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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OP THE
John Elliott Fund

Charles a. iDtiuratore

NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH.
ATONEMENT IN LITERATURE AND LIFE.
AIDS TO THE STUDY OF DANTE. Illus-
trated.
THE TEACHINGS OF DANTE.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York

THE NEW LIGHT ON
THE OLD TEUTH

THE NEW LIGHT ON
THE OLD TRUTH
BY
CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE

BOSTON AST) NEW VOBK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
<Cde SMtaetjrtDe p«jW Cambribge

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES A. DINSMORB
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October igil

TO
FREDERICK STARKWEATHER CHASE
WHO
MAINTAINING AMID HEAVY RESPONSIBILITIES
HIS INTEREST IN THINGS SPIRITUAL
OPENED HIS LIBRARY FOR THESE TALKS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

PREFACE
A company of thirty men met recently in
the library of one of their number on six con
secutive Monday evenings and invited me to
address them on the modifications of religious
faith resulting from the investigations of sci
entists and the researches of critics. They were
men of affairs, most of them manufacturers,
all of them prominent in business or profes
sional life. For an hour I talked on the great
themes of the spirit; then for an hour, often
for an hour and a half, there were questions
and discussion.
The city in which these discourses were given
is one of the busiest and most prosperous in
New England. That men of large responsibili
ties volunteered to give an evening a week to
consider religious topics is an indication of a
deeper note in our American life.
The addresses were delivered extemporane
ously and have been written out from memory,
with only slight modifications and additions.

viii PREFACE
The address on the Bible was somewhat longer
than the others, and, being written out more
fully, has been divided into two chapters.
The specialist will find nothing new in these
pages. I cannot boast that any original light
has shone upon the old truths through me.
The words are the utterance of a preacher who
hopes that within the range of his vision he
has seen clearly.
I wish to acknowledge indebtedness to Pro
fessor Douglas C. Macintosh and Rev. Wilbert
L. Anderson, D.D., for helpful suggestions.
Charles Allen Dinsmore.

CONTENTS I
THE MODERN WORLD AND THE MODERN MAN
Introduction. — The changed world. — The modern
man ; new bases of thought ; larger freedom ; scientific
spirit; changed motives. — The two schools of the new
theology. — The seat of authority in religion .... 1
II
THE BIBLE
The record of an inspired race. — Method of the
writers. — Priest and prophet. — The higher criticism. —
Early religious life of Israel. — The work of Moses. —
The critical period. — The services of David and Solo
mon. — The first continuous narrative. — The second
narrative  . 29
III
THE BIBLE (continued)
The prophets. — Deuteronomy. — History reedited.
— The Captivity. — Its literary activity. — Jerusalem
rebuilded. — The priestly account of Israel's early his
tory. — Night of legalism. — Broad sympathies shown
in Ruth and Jonah. — Contest with Hellenism. — Christ,
both priest and prophet. — The reconstruction of the
New Testament  57

x CONTENTS IV
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
His place in the evolution of humanity. — God's pro
gressive revelation of himself. — Incarnation in an indi
vidual in the interests of the race. — Redemption by
conformity to type. — In what sense was he perfect. —
Our highest symbol of the Eternal. — The line between
the divine and human. — The mood of to-day regarding
miracles. — Christ's consciousness of God. — His realiza
tion of the Father. — His ethical sonship. — Difficulty of
proving his sinlessness. — Unsurpassed in the sphere of
religion. — His conception of his mission. — His ability
to satisfy our spiritual needs. — Christianity does all
that a religion can be required to do  93

GOD AND SALVATION
New symbols of the divine majesty. — New concep
tions of God. — The perfect vs. the militant God. —
Materialism a waning philosophy. — John Fiske's strong
argument for the existence of God. — God known in
experience. — Contrast between Huxley and Phillips
Brooks. — Differences between good men are differences
of language rather than of experience. — New view of
the nature of sin. — Its source in animality, ignorance,
and perversity. — Its unnaturalness. — The waning con
sciousness of sin. — New conception of the way of sal
vation. — New ideals of character. — Modern meaning
of faith. — Our larger look backward. — Broader views
of the grace of God. — New interpretations of the atone
ment. — New vision of the gospel as social .... 129

CONTENTS xi
VI
IMMORTALITY
The sense of the infinite. — Consciousness and molec
ular action. — Inability of the imagination. — Reason vs.
the senses. — New approach through the evolutionary
hypothesis. — The outcome must be worth the cost. —
What life has already attained. — Man at the summit
of the physical is a child in the spiritual order. — New
light from personality. — Society of Psychical Research.
— The resurrection of Jesus. — Personality and the soul.
— We are potential persons. — The quality rather than
the continuity of life. — Assumed by the perfect man, a
premonition in imperfect men. — Tennyson and Brown
ing. — Need of a future to make life rational. — Man too
heavily endowed for temporal conditions. — The " More ' '
prophetic. — We trust the fidelity of God. — Words of
Martineau. — An endless sleep desired by some. — Con
ceptions of the future. — Annihilation. — Final restora
tion. — The persistent choice of evil  165
VII
IMPROVEMENT
The permanent and the changing in humanity. — The
goal of life. — The essentials. — Spiritual certitude. —
The sons of Martha and the sons of Mary. — The sim
ple and universal elements of religion. — The peril of
mature years. — Schleiermacher's enthusiasm created
by his new vision of truth  199

THE MODERN WORLD AND THE
MODERN MAN

THE NEW LIGHT OK THE
OLD TRUTH I
THE MODERN WORLD AND THE MODERN MAN
I am deeply sensible of the honor of being
selected to address this company of men. To
consider with you the great themes of the
spirit is indeed a high honor, and I shall seek
to be worthy of this rare privilege by express
ing with utmost frankness my sincere convic
tions on these topics so vital to us all. At the
close of each address the subject will be open
for discussion. By the give and take of free
debate the benefit of these evenings spent
together will be reciprocal. In gatherings such
as this we are continuing the best traditions
of New England. This little stretch of terri
tory has been famous for industrial leadership.
Men Hke you have taken riches out of these
iron hills. Yet, notable as has been its indus-

4 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
trial supremacy, New England has been espe
cially distinguished for intellectual astuteness
and moral power. While our fathers toiled
incessantly with the hand and with the brain
for material wealth, they were not forgetful
of the sovereign matters of the spirit. They
realized that the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen
are eternal. After the tasks of the day they
gathered about their spacious hearths, and
before the blazing fires " reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."
This habit not only sharpened the New Eng
land mind to finest subtilty, and toughened
its fibre ; it created the rigorous New England
conscience ; it gave to our fathers a profound
realization of the significance of life ; it en
larged and glorified their imagination, and
nourished in them an august sense of eternal
truths. For a body of business and profes
sional men to meet together at the close of
the day to discuss the stupendous themes of
religion is certainly in keeping with the noblest

