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"Igto, the/e
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Gift of
President Hadley
1911

WANTED-
A THEOLOGY

BY
SAMUEL T. CARTER, D.D.

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1908

COPTRICHT, I908, BT
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

[Printed in the United States of America]

Publithtd May, igo8

Be&fcatton

TO MY DEAR WIFE, NOW WITH GOD, WHOSE
LIFE OF PATIENT, GENTLE GOODNESS AND
COMPLETE SELF-SACRIFICE WAS A
BEAUTIFUL REVELATION OF
THE INFINITE LOVE

author's 0ott
I have appealed to my Presbytery, to the Synod
of New York, and to the General Assembly against
the further acceptance of the scholastic theology.
The appeal has had a wide publication, but there
has been no ecclesiastical action upon it. It
seems right to take a further step, and to suggest
what is now believed by very many, and what
might, with modifications, be substituted for an
old and outworn creed that does not commend
itself to the convictions of a large number, and is
repellent to a great many of the most thoughtful
and earnest people. This is the purpose of the
following treatise.
East Orange, N. J.

Contents

PAGE
I. Wanted — A Theology, g
II. God,  23
III. Jesus Christ, . . . - 34
IV. Man,  45
V. Future Punishment, . . . 70
VI. The Church,  91
VII. Rejoice and be Exceeding Glad, . 109

^anteo— a C^eologi?
THE world wants to-day more than anything
else a new theology. We call it a new the
ology in distinction from the old that has been
in vogue for centuries in Christendom. But in
fact the new theology wanted is the oldest the
ology of all, the theology of the mind and heart
of God — the theology that fell so brightly and
beautifully from the lips of the Lord Jesus —
the theology of all the saints and sages of all the
world. But it is a new theology in1 distinction
from the received theology, the theology of the
monks, the theology of the ordinary pulpit and
convention of to-day, which has gone for long
under the arrogant name of "orthodoxy." This
old theology is one of the saddest, darkest, crud
est products of the human mind in all the ages.

[9]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
It is perversely and ingeniously wrong, and the
minds of intelligent men and women have been
long distrest by hearing it, being assured that it
is "the truth," and the truth upon the most seri
ously important matters, and by being as con
tinually outraged in all their best thoughts and
feelings by it.
We step out under the sublime vault of heaven
and see moon and stars riding in their majesty
above us. Taught by modern astronomy we
have learned that these little points of light are
great suns like our own blazing sun, many of
them vastly greater than our own. With little
doubt each one of them is leading on a grand
array of satellites as our own sun is doing. There
are millions of these radiant suns and they are
moving with inconceivable swiftness through the
realms of space, and yet they keep their great
courses and not one dashes against another.
And the greatness of their size, of their numbers,
and of the boundless realm of space through
— — — __

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
which they move is something hardly expressi
ble in human language, goes beyond all our
thought or searching, the wildest fancy can not
realize it. Then we feel that all this demands
the fullest, highest thought and will and good
ness for its production and maintenance, de
mands in the most absolute way, just God.
The spacious firmament on high
And all the blue, ethereal sky,
The spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
In reason's ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
"The hand that made us is divine."
Laplace says, "There are two hundred mil
lions of millions chances against one that the uni
verse is the result of design and not of chance."
And Herbert Spencer says, "One truth must
ever grow clearer and clearer, the truth that there
is an inscrutable existence everywhere mani
fested. Amid mysteries that become more mys
terious the more we think of them, there will re-
_

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
main one absolute certainty that we are ever in
the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy
from which all things proceed."
Yes; all this is most positive, absolute, finals
it means God. And so is it with all God's revela
tions, they speak Himself.
Now let us step out into the world of the old
theology and give a quick sketch of its teachings.
There is a great God, Ruler of all. He has made
a marvelous creature in his own image, Man.
The first great act of man is to fall so as to be
come utterly corrupt, totally depraved, prone to
all evil and averse to all good. The great God is
furiously angry with this sinful man; as Jona
than Edwards says, he holds him above hell as
you would hold a venomous spider over your fire.
His son, Jesus Christ, soothes and placates this
fierce wrath of Jehovah by his death upon the
cross. The vast mass and sum of men in the
past have gone down to the abyss of hell, a lake
of fire burning with brimstone; the heathen in
_ _ . __

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
one great body have been consigned there, and
there lost men shall abide forever and ever, bear
ing the most dreadful tortures and strengthened
by God to be able to endure them. Now I ask,
do we have the same feeling here as when we
look up to the heavens and learn the lessons of
astronomy? Does the old theology demand the
great, good God? Do we feel that these two
things have the same glorious author? By no
means. We feel that the one who has done so
magnificently in the way of worlds seems to have
utterly failed in the far higher work of man. The
one suggests glory and triumph, the other shame
and weakness and failure.
No one who reads over a brief statement of the
old theology is sufficiently imprest with its awful
horror for the reason that we have been familiar
ized with many of its terrors. In fact so thor
oughly has it been drilled into the generations
from their childhood that they have simply taken
it as a thing of course. And a very different rea-
___________

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
son has led the great company of Christian peo
ple in these later days to endure the old theology,
namely this: that its worst horrors have been
of late years concealed — it is probably never
preached to-day in its fullest absurdity. If it
were preached to-day as it was one hundred years
ago, it would be flung out of pulpit and church
with an outbreak of popular indignation. Let
any one sit down and try to realize to himself the
dreadful features of this theology, a whole race,
and a very wonderful race, utterly lost, curst,
damned by God, and an endless torment en
dured to-day by countless millions of our fellow
men on the burning marl of hell, and the result
must be either quick rejection or insanity.
I am persuaded that many of my readers think
that I use too strong language on this subject.
That is not my difficulty, rather it is of the oppo
site sort, that the English language was not con
structed with any reference to the old theology
and has not expletives enough or strong enough
________ __~ __

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
to set forth its cruelty. Perhaps Volapuk or Es
peranto may invent such; then I shall be very
glad to use them. In the mean time more vigor
ous adjectives are called for than any I can light
upon, and I have to be content to use feebly what
I have at hand.
I want it to be well understood that I do not
write the present treatise to say that the old the
ology has room for improvement, is not well
adapted to the presenjt time and ought to be re
vised and corrected, and then adopted at ordina
tions and councils. My purpose is very different
from this; it is to express my utter abhorrence
for the whole system as a system, to declare that
in the light of the present day it is simply abom
inable, something that neither God nor man can
bear any longer. It has been a dreadful burden
for ages, it is an unendurable burden for this
time, and should be utterly swept away with the
besom of the hot indignation of the whole mass
of the people. _

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
But the strong language used as to the theology
does not at all apply to the worthy people who
accept it. They are of the excellent of the earth,
and having received these dreadful teachings
from parents and pastors they naturally accept
them on their authority. It will be the highest
kindness to deliver them, but they can not see it
in that light. Like the Prisoner of Chillon :
"My very chains and I grew friends.
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are; even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh."
By the general spread of light, the growth of
milder ways of thinking and doing, and by the
sheer terror of the old theology itself, a vast com
pany of intelligent people have been led to throw
off this most distressing bondage. But cer
tain seminaries seem hardly to have heard that
there is any new theology, and there is quite a large
company of ministers trained in such institutions
who still maintain this dreadful and antiquated
— - - _____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
system. The brighter men and the younger
men want to say as little about the old theology
as may be. They are distrest to have to declare
their acceptance of the Westminster Confession,
and fall back upon a large variety of reasons why
their solemn "Yes" in ordination really means
"No." I think if they tried the same treatment
with an oath in the law courts that they use with
the most solemn affirmation of ordination they
would come to grief very speedily.
In passing let me say that there is one pecul
iarly objectionable person, who has quite too
much intelligence to accept the old theology, to
whom it is simply unthinkable, who yet goes on
to show that it may all be explained in some mys
tic, occult, or poetic way. The fact is that there
is nothing mystic, occult, or poetic in the old
theology; it is bare, hard, cold talk; it is plain
and understandable and, to us in this day, mon
strous. The men who made this theology put in
plain terms just their faith. They meant what
— [17] ~~~

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
they said and said what they meant, and the men
who are drawing out its mystic, hidden meaning
had better be otherwise engaged. And we must
all of us lay to our souls this solemn consideration,
that there is a great deal of bread and butter, and
there are many fine pulpits and professors' chairs,
back of the old theology, and this should make us
very careful lest we be tempted not to speak our
minds about its dreadful character.
I must put in a plea here against the common
sneers at theology and scoffs at doctrine. These
have come from the false doctrines and miserable
theology that we have had. Theology will al
ways remain the queen of sciences. We need a
good, preachable theology more than anything.
This despising of theology has made preaching
the contemptible thing it often is. All overmas
tering power has gone from it and never will
come back till the preachers have found the true
theology, based on the love of God and the
brotherhood of man. A true theology has al-
— _ __

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
ways been a tremendous force and in every age
has bowed the hearts of men before it. This
beggarly remnant of rags and tatters that we have
had, will never move a soul of man, much less
save it.
A word may be allowed here on a kindred sub
ject, the prevalent custom in certain theological
seminaries of drawing students on to the accep
tance of a theological system which outrages all
modern thinking. Their men have to get into
the ministry and there must be a little hocus-
pocus to get them in, in spite of their inward re
volting. In the course of affairs the entire de
parture from absolute integrity is lost sight of.
It is a triumph of brain over commonest morals.
I pray the seminaries to look into this matter.
If they would train their young men, when asked
at ordination if they accepted the Westminster
Confession, to answer bravely, "No, we do not,"
it would clear the whole atmosphere, and help the
morality of the Continent; more especially as the
__ . _

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
Church in general is saying, "No, we do not,"
with more and more emphasis. God is always
teaching us theology. It would be a misfortune
for the theological seminaries to be the last to
learn it.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scot
land in the year 1907 struggled with the distress
ing question of subscribing to the Westminster
Confession, and instead of simply saying that
they do not consider it a satisfactory presentation ,
of the character of God or of the great truths of
religion, they have adopted an amended formula:
"I hereby subscribe to the Confession of Faith,
the public and avowed Confession of the Church
approved by former Assemblies as most agreeable
to the Word of God and ratified by Parliament
in the year 1690, declaring that I believe the Re
formed Faith therein set forth. To that, will I
adhere." The simple fact remains that any
statement of religion of the Parliament of 1690
would be objectionable, if not revolting, to Chris-
_ __

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
tian people now, and that the Westminster Con
fession is both objectionable and revolting, and it
would be a hundred times better to say so. It
is thought that there is quite a moral twist in
finance and in politics at present. Would it be
strange if it could be traced back to the twist in
the pulpit, the seminary, and the Church in gen
eral ? It is very difficult to receive straight mor
ality from a crooked man.
Having thus far very briefly treated some of
the unpleasant aspects of the old theology, we
have before us the delightful and even thrilling
consideration of what the New Theology is — how
beautiful and glad and divine. I trust I shall
not be judged foolish enough to think that I can
give in this little treatise the full coming theology;
for I believe that that theology is only in the heart
of God himself, that his capacious mind alone
can contain it, that in order fully to know it we
should have to be God ourselves. But I can at
least do two things : first show how far away it is
_____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
from the old theology, and second, as Matthew
Arnold says, throw out a few thoughts at it that
may be helpful to plain people. The sugges
tions I have to offer are only hints relating to a
new Theology that is fast coming to be received.

