirit is 
 helped by the body, how much it serves us. What 
 an active and indispensable agent it is in bringing 
 our minds to bear in accomplishing our wills, in 
 manifesting, and so deepening, our feelings and 
 making our enthusiasm fruitful. 
 
 The body, by limiting the spirit, contains, so to 
 speak, and consolidates it, individualizes and inten- 
 sifies it ; calls out its powers by directing them in 
 definite channels to definite ends. The very com- 
 monest needs of the body — shelter, food, and rai- 
 ment — are among the first things to call out the 
 powers of thought. Those nations which have the 
 fewest bodily wants are precisely those which are 
 lowest in intellectual power. I have always thought 
 that he was a wise man who, going as a missionary 
 from England to one of the Pacific Islands, set the 
 natives first of all to building him a house, somewhat 
 after the pattern of English comfort. He did this, 
 not in a mere thought for his own enjoyment, but 
 he saw what would follow. They were no longer 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 2JJ 
 
 contented themselves to live in huts, where they had 
 herded with their swine. By awakening new wants 
 in them, he had awakened thought and activity and 
 so opened the way for the reception of higher moral 
 and spiritual teaching. 
 
 And in civilized countries, what vast machinery of 
 manufacture, trade, commerce, and art are developed 
 by increasing bodily wants. And how much of 
 thought and skill and love of beauty and human 
 helpfulness are called out. 
 
 So, when we are inclined to complain of our bond- 
 age to our bodies, we will remember their benefits. 
 We will endeavor by good care and by obedience to 
 the laws of health to make these willing servants as 
 little of a burden and as great a help as possible. 
 
 Notice, too, how in proportion as these limitations 
 serve their purpose, they gradually withdraw and 
 broaden, enlarging the sphere of the mind's freedom 
 within them and its power over them. The child is 
 more limited by his body than the youth is ; full- 
 grown manhood has a large mastery over it, — and 
 the more mind, the more mastery. The war showed 
 us, among other things, that the men of mere muscle 
 sooner break down under exposure and fatigue than 
 more intelligent and educated men of inferior phy- 
 sique. We do not wonder that, in the account of 
 the Crucifixion, the stronger and coarser thieves die 
 first. We know how the disciplined heart and exalted 
 spirit triumph over bodily infirmity and pain. Men 
 have been known to put off even the hour of their 
 death by energy of will. For these limits also are, 
 as I said, not precisely fixed. 
 
 And when, "in the course of nature," as we say, 
 
2?8 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 the final limits of the body are reached, the soul, 
 having made its full use of that organism, is freed, 
 as we may believe, to use some finer body, suited to 
 its next stage of progress, whose limits are wider, 
 more flexible, more readily and completely answering 
 to the impulse of the spirit. 
 
 Again, how much we are hampered sometimes by 
 the limits of the mind. Striving after clear vision 
 of truth, seeking the explanation of mysteries, trying 
 to get clear conceptions of the infinite, of the right, 
 of God, of the soul and its destiny, of the causes of 
 things and the laws of the universe, we are perpetu- 
 ally baffled and tormented by our intellectual bounds. 
 Yet these bounds are helpful. They send us back 
 from speculation to observation, from thinking to 
 work, from theorizing to living. By showing us what 
 we cannot attain, the limits teach us to study to 
 know, to prize what is within our reach. They send 
 us back from daring flights to take faithfully the 
 first steps which are enough to task our present 
 powers. They bid us thoroughly master the known 
 and learn its height and depth and use. 
 
 For, as we have the desire to use it, is the truth 
 revealed to us ; and while we are putting it to use it 
 grows clear and leads us on. 
 
 The mere idealist, the mere closet-thinker, the 
 merely speculative reformer, — these men are apt to 
 overlook this law of use, and that law of steps and 
 degrees which is also a law of limit. The wise 
 reformer, while he firmly holds his ideal and never 
 loses sight of it, yet carefully observes how far it is 
 possible to make it actual to-day, and then how much 
 farther to-morrow. Recognizing, from the first, the 
 
THE LIMITATIOXS OE LIFE 279 
 
 interval between the actual and the ideal, while he 
 continually works towards it, he is saved from ex- 
 travagant expectations and consequent disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Thus it happens that a certain narrowness of 
 mental vision, a certain limitation of thought and 
 feeling, seems almost essential to vigorous and 
 effective action. This narrowness gives intensity 
 and that "excess of direction " which seem needful 
 to accomplish special results. In such cases the 
 broadest-minded men are not the most effective. 
 We may not like the one-sided man, or the man of 
 one idea, but he gets the thing done. The orator 
 who wishes to move his hearers to the point of 
 action must not spend time in presenting all the 
 sides of the question and all its qualifications ; but 
 narrow himself to the truth that he holds to be true 
 in spite of the objections, leave qualifications to his 
 hearers, and press home his single thought to con- 
 viction. 
 
 So it is a curious fact in history, that the great 
 movements of the world have been carried on by a 
 certain narrowness of vision, by a certain amount 
 of ignorance, and error even, mixed with the truth, 
 unintentionally, of course. The large results were 
 not in the thought of the movers. Their limits 
 were their stimulus and help ; they gave them cour- 
 age to begin and go on. Thus, as far as we can 
 see, what kept up the heart of the early apostles of 
 Christianity to preach and to suffer was their erro- 
 neous idea that Jesus would return in their own life- 
 time, as the Messiah, to establish the Jewish king- 
 dom of heaven. I do not doubt that Luther got a 
 
280 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 good part of his fervid force from his limitations, — 
 his dogmatism and intolerance. So the narrowness 
 of Puritanism concentrated its power. For all ener- 
 getic action, I say, such concentration within limits 
 is demanded. The stream turned into a narrow 
 channel becomes deep and rapid and sweeps obsta- 
 cles away. 
 
 In critical times, therefore, what is wanted is not 
 so much a very broad, philosophical way of looking 
 at events, a looking all round and dwelling on what 
 may be said on all sides, but a taking of sides ; 
 there is no time then for balancing and hesitating 
 and observing nice exceptions ; but for a hearty 
 surrender and throwing all our weight on the side 
 which we are convinced is substantially right. 
 
 The limitations of individual temperament and 
 faculty help us by making out for us what kind of 
 work we are to do, and in what way ; since there is 
 not time for all to do all things, nor need that all 
 should do all things. It is an immense advantage 
 to each of us that there are some kinds of business, 
 some kinds of study, some kinds of pleasure for 
 which we do not care, which we are not interested 
 in, and in which we should not succeed. The limi- 
 tations of space help us by keeping us from scatter- 
 ing our energies over too wide a ground. Not the 
 number of acres, but the depth of tillage, makes the 
 successful farm ; and that is a figure which covers 
 a good many experiences. 
 
 The limits of time help us by setting us more 
 promptly to work. Who does not know how often 
 he has accomplished more when he had but an hour 
 or two to work in than when he had the whole day 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 28 1 
 
 before him? And also by dividing our work into 
 portions so that it does not seem beyond our pow- 
 ers. To each day only the day's task. 
 
 We go into a great library. It does not begin 
 to be of use to us till our first desire, which is to 
 read all the books in it, has settled down into select- 
 ing and reading one. 
 
 We go into a great gallery. It is of little value 
 or satisfaction to us till our excited wish to see all 
 its treasures has quieted itself into a willingness to 
 study carefully one picture or statue. 
 
 We go forth upon our travels and want to see 
 the whole world ; but we are forced to choose one 
 country, one city, one mountain. And the wise 
 traveler limits himself to seeing a few things thor- 
 oughly, rather than many superficially. 
 
 "With renunciation," says the clear-sighted yeo- 
 man, " life begins " — the true life of wise endeavor 
 and successful accomplishment. " Our vague striv- 
 ings must mark out their own limitations," and 
 within these we must keep our desires and our 
 efforts. 
 
 But it is true, in a sense, of all life. The first 
 thing the infant must be made to learn is that there 
 are some things he cannot have, some things he 
 must not do. His very safety depends upon that. 
 That home alone is the happy home where the 
 growing children are limited by the authority of the 
 wise will of father and mother. The boy at school 
 gets on much better for those regulations of fixed 
 hours and lessons, which at times seem so irksome, 
 than if left entirely to his own direction and caprice ; 
 as every boy knows who has made experiment of 
 
282 THE LIMIT A TIONS OF LIFE 
 
 both methods. And when we leave the shelter of 
 home and school to go out into the world and make 
 our own way, we must very soon choose some defi- 
 nite pursuit if we would bring anything to pass. 
 He best succeeds, even, who in any pursuit devotes 
 himself mainly to some special branch, and makes 
 himself master in that instead of scattering his tal- 
 ent. 
 
 What is the law of beauty, in art, in manners, but 
 the law of limit, the keeping from all excess, from all 
 extravagance ? 
 
 And the law of pleasure, of happiness, what is it 
 but the same law ? Go too far, have too much, and 
 delight is quickly changed to satiety and disgust. 
 
 And the law of health, what is it but the law of 
 temperance, the law of limit, the keeping from all 
 excess of eating, drinking, exercise, rest, of every 
 appetite ? 
 
 The law of morals is the same. Sin is only trans- 
 gression, a going beyond, a going too far. It is no 
 entity in itself. People talk of it as if it were a 
 foreign element in us, to be uprooted and cast out ; 
 whereas it is only the excess or misdirection of some 
 passion, propensity, or faculty which, in its right use 
 and within just limits, is innocent and beneficial. 
 
 Oh ! what disappointment, wretchedness, injury, 
 come simply from uncontrolled tempers, unregulated 
 feelings, ungoverned wishes ! How gladly ought we 
 to hear that voice, which says to us on every side, 
 whether in warning or in retribution, " Thus far and 
 no farther," and to feel the grasp of that Hand, which, 
 holding us back on this side and that, points to 
 the only path of freedom, saying, " This is the way, 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 283 
 
 walk ye in it," on either side you waste or bruise 
 yourself. 
 
 I do not say that all our limitations are helpful 
 and friendly to us ; that would be an exaggeration. 
 They are sometimes hurtful, no doubt ; especially 
 when they are artificial. I do not say that we are 
 never to try to remove them ; we ought to better 
 our conditions, our surroundings, when we can. But 
 so far as they are natural, so far as they are inevita- 
 ble, so far as they are not rightly or not readily to 
 be removed, our wisdom is to accept them. And 
 this, not sullenly, not with the resignation of despair, 
 but with a cheerful determination to find them help- 
 ful, or to make them so. To see that we do the 
 most and the best which they allow. And to be- 
 lieve that they may be far better for us than an 
 unlimited freedom, which might make us only rest- 
 less, capricious, and selfish. 
 
 Not the rebellious spirit that frets itself against 
 the bars of its cage is free or happy ; but the heart 
 that is so busy in its appointed work, even its com- 
 pulsory work, which it so makes its own by pious 
 trust and voluntary acceptance that it has no time 
 to look beyond. The walls beyond which we do not 
 choose or wish to go are not a prison to us, but a 
 home. 
 
 How glorious an ornament chains may be upon 
 him who bears them with innocence and dignity ! 
 So the cross, fully accepted, became the sacred sym- 
 bol it is to myriads of souls. 
 
 Friends, I have opened this train of thought to 
 you, not as a subject of interesting speculation, but 
 in the hope that I might help you, or some of you, 
 
284 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 to a more wise recognition, to a more cheerful ac- 
 ceptance, of the limitations, the bounds, the priva- 
 tions, which sometimes, and in so many forms, press 
 heavily upon us. For I suppose there is hardly 
 one in this congregation who has not felt them in 
 one form or another. With one it may be the limit 
 of straitened circumstances, cutting off from so 
 many enjoyments and so many ways of doing good. 
 With one the limitations of ill health, the bonds of 
 invalidism, cutting off also from so many sources of 
 enjoyment and activity. With one the limitations 
 of uncongenial position or companionship. With 
 one the limitation of intellectual power, the sense 
 of mental inferiority. 
 
 With one it is some great sorrow, seeming to shut 
 down the heavens and shut off the very springs of 
 life and cut off every motive for exertion. With an- 
 other it is some great anxiety hovering near, seem- 
 ing to shut in the horizon like a wall, and to make 
 it impossible to take a step forward. With one it 
 is some natural infirmity of temper ; with one some 
 despotism of habit. With one it is some great hope 
 disappointed ; with one some great joy denied. 
 
 How powerless we are at times within these 
 bonds, how impatient to break these invisible chains, 
 these imprisoning walls, to free ourselves from this 
 overmastering grasp ! 
 
 Friends, we can conquer them only by accepting 
 them ! Trusting where we cannot see, that they 
 may be made helpful to us, then setting ourselves to 
 make them so. 
 
 Find what of patience, of fortitude, you may learn 
 from them ; what of tenderness and gentleness and 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 285 
 
 cheerfulness ; what pride and self-will they may help 
 you to subdue ; what energy they may develop ; 
 what contentment in doing what you can, and find- 
 ing what joys you yet have ; what obedience in 
 doing the work prepared for you and the task set 
 for you. 
 
 Feel that you have not earned the right to wider 
 limits till you have shown that you can be trusted 
 in these present ones ; nor a claim to a new lot until 
 you have well learned the lesson of this, and done 
 its work and got the good out of it. 
 
 Recognize early the limits of your own tempera- 
 ment and faculty and ability. Do not expect to be 
 or to do all that you admire in others. You are 
 differently constituted, and all are not made for the 
 same work or with the same capacities. Cease 
 striving after what is out of your beat, beyond your 
 faculty. Believe that your responsibility is limited 
 by your duty, your duty by your opportunity and 
 ability. Recognize your temperament, your talent, 
 as marking out peremptorily your kind of work. 
 Make the most of these, avoiding their peculiar 
 faults, developing their special virtues. You cannot 
 get beyond your constitution ; you only waste and 
 dishearten yourself by trying. But within its limits 
 you will find ample room for all your energies. 
 
 And for the same reason judge others charitably. 
 Recognize their natural limitations, make allowance 
 for their individualities. Keep their freedom sacred 
 from the intrusion of your will. Do not try to force 
 them to see as you do, or to do what you think 
 they ought to do. Do not expect the same kind of 
 virtue from all persons, or the same style of goodness 
 
286 THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 from all ; or the same sort of affection, or the same 
 method of action. Accept God's great law of va- 
 riety, which is also a law of limits. 
 
 His law ! For we did not make it, and no man 
 made it. Above our wills and all human wills, 
 behind our freedom and all human freedom, is ever 
 the supreme, the all-embracing Will ; the all-wise ; 
 the all-good, the Almighty ! At times that will may 
 seem stern, hard, and binding. But we cannot 
 escape it. Fixed, unchangeable ; but loving and 
 perfect ; a Divine Order ; holding all things — to 
 save all. Holy, inexpressibly holy is it, to him who 
 reverently accepts it. Sacred, inexpressibly sacred 
 to the wise mind, to the trustful heart ! Under our 
 feet, not the abyss, but the rock ; over our head, not 
 blank vacancy, but the overarching span of the beau- 
 tiful, sheltering sky ; around our way the circling 
 horizon of our limits, moving as we move ! Not an 
 iron ring, but the encompassing arms of protecting 
 Law and Love ! Not so close to us as to stifle and 
 imprison us ; never so far removed as to leave us 
 unguarded. So, our bonds are transfigured into 
 bounds, containing, supporting, helpful ; our strength 
 and our security. They widen as we grow. It is 
 our God who thus besets us behind and before. It 
 is our Father who never leaves us alone. His is the 
 constraining hand that points our way. His is the 
 voice that speaks, on the right hand and on the left, 
 " Thus far and no farther." Beyond Him we cannot 
 go ; let us thank Him every hour for that, — for we 
 should go only to loss and ruin. 
 
 And so, placing our hand in his, we take up the 
 beautiful hymn : — 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 287 
 
 "Thou Grace Divine, encircling all, 
 Unsounded, shoreless Sea, 
 In which at last our souls must fall, 
 O Love of God most free ! 
 
 " When over dizzy heights we go, 
 One soft Hand blinds our eyes, 
 The other leads us safe and slow, 
 O Love of God most wise ! 
 
 " The saddened heart, the restless soul, 
 The toilworn frame and mind, 
 Alike confess Thy sweet control, 
 O Love of God most kind ! 
 
 " And though we turn us from Thy face, 
 And wander wide and long, 
 Thou hold'st us still in Thine embrace, 
 O Love of God most strong ! 
 
 " But not alone Thy care we claim, 
 Our wayward steps to win, 
 We know Thee by a dearer name, 
 O Love of God within ! " 
 
 Yes, within. For here we strike upon the final 
 and central thought, and lay our finger upon the 
 secret pulse of the whole. The law which is around 
 us is within us too, one and the same. 
 
 For in the depth and sense of our being we are 
 one with God ; spirit of spirit ; one with our Father. 
 His perfect law is, then, the law of our being. In 
 obeying it we are but obeying the law of our own 
 being — and that is the very definition of freedom. 
 
 The limits are transfigured ; they are but the 
 saving conditions of our life ; the measured steps of 
 our liberty ! 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 And I said, I will water my garden-bed ; and lo, my brook became 
 a river, and my river became a sea. — Ecclesiasticits xxiv. 13. 
 
 Life is full of such surprises. You feel the truth 
 of it in your own experience as soon as I say it. 
 With all that is regulation and all that is routine in 
 your life, you know how large an element there is of 
 the unexpected. With all the accustomed satisfac- 
 tions that are as sure as the morning light or daily 
 bread, there come constantly the unlooked-for joys. 
 In the midst of disappointment about something we 
 hoped for and planned for, there comes something 
 we did not hope or look for, to make us feel that we 
 are not forsaken and that life is a blessing after all. 
 
 We even find all at once, sometimes in very 
 familiar things, a value, a beauty, a significance we 
 had never noticed in all the many days we had 
 lived among them. As you may go a hundred days 
 through a street, and on the hundredth see for the 
 first time some object which had been there all the 
 time. In the unlooked-for thing, in the before un- 
 recognized value, in the familiar thing, we have hints 
 in a thousand ways of this element of surprise in our 
 life — the unsought, the unexpected, the unprepared- 
 for. 
 
 It has its dark side, I know ; the unlooked-for 
 trouble, the sad disappointment ; but quite as often, 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 289 
 
 — I believe far oftener — it is the flooding of our life 
 with undreamed-of gladness. Through the meadow, 
 in front of my friend's house, winds a river, a narrow 
 thread of white in the green meadow, but some day 
 I look out and the flood-tides have turned the bare 
 marsh into a lake. As you journey in your summer 
 vacation among the mountains, you remark how the 
 landscape is marred by the desolate-looking river- 
 bed, through whose expanse of hot white sand and 
 pebbles trickles a shrunken streamlet, or lies in 
 pools among the rocks. But some day the black 
 rain-clouds descend about the summits, the far-off 
 hidden springs are filled, and a swelling torrent 
 dashes among the rocks and pours deep and broad 
 over the sandy reaches. 
 
 But even of the dark side, the disappointed hope, 
 the unexpected sorrow, we have to say that it also 
 bears in its heart the unlooked-for good, the still 
 more unexpected peace. 
 
 Even the anticipated evil — before the coming-on 
 of which we have trembled, as something which we 
 could not bear — when it has come has brought with 
 it an unexpected strength. God's hand was there, 
 the secret might which He has set in the depth of 
 the soul, or the safeguard by which we are shielded 
 from more feeling than we can endure. It is not all 
 that we dreaded. And the very tears wherewith we 
 water the garden-bed beneath which some dear hope 
 has been laid away, themselves grow into a river of 
 life and bear us out upon the great ocean of God. 
 
 But in our more ordinary experiences, those nearer 
 the surface, there is a great satisfaction in this 
 element of surprise, of the unexpected. How the 
 
29O THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 children love to have their little secrets about Christ- 
 mas-time or the birthday ! The little mystery and 
 surprise double the value of the gift ; and what they 
 know beforehand they will make believe not to know, 
 or it will not give them its full delight. And our 
 good Father, who gives us all, deals with his grown- 
 up children sometimes in the same way ; and in the 
 element of the unforeseen, the unknown which sur- 
 rounds our knowledge puts a joy of freshness and 
 surprise, which is not only a stimulus to search, but 
 one of the chief joys of discovery. He has done this 
 in making man a being of progress ; in constituting 
 him so as to find a joy in the advance from the 
 known into the unknown, and the transference of 
 the unknown into the known. 
 
 Next to the joy in the discovery of unexpected 
 Love, I suppose the highest may be that of the dis- 
 covery of unexpected Truth. Or even the faint 
 assurance of a truth before suspected but not estab- 
 lished, the lifting of the last veil, however thin. 
 
 The devout astronomer Kepler, when he had 
 reached the demonstration of a problem of scientific 
 truth, writes in the joy of his enthusiasm, "What 
 I prophesied twenty-two years ago, at length I have 
 brought to light, beyond my most sanguine expecta- 
 tions. It is now eighteen months since I got the 
 first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn ; 
 a very few days ago the unveiled sun burst upon 
 me, wonderful to gaze on. Nothing holds me ; I 
 will indulge my sacred enthusiasm, I will triumph 
 over mankind and build a tabernacle to God ! The 
 die is cast ; the book is written ; to be read either 
 now or by posterity, I care not which. It may well 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 291 
 
 wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six 
 thousand years for an interpreter." 
 
 And not into the lives of great men, only, but 
 into all our lives, in many simple, familiar, homely 
 ways, God, who has made us what we are, infuses 
 this element of joy from the surprises of life, which 
 unexpectedly brighten our days and fill our eyes 
 with light, — and it may be with a tear, — as our 
 heart is touched with the thought of his unlooked- 
 for goodness. He drops this added sweetness into 
 his children's cup and makes it to run over. The 
 success we were not counting upon ; the blessing 
 we were not trying after ; the strain of music heard 
 in the midst of some drudgery ; the beautiful morn- 
 ing or sunset picture thrown in as we pass to or 
 from our daily business ; the chance-made compan- 
 ion who brightens and lightens the else tiresome 
 and lonely journey ; the sweet child's face ; a pass- 
 ing benediction at the street corner ; the unsought 
 word of encouragement or expression of interest 
 and sympathy ; the friendly message ; the chance 
 word dropped in our hearing, that clears a troubling 
 beyond all our inquiries, or awakens or strengthens 
 us to a duty beyond all direct counsel ; the sentence 
 that means for us more than the writer or speaker 
 meant ; the letter which comes to cheer a desolate 
 hour that needed it as the writer could not know ; 
 the kindly greeting which lightens with hope the 
 heart of the young man seeking to make his place 
 in a strange city ; the guest who comes to your 
 house for a day and leaves a beautiful presence 
 there forever ; the words that thrill a mother's heart 
 with the first revelation of depth of feeling or height 
 
292 THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 of thought in her daughter's soul, or the brief, pre- 
 cious sentences that reveal a thoughtful aim in her 
 boy and show that his character has ripened into 
 manhood, — these and a hundred like things, which 
 your own experience will supply, are instances of 
 what I mean by the joy given in surprise. 
 
 You may call it accident or chance — it often is ; 
 you may call it human goodness — it often is; but 
 always, always call it God's love, for that is always 
 in it. These are the overflowing riches of his good- 
 ness, these his free gifts. Wonderful as are his 
 steadfast, immutable laws by which our lives are up- 
 held and beneficently ordered, around them fall ever 
 these flowing garments of his grace, within whose 
 folds his children may nestle and be comforted. 
 
 But I pass to another suggestion of my text, and 
 the most direct one. 
 
 " I said, I will water my garden-bed ; and lo, my 
 brook became a river, and my river became a sea." 
 He thought only to turn among his plants the lit- 
 tle irrigating stream, and it swelled and grew to a 
 mighty stream ! 
 
