MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 93-81652 MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This Institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in Its judgement, fulfillment of the order would Involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: STODDARD, JOHN LAWSON TITLE: REBUILDING A LOST FAITH PLACE: NEW YORK DA TE: [1 9221 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 936 St 63 D93b St63 Restrictions on Use: Ctoddai-il, Jchn Lav.-uon, 1050-1931. llebuildinf: v. loct i'aith, by an Anoric.'.ii a;niocti& Jolin L. ototkUird . . .^^ Ilovf edition - v.lth indo::. new Yorl:. Ilonody, {i??.?.^ vi , ?,Z^ p . 20 en . ♦NOTHER COPY IN MCOICAL LIBRAIW Copy in Barnard. 1 1953?! TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: //^ FILM SIZE: B 5'^'^'^ _ IMAGE PLACEMENT: L\ (ilA> IB IIB DATE FILMED: ^~ a^rj INITIALS FILMED BY: jTf^^L£AB:'I-_-_^:?_^ <, BIBLIOGRAPHIC IRREGULARITIES MAIN ENTRY: rrePPJgft, MMu 1-iLkio.if Bibliograp hic Irregularities in the Original Document List volumes and pages affected; include name of institution if filming borrowed text. ^Page(s) missing/not available: .Volumes(s) missing/not available:. .Illegible and/or damaged page(s):. .Page(s) or volumes(s) misnumbered:. .Bound out of sequence:. k^Page(s) or illustration(s) filmed from copy borrowed from: iKt, Ui^Jw^mijL^ ^ BiiffA/p; V- vij loii'ta'9 '^ lii'/SS^ iM^-i.!^ / Other: FILMED IN WHOLE OR PART FROM A COPY B ORRO WED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO c Association for information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm iMIlllMlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllMlllllIlM IllllHlllllllllllUlllllllllilllllllll TTT Inches I 1 m T 1.0 LI 1.25 TTT 1^ 23. 2.5 ^0 u til, ^ mutt. 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 TTT 1 MnNUFRCTURED TO fillM STRNDPRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE- INC. Rebuilding a Lost Faith REBUILDING A LOST FAITH BY AN AMERICAN AGNOSTIC JOHN L. STODDARD "Into Thy vineyard I come in haste, Eleven soiindF f rem iis auriejit tpwer, . So many years have goije :to wiasie;, * • \ What can I do in a single hour?' .•j»» »• • 1 « » • e c 4 I , • •> i NEW EDITION— WITH INDEX P. /. KENEDY AND SONS 44 BARCLAY STREET, NEW YORK It ■ NIHIL OBSTAT C ScHUT, D.D., Censor Depuiatus. IMPRIMATUR : Edm. Can. Surmont, Vicarius Generalis, Westmonasterii, Die 21 Mar tit, 1922, PREFACE THE world of literature possesses many records of conversion to Catholicism which are more startling in their events, more powerful in their delineation and more pleasing in their language than this story. Yet the experience of every soul is after all unique, and I myself have gained much benefit from readmg the accounts of those who have preceded me, as pilgrims to the Port of Peace This book is the result of numerous requests to write an explanation of the motives, influences and argumente which brought me^back to faith in God, the Bible, Immortality and the Christian Relieion, and finally led me to enter the ancient. Apostolic, Catholic Church, whose Primate is the Pope. It has seemed best to preface this explanation with a brief account of my youthful religious ex- perience, between which and my present standpoint there stretches, like a desert between two oases, a spiritual wilderness of more than forty years. Both of these widely separated mental states constitute kindred portions of my spiritual entity, the former having been to some extent the origin of the latter. .... . ,. From a glance at the Table of Contents of this volume one might perhaps conclude that the book is intended to be controversial. It IT true that many of the usual differences between Catholics and Protestants are here discussed, but not with a desire for controversy. As I formerly took a more or less public stand towards prominent relieious questions-unhappily in opposition to what I now through God's grace recognise as truth-I feel myself constrained to sta e with equal frankness my present religious convictions. As possible readers, I have had in mind especially such Protestants and Ration- alists as, like myself, have grown up under modern sceptical and materialUtic conditions, with little or no conception of ecclesiastical authority. To them the point of view from which I have approached the study of the Catholic Church will seem familiar and natural, however much they may differ from me in my conclusions. To Catholics, who may turn these pages, I would say in advance, lest they be disappointed, that the results arrived at by these arguments wUl offer to them nothing new. Yet possibly the story of the ar- duous journey I was forced to make to reach a land, already so wel known to them, may have for them some interest. They will at least appreciate the fact that I was moved to write these pages by a desire to counteract the evil influence which my hosUhty to Chr^Uamty IBf ^ PREFACE once exerted, and to undo to some extent the harm produced for more than two score years. God can make use of even the humblest instrument, and He may deign to do so in this instance. In view of this possibility I prayed that His Divine blessing might accompany me, as I wrote. God grant that such has been the case. THE AUTHOR. 'zn-r CONTENTS ^v oRAmm I. n. nr. IV. V. vr. vn. vm. DC X. XI. xn. xm. XIV. XV. r* XVI. ;Xvn. xvin. !v XIX. XX. XXI. ^ACK PRETACB V FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM i IN THE WILDERNESS OF RATIONALISM . . . . 15 THE AWAKENING 22 SEARCHING FOR LIGHT (tHE EXISTENCE OF GOD) . . 34 THE MORAL LAW . . . * ax IMMORTALITY ^2 REVELATION 5^ WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? yo THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 'yg LUTHER , . , , , , , ^ ..88 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 105 PROTESTANTISM IN AMERICA 116 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 130 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED — ^PAPAL INFALLIBILITY . I45 PURGATORY AND INDULGENCES . . . . . I54 THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE 165 REVERENCE SHOWN TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN, AND PRAYERS TO HER AND TO THE SAINTS . . .175 MIRACLES, ANaENT AND MODERN 185 THE VENERATION OF IMAGES AND RELICS . . .197 PERSECUTIONS FOR HERESY BY CATHOLICS AND PROT- ESTANTS 202 THE FINAL STEP 2II SOME CATHOLIC PRIVILEGES AND COMPENSATIONS . 2x6 Rebuilding a Lost Faith Chapter I FROM FAITH TO RATION AUSM "Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it." — ^John Henry Newman. "In den Ozean schifift mit tausend Masten der Jiingling; Still, auf gerettetem Boot treibt in den Hafen der Greis." Schiller, MY early training was extremely religious. Both my parents were of old Puritan stock. Their theology was Calvinistic and of the type denominationally known as "Congrega- tional." Their lives were not made gloomy by their creed, though they were certainly serious. Family prayers, morning and evening, were observed by them, followed on Sunday evenings by the sing- ing of some beautiful hymns, whose words and melodies are still dear to me. The musical accompaniment to these was furnished by my father, and those sweet Sabbath evenings, when the family group assembled thus in prayer and praise, remain among the most touch- ing memories of my life. Dear, old-time tunes of prayer and praise, Heard first beside my mother's knee, Your music on my spirit lays A spell from which I should be free. If lapse of time gave liberty. I listen, and the crowded years Fade, dream-like, from my life, and lo, I find my eyelids wet with tears, So much I loved, so well I know Those plaintive airs of long ago! My mother also used to talk to me in simple } ut impressive words about our Saviour, Heaven, and the truths of the Gospel ; and after her death I gained through reading her journals an insight into the spirituality of her nature and her intimate life with Christ in God. When I was twelve years old, there took place something in my parents* life which, though I could not fully understand it then, has never been forgotten. It is worth recording here, as a proof of one of the results of Protestantism, arising from its theory of the suprem- 2 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH acy of individual judgment in matters of faith and doctrine. A new mmister had been installed in our Congregational church, but not without duficulty. It was at that time customary for ministers of the Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist and other denominations, before entermg on a pastorate in any church, whose members had ^ven them a "call," to pass a theological examination, not only in the presence of a select committee of neighbouring clergymen, but also before the deacons and even the lay members of the parish. Ibese theological inquisitors, scarcely two of whom would probably have agreed in their interpretations of either Scripture or dogma, compelled the wretched postulant to run, for several hours, a gaunt' let of questions, criticisms and "observaUons/' whose alleged object was to ascertain whether, in the judgment of this heterogeneous court, he was perfectly "sound in the faith." As a matter of course, some of the questioners always were dissatisfied with the candidate's answers, and doubts were thus aroused in the minds of listening parishioners, many of whom were incapable of weighing the argu- ments, and some of whom were nothing more than well-meanine religious eccentrics. Thus were the seeds of future discontent and dismtegration inevitably sown. Nevertheless, the applicant was sel- dom rejected. Those who had found him "too Calvinistic," "old- school," "liberal," or "lax," usually gave way at last through mo- tives of expediency, though not without some mutterings of doubt and ominous predictions. In the particular case referred to the suspicions awakened by the examination of Rev. Mr. D. developed quickly into active opposition. Some members of his church, among whom were niy parents, became alarmed at the way in which he spoke of the Saviour in his sermons. Just how he failed to satisfy them I do not now remember, but I have reason to suppose that he was thought to emphasise too much the human element in the Son ot U)d, while laying insufficient stress on His divinity. At all events, a schism in the church grew imminent. A formal protest was drawn up by the dissatisfied party, and the reading of this arraignment, in the presence of the unhappy minister himself, m a crowded "Friday evening prayer-meeting" I well remember. It amounted to an ultimatum on the part of the complainants, who thought of course that they, as Protestants, had a right to protest. At all events, they insisted that either the Rev. Mr. D. must preach a different theology or they would leave the church and found another of their own! Had not Luther set them a glorious example? A 11 ^j^;?,t^ovej-sy ensued, which caused a lamentable scandal among all good Christians, and excited the derision of the ungodly. FinaUy a compromise of some sort was effected, but the Rev. Mr. D. soon betook himself elsewhere. Nothing could better illustrate, than this little incident, the natural process of disintegration which has been FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM 3 going on in Protestantism for the last four centuries,— an extraor- dinary process truly, if Protestant sects are really representative of a Church, which Christ not only founded, but with which He prom- ised to abide to the end of time I When I was thirteen years of age, my mother died, leaving to me a blessed memory of piety and love. My father, also eminent in godliness, died two years later. At the time of this latter event, I was still at school, but soon left for a neighbouring city, expecting to pursue a mercantile career. God willed it otherwise. During the following winter, largely through the influence of two sincerely religious friends, I passed through the spiritual crisis commonly known as "conversion." No special excitement attended it. There certainly was no "revival" in the neighbourhood. But I have rea- son to believe that this experience, notwithstanding my subsequent apostasy, was the result of God's Spirit striving with my soul. ^ I was at all events profoundly moved by the realisation of my sin- fulness and of the necessity of reconciliation with God, and I sought His forgiveness humbly through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, resolving with His help to lead a Christian life. When this great change had taken place, an ardent desire seized me to devote myself, as a minister,— preferably as a missionary,— to the preaching of the Gospel. This was not strange. In my ancestry ministers had been numerous. One of my father's brothers had recently died as a missionary in the Orient; another was an active and enthusiastic supporter of the cause of foreign missions. The latter, welcoming my zeal, and heartily approving my wishes, agreed to furnish me with funds sufficient to obtain a university education, and a few months later I for ever abandoned a mercantile life, and reopened my books with the determination eventually to proclaim Christ and Him crucified either at home or abroad. Soon after, with ten or twelve young people of about my own age, I made a public profession of my faith, and was received into the Congregational church of which my parents had been members. In connection with this ceremony I was baptised, as I had not re- ceived that Sacrament in childhood. This is a point worth special consideration here, for,— unlike the original Church of Christ, which has always regarded Baptism as a necessary Sacrament, obligatory for children as well as for adults,— the Protestant sect to which nay parents belonged— and there are many like it— did not believe m Infant Baptism. In fact, apart from the tradition of the Catholic Church, which Protestants disregard, it is difficult to find authority for this custom. In Scripture faith is stated to be essential to the rite of baptism, and every instance of baptism mentioned in the Bible is of adults. Infant Baptism was, however, practised very early in the Church's i\ 4 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH histojy and the Fathers justified it. St. Irensus, for example, says: — Christ came to save all, who