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 5
memories of New England. It places us in a
great and holy succession.
" Doubtless you were all reared in the strict
faith of the fathers and trained in its stern
morality. I surmise that most of you have
considerably modified your inherited religious
conceptions, finding it impossible to look at
life as your fathers viewed it. Being intel
lectually awake, you are aware that modern
scholarship has removed many of the ancient
landmarks, and that the new light pouring
into the world from recent scientific investi
gation has dissolved many of the old creedal
structures. Being absorbed in practical affairs,
while you dimly know of altered conditions,
probably you have lacked the leisure to inform
yourselves of the changes which have taken
place. You have left the shelter of the ances
tral faith and have not yet built for your
minds a new home which is complete and satis
factory. For a man needs a domicile to pro
tect his mind from spiritual storms and terror
as really as he needs a house to guard his body
from the inclemency of the weather. I imagine
that you often wonder how much is left of the

6 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
old faith, and ask whether the new equals the
old in power of comfort and in authority over
conduct. Perhaps you even go further and
question whether the men of to-day can have
religious certitude and be as sure as were the
fathers of the reality of the things of the
spirit. My task is not the ambitious one of answer
ing all these interrogations. But according to
my ability I hope to make evident and per
suasive the new approach to religious truth,
to describe the knowledge which has come to
this generation through its earnest study of
nature and of man, and to set forth the essen
tial verities of religion as they are held to-day
by constructive modern scholars.
I
The Modern World
First, let us consider the changed world in
which men live to-day. Dante has been called
the " voice of ten silent centuries." In his
"mystic, unfathomable song" the mind of the
Middle Ages, its ruling ideas, its philosophy,

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 7
find imperishable expression. The poet believed
in a snug little universe which could be inter
preted by a complete system of thought. The
earth he conceived to be the centre of the ma
terial creation, with heaven beyond the stars and
hell underneath the crust of the earth. Man,
in the exercise of his free will, merits the one
or the other. That he may walk in the way of
spiritual and temporal happiness God has pro
vided two authoritative guides, the Pope and
the Emperor. A closely reasoned theology at
tempted to interpret all man's experiences with
the divine. Through the fall of Adam the
trail of the serpent lay over all humanity. Man,
a finite being, could not pay this debt of sin
against infinite holiness. An infinite penalty
was demanded. Hence the God-man suffered
to the full the punishment required by justice
and canceled the obligation. By baptism the
soul entered into the merits of Christ and was
freed from the eternal consequences of sin.
Whatever sins were committed by penitent
spirits after baptism must be expiated in this
world and in purgatory. For the redeemed
there was provided a stately heaven whose

8 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
angels were classified and whose hierarchies
were named. For the reprobate there was an
endless hell of "anatomized damnation."
Copernicus shattered forever this tiny shell
of mediaeval cosmogony; the Reformation
challenged the infallibility of the papal system ;
the political enfranchisement of the people
destroyed the pretentious theory of the divine
right of kings. But theology remained Ptole
maic and mediaeval. Men still believed in the
six days of creation, they counted six thou
sand years since Adam, and they had a well-
defined scheme for saving humanity from the
results of the Fall. Within our own genera
tion this closed system of thought has received
a blow as fatal as that which shivered the
cosmogony of Dante's time.
In 1859 Darwin published his "Origin of
Species." This patient investigator did not
originate the theory of evolution, as he is pop
ularly supposed to have done. The conception
of a progressively developing order of nature
was a familiar one to philosophers, but Darwin
gave an exposition of the probable method
of the origin of species which was at once so

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 9
clear and so well substantiated that a philo
sophical speculation was transformed into a
scientific generalization. Darwinism has been
greatly modified and evolution is still an hypo
thesis, but beyond question the "Origin of
Species" was the chief initial impulse to the
movement of thought which has carried the
modern man completely away from the stand
point and the conceptions of former genera
tions. His point of view, his methods, the pre
vailing spirit in which he performs his tasks
are changed. He lives in a universe measure
less in duration and limitless in space. The
conviction of a progressive rather than a sta
tic order, both in nature and in history, is
fixed in the educated mind. It is as generally
assumed that an academically trained man is
an evolutionist of some sort as it is assumed
that he is a gravitationist. In all sciences this
generalization is recognized as a working hypo
thesis. Within our own generation its revo
lutionary influence has been felt in every de
partment of knowledge. The men now living
have been required to look at the old faith in
this new light. Some of you remember the

10 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
clash of conflict when the new views first met
the old, and all of us were born before the
sound of battle died away.
The theological implications of this new
method of approach to religious truth are very
clear. The world, instead of being six thou
sand years old, tells its years by the hundreds
of thousands. Man no longer considers him
self a newcomer ; he traces his lineage to a
remote antiquity. Instead of the fall of the
race in Adam, we assert the ascent of man.
Life and destiny no longer appear simple and
explicable, but open to us with fresh wonder
and hope. H
The Modern Man
Because one lives in the twentieth century
he is not necessarily a modern man. He may
have the soul of a mediaeval inquisitor clothed
in modish fashion. The modern man is one
who is controlled by the spirit and tendencies
which are characteristic of this age. He is
different from his fathers because he has es
tablished a new starting-point from which to

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 11
do his thinking; his habitual mood is peculiar;
his methods are unique; old motives have
been outgrown, and he insists upon examining
truth with a searching test not always em
ployed in the past. Altogether he is different
from the fathers both in attitude of mind and
in habits of thought.
Men of to-day begin their thinking from a
new basis. The time-honored method has been
to assume some prominent fact, such as the
sin of man or the sovereignty of God, or some
theory of inspiration and revelation, and upon
this rear a logically constructed system of
thought. The faults of this method are ob
vious. Disprove the major premise and the
superstructure collapses, to the confusion of
believers. We are seeking more secure founda
tions. We appeal from the authority of every
spiritual Caesar to life. We would know what
man has learned in his age-long experience.
The laws he has discovered, the spiritual ad
ventures he has passed through, the intuitions
he has developed, the religious consciousness
which his long journey has fashioned, we be
lieve furnish the only sufficient facts from

12 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
which to draw our conclusions. We base our
thinking not upon an authority which may be
questioned, or a metaphysics which may be
disproved, but upon the facts revealed by ex
perience. Accumulated experience quickens
insight into the nature of things. The mod
ern mind trusts more to its intuitions than to
its logic. It highly esteems the universal and
spontaneous judgments of spiritual men, for
the supreme truths are spiritually discerned.
To the facts of experience and to the intui
tions of the soul it entrusts itself. Its know
ledge of the foundations will enlarge, but the
base is rational and secure.
With so broad a field of observation the
modern man must be free and open-minded.
In a scientific age he must have that spirit so
finely described by Mr. Huxley : " Sit down
before a fact as a little child, be prepared to
give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and to whatever abysses
nature leads." Not since the creation have
there been so many minds, free in their action
and scientific in their methods, employed upon
religious truth. It would be inconceivable if

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 13
the harvest of knowledge and vision were not
rich. The modern man is eminently practical. He
has little taste for those lofty and refined spec
ulations which produce no perceptible differ
ence either in character or in conduct. He
keeps close to the known, and to what ap
proves itself as vital to the individual and to
society. He is not interested in a gospel which
is largely occupied in showing how God can
forgive sin, and provide a way of escape from
the wrath to come. It must be able to save
men now from the power of evil and the blight
ing curse of fear.
Some of the old motives for living the re
hgious life are no longer operative, while others
are receiving greater prominence. From primi
tive Christianity to the present day, supersti
tious fear has been a universal and sovereign
compulsion driving men into the church. They
crowded the sanctuaries and accepted the creeds
through dread of something after death. Such
fear is no longer a primal motive. Few to-day
believe in the prison-house of torture which
so affrighted former generations. This rapidly