 How there happen to all of us these unlooked-for 
 consequences ! How constantly we see large and 
 unexpected results from small beginnings ! 
 
 We thought to do one thing, and something quite 
 other or greater comes of it. 
 
 A few gentlemen get together to organize a move- 
 ment for protecting the health of our volunteer army, 
 by collecting and disseminating information upon 
 the sanitary condition and regulation of camps and 
 troops ; and the movement extends itself, swelling 
 with a gust of personal sympathy and tender help- 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 293 
 
 fulness, till it reaches every battlefield and hospital, 
 and has its messengers with the wine and oil, the 
 medicine, food, and garment, at the side of every 
 wounded, fainting, hungry, ragged soldier ; has every- 
 where its rests, its refuges, its home ; its agents for 
 securing papers and pay ; for protecting the men 
 against sharpers ; for helping them to their homes, 
 or their homes to them, — all the multiplied instru- 
 mentalities of help, one growing out of another, but 
 at the first neither intended nor foreseen. 
 
 The man of science begins some course of experi- 
 ment, and lights upon something that leads to re- 
 sults most remote and different from his intention 
 or expectation. The alchemist, — if I may name 
 so hackneyed an instance, — searching for the phi- 
 losopher's stone that shall transmute all metals to 
 gold, or the elixir of life that shall insure perpetual 
 youth, never attained the fulfillment of his dreams, 
 but discovered unintentionally some of the most 
 valuable chemical substances. Galileo goes into 
 the cathedral of Pisa to get a moment's quiet, or 
 coolness, or comfort of prayer, and sees that swing- 
 ing lamp which led to the pendulum that regulates 
 all our households ! 
 
 The plague breaks out in Cambridge, and Newton 
 goes for safety to Woolsthorpe, walks in the garden 
 one day, and, finding it hot, looks around for the 
 shade of a tree, — and we all know what fruit of 
 knowledge that tree bore. 
 
 The reformer begins to right some special wrong, 
 and he is led on into all freedoms, and his work 
 grows and lives beyond himself. Jesus could say 
 that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house 
 
294 THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 of Israel, yearning with a patriot's and a prophet's 
 heart to save his own nation from spiritual deadness 
 and moral bondage by teaching them to fulfill the 
 law, and substitute right-doing and genuine human- 
 ity for formal worship and ritual obedience, and 
 now, in lands unknown to him, he is worshiped as 
 Saviour of the world, and even as God of the Uni- 
 verse ! 
 
 Zwingli lights upon a copy of the Gospels in a 
 monastery library, and the outcome is that Switzer- 
 land is freed from the yoke of Rome. Luther was 
 roused to stop the scandal of indulgences openly 
 sold ; but he could not end there ; he must go on to 
 deny the authority of the church, to burn the bull 
 of the Pope, to proclaim the right of private judg- 
 ment. Protestantism aimed only at exalting the 
 authority of the Bible above that of the Church. It 
 is ending legitimately in setting the authority of 
 the word of God in the soul, the reason and con- 
 science and heart of man, above both Bible and 
 Church. 
 
 An ingenious mechanic of America invents a ma- 
 chine for cleaning cotton easily of its seeds, — no- 
 thing more. Its introduction gives an unexpected 
 impulse to the cotton culture, to slavery, then be- 
 ginning to die out ; its victims increase from thou- 
 sands to millions. Its moral poison spreads through 
 state and church and school and trade, infecting the 
 whole land. A handful of reformers, inspired with 
 an inexorable and tenacious moral purpose, and 
 headed by a man whom the mayor of Boston, 
 searching for, found at his printing-press in an ob- 
 scure attic, with only one small black boy as his aid, 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 295 
 
 — this handful of true men and women determined 
 to overthrow the wrong. They took neither ballot 
 nor sword in their hand ; they dared not hope in 
 their own lifetime to see success. They had no 
 method to propose save this simple moral protest ; 
 no plan save the simple ceasing to do wrong. They 
 have lived to see the little stream of influence grow 
 till the ballot brought a Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion, and the sword enforced it ! 
 
 I remember how a faithful preacher of the anti- 
 slavery gospel told us that when the subject first 
 pressed upon his conscience, he thought he could 
 free himself from the obligation by a single sermon 
 on the subject. But when once he had opened his 
 lips, it flowed in upon him in such a growing sense 
 of its vital and critical nature, that men came to say 
 of him that he preached nothing else. And that 
 was no more true of him than of others, of whom 
 the same thing was said by those who did not mean, 
 if they could help it, that it should be preached at 
 all. 
 
 Our fathers aimed only at securing colonial rights 
 by peaceful petition and protest. They could not 
 end until they had achieved, through eight years of 
 war, that independence of which the boldest did not 
 speak at first. 
 
 Their sons aimed only at preserving a union of 
 free and slave States under the guarantee of an un- 
 changeable Constitution. They could not end but 
 in a nation of free States under a Constitution thor- 
 oughly purged of slavery. Men in certain quarters 
 are agitating the question of inserting the name of 
 God into that Constitution. When justice was put 
 
296 THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 into it, and equal rights to men of every race, God 
 was put into it more than if, that left undone, 
 his name had been blazoned in every article. The 
 work will be completed when the courts shall de- 
 cide that, however unintentionally at the time, the 
 political rights of women were at the same time se- 
 cured. 
 
 We call it the logic of events. It is the mind of 
 God in events acting through human wills ; or 
 human wills putting themselves at last into the 
 order of the thought and will of God, the purpose 
 of the universe. 
 
 But now, to turn again from the public to the pri- 
 vate life : how our own personal, unpublished expe- 
 rience also illustrates this truth, of the unexpected- 
 ness of results, as it did the unexpectedness ol joys. 
 
 How little we can forecast or foresee the con- 
 sequences of our actions ! How much we fail to 
 accomplish which we intended and tried to do ; how 
 much we do, or have done through us, which we 
 never intended ! What results issue from our plans 
 of action which we neither hoped for nor thought of 
 when we began ! With however clear heads or de- 
 termined wills we mark out our chart or arrange our 
 strategy, in how many ways the voyage of life, or 
 the battle of life, ends quite otherwise than we had 
 sought ! We sail with " sealed orders." 
 
 Recall, even out of your childhood, the gratified 
 wish from which so much delight was looked for, 
 but which brought little but discontent and pain. 
 Remember the thwarted will, which turned out the 
 very best thing for you. 
 
 Remember your plan and purpose for another's 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 29; 
 
 good which proved all wrong, and that to which you 
 gave a reluctant assent, with many forebodings, 
 which proved in the end the best, the happiest 
 course. 
 
 Remember how much more you have accomplished 
 by indirect and unconscious influence than by in- 
 tended effort and advice. 
 
 Remember the affliction which seemed an over- 
 whelming flood of darkness, and proved an incoming 
 of great light, an opening into heaven. 
 
 Remember the success which puffed you up and 
 spoiled you ; and the loss which subdued, softened, 
 and purified you. 
 
 Remember the failure which seemed the breaking 
 up of your life, but proved the awakening of new 
 energies and the opening of new prosperity. 
 
 Remember the little act of denial or fidelity which 
 strengthened into a habit of virtue. Remember the 
 little indulgence which was the beginning of a bad 
 habit that overmastered and shamed you. 
 
 Remember the careless sentence which led to the 
 breaking of an old friendship or opened out into the 
 binding of a new and precious tie. 
 
 Remember the thoughtless speech which swelled 
 into a great mischief. Remember the brief word 
 fitly spoken which ripened into a great good. 
 
 I do not say that the little thing is always the full 
 efficient cause of the result, but it is the beginning 
 of a train of causes, leading to a result neither in- 
 tended nor foreseen. 
 
 And now what is the lesson ? 
 
 Surely not that we are to leave off aiming for or 
 planning for special things. Because we cannot con- 
 
298 THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 
 
 trive results, we are not therefore to be thoughtless 
 of results ; because we cannot calculate conse- 
 quences, we are not to be careless of consequences. 
 We have judgments and wills to be used. Because 
 the winds of God blow and his currents flow beyond 
 our vision and control, we are not the less, but all 
 the more, to set our sails to meet them, and to hold 
 firm the helm. Although there is this element of 
 the unexpected, the uncalculated, the unwilled, this 
 element of surprise, in our lives, — for the very reason 
 that it is so it is not our business ; we are to care 
 for the other elements, the regulated, the willed, the 
 resolved. The inspirations and reinforcements from 
 beyond ourselves are to be the reward of fidelity, not 
 the substitutes for it ; not mystic reverie and passiv- 
 ity, but active thought and consecrated will are the 
 conditions of God's indwelling power and peace. We 
 must begin to do the humble, plain duty of the hour ; 
 we must water our garden-bed ; for the stream, for 
 which we have thus made an opening into our lives, 
 may fill and flood them — first a river, and then a 
 sea ! We must have an object, a duty. And a part 
 of duty is to consider the consequences — the prob- 
 able consequences — of our actions, to the best of 
 our judgment. 
 
 Only, we are not bound to consider all merely 
 possible consequences ; since they are beyond our 
 knowledge and our power, and are therefore not in- 
 cluded in our responsibility. And there are generous 
 and noble impulses, and movements of conscience 
 which transcend the consideration of all immediate 
 consequences in the assurance of final and prepon- 
 derant results of good. 
 
THE SURPRISES OF LIFE 299 
 
 The lesson is that we are not to be overanxious 
 and troubled about results, or weighed down with 
 any morbid sense of responsibility, since results, 
 after all, are but partially in our power, and the 
 happiness and good of others but partially within 
 our control ; but, with a healthy cheerfulness, we 
 are to do as well as we can and what we can, ready 
 then to leave results to the Power and powers be- 
 yond ourselves that work with us. 
 
 The lesson is that we are not to have our will 
 and our way always ; but if we are willing not to 
 have it, we shall be likely to have something as 
 good, or better, done through us — or beyond us. 
 
 The lesson is that we are to guard carefully 
 against the incoming of the small beginnings of evil 
 that may swell to an engulfing and devastating 
 flood. 
 
 The lesson is that we are to keep the channels 
 open, by love and by fidelity, to the incoming of all 
 good influences and to the spirit which through us 
 works beyond our thought and will. 
 
 The lesson is, first and last, that we must recog- 
 nize and trust and gratefully bless that Will which 
 encompasses all our plans, and that Love which 
 embosoms all our lives ; which, in ways known and 
 unknown, by methods foreseen and unexpected, by 
 promises and by surprises, by his pledged justice 
 and his free grace, fills and floods all our lives with 
 good. 
 
 1877. 
 
WHO IS GOD ? 
 
 To us there is but one God, the Father. — i Corinthians viii. 6. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, who has written so eloquently upon 
 Art and other matters, and whose eloquence is 
 equaled only by his rashness, has recently addressed 
 some letters to the clergy of the Church of England, 
 of which he is, presumably, a member. In these 
 letters he begins by asking whether " a simple and 
 comprehensible statement" of the gospel, " accep- 
 table to the entire body of the Church," might not 
 be arrived at in " the terms of the Lord's Prayer, — 
 the first words taught to children all over the Chris- 
 tian world. The first clause of it," he says, "gives 
 us the ground of what is surely a mighty part of the 
 gospel, its first and great commandment, namely, 
 that we have a Father whom we can love, and are 
 required to love, and to desire to be with in heaven, 
 wherever that may be. And to declare," he goes 
 on, " that we have such a loving Father, whose 
 mercy is over all his works, and whose will and law 
 is lovely and lovable, . . . this surely is a most glo- 
 rious good message and spell to bring to men, as 
 distinguished from the evil message . . . brought 
 to the nations instead of it, that they have no Fa- 
 ther, but only a ' consuming fire,' ready to devour 
 them unless they are delivered from its raging flame 
 by some scheme of pardon for all ; for which they 
 
WHO IS GOD? 301 
 
 are to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the 
 Son." So writes Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 Some years ago a good deal of attention was at- 
 tracted to a statement of theological belief made in 
 a sermon by a distinguished and popular preacher 
 of the liberal wing of the orthodox church. The 
 statement was this : — 
 
 " Christ Jesus is the name of my God. All that 
 there is of God is to me bound up in that name. A 
 dim and shadowy effluence arises from Christ, and 
 that I am taught to call the Father. A yet more 
 tenuous and invisible film of thought arises, and 
 that is the Holy Spirit. But neither is to me aught 
 tangible, restful, or accessible. . . . Christ stands 
 my manifest God. All that I know is of Him, and 
 in Him. I draw all my life from Him." 
 
 I can imagine that theologians in those churches 
 would not accept these two statements I have quoted 
 unchallenged. But judging from popular sermons 
 and hymns, I presume they present a fair view of 
 the general opinion and feeling in the churches. 
 To the majority in them, I presume, these words 
 represent their conception of God. The Father is 
 to them a faint abstraction or a fearful Being ; the 
 Son, Jesus Christ, is their trusted and loving and 
 real God. 
 
 A large part of the Christian world, though ac- 
 customed by habit almost daily to pray, " Our Father, 
 who art in heaven," seem not to have yet found 
 that Father. Perhaps they have been accustomed 
 to think that they could not "meet " Him till they 
 should come to that heaven which they picture be- 
 yond the tomb and beyond the sky. 
 
302 WHO IS GOD? 
 
 But my object is not to criticise or judge the 
 opinions of others. It is easy to see the inconsis- 
 tencies in creeds which we are not involved in ; it 
 is not always easy to state with entire fairness views 
 from which we differ, — to state them, I mean, as 
 they lie in the minds of those who hold them. 
 
 I want rather, moved thereto by Mr. Ruskin's 
 letter, to present the belief about God which lies in 
 my mind and, I suppose, in the main, in yours. And 
 in doing it I shall use our familiar phraseology. We 
 can put it, in a single sentence, in those words of 
 Paul : " To us there is one God, the Father." 
 
 Here we have a doctrine of God, simple, full, 
 sublime, and tender ; entirely sufficing, I believe, to 
 every need of the mind and heart, to every problem 
 and stress of life. To us the Father, and the Father 
 alone, is the sufficient God and Saviour. None can 
 love us so much as He ; none surely can be so mighty 
 to help. When we have named the Infinite One and 
 called him Father, surely we have spoken the Name 
 which is above every name ; the Love which is 
 beyond every love ; the Power which is beyond every 
 power. We have named Him who, if known, must 
 be nearest and dearest of all, and to all ; we have 
 named Him who is the All in all. 
 
 To us there is but one God. Our prayers are not 
 distracted, our worship is not divided, our thoughts 
 are not perplexed by a trinity or multiplicity of per- 
 sonages in the Godhead. Through all the manifold- 
 ness of operation and of manifestation we reach and 
 perceive the " One and self-same Spirit," the only, 
 the universal God. If we speak of manifestation, 
 three is not a sufficient number. If we address Him 
 
WHO IS GOD? 303 
 
 as almighty, all-loving, all-wise, all-holy, all-fair ; as 
 truth, justice, love, holiness, power; as Creator, Sus- 
 tainer, Providence, Judge, Redeemer, Comforter, it 
 is still one and only one Being that we have in mind. 
 If we think of Him as He is in himself, or as He is 
 present working in nature, or as He is indwelling in 
 the human soul, it is still the same one, undivided 
 Spirit. He who is the order and unity in nature is 
 the Father of our spirits. We cannot fit to our ideas 
 the Trinity of the church creeds and the church 
 prayers. We cannot, for instance, distinguish his 
 presence in Jesus from his presence in all prophets, 
 saints, and good men. We cannot distinguish the 
 " Holy Spirit " from the Father, who is the Spirit 
 and who is holy. 
 
 To us He is the one God. He is not divided 
 against himself. In that perfect Mind there is no 
 dissension. We cannot speak of his justice as op- 
 posed to his mercy, nor of his ability as contradicting 
 his desire. We have no need of any expedient to 
 reconcile his love with his law. His justice is but a 
 form of his love ; his mercy is also his law. It is 
 not his justice which condemns and his mercy which 
 forgives. If we repent of and forsake our sins, He, 
 as John said of old, "is just to forgive us our sins," 
 since reformation deserves forgiveness, and is re- 
 demption. If we continue in sin, his love sends 
 every penalty of natural consequences which we 
 need to admonish and recall us. For true love is not 
 the indulgence that spares its object all pain, but the 
 strong good-will and true kindness that gives pain 
 when the good of its object demands it. Our God 
 did not wait for the advent of Jesus in Palestine 
 
304 WHO IS GOD? 
 
 before he could or would redeem men. The Old 
 Testament is as full of forgiveness as the New. All 
 religions teach redemption, and show the way and 
 give the power. The healing powers in nature and 
 the good in the human soul reveal it. 
 
 To us, again, there is one God throughout the 
 world and in all ages, under whatever name. And 
 we believe Him as willing and as able to "save" the 
 Jew who comes to Him through Moses and the 
 prophets, or the Buddhist who comes to Him through 
 Gautama, or the Parsee who comes to Him through 
 Zoroaster, or the Mussulman who comes to Him 
 through Mohammed, or the Theist who comes to Him 
 through his own spirit, — or even those who name 
 Him not but obey his law, — as He is to save the 
 " Evangelical Christian " who comes to Him " through 
 Jesus Christ." It was long ago said that " in every 
 nation he that reverenceth God and doeth right is 
 accepted of Him." 
 
 And to us this One God is the Father. We ask 
 no higher name, we can have none nearer or dearer. 
 It satisfies the yearning of the heart ; it justifies itself 
 to the intellect. Let me try to unfold what we mean 
 by the Father. Certainly not a mere metaphysical 
 abstraction ; not the name of the "first person" of 
 a metaphysical Trinity; not an "effluence" or a 
 "film." The name is to us vital as with life-blood; 
 significant of the utmost reality. It does not give 
 us, indeed, a God visible to eyes, or of whom we can 
 make a picture in our imagination ; but it gives us a 
 God perceptible to our spirits, apprehensible to our 
 reason, and accessible to our love. 
 
 When we call God our Father, we mean, in the 
 
WHO IS GOD? 305 
 
 first place, that He is the source of our being, and 
 that our being is akin to Ids. We mean no^t merely 
 that we are creatures of his power and objects of his 
 love, but that we are born of his very substance. Our 
 essential life is a germ from his essential life. Our 
 nature is essentially his nature. We, as spirits, are 
 emanations from, and therefore manifestations of 
 Him, the Spirit. Made in his image, we inherit his 
 likeness. By this kinship we are perpetually bound 
 to Him and He to us. Here is a primal tie which 
 can never be abolished. This makes Him accessible, 
 apprehensible to us. Our own essential, that is, spir- 
 itual, faculties are representative of what He is. As 
 we live in them, He becomes known to us through 
 the law of affinity. Reason, justice, love, will, in us, 
 are not different in kind, but only in degree, from 
 the same qualities in Him. So the son in us reveals 
 the Father in Him ; and we can rightly judge of 
 thoughts, purposes, and deeds attributed to Him, by 
 their correspondence to the highest faculties in us. 
 Such a God can give us the sympathy of a nature 
 like our own. Hence no relation can be so intimate, 
 no being so near, as God, our Father, may be to us ; 
 while at the same time we reverently recognize that, 
 as Father, He is, to us children, far above us, higher, 
 greater, not comprehensible, although apprehensible. 
 The intimacy takes away no reverence, but inspires 
 it. The great mystery of God remains, only not to 
 terrify but to uplift ; and it is plain that, as we live 
 filially with Him, this nearness, intimacy, union, and 
 likeness will become more and more, from a possibil- 
 ity, an actuality. Our growing spirituality is a grow- 
 ing revelation of the Spirit to us ; for no one truly 
 
306 WHO IS GOD? 
 
 knoweth a father save a true son and him to whom 
 true sonship shall reveal him. 
 
 In the second place : in saying that our God is 
 the Father, we mean that He is perfect love. He 
 is no father who does not love his children ; and 
 He is not the Infinite Father who does not love his 
 children with absolutely unlimited and inexhaustible 
 love. We can, therefore, never impute to Him hate, 
 wrath, or anger, even against the most rebellious and 
 wicked of his children, whatever men of old time 
 may have thought and said. These, in men, are 
 perverted passions, and not spiritual faculties, and 
 they have no likeness or correspondence in the di- 
 vine nature. They are unworthy of a true human 
 father, and to attribute them to God is to make Him 
 worse than man. A being of infinite wrath is simply 
 Devil, not God. The only form of anger justifiable 
 in man is indignation against wrong. This must 
 represent something in God, whose face, to use the 
 Biblical figure, is certainly set against all evil doing 
 to destroy it. God being perfect love, when most 
 just He is most loving ; for his justice is but the 
 application of his love. And when that justice ap- 
 pears in the most terrible retributions, which are 
 the natural consequences of sin, we see it to be love 
 still, because we see it to be disciplinary, and never 
 vindictive. This love our. heart first feels, and then 
 our reason justifies, seeing everywhere proofs of the 
 beneficent Providence ; and where it cannot see, it 
 trusts still the affirmation of the heart, and believes. 
 It may seem, at times, as if this Providence were 
 only power and not love, and so God a Ruler and 
 not a Father ; for at times it looks as if the indi- 
 
WHO IS GOD? 307 
 
 vidual were quite disregarded and crushed in the 
 on-going of the great Will. But a farther-reaching 
 look, a more spiritual insight, justifies the heart 
 still. In a spiritual estimate, in the eternal view, a 
 great law of compensation is revealed, and we shall 
 find that the individual is cared for in the end as 
 scrupulously as the race, the atom as the universe, 
 and none are lost. The perfect Providence reaches 
 the individual, not by being special, minute, and de- 
 tailed, but by being universal. We can reconcile 
 with the thought of a loving and all-mighty Father 
 the existence of evil and suffering so long as they 
 are disciplinary, temporary, and capable of being lost 
 at last in infinite good ; but the moment you speak 
 of everlasting evil and everlasting misery, you have 
 dethroned the Father, and must look for another 
 God. 
 
 In the third place : in calling God the Father, we 
 mean that He is the Infinite Will, the Supreme Law, 
 the Absolute Authority. As our Father, he has a 
 rightful claim to our obedience. For his power is not 
 arbitrary strength, but it is the energy of wisdom, 
 love, and justice. His law is not arbitrary enactment 
 or statute, but it is the divine method of the uni- 
 verse ; it is the law of his own essential being. It is 
 therefore the law of our being, and we can live com- 
 pletely and happily only in accordance with it. We 
 obey Him when we obey the inmost laws of our 
 being, since his law for us is written in our constitu- 
 tion ; while at the same time we reverently recognize 
 it as a law above ourselves, and look to Him to reveal 
 it to our reason and conscience, and to give strength 
 to our will to obey it when revealed. God is Judge 
 
308 WHO IS GOD? 
 
 and Sovereign, but is these as the old patriarchs 
 were, and is not less, but all the more, our Father. 
 Our obedience is not the reluctant service of slaves 
 fearing the lash, but of sons glad to carry out the 
 Father's will, and to work in accomplishing his pur- 
 poses. If we disobey, we harm ourselves and others 
 by putting ourselves against the law of our nature 
 and of the universe ; and that law, which is God's 
 law, condemns us. The law, which is perfect justice 
 and perfect love, meets us, then, not as anger but as 
 retribution. It pursues us till it restores us to unity 
 with itself. So the same who judges also redeems ; 
 and our Father is our Saviour, too. 
 
 Such is our doctrine of the Father. We hold it 
 sufficient for every need of the soul, for every pri- 
 vate want and every public emergency. 
 
 You are lonely, desolate, friendless : here is One 
 bidding you know Him as the Father, and in that 
 name giving you assurance of tenderest sympathy, 
 the sympathy of a nature like your own ; who, be- 
 cause He is Spirit, can enter into your inmost spirit, 
 to comprehend, to strengthen and uphold. 
 