through Him are born again to ood, infants and httle ones, boys, young men and the aged" (Iren u. 22, 4). The usual Protestant belief is that Baptism bestows upon the mfant a capacity for receiving this grace when it shall at the proper age have ratified the vows made for it by its sponsors. The Catholic doctrine, on the contrary, is that the grace is bestowed upon the baptised infant then and there. While many Protestants, prin- cipaUy Anglicans and Episcopalians, adopt this custom, fully as many reject it. Some even consider Baptism to be no Sacrament at aJl, but merely a rite, connected with admission into the Church 1 Others, although the institution was indubitably established by the bon of God, have actually condemned it as sinful! Great numbers of Protestants have, therefore, never been baptised. • It is difficult for me now to understand how devout Christians Lke my parents, could have failed to recognise Baptism as an indis- pensable Sacrament,-that is, an outward sign of an inward and spmtual grace, instituted by Christ Himself; for few of our Saviour's words are so emphatic as the folIowing:-"Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." He likewise commissioned His Aposties to each all nations, "baptising them in the name of the Fatiier. and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." As for my youtiiful associates and myself, I am sure that we re- garded our Baptism merely as a solemn ceremony, and had no notion whatever of tiie doctrine of the Catholic and Anglican Churches - that tt confers on the adult a special sanctifying grace, remits his sms, and makes upon Ms soul an indelible mark, or "character " Yet of the truth that the Sacrament of Baptism is primarily intended for the remission of sins, we have abundant evidence: for St Peter as recorded in Acts ii. 38, distinctiy says:-"Be baptised, ev^ry one ri' 'xT- ^ "^^^ °^ J*'"^ ^^"'t' ^°'" *•>« remission of your sins"; and the Nicene Creed states also:-«I confess one Baptism for the remmwn of srns." But of this and many other doctrinal points we youthful neophytes knew practically nothing, for our instruction in such matters had been very superficial. In fact, ignorance of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity is the rule, rather tiian the exception, among Non-Conformists. Al- though my parents had brought me up religiously, I personally never had rweived the least instruction in the catechism, and I doubt if any of my companions were better informed than myself. What we knew of the creed of our Church we had "absorbed" from ser- mons family prayers and Sunday-school lessons. Nor were we as postulants, asked any questions about doctrines I As I remem'ber the scene, each one of us in turn was requested to rdate his or her FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM 5 "experience," which naturally was a story of religious sentiment. We merely took for granted the truth of the creed, zs we found it given in the constitution of that particular chur.'; in which we pledged ourselves to Christ and to His service. The university years that followed were chavacterised by nothing specially worth recording. Surrounded by religious influences, it was not difficult for the professedly Christian students of my college to lead at least a nominal Christian life. This in my own case was distinguished neither by apathy on the one hand, nor special spiritu- ality on the other. No serious doubts disturbed me, and I looked forward to tiie ministry as my career, though my original wish to be a missionary to the heathen had considerably dimimshed. Ac- cordingly, without remarkable enthusiasm, yet equally without mis- givings or regrets, I entered, in my twenty-second year, the theo- logical seminary of . My fellow "theologues" were for the most part men of exceUent character, though of moderate mentality. As scholars and as speak- ers most of them were evidently doomed to mediocrity. So true was thi^ of some of them, that I often wondered whether they would ever have adopted this profession if it had not been made so easy for them. The seminary was richly endowed, and offered gratis to such students as applied for aid, not only free instruction, but also comfortable rooms and board. Moreover, after their second year of study tiiey always could earn money by preaching to congregations temporarily without pastors. Under such circumstances, men who are graduating from college without money, and who for the first time face the world's fierce struggle for existence, are easily induced to enter the ministry. In such cases it is a great temptation to choose the line of least resistance, and this, if it be the Protestant ministry, leads almost certainly to an assured livelihood. In Amer- ica it is true, the Protestant clerical profession is, as a rule, mis- erably paid (see Chapter XII.), and in small country parishes ministers have often to endure real hardships; yet, if a youthfid graduate from a theological seminary possesses pleasing manners and average ability, he will have littie difficulty in obtaining a pastorate, in which no great amount of learning and oratorical skill is neces- sary. Especially, if he becomes an Anglican, or in America an 1-pis- copalian, clergyman, he can usually make a desirable marriage and enjoy a good social standing, irrespective of his intellectuality. One of the studies of the first year at this seminary was Hebrew, and I shall never forget the pitiful efforts made by some of my associates to master the difficulties of that language. The poor fellow at the desk adjoining mine was frequently the picture of despair, when asked to conjugate a Hebrew verb, or to translate a Une of Genesis. Perhaps a tiiird of tiie class derived some benefit 6 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH '^,TS\^^, iTa-rLSf s^rr/s ■".*• ?*■»■■ The study of the New Testament in Gr^Pt xvJ ^r beneficia;, for all of us had read SZSli ^:kl:Z^'Zl tir!v!c • Sr ! ""^ flounder in translation, as frequently was cLT T.^t"^: ^' '°^^^^t •'' the studV of the wSs^ Christ and the Apostles was also naturally much greater thanTnth^t of the remoter and more difficult writings of tfe OW Tes^ml^. Moreover, in our professor of New TestamP„f »L!; • ^*^^™"'- clever, stimulating teacher Yet it Vc^ ^ f ^ ^^" ""^ ^''^ * this Jnrlv fhot "V ? ** '* ^^^ precisely m connection with this study that I found my greatest theological difficulties h Jt '°P^.^^ """, ^'^ '^^^'^'"^'^t •" Greek which I used as a text AU '^''^^ ''\^^'"^'''« «'^'t'°« •^O'^Pi'ed by the cefebrated d!?; Alford. This had, as a rule at tl,» t^r^ „f ceieorated Dean lines of Greek wh le muc^ nf f>,» ^ ? ^^^^^ ^^^^ t'"" °' three ui "recK, wnue much of the remaining space was fillpH .« ««- C ^'i'.;=°'"°'«''t^ «>^ the textual variftionsoTl^o^f lines L writers Hompr Plof/^ r^; TT '"dnuscnpts of the classical which takes us nearer to the tim^ nf rhr\^^ *\. ^^ospei of Queen Elizabeth. The dLp^lce " f,?"'' ^f T '° '^' "«'' of the New Testament i.^T^ ^ °"°'"^' manuscripts Emperors, like Diocletian, ordered thJtTobUiSrrHVT' manuscripts should be burned. Of the ^ieSrches o ihl • 'u^ matter, and of their wav<; nf h.iA- ^^^'^^'^^^ "t scholars m this ?sxr' '" " ""-^ ^ittlts. Lis;!" different readings' I havp ^'nr^ f "° ^^^ ^^" '^^^^^ xtatjiiig^. 1 nave since learned not to t^xaaat^ra^^ ♦!,««• nificance of this farf fnr ;« •« i% .i exaggerate the sig- FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM 7 of their genuineness. Many of these textual differences probably occurred through the carelessness of copyists, others were caused by the creeping into the text of footnotes made by previous tran- scribers, while others still may have been made intentionally by conscientious men, who thought that they could thus improve the older text, or at least explain its meaning. Mistakes could also easily be made because the Scriptures of the first ten centuries after Christ were written in large capital ("uncial") characters, without Greek accents or punctuation, and even without division between the wordsl t. u * More serious, however, seemed to me the absence from the oldest manuscripts of some entire passages found in the later ones. Such paragraphs were, in my edition of the Greek New Testament, enclosed in brackets, to indicate that,— being found only in later manuscripts,— they were considered less authentic. In such cases the oldest existing manuscripts,— the "Sinaitic," formerly in St. Petersburg; the "Vaticanus," now in Rome; and the "Alexan- drinus," in the British Museum,— are usually regarded as the most authoritative, but not invariably; for if many of the later manu- scripts contain a reading, which the eariier ones lack, their united,— even if more recent,— testimony is sometimes thought to be more decisive than the negative attitude of the older codices. What the precise text of the lost originals was, we have no way now of deter- mining, save as we find quotations from them in the writings of the old Church Fathers and their pagan critics. But such omissions do not necessarily prove that the passages are of an origin later than the early Gospels. They may have been intentionally omitted for some specific reason connected with the particular church for which the copy had been made; for at certain epochs and in certain places it seems to have been thought best by the Bishops (owing perhaps to the unusual prevalence in that city of some special heresy) , that certain passages, liable to be misunderstood by the local church members, should be omitted from the manuscript ordered for that community.* Copies of the Books of the New Testament were not mvanably made then on the theory that every word of the original manuscripts must be reproduced. They were transcribed for definite purposes. During the first one hundred and seventy years after the birth of Christ, although those Books were certainly regarded as sacred and inspired, the Apostolic oral tradition was still so fresh, that written authority was less frequently appealed to. ♦Similarly, the Gothic Bishop, Vulpilas (4-a.d., 381), in his translation of the Old Testament, in the Codex Argenteus, intentionally omitted the Books of Kings, in order not to make his own warlike Gothic people still more predatory through reading of the martial exploits of David. 8 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH Practical difficulties also contributed to the omission of certain portions of the text. The manuscripts were always in the form of narrow rolls, which,— being of necessity unrolled to be read and rolled again to be put away,— were liable to be injured. They were moreover, of a uniform length for convenience in handling, and sometimes, to avoid having too long a roll, or to economise the ex- pense of another "Book," a sentence might be altogether omitted. I mention these difficulties, because, as a Protestant, I was much more disturbed by them than a Catholic would have been. Catholics as a rule, attach comparatively litUe importance to these textual discrepancies, for their theological system is built up not frona dead manuscripts alone, but from the history of the doc- trines, the traditions of the Fathers, and the infallible voice of the Living Church, Protestants, on the other hand, who base their dogmas merely on conflicting texts, who have no other standard than the silent Book, and who acknowledge no authority but pri- vate judgment, are very seriously embarrassed by these differences since many of their doctrines find their confirmation or refutation in the acceptance or rejection of a certain reading. Accordingly, it finally dawned upon me that the Bible alone, without a competent . tnterpeter, cannot explain all that is necessary for religion- but ^ where was I to find in Protestantism a competent authority which ' had the right to settle questions about doctrinal interpretation and textual authenticity? Individual opinions were as numerous among Protestants as the discrepancies themselves. Even my Professor could grve me merely his private "view'' as to which of a number of conflicting readings was the right one, but this and his idea of what dogmatic conclusion should be drawn from it had no authority in ^S'^^T'L^K,'"^ intellectual chaos. The Anglican Dean Farrar, m his The Bible; its Meaning and Supremacy'' (pp. 118-20) states unmistakably that in order to ascertain what the word of God, contained m Scripture, really is, Wfi must find out for ourselves, and choose what satisfies our reason; for our own private judgment is our final court of appeal, to know how much of the Bible we can accept. But, if the Bible be a Revelation from God, how can it be interpreted by every individual to suit himself? Of what value is a heavenly Manual which we may mutilate at will? While I was thus floundering in my exegetical and theological difficulties, a work which deeply interested me was the "Exan^na- tion of Canon Liddon's Lectures on the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Chnst." The author of this volume announces himself anonymously as "A clergyman of the Church of England," and this fact proves what I shall soon again refer to,-that Anglican clergy- men differ so widely m their doctrinal beliefs, that they promulgate FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM 9 nearly every variety of Christian dogma. The book is, in fact, an adverse criticism of the Biblical arguments brought forward by I Canon Liddon to prove the Divinity of Christ; and its author argues jthat it is impossible for an unprejudiced reader of the Bible to de- \duce from that source only the doctrine of Christ* s co-equal deity! |"The really Scriptural position," he declares, "is that Christ fills, in the scale of being, a place not perfectly defined, but certainly above I man, and as certainly beneath God'' (p. 307). "If," he asserts, "that doctrine be from God, facts of the plainest character appear to compel the admission that He has seen fit to promulgate it, not through the Sacred Volume, but through the living voice of a divinely organised and divinely inspired Church" (p. 34). In other words, this clergyman of the Church of England attempts through more than four hundred pages to prove that St. Paul disbelieved in the Divinity of Christ, although assigning to Him a position higher than that of all other