[aa]

II
(_50D
THE new theology will have as its source and
center the infinite love of God. " God is
love " is the grandest sentence in the language. It
is like God himself in its simplicity and sublimity;
three words, one of two letters, one of three, and
one of four, but he who knows fully this truth
knows every best thing and enters into the ful
ness of life. This explains everything. This
light shines into all darkness and brilliantly.
Close your books; leave your University; learn
this and be blest forever. The book that does
not contain this, the University that is not based
on this, write on them " Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity." The new theology will give itself full swing in
the declaration of God's love. It is true no lan-

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
guage can set this love forth, no illustration or
comparison can fully reveal it. The utmost ful
ness of mother's love is only a little touch of it,
the great rapture of lover's love does not ap
proach it. Nothing in heaven or earth or under
the earth can fully declare the love of God. The
whole creation is an effort to set it forth, but the
sum of things seen and known can not do it com
pletely. God only knows the love of God, and
even he can not tell it in its fulness. These
thoughts are most rapturous. That an infinite
Being controls all things, and that the center of
his life is love is absolutely final. Irresistible
power moves infinite love, and infinite love guides
irresistible power to a result that transcends all
human thinking. The soul that has grasped this
combination of ideas, rests. There is nothing
further to be sought or hoped for, rather every
thing worth seeking or hoping for is contained in
this. The old theology vanishes like a nightmare
before this thought.
[24] ~

GOD
But, it is replied, the old theology taught that
God is love. But the old theology said God is
love and then went on to say unspeakably dread
ful things about God. The old theology said
God is love, but it taught the doctrine of Reproba
tion, and how many different kinds of a liar
the doctrine of Reprobation makes the dear God
to be! The old theology preached God is love
in the morning, and the endless torment of Soc
rates and Plato in the afternoon. If Adam had
tried to think the worst possible thought and had
kept trying till the present moment, he could not
have lighted on a worse thought than that God
would send an infant to endless torment in the
flames of hell. Yet the old theologians preached
sermons asserting that. If they were to do it to
day the women of the congregation would put
them out on the curbstone with their hats well
crusht over their eyes.
There is a fine expression of the old regime in
France, "Noblesse oblige." It means that no-
__ — _____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
bility itself compels. If a man is a noble he
must be superior to the rest; he must be true; he
must be gentle and courteous; he must be manly
and chivalrous; he must be altogether pure and
noble. The reign of terror came to France be
cause the nobility completely forgot "Noblesse
oblige," because they were cruel, tyrannous,
deadly in their selfishness.
But if nobility compels, divinity compels still
more. Unquestionably the great God acknowl
edges absolutely this "Noblesse oblige." God,
because he is God, must be the most pure and
the most patient, the most gentle and the most
strong, the most long-suffering and the most
helpful, of all beings. The last thing that it is
possible for God to do is one mean thing, be
cause it is utterly unworthy of himself, and re
pugnant to his nature. St. Francis says, "God
is always courteous." But here have we been
under the old theology ascribing the most atro
cious things to God. It is mercifully impossible
__ _

GOD
for us to enter into his thought about this mat
ter. God is infinitely patient, but can an in
finite patience endure this? The shining of the
sun and the flashing of the dew show God's good
ness, but not like this, that God did not take this
man preaching that God would damn an infant
and fling him where he would never be found
again by his mourning friends.
It is a common reproach cast up against the
teaching that God is love that it means God is
too good to punish. It means nothing of the
sort. Love is the thing that punishes wisely; it
will not let any wrong be done without opposi
tion and chastisement But it will certainly
never punish after the stupid, blundering way
of the old theology, a way against which con
science revolts and all fine feeling bitterly pro
tests. There is nothing on earth more admir
able and wonderful than God's punishment. Sit
down by Pharaoh or Nero or Borgia and hear his
story. No sleuth-hound follows the scent as
_

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
God's punishment follows the sin. If I leave
my study and go to the street and cuff a playing
child into the kennel, my punishment mounts the
stair quicker than I, and waits for me at the top.
My heart is much disturbed, and when policeman
No. 346 rings the door-bell and asks to see the
man of the house, I know what he wants and I
do not want to see him. So is all sin and pun
ishment from the flowing blood of Abel to the
last crime that has been wrought to-day.
But oh, the patience, the gentleness, the long-
suffering of the loving God ! That modern proph
et, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, wrote to his
friend Dr. John Brown, "What a blest and
glad thing human existence would be if we fully
realized that the infinitely powerful and infi
nitely wise God loves each one of us with an
intensity infinitely beyond what the most fervid
human spirit ever felt toward another, and with
a concentration as if he had none else to think
of." Such a sentence has boundless possibilities
_ [28]

GOD
in its influence over the soul that accepts it. One
can hardly conceive that sorrow or sin could mas
ter it. A rapture of joy is its only legitimate
issue. It is delightful to think that that rapture
will yet fill the world from pole to pole. And
yet it will be only believing that God means what
he says. Clemens Alexandrinus states it well:
"The purified soul in the grandeur of contem
plation embraces not the divine in a mirror or
through a glass, but feasts eternally upon the
vision in all its clearness, that vision with which
the soul smitten with boundless love can never
be satiated, and enjoys an inexhaustible glad
ness for endless ages, honored by a permanent
continuance in all excellence." Here is the very
heart of all religion in every land and age. Her
bert Spencer says, "The Ultimate Reality is the
sole existence." But how much this adds, that
it is an existence of infinite love. An existence
of infinite love is the one necessary thing, the sole
reality. But the old theology had no room for
__ __ ___

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
these magnificent thoughts. It is very much
harder for me to believe the infinite love of God
because I was trained in the old theology, but is
this what theology is for? The little girl who
was naughty and was told that God saw and had
written it down, cried, "I know it, he's always
getting mad at something," — a natural inference.
Browning says truly of such a God —
"For the loving worm within his clod
Were diviner than a loveless God."
Love has been well called the divinest thing in
the world, but a God full of love, that- is by far
the best of all. Every noble and beautiful thing
in nature, history, society, music, painting, poe
try, eloquence, patriotism, fatherhood, mother
hood, infancy, and age is a revelation of God;
every lovely sight, sweet sound, high thought,
noble deed, happy memory, and delightful hope
is a revelation of the love of God. God's love
being true and the one great truth, all things on
the whole are better, nobler, grander, richer,

GOD
more hopeful, more glorious than any one has ever
thought, and we might well, if we had no. other
way to show our delight, sing and laugh and
dance and praise God all the days.
We must continually remember, because we
have not been sufficiently taught it, how central
and fundamental love is. James Freeman
Clarke writes: "That which makes this earth
seem solid is not the rocks and mountains in it,
but the love in it. The longer we live in love,
the more beautiful the world becomes, the more
rich and precious life seems. As we live on we
seem to grow younger, not older. It is the young
who are oftenest tired of life; the good old man
wonders that he could ever have been weary of
life. He feels the infinite riches of the universe
and thanks God in the depths of a happy heart
for the gift of life." We can say for humanity,
Wanted God, and only God and God forever.
The touch of God is life to the soul. God is to
the soul as sunshine is to flowers. God is to the
__ _

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
soul as air is to the lungs. Atheism, even agnos
ticism is suffocation. Sin itself seems to wilt and
die before the love of God. Touched by it the
harlot becomes the Magdalene, and the drunkard
in our own day becomes John B. Gough, at
whose feet millions sit delighted. Here is the true
God. " In him is light and in him is no darkness
at all." In him is life and in him is no death at
all. In him is love and in him is no hatred at
all. This is the absolute religion. Nothing can
rise higher than this. Here we rest.
In spite of all our moods and frames God is
ever this. It has been said that it is winter not
because the sun changes, but because the earth
turns away from the sun; when it turns back
summer comes quickly again. So the winter of
the soul comes not because God changes but be
cause our souls turn away from him. When they
turn back, then "is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer" by his coming. And
the truth that needs deeply to be imprest on all
_

GOD
our hearts is that we can have all this fulness of
life and blessing here and now. It is not the
beatific vision of God in heaven that we want
now, but the beatific vision of God in New York,
Chicago, Paris, and London. "Thou satisfiest
the desire of every living thing."

[33]

Ill
3Jejsu0 ewt
HAVING darkened for us the beautiful face of
God, the old theology went on to confuse
and disturb our knowledge of and delight in Jesus
Christ, his Son. Evidently one of the dearest de
sires of the Lord Jesus was that his church might
be one, and that he himself might be the special
bond of unity. How distressing it must be to his
exalted nature that the theologians have contrived
to make himself the special cause of division, from
the days of the sad Council of Nice to this last
Council in New York where three of the best of
our citizens had the doors shut in their faces be
cause of difficulties about the Trinity. As the
scholastic theologian sits, like Marius in the
ruins of Carthage, amid a torn and divided
church that his Master prayed might be one, he
__ __

JESUS CHRIST

ought to realize feelingly what a blunder he has
made. One of the chief marks of the greatness and
goodness of the Lord Jesus is that men love him
so much in spite of all that the Scholastics have
said and done about him. And some of the
worst of this saying and doing has been in the
Councils themselves. Dean Milman in his
Church History says, "A general Council was
a field of battle. Men met with all the excite
ment, the estrangement, the jealousy, the an
tipathy engendered by fierce conflict. Each
bishop was committed to his own opinion and
was exasperated by opposition. They tried to
triumph over their adversaries rather than dis
passionately to seek the truth." Gregory Na-
zianzen, a church father of high name and sanc
tity, writes: "I have never known an assembly of
bishops to terminate well. They strive only for
power, they behave like angry lions to the small
and like fawning spaniels to the great. It would

[35]

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
seem as tho a herald had convoked to the Coun
cil all the gluttons, villains, liars and false swear
ers of the Empire. I will never more sit in these
assemblies of cranes and geese." It is no won
der that such an assembly would throw the Church
into confusion worse confounded, just as has
happened. Erasmus writes, "Synods and de
crees and Councils are by no means the fittest
modes of repressing error unless truth depends
simply on authority. On the contrary, the more
dogmas there are, the more fruitful is the ground
for producing heresies. Never was the Christian
Church purer nor more undefiled than when the
world was content with a single creed, and that
the shortest creed we have."
And I quite fail to see why such a dust should
be raised about this matter of the relation be
tween God the Father and his Son. Every one
agrees that the one great idea of Sonship is one
ness of nature. A son is of the same nature as
his father. And man being a son of God, as is
__ _

JESUS CHRIST

well understood, the supreme Man must be the
supreme Son of God. But when the theologians
said that the Son was equal in power and glory
with the Father, they simply gave the lie to the
Son himself who said, and all his life confirmed
it, "My Father is greater than I." The theo
logians have made Jesus himself do what he
charges us not to do, to take to ourselves the
highest place, "lest a more honorable man than
thou come." And the commended confession
was Simon Peter's, "Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God." Why not leave it thus?
Proverbs contain a great deal of downright
common sense. They are wisdom and wit
combined. There is one very homely proverb,
"You must not look a gift horse in the mouth."
It is improper and discourteous to discuss the
value of a gift. If this morsel of wisdom had
been received by the theologians they would have
saved themselves much sorrow and the Church a
world of trouble. When God gave to the world
[37]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
what the Apostle Paul calls his "unspeakable
gift," the theologians turned at once with much
acrimony to do the forbidden thing and to ex
communicate all who rated the gift at a different
valuation from their own. I for one confess that
I have no two-foot rule to measure the stature of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe he was not
given to us to measure his stature, much less to
divide the church and cast out noble souls be
cause their feet and inches are not just the same
as our own; but he was given to us that we
should walk in his steps and love one another as
he loved us. But we have flown in the face of
every divine precept, and all the divine example
of Jesus, in our miserable and age-long quarrel
about the divinity of Jesus. Nothing divine has
come from that. Dean Fremantle gives a very
impressive word, "Faith has suffered more from
over-definition than from indefiniteness." And
when we think of the wild fury and passion, the
war and blood and thousandfold death like the
-_

JESUS CHRIST

battle of wolves and tigers, we feel that his words
are true. Calvin himself wished that the word
Trinity might be buried in oblivion. I think it
is Augustine who says, "I can not tell how my
soul and body are joined together, and yet that is
my very self." If that be so what likelihood is
there that we can analyze divinity? And the
utter confusion and disorder and bitter strife that
have resulted from this business should teach us
how far we have erred.
When we turn from this most arrogant and
divisive contention to the Lord Jesus himself, all
is beautiful and glorious, and all true men can
bow before him. What we believe is not a book
nor a creed but a Person. Mr. Lecky writes,
"It may be truly said that the simple record of
three short years of human life has done more
to regenerate and soften mankind than all the
disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhorta
tions of moralists." And in Daniel Webster's
Private Confession of Faith we read, "I believe

[39]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
that the experiments and the subtleties of human
wisdom are more likely to obscure than to en
lighten the revealed will of God; and that he is
the most accomplished scholar who has been edu
cated at the feet of Jesus and in the college of
fishermen." About the person of Jesus all men of the most
diverse views gather with devoted reverence.
Renan writes, "To tear the name of Jesus from
the world would be to shake it from its very
foundations." That sounds more Christian than
many things the Scholastics have said. I should
want to claim that man, to draw him into the
home, not to fling him from the door.
It is a profound word of Dean Stanley's,
" When Bishop Pearson in his work on the Creed
vindicates the divinity of Christ without the men
tion of any of those moral qualities by which he
has bowed down the world before him, his grasp
on the doctrine is far feebler than that of Rous
seau or Mill, who seized the very attributes which

JESUS CHRIST

constitute the marrow and essence of his nature."
Robert Browning in a letter quotes with much ap
proval the saying of Charles Lamb, when with a
few friends he was imagining what they would do
were the great heroes of the world to enter the
room at that moment. Some one asked, " What
if Jesus should enter?" Lamb at once altered
the light and jocose tone of his voice and said
with deep solemnity, "If Shakespeare were to
enter we should all rise and greet him with the
greatest reverence, but if Jesus Christ were to
enter, we must all kneel."
And wonderfully this profound reverence has
centered about the cross of Jesus Christ. It is
hard for us to realize the shame and ignominy
that the cross meant in the days of Jesus. It is
one of the marvels of history that Jesus has made
the emblem of a slave's degradation the symbol
of the highest honor and dignity of the world,
surmounting everywhere stately cathedrals and
emperor's crowns. About this slave's shame

[41]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
bow all the wisdom and power and glory of the
world. Romanes says, "The entire story of the
cross is by far the most magnificent presentation
in history. Only to a man wholly destitute of
spiritual perception can it be that Christianity
should fail to appear the greatest .exhibition of
the beautiful and the sublime and of all else that
appeals to our spiritual nature, which has ever
been known upon earth." And Mr. Emerson
says of the Crucifixion, "This great defeat is
hitherto our highest fact." We may well believe
that the cross of Christ is the greatest exhibition
of the divine love that this world has ever known.
And may it not be that it is an exhibition of what
the great God is doing in all worlds, sacrificing
himself for his children in any way that it were
wise and kind for him to do. We may suppose
that there is something resembling the cross in
every inhabited world; that God has made in
every such world a demonstration of his love and
sympathy that is the greatest power of uplift in
- [42] ~

JESUS CHRIST

that world. The benevolent nature that has
tasted once the joy of doing good on the largest
scale must continue it, and he who has known
in this world the hidden, deep-lying joy of the
cross, surely will he not under the compulsion of
this principle be exhibiting that same self-sacri
fice in other worlds, how many none can tell?
We may be sure of this, that the cross exhibits
some of the very deepest qualities of the divine
nature and that, had we been deprived of the
cross, we should have lost much, and of the best,
of our knowledge of God. And it is a revelation
in the way of tenderness and sympathy that
reaches the lowest as well as the highest, the
hovel as well as the palace or the University. It
has written its story very deeply in the hearts and
lives of the common people. It has affected all
their traditions, their songs, their speech. The
Bretons call the aspen, "The Trembler," and
say it was the wood of which the cross was
made and has trembled ever since Christ hung

[43]

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
upon it. And I think, joyfully leaving out of
view incomprehensible and divisive doctrines
like the Trinity, we can all join in Paul's ardent
words, " He humbled himself and became obedi
ent unto death, even the death of the cross. Where
fore God also hath highly exalted him and given
him a name that is above every name, that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow of
things in heaven and things in earth and things
under the earth." Yes, we take the words from
the lips of Charles Lamb, and when Jesus Christ
comes we shall all, Unitarian with Roman Catho
lic, Jew with Gentile, we shall all kneel.