 The deep shadow of bereavement and affliction 
 lies heavy on your heart and broods darkly over your 
 home : lo ! " standing in the shadow," your Father. 
 In the silence a voice saying, " My child, be of good 
 cheer ; I am with you to bear your griefs ; I stand 
 by you, and you shall not fall ; I touch your sorrow 
 and change it into blessing." Is not the all-mighty, 
 all-loving Father the sufficient Comforter ? 
 
 You are troubled, weary, harassed with the care 
 and burden of life : what thought so helpful and 
 cheering as that of the eternal presence of the per- 
 
WHO IS GOD? 309 
 
 feet Providence, the Infinite Father, whose calmness 
 lies serenely above our distractions, and " around 
 our restlessness his rest ; " who is near in every 
 emergency and disappointment, and able and willing 
 to make everything work for good ! 
 
 You are confronted by difficult duty : what 
 thought can be so inspiring as the thought of Him, 
 the Father, whose work every duty is ; whose will is 
 working through every true work, in and through 
 every faithful man ! 
 
 You are tempted : what thought so powerful as 
 the remembrance of the nearness of the infinitely 
 holy Father, whose holiness is in your soul, too, as 
 warning and power, if you will listen to it and obey 
 it ; whose sons should be ashamed of every baseness, 
 since they are capable of all nobleness ! 
 
 But you have fallen, you have sinned, you have 
 disobeyed your Father's command, left his home, 
 sought a freedom which was not the liberty of his 
 sons, alienated yourself from Him, and incurred the 
 just, deserved penalty, the natural consequences 
 of the violated law : what thought so startling, so 
 moving, so redeeming as the remembrance of your 
 Father, whose son you still are, though a prodigal ! 
 What shame so keen as that of an ungrateful, diso- 
 bedient son ! The commands of a tyrant there might 
 be some manliness in defying ; but not those of a 
 Father. His love which was around you in your 
 innocence has followed you in all your wanderings, 
 and stirs the penitent resolve within you as you come 
 to yourself amid your hunger and your husks. You 
 will go and confess all to Him. You are not afraid 
 of your Father's perfect justice. It will give you 
 
3IO WHO IS GOD? 
 
 every penalty you need and deserve, and every help 
 you require to bear bravely the penalty. You will 
 wish to bear it manfully yourself and not put it off 
 upon another. So the God who has never left you 
 will redeem you, working in and with you, an all- 
 mighty, all-just, and all-loving Saviour. And He will 
 do this for you, I believe, as long as you exist, 
 whether in this world or in any other. 
 
 I might speak of other experiences. Let these 
 serve to show how sufficient to the needs of life the 
 doctrine of "one God, the Father" is. In Him we 
 find all that other religionists, hampered by what 
 seems to us a perplexing creed, have sought (and 
 have found) in their Saviour. Have found, I say ; 
 for God, I venture to believe, cares not for names: 
 and if men call him Jesus Christ, He is none the less 
 their God and Father, though they know Him not 
 clearly. Just as He is the God and Father of those 
 who call Him Buddha, or Ahura-mazda, or Allah, 
 or Jehovah, or Jupiter. To us the one God and 
 Father of all is Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Judge, Re- 
 deemer, Inspirer, Sanctifier, Comforter. For " all 
 these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit." 
 
 In saying this, I do not overlook the help we may 
 derive from human goodness, sympathy, strength. I 
 do not forget the inspiration, the consolation, the 
 saving power that comes to us from saints, martyrs, 
 heroes, faithful men and women, whom we meet in 
 the flesh or read of in history. 
 
 Whoever quickens the power of God in us and 
 helps free us from the power of evil is our saviour. 
 But through all these, and beyond them all, I must 
 see the Love, the Holiness, the Power which are 
 God. None can be so near to us ; none so willing, 
 
WHO IS GOD? 311 
 
 so able to help us, as our Father, who " is greater 
 than " all others. 
 
 The doctrine of the fatherhood of God is not 
 peculiar to Christianity. Father was the name famil- 
 iarly applied to the Supreme in ancient Greece and 
 Rome. It is found in the Old Testament as well as 
 in the New. It was repeated in the prayers of the 
 synagogue at Capernaum, and the temple at Jeru- 
 salem. But it is through the lips of Jesus that we 
 have learned to say " Our Father, who art in heaven." 
 To those who regard his reported words as final, it 
 might seem sufficient that he never in a single in- 
 stance that has been recorded called himself God, or 
 taught others to call him so ; that his constant name 
 for God was Father — " my Father and your Father," 
 he said to his disciples ; that he spoke of the Father 
 — not the Son — as dwelling in him and doing the 
 works ; and that in prayer to the Father he said, 
 " Thee, the only true God." 
 
 But not the words of the wisest and holiest will 
 suffice to reveal God to us as our Father : only the 
 son in ns ; the filial spirit of perfect trust, love, and 
 obedience. This alone will reveal to us fully what it 
 is to have for our God the Father. By spiritual 
 likeness alone can we know Him. 
 
 But as we have the name and the idea, let us try 
 to be true to it. Let us put off all notions and 
 phrases inconsistent with it. Let us feel its fullness, 
 its comfort, its inspiration, and its sufficiency. 
 
 We are not polytheists ; we are not orphans. 
 Let others have what God they mayor must ; to us 
 
 THERE IS BUT ONE GOD, THE FATHER. 
 February, 1880. 
 
WHAT IS MAN ? 
 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? . . . Yet Thou hast 
 made him little lower than the angels. — Psalm viii. 4, 5. 
 Beloved, now are we sons of God. — 1 John iii. 2. 
 
 I have spoken to you of God, who in the preva- 
 lent conception appears to be Jesus Christ, asso- 
 ciated with a fearful Being called the Father, but 
 little known, and a third shadowy and occasionally 
 appearing personage called the Holy Ghost. I tried 
 to present the truer conception of Him, dear to 
 spiritual minds, as the one, universal Spirit of 
 thought, love, and life, of truth, right, beauty, and 
 goodness ; the Power, Order, and Law in outward 
 nature, the Father of our spirits. 
 
 To-day I wish to speak to you of man. " What 
 is man," said the Hebrew Psalmist, " that Thou art 
 mindful of him ? Yet Thou hast made him little 
 lower than the angels ; " or, as some of the earlier 
 and later translations read, " but little lower than 
 God." 
 
 This, however, I need not tell you, is not the idea 
 of man in the popular theology. You know how 
 the churches speak of human nature. " Poor, fallen 
 human nature ; " " blind human reason ; " "the de- 
 ceitfulness and wickedness of the natural heart ; " 
 "the insufficiency of natural goodness;" — these 
 are the common phrases. You know what the old 
 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 313 
 
 creeds say : that man is by nature " utterly indis- 
 posed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and 
 wholly inclined to all evil." These are the words of 
 the New England Confession of Faith, which is the 
 basis of the creeds of the orthodox Congregational 
 churches, accepted by them "for substance of doc- 
 trine ; " and of the Westminster Confession, the stan- 
 dard of the Presbyterian churches. The " Shorter 
 Catechism," out of which the little ones in the latter 
 church are instructed in religion, teaches them to 
 say, " All mankind by the Fall lost communion with 
 God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made 
 liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, 
 and to the pains of hell forever." 
 
 This is the doctrine of " total depravity " and 
 "original sin." In one form or another it holds 
 possession of the churches. It is the foundation of 
 their whole system of theology. It is itself founded 
 upon the belief in what is called " the fall of man." 
 
 An ancient Hebrew legend, in which figure a 
 speaking serpent and trees, the eating of whose fruit 
 gives immortality and knowledge of good and evil, 
 is declared to be authentic, and, indeed, divinely dic- 
 tated history. According to this, the first created 
 man and woman sin in eating of the fruit, which 
 they have been forbidden to taste. At once their 
 innocence and uprightness are lost, their lives are 
 forfeited, their nature and destiny are changed. 
 That is not the worst. In their fall the whole race 
 which is to descend from them falls ; human nature 
 is corrupted and lost. With that taint of depravity 
 — not merely a tendency to sin, but the inability to 
 do anything else — every child is born into the 
 
314 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 world. The best born and the worst born are alike 
 under this curse. All men alike, by virtue of their 
 human nature, are disabled, ruined, lost. Their 
 highest virtues, most noble and generous senti- 
 ments, justest deeds, kindest affections, so long as 
 they are merely natural, are all tainted, all incapa- 
 ble of pleasing God. " Their righteousness is but 
 filthy rags." Human nature, as human, is evil. 
 Human reason, as human, is untrustworthy, and can 
 reach no knowledge of God. The human heart, as 
 human, is at enmity with Him. The human will, as 
 human, is opposed to his law. " One thing we must 
 all agree to," said an educated and amiable clergy- 
 man to me, " that the first voluntary act of a child 
 will certainly be evil." 
 
 This is the doctrine of the depravity of human 
 nature ; the received doctrine of the churches. It 
 is made the foundation of religion. The first step 
 in the religious life is made to be the consciousness 
 of sin ; not merely of sins knowingly committed, but 
 of the sinfulness of man's nature, and its lost state 
 without a Redeemer. " A man must feel," said a 
 distinguished theological professor, " the helpless- 
 ness of his guilt, and the guilt of his helplessness." 
 Into such a knot would the prevalent theology tie 
 us up. 
 
 I have tried to state this doctrine fairly. What 
 I have to say of it now — what you in your minds 
 are saying of it — is simply this : that it is not true. 
 Man is not fallen. The race is not in ruins. Hu- 
 man nature is not totally or substantially depraved. 
 It has as much of original good in it as it has of 
 "original sin." All scientific study of mankind 
 
WHA T IS MAN? 3 1 5 
 
 points to the rise of the human race from low be- 
 ginnings, not to its fall from high places. The 
 facts are against this theory. Human nature is all 
 about us. It is no extinct species. It is easy to 
 observe it. We need not go to old books to find out 
 what is true about it. Did any man, looking fairly, 
 ever see a totally depraved man ? or if he did, did 
 he take him as a true specimen of manhood ? Did 
 he not call him a monster ? Can he really believe 
 that his " unconverted " neighbor's goodness and 
 piety and honest endeavors to do right are unaccep- 
 table in the sight of God ? 
 
 There is, however, a truth covered up, and as I 
 think perverted, in the common belief. It is the 
 truth of heredity : the fact of the transmission not 
 only of physical qualities, but of moral tendencies 
 from parent to child, from generation to generation. 
 In this way, no doubt, evil tendencies — tendencies, 
 that is, to excess or perversion in certain directions 
 — are inherited and born in many a child. So the 
 " sins of the fathers are visited upon the children." 
 This is a truth of most serious significance. But 
 it is only half the truth. By the same law, good is 
 equally transmitted, — a fact full of encouragement 
 and hope, which the common doctrine entirely over- 
 looks. Even the evil taint never reaches to human 
 nature ; only to individual character. No human ca- 
 pacity is destroyed by it ; only the development of 
 capacity arrested or retarded. It has been said of 
 some men that they were so well born that they did 
 not need to be born again. If we are faithful, this 
 can be said of increasing numbers. At present, per- 
 haps, few are so well born but that, in some direc- 
 
316 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 tzons, they need regeneration, — if you choose that 
 word, — or development and discipline. 
 
 Against the common doctrine, as against a dark 
 background, let us hasten to set the bright truth, 
 Man is not fallen. There is no historical ground 
 for the alleged fact ; no necessity for the theory and 
 the system constructed upon it. Man is not fallen ; 
 he is imperfect. The race does not need to be re- 
 stored to a lost innocence, but to be educated on- 
 ward to a possible virtue. There are evil and wick- 
 edness enough in the world, — sin enough. No man 
 can shut his eyes to that. But there is no reason 
 to think that there was ever a time when there 
 was none. And never was there a time, I believe, 
 when there was so much goodness in the world as 
 now. Over against the theological fiction of the 
 Fall of Man let us write in letters of light the 
 natural truth of the Rise of Man. Over against 
 inherited depravity let us write inherited goodness 
 also. Over against the corruption of human nature 
 let us write the essential worth and rectitude of 
 human nature. Over against human disability let 
 us write human ability. Over against the falseness 
 of human reason and the wickedness of the human 
 heart let us write the trustworthiness (I do not say 
 infallibility) of reason, heart, and conscience. Over 
 against conversion, as the universal need, let us 
 write education as the universal need. Over against 
 supernatural grace let us write natural virtue and 
 human endeavor. 
 
 A germ, with an impulse of growth and a law 
 of development — that is what science finds every- 
 where, I believe, in physical nature. Germs of rea- 
 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 317 
 
 son, conscience, reverence, love, with an upward 
 tendency, an impulse of growth, a law of progres- 
 sive development, — these are what we shall find 
 in human nature. Human thought, feeling, moral 
 sense ; human customs, institutions, civilization, 
 have from earliest stages been advancing. Not un- 
 interruptedly indeed ; not without reversions, fall- 
 ings back ; not rapidly, not always even visibly, yet 
 certainly. From imperfection toward perfection is 
 the march ; though we must take large periods to 
 see it, sometimes. The outward world is not in 
 ruins but in building. And human nature is not in 
 ruins but in growth. 
 
 I believe that the native constitution of man con- 
 tains the elements of all the good that is in the 
 world ; of all the truth, the justice, the love, the 
 holiness — in a word, the religion. These are nei- 
 ther the remains of a primeval holiness destroyed 
 nor the fragments of an original revelation lost, nor 
 the product of a power supernaturally introduced. 
 Whatever a man by the grace of God may become, 
 that he has the native capacity to become. No 
 man needs a new nature, but only a new character. 
 Human nature is not under a curse, but under a 
 blessing, — the blessing of native capacity and in- 
 born law of growth. 
 
 Thus our theology sets out from faith in man. 
 It declares his native faculties of reason, conscience, 
 and heart to be, under right conditions, adequate, 
 good, and trustworthy. It declares the original idea 
 and law of human nature to be perfect. That idea 
 the race has never lost, but is slowly realizing and 
 developing. A man is "the perfect man" in pro- 
 
3l8 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 portion as he carries out the idea of human nature 
 and is obedient to the law of his being. We find 
 no faculty or propensity or instinct or passion in 
 human nature that is in itself and necessarily evil. 
 Every one is good in itself, intended for a good pur- 
 pose, and productive of good if legitimately exercised. 
 What we call evil passions are only good passions 
 carried to excess, or misdirected, or unbalanced. 
 What is needed is not eradication, but education ; 
 education including exercise, control, culture, en- 
 lightenment, influence, inspiration. 
 
 Inspiration, I say ; that incoming of quickening 
 from beyond ourselves and above ourselves, in which 
 there has been such a universal belief in the world. 
 The world has been accustomed, indeed, to regard 
 it as the special gift of a few men miraculously en- 
 dowed. We find it to be the common property of 
 human nature, as a capacity ; possessed in varying 
 degree, according to the degree in which the con- 
 ditions have been fulfilled. Like all natural forces, 
 it acts under law. Its conditions are aspiration and 
 obedience. A native capacity, how could it yet fail 
 to be in some men more intense, more full, more 
 vivid in its utterance, more profound and enduring 
 in its influence ? But no need of supplementary, 
 special and miraculous intervention to provide that 
 which was already provided for in the native consti- 
 tution of man, waiting but for favorable development. 
 Among the original faculties of human nature, we 
 find what we call the religious or spiritual faculties. 
 We find an inborn tendency to religion in all peo- 
 ples and times, manifesting itself in cruder or riper 
 forms and with superficial differences, but declaring 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 319 
 
 a natural relation between the spirit of man and the 
 Spirit which, under many names, is God. 
 
 What is all this but saying, in our familiar lan- 
 guage, that man is the child of God ? What is it 
 but claiming our birthright as " sons of God," 
 " made in his image," " partakers of the divine 
 nature " ? Such we believe we are by nature, and 
 not by supernatural grace. Such we are in capacity, 
 whatever we may be in attainment. Such we are 
 in nature, whatever we may be in character. 
 
 I have been speaking of human nature, not of 
 human diameter. Nature means capacity ; charac- 
 ter means attainment. It is the nature of an apple- 
 tree to grow and bear apples. A particular tree 
 may be stunted and fruitless ; or its fruit may be 
 gnarled and bitter. What it needs is only cultiva- 
 tion, a better soil and better exposure, to bring out 
 its true nature. 
 
 Should any one ask, then, If the moral and re- 
 ligious faculties be native in man, how can you ex- 
 plain that all men are not virtuous, that all men are 
 not religiously devout ? the answer is, of course, 
 that faculties may exist and yet not be used ; that 
 capacities which men alike possess may be in differ- 
 ent degrees developed. 
 
 Genius is not supernatural. Newton had not a 
 different nature from the schoolboy puzzling over 
 his sum. Jesus had not a different nature from 
 Pharisee and sinner, though a character how differ- 
 ent ! Of two sons of God, one may be an obedient 
 dweller with his Father, another may be a wander- 
 ing prodigal. But we have high authority for say- 
 ing that the prodigal may repent and " come," not 
 
320 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 to a mediator, not to his elder brother, but " to him- 
 self " and to his Father. 
 
 To be the son of God is man's nature. To be 
 consciously a child of God, willingly an obedient 
 son, that is his growth in religious life. To the 
 reverently exercised spirit there comes a time when 
 it feels God, the Spirit, more than near. In some 
 hour of high thought, when his reason has caught 
 sight of a great truth ; in some still hour of com- 
 munion, or strong yearning of prayer, when a great 
 peace has filled his heart ; in some nobler hour of 
 self-devotion or right-doing, when duty has grown 
 clear to his conscience and a quickening energy 
 has exalted his will ; in some moment of purity, 
 when high and spiritual affections have warmed his 
 heart, — then he has felt the assurance, glad, over- 
 powering, uplifting, unspeakably beautiful and holy, 
 that the God whom he had reverenced with such 
 awe as above him was now entered into his spirit, 
 an indwelling, inspiring presence. This love is 
 God's love ! This truth is God's truth ! This justice 
 is God's justice! This peace is God's peace! One 
 cannot speak many words of such an experience. 
 It is the experience of saints in all time, from the 
 Ganges to the Jordan and the Delaware. It is the 
 experience of every believing soul in its saintly 
 moments. Then the light within is felt to be the 
 light of God : " the spirit of man is the candle of 
 the Lord." Then we cry, O Father, hast thou been 
 thus always with me, and have I not known thee ? 
 Then we learn that the Spirit which stirred us so 
 powerfully in those rapt moments is every hour 
 working in most familiar ways within our spirits. 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 32 1 
 
 Such is our faith in man. As we believe in God, 
 the Father, so we believe in man, the son. Man, 
 not fallen, but imperfect ; often erring, often sin- 
 ning ; yet not incapable of finding the way ; capable 
 of redeeming himself with God's help. That help is 
 ever ready to him who earnestly seeks. It may 
 come to him through human mediations ; they are 
 channels of God. Most powerfully and sweetly it 
 comes through immediate contact and communion of 
 our spirits with their Father. 
 
 A most notable sign of our time is the growing 
 faith in man. In some quarters it is carried to the ex- 
 cess of being made a substitute for faith in God. This 
 is the far swing of the pendulum away from the ex- 
 cessive faith in God which makes man to be " nought 
 and less than nought ; " which thinks to glorify God 
 by depreciating and decrying man. But intelligent 
 men who avoid extremes are coming to offset divine 
 grace with human ability. For superhuman revela- 
 tion they write human discovery of truth, and declare 
 all religions, all bibles, to be the outgrowth of human 
 nature. For passive reliance on the divine provi- 
 dence they put the exercise of human providence 
 which, through knowledge, and care and faithful use 
 of faculty and obedience to natural law, so largely is 
 learning to arrest disaster, to heal and to prevent 
 disease, and to extend life. The responsibility of 
 evil is shifted from God to man, and also the provid- 
 ing the remedy. In place of a supernatural grace 
 converting the sinner, and trust in the atoning 
 merits and sacrifice of a Redeemer, they substitute 
 the human ability to put away evil and do what is 
 right and good, the self-sacrifice of the lower to the 
 
322 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 higher, and the attainment of just so much of "sal- 
 vation " and of "heaven" as each man in himself 
 merits and makes, and no more. In a word, in place 
 of the descent of God they put the ascent of man. 
 
 But does all this faith in man, in which I heartily 
 join, does this reliance on human ability exclude 
 God? No, it includes Him. It includes Him as 
 the ground of all power, the inspiring helper of all 
 endeavor, the constant life of all life. Our power is 
 the power to work, not instead of Him, but with Him. 
 Our knowledge is not to know that He is unknow- 
 able, but to know his ways and his methods in those 
 laws of nature, which to the devout mind are his will. 
 Our wisdom of experience is the learning to conform 
 our wills to his ; to obey those conditions of our true 
 and best life which surely no man created. If we can 
 discover these laws and conditions of life, it is be- 
 cause they already existed before and beyond us. If 
 long-accumulated experience of the race has found 
 out that a certain course of moral conduct is best for 
 our life, it is because the universe, or the world, is so 
 framed as to make it the best. And surely it was 
 not man that so framed it. He has only discovered 
 it and adapted himself to it. We shall find peace in 
 doing righteousness because the " Power not our- 
 selves makes for righteousness." We are to work 
 out our own salvation, precisely because God is 
 already and always working in that direction, and 
 because that which is working in us to that end is 
 God ; and because to be working in the direction of 
 his will is our salvation. 
 
 Sons of God, his children, receiving from Him a 
 nature akin to his, and partakers of his, let us never 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 323 
 
 forget that we have something God-like, something 
 of God, something of our Father, in us. Let us 
 never forget to what that summons us. For the 
 capacity imposes the duty. 
 
 Every thought ought to end in act, every specu- 
 lation lead to conduct. If we have the belief — the 
 better belief we count it — we must make it shape 
 our better lives. As children of God, endowed with 
 this high human nature, with these spiritual capaci- 
 ties, we are bound, as the apostle so strongly says, — 
 are bound to live not chiefly for the flesh, but chiefly 
 for the spirit. We are under bonds to live nobly, 
 humanly, manly ; to live unselfishly, to live bravely, 
 to live conscientiously, to live supremely for the 
 principles that are unseen but most real and endur- 
 ing ; to live that eternal life which is the life of the 
 eternal part of us. 
 
 If we counted ourselves fallen, disabled, thor- 
 oughly evil, totally depraved in our nature, we might 
 say, Then let us act out our nature, do the things 
 that are low and weak and wicked ; nothing better 
 can be expected of us. We might say this ; I think 
 logically we should say it. I do not mean that those 
 who believe in the depravity of human nature do say 
 it or act after it. Something in them, which they 
 ignore, keeps them from that. They demand of dis- 
 abled humanity to do a man's work. 
 
 Let us remember, in this conflict and discipline of 
 character, that, if human nature be weak, it is also 
 strong ; if it yield to temptation, it may resist and be 
 victorious. If it have animal passions and appetites 
 that war against the spirit, it has a spirit to war 
 against these ; has reason, conscience, spiritual affec- 
 
324 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 tions to control and direct the flesh. If it be selfish, 
 it is also unselfish. If it be ignorant, it also knows 
 in part and increasingly. If it be fallible, it is trust- 
 worthy and sufficient for our present need, and may 
 reach convictions which, if they fall short, need not 
 betray. Remember that good is as natural to man 
 as evil, and with right growth becomes more natural. 
 See, then, that you give the good supremacy through 
 the habitual choice of good. Expect, demand good 
 and true and noble and generous things of yourself 
 and of others. Faith in our nature, while it makes 
 us humble in view of our attainment, ought to in- 
 spire us with perpetual courage and endeavor in view 
 of our capacities. Respect yourself too much to de- 
 scend to what is base, sensual, selfish, unjust, un- 
 manly, inhuman. Let your lives do credit to your 
 birth. Noblesse oblige. See that your lives, within 
 and without, do honor to your Father. " Herein is 
 your Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." 
 Manifest Him to the world, through moulding your- 
 selves in his image, growing up into his likeness, 
 doing his will. Thus will you be fellow -workers 
 with Him in redeeming that world which, that it 
 may be redeemed, is only " waiting for the manifes- 
 tation of the sons of God." 
 