creatures. The fact that such a conclusion could be reached by a Christian clergyman by means of a critical study of the text of the New Testament, and that such ideas could be held and published by a regularly ordained priest of the Church of England, gave the last blow to my already tottering faith in the infallible text of Scripture, as interpreted by private judgment. Certainly some- thing more was needed than a silent Book, if from its pages one clergyman of the Anglican Church can be led to "affirm with unhesi- tating confidence that Christ is not Very God," while another clergy- man of the same Church asserts his firm belief that He is Very God! I felt that some supreme and living authority must be found to settle these vexed questions, unless the Church of Christ were to dissolve and perish. When able students of the Bible come to such diametrically opposite interpretations of it, it is evident that this volume, precious as it is, is not so simple a book that everyone, learned or unlearned, can readily understand its meaning. St. Peter, in fact, says expressly that in St. Paul's Epistles there are some things "hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruc- tion" (2 Pet. iii. 16). The Bible, therefore, in and of itself can never take the place of a living and infallible teacher. It remains silent under all the tortures inflicted on its texts. ^ The voiceless book and complicated manuscripts cannot alone decide the matters which disturb the soul. Suddenly, as my heart cried out thus for a divinely appointed interpreter of God's Revelation, I realised for the first time that Christ Himself neither wrote a book, nor dictated a line of one to/ any of His disciples. What He had done was to found a Church, which He had promised always to remain with and to guide. If He had wished that His religion should be propagated and preserved by lO REBUILDING A LOST FAITH 2l book only, why should He not have written one? The truth is that Christianity preceded the New Testament. The Gospels and Epistles were written for the benefit of a Church which already existed. The Gospels were not composed until sixty years after the death of Christ, nor was the Canon definitely established till the Council of Carthage, a.d. 397. Hundreds of Christians never saw the Books of the New Testament; and before a line of them had been traced, **Christ and Him crucified" had been preached to thousands, many churches had been founded, and converts innumerable had been made among both Jews and GentOes. Why, then, did I not see that the original Catholic Church was precisely the divinely instituted Teacher and supreme Authority which I was seeking for? Because, like millions of otherwise well- educated Protestants I knew then practically nothing of that Church, save what intolerant abuse or unfair criticism had given me. It is nothing short of amazing that Protestants, as a rule, not only know so little of the Catholic Church, but that they wish to know so little of it. It is deplorable that, although so many books explanatory of Catholicism are written and published, most Protestants refuse to open them, or even to hear a sermon from a Catholic preacher! Occasionally they ask a Catholic: — ^**What is the present religious belief of the Catholic Church?" not realising that, although one may appropriately ask about the "present religious belief" of the ever-changing Protestant sects, one cannot do so in regard to the Catholic Church, jor her belief does not change, since she preserves inviolate the ancient teaching given her by Christ and the Apostles, which through the aid of the Holy Ghost has been retained and .. guarded by her from the beginning. H Little of this did I, as a callow theological student in a Protestant seminary, know. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to go to someone for advice, and naturally turned to one of my Professors. He listened to me with probably as much sympathy as such a scholarly recluse could feel. He seemed, however, to think my case a serious one, particularly as my doubts were shared by one at least of my class- mates. To obviate our difficulties, therefore, he kindly volunteered to give our class some lectures of his own upon the proofs of Christ's Divinity. This he soon did, and I well remember the significant looks and ironical laughter indulged in by our fellow-students, as certain remarks and arguments of the lecturer were thought by them to disconcert and put to rout my comrade and myself. These lectures did not, however, remove my exegetical troubles, and others were soon added to them. Once more I sought the aid of my instructor, but this time, if I had expected from him bread, I received only a stone. I recollect in particular asking him how he met the scientific difficulties connected FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM II with the Star of Bethlehem. Why, for example, should God have sanctioned a pseudo-science like astrology? And, since we know that every visible star is either one of our planets or else a mighty sun separated from us by an inconceivable distance, how was it possible to believe that a stupendous mass of matter, probably larger than our own great luminary, could come within even a hundred million miles of our solar system without wrecking it completely? Moreover, how could such a gigantic body indicate with precision any portion of our tiny earth? It would have been easy for the learned man to have pointed out to me the fact that the great astronomer, Kepler, had found a confirmation of the Gospel story in the condition of the stellar firma- ment in the seventh year before the Christian era, as we reckon it, —the year accepted now by many scholars as the probable date of the Nativity. It certainly is most remarkable that in that year,— repeated three times, in the months of May, October and December, —there occurred a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the same constellation, and,— more extraordinary still,— that a conjunction of those two satellites with the planet Mars took place in the same year,— a marvellous phenomenon, which occurs only once in 794 years! (see "Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xxvu., p. 80, and vol. xiii., p. 66 1 ) . This was an incident sure to excite the amaze- ment of Chaldean astronomers, since such an event would, according to the tenets of astrology, foreteU terrestrial happenings of supreme importance. Even if this had been unknown to my Professor, he could have cited, as a possible explanation of the Star of Bethlehem, the well-authenticated instances of new stars suddenly appearing in the heavens, and, after blazing for a time with variable splendour, vanishing again from sight. As for God's making use of such a phenomenon nineteen centuries ago, in connection with^ the then prevailing notion that such sidereal occurrences are associated with our human destinies, the worthy Doctor of Divinity might surely have reminded me that in God's manifestations to mankmd He often uses methods suited to men's limited comprehensions and to the views and customs then prevailing; and if I had objected that the moment of the actual blazing up of the "new star" was probably several centuries previous to men's perception of it, because its waves of light, though traversing the awful void at inconceivable speed, could then first reach our distant orb, he could have answered, "What difficulty does such a preparation for the Nativity present to the Creator of this universe, to whom time is but one eternal Now?" But nothing of all this did the Professor deem it worth his while to mention. He merely smiled a trifle enigmatically, and gave me the advice to make as little reference in my sermons to that point FROM FAITH TO RATIONALISM 13 12 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH as possible! This staggered me. Could it be true that in Christian theology there was an esoteric and an exoteric system, and must its teachers laugh, like Roman augurs, when they met professionally? Some of my readers may object that the case I mention was exceptional. I do not affirm the contrary. I merely tell my own experience. Under these circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that, a few months later, a member of the faculty called upon me and, with a manner that betrayed embarrassment, remarked: — ^'^Mr. , you know we are approaching the time when the students of your class will present themselves before the Board of Examiners as candi- dates for ordination. Now, just between ourselves, I want to advise you and your friend X not to appear there. Intellectually, both of you are qualified to stand the test; and, morally, to the best of my knowledge, you are both irreproachable. But" (he cleared his throat, and smiled) "you know there are some *hard heads' on that Board, who would scent heterodoxy in a moment, if you and X began to answer honestly their questions upon certain points. An uproar would ensue. Your licences to preach would be refused. Worse still, — for us, — the matter would be mentioned and exag- gerated in the newspapers, and the seminary would acquire a reputa- tion for heresy." This was a blow the effect of which he evidently perceived, for he continued with a confidential smile: — ^"But after all, Mr. , why do you specially want to preach? You are much better fitted to be a Professor. Why not go abroad and spend a year or two in study? Then you could very well return, and be yourself • . • a Professor of Exegesis! That is what you ought to do." When he had left, I paced my room in agitation. After all these years of preparation, must I now turn back at the very threshold of the Christian ministry, — not because I was incompetent as a scholar, nor on account of any perceived defect in either my morality or spirituality, but merely because my theological difficulties on certain points, — ^largely dependent on disputed texts of Scripture, — might, if disclosed to the Board of Examiners and the public, scandalise the seminary? Yet I was sure that, if my instructor were himself obliged to pass a similar examination, and to answer certain questions truthfully, he also would be liable to the charge of heresy. I felt instinctively that he shared my doubts. At all events, he made no effort to dispel them, nor did he tell me what he did believe. He merely expressed the wish that I should not inform the public of my scruples! About this time I had a confidential conversation with a young minister of my acquaintance. He told me he was most unhappy. Doubts similar to mine had assailed him also during his course of study, but he had kept them to himself, had somehow managed to pass the examination for ordination, and now was bitterly conscious of the fact that he was preaching much that he did not believe! I never shall forget his mournful words. "Old friend," he said, "it is too late for me to act as you can do. I have worked all these years to be a minister, and orthodoxy owes me now a living. Moreover, I am married, and have setUed down in a parish. To tell my people and the world that I no longer believe the doctrines I proclaim would bring down ruin on myself and family. I simply cannot do it. I therefore steer around the dangerous points, and get along as best I can. The people want a certain amount of emotional religious treacle given them once a week, and I am paid to furnish it. I therefore serve it out to them, mixed with such ethical ingredients and literary spice as I am capable of producing." This frank avowal of my friend not only shocked and saddened me, but filled me with alarm, lest possibly such a fate might yet be mine were I not true to my convictions. . Fortunately for me, at this very time there occurred, m the providence of God, a sudden change in my circumstances, which enabled me to suspend temporarily my theological studies, and to enter upon a career of teaching. At the end of a year, being still undecided in my views, and conscientiously unwilling to return to the seminary, I resolved to make a tour of the Continent and the nearer Orient, hoping to find from a new point of view some light as to the ultimate path I should pursue. This year of travel did not, however, smooth away my theological difficulties, and I was forced to ask myself, whether I should adopt the profession of teaching permanently, or finish my theological studies in another way, and become a Unitarian minister. Upon the latter point I determined to consult an eminent Unitarian clergyman, settled over a wealthy, fashionable church in the metropolis. After hearing my story to the end, he frankly said ta me:— "My advice to you is not to become a minister of this denomi- nation. What can a young man now expect from the Unitarian Church? It is moribund. It has no future. This is not the form of Christianity that is going to survive. I am an old man, and shall remain where I am, but you had better keep out of Unitarianism." Nearly half a century has passed since those words were addressed to me, but they still echo in my heart. I left that clergyman's house and kindly presence profoundly disillusioned. I called to mind the wish expressed by Thomas Jefferson in 1822:— "I trust there is not a young man now born in the United States who will not^ die a Unitarian!" "Truly," I said to myself, "that ardent desire of the great American does not seem likely to be realised. On the contrary, this refined modern Arianism, like many other forms into X4 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH which Protestantism has dissolved, is only one of numerous intel- lectual halting-places between Rome and Rationalism. It is evident that I must choose one or other of these two extremes." "Rome" seemed to me then, however, hardly worth considering; for I again confess with shame that up to that time I had never opened a Catholic book, and knew of the Catholic Church only what reading on the Protestant side had taught me. Nevertheless, I thought that so-called "knowledge" quite sufficient! Though fairly well educated in matters of Church history and theology, — ^according to the superficial standards of my seminary, — I, like most Protestants (the High Church Anglicans perhaps ex- cepted), took it for granted that all the calumnies which I had read of "Rome" were true, and therefore I concluded that conditions which I had found unbearable in Protestantism would be much worse in Catholicism. Accordingly, although it was a matter on which my soul's eternal welfare might depend, so great were both my ignorance and arro- gance, that I made no attempt to investigate the claims and doctrines of the Catholic Church, but chose deliberately Rationalism, whose ardent advocate I then remained for forty years. Chapter II m THE WILDERNESS OP RATIONALISM "And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder, crawling, cooped we live and die. Lift not your hands to It for help, for It As impotently rolls as you or I." , Omar Khayyam. "Some day when Atheism has been tried and found wanting, it rSociety] will look around for a fixed point in the social chaos, and will find nothing but the Catholic Church."