[44]

IV
£$an
1HAVE the greatest hesitation in writing this
section of my treatise. If I considered my
own interest I certainly should not write it at all.
There are many who have followed me with a
great deal of acquiescence so far, who may pause
now. I fear that my Presbytery, which has been
very forbearing with me, may feel that this is
passing the bounds. But there are two reasons
that compel me to write: first, because I think
that it is true; and second, because if true, it is a
most interesting and delightful truth, changing
in a marvelous way our view of God and life and
of the whole sum of things.
The old theology taught concerning man that
God made him from the dust of the ground and
placed him in a delightful garden. Out of man's
__ _____

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
side God took a rib and from it he made woman.
In the garden were two trees. If man ate of one
of them he would live forever; if, of the other,
he would die forever. A serpent spoke to the
woman and tempted her to eat of the forbidden
tree. She ate and gave the fruit to the man who
ate with her. Upon this followed the stupendous
penalty that they and all their descendants be
came totally depraved and must be consigned to
fearful tortures of fire and brimstone for endless
ages. This is a most terrible presentation of the
history and character and destiny of man. A
tremendous burden of proof rests upon the old
theologians. The burden of proof rests not upon
us for rejecting it, for its very nature is full of
reason for doubting it, large reason for utterly re
jecting it. No ordinary foundation can bear up
such a dreadful superstructure as this. What then
is its foundation ? It is an old document, vener
able for its antiquity and always to be highly cher
ished as ancient literature — the book of Genesis.
_ . __ _ ___

MAN
First we remark that if we had lighted in our
reading upon a serpent that talked and a tree
that could give eternal life or eternal death, we
would conclude at once that this was a myth or
fable designed, perhaps, to give moral teaching,
but not to be considered historical fact. But
further, however interesting this book of Gene
sis may be and is as an ancient writing, its au
thority as history has been for a long time passing
away. I can well remember when it was con
sidered a most serious heresy to doubt that Noah's
deluge was universal. A man was called an in
fidel who dared to say it was partial. Unques
tionably the record means that it was universal,
but we now believe that it was partial. I can
still better remember how the geologists were
furiously assailed when they asserted that the
world had been thousands of years and not six
days in the making. Livingstone asked an op
ponent of Geology where the shells in the rocks
came from. He answered, "When God made
_____

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
the rocks he made the shells in them." A book
was published called "Popular Geology subver
sive of Divine Revelation." This is one utter
ance of the book: "Certainly of all the lately dis
covered sciences which the enemy of God and
man has thus pushed to his destroying ends, no
one has been so appropriate to his purpose or has
been so assiduously driven forward to the accom
plishment of his aims as the popular new science
of Geology. To enumerate all the infernal ar
tillery which the subtle enemy of God and man
has put into the hands of his vassals to aim at the
everlasting monument of revealed truth would
require his own unspent breath and unwearied
tongue." This blast ought to have finally ended
Geology, but it seems that it did not. No one
reads this fierce book now, but millions are study
ing Geology to-day.
The record of Genesis distinctly says that the
world was made in six days. When Geology had
firmly established itself, most heroic efforts were
_____

MAN
put forth to show that the days of Genesis were
long periods of time — about which explanation
it would be interesting to hear the comment of
the original author of Genesis. To him, doubt
less, the days were days and nothing else, and the
seventh day the day that became the Jewish
Sabbath and nothing else.
Again, students of human history have discov
ered that man has been thousands upon thou
sands of years an inhabitant of the earth. They
were assailed as infidels, but the intelligent world
has come to believe that man has lived here for
long periods of time, far beyond the notion of the
book of Genesis.
Again, some centuries ago there came one of
God's great revelations through the minds of
Copernicus and Galileo. This revolutionized
all man's thinking about the great system of the
worlds. These prophets who were stoned for
their contradiction of the book of Genesis taught
us the wonders of modern astronomy. For this
_ . — ~ — —

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
Copernicus was condemned to seclusion and si
lence, and only published his great work as he
was on his death-bed. Galileo, with bended
knees and with his hand upon the Gospels, was
compelled to pronounce the following words, "I
abjure, curse, and detest the error and heresy of
the motion of the earth, and promise that I will
never teach verbally or in writing that the sun is
the center of the universe and immovable, and
that the earth is not the center of the universe
and movable." But all this did not stop the
movement of the earth, and Galileo did not seem
to think it would, for as he rose from his knees he»
murmured, "It still moves." And so far as I
have heard it is moving yet.
In all these particulars we have made our prog
ress in the way of modern knowledge in opposi
tion to, and really in spite of, the book of Genesis.
Of late there has come a much more important
departure from the teaching of that book. For
these other matters were in the realm of nature,
_ __

MAN
and this is in the realm of man — and therefore
touches us much more nearly. The theory of
Evolution teaches that man has developed up
ward — that he bears in his very frame the marks
of his intimate association with lower orders of
life, and that, instead of a single day of creation,
immense periods have been occupied in the slow
process of development by which he is moving
forward to-day with the same steady progress as
thousands of years ago. As the theory of Evolu
tion stands to-day received in all our colleges and
universities it takes its place as one of the very
grandest products of human thought and inves
tigation that the world has ever known. But it
is distinctly opposed to the story of the book of
Genesis. It is a remarkable fact that the great leaders of
thought who worked out the theory of Evolu
tion builded better than they knew. They little
thought when they were patiently seeking the
facts as to man's history, the cold, scientific facts,
[sO

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
that they were taking part as well in a great the
ological movement that was beginning in the re
ligious world — that they were helping to deliver
their fellow men from a cruel bondage under
which they had suffered for ages. They were
called infidels and atheists but were really doing
a great religious work, while their theological
opponents were doing their best to injure true
religion. It is a remarkable fact that two great
movements have been going forward together and
have been mutually helpful — science and the high
er criticism — doing one of the greatest works of
all history. And thankful may we be who live
at such a time as this when so much light is break
ing forth in the realms of science and theology.
We see thus how once and again and again the
story of Genesis as to the creation and origin of
man has been contradicted by the patient inves
tigation of earnest and laborious and intelligent
men, the results of whose labors are received to
day in all our halls of learning. And yet the third
__

MAN
chapter of the book of Genesis is the basis on
which has been erected the whole terrible scho
lastic theology. This dreadful combination —
the fall of man in Adam, the utter corruption and
total depravity of the race, and the endless tor
ment of millions upon millions of our fellow men —
hangs upon the third chapter of the book of Gene
sis. Was there ever such an unspeakably hor
rible combination? Was there ever so frail and
feeble a foundation ?
Now, putting away prejudice and the influence
of early training, it becomes us carefully to bal
ance these two theories. The one is the theory
based on a story with the look of a fable and on
a writing that has been again and again proved
to be mistaken as to certain great facts of history.
The other is the theory that is practically ac
cepted by educated men to-day, that man has
come to his place in this world by a long process
of growth and evolution, which devout men be
lieve to be one of the greatest marvels of God's
[S3]

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
handiwork. When we have carefully consid
ered which opinion is likely to be true, that of the
old theology or of evolution, it surely adds an
amazing zest and relish to our reception of the
newer opinion that it sweeps away as by a
magician's wand this terrible combination — the
Fall, total depravity, and endless torment — the
greatest burden that humanity has ever known.
By the teaching of evolution it is a grotesque
blunder to call man a fallen being. He is prob
ably the best example of a rising being anywhere
to be found. The one thing he has been doing
for ages is to rise. He has risen from the merest
microscopic life to glorious manhood — he has
risen from the low, the bestial, the utterly self
ish nature that eats its own progeny, to a high,
wise, self-sacrificing, entirely devoted and in
spired spiritual life, to becoming partaker of a
divine nature, and sharing in a true sense the
very life of God; he has risen to the true man
hood, Son of Man and Son of God. One word
__ ___ ___. .

MAN
is peculiarly true of him, the Easter word, "He
is risen indeed." I can fancy some mighty angel
telling his comrades the wondrous story of man's
age-long rise, closing with the words, "And he
calls himself a fallen creature." This must add
to the hilarity of heaven.
And with the departure of the dogma of the
fall of man go the dogmas of total depravity
and endless torment. The old theology taught
the doctrine of total depravity in its largest sweep
because it was a logical deduction from the fall,
and everything must yield to logic. They for
got Luther's word, "Away with logicians, when
we must believe fishermen." By the logic of the
system, even infants shared this full depravity
and went to hell with the rest. The most wise
and witty comment that I ever heard on this con
clusion was that of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
He refers to such monstrous words as these of
Calvin (" Institutes," II. i. 8) : " Altho infants have
not yet produced the fruits of their own unright-
_____ __ . _

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
eousness, they have the seed planted in them
selves; nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a
seed-bed of sin, and therefore can not but be odi
ous and abominable to God." He then adds
the beautiful words of Jesus, " Suffer the little
children to come unto me and forbid them not,
for of such is the kingdom of heaven"; and
asks, " Do you mean, John Calvin, that Heaven
lies about us in our infancy ? "
The modern view of non-elected infants is well
given in Albert Lancaster's lines :
An "unelected infant" sighed out its little breath,
And wandered thro' the darkness along the shores of death
Until the gates of heaven agleam with pearl it spied,
And ran to them and clung there and would not be denied.
At last the gates were opened; a man with features mild
Stooped down and raised the weeping and unelected child.
Immortal light thrilled softly from avenues of bliss
As on the infant's forehead the spirit placed a kiss.
"Who are you, thus to hallow my unelected brow?"
"Dear child, my name was Calvin, but I see things better
now."
Further than this, the old theology taught us
that this world and race of ours was under a
— —

MAN
curse. This world is a vale of tears and a wil
derness of wo.
"Through sorrow's night and danger's path,
Amid the deepening gloom
We servants of an injured King
Are marching to the tomb."
"The few lurid mornings that dawn on us here
Are enough for life's wo, full enough for its cheer."
"This world is all a fleeting show
For man's delusion given."
And death was darkest of all, a horrid specter
to terrify mankind.
"Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound.
Mine ears attend the cry.
Ye living men, come view the ground
Where ye must shortly lie."
Professor Park used to tell with great gusto the
story of Dr. West of Stockbridge, who was in his
day one of New England's leading clergymen.
Professor Kirkland, when a student, was taught
by him, and taught the horrible system as it is
seldom taught now. He would hear it all in the
— — — -

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
study, and then come out to the beautiful sun
shine and look over the lovely Stockbridge valley
and say, " God is good in spite of what old West
says." The Gospel is sunshine in the open air;
the old theology is a smoking candle in a dark
cellar. Blow it out, wet the cinder, and come
out into the sunlight! When we hear the laugh
ter of children and see the beauty of flowers and
the glory of sunsets, we feel sure it was all a mon
strous blunder.
"If we poor souls involved in our own cloud
Deem the wide world lies darkling in a shroud,
Raving, the world holds no felicity!
One child's clear laughter may rebuke the lie."
How grateful is the teaching that man has not
fallen into such a corruption that the world must
be curst for him, but rather has risen from igno
rance and sensuality to a condition in which he
can enjoy all this beautiful world and help to
make it more beautiful and happy under the smile
of a most loving God.
~ [Ts]