 March, 1880. 
 
PRAYER 
 
 Ye ask and ye receive not, because ye ask amiss. — James iv. 3. 
 
 Prayer draws gently upward the habitude of our thought, and im- 
 parts to us the ways of the divine thought. It nurtures pure love, 
 and kindles what is divine in our souls. In a word, prayer procures 
 to them who follow it a familiar communion with Deity. — Iambli- 
 chus. 
 
 Whenever men have risen to the belief in God, 
 under whatever form, they appear instinctively to 
 feel that they must have access to Him, must come 
 into personal relations with Him. If they conceive 
 of Him as a mysterious elemental Power in the na- 
 ture around them, they must try to make that Power 
 favorable to them ; to ward off its harmful aspects, 
 to win its beneficent favor. If they conceive of Him 
 as mainly the Judge of human actions and Sovereign 
 decider of human fates, they try to appease his anger, 
 to win his moral approval, to avert, by some form of 
 propitiation, his condemning sentence. If they think 
 of Him as Father, in the sense of protecting love and 
 watchful care and counsel, they will seek to know 
 his will and be worthy of his affection. If they call 
 Him Father in the deeper sense of spiritual kindred 
 and identity of nature, it will seem most natural and 
 inevitable that there should be spiritual communion 
 and inspiration. If they conceive of Him as the all- 
 pervading Life of the universe, they will naturally 
 wish to come into conscious contact with it, to re- 
 
326 PRAYER 
 
 ceive more and more of its quickening into their own 
 thought, feeling, and will, and to reinforce their own 
 intermittent powers by the inflowing of this stead- 
 fast force. If they conceive of Him as the immanent 
 principle of that order of the universe which works 
 always by unchanging law, wrought into the consti- 
 tution of things, they will naturally wish to learn the 
 conditions of that law, and to bring themselves into 
 conformity with that order by fulfilling those condi- 
 tions. If they conceive Him as Spirit, they will de- 
 sire a conscious union with Him by the exercise 
 of their own spiritual faculties ; those faculties by 
 which they have vision of and vital connection with 
 the Highest. 
 
 A man's conception of God will necessarily deter- 
 mine or color his conception of his relation to God 
 and his mode of access to Him. The common notion 
 of prayer is therefore closely connected with the 
 common notion of God. I need not say how anthro- 
 pomorphic that conception is ; how closely patterned 
 after human limitations. Matthew Arnold's phrase, 
 "a magnified and non-natural man," well expresses 
 it. He is conceived of as a separate, individual per- 
 sonage, of vaguely infinite proportions, whose will is 
 expressed, not in the action of universal natural law, 
 but in arbitrary volitions, the divine choice of the 
 moment. To say that an event happens by God's will 
 means that it occurs by his direct intention. He has 
 a preference as to who shall be bishop in an English 
 diocese or deacon in a New England church. He 
 can decide to give the victory in an election or a 
 battle, on one side or the other. He can direct a 
 vote in Congress or a strategy on the field. He 
 
PRAYER 327 
 
 apportions prosperity or adversity, and saves or de- 
 stroys human lives, by his arbitrary will, " after his 
 own good pleasure." 
 
 In all this way of conceiving God and his relation 
 to man, prayer naturally takes the form of petition, 
 or the asking Him to give, or to do, special things 
 for special persons. In the earliest forms of religion, 
 the savage prays to his fetish, the idolater before his 
 image, for whatever he wants that he cannot get for 
 himself. He prays for rain and for sunshine ; he 
 prays for food in scarcity, for defense against tem- 
 pests, for healing of his sick child, for the cessation 
 of disease among his cattle, for success in battle and 
 the destruction of his enemy. These things he hopes 
 to get as a direct gift in answer to his prayer, from 
 the mysterious power or personage whom his idol 
 represents ; to get it in return for asking, as his 
 boy, for the asking, might get from him food or a 
 bow or javelin. In the most enlightened modern 
 communities, prayers are still offered for rain in 
 drought, for favorable seasons and abundant harvests, 
 for the restoration of the sick, for a prosperous voy- 
 age, for victory in battle, for the staying of the fever's 
 pestilence. The Archbishop of England prepares a 
 form of prayer to be used to abate the murrain in 
 cattle, or to avert the cholera. For other things 
 devout men pray, that God would " hasten the time " 
 when wars shall cease and oppressions come to an 
 end; that He would "convert the world " to Chris- 
 tianity [or, in some quarters, to Mohammedanism or 
 Judaism] ; that He would " make " presidents and 
 kings good and wise, and legislators just, and the 
 community virtuous. They pray for themselves, or 
 
$28 PRAYER 
 
 their children, that He would " make " them holy and 
 faithful and righteous and unselfish, and victorious 
 over temptation. 
 
 Now, all this asking, often formal, but often, also, 
 very ardent and earnest, proceeds upon the idea, more 
 or less definitely held, that God is an individual per- 
 sonage, dwelling by himself, overseeing and minutely 
 directing, after an altogether human fashion, all hu- 
 man affairs ; that everything which we ask for in 
 faith He will give us directly out of hand, as a human 
 father gives his child money, or a toy, or a book, for 
 the asking, 
 
 But when we outgrow this primitive and childish 
 conception of God ; when we come to think of Him 
 as Person, if you will, or conscious Mind, but not as 
 a personage ; as Being, rather than a being; not so 
 much just, as Justice ; not so much true, as Truth ; 
 not so much loving, as Love ; not so much holy, as 
 Holiness ; in short, as the Infinite Spirit, not a God, 
 but God, then our approach to Him, our expectation 
 from Him, our prayer to Him, must change its form. 
 When we conceive of Him as the Universal Life, the 
 one all-pervading Power, of which Truth, Righteous- 
 ness, Beauty, Love are the correlative forms ; when 
 we conceive of his Will as not a series of separate 
 intentions, the volitions of the moment, but as the 
 constant, unbroken, immutable stream of beneficent 
 Energy ; when we think of this Will as a power that 
 works always by the unchanging methods of law, — 
 then we shall know that He gives nothing out of 
 hand, but that all things are to be obtained by fulfill- 
 ing the conditions, by using the appropriate means. 
 We shall then give up the old ways of asking for the 
 
PR A YER 329 
 
 true ways of seeking. The old ways will be seen to 
 be irrational and barren. All of the old phraseology 
 which, through habit and association, we may retain 
 will be felt to be mythological and figurative. We 
 shall gradually adjust our feelings and our words to 
 our thought, and from very sincerity cast off the 
 phrases that to us are no longer true, though the 
 language of prayer will be always the language of 
 feeling, not of science. 
 
 When the irrationality of the old conceptions and 
 language is first perceived, there is a tendency in the 
 name of reason to throw off all that they repre- 
 sented as being untrue as they. Men are saying : 
 " It is irrational to believe in such a God as the 
 churches present, let us boldly say there is no God ; 
 the prayers of the churches are futile, let us re- 
 nounce all prayer ; the religion of the churches is 
 superstitious, let us throw aside all religion, and 
 breathe freely and act naturally." 
 
 If, however, we have learned to think that nothing 
 which is native to man is altogether wrong or use- 
 less ; if we are accustomed to believe that no error 
 long maintains its hold of the human mind which 
 does not contain a germ of truth, we try to find 
 what this all but universal faith in prayer and habit 
 of prayer really means. So that we may hold by 
 the essential truth which the error represents — 
 even if it misrepresents. 
 
 Under the common ideas and language of prayer 
 lie these truths, as it seems to me : — 
 
 That there is a Power beyond the human powers. 
 
 That this power is not to be resisted by us ; that 
 if we try to resist or thwart it, we injure ourselves 
 
330 PRAYER 
 
 and suffer ; that, if we are in accord with it, it 
 blesses, strengthens, and prospers us. 
 
 That we are closely related to and intimately in- 
 volved in this power ; that it is a factor in all that 
 we have and do ; that our wisdom is to know more 
 and more of it, to search out its ways, learn its con- 
 ditions, and then to adjust and conform ourselves to 
 them. 
 
 That this power is not only a physical force in- 
 volving our physical being, but a spiritual force in- 
 volving our spiritual being, to which we are intimately 
 related in our minds, consciences, and affections ; 
 that it is a moral order of the universe, as well as 
 a material order. 
 
 That we have faculties suited to knowing this 
 power ; that, seeking it, we may find it ; that, work- 
 ing with it, we receive its invigoration and share its 
 life, becoming channels of its operation ; that, as 
 our truest wisdom is to know it, so our truest life is 
 to obey it, and our truest religion to trust it with 
 entire acceptance, and to act with it in entire faith. 
 
 That our growth in life, in power, in success, in 
 joy, is in proportion to our likeness to, our reception 
 of, our submission to, our working with, this Power 
 which is more than we, which rules and orders the 
 universe, and holds every atom of our bodies, and 
 every thought of our minds, and every purpose of 
 our wills in its law, while within its bounds we have 
 a certain real, though limited, freedom of choice and 
 action. 
 
 This Power we call God ; that name to which we 
 gladly revert from all other expressions, because it 
 says so little and means so much ; means all that we 
 
PR A YER 
 
 331 
 
 can put into it of truth and goodness and might and 
 beauty and life — and more. 
 
 Prayer, in a rational and spiritual sense, is the 
 seeking — and finding — God. It is the longing to 
 reach the strength which is in his steadfast energy ; 
 the peace which is in his unbroken order ; the love 
 which is in his universal good-will ; the truth which 
 is in his infinite thought ; the righteousness which 
 is in his holy purpose. It is the bringing, the lift- 
 ing up, of our mind, heart, conscience, and will into 
 contact with Him. Then we see how far we are 
 from, or how near we are to, that high ideal — to a 
 likeness to which the identity of our nature with 
 his pledges us as a possibility. Then, as from a 
 mountain-top, we see our lives in their truer rela- 
 tions, and better discover what is our true path. We 
 see our sins in their true unworthiness, divested 
 of the glamour of passion ; we see our difficulties 
 and troubles and burdens in the light of the greater 
 strength that shall cheerfully meet and overcome 
 them, of the larger purpose that shall make them 
 a blessed discipline. We see things in their far- 
 reaching relations, and not in their short-sighted as- 
 pects. The wrongs, the evil, and the darkness are 
 beheld in the final order of the supreme Good. 
 
 As we come to the rational and spiritual concep- 
 tion of prayer, we, as I said, change asking to seek- 
 ing. We first give up asking for outward and ma- 
 terial goods as if they could be directly given ; for 
 we know that, if we would have them, we must fulfill 
 the conditions upon which they may be obtained, so 
 far as our own exertions are among those conditions ; 
 and must trust for what is beyond our power to those 
 
332 PRAYER 
 
 forces which will not be changed to meet our wishes, 
 but which will bring about the fulfillment of such 
 wishes as are in accordance with them. 
 
 Then we give up asking for spiritual benefits — 
 for love and faith and holiness — as if they could be 
 directly given; for we see that, in the spiritual 
 realm also, law reigns and conditions must be ful- 
 filled. But one condition of spiritual attainment is 
 spiritual seeking, spiritual earnestness. Inspiration 
 comes from aspiration ; spiritual life and health from 
 the exercise of our spiritual powers. We no longer 
 ask God to come down to us, or to reveal himself 
 to us, except as a figure of speech ; but we strive 
 to lift our spirits up ; to open our spiritual eyes to 
 receive that light which is ever about us. As we 
 know that, if we want health of body, we are not 
 to ask for it, but to get it by obeying the laws of 
 health (such as exercise in a pure atmosphere) ; so, 
 if we want holiness, we must obey its laws by exer- 
 cising holy feelings and wills, in the atmosphere of 
 holiness, which is the holy spirit in good men, or 
 God. Thus our prayer resolves itself more and 
 more into communion and meditation, and then 
 action ; and the inward exercise is a preparation for 
 the outward, and, I will say, a needed exercise. Our 
 actions fail in nobleness because they spring from 
 superficial motives or a low ideal. The prayer of 
 communion and meditation is precisely fitted to 
 deepen and elevate our ideal by comparison with, 
 and by companionship with, the Highest and the 
 most Central. It gives us a universal and eternal 
 standard, instead of a local, temporary, individual 
 one. It lifts us to our own highest and best. It 
 
PRAYER 333 
 
 helps to purify us from self-seeking, and to strengthen 
 those powers and sentiments in us whose province 
 it is to limit our passions, and rightly direct them to 
 good and worthy ends. 
 
 "To labor is to pray " is the often quoted maxim 
 ascribed to the monks of old, — a source from which 
 we should little expect it. We are urged now not 
 to pray for, but to work for, the good we want. 
 Simply to ask for it, instead of working for it, were 
 indeed futile. We ought to leave off asking God 
 to give in ways He never uses ; to be what He 
 always is ; to do the things which He is always 
 doing, or those which, by all claims, it is man's busi- 
 ness to do. And if there be any way appointed (in 
 that "nature of things" which, to the religious 
 mind, is "God's will ? ') by which a thing is to be 
 got, that way we must try to learn and follow. We 
 must search out the ways of God, that, finding, we 
 may walk and work therein. 
 
 But life is not only action ; it is thought and feel- 
 ing also. We must, then, exercise not only our 
 will, but our thought and our feeling, if we would 
 get the fullness of our life. A life given entirely to 
 action is apt to be hurried and driven, wanting in 
 depth, in elevation, in tranquillity. Its moral tone 
 is easily lowered by reference to visible results and 
 immediate effects. What shall keep the aim high 
 and true, what keep the impulse steady and patient ? 
 What but withdrawal, from time to time, into that 
 higher realm of thought and feeling where, in con- 
 tact with the highest, the best, the immutable and 
 the eternal, we can revise our estimates, test our 
 procedures, and purify our motives ? We need, in 
 
334 PRAYER 
 
 this hurried, confused life of activities, to turn from 
 the streets to the solitudes of the soul, where we 
 may look up to the calm heavens and the steadfast 
 stars, and drink of waters that spring from cool and 
 unpolluted depths. This we do in the prayer of 
 meditation and communion with the Spirit. And 
 for such prayer we must carefully secure the hours, 
 and faithfully use the opportunity. Our willingness 
 to do so will be a good gauge of the height of our 
 spiritual life. And, therefore, where we have the 
 least willingness we may have the most need. 
 
 I should not have said all — indeed I leave many 
 things unsaid — if I did not add this : that it is not 
 only in what we do for ourselves in prayer that its 
 power lies. I spoke of companionship. In its calmly 
 uplifted mood we become receivers of the Power 
 beyond ourselves. Doubtless, whenever we act in 
 the line of the action of that Power, in doing the 
 things that are just, pure, true, and loving, we are 
 receivers of the Life that then flows into and through 
 our will. But also when, withdrawn from outward 
 action, we think and feel, that quickening Spirit of 
 truth and love and peace flows into our conscious 
 souls. And so prayer is an inlet of God into our 
 spirits, and lifts us above ourselves. Such help 
 shall we disdain, or voluntarily cut ourselves off 
 from such supplies? Surely by such companion- 
 ship our manhood must be enhanced. 
 
 The essence of prayer is reverent and trustful 
 seeking ; the earnest desire, the upward look, and 
 the confiding will. Whether these take form in 
 acts, in words, or in thought and feeling alone, they 
 are true prayer, and bring the answer and blessing 
 
PRAYER 335 
 
 of prayer. And the highest reward of prayers is 
 that they make reverence and trust to become more 
 and more the constant mood of our souls, and, grad- 
 ually ceasing from times and forms, we " pray with- 
 out ceasing." 
 
 But this is the completest attainment of piety. 
 Toward it we should be tending. Few, perhaps, 
 can count themselves to have fully attained. 
 
 In the earlier stages of our spiritual growth we 
 use set times of prayer — forms of words, our own 
 or others'. We thus avail ourselves of the power 
 which association gives to fixed times and places and 
 familiar words to awaken feeling. The words are 
 helps to give definiteness and strength to our de- 
 vout emotions. It is a great moment in a boy's re- 
 ligious life when he begins to use words of his own, 
 and to know that his prayer is of no avail unless he 
 really feels what he is saying ; and when some spe- 
 cial need of comfort or help sends him, in real sense 
 of need and in real faith, to the God who seeth in 
 secret. As we go on to a more spiritual conception 
 of God, and to feel that we are constantly enfolded 
 in his presence, which is strength and love and holi- 
 ness, our words grow fewer and less formal, as if a 
 whisper were enough to reach one so near. In the 
 deepest experiences the words are fewest, — "O 
 God, help me ! " " God be thanked." In the high- 
 est moments, the words utterly fail ; to attempt to 
 use them chills the current of our feeling ; definite 
 thoughts even are left behind ; we are 
 
 " Rapt into still communion which transcends 
 The imperfect offices of prayer and praise." 
 
 But whether we speak or are silent, it is the 
 
336 PRAYER 
 
 thought and the feeling which make the prayer. 
 God is Spirit, and only what is spiritual can reach 
 Him — be " heard " by Him, as we say in our figure 
 of speech. The loudest, the most eloquent, the 
 most devotional words, with no spiritual life behind 
 them, we may say are not even perceived by Him. 
 They are vacancy and nonentity. But not one sin- 
 gle heart-throb of real feeling, of real yearning, of 
 real trust, faith, reverence, devout thankfulness, but 
 quicker than thought, surer than light, is felt by 
 that infinite Spirit in whom we dwell. We know 
 how little even human sympathy, when truest, has 
 need of words ; but the pressure of a hand, the look 
 from an eye, the glow of a face are full of meaning, 
 felt and returned. So is it with the sympathy be- 
 tween our spirits and the Spirit, between the child 
 and the Father. 
 
 To lift us out of our perplexities toward his clear 
 truth, out of our shadows into his light, out of our 
 burdens into his strength, out of our disappointed 
 or unwise purposes into his will, out of our despon- 
 dencies and frets and troubles and griefs into his 
 peace, — this is the office of prayer. That we can 
 find that light, that strength, that love, that peace, 
 is the all-sufficient answer to prayer. Any special 
 good or particular benefit seems trivial in compari- 
 son — not to be named, not to be desired. 
 
 Or if into our prayer of meditation and commun- 
 ion we ever bring our special wishes for things, it 
 will be only to see how those wishes look beside the 
 thought of God. Can they stand that presence and 
 that light ? 
 
 Love, reverence, trust, thankfulness — these are 
 
PRAYER 337 
 
 the essence of prayer ; these cannot fail to bring 
 the answer of prayer ; they are the answer of 
 prayer ; and the more we have of them, the less we 
 shall have to ask for. 
 
 O friends, in this world and life of ours, full 
 indeed of joys and satisfactions, but also full of 
 uncertainties, of anxieties, of duties not always 
 clearly seen, and often haltingly performed, of dis- 
 appointed expectations and sympathies imperfectly 
 met, — is it not a great privilege that we can lift 
 ourselves above ourselves ; that there is this Wis- 
 dom, this Goodness, this Will greater than we, which 
 we can take hold upon to keep us from falling and 
 to steady and guide our uncertain steps — to which 
 we can in trust leave so much that is beyond our 
 control ? How is our responsibility lightened, our 
 burden made easier, our way more plain ! How is 
 our fainting courage reassured, and our faltering will 
 reinforced, and our troubled heart calmed, when we 
 but think of God, and remember that " his greafc- 
 ness lies around our incompleteness — round our 
 restlessness his rest ! " To be lifted above our- 
 selves by communion and contact with the sanctity, 
 the energy, the calmness of God ! Even so a man 
 is reassured, and kept to his best, and lifted above 
 himself by a pure and noble human friendship. 
 Even so a little child waking in the night, affrighted 
 at the darkness and the loneliness, reaches out and 
 finds his mother's hand, and sure now that he is 
 safe, stops his tears, and falls asleep until the day 
 dawns. 
 
 October, 1879. 
 
THE HOME 
 
 "And though abroad the sharp wind blow, 
 And skies are chill, and frosts are keen, 
 Home closer draws her circle now, 
 And warmer glows her light within." 
 
 The season presses upon me the topic of Home. 
 I shall try to speak of its foundation, its blessings, 
 its disciplines ; if so I may deepen a sense of its 
 worth and sacredness. 
 
 I know the drawbacks and the deductions that 
 must be made. I know that all homes are not true 
 homes ; that none perhaps are perfect. But when I 
 remember what I owe to the good and happy home 
 which embosomed my childhood and sheltered and 
 trained my youth, and when I think of the thousands 
 of homes that have been and are to others what that 
 was to me, I feel as if I were but paying a debt for 
 myself, and for you too, in what I am going to say. 
 
 Of course, I do not say that the home — the fam- 
 ily — is all. The world — society — has claims on 
 us, and opportunities and benefits for us, very need- 
 ful for the development of our humanity, our charac- 
 ters, and our powers. There have been good and 
 noble men and women who have never known a 
 home. I think they will tell you that they have 
 always missed something ; that the best in them 
 they owed to homes not their own. I know that 
 we often find a more perfect sympathy outside the 
 
THE HOME 339 
 
 home than within it. The very foundation of the 
 home lies in the natural law which makes us seek 
 outside of it. I of course know not what may in the 
 future be evolved from our present forms of society. 
 But I cannot foresee that anything can be better than 
 a society which is a union of families. All organic 
 physical bodies are formed from the union of cells ; 
 and the cell-walls are broken, not to abolish cells, 
 but to form new ones. I cannot foresee what may 
 be evolved out of the present family relation ; but I 
 deem the inquiry unprofitable. For I see that the 
 family is very far from having exhausted its possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 I think we should be better employed in develop- 
 ing and perfecting it, in making the most and best 
 of it, than in imagining or seeking substitutes for it. 
 We shall be better employed in studying its laws 
 and obeying them, than in opening the doors to any 
 lawless caprice. 
 
 For I see that the family is — and I do not see 
 why it should not always be — the best preparation 
 for, and foundation of, society ; the best fitting-place 
 for life's work ; the best nursery of all the sweetest 
 and noblest traits of human character. It is this by 
 its sympathies and its oppositions ; by what it gives 
 and by what it demands ; by its privileges and by its 
 duties ; by its satisfactions and by its disciplines. 
 
 And the man who lives outside of it is a loser 
 in both ways ; missing the benefits and the demands, 
 the joys and the responsibilities. It is a sacrifice 
 that sometimes has to be made, either from neces- 
 sity or from a sacred sense of duty ; but it is none 
 the less a loss. 
 
340 THE HOME 
 
 The home is this that I have said because it is 
 founded in love. If it be not so, it is not home, but 
 only a house ; hollow walls, however painted and 
 gilded ; drearily empty, however splendidly fur- 
 nished. 
 