14 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
vanishing motive is being replaced by two
others, which, though never absent from the
religious life of the past, are now more than
ever prominent. One is the desire to be right
with God and man. We know that these right
relations must be achieved and sustained. We
are aware that we come far short of fulfilling
our own ideals. We are conscious that we need
help. We are persuaded that the law of the
spirit of life in Christ will set us free from the
law of sin and death. We confess and obey
him because he enables us to be the men we
wish to be and to live the life we desire to
live. Closely akin to this is another motive.
We wish our lives to count for something in
the world. We are anxious to make a real
contribution to the race. Therefore we put
ourselves in line with that Increasing Purpose
which is unfolding through the ages. We wish
to take our proper place in God's plan and to
bear our share in the fight he is waging against
the powers of darkness. Men to-day in ever en
larging numbers are living the religious life as in
the Great Taskmaster's eye, to apprehend that
for which they have been apprehended of God.

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 15
The modern man looks at truth with a very
different perspective from that familiar to the
fathers. He has been so powerfully influenced
by the doctrine of evolution that he is per
suaded that man grows in his apprehension
of truth, and that God's revelation of himself
is progressive. No perfect system of truth,
or institutional plan, has come down from
heaven to men to be preserved inviolate at all
hazards. Ideas and institutions, he realizes,
must be studied in their origin and develop
ment, and are not to be considered as crystal
lized into a permanent form. New light shines
upon both church and doctrine when he per
ceives that they are not final, but are pro
gressive disclosures whose form is determined
by historical conditions.
The changed world has produced a changed
man. With liberated mind, from a fresh point
of departure, with an enlarged perspective, by
new methods, governed by high motives, ap
plying a novel test to truth, the typical reli
gious thinker of our times approaches the reali
ties of the spirit confident that new glory will
stream from the ancient fountains.

16 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
The question of the date of the beginning
of the modern world is being vigorously dis
cussed in Germany. The Reformation is the
boundary usually assigned to the dominance of
the mediaeval spirit. But the reformers held the
Catholic conception of creation, the fall of
man, and the theology growing out of it. Most
of them maintained the necessity of the union
of church and state and the authority of the
civil powers in matters spiritual. Their views
of the world and their methods of reasoning
were not dissimilar to those of Catholic theolo
gians. The mediaeval shadow has rested upon
the world even until now.
The truth is that the modern day has had a
gradual dawning. Dante has been called the
first modern man. His lofty spirit, like
" a poising eagle, burnt
Above the unrisen morrow,"
catching some gleams of the coming day. At
the Reformation the whole east was aglow.
The morning waxed brighter when the church
was separated from the state and the authority
of king and bishop was cast off. But the mod
ern as distinguished from the mediaeval world

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 17
did not come in its glory and joy until the
notion of a static universe was discarded, and
men, knowing that the forms of reality are
ever changing, felt free to follow truth into all
her hiding-places. There have been free in
dividuals in all the Christian centuries, but
ours is the first generation since the days of
the primitive church which has enjoyed the
freedom of faith. Ill
Two Schools of Religious Thought
Modern religious thinkers assemble them
selves into two quite distinct groups. One in
terprets spiritual realities through the medium
of nature, while the other searches the spirit
of man and his history. When the hypothesis
of evolution first assumed sovereign import
ance, many men felt that now for the first
time faith could rightly understand and defend
its history. Some of them were trained scien
tists, and into the world of the spirit they
brought the temper and method of scientific
research, essaying the bold task of formulating
religious conceptions through the medium of

18 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
their enlarged perceptions of nature. One
writer of this school who won popular recog
nition was Mr. John Fiske. That he was an
accurate and convincing writer on scientific
themes Charles Darwin himself attests. "I
never in my life," he writes Mr. Fiske, "read
so lucid an expositor, and therefore thinker,
as you are." The title of one of his books,
" Through Nature to God," throws light upon
his habitual method. He studied the " Idea of
God," the " Destiny of Man," the " Life Ever
lasting," in the fresh light which had come to
him through nature. Another author of equal
fame was Mr. Henry Drummond. Profoundly
interested both in religion and in the facts of
the laboratory, he wrote " Natural Law in the
Spiritual World," and the " Ascent of Man."
These titles sufficiently indicate his attempt to
study man and his spiritual life through the
new knowledge of nature and its laws. Other
writers less widely known found genuine en
richment to faith in tracing the wisdom of
God in creation. " Through Science to Faith,"
" The Religion of an Evolutionist," " Science
and Religion," are the names of books written

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 19
by this school of thought, and they indicate
its method.
Quite distinct from this group is another
body of thinkers, who, while they are not
blind to the light from nature and work in an
atmosphere modified by its influence, are su
premely concerned with the spiritual constitu
tion of man and his experiences with God.
They believe that the Eternal has revealed
himself in the personal spirit of man more
fully and intimately than in the grandeur of
the material universe. God is to be studied in
his highest work, which is the personal spirit
of man. Personality, therefore, rather than
nature, is their master word. They affirm that
the higher life of man reveals more clearly
than the processes of the chemical laboratory
the deepest reality of the universe. Personal
ity is the golden key unlocking the mystery of
our world and of our cosmos, or there is no
key. What is loftiest in man must be the best
interpreter of what is loftiest in the universe.
The spirit of man in its varied religious expe
riences, and especially that spirit as it has come
to its perfection in Jesus, is the supreme fact

20 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
for investigation. The thinkers to whom per
sons and personal relations are of supreme im
portance have written many books. The titles of
some famiHar volumes wiU sufficiently indicate
this school and its trend of thought : " Through
Man to God," "Theology and the Social Con
sciousness," "Social Law in the Spiritual
World," " PersonaHty and the Christian Ideal."
These two groups are not antagonistic, but
are mutually supporting. Those who find in
man the key to the universe need to study the
order and vastness of the cosmos to compre
hend the wonder and greatness of God, while
the approach to him only through nature
tends to pantheism and the submergence of
personal spirit in the deeps of natural forces.
We construct our truest conceptions of God
and his ways by combining those revelations
of himself which he gives through nature and
through man. IV
Religious Authority
The modern man, acknowledging that new
light has come to this generation through our

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 21
enlarged views of nature and our more com
prehensive study of man, inevitably asks him
self whether the added light gives more or less
certainty to his faith. Religion should speak
with a voice of unhesitating authority. It
should point out the way of life so clearly that
the wayfaring man need not err therein. It
must declare a law of conduct whose sanctity
cannot be doubted. The Hght it sheds must be
from the Eternal Fountain. Its premises must
be clear of all suspicion of being the shining
and phantasmal dreams of men. We have re
ceived no new Hght, but rather fatal darkness,
if the Rock of Ages does not appear more dis
tinct, more extended, and more impregnable.
We have delusion and not light unless relig
ious certainty is increased.
The mediaeval man had peace and joy be
cause an infallible church had spoken. Our
fathers replaced the authority of the church
by the authority of a book. If we give up the
belief in verbal inspiration and in the infalli
bility of a hierarchy of priests, have we found
something more credible? Has the assurance
which made our fathers strong in battle, and