MAN
And as for death itself, which the old theology
made so dreadful, the truth is that if we live as
God meant us to live, death is a priceless boon,
a freedom from the infirmities and limitations of
the flesh, a graduation to a higher school, an en
trance into a most exalted spiritual society, a rap
ture of reunion with deeply loved ones gone be
fore, a new nearness and vision of God himself,
in short by far the most delightful experience the
soul has ever yet enjoyed, to be followed by larger
and fuller revelations. As dying Bunsen said,
"It is sweet to die," and as John Howe wrote,
"Thank God, no one can rob us of the glorious
privilege of dying."
Men have long strained themselves over the
problem of the origin of evil, with no satisfying
results. May it not be because it never had an
origin? Topsy "never was born, never had a
father, never had a mother, just growed" — and
evil has done the same, only it has grown less. It
is itself the lower and worse thing that has been
. _____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
put away, sloughed off in the movement of the
ages. What is wrong in a man is not wrong in
a dog or tiger. What is wrong in a civilized man
is not wrong in a savage. Savages to-day are re
minders to us of what our fathers were. The
old arguments in favor of polygamy and slavery
failed here. Because Abraham and David had
wives and slaves we should have the same. Oh,
no! They had them, but we should not have
them. Because Samuel hewed Agag to pieces
before the Lord, some of the Scotch Covenanters
said, "Hew Archbishop Sharp to pieces," and
they did it thoroughly, but they made a miserable
mistake. With a movement like the movement of the
spheres, grossness, cruelty, animality, are going.
The brawn is growing weaker, perhaps, tho that
is doubtful, but the brain is growing stronger.
Pharaoh and Nero have had their day — this cen
tury would electrocute them. To say that man
is totally depraved — prone to all evil and averse
~ ]

MAN
from all good — is simply an atrocious falsehood.
It is a statement after the manner of Baron
Munchausen. He would admire it, but not dare
to parallel it, as being quite beyond him. I deny
the doctrine and I resent it. After an experience
with my brother men of nearly seventy years, I
find it false in every particular. I have met
rogues and rascals, but a host of kindly, gracious
men and women and children and many exquis
itely beautiful souls, every thought or recollection
of whom is a delight and inspiration. As well
might one say that the glorious sun is a blazing
meteor full fraught with destruction because
sometimes its rays blast and burn — or that the
beautiful flowers are seductive poisons because
of the poppy and mandragora — or that the sweet
airs of heaven are deadly vapors because of the
black hole of Calcutta — or that the cold-flowing
waters are fatal because in them may lurk typhoid
or cholera. My heart responds fully to Words
worth's beautiful lines, —
_ __ _ __

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning.
Alas: the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning."
Burke said you could not draw an indictment
against a whole people. This doctrine of total
depravity is a slander upon a whole magnificent
race of beings.
I am aware that this new view of man's char
acter and destiny is a great departure from the
opinion that has long prevailed. I know that the
old views have been deeply fixt in the hearts of
men. It will take a strong wrench to tear them
away. One of our bitterest words is miscreant.
Throw that at any man and see how quickly he
will resent it. Yet "miscreant" simply means
one who believes differently from his neighbors.
So firmly was the system bound upon men that
not to believe it was to be a most dreadful man,
a miscreant. There is always the strong conser
vatism of human nature that makes any depar
ture from use and want difficult. A witty French-
— - [62]

MAN
man says that when the Lord informed heaven
that he was about to create the worlds, an angel
cried, "But, Lord, Lord, what is to become of
Chaos?" We want to remember Bacon's wise
word, "Froward retention of custom is as turbu
lent a thing as an innovation." When coal was
first introduced in London a law was passed ma
king it a capital offense to burn it, and it is said
that one man was executed for transgressing.
The first cargo of ice that came to New Orleans
was sent away by a mob, and the ice-house de
molished. Lord John Russell said, "It takes
England forty-five years to accomplish any nec
essary reform." It has taken more than ten
times forty-five years to reform our theology.
The chief and sufficient reason for adopting
the new opinion is the unutterably monstrous
character of the old one. It is its own sufficient
antidote. The heathen damned, the ignorant
and neglected lost, the vast mass of men thus far
undone, a mere fragment saved, the best hope of
_____ _________

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
men to die in infancy — surely this can not be the
good tidings of great joy to all people.
Dr. Parker, of London, in his funeral discourse
at the death of Henry Ward Beecher, said, "The
one man that the church must get rid of at all
costs is the systematic theologian who attaches
less value to his theology than to his system.
That man must go! He destroys more souls than
have been ruined by all the infidels that have ever
lived. Where system is regarded as complete
and final, it is fraught with inexpressible mis
chief, and is to be denounced by every man who
is in sympathy with the cross of Christ."
A resident of China writes about the miserable
foot-binding of the people: "We have listeiied
with our own ears to the cries of a little girl un
dergoing the torturing process. Such agonizing
wails never before fell on our ears. They were
the shrieks of a child absolutely wild with suffer
ing. When the ligatures were loosened and the
shocking succession of breathless screams ended
—

MAN
in long-drawn wails of exhaustion and misery,
the listener turned almost sick with horror and
sympathy — yet a mother was the deliberate tor
turer of her own baby, and a father listened to
its cries." This is very bad, but far worse is the
old theology that worthy fathers and mothers
taught to frightened children. It was accepted
by the children without realizing thought — a,
matter of memorizing from a catechism, not
receiving in the heart. When the heart woke
indeed to realization, it rejected with horror or
went wild with frantic fear. In millions of cases
it has done one thing or the other.
Let me make an earnest protest against the
continued use of the Shorter Catechism in my
own church. It contains the false doctrine as to
man and the present state of things, in its worst
form. The best thing that can be said for this
Catechism is that the first study of it and the con
tinued repetition of it are so entirely grievous and
mortally wearisome that it gives a strong distaste
_ ___ _

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
for the whole thing in the minds of young people.
It is as painful to the mind as foot -binding is to
the body. God pity and bring to a better mind
the parents who afflict their children with either
of them! In Dr. Chalmers' "Life," Vol. 4, p.
449, we find a talk of his with his daughter about
the Catechism. "There's some of your stour,
orthodox folk just ever ready to stretch the Bible
to square with the Catechism; all very well,
needful as a landmark, but " (kindling up) "what
I say is, do not let the wretched, mutilated thing
be thrown between me and the Bible." Said his
daughter, " Bacon compares the Bible to the well-
spring and says he were a huge fool that would
drink but from the tank." Dr. Chalmers laughed,
"Ha, ha ! where does Bacon say that ? It's nasty
in the tank too, sometimes." I have heard very
many warm encomiums upon the Catechism, but
I suggest in all fairness that our Board of Pub
lication, which still distributes thousands of these
Catechisms, should print on the title-page two
—

MAN
mottoes: "For the huge fools," Bacon, and "It's
nasty in the tank sometimes," Chalmers. I
should think I had not lived in vain if I could
deliver our young people from the sad infliction
of the Shorter Catechism. I know one dear
friend, now with God, who in a large family
went to sleep commonly after answering his ques
tion, happy youth, and was awakened to answer
when the next one came. And another, in a fam
ily of three children, learned every third question
and then had only to place himself rightly for the
recital. When Mr. Beecher delivered his famous
lectures on preaching at Yale University, he
launched out into a philippic against our dark and
gloomy churches. In the time of free question
ing at the close of the address, Dr. Leonard
Bacon, president of the Seminary, asked in a
quizzical way, "Mr. Beecher, don't you think it
might be a good idea to hang one or two archi
tects?" Mr. Beecher reflected for a moment,
and answered, "No, I should not do that — but
__

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
I'd make them learn the Shorter Catechism."
Perhaps that might be tried as a penalty for this
bad business of speeding automobiles. It would
surely be effective.
The old view of the character and destiny of
man has been the cause of the bitter hostility to
religion in a vast company of those who have
been called hostile. It was this system, and not
the religion of Jesus, that provoked the sharp
arrows of many called "infidels." This system
was the constant theme of Col. Robert Ingersoll.
Without it his occupation would have been gone.
Ingersoll, in grateful remembrance, should have
endowed Princeton Seminary in his will, for it
furnished him all his controversial material.
May we not hope that many will welcome the
new and beautiful light upon the subject of their
own very nature? It is one glory of our time
that there is a greater readiness to receive new
truth than ever in the history of the world. Blest
be God! new truth will always be coming. Pro-
rliTj ~

MAN
fessor Brute says well, "New wine is always in
course of being produced by the eternal vine of
truth, demanding in some particulars of belief
and practise new bottles for its preservation, and
it receives for answer the order to be content with
the old ones." We must never be content with
the old ones, but fling them away and demand
new ones for our time and ourselves.
In Hoffman's well-known picture, "The Child
Christ in the Temple," the beautiful child stands
in the center of the picture, and near him, lean
ing upon a staff, intently listening, is a very old
Rabbi — the old dispensation earnestly listening
to the new. Ah, it is fine when even old age re
ceives the new truth, and the new truth accepted
by the old and borne on the shoulders of age and
experience will gloriously conquer the world.

[69]

future ^unfjs^ment
PERHAPS the most flagrant transgression of
the old theology is its teaching as to future
punishment. We may in general characterize
it as the worst possible dogma upon the subject.
The barbarians who formulated it were much too
ignorant to realize the full sweep of their own
doctrine, and were remorselessly cruel. Frois-
sart tells this story of a Baron in whose immense
chimney the great fire was going out for lack of
fuel. He sent for wood again and again, but it
did not come. He became quite furious, and
when the wood was announced to be at the castle
door, he hurried out, picked up the ass with the
fagots of wood on its back, carried the whole
thing to the fireplace, and hurled ass and wood
and all into the raging flame. Whereat the guests
— — _____

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
laughed heartily. The Baron ought surely to
have been hanged for this, but it passed as a
cheerful joke. These men could believe in endless
torment; we can not. But even these cruel men
did not receive the modern doctrine, for the Ro
man Catholic Church always taught the great
and very merciful doctrine of Purgatory, but
Protestantism has taken hell from the Roman
Catholics and rejected Purgatory, producing the
most diabolical doctrine of future punishment
that could be devised. After a few years of
earthly life the great mass of the world's popula
tion have been remorselessly swept into endless
torments. And God is Love!
Sismondi, the Italian historian, came to Eng
land with a great admiration for its history and
constitutional liberty and with much respect for
the Protestantism that had helped to make Eng
land what it is. But he went to church and
heard a sermon that denied an intermediate state
and preached the endless torment of the wicked.

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
He was full of indignation, and left the church
vowing that he would never again enter a church
holding such a creed, and would never help to
spread what the English call their Reformation,
for by its side Romanism is a religion of mercy
and peace.
It is wise and well to give some of the utter
ances in which this doctrine has been taught.
Here are some of the many expressions of
Jonathan Edwards on the subject of hell: "He
will trample them beneath his feet with inexpres
sible fierceness. He will crush their blood out
and make it fly, so that it will sprinkle his gar
ments and stain all his raiment "; "You can not
stand before an infuriated tiger even — what then
will you do when God rushes against you in all
his wrath?" What a beautiful conception of
God this is! He says, "In some heathen coun
tries the manner of disposing of dead bodies is
to dig a pit and put in it a great quantity of fuel,
to put the dead bodies on the pile and set it on
[y2]

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
fire. This is some image of the burning of dead
souls in hell." He says again : "The whole world
will probably be converted into a great lake or
liquid globe of fire, a vast ocean of fire in which
the wicked shall be overwhelmed, in which the
wicked shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest
day or night, billows of fire continually rolling over
their heads. They shall forever be full of quick
sense; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their
hands, their feet, their loins, and their vitals shall
forever be full of glowing, melting fire, and also
they shall be eternally full of the most lively sense
to feel the torment." This is bad enough, but
there is one touch that caps the climax: "The
sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of
the saints forever, it will really make their happi
ness the greater, as it will make them sensible of
their own happiness, it will give them a more
lively relish of it — oh, it willmake them sensible
how happy they are." The hell is pretty bad,
but the heaven seems to me to be worse.
___

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
Mr. Spurgeon sometimes tried to equal Ed
wards in this matter, but I do not think he has
quite as "lively a relish" of it. In his sermon
on the parable of Dives and Lazarus he says:
"See how his tongue hangs from between his
blistered lips. How it excoriates and burns the
roof of his mouth as if it were a firebrand." Here
is another specimen of a child's hell, quoted from
a Roman Catholic book by Rev. Mr. Furness,
published in England not long ago : " The fourth
dungeon is the boiling kettle. Is it really a kettle
that is boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear
what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded
veins of that boy; the brain is boiling and bub
bling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his
bones." Here is a graphic description of hell from lines
of the year 1300:
"Some the jaws wide open wrast
And poured in the lead all hot,
Bade him thereof to drunken fast
_74_

FUTURE PUNISHMENT

And skink to all his friends about.
A devil came there at the last
That was the Master, well I wot,
A glowing coulter in him thrast
And thro' the heart the iron smote.
White-hot sword blades some did set
To back and breast and either side,
In his heart the pointers met
And made great, gaping woundes wide."
As respects such pictures of the future life Mr.
Lecky well exprest the natural feeling of the hu
man mind in the indignant words: "That an all-
righteous and all-merciful Creator in the full
exercise of these attributes deliberately calls into
existence beings whom he has from eternity des
tined to endless, unmitigated torture is a prop
osition at once so extravagantly absurd and so
ineffably atrocious that its adoption might lead
men to doubt the universality of moral percep
tions. Such teaching is, in fact, demonism and
in its extreme form. It attributes to the Creator
acts of injustice and barbarity which it would be
impossible for the imagination to surpass — acts
— [75] "

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
before which, the most monstrous excesses of
human cruelty dwindle into insignificance — acts
which are in fact worse than any theologians have
attributed to the devil. As is customary when
they enunciate a proposition which is palpably
self-contradictory, they call it a mystery and an
occasion for faith."
Mr. Beecher in his statement of belief before
the Congregational Association says: "The me
dieval representation of the punishment of the
wicked is a spiritual barbarism worthy of having
been invented in just such a place, and by such
demons as have been invented for it. That there
will be pain and penalty in another world for
those who have perverted their nature in this
world I fully believe. But those exquisite and
infernal descriptions of the material and sensu
ous torments of the lost, rolling in flames of fire,
writhing in the folds of serpents, gnawed by de
mons, pierced by fiery forks, clawed, dragged,
tossed, roasted by an infinity of disgusting devils
. __ _____