— T/ie Unworthy Pact, p. 243. "Notre intelligence tient dans I'ordre des choses intelligibles le meme rang, que notre corps dans Tetendue de la nature." — Pascal, RATIONALISM did not mean for me Indifferentism. The world was then in intellectual ferment. Those were the days of Bishop Colenso in South Africa, of James Martineau in England, of Emerson in Concord. The scientific and religious ele- ments of the country stood "at daggers drawn." Mankind was quivering under the impressions made upon it by Darwin in his "Origin of Species" and "Descent of Man," by Spencer in his "First Principles," and by Huxley in his daring exposition of Agnosticism. These formed the great triumvirate of the new theology. Lesser luminaries, with whom I came into closer contact through sermons, lectures, books and conversation, were Moncure D. Conway, Octavius Frothingham, Francis E. Abbott, editor of the Boston Index, Minot J. Savage, the radical Unitarian minister, also of Boston, and, finally, the mocking, eloquent iconoclast, Ingersoll. That was a time when young men like myself went every Sunday eagerly to listen to some scientific lecture, "Free Religious" address, or Unitarian sermon, and even in the week-time zealously frw^uented radical debating clubs, where papers were discussed on "Immor- tality," "Science and Religion," "The Bible," "Omar Khayyam s Philosophy," "Gnostics and Agnostics," and a score of simUar themes. We had, in fact, what might be called a positive enthusiasm for unbelief. , It is true, this was not to any great extent embarrassed by definite knowledge; but all that was Unknown to us we thought Unknowable! Our great mistake was that we accepted without question, not merely all the positive truths which Science brought to light, but also all the radical deductions which certain scientists drew from them. We disbelieved in God and in His government of the universe because we thought that Science proved their non-existence; yet 15 i6 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH in reality we based our unbelief on the authority of a few men, not much older than we were, who frequently disagreed among them- selves. At the same time we ignored the statements of older and far greater scientists, and scornfully rejected the authority of the Church, and the traditions and testimony of 1,900 years! A truthful picture of that time is given by Canon Sheehan, D.D., in his "Early Essays and Lectures" (p. 57): — "All sacred things of religion, names that were spoken with bared heads and bended knees, sacred stories that had so often brought comfort to the sorrowful, and sacred hopes that had so long had their consecrated shrines in the human heart, are made the subject of derision. The scoff of the unbeliever has degraded in the eyes of thousands the purest and holiest revelations of Heaven." So far did we finally carry our hostility to the Christian religion, that almost any ideas which bore the stamp of flavour of Christianity were obnoxious to us. Many of the parables and precepts of the Gospels would have been lauded by us to the skies, had they been uttered by some Chinese sage, or couched in other words than those employed by Christ and His disciples. Not for the world would we have spoken of "God" or the "Devil" as real entities, but we would talk complacently of "something Real that is Divine," or "something Real that is Diabolic," as if we could transform the nature of things by speaking of them in the abstract, or by writing their names in capitals I Thus did we cheat ourselves with words, and caught at every subterfuge, in order to avoid a reference to the Almighty as a Person. Thus did we turn our backs upon the Light of the World, to hail some tallow candle as the Morning Star, and to "explain Christianity by explaining it away." There is much truth in the words of Father Benson: — ^"The mind most impervious to the Church's influence is that of the tolerably educated; the young man who has studied a little, but not much, and that chiefly from small handbooks; the young woman who attends University Extension Lectures, but not too many of them." To the young and superficially educated there is special danger in having people older and better informed than themselves assume, as a matter of course, that a belief in an intelligent Creator is obso- lete, and that Materialism is to be the "religion of the future"; for untrained minds are wont to cower before the ridicule of anyone who claims superior knowledge, although his bold assertions may be mere MBumptions. As a matter of fact, although we all talked much at that time about "Free Religion," in our hearts we wanted no religion whatsoever; and though we were for ever clamouring for "religious liberty," what we really meant by that term was liberty to have no a ourselves, and to discourage everybody else from having IN THE WILDERNESS OF RATIONALISM 17 any. Spencer had stated in his "Sociology" that "a religi^^^^^ system • o nnrmal and essential factor in every evolvmg society , but we Int^rJ red\^^^^ that, when -dety ^ad ^^^^^^^ fwould slough off its religions, as a snake discards its skm ^ '' jTco^Sci, if possible, this stream of scientific scepticism ♦J Protestant Churches founded lecture courses, and able LroSnents. The^ courses we attended, and afterwards dis- their J>PP^^°^^^^^^ ^ ^^^bt our minds were often too much p"^^^^^^^^^ S decision, yet I recall those days with Setas I look about me at the present rising generation, and note its relative indifference to such subjects. H Sicism was the characteristic of our youthful epoch, In- diLntlsm s the "Religion" that prevails to-day. At present, tutri^ld as we were then could hardly be induced to attend a irtu?e,-let us say, on the "Miraculous in the Bible,"--were one tfbe dven. Some of them never hear a sermon of any kmd They prefer to play golf, or to "take a spin" in an automobile. I do not "Sd'L-uSrU U showed... .-. .»u. „t,vj^^ . m"^^^^ greatness of this age is material not moral; Sd not religious. But we are paying the penalty for this, "'iake^^^^^^^^ were in many things and absolutely wrong mou^ reiection of Christianity, we were at least concerned ^th them^ 7pa amount importance. There was some hope for us, or we to^k Merest in discussions which pertained to the imma erial and the tS^VJe may have been fools, but we were capable of becoming w^ser, because we still read, thought, investigated and debated S wTs some life in us for the Spirit of God to work on. The frozen callousness of to-day is less encouraging. Our modern youths have practically no sense of spiritual values, since thTyha^^^^ grown up in an age of self-indulgence and indifference r e£^^^^^ Many of them are by inheritance wha th^r fathes became through conviction,-godless agnostics, or else mlterTaliS w^^^ see in money, luxury and pleasure the only hmgs worth STor. It is not too much to say that at the presen time Sifof yi^^^ men and women, who are to decide the future S Seat Britain and America, are being brought up m ignorance L mble of the teachings of Christ, and of the fundamentals of ChriftfanV. Into their lives there enters neither worship nor even irons reading! Their temples are the theatres, their shrines the Z^LXhe^ Scriptures the newspapers, their Sunday-school books the Sunday '^Comi^ Supplements"! If they were questioned on i« REBUILDING A LOST FAITH idi^otts subjects, they would probably reply, that of the existence of God, personal immortality, or a future day of judgment they knew DothiBf and cared less. I doubt if thousands of them ever say • prayer . This sUte of things has brought about one of the most niMpiiuous characteristics of our age,— -Irreverence, especially for thing connected with religion .♦ of this fact arc numberless, but the following is worth _ In an antiquary's shop in Switzerland there was lately ^ L^?f" * *^"^^^ old reliquary. It stood upon a pedestal, ■Mked by eiqulsite statuettes of Saints, while the summit was sur- ■OMied by a figure of our Saviour. In the centre had once stood acrystal tube, five inches high, containing a sacred relic. The bewity and richness of the object can be estimated from the fact that It was purdttied for 2,800 francs. The purchaser has, however, •ubsuiuted for the relic-holder an . . . electric-Ught bulb! It is toiervc hereafter as a lamp upon his writing-table. Viewed merely worn the rsthetic standpoint, this is regrettable as an act of van- Ajten, but it is also sad to think of the lack of reverence thus Mbited. Of aU the prayers which have been offered up to God before this precious shrine in memory of the saintly soul, a frag- ment of whose earthly vestment was once treasured here, its present ^^^^^ never thinks. For him it is a pretty ornament,-a lucky find ; and m its consecrated centre is now seen the typical jrmbol of our Vogress,"— an electric burner, by the light of which he may perhaps read Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" or Sir Oliver Lodge's "Raymond"! Unfortunately such acts of desecration multiply themselves con- ^*^^'^iL!^^ ^^ * resident in a European capital, who acquired a sa\'er aHar-front from an old Benedictine abbey in Sicily. This he has actually set above his sideboard as a background for his fine iquean! The same man had the unhappy inspiration to use, as wet for bouquets of flowers, five old chalices, which had no doubt contained hundreds of times during the celebration of the Mass the Holy Sacrament! f So far hat our flippant, practically godless society drifted' Irreverence and materialism are acting like corrosives on its charac- IN THE WILDERNESS OP RATION AUSM X9 ,^tl« advertisements which make hideous the landscapes of aod are particularly conspicuous at night in letters of fire above .- -"T» o« Broadway is one of almost inconceivable vukaritv and oro- Umty. which urges the people to "Boost Jesus." vuigariiy ana pro- he ^ISn^^I^l* °^ "Jft*'"' irreverence, bordering on blasphemy, it may «L^^,»^^* well-known professional dancer recently a ppcared-of ST^iL *Th''V'??rj^''yr;" ^he Trocadero, Paris, in two n^ danTw. tjff««rting The Childhood of Jesus" and "The Redemption"! And as if ^^''^Ui^^T!^ ^Z^ insufficient, the first performance of these ■■ wa* given on oood Friday I ter, and are eating away its old foundations. We see their bad effects in much of our modern literature, where a desire to be "breezy" and to shock the reader's sensibilities in regard to sacred themes is thought to be a proof of genius, or, at all events, of originality. Yet flippancy in reference to God, immortality, or the re- ligion of Christ is more than indecorous, it is indecent. Such writers and sensational preachers often seem to be the progeny of those who passed the Son of God upon the Cross, wagging their heads. Let us be charitable enough to believe that they "know not what they do." My last station on the way to absolute infidelity was the philos- ophy of Auguste Comte in his singular paraphrase of religion, known^- as Positivism. This religious wraith, in so far as it represented moderate socialism, appealed powerfully to certain rare, ascetic souls, like Frederic Harrison and George Eliot, who were capable of being devoted to "Humanity" in the abstract. It can, however, never dominate the masses of mankind, and has found few followers. It is dying out. A wit described one of its services as being an assembly, where there were present "three persons and 110 God"! Curiously enough, much of the formal framework of Positivism is derived from Catholicism, for Comte was in early life a Catholic, and never entirely lost the influence of his youthful training. Huxley, in fact, called Positivism "Catholicism without Chris- tianity." . . The truth is, Comte saw plainly that society cannot exist without a religion of some sort, and furthermore that religion implies worship. Some object, therefore, worthy of worship had to be found by him; and, since according to Positivism there is no God, Comte deified the abstract notion of Humanity. In the elaborate scheme which he built up from this foundation philosophers were to replace priests, while inventors, scientists, poets and heroes were to be regarded as the Saints of Positivism. Paris was to be to them what Rome is to the Catholics, and Mecca is to Moslems; and a substitute for the Blessed Virgin was to be symbolised by a "woman of thirty, with a child in her arms"! In short, the "Religion" of Comte was a com- bination of noble ideals and great absurdities. C. Kegan Paul has said of it:— "Positivism is a fair-weather creed, when men are strong, happy, untempted, or ignorant that they are tempted, and so long as a future life and its dread possibilities do not enter their thoughts; but it has no message for the sorry and the sinful, no restoration for the erring, no succour in the hour of death." Nevertheless it attracted us for a time, as a novelty. We did not stop to ask ourselves why Comte and many other great men were agreed that man has a religious instinct, and must accordingly have a religion to give satisfaction to that instinct. Yet, if so, where did i8 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH IN THE WILDERNESS OP RATIONAUSM »9 rdipous subjects, they would probably reply, that of the enstence of God, personal unmortality, or a future day of judgment they knew nothing and cared less. I doubt if thousands of them ever say s prayer. This state of things has brought about one of the most conspicuous characteristics of our age.— Irreverence, ea)edally for everything connected with religion.