22 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
gave our mothers calm in the night of their
sorrows, been increased unto us ?
A simple illustration will make clear how
august and indisputable is the authority which
speaks to the modern man. A friend, having
spent the evening with Carlyle, was saying
good night as the two stood upon the door
step. The visitor, looking up, remarked on the
glory of the starHt night. The Seer gazed for
a time on the inconceivable majesty of the
heavens and then exclaimed, " Mon, it 's just
awful ! " But suppose that Carlyle, after
glancing upward, had said, " I see no stars !
I never heard of them ! What are they? I
perceive only blackness above." The visitor
would have been dumbfounded. Let us im
agine that he goes through Chelsea and Lon
don questioning all whom he meets, and that
he finds that no one can see the stars or has
ever heard of them. Amazement possesses
him. He hurries to the Hbrary, but he can
find no book which hints at any brightness in
the heavens. He detects no intimation that in
all the preceding ages any one has seen the
stars ! He is the only human being who has

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 23
had that vision ! He can draw but one conclu
sion. If he alone can discern the black depths
above to be studded with stars, he must be
subject to an haUucination. He may well doubt
his sanity.
But the facts are far otherwise. The same
constellations he sees, Carlyle sees also. Every
one in the city who looks up has the same
perception. He finds that men in the Middle
Ages were studying the mystic influences of
these same clusters. The Hebrew Psalmist
sang of their glory, and the Babylonians bowed
before them in awe and wonder. He knows
that the stars exist because of the testimony
of unnumbered generations. They have seen
the vision. They have tested it by every means
available, and they have not been put to con
fusion. We live in unperturbed certainty of
the reahty of the stars, though no man was
ever caught in the silver mazes of the Pleiades,
or grasped the sheath of Orion's sword. The
vision of the individual has been verified by
the vision of the race. The universal conscious
ness has rendered its verdict in favor of lights
above, and trained minds have discovered and

24 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
explained their governing laws. The general
consciousness, verified and interpreted by ex
perts, gives us certainty of the stars.
Let us suppose that instead of alluding to
the stars Carlyle's guest had spoken of God,
human sinfulness, duty, and the Sage had ex
claimed : " God, sin, duty ! what do you mean ?
Those words represent no thoughts that ever
entered my mind, or any experience of my
life." The man would be puzzled and would
doubt Carlyle's sanity. Suppose that he wan
ders about the city, questioning every one
whom he meets, yet finding none who even
so much as dreamed of a Superior Being. He
consults the records of the past and finds no
intimation that any man ever thought of
Deity, or duty, or redemption. Poor man ! he
realizes that an asylum for the insane is his
proper home.
But how different are the facts. To Carlyle
the ideas of God, man's frailty, duty, are more
familiar than the brightness of the stars. Their
mystery and significance constantly fill his
mind. Every man in England and throughout
the world knows something of their meaning.

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 25
In the eighteenth century Wesley proclaimed
a gospel of reconciliation. In the thirteenth
century the Schoolmen pondered the Al
mighty's way of redemption. In ancient Greece
iEschylus lifted the drama to the elevation
of moral ideas. Upon the banks of the Nile,
in Nineveh, in Jerusalem, these conceptions
were familiar. Humanity's consciousness of
spiritual reaHties resembles in its universality
its sense of physical reality. Germany's most
profound philosopher, Immanuel Kant, once
declared : " Two things fill my soul with al
ways new and increasing wonder and awe,
and often and persistently my thought busies
itself therewith : — the starry heavens above
me and the moral law within me." Kant was
as well aware of his moral personality and its
necessary connections with an august moral
order as he was of the material splendors above
his head. Men have experienced a material
world, and they believe in it. They have also
experienced a spiritual world. They have come
in contact with God, and they have been per
suaded that from the Eternal there has come
to them light, and wisdom, and power. The

26 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
sovereign religious ideas are the expression
of the thinking and life of the race.
Moreover, the universal rehgious experience
finds illumination and exposition in the poets,
prophets, philosophers, and spiritual leaders of
all peoples. These loftiest spiritual geniuses are
nourished, trained, and made strong by a world
of unseen realities in which they habitually
live. Deep-souled men, their beings are rooted
in the hidden power which binds together
the things that are seen ; sensitive men, they
hear and interpret that still, small voice which
speaks its mystic word amid the jangHng noises
of the world. These men are experts, and the
concurrent testimony of experts must be our
standard in spiritual as in other matters. He
who stands upon the mountain-top and sees
the farthest can speak authoritatively to those
below. And the One whose name is above
every name, the supreme spiritual mind of the
world, must be the ultimate authority.
The basis of our certitude in religion is our
personal experience with God, corrected and
validated by the experiences of countless gen
erations of men, interpreted by seers and meas-

MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 27
ured and explained by the words, the spirit,
the life of Jesus.
The authority of the mediaeval man was
the thought and experience of the Roman
Church as formulated by its Councils and its
Popes. The authority of the Puritans was a
Book which contained the records of God's
way with a peculiar people and his fullest dis
closure in Christ. We have all that the Catho-
Hc has, plus the testimony of the Spirit as he
has spoken in all communions during the Chris
tian centuries. Like the Puritans we treasure
the faith of the Hebrews, but we verify our
conclusions by the ways of God with all tribes
and nations. And with the Holy Church
throughout the world we look to the mind of
Christ as the complete expression and suffi
cient standard of spiritual truth.
" The great and indeed the only ultimate
source of our knowledge of nature and of her
laws," says Sir John Herschel, " is experience,
by which we mean not the experience of one
man only, or of one generation, but the accu
mulated experience of all mankind in all ages,
registered in books, or recorded in tradition."

28 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
We live in a spiritual as well as in a physical
world, and we learn its reahty and its laws in
the same way — by the experience of all ages
revealed and uttered by the most competent
minds. What better lamp is there to guide our feet
than the accumulated wisdom of thousands of
generations of righteous men ? What court of
final appeal is so near infallibihty as the relig
ious life of the race explained and attested by
its supreme spiritual leader ?
" And I heard behind me," said St. John,
"a great voice, as of a trumpet ... as the
voice of many waters." That clear and multi
tudinous voice, coming out of the past, and
uttering itself through the lips of Jesus, is our
authority, and it is sufficient. " Behold the
days come that I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel. I will put my law in
their inward parts, and in their hearts will I
write it." This inner book of the law, written
by the finger of God in human hearts, verified
by experience, and expounded by Jesus Christ,
is all the authority we need.