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
in an eternity of torments, increasing with every
age, the capacity to suffer increasing also, till the
whole infinite round of imaginable space is filled
with the smoke and shrieks of their torment —
such a dogma is an insult to reason, to the moral
sense of mankind; and if it shall be ascribed to
God, it is a blasphemy that would justify the
annihilation of its propagators."
The old- theology men confess the dreadful
nature of their doctrine, but say that they must
teach it because it is taught in the words of Christ.
This we absolutely deny. The Greek word
"aionios" is the one that is relied on to maintain
the endlessness of future punishment, but Greek
scholars know that it does not necessarily mean
endless, that it very often does not mean endless.
Here is one of the most damning facts about the
old theologians, that they take a word that does
not of itself mean endless, and upon this awful
theme compel it to bear the mosi awful sense. I
accuse them of utmost cruelty in so doing. I lay,
[77]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
at the door of this false interpretation of theirs,
blasted lives, broken hearts, dreadful suicides,
and wide-spreading infidelity and atheism. Mr.
McCullock, Secretary of the United States Treas
ury, tells us that when his cousin, a most lovely
lady, was dying, her pastor, Dr. Fessenden,
father of Senator Fessenden, came to her bedside
and said : " Sister, this is probably the last time
we shall meet. I want to ask you one more
question: are you willing to be damned for the
glory of God ? " She hesitated, when he repeated
the question with much severity. At last she an
swered, "Yes, I think I am." Again I cry out
against the remorseless cruelty of the old theology.
Think of a woman, a gentle, timid woman — a
dying woman — belabored with such a question as
that! They used to say of the old theology, —
" A text or dogma
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure if another fails."
__ -

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
There is one text which, perhaps more than
any other, has led to the acceptance of endless
torment. It is Matt. xxv. 46: "And these shall
go away into endless punishment, and the right
eous into life eternal." But a right understand
ing of the words sweeps away the dreadful doc
trine. In the Greek we read, "these shall go
away into the eternal kolasis." I open my Lid-
dell and Scott's Greek Dictionary, a standard
book, and repeat to the reader what I find as the
meanings of " kolasis " — "pruning of trees; hence
checking, punishing, chastisement, correction."
The word is from the verb " kolapto," to hew or
cut, so comes pruning as the first meaning. But
does any gardener prune a vine to destroy it ? It
is a hard process to the vine, but it helps the vine.
And the Lord Jesus in this verse teaches us dis
tinctly that the punishment is for correction.
What a cruel heart it is that would twist that to
eternal torment! I charge it home upon the old
theology that it is remorseless cruelty so to teach.
[79]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
The doctrine of endless torment is a combina
tion of ignorance and cruelty, two of the most
desperate crimes of humanity. Shall we not all
join in Luther's exclamation in his letter to Han
sen von Rechenberg: "God forbid that I should
limit the time of acquiring faith to the present
life! In the depths of divine mercy there may be
an opportunity to win it in the future state."
A word may be added as to Edwards' sugges
tion that the sight of hell will increase the happi
ness of the saints — will give them a "more lively
relish " of it. In this he follows the word of an
old father, Tertullian, who vents the same most
abominable notion. Bishop Bickersteth, in his
"Yesterday, To-day, and Forever" gets a better
view in saying that lost souls find their only
"lenitive of pain" in gazing at the bliss of the
saved. Upon this Dean Plumptre wisely com
ments: "Might it not even be said that there is
a higher spiritual excellence in the character
which rejoices that others are in blessedness which
_____ . _ _

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
it can not share, than in that of the blest who
contemplate the torments of the lost with an un
disturbed complacency?" Most of us will agree
with the Dean, tho it seems rather an inversion
of heaven and hell. I, for one, if I were where
they were having a " more lively relish" from the
endless torment of some one else, would have
only one feeling — " Please let me out — anywhere,
anywhere out of this world." Our President
Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress has
this to say of the crime of lynching: "No man
can take part in the torture of a human being — "
(let me pause a moment to say, no man can have
a "lively relish" of it without taking the very
worst part in it) — " No man can take part in the
torture of a human being without having his own
moral nature permanently lowered." How then
with these saints and their lively relish of hell ?
How long will they remain saints? And how
with the great God who for ages has been con
templating this torture and strengthening the
[-7] ~~ ~

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
victims to endure? How will it affect his moral
nature? John Locke says on this subject of future pun
ishment: "By death some understand endless
torments in hell. But it seems a strange way of
understanding a law which requires the plainest
and directest words, that by death should be
meant eternal life in misery. Can any one be
supposed to intend, by a law which says, 'for
felony thou shalt surely die,' not that he should
lose his life, but be kept alive in exquisite and
perpetual torments?"
Whittier wrote to a friend: "I am not a uni-
versalist, for I believe in the possibility of the
perpetual loss of the soul that persistently turns
away from God, in the next life as in this. But
I do believe that the divine love and compassion
follow us in all worlds, and that the Heavenly
Father will do the best that is possible for every
creature He has made. What that will be must
be left to His infinite wisdom and goodness."

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, in his ser
mon on the "Final State and Condition of Men,"
says, "The eternal punishment is of the wicked,
and the wicked may repent and change." He
says further: "To suppose that a man's happi
ness and misery to all eternity should absolutely
and unchangeably be fixed and determined by
the uncertain behavior of a few years in this life
is a supposition even more unreasonable than that
a man's mind and manners should be completely
formed and fashioned in his cradle and his whole
future fortune and condition depend altogether
upon his infancy. . . . Repentance is therefore
not impossible, even in hell."
As to the opinion of the Jews upon the subject
of endless torment, one of the most learned Rab
bis, Emmanuel Deutsch, whom George Eliot
calls "the man among living men who knows the
most about the Talmud," in his essay on the
Talmud writes: "There is no everlasting dam
nation according to the Talmud. There is only
" " [83]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
a temporary punishment even for the worst of
sinners." In conversation with Mr. Cox, author
of " Salvator Mundi," he said : " Of this you may
be quite sure, that there is not a word in the Tal
mud which lends any support to that damnable
doctrine of endless torment." The Rabbi feels
strongly on the subject, and we can not wonder.
The new theology would make room for a full
discussion of two varieties of opinion on future
punishment — an intermediate state and condi
tional immortality. Either of these is an im
mense advance on the absolute universality of
endless torment for the wicked that the old the
ology so cruelly insists upon and with so very
little foundation. An intermediate state is based
upon the idea that very many, when they leave
this world, are germinal souls — souls in bud —
too bad for heaven and too good for hell. Bishop
Butler says, "Analogy," Part i,chap. 3, that virtue
becoming very strong in the future life and being
"seen by any order of vicious throughout the uni-

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
versal kingdom of God, would have a tendency
to amend those of them that are capable of amend
ment. If our notion of the plan of Providence
were enlarged in any sort proportional to what
late discoveries have enlarged our views with re
spect to the material world, representations of
this kind would not appear absurd or extrava
gant." Christianity in general accepts the doc
trine of an intermediate state. Many Protest
ants accept it, and the Protestants who do not
accept it are but a fragment of the whole Chris
tian world. It is a very interesting fact that the
two great branches of the Christian Church, the
Roman Catholic and the Greek, both hold to an
intermediate state of purification. It is very
pleasing to know that the men who insist so posi
tively on endless torment for all not saved in this
life, form but a small portion of the Christian
Church — that those who cherish so very unde
sirable and uncharitable an opinion are not as
numerous as they think or sound. General Grant
" " f-sl

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
tells us his first experience with wolves. He
heard a great pack howling down upon his soli
tary companion and himself. But his comrade
laughed and said it was either one or two, and so
it proved. Wolves are very noisy and very cruel,
and there are not so many of them as you think.
Many who receive the new theology accept the
doctrine of conditional immortality; that sin
tends distinctly to destroy the soul, and so the
wages of sin are really death. Mr. Beecher says:
"The number of those who hold that immor
tality is not natural but a gift of God to those
who have gained sufficient moral development is
increasing, nor does the New Testament forbid
such a supposition. Suppose some men go out of
existence and that is the end of them. Suppose
men attain unto eternal life through faith in Jesus
Christ in so far as they have unfolded here from
animal conditions and are susceptible of further
development in time to come. Or suppose their
low moral condition at death brings the experi-
______

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
ment to an end. When a man has spent the
forces of life here and has not reached the condi
tion which makes another stage possible to him,
suppose he simply goes out. He that would live
on must live well now."
This teaching has been an immense relief to
many thoughtful minds, from the most distressing
teaching of the old theology. Of conditional
immortality Coleridge says: "I am confident that
this doctrine would be a far stronger motive than
the present, for no man will believe eternal mis
ery of himself, but millions would admit that if
they did not amend their lives they would be un
deserving of living forever." There is a beauti
ful Hindu saying which the good Lord may
practise in his treatment of undeveloped or err
ing souls : " Conquer a man who never gives, by
gifts. Subdue untruthful men by truthfulness.
Vanquish an angry man by gentleness; and over
come the evil man by goodness." There are
many thoughts that lie in the direction of an ut-
_____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
terance of Swedenborg, that Bishop Huntington
commends as worthy of serious consideration,
that in some respects hell may be more of a hell
to those who are not in it than to those who are.
The slums are not as grievous in some respects to
those who live in them as to those who go "slum
ming" through them. It looks, too, as tho the
only real satisfaction of God would be, not in
tormenting sinners, but that sinful men should
fully acknowledge that God is right, that good
ness is right, that obedience is right, and that they
were wrong. And, after all, faith in the future
life is not so much that it will be thus and so, but
that it will be as God arranges, and he who has
done such wonders for us here will not fail us
there, so that both life and death are a most pro
found faith in God. When Lincoln's father was
dying, his son, then a young man, wrote to him:
"Remember to call upon and confide in our great
and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn
away from you in any extremity. He notes the
[88]

FUTURE PUNISHMENT
fall of the sparrow and numbers the hairs of our
heads, and He will not forget the dying man who
puts his trust in Him." Here Lincoln writes the
profound yet simple theology of the universal
human heart.
The study of the whole subject of future pun
ishment may teach us that we damn others a
great deal more easily than God does. That is a
work about which He is extremely slow.
And another thought may be added, that the
spiritual life is itself the highest proof of immor
tality; live it and you will know it: so the sinful
life is the most profound proof of hell ; live it and
you will know it. It was a wise man who said,
"I believe in hell because I have been there so
often." I shall be assailed upon this head by the usual
remark that I am "letting down the bars." I
earnestly wish that I could persuade the man
who is so zealous in putting up the bars that he is
probably doing it from the outside. If there is
__ . ____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
one sin more deadly than another, it is self -right
eousness; and the horror of it should make our
friend drop the bar that he is laboriously putting
very high up. With his harsh severity he is
probably fencing himself out.

[90]

VI
WE give the name of church commonly to
a special building with Gothic windows
and lofty spire, with long-drawn aisle and fretted
vault, the Gregorian chant echoing through its
lofty arches, the mitred priest or tiaraed Pope min
istering at the altar, and the people bowed before
the sacred symbols. But it is quite possible that
there may be all these things and there may not
be any church at all. Channing says : " One of
the coldest spots on earth is a church without de
votion. What is it to me that a costly temple is
set apart by ever so many rites for God's service,
that priests who trace their lineage to apostles
have consecrated it, if I find it thronged by the
worldly and undevout ? This is no church to me."
An American was being led by a verger through
[-7]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
Westminster Abbey — a man was kneeling by the
shrine of Edward IV. The verger told the man
he must not do that. The American asked if the
man was not praying. The verger answered,
"No doubt, but if we allowed that sort of thing
we should have them praying all around." To
a vast company from bishops to vergers, the
church is for the fees, not for the devotion. Rev.
Sydney Smith said some bishops were so like
Judas Iscariot he was inclined to receive the doc
trine of the apostolic succession.
There is an ancient legend that runs in this
wise : Jesus came down in the midst of an Auto
da f_, where many were being burned to death
for their faith. He showed his sympathy with
them and was cast into prison. At midnight the
chief inquisitor visited him in his cell and said
to him: "You are wrong in coming back to the
earth to interfere with the work of your church.
You made a mistake not to accept the offer of
the Tempter on the mount, and to undertake to
_____

THE CHURCH

convert the world by silent and spiritual forces.
It has been necessary for the church to correct
your work and supplement it with the sword of
Caesar. You also to-morrow shall be burned."
Jesus answered not a word, but looked into the
eyes of the inquisitor with his mild gaze, stooped
and kissed the old man's bloodless lips. The
inquisitor opened the door and bade the Master
depart and never return again.
A friend of mine, an elder in a Presbyterian
church, was fighting the battle of the church one
Sunday morning. His opponent challenged him
to go to a near-by fashionable church and see
what their reception would be. They were a
very plain couple. They entered. No one no
ticed them or offered them a seat. The elder in
sisted on giving the church people full time, but
the service began and still they stood uninvited.
Then his secular friend leaned toward the church
man and said, "Let us get out of the damned
place."