* Instances of this fact are numberless, but the following is worth recordmg. In an antiquary's shop in Switzerland there was lately to be seen a beautiful old reliquary. It stood upon a pedestal, flanked by exquisite statuettes of Saints, while the summit was sur^ mounted by a figure of our Saviour. In the centre had once stood a crystal tube, five inches high, containing a sacred relic. The beauty and richness of the object can be estimated from the fact that It was purchased for 2,800 francs. The purchaser has, however substituted for the relic-holder an . . . electric-light bulbl It i^ to serve hereafter as a lamp upon his writing-table. Viewed merely from the asthetic standpoint, tiiis is regrettable as an act of van- «S' in, 1, ^u"" "^^ '° ^^"^ °^ ""^ J^ of reverence thus CThibitcd. Of all the prayers which have been offered up to God before this precious shrine in memory of the saintly soul, a frae- ment of whose earthly vestment was once treasured here, its present hX 'K- '' r"". '^^^'- ^°^ ^'"^ '*■ ^ ^ pretty ornament,-a llh 1 f' T^ '" 'ts consecrated centre is now seen the tyj^ical symbol of our "progress,"-an electric burner, by the light of which he may perhaps read Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" or Su- Ohver Lodge's "Raymond"! tinSirTJ''^ '".'^ ^'^.°^ desecration multiply themselves con- tinually. I know of a resident in a European capital, who acquired a sUver a tar-front from an old Benedictine abb^y in Sicily. TUs iout'rsT "^"^ ""' '"^'^ ^t ''^'"^''^ ^ ^ back^ound for'^Lis fin^ hqueursi The same man had the unhappy inspiration to use as vases for bouquets of flowers, five old chalkes, which l^d no Sub? rSotstratenul ""^^ '"'"^ ''' ^'^'^"'^"^ °^ ^^ ^"^' So far has our flippant, practically godless society drifted! Irreverence and materialism are acting Hke corrosiv^on L c^^^^^^ Ame'ii^^lnd\^e1:?t^^^^^^ "^H^ W^^^o^s the landscapes of the crowds of Broadway is t^^^^^ ?' "^^^^ 'V'^'l' ^^ fire above fanity, which urges Sopl^to^'B^T^^^ ^^^^"^ ^"^ P^o- be^mentireWt%'^ ^i^""^ on blasphemy, it may course in a state of se^i-lX-i^^^^^^^^ ^""^"'^^ appeared-^f representing "The ChildhocS of Tesus"in^"Ti. 'Ji«"'' ^"- *^.°. "^^ ^^"^^s. this monstrous improprictvw^efn«^^^^^ The Redemption"! And. as if dances was given SnG^^PrSly?*^*' ^^ ^"^ performance of these ter, and arc eating away its old foundations. We see thdr bad effects in much of our modem Kterature, where a desire to be "breezy" and to shock the reader's sensibilities in regard to sacred themes is thought to be a proof of genius, or, at all events, of originality. Yet flippancy in reference to God, inmiortality, or the re- ligion of Christ is more than indecorous, it is indecent. Such writers and sensational preachers often seem to be the progeny of those who passed the Son of God upon the Cross, wagging their heads. Let us be charitable enough to believe that they "know not what they do." My last station on the way to absolute infidelity was the philos- ophy of Auguste Comte in his singular paraphrase of religion, known ^ as PosiUvism. This religious wraith, in so far as it represented moderate socialism, appealed powerfully to certain rare, ascetic souls, like Frederic Harrison and George Eliot, who were capable of bemg devoted to "Humanity" in the abstract It can, however, never dominate the masses of mankind, and has found few followers. It is dying out. A wit described one of its services as being an assembly, where there weie present "three persons and no God"! Curiously enough, much of the formal framework of Positivism is derived from CathoUcism, for Comte was in early life a Catholic, and never entirely lost the influence of his youthful training. Huxley, in fact, called Positivism "Catholicism without Chns- tianity." . .^, , The truth is, Comte saw plainly that society cannot exist without a religion of some sort, and furthermore that religion implies worship. Some object, therefore, worthy of worship had to be found by him; and, since according to Positivism there is no God, Comte deified the abstract notion of Humanity. In the elaborate scheme which he built up from this foundation philosophers were to replace priests, while inventors, scientists, poets and heroes were to be regarded as the Saints of Positivism. Paris was to be to them what Rome is to the Catholics, and Mecca is to Moslems; and a substitute for the Blessed Virgin was to be symbolised by a "woman of thirty, with a child in her arms"! In short, the "Religion" of Comte was a com- bination of noble ideals and great absurdities. C. Kegan Paul has said of it:— "Positivism is a fair-weather creed, when men are strong, happy, untempted, or ignorant that they are tempted, and so long as a future Ufe and its dread possibUities do not enter their thoughts; but it has no message for the sorry and the sinful, no restoration for the erring, no succour in the hour of death." Nevertheless it attracted us for a time, as a novelty. We did not stop to ask ourselves why Comte and many other great men were agreed that man has a reUgious instinct, and must accordingly have a religion to give satisfaction to that instinct. Yet, if so, where did 20 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH this religious instinct come from? If man must have some sort of a religion, his need must correspond to a reality. Hence Atheism is antagonistic to a universal want and instinct of humanity. What we young men inevitably drifted into finally was arrogant infidelity and materialism. I do not know why we all derived great satisfaction from the theory that we had descended from an ape-like animal, but we certainly did. It was probably because we thought that it refuted the Biblical account of man^s creation, and made the doctrine of his Fall and Redemption quite untenable. Anything like a Divine Revelation of man's origin and relation to God was, of course, rejected by our rationalistic circle with disdain, and, having lost our faith in such a Revelation, we came to lead a practically godless life. I, at least, never went to church for public worship; Christianity was to me but one of numerous religions, all of human origin; the universe was an insoluble mystery; the existence of God was prob- able, but the term was meaningless; Christ was a noble teacher and examplar, but a man, who had been born and died like other mortals, with no resurrection; whether the soul existed separate from the body was a matter for conjecture; in any case, its conscious im- mortality was very questionable; reincarnation was a pleasing theory, which fairly well explained the presence here of suffering and evil, but the essential thread of memory was lacking to make a pre- vious life of any real advantage; death was a matter hardly to be feared, since it was universal and as natural as birth ; moreover, if it meant eternal sleep, it was a boon; if not, one could at least suppose, according to the theory of evolution, that our next stage of existence would be an improvement on the present one; and since the inhabi- tants of this planet, if they survived the dissolution of the body, would probably be kept together, wherever they might be trans- planted, conscious reunion with our loved ones seemed not utterly unlikely. Of all these things, however, I thought as little as possible; and, much as an ostrich thrusts its head into the sand to avoid the sight of coming danger, I lived on, apathetic, hopeless and apparently in- different. Yet in my better moments I indulged in hopes and feelings which I was ashamed to reveal to anyone. In my portfolio lie several poems, some original, some selected, which well describe my doubts and sentiments, that would not die. Perhaps I cannot do better than to quote from one of them. At the Monastery of Acqua Fredda By Acqua Fredda's cloister-wall I pause to feel the mountain-breeze, And watch the shadows eastward fall From immemorial cypress-trees; IN THE WILDERNESS OF RATIONALISM While mirrored peaks of stainless snow Turn crimson 'neath the farther shore, And here and there the sunset glow Threads diamonds on a drippmg oar. But now a tremor breaks the spell, And stirs to life the languid air,— It is the convent's vesper bell, The plaintive call to evening prayer ; That prayer which rises like a sigh From every sorrow-laden breast, When twilight dims the garish sky, And day is dying in the west. How sweet and clear, how soft and low Those vesper orisons are sung In Rome's grand speech of long ago. For ever old, for ever young I So full is life of hate and greed. So vain the world's poor tmselled show, What wonder that some souls have need To flee from all its sin and woe? I would not join them; yet, in truth, I feel, in leaving them at prayer, That something precious of my youth. Long lost to me, is treasured there. 21 TEE AWAKENING 23 Chapter III TEE AWAKENING "I?^ ^^^^ ^^® J"^*' ^"^ °^ ^"'' pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us." Shakespeare. ^^^^J^l^^^:^^ ^^'"^ .ho^isposef of ev^^f/ *5 sen'Jmen! '' "" ^fl^" }<^ for nations animated by a sincere religious rnrriinVau^nVao^D^J;^^! '°^^ ^' ^^'^"^ '" * ^"'"-• tiorSn\Sry5li"J'pk'''^^^ °^ •"^"^-'^ •"-' -^-^^'rily be na- THUS outwardly indifferent, but inwardly unhappy, I drifted on towards life's inevitable end . . . till suddenly the »!, . -u^^^^u . , °^ ^^^ unspeakable horrors of the World War and the terrible debacle of our boasted civilisation aroused me from my torpor, like the trump of God. ^ FnTn-t *'"''"'"'' °^ ^°'*'"'''' ^^ '914 found me in one of the rl WH ""T'"^ T"'"'?' ^""^ "^^""stances of a domestic nature retained me during the entire war not only in a belligerent land, but Ttr^l 'nner war-zone, often within the sound of cannon and the fall of bombs My purpose is not to describe here, even briefly the sufferings and privations which I saw and shar;d in rerions bordering on that belt of batUe. If any of my readers have been overwhelmed w.th horror, pity and dismay at merely readingb thS can perhaps imagine what it meant to live, day in, day out for STrave vomhsTn't' ''' °'P'^"^' ^"'^ *''°"^°'>^ '^P"" thousand! ot brave youths departing, . . . never to return. Those were five Sir Mv IrT'^n'^''^^--' ^"^ sometimes of clple^^ d^pair. My wish is to relate how this encampment at the eat^ of II^XVTC^'^:^' ^' ^^ ^^^<^- o^ ^eath. sioJin:! *i,^*'^l'^ ^ ^T^ }^^'^*''' ''"^ ''e^th is a still greater one To know that thousands of brave souls are being hurried into eternkv dav £'h7 '?.w^ '"" "' '"^^ ^'^y' "Ot "somewhere" far away bS ust beyond that range of hills and inside the horizon" vS- to leam that some of those poor, slaughtered boys were ^y owl S^Jf 22 ' or sons of friends; to see their parents meet the awful news; to look upon the ghastly wrecks of what but yesterday were stalwart youths; and then to note the ever-lengthening line of shrouded forms and read the lists of desolated homes;— to see, to feel, to know all this, and not to ask my soul some searching questions about God and immortality, was impossible. Hence, little by little, a mysterious Power, which I now humbly recognise as the grace of God, constrained me to confront once more the awful problems I had shunned so long. To-morrow I, too, might . be dead; my dear ones also might be slain; my own home might be shattered to a mass of ruins. Surely the time had come for me to settle once for all my attitude towards the omnipotent Maker of the universe, one tiny part of which was my own soul. However hope- less the attempt, I nevertheless felt forced to make it. At the outset it was clear to me that the scientific scepticism which had been my philosophy for forty years could neither aid nor comfort me in this catastrophe. It had sufficed thus far to narcoUse my soul, but now it had no more effect. I looked at "civilised Europe, and beheld entire nations slaughtering one another by land, by sea and in the air with the most frightfully destructive means that science had been able to invent. I saw still other millions of the human race,— the aged, the infirm, women, children, infants,— threatened with starvation! And, all the while, the Frankensteins of modern times, the mighty agencies of printed words, emitted floods of falsehoods, hate and malice, which spread a terrible miasma through a blighted world! I saw besides all this, and partly as a result of it, society itself dissolving in indecency; public and pnvate morals rapidly degenerating; hideous diseases eating out the marrow of the race; revolting realism in art and drama breeding a pubhc taste for filth; the old ideals of honour, truth and even common honesty trampled under foot, accompanied by indifference to religion and open disbelief in God and immortality. Home life, the very nucleus of Christian civilisation, seemed in many places a Jhing of the past. A letter from a friend in America assured me:— "No one here cares any more for a home. Hundreds of fine houses are closed, " and the owners travel, or live in hotels. They would not take a *home' as a gift, if they would thereby be compelled to live in it. What they desire most is an automobile which will pass all others on the road. What will the coming generation be, under such homeless conditions on the one side, and insensate luxury and perilous amusements on the other?" As to the latter, the mere perusal of the titles of many of the dramas placed to-day upon the stage will convince anyone, in whom a remnant of morality and decency still remains, that the tendency among nlaywrights and managers aUke is to place before the public H REBUILDING A LOST FAITH plays which are sexually suggestive, morally unwholesome, vulgar and degrading. Their themes are all too frequently picked out of the moral garbage-boxes of humanity. Yet, if we turn from these un- wholesome exhibitions of indecency to the still more baneful in- fluences of the cinematograph shows, we reach an even lower level. A New York editor writes: — ^'It is not an exaggeration to say that to-day the dominant purpose of the moving-picture industry is to commercialise some form of immorality. Even pictures not morally objectionable seek popularity by adopting titles which hint at and promise indecency. The moving picture is a standing menace to the morals of our children." This condemnation is not confined to "Puritan America." The president of the juvenile