II
THE BIBLE

n
THE BIBLE
The modern man has many difficulties with
his Bible. He was brought up to believe it to
be the inspired word of God, every recorded
fact being genuine and every teaching true.
It is so completely inspired that God dictated
it to men who served as his amanuenses.
Every statement must be accepted as author
itative, a text taken from Leviticus being as
binding as one found in Mark. This strict
theory of verbal inspiration has led to the
formulation of many grotesque dogmas, which
make rehgion appear irrational and ridicu
lous. A passionate outburst of the Psalmist,
joiaed to the gorgeous rhetoric of Isaiah, and
set into one of the sublime visions of the Seer
of Patmos, has produced many an astounding
doctrine. But these uncouth dogmas have not
been so injurious to most of us as the belief
that a book so inspired must be accepted from
"cover to cover." To doubt the historicity of
the Jonah incident, or to discredit the story of an

32 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
axe floating upon the waters of Jordan, or of the
sun standing stiU over the Plain of Ajalon was
to question the very fundamentals of religion
and to place one's self in the ranks of skeptics.
We know the powerful influence which the
Bible has had upon the institutions of the
modern world. Its truths gave strength and
grace to the characters of our fathers. Its sub
lime poetry elevated their imaginations, its
exceeding great and precious promises were
unfaihng springs of comfort, its wisdom they
followed as above mortal wisdom. Reverence
for the book is wrought into the fibres of our
natures as part of a noble heritage. We feel
instinctively that any diminution of its spirit
ual authority would soon report itself in feeble
men and in a devitahzed nation. How may the
Bible be unto us as unto our fathers the guide
and way of life, and yet be reverenced with
out the degradation of our mental integrity?
I
The Records of an Inspired Race
The first fact which appears, even to a cas
ual student of the Scriptures, is that they are

THE BIBLE 33
a library of sixty-six volumes, bound together
under one cover. These writings from the pens
of many authors have been brought together
because they are the original documents of a
supreme historical movement. The Jews were
a unique people. As the Romans had a pecul
iar insight into those structural laws which
bind men together, and could formulate them
into codes for the government of the world ;
as the Greeks had singular perception of the
beautiful, and could give it imperishable ex
pression in architecture and sculpture ; so the
Jews had an extraordinary intuition into the
moral framework of the world. The men who
most fully embodied the loftiest genius of
their race experienced God and learned his
ways. They sought after God and found him.
Their talent was prophetic, as the talent of the
Romans was administrative and that of the
Greeks artistic. Under the providential gov
ernment of the world they were gifted for a
special task. The Bible, considered from a hu
man standpoint, is a record of the unfolding of
their religious genius. It recounts their adven
tures in their search for God, their blind stum-

34 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
bling into darkness, their intuition of spiritual
truths, their broadening vision, the fulfillment
of the nation's essential spirit in the supreme
person of the race and of history, Jesus Christ.
Considered from a divine point of view the
Bible is a record of God's progressive disclos
ure of himself through a nation to the world.
To call it an inspired book is not so compre
hensive or so true a statement as to speak of
it as the record of an inspired movement ; an
assembling of the original documents which
attest and interpret a providential course of
history through a chosen people for the rehg
ious instruction of humanity.
The structural ideal of our own nation is
individual liberty under law. This idea has
had an origin, a development, an interpreta
tion, and an incarnation. If some one should
gather under one cover the Magna Charta, the
Bill of Rights, Cromwell's speeches, Brad
ford's "Journal," the Declaration of Inde
pendence, the Constitution of the United
States, the speeches of Webster, the maxims
of Benjamin Franklin, " Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
the impassioned verse of Whittier, Lincoln's

THE BIBLE 35
" Gettysburg Address," the war songs of the
nation, we should have a volume analogous
to the Bible. Both would be a collection of
original documents recounting the history and
manifesting the spirit of a movement of world
wide importance. Both would disclose a prov
idential endowment and training of a great peo
ple in the interests of the race. Both would show
the origin and trace the progress of a special
purpose of God for the good of mankind.
Such a conception of the Bible as a collec
tion of many books, selected and unified by a
central truth, written by many men in differ
ent periods of history and at different stages
of development, made up of traditions, war
songs, laws, history, which greatly vary in
value, yet reveal man's spiritual growth and
God's progressive revelation, is now the one
commonly held among us.
II
Oriental Method of writing History
Higher critics1 may differ among themselves
1 For some of the ideas immediately following I am in
debted to Abbott's Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews.

36 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
in matters of details, but there is no diver
gence of opinion regarding the composite na
ture of the book. Yet the history was written
in a manner very distinct from the methods
we use. A modern historian, after collecting
and digesting his data, tells his story in a way
clearly to indicate his individual contribution
and judgment. He is extremely sensitive to
the charge of plagiarism. By footnotes he
indicates his authorities for important state
ments. By quotation marks he distinguishes
the words and sentences he has incorporated
in his narrative from other sources. The Ori
ental method is the opposite of this conscien
tious discrimination of the individuality and
responsibility of each writer. As in their so
cial system, so in their histories, the individ
ual is lost in the whole. If the story is told, it
matters Httle who tells it. Oriental histories
are for the most part compilations. The author
weaves together his documents and authorities
into a continuous narrative. He uses no quo
tation marks, seldom states the sources of his
information, and interjects without acknow
ledgment into a paragraph the words and

THE BIBLE 37
opinions of another. " It is the law of Orien
tal history writers," says Renan, "that one
book should annihilate its predecessor. The
sources of a compilation rarely survive the
compilation itself. A book in the East is rarely
recopied just as it stands. It is brought up to
date by the addition to it of what is known,
or supposed to be known, from other sources.
The individuality of the historical book does
not exist in the East ; it is the substance, not
the form, which is held of importance, and no
scruple is felt about mixing up authors and
styles. The end sought is to be complete, and
that is aU." Ill
The Priest and the Prophet
The historical books of the Old Testament,
besides being compilations, represent two
clearly distinguishable types of mind, that of
the priest and that of the prophet. With them
we are familiar. These two have walked to
gether from the beginning down through all
the centuries of religious history. The first
considers himself to be set apart from others

38 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
by a special ordination. He usually emphasizes
this distinction by his dress and often by his
manner and voice. He worships God by ritual,
and is interested in institutions rather than
in truth. His virtues are reverence for the
past, obedience to authority, a love of order
and decorum, and a developed sense of the
beautiful as expressed in ceremonials and ar
chitecture, rather than in the stars and mead
ows. Generally he prefers cathedrals to moun
tains. His faults are an over-emphasis of the
value of institutions. To preserve and honor
them he will too often sacrifice the truth. He is
the defender and protector of organization, and
not a fearless seeker after truth in every field.
His unquestioning subservience to authority
dwarfs his reason and judgment, while his sep-
arateness from his fellows tends to hypocrisy.
The prophet is a born adversary of the
priest, and his characteristics are antipodal in
almost every respect. He is an individualist,
and is impatient of authority. Believing that
he meets the Most High more intimately in
his own soul than in sacrament or in book,
his conscience has for him august sanctity.

THE BIBLE 39
God he will obey and not man. All earthly
powers are insignificant in comparison with
the Judge of aU the earth. The true prophetic
mind is open to God's voice whether he speaks
through nature, in the course of history, or in
the drift of circumstance. It seeks to know
the truth and willingly goes alone to obey it.
The evil tendencies of the prophet are egotism
and a defiance of needful convention which
leads to brutal iconoclasm. His sense of per
sonal rectitude and his clear vision often make
him intolerant of the opinions of others, and
frequently he degenerates into a common
scold. The priest is in danger of excluding the
new and larger truth from his venerable institu
tions. The prophet often fails to incorporate his
nobler visions in becoming and effective forms.
Upon whatever century we lift the curtain
we find the prophet and the priest confronting
each other, always in earnest debate, often in
bloody conflict. Their hostile spirits appear
in ritualists and non-ritualists. Their charac
teristics distinguish high church from low ;
the conservative from the independent.