[93]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
Such a church as this makes up for its utter
disregard of every precept of the Lord Jesus by
a very special emphasis on dead doctrine and
equally dead ceremonies. It lengthens the creed
and shortens the commandments. And how
dead and dark it can become no mortal man
knows. Chrysostom once declared, "If I have
ever administered the eucharist when not fasting,
let my name be wiped out of the catalog of the
bishops, let Christ cast me out of his kingdom."
It is said that in Italy some bandits attacked a
traveler, killed him and stole his goods, but they
would not touch the meat that was in his wagon
because it was the time of Lent. "Ye pay tithe
of mint and anise and cumin, and have omit
ted the weightier matters of the law — judgment,
mercy, and faith."
And a church of this sort has uniformly de
graded and debased the people committed to its
care. They are a disgrace to it. The church
has taught them a mean theology, and as a result
[94]

THE CHURCH

the meanest people in the whole world are some
times found on the church-rolls. They are strict
in doctrine and very careful in ritual, but they are
mean in their shops, mean in the street, mean in
their homes, their kitchens and parlors, and mean
est of all in their very hearts. The church has
taught them to seek their own salvation by re
ceiving certain dogmas and doing certain cere
monies instead of by being noble men and women
and giving their lives for others. Ordinary men,
like Abou ben Adhem or Longfellow's Village
Blacksmith, loathe them, and the country town
despises them as they pass, for they never lift a
finger to help man, woman, or child.
In the year 1893 Dr. Ernest Hart analyzed the
water of the sacred well at Mecca, where the pil
grims crowded, and found it swarming with
cholera bacilli. His warning was unheeded, and
on June 24, when 100,000 people were gathered,
the plague struck them like a cloud-burst and the
ground was covered with the dead. A Turkish

[95]

WANTED— A THEOLOGY
regiment was ordered to bury them. It began
the work 700 strong, and when it was done only
200 of them were left. This comes, and it will
always come, from having the sacred wells poi
soned. There is not a sham church in the whole
world teaching sham doctrine and ritual but the
dead are lying thickly about it, while the church
is stoutly insisting it is the only true church and
gateway to heaven.
There is and always will be a Church of God,
and it will be quite the opposite of this other,
as a man differs from a corpse. It is a very
far-spreading institution. Dr. Washburn, Presi
dent of Robert College at Constantinople, was
invited to the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.
He wrote in reply to the invitation: "I sympathize
with the spirit of your circular. There is a unity
in religion broader and deeper than the world
has ever generally recognized. I am more and
more imprest every year, as I am brought into
close contact with so many different faiths, that
__ r

THE CHURCH

there is a God to whom we are responsible for
our actions; that to do justly, love mercy, and
walk humbly with God is essentially the founda
tion of all religion. The Holy Spirit leads men
of the most diverse faiths to the knowledge of
one common Father."
The man who loves God and is full of his spirit,
who walks in love and in righteousness and en
joys the peace of God and the joy of overcom
ing sin, who spends his days doing his appointed
work faithfully and in all ways serving his fellow
men, belongs to this true church. The church
made up of such people and calling for such peo
ple is One and always must be, and orders, sac
raments, and ritual are the merest trifles compared
with the faith and work of such a church.
One of the great sins of the sham church is
that it keeps out so many who are in the true
church, well meaning, right feeling and right do
ing men and women who have not had a certain
kind of experience, or can not accept a very

[97]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
absurd dogma, or do not enjoy a very joyless style
of religious service. And being kept out, they
have all the discomforts of the banished, and are
discouraged or alienated, and, instead of helping
religion, have been inclined to a seeming opposi
tion and to lead others that way. The results
have been very large and very disastrous. It
will do a world of good to tear off the mask from
this false church and lift up the church of God-
fearers and man-lovers and so true followers of
Jesus. Lincoln was asked why he had never
joined the church, and answered that when he
found a church that had these two foundation
principles — of love to God and love to man — he
would join it at once. Well, this is the true
church, and it is coming, and men like Lincoln
will be leaders within it and no longer outside it.
Moreover, the man who asked Lincoln why he
was not a member of the church overlooked the
fact that the church was in that day abolish
ing slavery, and in that church Lincoln was
. _ __ . _

THE CHURCH

not only a member, but a High Priest of the
whole host.
There are many pathetic stories told about
Lincoln ; and one of the best concerns a certain
young Vermont soldier, William Scott. He was
condemned to death for sleeping at his post while
on guard. Lincoln visited the camp, and, hear
ing of it, sent for him and heard his story. He
said: "You shall not be shot. Now how am I
to be paid for saving your life?" The soldier
told him he thought he and his comrades could
raise perhaps $500. Lincoln said: "There is
only one man in the world who can pay me, and
his name is William Scott. If from this day Will
iam Scott does his duty so that when he comes to
die he can look me in the face and say, I have
kept my promise, then I will be paid." Scott
became the best soldier in his regiment, and was
shot to death on the Peninsula. He said, "Let
some one tell the President I have tried to be a
good soldier and true to the flag." It seems to

[99]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
me Lincoln admitted him into the church that
day, the church of the faithful and true to which
Lincoln so nobly belonged.
Max Muller pleads for the "bookless religion,
which is in the head and the heart, in the sky
and the rocks, the rivers and the mountains, the
simple, natural, bookless, eternal religion which
our age wants more than anything else."
One thing the true church will do — it will tear
down the miserable fence that the sham church
has erected between the religious and the secular.
Mr. Justice Stephens says, "Every act is spir
itual, every power is spiritual, whether a man is
saying his prayers or buying an estate." An
other says, "They are the fruits of the spirit,
whether the love is the love of a woman nursing
a fretful child, or the long-suffering of a man
harassed with the vexing details of business, or
the gentleness is that of the doctor following the
dark mazes of a fever, or the patience that of a
mechanic fitting the joints and valves of an en-
[100]

THE CHURCH

gine." Taught by the false church the wicked
King John ordered that his body was to be wrapt
in a monk's cowl and that he was to be buried
between Saints Oswald and Wulfstan. What
more could be done for him than that ? But the
common people did not seem to think he was
comfortable, for they said, "Hell is a very bad
place, but it is much worse since King John went
there." There is a beautiful little book, whose title is
worth a good deal more than most books, "The
Practise of the Presence of God." It is the rec
ord of a monk in the Middle Ages called Brother
Lawrence. He was cook for the monastery, and
he found God just as near and enjoyed him just
as much when he was cooking the dinner for the
monks as when he was taking the sacrament.
He understood the true nature of religion, and if
any cook does not find God in preparing the din
ner and in doing it well, then he does not find
God in any sacrament.

[IOI]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
James Freeman Clarke writes of that marvel
ous man, John Wesley: "No man ever went so
entirely out of the realm of form and ceremony
into that of life as Wesley. His profoundest con
viction was this, that no human being lived on
earth so bad or so base, so stupid or worldly, but
that, if he could believe it, God was ready to
kindle in his soul a fire of love which would
wholly consume the evil. His business was to
make men believe it, and for this faith he lived."
It is no wonder that he brought so many outsi
ders within the fold.
There is unquestionably one great, true church
in all the world. It is made up of all the good in
every land — simply that. One thing it can not
endure, even pretension. The narrow church
that insists that it is the only true church is much
less the church for its arrogance. The Pharisee
who enlarges his phylacteries and widens the
borders of his garments is the most likely man
to be outside. Poor sailor Jack, who chews and
[102]

THE CHURCH

smokes and fights and sometimes, alas! swears,
but who volunteers to go in that very little boat
into the hell of furious raging waters to save the
shipwrecked people, he is quite likely to be in
the true church. The fireman who murders the
King's English, and makes no figure in society,
but climbs the ladder and leaps into the smoke
that clutches him by the throat, staggers to the
bed and lifts up the little babe crying there, fol
lows our dear Lord indeed.
I have always enjoyed this story of the famous
showman, P. T. Barnum. He was leading a
minister over his "Greatest Show on Earth," and
when he was through the circuit the minister
thanked him effusively as he shook hands and
wished that he might meet him in heaven. Quick
as a flash the showman answered, "You will if
you get there."
Some one has painted a very suggestive picture
that sets forth the householder in the parable
giving to every man a penny. A bishop and a

[103]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
cardinal and a great Pope look at the penny with
much disgust, but an American Indian quite ad
mires it, and a one-legged sailor stumps along,
his face wreathed in smiles as he holds the penny
in his hand and fairly gloats over it. What im
mense meaning is in Jesus' words: "Ye shall see
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom
of God and ye yourselves thrust out, and they
shall come from the east and the west and the
north and the south and shall sit down in the
Kingdom of God. And behold there are last
that shall be first and there are first that shall be
last." In short the sham church is full of arrogance
and bitterness and pride and cruelty; it is the
meanest humbug there is in all the great round
world: the true church is full of meekness and
gentleness and patience and charity and helpful
ness: it is the grandest reality in all the world,
and all true men will press into it. Such a church
appeals irresistibly to all manly men and noble
[104]

THE CHURCH

women, and they are in it; but the sham church
appeals only to the weaker sort of women and
still more weakly men. Every gathering of the
true church is like a trumpet-call to every noble
endeavor. There has just been held in New
York a great Peace Congress with representa
tives from the whole world. This was a great
Church Council, wiser and better than that of
Nice. It did not dissect the Godhead, but it
planned to save men from the rot and curse and
fury and hell of war. And the high Court of
The Hague is not only one of the greatest tri
umphs of our civilization, but one of the noblest
parts of the true church. And the life-saving
stations all along our shores are true branches of
this noble vine and church. And our splendid
hospitals all over Christendom, more of them
and better equipped than our fathers ever dreamed
of, are most beautiful sections of this great church.
The devil fairly gnashes his teeth at this noble
church, but he loves the cold, dead, narrow,

[~5]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY

pragmatical, sectarian, high and mighty and ut
terly contemptible sham church and looks upon
it as his very chief work. Let us make sure of
two things — that we are out of the sham church
and in the true church, by laying our hands to
the world's great need and the Lord's eternal and
soul-satisfying work.
And the most beautiful thing about the true
church is that no one is excluded who tries to do
his best. The Pope is not shut out, the cardinal
and bishops are by no means refused; pillars of
churches of all sorts will be let in with the rest
if, like the Christ, they go about doing good.
But they must all come in with the rest. They
have no exclusive claims or primogeniture rights.
High functionaries of all sorts must not be dis
couraged — there is room for them too, if they
will be meek and come in in a very lowly way.
The One who was born in a stable, and had once
to borrow a penny, and owned just the coat that
covered Him and that the soldiers gambled for
- __ [106]

THE CHURCH

and who died on the shameful cross and was laid
in a borrowed grave, will accept as brethren and
sisters all who come meekly and truly and bear
his cross of patient love and service. Judson,
the great Burma missionary, showed that he
understood these things when some one was
praising him for his great endurance and he an
swered, "Many a poor washerwoman has done
as much." A Presbyterian minister once told
me that, his wife being sick the day before, he had
done the washing for the family. He was not
much of a preacher and I fancy the good Lord
admired his Monday's work more than his Sun
day's. His wife probably did also. "He that
doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same
is my brother and sister and mother."
"The parish priest of austerity
Climbed up in a. high church-steeple
To be nearer God so that he might hand
His word down to the people.
And in sermon script he daily wrote
What he thought was sent by heaven,
And he dropt it down on the people's heads

[107]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY

Two times one day in seven.
In his age God said, ' Come down and die.'
And he cried from out the steeple,
'Where art thou, Lord?' And the Lord replied,
'Down here, among the people.' "

[108]

VII
ISe/oice £n& _3e exceeding (_aat>
GOD is the greatest, nearest, kindest of all
beings ; religion is the brightest, gladdest
of all things. It is impossible to make these dec
larations too positively; one can not exaggerate
here. But this is very far from being the common
thought. There has been exhibited in New York
City an antiquarian curiosity, one of the old
morality plays, called "Everyman." It is meant
to be a facsimile of the ancient play. As a piece
of antiquarianism it is admirable; as an exhibition
of religion it is most horrible. But it is true to its
original, and sets forth religion as received in the
old days. The sad fact is that it is the same sort
of religion that is received too largely in the
present day. Let me give the plan of the play :
[109]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
First Death enters, a most dreadful make-up.
In deep sepulchral monotone he makes himself
appear as terrible as most people think he is.
After he is through declaring how he is to lay
waste hirmanity for time and eternity, Everyman,
the subject of the play, appears upon the scene,
running in to the stage, with a guitar in his hand,
singing a merry tune, keeping step to the music
with his dance. He comes with a dash upon the
horrible Death, standing in the middle of the
stage. Death gives him a good scare, and so
thoroughly frightens him that he drops his
guitar, and goes on to make himself unspeakably
wretched in hope of escaping hell. The whole
progress of the play grows darker and darker
until Everyman is wrapt in a monk's dress and
cowl, and dropt into a most forlorn grave. Then
appear angels and suggestions of an extravagant
happiness. Of course this whole thing is a travesty of true
religion. But it fairly represents the religious
[no]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
ideas of that day; and these ideas have made
such a deep impress that they reach even the
thought of this time, centuries later.
Everything most dull, wearisome, and forlorn
has been associated with religion. A sermon has
come to be synonymous with all that is soporific.
In the olden times they were accustomed to take
the collection in a velvet bag and to the end
of the bag was attached a bell, to waken the
sleepers. A witty poet has put into verse the common
thought of the dulness of churches. He repre
sents different objects in nature wondering at the
going of the people to church as follows:
Said Grass, "What is that sound
So dismally profound,
That detonates and desolates the air?"
"That is St. Peter's bell,"
Said rain-wise Pimpernel;
"He is music to the godly,
Tho to us he sounds so oddly,
And he terrifies the faithful unto prayer."
Said Grass, "And whither track
These creatures all in black,_____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
So wobegone, and penitent and meek?"
"They're mortals bound for church,"
Said the little Silver Birch;
"They hope to get to heaven
And to have their sins forgiven,
If they talk to God about it once a week."
Said Grass, "What is that noise
That startles and destroys
Our blessed summer brooding when we're tired?"
"That's folks a-praising God,"
Said the tough old Cynic Clod;
"They do it every Sunday,
They'll be all right on Monday,
It's just a little habit they've acquired."
The idea that the religious life is one of sad
ness, while the life of sin is one of happiness in
any sense of the words, is simply an outrage on
all common sense. The one miserable thing on
earth is wrong-doing everywhere and always, and
any man will surely find it so who tries that
wretched way. Madame de Remusat tells us
that Napoleon used to say life was bright at first,
but veil after veil dropt as we went on, till all was
blackness itself. I have no doubt he spoke truly
his own experience; for he lived an utterly self-
__ _ _ .