 And, love being the sweetness and delight which 
 it is, being the power and strength which it is, being 
 the very presence of God in us which the Apostle 
 tells us it is, — we have to note that in the home it 
 is found not in one but in manifold forms. Did you 
 ever think of that ? First, there is the love of hus- 
 band and wife, that warm attraction which draws 
 them away from all other ties to cleave to one an- 
 other, and which in every true marriage remains, I 
 suppose, supreme, whatever others are added. That 
 is one kind of love, the conjugal. Then there is 
 the love of parent to child, another kind of love, 
 the providential love of care and protection, that 
 leans downward to helplessness and inexperience. 
 Then there is the love of child to parent, a still 
 different form, the love that looks up in depend- 
 ence and reverence, that flies to mother's arms and 
 heart for shelter and consolation, to father's hand 
 and mind for counsel and help. Then there is the 
 love of brother and sister, still different, the love 
 of equal sympathy and nearness of age, and like 
 pursuits and thoughts ; a kindly, helpful friendship, 
 whose roots run farther back than those of any 
 other friendship, and into more places of memory 
 and association. 
 
 Nor is the list yet exhausted. Since the home must 
 also be the place of hospitalities, we must add the 
 love of kindred and neighbor, a kindliness which 
 
THE HOME 341 
 
 goes out beyond the immediate home circle. And 
 since there are always the poor at the gate, I must 
 lastly name the love of humanity, the kindness that 
 goes out to the needy and the forlorn, to those 
 whose only claim upon us is that they are of com- 
 mon race with ourselves, children of the one Father. 
 And if we must not give to them at the gate, we 
 must never fail to see that we find the right and 
 wise channels through which they may be helped 
 without being harmed. 
 
 From so many springs may we, in the home, drink 
 of this water of life, which flows forth from the heart 
 of God, through all these channels, to our thirst. 
 In so many ways does this atmosphere and breath 
 of the Holy Spirit flow in and around us there, to 
 tempt out all that is good in us, to soften and melt 
 away all that is hard and evil. 
 
 The fouiidi?ig of the home must needs be, as the 
 first, so the most important thing. If the founda- 
 tion be unfit or insecure, how can the building 
 stand ? Or, since this is not a mechanical structure 
 but an organic growth, I will say if the root be not 
 healthy, or be ill set, how can good fruit be looked 
 for? 
 
 Consider the possibilities for good or evil, for joy 
 or misery, for a noble life or a thwarted and ruined 
 one, which hang upon the right beginning, and it 
 will be evident that the founding of the home is not 
 a matter to be lightly or carelessly undertaken. 
 
 There is enough in marriage and parentage, and 
 their possible consequences, to call for and awaken 
 most earnest and serious thought. Even the happi- 
 ness is too tender and deep for sport. I am always 
 
342 THE HOME 
 
 pained when I hear young people laughing and jest- 
 ing about love and marriage. It either shows a 
 shallow soul, or if, as is sometimes the case, the jest- 
 ing tone be assumed to hide real feeling, it is not 
 wise, nor true, nor good. It is a matter too serious 
 for jest. Serious, I say. I do not forget the beauti- 
 ful joy — which I suppose no words can describe, no 
 observation comprehend — when two hearts and 
 souls love and are loved, and in the power of that 
 attraction enter into a union from which all barriers 
 are taken way. I see a joy which fills and floods the 
 whole nature, brightens the eye, makes the step 
 elastic, expands and fills every faculty with new 
 energy, perfects the man and the woman. And this 
 joy flows out from the lovers and sheds its brightness, 
 and glow over other hearts, which, sunning them- 
 selves in it, grow young again, as these spring-like 
 days clothe with their soft beauty and tender light 
 the bare boughs. But this cannot come from a 
 thoughtless, from a superficial or trivial fondness 
 which too often is mistaken for love. How often, 
 indeed, and with what harmful, if not fatal, conse- 
 quences, is such a fondness, which is little more than 
 an animal magnetism, made the ground of a mar- 
 riage, whose duties it is altogether unfitted to meet, 
 whose trials it is utterly unable to tide over. For 
 this mere fondness, this mere magnetism, delightful 
 as it may be, over-mastering as it may be in its pas- 
 sionateness, — even to the point of great momentary 
 sacrifices for the possession of its object, — has yet 
 no real moral quality in it, no spiritual element, no 
 element of principle, no element of fidelity. And 
 let me say that I believe that only this spiritual ele- 
 
THE HOME 343 
 
 ment, this element of principle, this, at least seri- 
 ously intended and earnestly purposed fidelity, can 
 justify the intimate union which marriage is ; be- 
 cause these can alone elevate and purify the relation 
 and make it truly human. 
 
 Stop, then, and think, you who would found a 
 home by marriage. Think seriously, earnestly, hon- 
 estly, sacredly ; for it is a very serious thing to take 
 into your keeping the happiness of another. Still 
 more serious to take into your keeping the charac- 
 ter, the virtue, of another. And both of these are 
 involved in marriage. The happiness may be the 
 growing and deepening of faithful affection and true 
 sympathy ; or it may pass quickly to wreck in in- 
 difference, annoyance, irritation, contention. The 
 character may improve in all that is noble, true, and 
 sweet ; or it may silently degenerate. And this may 
 be from no intention on either side ; but from the 
 first mistake of rash haste, or thoughtless, uncon- 
 trolled feeling, unregulated fancy. 
 
 It is not enough, then, that there be an outward 
 attraction, however powerful. It is not enough that 
 the vision of the face be dear and the touch of the 
 hand a thrill ; that the very presence in the room be 
 restful and satisfying ; that the very sound of the 
 step be welcome ; it is not enough that, as you say, 
 you could kiss the very ground beneath her feet, the 
 very book her hand has rested upon. With these 
 there must be something beyond these. Pause and 
 think. Is there a love, an attraction, of mind toward 
 mind, of principle toward principle, of will toward 
 will ? Do you sympathize in each other's thoughts, 
 feelings, purposes ? Are you interested in the same 
 
344 THE home 
 
 things ? Without this inward attraction, this spiritual 
 sympathy, outward affectionateness cannot make a 
 true union. Certainly not to those whose inward 
 life of thought, feeling, principle, and purpose is at 
 all developed. I do not mean that there are to be 
 no differences. Still less do I mean that one is sub- 
 missively to receive and adopt the opinions and 
 tastes of the other. That might produce peace, — a 
 kind of peace of subjugation. But mere peace is 
 not the end of marriage. Our friend at the Radical 
 Club told us that marriage is " a divine institution 
 to secure perpetual conflict," — as the only method, 
 he added, of developing a free personality. Of 
 course, by conflict he did not mean quarreling, but 
 the friendly collision of two self -subsisting minds and 
 characters, like in unlikeness, various in unity, inde- 
 pendent, yet in full sympathy. It is harmony, not 
 monotony, that should be looked for in marriage ; 
 and harmony is not the echo of one note, but the 
 union of notes, different yet accordant, deepening 
 and enriching each other. We commonly say that 
 husband and wife should be the complements of each 
 other, one having in predominance the qualities in 
 which the other is deficient. I might say that there 
 should be similarity in tastes, principles, and aims, 
 with difference in temperament. This would suffice, 
 I suppose, to furnish that variety of view and opin- 
 ion which are needful to keep us from that rut of 
 narrowness in thought and sympathies into which 
 men and women are likely to run who live in contact 
 only with those who think just as they do. 
 
 Perhaps, if we look out for the points of true 
 sympathy, Nature, that is, God, who made man and 
 
THE HOME 345 
 
 woman, will provide all the needed difference in the 
 masculine and the feminine difference. 
 
 But, cries my romantic young friend, would you 
 make marriage a matter of cold calculation ? Is not 
 the heart an all-sufficient guide ? My dear friend, I 
 too, believe in romance, in feeling, in enthusiasm. 
 The marriage, the home, where they are not would 
 be robbed of some of its human charm and glory. 
 But, in important matters, head and heart must take 
 counsel together. Feeling alone is open to many 
 delusions. It must be made wise by thought. Hate- 
 ful as merely mercenary considerations are in mar- 
 riage or life, some regard must be had, in founding 
 a home, even to the common prudential consider- 
 ations of the purse. A man must not ordinarily 
 ask a woman to the burden of poverty and its hard 
 struggles, though he may ask her sometimes to bear 
 with him some self-denials of very plain living ; and 
 if she is true-hearted, she will not refuse. But I was 
 speaking of still more important considerations ; of 
 the serious thoughtfulness which is absolutely de- 
 manded in the founding of home ; not cold calcula- 
 tion, but the earnestness of purpose which seeks for 
 true wisdom. " The mind must open the just and 
 safe pathways for the unquenchable flames of the 
 affections," says Mr. Weiss. Romance may gild 
 and glorify many rough places in our lives. But 
 there have not been wanting instances of men and 
 women who were capable of single acts of romantic 
 sacrifice, yet who were not equal to making any of 
 those simple commonplace self-denials which are 
 needed to make the home happy. 
 
 But it is not for the companionship of two 
 
346 THE HOME 
 
 alone, beautiful and beneficial as that is, that mar- 
 riage and the home exists. By the sacred law, in 
 the divine purpose, marriage is for parentage. And 
 if the first is to be entered into, not rashly nor in- 
 considerately, but with a certain consecration and 
 under the sense of responsibility, surely this is no 
 less true of the second. I might well say it is far 
 more momentous. 
 
 Let us, then, in reverence approach this great and 
 beautiful mystery, the initiation of a soul in the flesh ; 
 the birth of a son of man, a child of God. Surely 
 some thoughtful foresight were here in place. And 
 the first condition to be brought to this high office 
 of fatherhood and motherhood is health. Where 
 definite hereditary disease of any kind exists, it 
 should be regarded as an absolute prohibition of 
 parentage. But in every case, health can be born 
 only of health, vigor of vigor. What a wrong to a 
 child that it be brought into being overweighted, in 
 the race of life, with a feeble constitution and the 
 germs of ill-health. To escape this reproach might 
 well engage the thoughtful purpose of those who are 
 to be mothers and fathers. It might well induce 
 the young woman to avoid the destructive excite- 
 ment of fashionable life ; the injuries of dress, of 
 self-indulgent habits, of indolence and neglect of ex- 
 ercise. It might well be a powerful motive with the 
 young man to keep his bodily vigor unimpaired by 
 premature indulgence of passions, his constitution 
 unharmed by vices. For remembering this law of 
 heredity, they cannot say, " I harm no one but my- 
 self." But it is not the body only which transmits 
 itself ; the soul, the character, the disposition, the 
 
THE HOME 347 
 
 temper, — these also transmit themselves. Surely 
 it is a still greater wrong that a child should be born 
 into the world overweighted in the moral contest; 
 with tendencies to evil passions, dispositions, tem- 
 pers. It seems a terribly hard law that the sins of 
 the fathers should be visited upon the children. 
 But the knowledge of the law ought to keep men 
 from sinning. 
 
 The remedy is in our hands, to make the law a 
 dead letter, by not coming under its conditions. 
 What a powerful inducement this ought to be to 
 self-discipline and virtue ! For the virtues of the 
 fathers are visited upon the children. That is the 
 law, too ; and what a blessed law, — the hope of the 
 world ! For the better world that we look for must 
 come from better children born into it. From such 
 is the kingdom of heaven upon earth. And to every 
 man the most important thing is that which was born 
 in him. 
 
 The advent of the child in the home is the advent 
 of a new life not to the child only. Father and 
 mother are also new-born. First a new kind of 
 affection, as I said, wells up ; then new hopes, new 
 anxieties, new ambitions, plans, purposes, energies, 
 and motives. 
 
 Shall there not be a new consecration, a new reli- 
 gion ; a secret awe before the mystery of this new 
 life ? A secret sense that God has come very near 
 in the new blessing, the new duty, the new need of 
 wisdom and power ? Can any but a parent know 
 all that we mean by the fatherhood of God ? 
 
 The new-born child is the centre of the home ; 
 almost its ruler, for all must bend to it. All come 
 
34§ THE HOME 
 
 and bow down before it and bring gifts. And the 
 novelty does not wear off for long, but is prolonged 
 and repeated with the beginnings of intelligence, of 
 noticing the outward world, and establishing relations 
 with it. Then there is the first creeping, and the 
 first standing alone, and the first step of walking ; 
 and the first tooth, and the first spoken word ; and 
 the first sickness with all its terror of inexperience. 
 
 But how shall I venture to speak of all the tender, 
 blissful experiences of the mother, or of all that she 
 ponders in her heart ? 
 
 The disciplines of the home, of which I have next 
 to speak, begin very early, and are among its great 
 blessings. They begin with the happiness which 
 is an atmosphere in which so much that is good 
 expands and so much that was ill disappears. They 
 begin in the affections that uplift and purify. They 
 begin in the silent but powerful influences of com- 
 panionship, the power of character to mould and 
 subdue and quicken character. They begin in the 
 contact — the collision, if you will — of minds, which 
 sets us revising our opinions, looking at things in new 
 lights and broadening our views and our judgments. 
 They begin in the necessity of consulting the wishes 
 and the convenience and the pleasure and the will 
 of another. They begin in that which makes self 
 to be no longer the centre. They begin in the new 
 duties, claims, responsibilities, and obligations as- 
 sumed or imposed. They begin in the new cares. 
 They begin in the new fidelities. They begin in the 
 new self-denials, self-forgetfulnesses, and self-devo- 
 tions. They begin in the new reverence for purity 
 and goodness. They begin in the new need of self- 
 
THE HOME 349 
 
 control and governing of feeling and temper. They 
 begin with the new appeals to generosity and sym- 
 pathy, and consideration for the feelings of others. 
 They begin in the troubles and anxieties, in the 
 annoyances and differences and irritations which call 
 for patience and forbearance ; in the mistakes and 
 errors which call for charity, and the transgressions 
 which call for forgiveness. They begin in the rights 
 which call for justice. They begin in all which calls 
 for truth, frankness, honor, and chivalrous respect 
 And where they begin they continue. 
 
 Is not the home, then, a place admirably con- 
 trived for the training of the character by its disci- 
 plines ? Yet they may all be futile, if they be not 
 understood, accepted, and used. 
 
 The discipline of children by their parents in the 
 home begins also very early. First, again, in the 
 silent influence of disposition, temper, and charac- 
 ter ; but very soon in direct disciplines of restraints 
 and commands. These are absolutely needed for the 
 child's welfare. The need of them sets the mother 
 early to changing the mere fondness of caressing 
 affection to the strength of true love which seeks not 
 merely the pleasure, but the best good, of its object. 
 And that best good of the child is secured by exact- 
 ing respect and obedience. The demands of obedi- 
 ence ought always to be reasonable ones, and the 
 reason for them may often be given ; but not always, 
 for the child should learn to obey implicitly, in the 
 confidence that the command will always have a rea- 
 son, and that the parent's wish is one reason. The 
 utmost faith should be kept with the child, and the 
 truth always spoken as always demanded. Promises 
 
350 THE HOME 
 
 and denials, therefore, should not be hastily made ; 
 but once made, they should be faithfully held to. 
 
 Threatenings should be avoided, especially those 
 which are made in terrorem, and not meant to be 
 kept. Much lecturing, too, should be avoided. Re- 
 proof should be direct, pointed, and strong, and then 
 done with. Nothing is more irritating than the 
 dribble and drizzle of complaint, and nothing more 
 ineffectual. It is a great point to choose the proper 
 time for the fitting word, whether of rebuke or coun- 
 sel. The mother's blessed hour, which must not be 
 lost, is when she puts her children to bed. It is the 
 hour for sympathy and confidences and warnings ; 
 for words that may sink deep and make a lasting 
 impression. 
 
 Teach your child unselfishness, not by precept so 
 much as by asking him to share what is given him, 
 by giving him the opportunity to do disinterested 
 things, by asking services of him. If you give up 
 everything to him and do everything for him, he 
 will expect everybody else to do the same ; and how 
 will he learn to do things for himself or for others ? 
 Your mistaken unselfishness will have made him 
 selfish. 
 
 Do not formally inculcate piety, but make your 
 child sharer in your own reverent and devout emo- 
 tions. No formal tributes to virtue will have much 
 effect with him if he finds you applauding some suc- 
 cessful dishonesty as great shrewdness, or laughing 
 at some falsehood as a good joke. But remember 
 that virtue can be better learned by practice than 
 by precept. The very games in which you join your 
 children can be made the opportunities of learning, 
 by putting into act truth, honesty, and honor. 
 
THE HOME 351 
 
 Avoid conflicts of temper and will ; and when the 
 conflict of will cannot be avoided, as sometimes it 
 cannot, see that the child's unreasonable obstinacy 
 be met, not by unreasonable obstinacy on your part, 
 but by patient firmness ; so that the conflict shall 
 not be between mere will and will, but between will 
 on one side and reason and right on the other. 
 
 The disciplines of the family are best accomplished 
 where there are several children. They make their 
 mutual rights respected with a kind of rough, but 
 wholesome justice. Besides, it is not good for one 
 to be the centre of all the thoughts and interest of 
 his parents. 
 
 The parent's opinions must not be too arbitrarily 
 enforced upon the children, but they must be ex- 
 pected to think and act for themselves, to learn by 
 consequences and mistakes as well as by warnings. 
 
 Leaving many things on this point unsaid, I pass 
 on to speak of the griefs of the home. For these 
 must come, as well as its great joys. They might 
 be counted among its most precious disciplines, its 
 deepest blessings. The shadow which we see pass- 
 ing over other homes, and which we think of with 
 dread — or dare not think of — as some day to reach 
 us, when it falls, is found to be an overshadowing 
 of angels' wings, an overshadowing of God. In the 
 darkness that needs Him so much, He is found a 
 present help. In the stress, the soul's strength is 
 discovered. We can bear what we thought we could 
 not bear. The spirit is uplifted, subdued, purified, 
 made tender. When death enters the home, it hal- 
 lows it. It brings a hush, a sacred silence, a holy 
 peace. The little troubles are swept away. They 
 
352 THE HOME 
 
 who pass together through a deep sorrow are bound 
 by closer ties than ever before. Their inmost hearts 
 are, perhaps for the first time, opened to each other. 
 A friend who had watched all night with his wife 
 by the bedside of their dying boy could say to me, 
 "We were never more truly happy." Such was the 
 exaltation of spirit in that hour ! 
 
 There is a loss, one keenly felt, — a loss out of the 
 home, out of the heart ; but there is a gain. The 
 loss is outward, the gain spiritual. The loss, for a 
 time ; the gain, if we will, for eternity. Life, hence- 
 forth, may be less glad, but it can hardly fail to 
 be more thoughtful, more earnest. Death is less 
 dreaded, because more familiar. The spiritual world 
 is more near since one we loved has entered there ; 
 more real since we have a treasure in it. The home 
 has begun to form beyond. 
 
 There are other troubles which may fill the home 
 with dismay, — business disasters, loss of property, 
 bringing terrible anxieties and fears. These I am 
 confident will be best met and borne, not by any 
 concealment, but by the utmost frankness and fullest 
 confidence between husband and wife. Here there 
 should be a true partnership. For a man to let his 
 wife go on, ignorant of the impending ruin of his 
 business, spending as freely as ever, is not only un- 
 just, but he is depriving himself of the support he 
 might have in her sympathy, her fortitude, her good 
 sense, her help in economies. Through fear of giv- 
 ing her pain, he may be only preparing a greater 
 shock. How often a wife's right-mindedness would 
 have prevented a husband's desperate risks ! 
 
 But in the home sometimes comes a trouble, an 
 
THE HOME 353 
 
 anxiety, a grief, far beyond loss of wealth and the 
 sharpest straitenings of poverty. When upon the 
 wife's or the mother's heart comes the sad know- 
 ledge of moral failure or weakness in husband or 
 son ; when she sees him becoming a victim of in- 
 temperate habits ; when she learns that he has lost 
 not money only, but integrity and honor ; when the 
 shadow of guilt and crime falls upon the home — 
 who can speak of that anguish, far bitterer than 
 death ? 
 
 Remembering, then, the past, or looking forward 
 to the future, shall we not renew our purpose to 
 make the home more true, more pure, more just, 
 more beautiful; to make it more the place of the 
 highest affection, the fairest culture, .the noblest dis- 
 cipline, the most consecrated joys, the most trans- 
 figured sorrows, the sincerest religion ? Then it will 
 be itself a better world, in which we may take shelter 
 from evil tongues and exhausting work and wearing 
 disappointments ; from hollow hearts, or failing for- 
 tunes or unsatisfying ambitions. It will be the fore- 
 taste and preparation of any better world we look 
 for on earth, or beyond. God help us to be faithful 
 to its opportunities ! 
 
 In the blessed sympathies and disciplines of home 
 is man trained for life here and hereafter ; and as 
 we can find for our God no truer name than Father, 
 so we can give to the heaven we hope for no better 
 name than Home. 
 
 February, 1879. 
 
LIFE, NOT DEATH 
 
 There is but one word to be spoken to-day, and 
 that word is Life — Eternal Life ; Life surviving all 
 changes, Life persisting through all that seems to 
 overwhelm it, Life victorious over death, Life that 
 makes real death impossible to our thoughts ! 
 
 How all nature speaks the word, yes, sings it as 
 a psalm to our hearts, cheered by the softer sky, 
 the warmer sunshine, the exhilarating air, the secret 
 quickening through all our veins and nerves ! The 
 first crocus of the garden sings it, and the first 
 spring flowers that in the woods reward your search ; 
 the swelling buds on the trees, the unfolding leaves 
 of the rosebushes, and the maples flushing red with 
 their blossoms ; the earliest green that hangs its 
 harps on the willows not in lamentation but in joy, 
 and the strong bright grass that answers to the call 
 of the sun and the impulse of the rain. And even 
 the trees that stand waiting gray and dry are thick- 
 set, if we look closely, with the tokens of life. 
 
 Yet there are those to whose heavy hearts these 
 bright days bring no lightening ; from whom all this 
 npspringing life around them cannot lift their bur- 
 den. The sunshine seems almost to mock them; 
 it cannot get beyond their eyes. The voices of joy- 
 fulness jar with their sorrowful desolation; the 
 light has no gladness to their eyes, dim with tears 
 or deadened with woe, that cannot even weep. In 
 
LIFE, NOT DEATH 355 
 
 vain does spring return, since not to them returns 
 the touch of the vanished hands, and the sound of 
 the voice that is still, and the eyes that were sweeter 
 than any flower. 
 
 In vain for them that grass and flowers spring 
 anew out of the dark earth. The form they have 
 laid away comes not forth, and shall never have a 
 resurrection. 
 
 The delicate leaf wounds them with a pain 
 " whose balsam never grew." And so to them, in 
 their sense of what is gone from them never to re- 
 turn, however many returning springs they may 
 have to meet, the voices of nature are powerless to 
 bring comfort ; they are no more able to reach the 
 seat of their loss than are the little words with 
 which a child tries to comfort them, " Do not cry, 
 mother ; you shall have all my dolls." 
 
 No outward thing, not the lovely spectacle of the 
 renewed world, can reach the aching, longing heart. 
 
 There must be a deeper voice, and that voice 
 speaks, " Oh, listen, listen ! " Not to the ear it 
 speaks. It speaks to the soul ; it comes from the 
 Spirit of which our souls are but the channel, and it 
 says, Life, Life, not Death. Life, not to the frail 
 body, whose atoms indeed perish not when it falls to 
 dust and exhales to the air, but whose dust shall 
 never be regathered into that form. Life, not to 
 the body, but to the soul. Life, not resurrection, for 
 that only can be raised up which was laid down ; 
 and we mock the truth if we write upon the tomb 
 or the headstone, " I shall rise again." The I, the 
 self, the personal being whom you loved, who 
 thought, who felt, who loved you, can never be laid 
 
356 LIFE, NOT DEATH 
 
 in the tomb or beneath the sod. Not Resurrec- 
 tion, but Life, is the word spoken to the soul and 
 from the soul. 
 