40 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Now the shadow of the priest and the shadow
of the prophet rest plainly upon the pages of
the Old Testament. Each has interpreted his
tory according to his own sovereign principle.
We can readily understand that if a man of
prophetic mind were to write the history of
England he would be most interested in the
people themselves, their condition, the struc
tural principles of their civilization, the social
and economic forces which moulded their des
tinies, and the genius and achievements of the
national leaders. But one of Dr. Pusey's tem
perament would treat of the institutions of
England, its throne and the laws of succes
sion, the kings in their religious character,
and their attitude toward the Church. The
progress of the country would coincide in his
mind with the prosperity of the EstabUshed
Church. He would describe its development,
its great bishops, its charities and its rituals,
and would approve or condemn all popular
movements according to their influence on the
National Church.

THE BIBLE 41
IV
The Clue to the Documents
There is indisputable evidence that both the
priests and the prophets have written the his
tory of Israel in their characteristic mode, to
make enduring the facts and truths which they
thought of chief importance. We have in the
Old Testament two narratives of God's deal
ings with his chosen people from the reign of
David to the Babylonish Captivity, covering
a period approximately from 1000 to 600 B.C.
Two historians survey the same four centuries,
yet how different is their spirit, and how di
verse are their judgments of the events in the
national history which best reveal Jehovah's
character and purposes. First and Second
Chronicles, practically one book, are evidently
written by an ecclesiastic who identified the
religion of the Hebrews with its churchly
form. He tells of the organization of the
priestly hierarchy, he records minutely the
genealogies of the tribes, gives a careful list
of the cities of the Levites, exalts the glory
of Solomon, and elaborately describes the

42 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
building of the Temple and its ceremonies.
He is evidently a high churchman who consid
ers religion to be inseparable from Jerusalem,
the Temple worship, and the formal priesthood.
The Temple is the centre of the world, and
Judah is God's peculiar people. After the
federation of the ten tribes they ceased to
interest this writer. The deeply instructive,
romantic career of Elijah is passed over, for
he is not of the succession ! He is not the
robed priest ministering at the altar ! He is
ignored as a high church historian would
ignore Wesley. Northern Israel, being sepa
rated from the Temple, is as uninteresting to
this priestly writer as the nonconformists of
England would be to an ardent Puseyite.
Covering the same period we have First and
Second Kings, one book in two volumes.
This narrative as clearly came out of the pro
phetic school as Chronicles issued from the
priestly. Here alone we have reported the se
vere and stormy character of Elijah and the
marvelous activities of Elisha. When kings
appear on the scene, it is that they may form
the background to set off the greater grandeur

THE BIBLE 43
of the prophet. The writer does not hesitate
to describe the pollution of the Temple and the
sins of the priests. So thoroughly prophetic
is the Book of Kings in its spirit and inter
ests that Jewish tradition assigned its author
ship to Jeremiah, while good critics affirm that
Chronicles and Ezra were originally one book.
The difference in the documents treating
of the history of Israel from David onward
naturaUy gave scholars the clue to the diver
gencies of statement and the peculiarities of
style found in the annals preceding the reign
of that monarch. They noticed that in certain
portions of Genesis God was always spoken of
as Jehovah, and that these sections have a
marked individuahty of style. In other por
tions God is named by the Hebrew word
Elohim, and the style and interest of those
parts are easily distinguishable from the Jeho
vah section. It would seem, then, to be an
easy matter to separate the early history into
two original documents, the Jehovistic and
the Elohistic ; and where the words Lord God
are used, or Jehovah Elohim, to say that the
two documents were here combined. This at

44 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
first was the easy solution, but further investi
gation showed that certain sections of Genesis
used the word Elohim and yet were decidedly
similar in style to the Jehovah documents and
sustained its assertions of facts, while other
Elohim sections were written in a very differ
ent style and contradicted the Jehovistic docu
ments in important matters. This discovery
has led to the conclusion that the early his
tory of Israel as we have it is a composite of
at least three principal documents, known re
spectively as "J," "E," and "P"; the latter
so called because it is thoroughly priestly in
form and is preoccupied with the same inter
ests as the Book of Leviticus and the priestly
sections of Exodus and Numbers.
V
The Story of the Hebrew People
Instead of entering upon a discussion of the
documentary structure of the Old Testament,
which would necessarily be somewhat dry, I
can best present the nature and origin of the
Scriptures by giving in brief outline the story
of the development of the Hebrew people, or

THE BIBLE 45
of God's progressive revelation of his charac
ter and purposes to them, as it has been recon
structed by modern scholars.
About the year 1500 B.C. there was a mi
gration of Semitic people from Mesopotamia,
along the well-trodden ways of commerce,
toward those lands in southwestern Asia which
were under the powerful protection of Egypt,
then the dominant empire of the world. In
this migration were probably the ancestors of
Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as Israel.
Many scholars maintain that the patriarchs
were historic characters, and that the story of
their lives is authentic biography. Some, how
ever, consider these interesting tales to be the
sagas of a primitive people and the personifi
cation of tribal characteristics. There is cer
tainly much in the record, similar to the tradi
tional and poetic elements in the earliest annals
of all great peoples, to sustain this conclusion.
Under the stress of famine the Hebrews
moved into Egypt and settled down in the pas
ture lands of the Nile Delta about the year
1400 B.C. As the residence in Egypt lasted
about three generations, or approximately a

46 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
hundred years, we may place the date of the
Exodus around the year 1300. Under a great
leader, who was either Moses, or, as some one
has wittily said, another man of the same name,
they succeeded in freeing themselves from their
Egyptian taskmasters. To avoid the border for
tresses, Moses led the people to the desert by
way of the Red Sea, crossing at a favorable
point. At Mount Sinai he held high communion
with Jehovah. Here by this rugged and storm-
encircled mountain a nation was organized
and a spiritual religion was born. Moses had
been trained in aU the learning of the Egypt
ians. Rawlinson, in his " History of Egypt,"
informs us that " the primary doctrine of the
esoteric religion undoubtedly was the real es
sential unity of the Divine Nature. The sacred
texts taught that there was a single Being,
' the sole producer of all things, both in heaven
and earth, himself not produced of any' . . .
'the only true living God, self -originated' . . .
' who exists from beginning ' . . . ' who made
all things, but has not himself been made.' "
This pure spirit, perfect in wisdom, goodness,
and power, was not to be represented by any

THE BIBLE 47
symbol, and his name was incommunicable.
The deities of popular mythology were either
his attributes personified or nature deified.
This high God, who was a philosophical
abstraction to the wise men of Egypt, was to
Moses the supreme Reality. To this true God,
the statesman-prophet would dedicate the peo
ple. They were to be holy because he was holy.
They, on their part, were to serve only him,
and he in return would be their God and give
them national prosperity. It was the privilege
of Moses to do what no man had done before.
He rooted morality more deeply in religion,
and organized a nation around the central idea
that the sovereign duty of the individual and
of the nation was to obey a holy God. Lofty
minds before his day had framed a spiritual
conception of the Ultimate Reality. Other law
givers had guarded individual rights and social
morality by the sanctions of religion. Moses
rendered a twofold service. As a prophet he
made impressive the ethical nature of religion,
and as leader he made the union of morality
with religion the organic law of a great people.
He created a commonwealth whose corner-

48 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
stone was neither commerce nor militarism,
but obedience to God.
His imperishable monument is the Ten
Commandments, or the Ten Words. Ewald
gives the original form as follows : —
I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

1. Thou shalt have no other god before me.
2. Thou shalt not make to thee any image.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy
God in vain.
4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to
sanctify it.
5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.
II
1. Thou shalt not kill.
2. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
3. Thou shalt not steal.
4. Thou shalt bear no false witness against thy
neighbor. 5. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
The fuller and more familiar form was pro
duced by the addition of explanatory clauses.