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
ish life, and in this there is no escape from dark
ness. And when Byron wrote:
"My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of lovs are gone;
The worm, the canker and the grief
Are mine alone,"
he wrote the true results of his ill-regulated
life. Happiness wants cultivation; there is a habit
of being happy and a habit of being miserable,
and we want to cultivate the first. I would bring
this indictment against religious people, that
there has been far too much cultivation of mis
ery. I knew one very pious woman who would
never have her piano opened on Sunday. I would
rather throw the lid of the piano back against the
wall on Sunday. This woman also did not light
her hall gas-jet on Sunday. I should light two
for one on that day.
The whole subject of popular amusement comes
in here and merits the most careful consideration.
TTTJ]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
Take the drama, for instance. The drama is one
of the most beautiful rests and refreshments of
man that have ever been provided. It has always
been one of the chief instructors of the world, but
it has suffered greatly from the modern opposi
tion of good people. We have been quite indis
criminate in our condemnation of the theater.
What would be thought of him who would con
demn all books because so many books are bad ?
Bad books have done more harm than bad
dramas, because there are so many more of them
and they are so much more used. But we never
think of attacking books. We cultivate in our
young people the habit of reading. There are
noble plays that stir every high emotion of the
soul. Mr. Booth tried in New York a high-class
theater, but it failed because the good people who
had been crying out against the bad theater never
went near his good theater. Let us understand
that we can never crush out from the human
heart the love of the drama ; it is instinctive and
[n4] ~ "

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
ineradicable. It can not be destroyed, because
it ought not to be destroyed. It is one of God's
great teachers of the race. The one who sees
Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep, trying to
wash out the blood-spot, and saying, "Who
would have thought the old man to have had so
much blood in him?" will have an idea of re
morse that he would not get from a sermon. And
as we rely upon the good books to kill out the
bad ones, so we should use the good plays to
stamp out the bad ones. For so long as men are
as God made them, they will go to see tragedies
and comedies. The church must cultivate legiti
mate pleasures, rebuke illegitimate pleasures, and
enforce a life of faithful labor, which only can
enjoy pleasure at any time; labor being the blest
law of our life, legitimate pleasure its recreation
and refreshment.
Good people must take special pains to give no
valid ground for the complaint of the poet Will
iam Blake: _____ ______

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
"I went to the garden of love,
And I saw what I never had seen;
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
"And the gate of this chapel was shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the garden of love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;
" And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding, with briers my joys and desires."
There is a gentleman who has given much time
and labor to helping the poorer classes. He
gathers them by the thousands in great halls for
mutual improvement, and the thousands never
fail to come at his call. I heard him close an
address upon the subject of his work, with a vi
sion which he had often imagined. It was of a
magnificent building fitted up with everything
that could be desired for innocent and helpful
amusement — music, pictures, lectures, games, ath
letics, all of the very best quality, and thronged
[77-1

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
by the laboring millibns. He spoke of the great
and valuable work that Mr. Carnegie has done
for the supply of libraries and reading, but he
remarked that he thought a building of this sort
was more needed by the laboring people than
even libraries. For they were very tired after the
work of the day; rest and refreshment were what
they called for, and, alas, they often found them
only in dissipation or perhaps vice. If such
buildings, of a really fine character, could be scat
tered over the city, they would do incalculable
good, and make a vast inroad upon vice and crime.
"Thou shalt not" has had too large a place in
our methods; "Come and welcome" would ac
complish wonders. Perhaps Mr. Carnegie him
self may be drawn to such a work as this. I went
to the People's Palace in London, and found in
it an organ recital, a loan picture-gallery with
some of the chief works of art in England, pic
tures known round the world, a public concert,
bowling-alleys and billiard-tables, all for one
~ ["7]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
English penny, and the place filled with people.
This seems the very spirit of Jesus of Nazareth,
and his parable of the good Samaritan. When
the world is made good, it will be found that de-
spised amusement has done a full share of the
work. Returning to our general theme, it may be said
that we give way far too much to anxious and
troubled thoughts. A good old man once said
to me, "My dear sir, I have suffered most in my
life from things that never happened." So have
we all of us. It is said that a traveler in the old
days was taking the common journey to the West.
For some days he wondered how he would get
over a certain broad river before him. He found
that the river was frozen over, and was glad to
hear it. He started forth on the ice, but when he
reached the middle of the wide expanse his cour
age failed him and he became quite demoralized.
What if the ice should break beneath him in the
very middle of the stream! He lost his strength
" [118]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
and could hardly put one foot before another.
He actually threw himself upon the ice and be
gan knocking with his clenched fist as he crawled
to test its firmness. While so engaged he heard
the tinkle of bells, and saw a team of horses with
a sleigh run upon the ice at the edge of the river
before him. He sprang to his feet, and, as the
sleigh jingled past him, saw that it had a ton of
pig-iron upon it. In a universe of God's love,
our fears are like this.
We are almost dying of solemnity. Occasional
solemnity is a good thing, but it can not compare
with joy as a moving power in the hearts of men.
We have the best news in the world, and we often
tell it in the worst way. The pulpit tone, so
called, is a mournful tone; away with it! The
prayer voice is a sad voice; brighten it! One who
has been used to the full joy of religion, coming
into many religious meetings, would be inclined
to ask his neighbor, "Friend, whose funeral is
this?" Religious meetings must remain small so
__ . -

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
long as the minor scale is indulged in. Men who
know, do not try to catch fish with pebbles; they
choose the most attractive bait. They recognize
the judgment of fishes ; let us recognize the judg
ment of men. I fancy if a religious meeting were
what it might be, what it has a right to be, people
would come crowding to the door, and as they
looked over the heads of the audience would cry,
"Can not I get in? is there not room for one
more?" That day is coming, and we are the
people who keep it from coming. True religion
is meant for men who love to be happy; and it is
the one thing that will make them so. St. Francis
of Assisi said to one of his followers: "Repent
before God in. secret, but before me and others
be cheerful; for it does not become a servant of
God to have an air of melancholy and a face full
of trouble."
We would not deny that there is very much of
religion in the world, but we want a great deal
more of it than we have ever had. We deal it
[120]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
out too stingily, as they do food in mean hostel-
ries. It was at one of these that a disgusted
guest, when the piece of apple-pie was brought,
took out his glasses and scrutinizing it carefully
said, as if it were a sample: "Yes, that is what
I want; bring me some of that." So the good
God says of our religion. We have the sample
of religion and as yet we have little more. Sell
ers come to merchants with a little wheat in their
hand ; they have great elevators full of it to sell.
Or they bring a little wedge of steel; they have
car-loads of it to sell. Just so we have a sample
of religion, but we want the great mass and sum
of it. And we shall have them one day. It will
all be very easy work then. But now some one
has said, "When I think of a baseball game, the
church seems like an ice-house."
Let us understand that animation and enthu
siasm are natural to us, but we kill them by our
cold ways. Baxter says that some good people
could kiss a live coal to ice. We have to practise
__ _

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
before we can come to that. See the vivacity of
childhood. We are sitting gravely in our parlor,
with company manners upon us, when to the re
lief of all a burst of children enters the room,
with peal upon peal of laughter. Some proper
person says, "Hush!" but many of us feel that
we should like to inject a good deal of that mer
riment into mature life. I was once crossing
Central Park in New York on one of the most
forlorn of old-fashioned horse-cars. There was
a children's picnic in the park, and the children
crowded to the edge of the road, and gave us
cheer upon cheer, with perfect abandon. If we
had been General Grant after Richmond, or
Admiral Dewey after Manila, we could hardly
have had a more enthusiastic ovation than was
given us in that old _horse-car. I wished that
this rapture could spread over the rest of
life — that we were all taught to be more ex
uberant; it would not harm us, no heart knows
how it would help us. Here again, unless we
_ [122]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
become like children we can not see the king
dom of heaven.
This is no new thing that I am pleading for.
In the old Jewish state there was a great deal of
religious joy. One of their chief occasions was
the feast of tabernacles, called also the feast of
ingathering because observed at the time of har
vest. The people dwelt in booths to remind
them of the days in tents of the desert. There
were two special observances; the first was the
pouring out of water. The water was brought
from the pool of Siloam and was poured out with
great rejoicings in the temple; probably a remind
er of the gift of water from the rock in the desert.
In the evening of the same day two lofty stands
were erected, each supporting four great lamps
which shed their light over the whole city. The
people engaged in singing and dancing, and it
was a saying of the Jews that he who had not
seen the joy of the pouring out of the water had
never seen joy in his life. It will be remembered,
[123]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
too, how the disciples were gathered in the upper
room on the day of Pentecost, and the Holy Ghost
came mightily upon them, so that the people came
thronging to the place to see the wondrous scene.
At first they thought that these men were drunken,
for Peter explains that they are not, but that they
are filled with the Spirit. I venture to say that
it is not common for this mistake to be made,
or that people would think we were drunken at
a religious meeting. We have not enough of the
Holy Ghost for that. We are always the pink of
propriety; we are far too proper, too little joyful.
We are less enthused and inspiring in our religious
meetings than at any other time. In politics
there is much enthusiasm, in a boat-race more,
in a church service there is usually none; and we
shall never have much power till the enthusiasm
of joy has come and filled us.
There is another exhibition of the joy of the
early Christians, and strangely enough it is in
connection with their graves. Beneath Rome
[ia4]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
lie the catacombs, the tombs of the primitive
Christians. One who made a study of the cata
combs gives his thought in this pregnant sen
tence : "There you find miles upon miles of graves
and not one word of gloom." We clothe our
selves in the deepest sables, and our funerals are
often monstrosities of wo. It will be remem
bered that Mr. Beecher forbade every manifes
tation of mourning at his own funeral, and that
it was conducted with that charge carefully ob
served. It was a revelation and a preaching of
the gospel of victory over death to every one who
participated. Dr. Parker of London left the
same charge as to his funeral. Tennyson wrote
of his mother's funeral: "We all of us hate the
pompous funeral we have to join in — black plumes,
black coaches and nonsense. We should all like
to go in white and gold rather, but convention is
against us." The gorge of the enlightened Chris
tian, who believes in God and immortality, rises
against the ordinary undertaker's performances.
~ 5] "" ~

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
I fancy the Hallelujah Chorus could have been
played at Mr. Beecher's funeral with the greatest
propriety. Yes, we would have the joy break
even into the death and the funeral, break
everywhere, as the sunrise breaks over all the
earth. Religious joy should be by far the greatest and
highest because it is the joy that may be for every
body. It is undeniable that the wider the joy,
the greater it is. Let us fully understand that
religion is good tidings of great joy which shall be
to all people. We continually limit it, but the re
sult is that we lose the joy ourselves. It is an
absolute impossibility for a strong sectarian to
get much of the joy. There is no room for it in
his pigmy heart. Just as a man casts out his
brother, he casts out the joy. This is one reason
why we may hope for a wider, deeper joy to-day ;
because exclusion is yielding to inclusion, nar
rowness to love. It is a general principle of our
being, and how fine a thing it is, that the wider
__ _

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
our sympathies spread, the richer our enjoyment
becomes. There is something inexpressibly
grand about the enthusiastic joy of a vast multi
tude. One of our soldiers, Captain Ricks, tells
us how he carried the news of the surrender of
Lee to an army corps. He heard the news,
mounted a horse and started along the road where
the men were resting on the march and eating the
midday meal. He could be seen for a long dis
tance along the line, and he went at full gallop,
crying, "Lee has surrendered, Lee has surren
dered!" One great shout followed him all the
way, a tumult of delight. And when he came
where the General was with his aides, the Com
mander leapt into the middle of the road, and,
hardly knowing what he was about, turned a
somersault before the whole corps, at which the
men just went wild with delight. It was the com
bined joy that made it so great — it spread from
heart to heart till it became like a wide-rolling
ocean. Who then can conceive the joy of a whole
[127]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
world, when it has once received the infinite love
of God?
There is one way in which we can all help the
coming of this great joy, even by believing that
it is coming. Every one who doubts, delays;
every one who believes, hastens a world full of
joy. And it is as sure as anything can be that the
joy is coming. The truth and love and power of
God are pledged to it. The God of the moun
tain and the ocean, of the sunset and the cataract
will not fail in his highest work in men. Human
character will be the great glory and wonder of
the world. What it will be, the life and character
of our Savior show us. There is the purpose of
God. And at the very summit of this character
will be supreme joy. God loves happiness ; it is for
the joy that is set before Him, He does His mighty
works. We can lose ourselves for a moment in
the thought, how ecstatic will be the universal de
light when God has wrought His full pleasure
with the world and made it full of joy and love.