 Life, unbroken, continuous, uninterrupted, — not 
 waiting for some distant resurrection day and an 
 awakening at some trumpet's sound. But life going 
 on, passing unchanged to new conditions. The life 
 that begins here with the first spiritual thought, 
 spiritual feeling, and spiritual experience ; that inner 
 life of thought, and feeling, and experience of things 
 that do not belong to the body and are not con- 
 cerned in its life ; the inner, invisible, spiritual life 
 of ideas and principles, and lofty reverences, and 
 enduring affections for that which is invisible and 
 enduring in man ; those secret, unprovable convic- 
 tions and assurances of the soul, the truths which 
 shine by their own light, and are revealed to us in 
 the highest and deepest moments and experiences. 
 
 And this is the word I bring to you to-day, unend- 
 ing Life, immortal Life. I bring you to-day, " not 
 an argument, but a message." 
 
 There are arguments for immortality, — I have be- 
 fore presented them ; arguments not amounting to 
 a demonstration, but sufficient, as I think, to satisfy 
 the mind with a reasonable assurance. But I do 
 not present them to-day, nor do I speak of a Judean 
 resurrection that seems to me impossible, and if 
 possible, no argument for our own immortality. I 
 bring you to-day, not an argument, but a message. 
 I speak from my soul to your souls. I speak from 
 an inward experience to your experience, or that 
 which may be an experience to you. I bring to you 
 a message from the chamber of death and from the 
 
LIFE, NO T DEA TH 357 
 
 gateway of the tomb. And that message is Life, 
 Life immortal, Life uninterrupted, unarrested, not 
 cut off, as we so often say, but going on, not changed 
 in any essential quality. 
 
 I bring this message, that we could stand by the 
 lifeless body so soon to be put out of our sight, so 
 soon to perish, and yet have no sense of death, no 
 feeling of mortality ; lifted up, in a way that seemed 
 inexplicable, even beyond grief or sorrow, into a 
 peaceful and happy calm, as if a serene and cheerful 
 presence were filling all the room, the presence as 
 of one who had laid aside all sickness and all sorrow 
 and was himself in the fullness of life released from 
 limitations. Was it not, then, most natural, in full 
 accordance with the true feeling of the hour, to read 
 lines written by that now lifeless hand, by that now 
 most living spirit, as if his own voice spoke them ? 
 
 "Weep not, my friends, rather rejoice with me, 
 And in your life let my remembrance linger 
 As something not to trouble or disturb it, 
 But to complete it, adding life to life. 
 And if, at times, beside the evening fire 
 You see my face among the other faces, 
 Let it not be but as a guest that loves you, 
 Without whose presence there were something wanting." 
 
 And these others, his also : — 
 
 " Take them, O Death ! and bear away 
 Whatever thou canst call thine own ! 
 Thine image, stamped upon this clay, 
 Doth give thee that, but that alone ! 
 
 " Take them, O Grave ! and let them lie 
 Folded upon thy narrow shelves, 
 As garments by the soul laid by, 
 And precious only to ourselves ! 
 
358 LIFE, NOT DEATH 
 
 "Take them, O great Eternity! 
 Our little life is but a gust 
 That bends the branches of thy tree, 
 And trails its blossoms in the dust ! " 
 
 And to go on, taking up the Psalm, " Bless the 
 Lord, O my soul ; and all that is within me, bless his 
 holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget 
 not all his benefits." And to follow on with a 
 prayer filled not with mourning, but only with 
 thanksgiving, with gratitude for the life which had 
 been so long with us ; the life blameless and un- 
 stained ; the life so full of genial activities and 
 faithful use of faculties and talents committed to it ; 
 so full of kindly affections and wide sympathies and 
 helpful friendliness ; of gentle courtesy and charita- 
 ble judgment ; of broad humanity and simple, sin- 
 cere, unobtrusive piety. 
 
 The prayer asked for no consolation, since none 
 was needed beyond what was already given, already 
 possessed in that quiet, cheerful, uplifted faith. It 
 seemed a birthday, not a deathday ; a deep sacred 
 joy, not a mourning. 
 
 And at the portal of the tomb what words could 
 be said but those old words with all their felt fresh- 
 ness of meaning : " O death, where is thy sting ? 
 O grave, where is thy victory ? Thanks be to God, 
 who giveth us the victory." 
 
 The word that I bring you to-day, then, is this, 
 that the soul knows nothing of death, cannot con- 
 ceive of it. That to all doubts and questions of the 
 understanding it returns only the affirmations of its 
 experience and inmost sense of immortality. 
 
 It cannot believe in any death but that of the 
 
LIFE, NO T DEA TH 359 
 
 body ; nor in that death as anything but a release of 
 the real life into new conditions. The understand- 
 ing may doubt, but the soul affirms ; the under- 
 standing may gather proofs and arguments, but the 
 soul already knows. " Demonstration in its own 
 province is supreme, but there are times when argu- 
 ment is silent before the deep incommunicable as- 
 surances of the soul." 
 
 And in the days that followed in the house, in re- 
 turning to which might have been expected a sad 
 and overpowering sense of a presence gone from it 
 forever, instead of that was a sense of a bright in- 
 visible presence, brightening every room ; what was 
 gone seemed nothing in comparison to what re- 
 mained. The spirit had not fled. He had not 
 gone. To use again his own words, — 
 
 " He did but . . . step into the open air, 
 Out of a tent already luminous ; " 
 
 and it seemed as if any moment he might enter visi- 
 bly with his wonted bright greeting. And so it was 
 most natural to speak of him constantly and cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 Whether this will always be so with those who 
 remain in that home, I cannot say. It would seem, 
 however, that it must be so. Or if there should 
 come hours of loneliness and sense of loss, they 
 must quickly be comforted and replaced by these 
 higher, and I will say truer feelings, truer to our 
 faith in immortality, truer to the soul's perceptions, 
 which must be truer as well as higher than the sight 
 of the senses. 
 
 And now let me add that all this mood of feeling 
 
360 LIFE, NOT DEATH 
 
 was perfectly quiet and natural. It was reached by 
 no effort of thought, by no exertion of the will, by 
 no determination to look above the grief, by no ex- 
 citement of feeling, by no prayer even that the grief 
 might be consoled ; the grief simply was not there. 
 I need not say it was not from any hardness of feel- 
 ing. It was simply that the sense of grief was swal- 
 lowed up in the sense of life, the sense of loss 
 merged in the sense of abiding spiritual presence. 
 Death was swallowed up in victory. 
 
 It was a surprise, a wonder to me ; in part, it was 
 a mystery, I could not account for it, but it was 
 simply a reality, an experience, — an experience of 
 spiritual life. 
 
 " Behold I show you a mystery," wrote the apostle. 
 His mystery was that he and some of his disciples 
 would know no bodily death ; while they yet lived 
 in the body the Messiah would appear in the clouds; 
 those who had died would be raised up from their 
 graves to meet him ; those who still remained alive 
 would have their bodies changed, to dwell with the 
 Messiah in that kingdom of heaven upon earth, 
 which flesh and blood could not inherit, but from 
 which not only sorrow and crying but death itself 
 would be forever banished. This was the apostle's 
 mystery. 
 
 But the mystery which I have shown you is this, 
 that in the very presence of the lifeless body, where 
 the senses tell us only of death, no movement, no 
 whisper, silent, irresponsive, dead ; that at the very 
 side of the grave, open to receive and hide forever 
 and take to its decay and dust all we can see and 
 touch of our dearest friend ; that, I say, in the very 
 
LIFE, NOT DEATH 36 1 
 
 presence of death and corruption, we do pronounce 
 the word life ; do feel immortality, and declare with 
 inward assurance that the friend we love still lives. 
 
 This is the mystery, that we cannot be satisfied 
 with death so visible before us, cannot believe in it 
 as having reached and destroyed that which we 
 loved. 
 
 The more we live in spiritual things the more 
 easily will the frame of mind of which I have spoken 
 come to us. For it is simply looking at death from 
 the spiritual point of thought and feeling. If we 
 live, not absorbed in outward things, not neglecting 
 them indeed, but always feeling that higher and 
 more important are the spiritual things, — the life 
 of high thoughts, divine ideas, holy feelings, sacred 
 principles, — what else can be so good a preparation 
 for the life of the spirit when it shall have laid aside 
 the earthly body ? What else but familiarity with 
 spiritual things and spiritual estimates shall make 
 us victorious over death, and give us the assurance 
 that it touches not the spirit ? 
 
 What else can make us possessors of the treasures 
 which we shall not have to leave behind with the 
 body, but can take with us in the spirit into what- 
 ever world or form of life awaits us beyond ? 
 
 This is to live the eternal life, the immortal life ; 
 to live not supremely or chiefly for the things seen, 
 which are transient, but for the things unseen, which 
 are eternal. And what are these everlasting things 
 over which death hath no power, the things in which, 
 in the presence of death, we feel only life, and over 
 which the grave hath no victory ? 
 
 What are they but the things which are true, the 
 
362 LIFE, NOT DEATH 
 
 things which are just, the things which are pure, 
 the things which are honorable, the things which 
 are lovely ? 
 
 Let us think on these things ! 
 
 Germantown, April 2, 1882, on return from the funeral of Henry 
 W. Longfellow. 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
 Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by 
 the Spirit of the Lord. — 2 Corinthians iii. 18. 
 
 The visitor to the British Museum finds his eye 
 and step arrested at one of the entrances by two 
 strange figures of stone that stand on either side, 
 seeming to guard the passage. From the strong, 
 sinewy body of a lion spread the mighty pinions of 
 an eagle, and above them rises the head of a man, 
 bearded, calm, severe. These are the images which 
 Mr. Layard some years ago unearthed from their 
 age-long burial in Assyrian sands. They stand here 
 as they stood in Nineveh twenty-five centuries ago, 
 in her splendid prime ; here at the entrance of a 
 museum of sculpture, there at the entrance of a 
 temple. Between them and hundreds like them, 
 priests, and warriors, and conquering kings, and wor- 
 shiping multitudes have gone up to their sanctuary 
 to offer sacrifices and thanksgivings on the altar of 
 Bel or Assur. Altars, long ago deserted and fallen, 
 temples long ago heaps of ruin, kings and priests 
 and people long ago vanished and perished off the 
 earth. This work of their hands, which the sands 
 of the wilderness have had in their safe-keeping, 
 now revealed to the keen search and curious study 
 of our nineteenth century. Strange, incongruous 
 
364 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 figures, indeed ; impossible creatures ! " Idols," 
 shall we say, and pass on, with a pitying thought of 
 those blinded people who know no better than to 
 bow down to wood and stone ? I confess the 
 strange figures had a great fascination for me, with 
 their strength and grave dignity. I thought of that 
 whole ancient world contemporary with these fig- 
 ures ; of the strange Hindoo deities ; of Philistine 
 Dagon ; of Egyptian Sphinx ; of Isis, crescent- 
 crowned and holding the child in her arms, forerun- 
 ner of the Virgin in the Roman Catholic churches ; 
 of the rude, massive images of Mexico and Central 
 America ; of the Diana of Ephesus with multitudi- 
 nous breasts. I thought of Greece, with her culti- 
 vated sense of beauty, carving the Minerva of her 
 Parthenon in gold and ivory, or her Phidian Zeus in 
 marble of Pentelicus. I thought of the forms of 
 grace and loveliness which stood in other cham- 
 bers of these great museums ; the Apollo, the Diana, 
 the Venus of Milo. " Idols," all ; beautiful or gro- 
 tesque, harmoniously proportioned or incongruous 
 and monstrous. Idols, all ! 
 
 And have we said all when we have said that, has- 
 tening perhaps to drop our penny into the mission- 
 ary-box, if some poor creature may yet be saved from 
 that deadly sin of idolatry to the worship of the true 
 God, "washed in the blood of the Incarnate God " ? 
 
 But stop ! what is the missionary saying ? " The 
 blood of the Incarnate God." Perhaps all the idol- 
 atry is not in India and Thibet ! " Idolatry " — with 
 a tone of pitying contempt ! Mr. Layard, who dis- 
 covered these Nineveh sculptures, might teach us 
 better, if any of us need teaching. 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 365 
 
 " I used to contemplate for hours these mysterious 
 emblems," he says, "there in those Eastern soli- 
 tudes. What more noble forms could have ushered 
 the people into their temple ? What more sublime 
 images could have been borrowed from nature 
 wherein to embody their conception of the wisdom, 
 power, ubiquity of the Supreme ? The head of the 
 man was the type of thought, the body of the lion, 
 the emblem of might, while the pinions of the bird 
 symbolized the swiftness of omnipresence. These 
 were not idle creatures of mere fancy. A meaning 
 was written in them." 
 
 Yes, a meaning has been written in every image 
 which the hand of man has ever shaped to embody 
 his vague conceptions of the mysterious Power and 
 Goodness in which the soul of man in all ages has 
 felt itself encompassed or overawed ; that power 
 which men felt above and about them, but could not 
 see. To a faith that there was something which 
 their eyes could not see nor their hands touch, that 
 spiritual nature which lies in germ in all men im- 
 pelled them. But that eye and hand might also be 
 satisfied, they made these emblems and symbols, 
 rude or refined. Thoughtful men always knew that 
 they were but symbols, as we have abundant testi- 
 mony in heathen writers. The ignorant clung with 
 superstition to the visible figure, endowed it with 
 magical power, and bowed before it with childish and 
 groveling reverence. 
 
 So everywhere, in the early ages, we find altars 
 and temples ; and in every temple stood its image, 
 the image of a God. 
 
 In every temple, save one ! At Jerusalem, in the 
 
366 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 Holy of Holies, or inmost shrine of the temple on 
 Moriah, there were winged figures of cherubim upon 
 the lid of the ark; there was no image of Jehovah. 
 
 For the word had been given to them, "Thou 
 shalt make no graven images of Yahweh to bow 
 down and worship before ; " and when, once a year, 
 the high priest went up into the Holy of Holies, 
 Yahweh was popularly believed to reveal himself in 
 the form only of a luminous cloud, the shekinah. 
 But the sacred books of the Jews taught them that 
 man was made in the image of God. " In the image 
 of God, created He them." Without stopping to 
 ask just what was meant by this, or whether they 
 comprehended its spiritual import, I wish to seize 
 the thought. 
 
 We are not to make any image of God ; we are to 
 be the image of God. Is the thought too high ? Is 
 the claim too bold ? Let the high thought uplift us, 
 let the bold claim give us courage. Do not say, 
 How can I, a weak, fallible, ignorant, sinful man, 
 be the image of the perfect, holy, infinite, all-wise, 
 all-mighty God ? But say this, rather : Cannot I, 
 a man, capable of manly virtue, of holy feelings, of 
 purity and unselfish love, of exalted thoughts and 
 noble aims, having in me an immortal soul, and 
 hopes and faiths that reach beyond death, — I, a 
 child of God, — cannot I be worthy of my parentage ? 
 — be like my Father ? be in some degree, and in a 
 growing degree, what I honor and reverence in 
 Him ? Is there any height of excellence toward 
 which I may not aspire ? May I not be growing 
 heavenly, godly, godlike ? The divine elevation that 
 I feel in my best moments, may it not become more 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 367 
 
 and more frequent and familiar ? Can my highest 
 conception of God go beyond the best human quali- 
 ties, conceived of in their perfect and infinite degree ? 
 And is there any one of these, whether it be wis- 
 dom, justice, love, holiness, or power, which every 
 human being may not possess in some measure ? 
 And in graving degree if he make use of his powers ? 
 
 It is said that men always make God in their own 
 image. But they may justly do this if man be first 
 made in the image of God. It does not follow that 
 God is only a gigantic ghost of man, a chimaera of 
 the human fancy. Because we can only conceive of 
 God under human attributes, it does not follow that 
 God is only a projection of ourselves upon the blank 
 screen of the unknown ; only a Brocken-shadow on 
 the mists of imagination. 
 
 But why should man have been irresistibly, and all 
 but universally, impelled to set these highest quali- 
 ties of humanity above and beyond humanity, above 
 and beyond nature, above and beyond what he saw 
 and touched, — a reality beyond his own dreams ? 
 That is to be explained. And to me, at least, the 
 best and easiest explanation is that there is a real- 
 ity beyond man ; a Spirit like man's spirit — but 
 infinite and perfect. A power, not ourselves that 
 makes, not only for righteousness, as Matthew Ar- 
 nold says, but makes for holiness, for unselfish love, 
 for truth, and for spiritual beauty. 
 
 The metaphysician proves to us that of the out- 
 ward world we know nothing, but only of certain 
 sensations in ourselves ; nevertheless, every sane 
 mind when not entangled in metaphysics, instinc- 
 tively believes, and I hold rightly believes, that there 
 
368 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 is an outward world, not the product of our own 
 thought and independent of our sensations. So I 
 think every healthy soul, not entangled in metaphy- 
 sical speculations, trusts its own instinctive sense 
 that there is a spiritual reality beyond ourselves, and 
 comes back from speculative doubts to the intuitive 
 faith that God is. 
 
 If God is, and man is made in his image, — I should 
 rather say since God is, and man is made in his im- 
 age, — we see where we are to look for our know- 
 ledge of God. We speak of nature as his manifes- 
 tation ; and such it is so far as it can be. We see 
 there power and order, a unity under variety, and a 
 permanence under change. But moral qualities we 
 do not see there. These, which are essential to our 
 conception of God, and which are the truly divine 
 part of Him, we find first in human nature. Of the 
 divine justice, goodness, love, purpose, thought, — 
 of these human nature is the revelation. Thus in 
 the human spirit we must look for God, and not 
 till He has been found there, and only because He 
 is found there revealed, do we find beneficence, 
 thought, purpose in the world of matter. That 
 would be to us but an automatic machine, self-regu- 
 lated and having no relation to man (except as man 
 had gradually and involuntarily adapted himself to 
 it, and become, in long ages, adjusted to his environ- 
 ments), had we not hints of God in man. 
 
 Look not abroad, then, for proofs of God ; look 
 within ; look into the souls of good men ; look into 
 your own soul in its best moments and highest ex- 
 periences ; find it in its best moments bowing be- 
 fore a better than itself ; in its highest experiences 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 369 
 
 looking up to a higher than itself, to the Most High ; 
 finding its most vigorous strength reinforced from 
 beyond itself ; and its vastest thought but a looking 
 upon some portion of one infinite truth. 
 
 Man the image and revelation of God ! Too long 
 has man, in the supposed interests of religion, been 
 decried and degraded. To honor God, He has been 
 pictured as an unapproachable sovereign, with the 
 attributes of an oriental monarch, and man's at- 
 titude has been declared to be that of a prostrated 
 slave. 
 
 Man is beginning to stand upright before God, — 
 his child, his Son. 
 
 And we see what is the full meaning of the word 
 by which, from distant ages, — for this is not a dis- 
 covery of Christianity, — man has given to God the 
 name of Father. This word we now see means not 
 only beneficent care and superior wisdom ; it means 
 kinship of nature ; an identity of the human spirit 
 with the divine spirit. Not only are we made in the 
 image of God, as a sculptor might make an image 
 of a man in his likeness ; we are, as spirits, " par- 
 takers of the divine nature," and truth, justice, 
 love, in us, are not only like these qualities in God, 
 but they are identical, the inflowing and indwelling 
 of God. 
 
 Does not this thought clearly mark out to us our 
 aim and destiny, — to grow up fully into their like- 
 ness through the fullness of this indwelling ; which 
 requires only that we should be true to our best 
 selves ; should seek for and obey our highest thought 
 and our best feelings ? That in the choice which 
 is every hour offered us between the higher and 
 
370 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 the lower in thought, motive, and action, we should 
 choose the higher ? 
 
 Likeness to God has been the aim which the best 
 and wisest men have set before us. This Pythag- 
 oras taught to his disciples. This Plato and Zeno 
 insisted upon as a motive to virtue. And Epictetus 
 said that he who would please and obey God must 
 be like Him : " Faithful as God is faithful, benefi- 
 cent, noble as God is in all his words and actions, 
 behaving as an imitator of God." And in the same 
 language in which Plato and Epictetus wrote and 
 spoke have come down to us the more familiar words 
 of Jesus : " Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven 
 is perfect." 
 
 Our thought and purpose, then, if we follow these 
 great teachers, will be — must it not be ? — to carry 
 out as speedily and as far as we are able in our char- 
 acters and our lives our highest ideals of excellence ; 
 to live up to the best that is in us : to be true sons 
 of God, true men and women ; to take our birth- 
 right ; to grow up into his likeness, and mould our- 
 selves into his image. 
 
 Do we conceive of God as spirit ? Then only as 
 we live in the spirit, grow in spiritual-mindedness, 
 act from spiritual motives, and judge by spiritual 
 estimates, are we fulfilling the objects of our crea- 
 tion and becoming what we were made to be. 
 
 Do we conceive of Him as truth ? Then only as 
 we love and reverence the truth ; only as we speak 
 and live the truth, loyal to it at all costs ; only as we 
 put away from us every form of dissimulation and 
 deceit ; only so are we fulfilling the object of our 
 creation and becoming what we were made to be. 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 37 1 
 
 Do we conceive of Him as justice, as righteous- 
 ness ? Then only as we are just in our thoughts 
 and in our dealings, scrupulous of the rights of 
 others, seeing that no man suffers a wrong at our 
 hands ; only as we keep a conscience quick to see 
 and to do what is right, are we fulfilling the object 
 of our creation and being what we are capable of 
 being. 
 
 Do we conceive of Him as love ? Then only as 
 we are love, as we regulate all our motives by ref- 
 erence to others' welfare, as we govern all our con- 
 duct by the thought, not of self but of man, are we 
 realizing what, as God's children, we ought to be. 
 
 Do we think of Him as holiness ? Then only as 
 we become holy as He is holy, " holy in all manner 
 of conduct," are we worthy to be called the sons of 
 God, and realizing that which by our nature we are 
 called to be. 
 
 I said that in the temple at Jerusalem, there 
 stood no image of God. But once there stood there 
 a boy of twelve years, who, to the appeal of his par- 
 ents, answered : " Know ye not that I must be about 
 the affairs of my Father ? " 
 
 And later, the same stood there, a man, who, 
 looking round upon the crowd buying and selling 
 and shouting, filled with indignation at the desecra- 
 tion cried : " Ye have made my Father's house a den 
 of thieves ! " 
 
 He seemed, to some who looked on, in his love 
 and his righteousness, " the express image of God." 
 Many in later times have called him God, and wor- 
 shiped the image for the reality with a worship that 
 cannot but seem to us as idolatrous, — the worship 
 
372 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 of a created and visible personage for the Invisible, 
 Increate, Almighty. 
 
 Jesus never in any word of his that has been re- 
 corded called himself God. When charged with 
 making himself " equal with God " he put aside the 
 charge, and spoke of himself only as one whom the 
 Father had " sanctified and sent." 
 
 He loved to call himself " Son of Man." A son 
 of God he also was in very truth. 
 
 Men have thought to honor him by speaking of 
 him as superhuman, and as unapproachable in his 
 perfect manhood. Yet those who were nearest to 
 him and walked with him in intimacy did not speak 
 so. Quickened by his spirit they cried : " Behold 
 what manner of love hath been bestowed upon us, 
 that we should be called the children of God ! " 
 
 I have been interested in seeing how the highest 
 claims that are made for him in the New Testament 
 writings are in the same writings, even in the same 
 words, claimed for his disciples. 
 
 Is it said of him that " in him dwelt all the fullness 
 of the Godhead bodily " ? Paul prays for his fellow- 
 disciples that they "may be filled with the fullness 
 of God" (Ephesians hi. 19). 
 
 Is it said " God was in Christ, reconciling the 
 world to himself"? John says, "If we love one 
 another, God dwelleth in us" (John iv. n). 
 