THE BIBLE 49
These Ten Words are the introduction to the
Book of the Covenant, the oldest book that
is incorporated completely in the text of the
Scriptures. This venerable book, which com
prises Exodus twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-
second, twenty-third, and perhaps the first
eight verses of the twenty-fourth, contains the
substance of the Mosaic legislation. "The
book is as remarkable for what it omits as
for what it contains. It is practically silent
respecting any future life, any sacrificial sys
tem, any ecclesiastical ritual, any organized
priesthood, any form of what was then uni-
versaUy and is even now generally termed re
ligious duty. It is purely spiritual in its con
ception of God and of his worship, and whoHy
non-ritualistic and almost exclusively ethical
in its interpretation of the divine will."
There are many scholars who are inclined
to deny the Mosaic authorship of the Deca
logue. Its simple and austere morality and its
evident monotheism seem too exalted for so
early an age. Therefore they assign it to the
period of the prophets, when the religious
consciousness of the nation was more fully

50 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
developed. Undoubtedly the conceptions and
practice of the common people were far below
the lofty standards of the Book of the Cove
nant, just as the actual morality of Christen
dom does not conform to the Sermon on the
Mount. If so great a summary of religion as
the Decalogue came into Jewish history at a
later date, why did it produce no ripple of
agitation ? As Bruce has well inferred, if the
writing of the law by Ezra was duly chroni
cled, it is impossible that "the grandest part
of that law, the very essence and kernel of
Israel's rehgion, steals into existence without
a father and without a date ! "
After the death of Moses there followed the
conquest of Palestine. The work was only
partially successful. Enough of the original
inhabitants remained to be a source of con
stant annoyance and corruption. The tribes
were scattered. The sense of national unity
was weak. There was no central capital or
sanctuary. John Fiske has affirmed that the
period between the close of our American
Revolution and the adoption of the Constitu
tion was the most critical period in our his-

THE BIBLE 51
tory. During the two hundred and fifty years
under the Judges the tribes were in much the
same- condition as our thirteen states. The
looseness of their organization was a constant
source of weakness. A strong central govern
ment was sorely needed. A king finaUy was
chosen, but he proved not to be great enough
to call out the united loyalty of the people.
After Saul came David ; one of those continen
tal characters whose nature stretched through
every zone of power. He changed the army
from a mob into an organized body, with cap
tains of tens and captains of hundreds. With
these disciplined troops he won a succession of
victories. The people were united by a com
mon loyalty. They changed from an agricul
tural to a commercial nation, and wealth in
creased. The reign of Solomon was splendid
because he completed the work of his father.
His task was to unify further the tribes into
a nation. To do this he built a magnificent
temple at Jerusalem to be the centre of the
people's pride and worship. He entered into
many matrimonial alhances, not because he was
more sensuous than other Oriental despots,

52 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
but as a policy of statecraft. He would make
the house of David stronger than the house
of Saul by a multitude of state marriages.
Moreover, in his great wisdom, he opened
the ways of commerce with surrounding peo
ples, that the energy of his subjects might be
expended in the acquisition of wealth, rather
than in civil war. During his long reign,
by his sagacity and the weight of his personal
influence, he held together a turbulent and
disunited people. After his death the inevit
able separation came.
As yet no one had written a continuous his
tory of the people, but the splendor of the
reigns of David and Solomon would not un
naturally excite an ambition to set in order
the events from the beginning. The Israelites
were indeed not without a literature. Besides
the Book of the Covenant there were the
Song of Deborah and the Lament of David
over Saul and Jonathan. There were many
memoirs and annals, like the Book of Jasher,
the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Samuel
concerning the Kingdom, the Chronicles of
David, the Acts of Solomon, the Acts of Na-

THE BIBLE 53
than, Samuel and Gad, the Book of Jehu, the
Sayings of the Seers, besides many psalms and
proverbs. About the year 825, while Elisha
was prophesying in northern Israel, there oc
curred in Judah, under Joash, a pronounced
awakening of intellectual and spiritual activ
ity. The prophetic party was in the ascend
ancy, and out of some school of the prophets
there issued the first continuous narrative from
the creation to the time of the monarchy. The
purpose of the authors was both to incorpor
ate everything that would throw light on early
conditions and also to illustrate Jehovah's
deahngs with his people. The style of the
narrative is free and pleasing, the characters
are distinctly sketched, dialogue is frequently
employed, and the vocabulary is picturesque
and dramatic. The Deity is called Jehovah,
and he is conceived, not as a spirit dwelling
in sanctity above the earth, but as one who
enters intimately into relationship with men.
He walks in the garden at the cool of the day ;
he descends to learn what the children of men
are doing at Babel ; he speaks from the burn
ing bush. Jehovah is so truly a glorified hu-

54 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
man that he challenges love and obedience.
The story is told with the dramatic fervor and
simplicity of poetry. The ethics of the writer
are clear and simple. To do Jehovah's will in
thought and deed is one's whole duty. Right
and wrong are not determined by abstract
principles, but are conceived as loyalty or dis
loyalty to the divine will.
This document is called " J " because it is
supposed to be Judaean in its origin and be
cause the Deity is designated as Jehovah. It
is thoroughly prophetic, both in purpose and
in sympathies. It constitutes about one third
of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers,
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
Some seventy-five years later, during the
days of the prophet Amos, or about 750 B.C.,
a second narrative appeared. In this history,
the southern shrine, Hebron, is ignored, and
the northern shrines, Bethel and Shechem, are
made prominent. In the stories of Joseph,
Reuben instead of Judah is recognized as
leader. Much space is given to the life of
Joseph, the traditional head of the tribe of
Ephraim, and to Joshua, the Ephraimite hero.