court in Brussels (in Belgium there exists a special magistracy for youthful criminals) has also published a most interesting report, in which he states that cinematograph shows have a pernicious influence on children's morals. "The daily proofs of this," he says, "are striking. The cynicism of the little criminal is astounding; he confesses that he steals in order to be able to go to the kino, and that it is the kino itself that incites him to steal. The cinematograph surpasses every other agency for ruining our youth; it is even more deleterious than the reading of detective stories, because in this case at least the effort of reading is necessary. The cinematograph, as a rule, excuses and glorifies murder and crime, suggests suicide, embellishes adultery and incites to theft." In fact, all who are acquainted with the subject recognise that this amusement, which might be of so much educational value, is becoming more and more a breeding-place for vice and im- morality. T: it any wonder, therefore, that at last a tidal wave of disillusion- ment and discouragement has overwhelmed the world? One suffers from a kind of spiritual nausea; and what accentuates one's mental anguish is the realisation that most of us have been egregiously deceived; that, in our deification of inventive cleverness, we have been worshipping the wrong gods; that much of our loud-vaunted "progress" is merely acceleration; and that our boasted civilisation is a thin veneer, concealing a substratum of appalling barbarism. We have believed that our mechanical inventions formed the (principal test of man's advancement; but now we are beginning to j perceive that the only real criterion of civilisation and progress is \ character; and that greater personal comfort, better facilities for 'communication, and an immense increase of marketable products through machinery, can no more help a man, whose character is deteriorating, than a new suit of clothes can cure an individual 'suffering from cancer. In short, we have been living in a fool's paradise. Our standard of measurement has been wrong. What THE AWAKENING 25 we have needed was progress in thmgs spiritual, not in things material. Appalling also is the fact that most of our so-called progress means increased capacity for . . . wasting the earth's resources! Each year has brought forth new contrivances, by which to throw away on senseless speed the planet's ever-dwindling stores. But when earth's coal and oil shall have been exhausted, no more can be produced. Our capital, though originally large, is limited; yet, although almost every new invention has led to fresh extravagance, we have all hailed it as a triumph! We have indeed learned to fly like birds, and to plough the ocean's depths like fishes; but we have used these last achievements chiefly to destroy our fellow-men, or else to blow to atoms what has been amassed through centuries of toil. Meanwhile we have made the acquisition of wealth and physical indulgence the principal end and aim of life, and in our rush for riches and pleasure have thrown our old ideals of morality to the winds, and most of our religion to the scrap-heap. Yet, with all this, our "progress" has not made us happier. We had supposed that happiness consisted either in making or in spending money, but now we have discovered this to be a miserable delusion. There never was a time in human history when men possessed so little happiness and peace of mind as now. Our modern unbelief brings with it no relief from the intolerable burden of the world, but rather an increas- ing discontent with present conditions, assuaged by no consoling vision of the future. Truly the cup of all this godless and material prosperity has bitterness in its dregs! We once supposed Machinery to be our slave; it has become our master. It has relieved us of some manual toil,— -with little real benefit to the joyless labourer, — but it has heaped upon us overwhelming burdens; for our desires increase a thousandfold with every new invention, and with them come those fiends of modern life, — competition, envy, hatred . . . War! All this I finally perceived, and realised that this reign of hell on earth was the inevitable Nemesis of our misconduct. We had dis- carded God, and He was letting us see how we could live without Him. We had ignored religion in our families, schools and govern- ments, and the result had been the breakdown of a civilisation we had thought secure. In the great Belgian Exposition, a few years ago, above the entrance to the Hall of Modern Mechanical Inventions was placed the inscription:— "Man as God." These words express the sentiment of many of the leading men of Europe at the present time. Yet we can see what many of the machines produced by "Man as God" have thus far done for him! Our "godlike" mechanism is maddening 26 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH some, murdering others, materialising all of us. We boasted once that our inventions had made rapid transit so secure, that famines were no longer possible; but later wonderful machines have changed all that, and never have the inhabitants of Europe suffered so acutely from under-nourishment and hunger-typhus as precisely in the last few years, when thousands of infants and of the old and feeble have died, and are still dying (1920), from lingering inanition! I also recognised the fact that merely secular education is not sufficient for the preservation of society. The notion that some years of schooling, with no instruction in morals and religion, is a panacea for all social ills, is a delusion. The acquisition of mere secular knowledge often means the power of gaining wealth illegally, or gratifying vice more easily. It may make children "smarter," and young men still more cunning in the art of money-getting, but it makes some of them clever anarchists and criminals. The man of brightest intellect, unbalanced by moral and religious forces, often is a godless knave. In such a case his glittering accomplishments resemble iridescent colours on a putrid pool. What is the use of learning facts concerning physics, chemistry, biology, history, languages and mechanics, if there is wanting in the youth who masters them a moral character, to guarantee us that this education, which we tax ourselves to give, shall not be used against the common- wealth? As "grafters," corrupt legislators, venal editors, dema- gogues and Bolshevists, the educated scoundrels are more dangerous than the same men would be if uneducated; and history plainly teaches that the continued prosperity, often the very existence, of nations largely depends upon the vigour of their moral and religious life, and on their faithfulness to public and private duty, I am aware of the difficulty of making taxpayers, who belong to different faiths, agree upon the kind of religious instruction to be given to their children. But surely some agreement can be reached by rational men upon at least the simplest principles of Theism, which none but atheists and anarchists would probably reject. There is at present a total lack of even ethical instruction in our schools, in consequence of which we have a growing generation of youthful materialists who possess a very meagre moral code, look upon wealth and pleasure as the only gods worth worshipping, admire the "grafter" and the "plunger," if they are successful, acknowledge only the "eleventh commandment," — "Thou shalt not be found out," — and later on may hire conscienceless lawyers to help them circum- vent thte law or bribe the Legislature. A Niw York lawyer has recently written: — ^**Our children may be taught/the lives, the wars and the amours of every god and goddess of pagan mythology, but the name of Jesus Christ must not be sDoken in the schoolroom. The walls of the schoolhouse may show THE AWAKENING 27 the pictures of real or fabled heroes of Greece and ancient Rome, but no picture of the Saviour of men or of His Mother may be shown, lest some squeamish soul in this Christian country be sore ofifended!" "It cannot be doubted," writes a Pastor in the Katholiken K'or- respondenz (Prague, February, 1920), "that the exclusion of religion from the instruction and education of millions of children must cause a gradual lowering of the moral formation of the people. It is inevitable that, if there is a lack of a positively taught, religious conception of life, greed for money and abandonment to low pleasures will more and more cause the life of the people to degenerate, and that unscrupulousness and corruption will gain the mastery. Phenomena of fearful significance in American life prove this clearly. The State is being undermined." This condition of affairs reacts unfavourably even on purely secular education. If there was one thing of which the people of America were formerly proud, it was the educational system pre- vailing in at least some of the United States; but, judging from the salaries at present paid to most of the teachers there, education is valued much less than material pleasures, luxuries and vices. Dr. Claxton, Commissioner of Education in the American Republic, says: "The negro porter on a Pullman car makes more than two-thirds of the high-school teachers in the United States; while a good stenog- rapher, with no more than a high-school education, may make more than the maximum paid for a teacher in the grades." Accordingly, he estimates that there is now a shortage in the United States ot 50,000 teachers, and that "wo/ less than 300,000 now in service are below any reasonable standard of ability and preparation*' I Worse than this, however, are the conditions prevailing in some American colleges and so-called universities, where the Professors are so badly paid that they often cannot afford to hire a servant, and are obliged, in case of the illness of their wives, to do the house- work themselves, including standing at the tubs, and doing the family washing I The writer has absolute, documentary proof of the truth of this almost incredible statement, and it is beyond question that scores of gifted men, who have the higher education of American youth in charge, are, at a time when the world stands aghast at American luxury, living in extreme poverty, and struggling with hardships, privations and harrowing anxieties. Meantime the void so noticeable in our modern education is filled with such ethical standards as are discoverable ... in the news- papers I Fifty years ago, Carlyle declared that the Press had re- placed the Pulpit. If that is still the case, God help us! One could not find a more appalling illustration of the prostitution of truth, honour and morality than is seen in the Press of a considerable portion of the world to-day. 28 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH For years it has lent itself to the work of murder, and has kept the fires of international hatred burning at white heat, for the sake of profits gained from the patronage of a sensation-loving public, or from parties interested in the publication of prejudiced descriptions or absolutely false reports. A considerable portion of the Press is now an ominous danger to public morals, since it has shown itself to be both vile and venal, and willing to deceive and brutalise mankind. The depths to which its employes are frequently reduced is seen in the judgment passed upon the calling of the American journalist by a New York editor, John Swinton, during an annual dinner of the New York Press Association. It certainly is a frank confession: — "There is no such thing as an independent Press in America, if we except that of little country towns. You know this and I know it. Not a man among you dares to utter his honest opinion. Were you to utter it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week so that I may keep my honest opinion out of the paper for which I write. You, too, are paid similar salaries for similar services. Were I to permit that a single edition of my newspaper contained an honest opinion, my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone in less than twenty- four hours. The man who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinion would soon be on the streets in the search for another job. It is the duty of a New York journalist to lie, to distort, to revile, to toady at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or what amounts to the same thing, his salary. We are the tools and the vassals of the rich behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings, and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our capacities are all the property of these men; we are intellectual prostitutes." Philip Francis, for years an editorial writer of great influence in America, and who has had for forty years an intimate connection with journalism, writes: — ^**With a few honourable exceptions, the big papers and magazines of the United States are the most ignorant and gullible, as well as the most cowardly and controlled Press, printed in any country in the world. The majority of the owners are mere financiers, who look upon their magazines and newspapers simply as money-making mills, and who, whenever it is a question between more coin and good, honest, patriotic public service, will take the coin every time" ("The Poison in America's Cup," p. 31). What adds to the peril of this capitalised Press, — ^which is, of course, not confined to any one country, — is the deplorable fact that millions of the people of all lands find in their newspapers their only mental food, and form their opinions on practically all subjects by reading insincerely written editorials. Some even have time only for the headlines I THE AWAKENING 29 Reverting now to the absence of religious education among the present rising generation, we find in France the testimony against the system of secular training prevailing there still more damaging than in America. For many years, as is well known, the policy of the French Government was not only anti-Catholic, but also anti- religious. At one time it nearly succeeded in destroying the belief and practice of Christianity among the men of France at least. Aheady in 1863, the following picture of the state of France was drawn by a friendly critic: — ^''A sad infidelity appears to me the prevalent tone of feeling among the French of all ranks. In