 Is he called "Son of God"? Paul writes, "As 
 many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons 
 of God." And we are told that it pleased God, " in 
 bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain 
 of their salvation perfect through suffering " (He- 
 brews ii. 10). Then he was not perfect before he had 
 suffered, and could not have been God. 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 373 
 
 Think, now, how wonderfully, how admirably this 
 world, this human life, is fitted to be a training-place 
 of our souls toward this high aim, this divine ideal. 
 This world, this life, with its opportunities and its 
 demands, its pleasures and its duties, its joy and its 
 discipline, its peace and its pain, its happiness, an at- 
 mosphere in which much good may grow ; its trials, 
 losses, sufferings, calling out our courage and our 
 patience ; all its human relations calling for the exer- 
 cise of justice, forbearance, benevolence, self-forget- 
 fulness ; its varied work calling out our energies ; its 
 bereavements sending us home to the tender heart 
 of our Father. For it is not merely in the contem- 
 plation of the closet and the church, but far more in 
 the arena of actual life, that we are to be trained 
 and moulded into the divine image. 
 
 A sculptor sat at midnight in his studio, alone. 
 Around him in the dim light of his single lamp lay 
 the implements of his art, the works of his hands. 
 As he sat there buried in thought, his life seemed 
 to pass before him ; the hopes and aspirings of his 
 youth, the struggles and passions and endeavors of 
 his manhood, the fulfillment or failure of his age. 
 Before him, covered with a veil, stood the figure 
 upon which he had concentrated the best hours and 
 inspiration and effort of his life, to which all his 
 other works had been but as studies ; the one great 
 work upon which his fame and his fate should rest. 
 
 As he sat thus in retrospective thought, suddenly 
 a light shone about him, and, looking up, he beheld 
 an angelic form, adown whose shining robe of white 
 flowed locks of celestial brightness. And in tones 
 of clear music, the angel spoke to him: "Is thy 
 
374 IMAGES OF GOD 
 
 work done ? For the king has sent for thee ; and at 
 the sunrising must thou come into his presence, 
 bearing with thee thy life-work, — the statue thou 
 hast been chiseling to stand in the Halls of the 
 Eternal Palace. Unblemished must it be in coun- 
 tenance and limb ; of stainless purity ; of perfect, 
 harmonious proportions — else it cannot be admitted 
 there." 
 
 Then the sculptor rose ; with trembling hands 
 withdrew the veil that hid his statue, that the spirit 
 might look upon it, and stood with downcast eyes 
 to hear the judgment, while already forebodings 
 began to mingle with the hopes which had filled his 
 heart. There was silence ; and then a sigh of un- 
 speakable sorrow seemed to fill the air of the room 
 with its accent of pain and reproval. And the old 
 man looked up, and lo ! the statue seemed strangely 
 altered. In the penetrating light which shone 
 from the angel's countenance, every feature, every 
 line stood out in startling distinctness ; strange 
 roughnesses were revealed, imperfections, distor- 
 tions, unseen before. Then, with tones of deep 
 sorrow, the angel said, "Is this the work which 
 your lifelong study and labor have wrought ? For 
 whose completion your Royal Master has given 
 you time, instruction, opportunity ; for which he 
 has furnished you lavish means and the fairest 
 models ? Is this the image, so blemished, ignoble, 
 soulless, dwarfed, which you offer for a place in the 
 Palace Beautiful ? This, to stand with the forms 
 of faultless mould that there abide ? Ah ! see, those 
 lines which seam the forehead and the cheek too 
 clearly tell of unholy passions. Anger and malice 
 
IMAGES OF GOD 375 
 
 have left their mark ; and Pride has left her stamp 
 upon lips curled in scorn against the humble and 
 the poor. Evil thoughts and feelings have passed 
 like a blight over the form that should have stood 
 erect in godlike fullness of stature, now shrunken 
 and bent ; and the hand that should have been out- 
 stretched in open beneficence is tightly clinched in 
 selfish avarice. Oh ! impress of hours wasted, and 
 worse than wasted ; of a life misspent, of talents per- 
 verted ! For, unknown to thyself, old man, every 
 motion of thy heart, every thought of thy mind, 
 every action of thy life has transferred itself to the 
 marble ; and it stands the image of thy soul ! It 
 should, it might have been the image of thy divine 
 master, the image of a god ; and it is — what thou 
 hast made it — what thou art ! " 
 
 Then there was silence in the room and darkness ; 
 and then the sculptor — awoke. For it was but a 
 dream. He was yet young ; his life lay yet before 
 him, and his life's work. But he never forgot the 
 lesson of that night. 
 
 " In the still air the music lies unheard ; 
 In the rough marble beauty lies unseen ; 
 To wake the music and the beauty needs 
 The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 
 
 " Great Master, touch us with thy skillful hand ! 
 Let not the music that is in us die : 
 Great Sculptor, hew and polish us, nor let 
 Hidden and lost Thy form within us lie ! 
 
 " Spare not the stroke ; do with us as thou wilt ! 
 Let there be nought unfinished, broken, marred ! 
 Complete Thy purpose that we may become 
 Thy perfect image, O our Father, God ! " 
 
-HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP" 
 
 We are fond of dwelling upon Man as a Will. 
 We urge it as his human quality, that which makes 
 him greater than the lower creatures, that he has 
 the power of self-directed thought, of self-chosen 
 virtue. We count it his crown that he can know 
 himself, can direct himself, can discipline himself. 
 We appeal to him continually, in our exhortations, 
 to be true to the responsibility which belongs to 
 such capacities ; to be true to himself, to put forth 
 his will and his conscience in the choice of good ; 
 in the doing of right ; to make himself what a man 
 should be ; not to fail in doing what a man should 
 do. We expect him to control his passions, to mas- 
 ter his feelings, to govern his appetites, to rule his 
 impulses, to conquer his weaknesses. We ask him 
 to use his opportunities ; not to be enslaved by cir- 
 cumstances, but to master and mould them ; not to 
 yield to misfortunes and sufferings, but to make 
 them serve him ; and to rise superior to defeat. 
 The very powers of nature, which he cannot change 
 and is helpless to resist, he must use to turn to his 
 purposes. And when he bends in reverence before 
 his God, it must be no slave's prostration of terror, 
 but a son's voluntary homage, which bends the knee, 
 but looks straight into the Father's eye and asks, 
 " What work can I do for and with thee to-day ? " 
 That alone is felt to be a noble life which is self- 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 377 
 
 trained to noble ends ; which voluntarily assumes 
 the reins of its own government, and freely accepts 
 the obligations of duty. 
 
 So we preach self-reliance ; we preach faith in man, 
 confidence in human faculties and human nature. 
 Mr. Emerson sounds our tonic note : " Trust thy- 
 self; every heart vibrates to that iron string. In 
 self-trust are all virtues included." And another 
 clear and eager voice declares that " Religion is 
 Man's effort to perfect himself." 
 
 There, perhaps, we hesitate. At least I do. I want 
 to move an amendment. I am willing to say, Re- 
 ligion is man's effort after perfection, as a partial 
 definition. Man cannot perfect himself by himself. 
 Man's effort is not the whole of man. I am reminded 
 that there is another side. What I have stated is 
 but half the story ; it is all true, yet but one hemi- 
 sphere of the truth. I think how much of our life is 
 instinctive, unconscious, and involuntary ; how much 
 our characters owe to influences not of our choice ; 
 how much power circumstances have over our lives ; 
 in how many ways our will and purpose are but a 
 single element among many that bring about a result ; 
 how often a flash of instinctive feeling makes things 
 clear to us, after which our thought had striven in vain 
 by conscious intention ; how often self-conscious- 
 ness hinders and spoils our actions ; of the charm of 
 spontaneous and impulsive persons, of the beauty of 
 a virtue that is not an effort or struggle (we never 
 think of angels trying to be good). I remember the 
 silent but mighty power of character, above teaching. 
 I recall what poets, orators, artists have said of their 
 best things being said and done without effort, when 
 
378 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 they were carried beyond themselves and beyond 
 their intention and their will, building better than 
 they knew. Surprised themselves, are they, at clear 
 thought and fitting word and glowing image which 
 seemed not their own. We hear the saint and 
 prophet speak of possession and illumination ; of a 
 divine word coming to them and a Spirit dwelling 
 in them from above. Our own souls have felt the 
 touch and thrill of that divine contact ; have heard 
 the whispers of the Spirit in us, akin to us, but not 
 ourselves. 
 
 Besides, then, the self-conscious, the self-knowing, 
 the self-directed life of thought, will, conscience, is 
 this other element of life, the unconscious, the recep- 
 tive, the spontaneous. 
 
 First, in the vital operations of the body, — the 
 circulation of the blood, the breathing of the lungs, 
 the assimilation of the food, many actions of the 
 nerves and muscles. I do not will to feel cold or 
 pain, to laugh, to wink, to weep. These processes 
 are taken out of the charge of our wills ; they are 
 involuntary, automatic. The moment we try to 
 breathe evenly, or to time our heart -beats regularly, 
 we fail. The more we think about our digestion the 
 less well it goes on ; and whenever we have to think 
 about it, it is disease not health. These vital pro- 
 cesses go on fulfilling the creative law without our 
 choice or determination. Think that fully one third 
 of our life is spent in the unconsciousness of sleep. 
 
 There are still higher automatic operations of our 
 bodily systems. The brain itself, organ of conscious 
 thought, carries on processes of perception, processes 
 of thought, in an automatic way — what is called 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 379 
 
 unconscious cerebration, the thinking in dreams, in 
 reverie or day-dreams ; memory as distinguished from 
 recollection, — how often we try in vain to recall 
 some name or person ; and how words, scenes, faces, 
 sensations, long passed and forgotten, startle us with 
 wonder, delight, or pain, springing up unbidden with- 
 out wish or will of ours. It is as if every perception, 
 every sensation, every feeling, imagination, thought, 
 took possession of some fibre of the brain and 
 became permanently organized into it ; ready ever 
 afterward to reappear when from any cause that 
 fibre was set vibrating. It is Mr. Bain's notion that 
 such is the case. So trivial are some of the impres- 
 sions thus firmly held that we are led to believe 
 that every minutest experience of our lives is recorded 
 there. People recovered from drowning tell us that 
 it is as if their whole lives in smallest detail passed 
 swift as a flash before their sight. If in the spirit 
 which uses the brain every experience of thought 
 and feeling be thus also recorded — what a book of 
 judgment do we carry with us through eternity. 
 How unerring for evil and for good. But for the 
 duration of our bodily life it is easy to see what a 
 storehouse of impressions, pictures, sounds, thoughts, 
 we have here, behind every present moment, behind 
 every conscious thought. How many things are in 
 our minds which yet we are not thinking of! It 
 seems as if the "gray matter" of the brain had 
 power of itself to think, but only — only — wJicn the 
 mind has once tised it. What a storehouse ! What 
 a background ! What an ever-attending companion- 
 ship to all our life of present thought and activity ! 
 When the poet's or artist's imagination, the speaker's 
 
380 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 thought, has kindled his brain into excitement, what 
 thronging fancies, quick-coming thoughts, swift and 
 fitting words, glowing images, flock to lip or hand ! 
 Is it strange that coming from a past self, so long 
 forgotten, they seem new-created, seem not himself, 
 but suggestions from beyond himself ? Is it strange 
 that men in certain moods are startled with voices, 
 apparitions ? How many mysteries this uncon- 
 scious cerebration may explain. I do not say that it 
 explains all. 
 
 In dreams, and the state called sleep-walking, 
 the brain, as an automatic machine, carries on pro- 
 cesses that ordinarily are done by conscious will and 
 self-directed effort. The dream that men so often 
 count prophetic of the future is rather the record 
 of the past, unshaped and unregulated by conscious 
 thought and intention. Our dreams, however, may 
 be self-revelations, and may be valuable for self- 
 study by indicating what is the unconscious under- 
 current of our thoughts and feelings, what thoughts 
 and desires are getting organized into our brains 
 and nerves, so that they come out to play when 
 watching conscience and will are not on guard. They 
 may show us in what directions we are drifting, and 
 give us useful warning of unintentional lapse. Still 
 better, perhaps, will our day dreams, our reveries, do 
 this. 
 
 There is a constant tendency in us for things to 
 pass from the conscious to the unconscious state. 
 This is the law of our growth. This is the pro- 
 cess from intention to habit in body and in mind. 
 Thought, will, conscience, become organized into 
 character, which is the deposit of disciplines, liber- 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 38 1 
 
 ated into the spontaneous state. For it is the sin- 
 gular fact, that what passes thus from the free will 
 and enters the domain of organic law becomes not 
 enslaved but liberated. For all organic action 
 appears to us more free than intended action. It 
 has become spontaneous. Not that the will is 
 excluded, but it acts without hindrances and so is 
 not made conscious of itself. There can be no 
 grace of movement till we have ceased to think 
 how our hands or feet are placed or moved. The 
 fine tact which is the charm of good manners, or 
 of style in writing, may be born with a man, a de- 
 posit from his ancestry, or may be an attainment of 
 his own culture ; but in either case it has passed 
 from a conscious to an organic state ; it is no longer 
 a definite choice or volition, it cannot explain itself 
 or know itself. What is it Carlyle said about uncon- 
 sciousness as the essential element of genius ; of all 
 virtue ? " If Adam had remained in paradise, there 
 would have been no anatomy and no metaphysics ; " 
 that we spoil ourselves by knowing ourselves ; that 
 to be conscious we have a body is to be already 
 diseased ; to be conscious we have a soul is to be 
 already fallen from innocence ; that when a man 
 begins to inquire into the grounds of his faith he 
 has already ceased to believe ; that they do best 
 who know not what they do. Yes, but worst also. 
 For this also is but half the truth. And what is it 
 that Mr. Emerson says, which sounds so ungracious 
 towards those who by self-discipline are trying to 
 be good, when he declares one to whom goodness is 
 cheerful, natural, and easy, to be a far lovelier sight 
 than Grump with his grunting resistance to a legion 
 
382 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 of devils. It is good as against a sour and ascetic 
 virtue, but this also is but half the truth. 
 
 But this is the side of the shield we are now look- 
 ing at ; the spontaneous, natural, impulsive, uncon- 
 scious, as against will and effort. We love the 
 spontaneous ; we are moved by the impulsive. The 
 orator does not become perfectly eloquent, carrying 
 his hearers away with the spell of his speech, until 
 he has lost himself in his theme, and is himself car- 
 ried beyond himself ; no longer directing his will to 
 the choice and arrangement of his words. 
 
 The artist struggles and works laboriously over 
 his canvas or his clay with careful effort, but it will 
 not glow with life till in some happy moment he is 
 seized above his will and, he knows not how, gives 
 the electric touch of inspiration that lifts mechanical 
 work into artistic creation. Unconscious of self, of 
 fatigue, of hunger, of time, he is possessed by the 
 thought, the feeling, the beauty he would express. 
 And what is genius but that happy organization 
 which makes this possession frequent, so that the 
 forces which in other men are hindered, obstructed, 
 or suppressed, in some one flow free, spontaneous, 
 and unhampered ? 
 
 Now it is much the same in our moral life, in the 
 creation of character, the finest of arts, the building 
 up the stature of the perfect manhood, the Divine 
 Image. Most men are so well born in some re- 
 spects — thanks doubtless to some ancestral fidelity 
 to the divine laws — that in those directions they 
 need only live out the spontaneous natural impulse. 
 Few men are so well born, but that in some other 
 respect they must pass through conscious self-dis- 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 383 
 
 cipline, control natural impulse, resist temptation. 
 But in these cases the virtue which we respect will 
 not be the goodness which we love, till the stage 
 of struggle and conscious effort is passed, and the 
 virtue has become organic and spontaneous, like 
 the goodness of God ; till it flows forth as waters 
 fall, as birds sing, as roses blow, because they cannot 
 help it ; till it has become natural to the man, if not 
 born in him, yet he born into it. This surely is the 
 sweetest, truest goodness, the flower and perfume 
 of character. I am not speaking of merit. It is not 
 a question of merit, but of quality ; what is lovely 
 to God and man. Perhaps this is the truth hidden 
 in the popular doctrine of the churches about regen- 
 eration. But they state it so rudely and with so 
 little discrimination that they make it a falsehood. 
 They so lose sight of quality in insistence on spe- 
 cial methods and agencies ; they seem so sure that 
 there is no light save what comes through church 
 windows, no water of life save what runs through 
 church spouts ; they so belittle the grace of man 
 and the grace of God ; above all, they are so voluble 
 in casting discredit on all " natural " goodness as 
 being worthless and accursed beside the artificial 
 article raised in church hot-houses under the stim- 
 ulus of the fires of the pit, that we cannot always 
 have the needed patience to search out the grain of 
 truth in the chaff. 
 
 It is plain that if we are continually studying our 
 moral condition, dissecting our characters, examining 
 our moral growth, working over our sins and weak- 
 nesses, we are in great danger of becoming morbid, 
 — moral dyspeptics. There may be an excess, as 
 
384 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 well as a deficiency of conscientiousness ; there may- 
 be a virtue which is a bondage, so hampered by fear 
 of transgression and painful endeavor to walk the 
 crack of rules, that it can never take the free stride 
 of manhood. Such is not the liberty of the sons of 
 God, who are emancipated from rules and regula- 
 tions into the realm of principles and law. 
 
 So that not merely are spontaneousness and un- 
 consciousness the best result of self-discipline, but 
 also one of its methods. If you watch the pot it 
 will not boil, says the homely fireside proverb ; if 
 you watch the plant it will not grow. We must 
 trust ourselves to natural, silent processes, to unob- 
 served methods. Effort is but one element of our 
 moral growth ; whether the effort that constrains 
 and subdues the evil within us, or the effort that 
 consciously chooses and lays hold of the good. There 
 is a whole other realm of mighty power to mould our 
 moral being, — I mean the realm of influences. We 
 do not become good only by trying to be good ; but 
 quite as much also by forgetting ourselves, even our 
 self-culture, — absorbed in other things, and receiv- 
 ing, as in sleep, abundant and healthful stimulus and 
 nourishment from the silent operation of the good 
 about us, and the natural, unwatched movements of 
 the good within us. Just as our bodies grow not by 
 the voluntary exercise only, but quite as much by 
 silent influences, the operations of light, air, and the 
 electricities in which we are embosomed, which enter 
 into us and weave our tissues into shapes of health 
 and strength. 
 
 Now, it is precisely on the unconscious, involun- 
 tary side of our nature that we are open to influence 
 
HE G1VETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 385 
 
 from beyond and above ourselves. Our minds are 
 recipient as well as creative ; our consciences are 
 recipient as well as self-determining. Our intellec- 
 tual condition, — how largely it is dependent upon 
 our inheritance of temperament, of race, of civiliza- 
 tion, of tradition, of family. How few of our ideas, 
 or opinions, even, are strictly our own. I need not 
 say how much our characters and moral estimates 
 are modified by inheritance and surroundings. How 
 familiar the experience of the influence of compan- 
 ionship ! What mysteries of attraction and repul- 
 sion ! Who does not know persons whose presence 
 calls out all that is best, noblest, sweetest in us, 
 quite outside of any will of ours ? We are lifted 
 above every mean thought or base purpose ; " our 
 souls to higher levels rise;" while the presence of 
 others brings out our least worthy qualities, and we 
 are ashamed of what we are led to think, to say, to 
 do, and every better thought or nobler sentiment is 
 chilled before them. Thus our characters are in 
 part moulded by the moral tone of the community 
 in which we live in ways we have not sought and 
 cannot definitely detect. Our virtue is only in part 
 ours, our vice only in part ours. 
 
 We live environed by and immersed in these mul- 
 titudinous influences. They do not supplant our 
 own moral energy or displace our responsibility ; but 
 they do most certainly modify both. They flow into 
 the veins of our unconscious and receptive life. Nor 
 are these influences, as I believe, confined to the 
 society in which we visibly move. The whole realm 
 of spirits must contribute to it. As the powerful 
 force which maintains life upon our planet comes 
 
386 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 from a sun nearly a hundred millions of miles away 
 in space ; nay, even in part from the star-suns whose 
 distance is absolutely incalculable ; so we may be- 
 lieve our spiritual life to be acted upon by the 
 whole world of spirits. Secret and mysterious in- 
 fluences touch our thoughts, our feelings, our con- 
 sciences, and our wills from sources beyond our 
 cognizance. 
 
 But, supreme above all these sources of influence 
 in might and beneficence must surely be He, — the 
 Supreme Spirit. Since God is, surely his energy — 
 the energy of perfect and infinite truth, justice, 
 holiness, love, for that is what we mean by the 
 name God — must pervade all worlds and reach all 
 souls. Of all influences, his must be mightiest, pur- 
 est, sweetest, nearest, and most intimate. Of all 
 companionships, the fellowship of the Spirit must be 
 most quickening, most elevating, most enlarging. 
 Of all communion, that which to our spirits must be 
 most precious, most helpful, most comforting, most 
 deep, most peaceful. But our spiritual state must 
 determine our ability to receive. 
 
 For this recipient side of our nature, spontaneous 
 and free as it is, has its conditions. Precisely be- 
 cause it is organic it has its laws. For throughout 
 the universe of matter and of mind man has never 
 found a spot where law is absent, — until he has 
 come to see that freedom is only the unobstructed 
 action of law, is found only in obedience to a law 
 felt to be divine and omnipresent and one through 
 all orders of being, the divine law being but the law 
 of their constitution, not outside of them but within 
 them. 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 387 
 
 Among the laws of this involuntary, unconscious, 
 recipient life there seem to be two, without obedi- 
 ence to which we can never have that side of our 
 life healthy and true. 
 
 One is, that this unconscious, involuntary life 
 should remain unconscious, involuntary. If we try 
 to put much of our thought, our intention, our will 
 into it, if we carry curiosity or definite seeking into 
 it, asking consciously to know it, we already vitiate 
 it. Just as we disturb the unconscious, vital pro- 
 cesses of our bodies by watching too closely or try- 
 ing to regulate their operation. It will come to us 
 most healthily and beneficently when we are not 
 too definitely seeking it ; when our thought and our 
 will are engaged in their proper work of doing what 
 lies within the province of our will, our self-deter- 
 mined work. 
 
 The monks and the mystics who have deserted 
 their work and their duty in the world where God 
 set them, in the idea that they could find God by 
 seeking Him only in the way of contemplation and 
 prayer, have not gained what they sought ; have 
 found only a diseased or torpid, not a healthy reli- 
 gious life. No wonder they have been infested with 
 devils ! Do your daily work with cheerful heart, 
 love your neighbor, deal justly, love mercy, forget 
 yourself, yea, your very soul, if you would that God 
 should come to you and abide in you. The divine 
 reinforcement and inspiration are the reward of 
 duty, not the substitutes for it. And the will that 
 is turned to doing his will, to loving what He loves, 
 cannot fail to have his abiding, quickening presence. 
 His inspiration is not a definite communication of 
 
388 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 thought, or knowledge, or direction, but rather a 
 quickening and exalting and inspiration of our minds 
 and consciences. We must do the day's plain duty 
 and put forth our mind and hand to the morning or 
 noonday task. Then we may expect the helpful, 
 vitalizing, spiritual powers to flow into ours. For 
 so we have fulfilled the condition upon which they 
 can healthily, because unconsciously to us, enter into 
 us. For we must never think to be able definitely 
 to distinguish between the divine and the human 
 thought, the divine and the human will, or know at 
 what precise point God comes in, in this sacred 
 mingling of the human and divine. 
 
 And so, I believe, we ought to allow the influences 
 from spirits in the invisible sphere to remain indefi- 
 nite, undetermined, general ; and not seek detailed 
 communication or direction or answer to the ques- 
 tions of curiosity. Else we lay ourselves open to 
 endless delusions and perhaps much spiritual harm. 
 Enough to know, to feel, that if we are seeking true 
 and pure ends, we must by a spiritual law receive 
 the sympathy and helping influences of all true and 
 pure spirits. 
 