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
One of the most pathetic things is to see the
weary and disheartened way in which the best
people often do the best work. Whether it is a
prayer-meeting or a church fair, it is gone about
as if not much would come of it. And often very
little does come. When we think of the millions
spent for what is called pleasure, most tiresome
and disappointing pleasure, how slowly often the
pennies come in for the benevolent fund. But
this matter of joy will make all the difference.
When the hearts get full, the gifts will be full.
It is the fun of it that makes the football field
so crowded. And there is more downright fun
in religion than in all other things put together.
The love of God is the summum bonum of the
human heart, and nothing else can be, or can ap
proach it. The love of God is the great undis
covered secret of the world. Sometimes in a re
ligious service when I have felt even a little of
what I might have felt, I have wished that I could
have the grandest orchestra of the whole world
[129]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
with every instrument of music that was ever
known, strained to its highest pitch and power
to set forth the majestic grandeur and delight of
religious truth. If I had all these, and they would
not be too many, for I should have wished for the
orchestras of all the worlds, and if I had all these,
I do not fancy that I should have any difficulty
in finding an audience, or need to make great
advertisement to draw all the world; the joy
would advertise itself. Nothing ever advertises
itself as does joy. You would need to have the
reserved seats for the Church more than for the
opera. The little boy in a fashionable church
said that the ushers in his church were to show
the people where they must not sit. How the
small boy does get succinctly at the true inward
ness of things! The ushers in a real church are
to show the people where they are gladly welcome
to sit. But there is a third use of ushers for that
great coming day of joy, even to show the people
out of the churches. Benediction has been pro-
[130]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
nounced, service is ended, but nobody moves;
why should they? To what place can they go
that will be as good as this ? No, no, they know
when they are well off. Like the famous French
General after the taking of the Malakoff, they
say, "Here I am, and here I stay." Then the
minister tells them that they have been in the
service three hours, that it is absolutely necessary
to ventilate the church and to rest for a while,
but if they will withdraw now, another service
will be arranged for them as soon as is best. But
this is quite ineffectual; so he calls upon his
ushers to come forward and kindly lead these
eager people out of the door, and at last with
much hard persuasion the congregation is dis
missed, to find in the fresh air and the sunshine
the same dear love of God. Then in good sea
son before Thanksgiving-day, the football men
will come to the minister and say, "We want to
know at what time you are to have your services,
so that they may not interfere with our game.
__ ____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
For if your bell should ring in the middle of the
game, there would not be a soul left to finish the
thing. So please give us your hoUr, and do not
change it, for we want a game." And what a very
sensible state of affairs it is, when God and heaven
are really believed to be better than a game; and
all will enjoy the games too, better than ever be
fore, and be more courteous in them.
At the top of Wall Street in New York stands
Trinity Church. Beneath its beautiful spire
rush and hurry the crowds of eager men. Money
is their god and he breaks their hearts. There
is a little touch of the coming glory when a noon
service is held in Trinity, and men crowd it in
the busiest day to hear the word of God from
Phillips Brooks, or another prophet of the Lord.
But in that day it will be a constant feature.
Trinity Church is fine as a protest to-day; it will
be a triumphant rapture then. As often as its
doors are opened will it be crowded, and at the
close of the service the preacher will say: "Now,
[13-]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
brethren, you must go down to your stocks and
bonds; railroads must run, telegraphs must
flash, corner lots must be sold. You must not
forget the importance of money, and keeping it
as you do, not above but below, it will do a fine
service. The congregation is dismissed, and you
must go, but we shall have you back very soon
again, that we promise you." And what merry
faces will go thronging out to see that they do
their neighbor no wrong in the buying of a rail
road or the selling of a horse!
Know all men, God's infinite love and joy are
calling you. Depths of unimagined rapture are
awaiting you. Heaven's joy and glory press all
around the earth, and very near, but we are hold
ing them off. In God's dear name let the joy
come, all we can hold of it, all that God can
send of it, let Him strain His omnipotence as
He will. How profoundly happy will God be
then! and we, all human language fails to tell
of that. [J33]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
"For behold I bring you good tidings of great
joy, which shall be to all people."
In summing up the whole subject we may say
that as the old theology is the most terrible sys
tem of thought that man has ever devised, so the
new theology is the most beautiful and enraptur
ing. The result of the change from the one to
the other must be such an overturning as the
world has never seen before, and in one great
direction, the direction of happiness. We have
erred in many respects, but in none more greatly
than in our misery. We have fallen absolutely
away from our rightful bliss. We have never been
as happy as God wants us to be. The old theology
led men down to the depths of wretchedness, the
new will lead them up to the heights of bliss.
The present state of things is built upon the
basis of great happiness, if we would but ac
knowledge it. Wallace, the naturalist, asserts
that "the popular idea of the struggle for exist
ence entailing misery is the very reverse of the
[134] ~ '

REJOICE AND BE GLAD

truth; it is very difficult even to imagine a sys
tem by which a greater balance of happiness
could be secured." Of the lower orders of crea
tures he says: "They have almost perfect en
joyment of their life — they enjoy all the happi
ness of which they are capable. The present
condition of things brings about the maximum
of life and the enjoyment of life with the mini
mum of suffering and pain." Stanley, when he
found Livingstone, writes of him: "Under the
wayworn exterior lay a fund of high spirits and
inexhaustible humor. Every day I heard in
numerable jokes and pleasant anecdotes. At
first I was not sure but that this joviality and
abundant animal spirits would pass, but as I
found they continued while I was with him, I was
obliged to think them natural." And, by the
way, this very thing turned Stanley from a skep
tic to a believer. The joy of Livingstone was the
converting power to Stanley, illustrating the mag
nificent and fundamental truth that the joy of
__ __ _____

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
the true church will be the salvation of the world.
When we have gotten rid of our abominable and
stupid melancholy we shall win the world to God,
and never till then. The merry spirit of Living
stone was based upon his deepest convictions. In
the heart of Africa he writes: "Here there are
invisible myriads of insect life all brimful of en
joyment, working with never-tiring mandible on
leaves and stalks and beneath the soil. Indeed,
the universality of organic life seems like a man
tle of happy existence encircling the world and
betokening the presence of our benignant Father's
smile on the works of his hand." This suggests
to us the pleasing thought that at the one extreme
there is the hum of all the little insects in the
whole world, which is a hymn of praise to the
good God, and at the other there is the rapturous
song of all the angels and saints of God, and,
when things become right, all the way between
these two extremes will be found the same hymn
of joy and praise.
_~ [I3S] ~ ~ ~~

REJOICE AND BE GLAD

We go along through bad education and fool
ish ways of living, in a very poor kind of minor
tone at the best, but we do not know ourselves.
There comes a time when we are carried away
beyond ourselves into a sheer delirium of joy.
We laugh, we sing, we cry with delight. Every
one of us has known this experience. And this
is a revelation to ourselves of our own capacity
of happiness. An apostle writes, "Tho now ye
see him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy un
speakable and full of glory." These are very
strong terms, but they are true. Yet how sel
dom do we rejoice thus ! We have been toned
down, we have been saddened, our lives have been
darkened by our religious teachings, and it will
take time to break away from our grave-clothes
to life and joy and rapture. This happiness is
extremely necessary. It is perhaps the great
need of the church to-day. There is a contest
powerlessness. It was pathetic to see a deputa
tion of ministers sent from New York to ask
[w]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
President Roosevelt to help the churches. Presi
dent Roosevelt is an admirable gentleman, but
we shall have to look higher. I sometimes fear
religion may be dying of solemnity. Look in
our churches. What an oppressive solemnity!
Would it not be well to act as if God were good,
and heaven near, and life glorious? Would it
not be good to smile a bit, and beam on a neigh
bor instead of folding the arms and looking se
verely at the carpet? One feels sometimes like
lifting his head and shouting by way of protest.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. One of the
first things to be done is completely to demolish
the old theology and leave not one stone upon
another. God is good enough in himself — life is
fine enough in itself — the world is beautiful
enough in itself, but the old theology has maligned
and darkened them all. It has the strange ca
pacity of extracting all the joy from everything.
A young Scotchman of my acquaintance lighted
upon his first watermelon and had to serve it to
f- 5

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
the company at table. He had seen musk-
melons, so he politely cut out and laid to one side
the juicy heart, and gravely served the rind to
the astonished guests. We have been doing just
that for some centuries in our churches. It is
time now to stop, and let the people know how
good God is —
"How good is man's life, the mere living,
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!"
Tear down the sackcloth, scatter the ashes,
throw away the crape and habiliments of mourn
ing, and let joy have a little room, and then more
room, till joy shall be unconfined, and the songs
and laughter of God's sons and daughters take
the place of tears and lamentations. It will be
found at last that the man who has believed the
most, hoped the most, and rejoiced the most
was supremely right. God is not the great sex
ton, and life is not the great funeral, but God is
[139]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
the great and ever blest God, and life is his ban-
queting-house where his banner over us is Love.
I believe that there is a vast company of people
who stand ready to accept this religion of Love
and Light and boundless Hope instead of the
miserable substitute that the old theology has
been so long offering them. I believe all things
are trembling on the point of a great enthusiasm
and outbreak for God and religion and the true
spiritual life of every-day goodness, kindness and
service, the love of God and the love of the
neighbor. With enthusiasm men will fall back
on these two great commandments of Jesus, in
place of the monstrous and horrible and base
less notions of the old theology. I am looking
for such a day of humble piety and honest glad
ness as the world has never seen before, and I
am with every man of every land and every creed
who wants to bring that good day. As sure as
God lives it is coming, and coming fast.
We must insist, then, with the utmost empha-
[140]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
sis that religion is in no way to be confounded
with the terrible dogmas of the old theology.
They form no part of its beautiful essence, they
have been only a miserable incubus upon its his
tory, a sad legacy from the dark ages. It is one
of the marvels of history that the scholastic the
ology, the most dreadful of all parasites, should
have attached itself to the life of Jesus, the most
beautiful of all lives.
True religion does not teach that man is repro
bate, set against all that is good, determined on
all evil, abiding under the wrath and curse of
God. This is not a ruined world; it is a most
beautiful world, and both its majesty and its
beauty draw the hearts of men to God. There
has been no terrible cataclysm dashing into God's
exquisite labor, but steadily from the darkness
to the light, from the beast to the angel, has moved
the race destined to bear the glorious image of
God. The human heart springs up with a bound
[141]

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
when delivered from its long thraldom. We look
up to a most beautiful God whom with full heart
we can call Father. In his hands we lie with
the most perfect joy and hope. We look round
upon a most beautiful world in which God is
doing his grandest works. Nature has an ex
quisite loveliness, and it is not all marred by a
terrible curse. The trail of the serpent is not
over it all. Righteousness reigns ; goodness pre
vails ; all is moving forward by the omnipote_.ce
of God to the better. On the highest level all is
supremely well. Optimism is the only possible
creed. A most kind and omnipotent God ne
cessitates a result beyond our highest thought or
hope. The watchers of all worlds may cry,
"All is well." The future is radiant with hope.
Wrong will be met and defeated at every point.
God will gain his great victory, the acknowledg
ment that He is right and sin is wrong. The
self-evident glory and loveliness of truth and
goodness will shine through the whole creation
[74-]

REJOICE AND BE GLAD
of God. Nothing is too good to be looked for.
The result will transcend our highest thought.
The wildest fancy can not equal God's reality.
All things thrill with a boundless expectation.
The dreams of the poets will be quickly passed
in the visions of every-day reality. God is a
much more magnificent worker than we have
ever conceived; and man is dearer to him than
we have ever known. Man's marvelous powers
will not be a wonder for their waste, but for their
use; every faculty drawn out to its largest service
in a way to astound the beholder. Power and
environment now fully meet and mutually help.
The unhoped has become fulfilment. The rap
ture of the seer has become the sight of every
common man.
But we must take all this home to our hearts;
we must not doubt, but believe; not scoff, but
sing. By cherishing this disposition we are in a
condition most fully to hasten on the better day
that is coming. We are saved by hope. The
__ .

WANTED-A THEOLOGY
eye lifted with this transcendent joy sees the full
vision as no other can. What the future will be
passes thought. Holy Scripture says that heaven
will come down to earth, and this is the way of
its coming. We must not "bate a joy of heart
or hope, but still bear up and steer right onward."
So with our full force will we bring the bright
future to the coming generations. This new
theology means a boundless good for man, a deep
and divine joy to God.
"My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth -ever stretched;
That after last returns the first,
Tho a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blest once prove accurst."

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