the railway carriages, from officers, merchants, labourers, travellers of all ranks and degrees, when no priest or nun was present, I have heard nothing but sneers at the weakness of those who believed in la mythologie of Christianity. A vast proportion of the people are atheists. The French seem divided into two classes, — those who believe everything, and those who believe nothing" {Once a Week, No. 233, 1863). Not long ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, in the vast hall of the Trocadero in Paris an audience of 5,000 assembled to declare their adhesion to atheism, and to listen to speakers who mocked at "the dead God, on whom priests live"! These evils were foreseen and pointed out, already forty years ago, by statesmen like M. Jules Simon. To realise how atheistically the French authorities ventured even then to speak in public, we have but to consult the records of that time. Thus, in 1882, a president of French schools said to the children: — ^"People pretend that we wish to have schools without God. But you cannot turn a page of your books without finding there the name of a god, — that is, of a man of genius, a benefactor, a hero of humanity. In this point of view we are true pagans, for our gods are many ! " ("Dieu, Patrie et Liberte," p. 350.) Another President, addressing a body of school- teachers, said: — "Religious teaching plunges him [the student] fatally into an obscure night and into an abyss of lamentable super- stitions" {idem, p. 351). Another President, quoted from the same source by Cardinal Manning ("Miscellanies," vol. iii., p. 63), said: — "Young citizenesses and young citizens, you have just been told that we have driven God out of the school. It is an error. Nobody can drive out that which does not exist, God does not exist. We have suppressed only emblems." The "emblems" referred to were sacred pictures and especially crucifixes. These the Prefect of the Seine in the Senate called "school furniture"! The same could be said of the Courts of Justice throughout France, from which the crucified figure of the Saviour and future Judge of mankind, which formerly confronted every witness and juryman, has also been re- moved. Paul Bert, the Minister for Public Instruction under Gambetta, in 1881, and for years a leading exponent of the French 30 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH atheistic school, proposed to sell all Bishops' palaces, seminaries for priests, and nunneries, belonging to the State, and openly declared:— "Others may occupy themselves, if they like, in seeking a nostrum to destroy the phylloxera; mine shall be the task to find one that shall destroy the Christian religion." We cannot wonder, therefore, that the French Abb6 Bougaud says in his book, "Le Grand Peril" (p. 70) :— "Our people are not hostile to religion; they are ignorant of it; they live bowed down to the earth. You speak to them, but they do not understand." This is an awful responsibility for any nation to take upon itself, and is ominous for the future, when one or two generations more shall have come and gone in godlessnessi The Abbe also says (p. 83):— "If warned by the lightning which foreruns the storm, they return to God ... the people who are now wandering may be brought back. ... If, on the contrary, they are obstinate, we must wrap our mantle about us, and let the storm pass over. It will be terrible." Have not his words been mournfully fulfilled? Poor France, of course, is not the only land where godlessness has made such c^n and official progress. In Italy similar causes have produced in many places similar results. Italian priests have told me that frequently men whom they encounter on the streets take a malicious pleasure in uttering in their presence the most shocking blasphemies. In a newspaper, published in Northern Italy, I recently read a communication signed by a "Group of Fathers." In this tie charge was made that two school-teachers in the town of Guanzate had distinguished them- selves by their virulent hostility to Christianity. A dialogue between one of these teachers and a pupil is quoted: — "Where have you been?" "In the church to be taught my catechism." "May you and your God go to perdition in your church!" Another dialogue was as follows:— "What book is that?" "The catechism." "What a little fool you are to learn those absurdities!" With these words the teacher seized the book from the child's hands, and tore it in pieces. One day, another of these teachers became suddenly in- furiated by the sight of the Crucifix in the hall. He therefore attacked it with fury, tore it from the wall, and, with an accompani- ment of oaths, kicked it through the schoolroom towards the stove, with the intention of burning it. Fortunately a pious hand was able to rescue in time the figure of the Divine Sacrifice. These facts are stated by the group of Fathers to be absolutely true and authentic, "as many witnesses can testify." Moreover, these acts and words of sacrilege were done and said, not before older lads, who would perhaps have resented them, but before innocent little children of the primary grades. Accordingly, on the 3rd of April, 1920, a formal protest to the Italian authorities was made by some of the inhabitants THE AWAKENING 31 of the place, including numerous fathers and two hundred mothers, who declared that they wished that their children should be brought up as Christians. Guanzate is, of course, only one of thousands of Italian towhs where religious teaching is to-day either refused or neglected; and the teacher, guilty of kicking the Cross of our Lord through the schoolroom, has doubtless many actual or would-be imitators. The citizens of that one community have openly protested, but in how many other villages are the people silent, either intimidated, or rendered infidels themselves by such impiety! In England and America such acts of violent hostility are rare, but there are many atheists in those enlightened lands who, believing that theirs is the "religion of the future," desire to instruct their children in the coming creed. Accordingly, in London, Liverpool and other British cities, as well as in some American ones^ Sunday-schools have been instituted by Radical Socialists for that purpose! The Rev. Dr. N. D. Hillis, of Brooklyn, stated recently that there are in New York City alone about 12,000 children taught every Sunday in Socialist or Anarchist schools that there is no God, and that the precepts and doctrines of the Christian religion are absurdities! A textbook is used in these Sunday-schools, in which occur, among many others, the following questions and answers: — Question:— ^W[i2X is God? Answer: — God is a word, used to designate an imaginary being, which people have themselves devised. Question: — How did man originate? Answer:— }vLSt as did all animals, by evolution from lower kinds. Question: — Has man an immortal soul, as Christianity teaches? Answer: — Man has no soul; it is only an imagination. Question: — Is it true that God has ever been revealed? Answer: — As there is no God, he could not reveal himself. Question: — What is heaven? Answer: — Heaven is an imaginary place, which churches have de- vised to entice their believers. Question: — ^Who is Jesus Christ? ^njw^r:— There is no God, therefore there can be no Son of God. Question: — Is Christianity desirable? Answer: — Christianity is not advantageous to us, but harmful. It is the greatest obstacle to the progress of mankind; therefore it is the duty of every citizen to help wipe out Christianity, Question: — ^What is our duty when we have learned there is no God? Answer: — ^We should teach this knowledge to others. Question: — Do you owe a duty to God? Answer: — There is no God, and therefore we owe him no duty. This is indeed an appalling state of things, the full significance of which will be seen only when an entire generation shall have grown 32 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH to manhood without belief in God and immortality; for such a training substitutes for the hitherto accepted code of morals one that incites to crime or bestial degradation. If God is totally excluded from the popular mind, and if the masses are persuaded that the life beyond the grave is a mirage, that there will never be a dispensation of rewards and punishments by Almighty God, and that man's only duty is to grab the most of earth's good things,— then civilisation is to cease, and man will soon degenerate to savagery. We see this in the utterances of these modern anarchists. In the Umanitd, Nuova, the paper of the Italian anarchist, Enrico Mala- testa, appears the following: — "So long as a sorrow-stricken woman kneels down before an altar and derives therefrom any comfort and relief, we shall never be able to make a revolution effectively; so long as children shall be reared on the knees of such mothers, those chil- dren will never be the men who are called to form the new humanity, but idiots, such as we see around us in such numbers to-day 1" Now true humanity, whether old or new, has hitherto regarded a mother's pious love as the most sacred thing on earth. The humanity of the future, however, is to rid itself of such weakness and idiocy! One marvels that a man can write such words without a chill of horror creeping over him and paralysing the hand that holds the pen. In such monsters we comprehend at last the horrible cruelties of atheistic Bolshevism. Materialism, Socialism, anarchy,— these are three steps which logically follow one another: — rocks, on to which a rising tide of lawlessness is driving us. Much of the so-called "Socialism," which is undermining the religion and morality of the masses, is atheistic. Its radical leaders frankly admit it. "The future," says one of them, "must belong to atheism." It is signifi- cant that the French Socialist, Proudhon, who affirmed that "Prop- erty is theft," also wrote: — ^"The first duty of an intelligent and free man is to drive incessantly from his mind and conscience the idea of God; because God, if He does exist, is essentially hostile to our nature, and we elevate ourselves in proportion as we rid ourselves of His authority. Each step we take is a victory, in which we crush the Deity!" The sun of hvmianity at present seems to be eclipsed, and what is threatening us is not only atheistic anarchy, but hopelessness and blank despair. We seem already to have entered the penumbra of this spiritual obscuration, and to be suffering from incurable pessi- mism. When the great Roman Empire sickened under such a malady, a new and virile race was in reserve to give it fresh vitality; but there is no new race at hand for us. Society has grown so old that godlessness will now prove fatal to it, if it gains supremacy. The globe is circumnavigated; the races are so unified that even mental sicknesses are now contagious; and from the taint of atheism THE AWAKENING 33 no people could be long immune. One cannot, therefore, view the future without apprehension. "Never in the history of man," says a writer "On Theism" in an English Review, "has so terrific a calamity befallen the race, as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge; black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in desolation. The, floodgates of infidelity are open, and atheism is upon us." Donoso Cortez, the eloquent Spanish writer and diplomatist, well said:— "i4 combination of material wealth and religious poverty is invariably followed by one of those immense catastrophes, which write themselves for ever on the memory of man." Are not these words being verified to-day before our eyes? Evil forces, originating from Mammonism, luxury and godlessness, have overmastered us,-" and are now beating down, or undermining, our "Towers of Babel" and "Gardens of Lucullus," leaving us naked, disillusioned and be- reaved, with millions of the finest specimens of our manhood, — the victims of the World War,— rotting in human shambles! To some this means the total loss of faith in God and in religion; to others, on the contrary, it proves that God is the only thing essential,— the want of which is killing us. As for myself, I felt convinced, through close acquaintance with a war-cursed, irreligious world, that we had come into this lamentable state through our neglect of God and through a lack of moral and religious training; and I was therefore anxious to be one of those who turned their faces upward towards the Divine and Supernatural, rather than one of those who in despair were ready to "curse God and die." Hence, having reached this point, consistency com- pelled me to go further, and to seek material for the reconstruction of my long-lost faith. if. »■ Chapter IV SEARCHING FOR UGHT {THE EXISTENCE OP GOD) "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth ? De- clare, if thou hast understanding ? Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors . . . and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? Where is the way where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? . . . Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus and his sons ?" — Job xxxviii. "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers. The moon and stars which Thou hast ordained, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, And the son of man, that Thou visitest him V* Psalm viii. 3-4. "It is absolutely certain that we are in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." — Herbert Spencer. "We are unmistakably shown through Nature that she depends upon an ever-acting Creator and Ruler" — Lord Kelvin: Presidential Ad- dress British Association, 1871. FIRST of all, could I believe in God? The words of Immanuel Kant recurred to me: — ^'^Two things overwhelm me with awe, — the starry heavens and man^s accountability to God." The study of astronomy had always been to me the most elevating and attractive of all intellectual pursuits. Schiaparelli well named it the "Science of Infinity and Eternity." With Kant's impressive words in mind, one cloudless night, I took occasion to survey a portion of God's stellar universe, with the determination, under its enthralling influence, to hold communion with my soul. Never before had the mysteries of the sidereal worlds app)eared to me so awe-inspiring. In that immeasurable realm of space, in which a hundred million suns pursue their solitary paths, what beauty, order and precision were discernible I I knew that all that area was occupied with matter in perpetual motion, either as inter- stellar ether, vibrating with waves of light or electricity, or else in various stages of evolution or devolution, — star-dust transforming itself slowly into suns and planets, and these resolving finally again to star-dust. I knew that some of these celestial bodies are still gaseous, others 34 SEARCHING FOR LIGHT 35 solid; some inconceivably hot, others comparatively cooled; while others still are absolutely frigid, burned out and black, with all their planets tenantless,— the darkened orbs more numerous probably than the shining ones; for all the stars which we can see are. merely those which at this stage of their careers happen to be for the time so highly heated as to be luminous. Beyond that obscure, lifeless stage, however, there seems to be another ; for, as those solar bodies doubtless had a fiery origin, sp they will ultimately have a fiery end. "As surely," says Sir William Thompson, "as the weights of a clock run down to their lowest position, from which they can never rise again, unless some energy is communicated to them from some source, not yet exhausted, so surely must planet after planet creep in, age by age, toward the sun." The same planetary decrepitude and cosmical death also awaits our solar orb itself, if it be true that it is likewise moving round some vastly distant centre of attraction. In fact, it has been demonstrated that this stupendous universe, as we know it, once had a beginning and must have an end. Between that beginning and that ending some mighty scheme is evidently in a process of progression, and we are a part of it! Order, beauty and sublimity are everywhere discernible in this process. Many of the glittering points of fire, at which we gaze from the thin rind of our relatively tiny globe, are "double" or even "multiple" stars,— huge orbs revolving round a central point of gravity with stately motion, in dual, treble or even quintuple unions, which become still more marvellous from the fact that they have frequently different and even complementary colours! What shall we say, too, of the stellar clusters, which telescopes resolve into groups of thousands of suns, unquestionably bound together in some wonderful affinity; wheeling about each other in gigantic orbits, yet in their inconceivable remote- ness from our earth, seemingly massed in one unbroken blaze, like jewelled mitres of supernal splendour? I gazed long also at the amazing Milky Way,— the "ground plan of the universe," the "broad and ample road, whose dust is gold," the pathway of innumerable suns, perhaps the equatorial zone of the whole stellar universe! In this vast, shoreless sea of space we,— earth-imprisoned voyagers,— find ourselves on the surface of a tiny satellite, whirling upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour. Although we feel no motion, not only are we turning thus, but are also being borne along our planet's path around the sun with a velocity of 1,080 miles a minute, or one and a half million mUes a day! Moreover, in addition to all this, our entire solar system is sweeping onward through infinity at a rate of 400,000,000 miles a year, and entering thus continually new regions of sidereal space! Yet is there no appreciable danger of collision; for our 36 REBUILDING A LOST FAITH solar colony, vast though its limits are, is but a point in a gigantic solitude. Our isolation is almost inconceivable. Our nearest astral neighbour moves at a distance of 275,000 times the earth's distance from the sun, which is itself 92,000,000 miles 1 Yet this star is ex- ceptionally nearl And what we do in our small corner of the universe, millions of other suns and satellites are doing, — swinging in perfect equilibrium millions of miles from one another, and moving with such perfect regularity that most of their vast changes can be foretold to a minute centuries in advance, or ascertained at any date of the historic past I Yet the same law that guides the motion of Arcturus regulates the falling leaf. The same Divine hand paints the sunset glory and the petals of the rose. Proofs of design and wisdom, which over- power one in his study of astronomy, are just as evident in every other sphere of science. The revelations of the microscope are as marvellous as those of the telescope. The same supreme Intelligence is discoverable in the infinitely small as in the infinitely great. The ornithologist finds an adaptation of means to ends in the wonderful structure of birds; the zoologist traces it in every form of animal life; the botanist is filled with reverence and admiration in his investiga- tion of the fertilisation of flowers; the worker in the laboratory is lost in wonder at the mysteries of chemical affinities; and if "an undevout astronomer is mad," so also is an undevout investigator of the uni- verse in any field of knowledge he may enter. Thus I was recently much impressed by reading in an old British Review some facts and statistics in regard to that essential requisite for life of any kind upon our planet, — irrigation. Water is really the life-blood of our earth, yet we accept its rhythmical migration from sea to sky, and from the sky to sea again, as lightly as we do the circulation of the vital fluid through our veins. How wonderfully perfect is the process of evaporation, for ever going on from all the lakes and oceans of our globe, — as from those mighty reservoirs the solar heat draws moisture upward in the form of vapour I For water, being many hundred times heavier than air, could in no other form be lifted several miles above the earth. Yet this supply, prodigious though it be, floats lightly in the empyrean in the shape of clouds, — huge, sunlit galleons, filled with precious cargoes, waiting patiently to be unloaded. These vaporous ships are filled and emptied with- out human hands; and sail to their respective ports with- out a helmsman, chart or compass. Currents of air, like currents in the sea, convey them far into the hearts of continents, that they may there discharge their freights over the very fields in which stand waiting husbandmen. The total quantity of water thus dis- tributed in rain or snow is inconceivable. Sometimes a single cloud contains thousands of tons of liquid, which, if released at once. SEARCHING FOR LIGHT 37 would sweep away both vegetation and the soil itself; yet with what delicate precision is its distribution usually effected! True, cloud- bursts do sometimes occur, as if to remind man what migjit always be the case, but for the care of Providence; yet, as a rule, nothing can be more gentle than the fall of moisture to the earth. The rain sifts through the atmosphere in billions of small drops, as if poured through a finely woven sieve, alighting from a dizzy height without the crushing of a leaf or flower ; and, on its way, cleansing the air of its impurities, as later on, in the form of rivers, it will sweep them to the sea. Man can do nothing to determine the delivery of this essential element; but at the touch of some cool mountain peak or by the contact of a chilling wind the magic "Open Sesame" is spoken, and the rain descends! Suppose we saw all this for the first time, instead of being accustomed to it from our childhood, and hence accepting it, like so many other blessings, as a matter of course: could we then fail to see in this impressive scheme the plan of an intelligent Creator? Filled with these thoughts, I turned back to my library, and looked through books which, fifty years before, had seemed to me a new evangel. I took down Spencer's writings;— not his "First Principles" this time, but his last,— found in his mournful auto- biography. Here I read: ^"Behind these mysteries lies the all- embracing mystery, — whence this universal transformation, which has gone on unceasingly throughout a past eternity, and will go on unceasingly throughout a future eternity? And along with this rises the paralysing thought,— what if, of all that is thus incompre- hensible to us, there exists no comprehension anywhere! No wonder that men take refuge in authoritative dogma." I also turned to the remarkable passage concerning Spencer in Henry Murray's Memoirs: —"Walking up and down the lawn, ... I told him [Spencer] what a load of personal obligation I felt under to his Tirst Prin- ciples,' and added that I intended to devote the reading hours of the next two or three years to a thorough study of his entire output. What have you read of mine?' he asked. I told him. *Then,' said Spencer, *I should say that you have read quite enough.' He fell silent for a moment, and then added:— 7 have passed my life in beating the air/ " I turned to my old notebooks, and found records there, which I had once inserted, without appreciating their full significance. Among them were these words from Sir Isaac Newton:— "The whole variety of created things could arise only from the design and will of a Being existing of Himself. This exact machinery of suns and planets could not originate except from the plan and power of an intelligent and mighty Being." Another page contained these words from Darwin:— "Another source of conviction for the exist- 3S REBUILDING A LOST FAITH eoct of God,— connected with reason rather than with feelings, — follows from the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of con- ceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man, with his capacity of looking forwards far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, / jeel impelled to look to a First Cause, having an intelligent mind in some degree aiudogDus to that of man." Moreover, in his "Fertilisation of Orchids*' Darwin speaks of "beautiful contrivances" and "mar- vellous adjustments," — words which clearly f)oint to a directive IntelUgence. The great astronomer, Kepler, said: — "My supreme desire is to find in myself the God, whom I find everywhere outside" No less remarkable are the words of Sir W. Siemens, uttered in 1M4: — ^**We find that all knowledge must lead up to one great result, — that of an intelligent recognition of the Creator through His works." Sir Francis Bacon, who had one of the keenest intel- lects ever given to man, declared in his essay on "Atheism": — "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Koran, than that this universal frame is without a mind." Lord Kdvin, one of the greatest of modern scientists, has affirmed that •^Overpowering proofs of intelligence and benevolent design lie mround us, showing us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one everlasting Creator and Ruler/' Dr. Bence Jones, in his "Life of Faraday," says of that great discoverer in chemistry and electricity: — ^*'His •tandard of duty was supernatural. ... It was formed entirely on what be held to be the Revelation of the will of God in the written word, and throughout all his life his faith led him to act up to the very letter of it." UTiy, then, did we poor, amateur investigators of half a century IfO ahvays prefer the latest atheistic school of scientists for our teachers, rather than master minds, like those which I have quoted, anqr of whom were also our contemporaries, and whose researches led them, not to blank agnosticism, but to the adoration of their Creator? I do not know, unless we thought the newest theory must always be the truest, and that the latest word of some experi- ■cstalist must also be the final word of science. At all events, we were quite positive that we knew already, or would soon discover, all the secrets of the universe which the human mind could grasp 1 Yet Lord Kelvin said, as recently as 1896, in Glasgow:— "One word characterises the most strenuous efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly for fifty-five years; — that word is failure, I know no more of the electric and magnetic forces, of the relation of either to electricit^j and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach my students in my first session as professor!" The truth is, that, in spite of such SEARCHING FOR LIGHT 39 achievements as determining the speed of light and the composition of the stars, we are still unable to explain the origin and essence of the simplest life, whether it be our own, or that of the "flower in the crannied wall." / We have discovered only externals. To explain essentially the simplest phenomena of light, heat, force, electricity and gravitation is beyond our power. Thus Newton said: — "I know the laws of attraction, but if you ask me what attraction is, I cannot tell," Professor Tyndall also said, in reference to the waves of sound that reach the brain along the auditory nerve, — there, as it were, to be translated into thoughts: — **Why the motion of that nervous matter can thus excite our consciousness is a mystery which the human mind cannot fathom. The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the prescientific ages. ... If you ask him [the materialist], what is this 'matter' of which we have been discoursing; who or what divided it into mole- cules; who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms, he has no answer. . . . Science also is mute in reply to these questions." But if Professor Tyndall thus concedes his ignorance of material causes, he ought not to imply, as he did in his address before the British Association, that material causes alone are sufficient to pro- duce, not merely the material world, but also the world of reason and intelligence; and to say that he can see in matter "the promise and the potency of every form and quality of life," including there- fore human life, with all its intellectual capacities. What is the reason of this preference on the part of many scientists to recognise such "promise and potency" in matter, rather than in mind? Whence comes their apparent satisfaction in giving to mankind a material, rather than a spiritual origin? "O star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there To waft us home the message of despair ?" For with that grim solution of the riddle of the universe, we lose belief in God and personal immortality, and Tyndall himself speaks of coming generations still trying to comprehend earth's mysteries, ^^