 Another condition of this unconscious, recipient 
 life is the law of temperance. If we give ourselves up 
 to it without self-control, resigning our self-mastery 
 in its behalf, we shall lose our spiritual life instead 
 of gaining it. It is characteristic of the impulsive, 
 emotional, spontaneous, instinctive part of our nature 
 that it has in itself nothing to keep it from going 
 to excess. Its nature is only to express or indulge 
 itself, and it would stop only with exhaustion, being 
 without an element of self-restraint or self-limitation. 
 
HE GIVE Til HIS BEIOVED IN SLEEP 389 
 
 It needs, therefore, always to be balanced and 
 held in bounds by the conscious will, intelligence, or 
 moral sense. If without such guardianship we give 
 ourselves up to the mere emotions of feeling, to the 
 recipiency of impressions, to the impulses of instinct, 
 to the currents of influence, — give ourselves up, I 
 say, — we shall be in great danger of becoming vic- 
 tims of caprice, fancies, and feelings. We shall have 
 notions instead of thoughts, whims instead of con- 
 science, willfulness instead of will. And the life 
 that might be beautiful with the free play of spon- 
 taneity within law will become self-indulgent and 
 passionate, or weak and wasted. No man has a 
 right to give up this control entirely, not even to 
 the highest and divinest influence, not even, I will 
 say, to the Supreme Spirit ; and certainly, with 
 much more reason, to none less than He. It is not 
 safe for a man to allow himself to be possessed by 
 another. We sometimes meet in life an instance 
 where a strong will and forceful character has 
 gained complete power over another. How the life 
 dwindles and dies out of the weaker ! All individu- 
 ality and character disappear ; it is the murder of a 
 soul. Amadeus may abdicate the throne of Spain, 
 but no man has a right to abdicate the throne of his 
 own soul. To do this is the " great refusal," like 
 that of the Pope embalmed in Dante's vigorous 
 scorn. He may often lay aside the robes of state 
 and the rod of empire. He may bathe himself in all 
 sweet and beautiful influences, accept gladly the 
 tonic quickening of high and strong companionships, 
 seek a consecrating communion with the Holy 
 Spirit, and even let himself fall peacefully to repose 
 
390 HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 in the arms of Him who giveth to his beloved while 
 they sleep. But his sceptre must always be within 
 his reach, nor must he let his crown be stolen. 
 
 I have said that a man has not even the right to 
 surrender his control of himself, permanently, even 
 to the Supreme Spirit. Is that too bold ? I think 
 not. If anywhere, it would be here. This posses- 
 sion one would pronounce safe — to be possessed by 
 God. But God has not asked that, has not willed it. 
 I say this not because I have " entered into his coun- 
 sels." But I see that He has given us self-conscious 
 thought, self-determining consciences, self-directing 
 wills. We are not made, like some lower creatures, 
 to obey without conscious purpose or knowledge 
 the life -forces that work through them. He has set 
 us a little off from himself, so to speak ; and laid a 
 responsibility on us that we cannot fail to feel and 
 which shows us his will for us. To us his sons He 
 has given the glorious liberty, the perilous but no- 
 ble privilege, of sharing his creative intelligence and 
 becoming voluntary co-workers with Him. We are 
 not mere " receptacles," as Swedenborg calls us, we 
 are recipients of his life. He does not pour him- 
 self into empty vessels, but sends the thrills of his 
 power, his justice, his beauty, and love along the 
 lines of healthful nerves and vigorous fibres, reach- 
 ing out to do his work. Not broken wills, not cruci- 
 fied wills, but consecrated wills does He seek, to pour 
 his will through. 
 
 Selfishness, and self-reference, and self-seeking 
 must indeed be crucified, but not self ; wilfullness 
 must be extinguished, but not will. I distrust the 
 humility which is an abasement. I find that a dis- 
 
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 39 1 
 
 eased piety which says in our hymn-books, " Man 
 is nought, is less than nought." I cannot sympa- 
 thize with the Romanist devoteeism which puts 
 self-extinction, annihilation of will, as steps to the 
 life of God in the soul. It is too much akin to 
 the Jesuit discipline, which bids every member of 
 the order put himself " as a dead body " into the 
 hands of his superior. Not dead but living souls 
 will God inspire ! Rather would I hear the Stoic 
 trumpet of Epictetus : " Dare look up to God and 
 say, Make use of me as thou wilt ; I am of the same 
 mind, I am one with Thee." 
 
 Thus, between two forces, do we in our path of 
 life "go sounding on our dim and perilous way." 
 Perilous, yes ; but not unguarded, not insecure ; it 
 need not be uncertain. The sun at the centre draws 
 us with its unrelaxing claim of Duty ; the influences 
 without us never lose their balancing attractions. 
 The resultant should be the full circle. Duty and 
 inclination, spontaneity and obedience, impulse and 
 conscience, — in the equilibrium of these is our true 
 orbit of life. 
 
 We must wear the yoke of discipline as prelimi- 
 nary training for the unconscious life of holiness. 
 While we accept the responsibility which our power 
 of self-direction imposes on us, we are saved from 
 the burden of a responsibility which we could not 
 bear by the remembrance that our characters are but 
 in part of our own building, — but partly in our own 
 keeping. We hold the helm and set the sail, but 
 the wind of heaven and the currents of ocean bear 
 us on. 
 
 The same thought will also keep us from over- 
 
392 HE GIVE Til HIS BELOVED IN SLEEP 
 
 anxiety about our duty to others for whose character 
 and well-doing we feel responsibility. 
 
 Our duty of direct guidance and watchfulness is 
 but a partial duty. Our indirect, unconscious influ- 
 ence and many influences beyond our control are 
 working too, and take from us half the responsibility 
 which else might here, also, be more than we could 
 bear. 
 
 And, finally, a lesson of charity is suggested in 
 our judgment of our fellow-men, in our blame of 
 their misdoings. While we ought not to abate our 
 just condemnation of the misdeed, or withold its just 
 punishment, for the misdoer we may remember that 
 not all the burden lies at the door of his conscious 
 will. Only the Omniscient can tell how far he is 
 morally guilty for willful disobedience, for intended 
 wrong, and how far circumstances of birth, educa- 
 tion, temptation, beyond his will and intention, have 
 made him what he is. In the hands of that Perfect 
 Justice we may well leave him, as we are glad at 
 every moment to leave ourselves, happy in the 
 thought that we cannot put forth one effort of mind, 
 heart, or conscience toward truth, right or good, but 
 his inflowing Spirit works through us, inspiring and 
 conspiring ; that we cannot descend into any hell 
 of passion or disobedience but that He is there, in 
 his retributions, to warn us back to life. For in help 
 or in retribution, while we work out our own salva- 
 tion by our own way, it is always God who is work- 
 ing in us. 
 
STAYED ON GOD 
 
 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on 
 Thee. . . . For in the Eternal is everlasting strength. — Isaiah xxvi. 
 3>4- 
 
 To very many persons the enterprises and the ac- 
 tivities of life are so attractive and interesting that 
 they ask nothing more for their happiness than the 
 exercise of their energies in some work to which 
 they feel fully equal ; which gives them good hope 
 of success ; and offers no difficulties or obstacles, 
 except such as their energy is able to overcome, and 
 against which they feel an exhilaration in mating 
 their powers. They do not pray ior peace, but only 
 for more power and more opportunity, and ' a task 
 that shall call out their powers and give them full 
 play. 
 
 But, sooner or later, comes to all a different ex- 
 perience, in one or other shape ; some demand to 
 which they are not equal ; some hindrance which 
 they cannot overcome ; some duty to which they 
 can bring only failing or exhausted strength ; some 
 disaster against which they struggle in vain ; some 
 disappointment which seems to break the very spring 
 of life ; some affliction which overwhelms and ap- 
 palls ; some tempest which hurls them from their 
 foundations and makes the earth tremble and rock 
 under their feet ; some uncertainty or anxiety which 
 
394 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 overthrows all their plans and tosses them to and 
 fro, and makes their prayer to be for peace, only 
 peace, and their eager question, " Where shall we 
 find our rest ? " — rest from driving ambition and 
 tyrannous passions, from haunting desires after the 
 unattainable, from perplexing doubts and strivings 
 after truth that still evades us, from hopes doomed 
 to repeated disappointment, from desponding fail- 
 ures, from plans defeated, from broken reliances, 
 from unanswered affections, from wearying yet never 
 ceasing cares, from duties urgent yet feebly met, 
 from conscience quick to condemn yet powerless to 
 aid, from conflict with passions within or tempta- 
 tions without, from restless despondency and fears, 
 from sorrow and the burden of grief, its loneliness, 
 its longings, and its pain — could we but learn the 
 secret, would not all be well ? would not all be at- 
 tained ? 
 
 There are two ways conceivable in which we 
 might find relief from this perplexity, this unrest 
 which at times becomes fearful and overwhelming. 
 One is by having all trials, temptations, losses, suf- 
 ferings, burdens, difficulties, obstacles, hard duties, 
 sorrows, removed, taken quite away from us. The 
 other is by having strength imparted and cheerful 
 courage to do, to meet, to bear them ; by having a 
 power given to us, or revealed within us, equal to or 
 greater than the demand. The former is too often 
 the way we should choose for ourselves or those dear 
 to us ; the latter seems apt to be God's way for us. 
 Which is the highest and best way, a serious thought 
 may show us. For the first would give us the rest 
 of self-indulgence, indifference, and indolence ; the 
 
STAYED ON GOD 395 
 
 latter the rest and satisfaction of strength and 
 courage. 
 
 There is peace, then, not only in becoming in- 
 different to all objects of desire, but in desiring 
 only such as we can obtain ; not merely in having 
 duties appointed us, but in having power and fidel- 
 ity to meet and accomplish those that demand us ; 
 not only in having obstacles removed but in hav- 
 ing cheerful energy to surmount them ; not only 
 in having our passions suppressed, but in having 
 the strength of will to control and guide and use 
 them ; not in having temptations withdrawn, but 
 in having a strength of principle that readily puts 
 them by or makes them occasions of virtue ; not in 
 being spared trials and sorrows, but in having a faith 
 that meets them with serenity and learns from them 
 beautiful and divine lessons ; gets from them bless- 
 ings of patience, trust, purity, and heavenliness, and 
 cheerfulness, and depth of soul, and spirituality of the 
 affections, which God's hand hides in them ; not in 
 having every wish, even the most extravagant, ful- 
 filled, but in having a well-balanced and calm spirit 
 that so adapts itself at once to whatever happens that 
 it cannot be said to know disappointment long. 
 
 This is plainly the highest peace, because it be- 
 longs to a strong, serene, trustful, steadfast soul ; be- 
 cause it is from within and not from without. This 
 is God's peace, and it is to be found in Him. It is 
 true that " He keepeth in perfect peace the heart 
 that is stayed on Him." Nothing less great, nothing 
 less central, can give the peace which shall be equal 
 to all needs, unshaken by all trials, abiding through 
 all changes. Only that which is highest and that 
 
396 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 which is deepest, — above the tempest ; beneath the 
 waves. Only the immutable, only the eternal, only 
 the real. And what does not disturb Him will not 
 disturb the heart that is stayed on Him. What does 
 not thwart his sacred purpose will not disappoint 
 the will that is stayed on Him. What He can bear, 
 the heart that is stayed on Him can bear. 
 
 They tell us that when men were sounding to find 
 the ocean-floor along which the Atlantic cable should 
 be laid, they found that floor to be covered deep with 
 a deposit of microscopic shells of the most exquisite 
 delicacy. These minute shells, which the slightest 
 touch of a finger would crush, were found to be un- 
 broken and perfect in their outline. The terrific 
 storms, which ploughed up and lashed up the ocean 
 surface, and crushed the strong ships, were out on 
 the surface. In the depths was unbroken calm. 
 
 This globe of ours, whose surface is daily revolv- 
 ing with such inconceivable swiftness, so that we 
 are now miles away in space from where we were 
 when I began this sentence, has through its centre 
 a line of atoms which do not move — the steadfast 
 axis of the earth's revolution. Such a depth of un- 
 disturbed calm must we seek beneath the restless, 
 harassed, ever changing surface of our life ; such a 
 steadfast central line of thought and purpose run- 
 ning through our changing lives. 
 
 It is the God who is in all things as all things are 
 in Him ; that invisible which is in all things visible ; 
 that permanent which runs through all things that 
 change ; that spiritual which lies within all things 
 material ; that truth which underlies and survives 
 all changing opinions ; that soul of good which is 
 
STAYED ON GOD 397 
 
 within all things evil ; that supreme, all-conquering, 
 beneficent Will which contains and controls all ; 
 that perfect law of righteousness which holds in 
 check and overcomes all wrong ; that perfect Love 
 which embosoms all in its purposes of final and 
 spiritual good. These, these are God, name them 
 as we may. And our faith in God is our faith, 
 our assurance of his reality, this supreme, omnipo- 
 tent reality and permanence of an unseen Good, 
 Right, and True, within. And because God is this 
 omnipresent element of reality, of permanence of 
 order, therefore is He the ground of peace, and 
 therefore does He keep in perfect peace the heart 
 that is stayed on Him. 
 
 We cannot rest in what is uncertain, unreal, dis- 
 orderly ; it is just these things that make us restless 
 and destroy our peace. What is it that is restful 
 to us in life? What but the certainties of nature 
 about us ; the affections that can be relied upon ; the 
 men and women that can be trusted ; the things that 
 we can be tolerably sure will not change and fail 
 us ? Whence are our anxieties, our troubles, our dis- 
 tresses, all that mars our peace, but from the uncer- 
 tainties, the failures, of that we thought could be 
 relied upon, bringing disappointment, instability, in- 
 security ; the smooth sea beginning to toss under 
 us ; the steadfast earth to quake. It is not change 
 that disturbs. For the change, the movement, that 
 is orderly and calculable is life and exhilaration and 
 delight ; and absolute rest, if inaction, is no more 
 peace than it is life. But peace is equilibrium and 
 balance and harmony ; balance of feeling, balance 
 of power, balance of circumstances, adjustment to 
 
398 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 our condition and its demands. And this we are to 
 t get by getting at the element of permanence in the 
 changing, so that we do not lose hold of the thread 
 of continuity ; so that though we are moving, our 
 tread is on the firm earth ; so that though all things 
 be shifting about us, we have still firm grasp of that 
 which does not change. 
 
 What is this but saying that we must look beyond 
 the fleeting, within the sure ? It is the large look, 
 the high look, the deep look alone that can reveal 
 to us the immutable secrets of Peace. 
 
 Some things are, and some things only appear to 
 be. The things that are, are the real and lasting, 
 the true, the eternal ; these have being. The things 
 that only appear to exist are the changing, the tran- 
 sient, the shows, the fashions. These have only out- 
 ward existence, whose very nature is change. We 
 live truly just in proportion as we have knowledge 
 of, and experience of, and faith in, things which are, 
 in the realities, the element that does not change. 
 These are truths, ideas, principles, laws ; the same 
 to-day, yesterday, and forever ; they are truth, jus- 
 tice, virtue, goodness, holiness, faith, — the unseen. 
 The physiologist tells us of the perpetually chan- 
 ging atoms of our bodies, every moment passing off, 
 every moment renewed, so that not one particle 
 remains that formed our body a few years ago. 
 And yet that body is essentially the same and rec- 
 ognizable by those who saw it then, so that there 
 is a certain unity and continuity which holds on 
 while atoms disappear. But even more in our minds 
 and characters, in our inner self, do we find a con- 
 tinuity. Since we were children, what changes of 
 
STAYED ON GOD 399 
 
 thought, experience, feeling, opinion, motive, desire, 
 purpose ; yet, looking back, we find ourselves essen- 
 tially the same in all characteristic qualities now as 
 then ; our individual personality unchanged ; and so 
 we find it will be, must be, in the years that await 
 us, unchanged. 
 
 And in the great universe about us, which science 
 explores amid the perpetual and unresting move- 
 ments of molecules and of orbs, there is more and 
 more clearly recognized among all things a unity and 
 permanence of forces ; a persistency and omnipres- 
 ence and perpetuity of law, which is the orderly 
 method that runs through all processes and changes ; 
 and which justifies us in speaking of will and pur- 
 pose in the universe. 
 
 So in the world of Man. We travel from land to 
 land, through savage nations and cultivated com- 
 munities ; we note the variations, the grades of 
 advance, the peculiarities national, local, and climatic, 
 of races ; but we find under them all certain essen- 
 tial human elements the same substantially in all. 
 All in some way or other eat, sleep, think, love, 
 hate, build, make implements for their work, adorn 
 themselves, have rulers and laws, have notions of 
 right and wrong, and unseen power, and dreams of a 
 future life. 
 
 So if we study the history of the human race, we 
 find the same essential unity amid differences, the 
 perpetual recurring elements of language, society, 
 government, worship, law, conscience, heart, and 
 will. Under a thin surface of difference is a solid 
 basis of likeness ; under variety of appearance, reality 
 of permanence. 
 
400 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 In this way is justified to our reason that instinc- 
 tive sense (which belongs, as I think, to our spiritual 
 nature), the sense of an Immutable Reality of being 
 within, under, and through all changes of existence. 
 This our religious thought calls God. In this our 
 hearts rest, to this our conscience appeals, to this 
 our minds work, by this our wills hold steadfast. 
 He is the one permanent cosmic Force and Cause 
 in the world of matter, the unchanging Inspiration 
 in the world of soul. He is in the law of gravitation, 
 He is the law of conscience. In outward nature, 
 He is the Presence and Purpose of good which con- 
 verts all corruption into beauty, all decay into life. 
 In the world of human souls, He is the Presence 
 and Purpose of good which converts all seeming and 
 temporary sufferings into blessings ; the Will and 
 Law of righteousness which converts and sets right 
 every wrong. 
 
 Our need, then, is to get beneath appearances ; to 
 find out what things really are ; not what they are 
 for the moment or the day, but what they are for 
 the eternities ; not what they are in reference to our 
 outward comfort, but what they are to our inner and 
 enduring life. 
 
 Disappointments, losses, bereavement, failure, se- 
 cret sorrow — how full life is of them ! But is that 
 all the tale ? Moral disciplines, are they ? Say bet- 
 ter, they are consecrations, openings into inward life, 
 openings into higher thoughts and holy feelings of 
 trust and faith. Then it is in this reading of them 
 in the light of spiritual results, and God's purpose, 
 that we are to find peace and refuge from the dis- 
 tresses which they occasion. If we felt no pain in 
 
STAYED ON GOD 4OI 
 
 them, no anguish, it could only be because we 
 were hard, heartless, unfeeling ; or because we had 
 learned the lesson of peace too deeply and fully to 
 be moved by any outward thing. Whatsoever, then, 
 it be that disorders, annoys, grieves you ; makes life 
 look dark and your heart dumbly ache, or wets your 
 eyes with bitter tears, look at it steadily, look at it 
 deeply, look at it in the thought of God and his pur- 
 pose of good, and already the pain and annoy of it 
 will begin to brighten. The heart may not grow 
 calm at once, as the storm-lifted waves do not at 
 once sink into tranquillity, but toss through days 
 and nights after the wind has ceased ; but a centre 
 of peace has been found which will keep us from 
 sinking, for we are stayed on God. 
 
 In two ways does the he^rt stay itself on Him, 
 and find itself kept in peace. 
 
 One way is by trust in Him ; one is by obedience. 
 Sometimes all we can do is simply to trust ; when 
 there is absolutely nothing for us to do in the trial, 
 but to be still under it ; when we cannot see the 
 reason for it, or the need of it, or the way out of 
 it. We can be still, with God's help. The thought 
 of Him in such an hour is a thought of calmness, of 
 something that stays by us whatever else is gone, 
 wrecked, lost. There He stands, and there we can 
 stand. We can hold up by that Hand while the 
 waves and billows go over us, and the wrecks of 
 fortune, of hope, of affection are scattered about us. 
 And how beautiful a thing it is to trust, till the 
 storm subsides and the light comes again ! And 
 how reasonable a thing ! Not a hope of ours falls 
 to the ground without the Father, who holds dis- 
 
402 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 appointment in his hand as easily as fulfillment. 
 What, does his power hold every particle of matter 
 to perfect laws in all its shapes and movements; 
 and can any human event be denied his presence ? 
 Even what the sin of man does, or his ignorance, or 
 his passion, or his mistake, — is that outside of his 
 presence ? In every evil God is present, not as evil 
 but as redemption, as the Power which restrains evil 
 within sure limits, which makes it work its own 
 destruction, which makes it servant of good, and at 
 last transmutes it into good, by his spiritual chemis- 
 try turning the vilest thing in nature into beauty 
 and sweetness. In pain, He is present as a power 
 to bear up under pain. In affliction, as a ready 
 peace. Nothing in the world is so bad as it seems 
 to an outside view, severed from its relations. There 
 is no absolutely unmixed evil in a world of which 
 God is the life. For no human will can shut Him 
 utterly out, and where there is a ray of good, there 
 God is. It is this assurance that He mingles him- 
 self in all things which is the reasonable ground of 
 our trust in the darkest and most mysterious, the 
 most unrelieved and apparently hopeless trouble. 
 But our trust is beyond and before our reasoning. 
 It is the sweet childlike surrender of our hearts. It 
 is the full acceptance of our lot. " I will trust Thee, 
 though Thou slay me." 
 
 The second ground of peace is righteousness, or 
 obedience to the divine will as moral law. A man 
 can no more be at real peace who is not living 
 in accordance with this divine law, than a building 
 can be stable which is not in accordance with the 
 laws of cohesion and gravitation. In the old days, 
 
STAYED ON GOD 403 
 
 whose lesson I hope we have not forgotten, when 
 the attempt was made again to stave off moral ques- 
 tions in politics, to keep back and cover up the sim- 
 ple obligations of justice and humanity, when peace 
 was bought by continual compromises, temporizing- 
 expedients, — called each in turn a finality, — it used 
 to be said, and truly, that nothing is settled which 
 is not settled right, which is not fixed on the basis 
 of justice. It is with individual men as with classes 
 and communities. There is no peace to the man 
 whose thoughts, purposes, conduct are not adjusted 
 to the eternal law of God's righteousness. Till that 
 is done, there remains an element of discord, an- 
 archy, war within him, that will not let him have 
 peace. The reproofs of his better nature, the sug- 
 gestions of conscience, will not let him rest in any 
 moral compromise with himself, by which he may 
 try to atone by some virtues for other allowed vices. 
 Or, if conscience be deadened, the fear of discovery, 
 the dread of betrayal by accomplices in wrong, keep 
 him disturbed. Or, if none of these, there is still a 
 will at discord with God's will and the moral order 
 of the universe. Not till he is adjusted and centred 
 on these is a man at peace in the conscious and fear- 
 less strength of virtue. Against wrong doing the uni- 
 verse of God is arrayed ; on the side of right doing 
 it is forever pledged. "Whoso is at heart just, so 
 far is he God," said one who spoke not too boldly. 
 The greatness of God, the eternity of God, do enter 
 into that man with justice ; whatever comes to him, 
 whatever goes from him, is stayed on God. " All is 
 lost, save honor," says the brave general on the 
 battlefield, calm amid his ruined plans because he 
 
404 STAYED ON GOD 
 
 has faithfully done his best. All is lost save integ- 
 rity, save principle, save human respect and affection, 
 save God's approval, many a man has said, amid the 
 wreck of fortune by no fault of his own. What he 
 has, in having honesty, is more than what he has 
 lost. Stayed on God, he is kept in perfect peace.