THE BIBLE 55
These characteristics have led to the conclu
sion that this document came from northern
Israel. As Ephraim is the name by which
Hosea, the greatest of its prophets, addressed
northern Israel, it is called the Ephraimite
prophetic narrative. Moreover, in all the ac
counts of events before Moses, the Deity is
designated as Elohim. Its use of Elohim, and
its supposed origination in Ephraim has given
to this document the designation " E."
The purpose of " E " is less historical and
more distinctively didactic and religious than
" J." It centres attention on the ideal theo
cracy rather than on the nation. The prophets
and their work are considered as of more im
portance than kings and their administrations.
The dominant purpose throughout the whole
is to show that when the people submitted to
God's will, as made known by the prophets,
they prospered, and when they rebelled, they
suffered. In the Judaean narrative, Jehovah walked
the earth and visited Abraham in his tent. In
this later history, God is not treated in so pic
turesque and anthropomorphic a fashion. He

56 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
comes in dreams and by his messengers. Only
to Moses does he reveal his face. From the
darkness of the mountain, or from the pillar
of cloud, he speaks to the people. The seventy-
five years intervening since the production of
the Judaean document had served to purge the
traditions of much of their dross and to ma
ture in thoughtful minds the conceptions of
the divine character and methods of revela
tion. Within a generation after this writing had
been given to the world, northern Israel went
into captivity and its sacred records, together
with the writings of its great prophet Hosea,
became the treasured possessions of the south
ern tribe. During the prophetic and literary
activity resulting from the reformation under
Joash, " J " and " E " were formed into a con
nected history in much the same manner as
we to-day weave the four gospels together into
a continuous story of the life of Christ.

HI
THE BIBLE (continued)

ni
the bible (continued)
I
The Hebrew Prophets
In order to connect our account of the man
uscripts "J" and "E" and their blending, we
have anticipated a little our interpretation
of the development of Israel's religious con
sciousness. The greatness of a people is de
clared by the character of the masses and the
quahty of its supreme men. The eminent men
of Greece and Rome were generals, states
men, philosophers, artists. The imperishable
names in Israel are the names of her prophets.
The genius of the nation was neither artistic
nor military, but spiritual.
The work of the prophets often has been
misunderstood. They have been valued as men
to whom God revealed the future, enabling
them to foretell with accuracy coming events.
Their uniqueness has been supposed to lie in
the wonderful precision of their predictions of

60 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
the future. This is an entire misapprehension.
The prophet is one who speaks out. He utters
the deep things of God to his generation. The
prophets of Israel were men possessed of a
fervent p ssion for righteousness. They felt
the moral framework of the world. They had
a profound sense of the Living God. In the
events about them they saw the operations of
his will and the glory of his presence. There
fore they interpreted the history of their day
in the light of their vision of God. They were
reformers and statesmen, and measured men
and pohcies by the "higher law." Because
their eye was single, their whole body was f uU
of Hght. Comprehending the present so clearly,
they were sagacious in foretelling the prob
able future. But prediction was an incidental
characteristic of their work. Their supremacy
consisted in that quality and elevation of moral
genius which gave them insight into the di
vine character, and enabled them to make a
holy and merciful God a reahty to their own
and to future generations.
The eighth century before Christ was
throughout the world one of extraordinary

THE BIBLE 61
power and brilliancy. The songs of Homer
were assuming their final form ; Carthage had
recently been founded ; and the laws of Ly-
curgus were still new in Sparta. The year 776
marked the commencement of the Olympiads
in Greece, and 753 is the traditional date of the
founding of Rome by Romulus. Over Palestine
there arose a galaxy of minds, bright with
rare religious genius. It was a time of tran-
quilhty in both northern and southern Is
rael. Riches were increasing ; the worship of
Jehovah was never more inspiring, yet the
priests were worldly and there was no open
vision. If the spiritual life of the people be
not choked by materialism, a spiritual awak
ening must come speedily. The first of the
divine messengers was Amos, the Hebrew Car
lyle, the founder and purest type of a new
order of prophecy. Reared in that same wil
derness, twelve miles south of Jerusalem,
where afterwards John the Baptist was trained
and Christ was tempted, he grew up clean of
heart and austere in morals. His message was
the retributive justice of God. Before Jeho
vah all men are equal; let them adjust them-

62 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
selves to this Power which makes for right
eousness. A younger contemporary of Amos was
Hosea; a man of finer fibre and more sympa
thetic heart. He was the first of the prophets
to preach a gospel of love, and his lesson was
learned in the deeps of bitter experience. We
can reconstruct his pathetic story by reading
between his cryptic lines. In the days of his
youth he loved and won the voluptuous
beauty, Gomer. Soon after marriage he sus
pected her fidelity, but he did not cast her
off. Finally she left his home to become a
common wanton of the streets, and at last was
sold as a slave. Yet her husband's solicitude
followed her into her degradations and he paid
the price of her ransom.
" Weeping blinding tears,
I took her to myself and paid the price
(Strange contrast to the dowry of her youth
When first I wooed her) ; and she came again
To dwell beneath my roof."
But he could not restore her to the old re
lationship until her soul was purified by works
meet for repentance. In the fires of his expe-

THE BIBLE 63
rience Hosea found his evangel. " If I," he
meditated, "could seek after my erring wife
until I won her back to purity, wfll not Jeho
vah in leal love seek after his people, even in
their sin?" This Old Testament tale of the
Prodigal Wife anticipates and parallels the
pure gospel of the parable of the Prodigal
Son. The interpretation of Hosea's experiences
does not lie upon the surface of the prophet's
pages, but the story is there plain enough, if
we remember that men in ancient times learned
their religious lessons in the same way that we
learn ours.
Greater than either of his predecessors was
Isaiah. He was a lad when Amos was prophe
sying at Bethel, and began his career while
Hosea was writing his last pages. He was
more fortunate than they in birth and station,
and was gifted with an eloquence so rhyth
mical and stately that it has been the admira
tion of subsequent ages. It was in the year
King Uzziah died, 740 B.C., that he beheld that
vision of the holiness and nearness of God
which was his commission as a prophet. To
Isaiah's anointed eyes God was a devouring fire

64 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
in Israel, burning up all falsehood and evil. He
was also head of the nations, working through
them to carry out his holy purposes.
A contemporary of the statesman-prophet
Isaiah was Micah, a yeoman of an obscure vil
lage, who was called to be an evangelist. He
is remembered to-day for that incomparable
definition of religion which caUed forth this
burst of admiration from Mr. Huxley : " In the
eighth century before Christ, in the heart of
a world of idolatrous polytheism, the Hebrew
prophets put forth a conception of religion
which appears to me as wonderful an inspira
tion of genius as the art of Phidias or the
science of Aristotle. ' He hath showed thee, 0
man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? '
If any so-called religion takes away from this
great saying of Micah I think it wantonly
mutilates, while if it adds thereto, I think it
obscures the perfect ideal of religion."
In 722, while Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah
were still living, northern Israel was invaded
by the Assyrians and a large part of the people

THE BIBLE 65
was carried into captivity. Henceforth Judah
continues the ancient faith, but not without an
immediate and violent reaction toward paganism
during the reign of Manasseh. The heavenly
bodies were worshiped; altars were built to
Astarte ; human sacrifices were offered ; and the
Ark of the Covenant was removed from the
Holy of Holies. A reign of terror followed the
attempt of faithful servants of Jehovah to stay
the prevalent corruption. For fifty years pagan
ism flourished, and the ancient writings with
their lofty teachings were forgotten by all ex
cept a smaU circle of religious men who were
associated with the Temple.
It is darkest before the dawn, and after this
night of paganism there was a brilliant awak
ening of the prophetic spirit. Sluggish, in
deed, would have been the life of the nation,
if the momentous events of the time had not
stirred its deepest soul. The civilized world
was in the throes of revolution. The vast As
syrian Empire, that stupendous despotism that
had long held the world in terror, was crumb
ling. The Medes, upon their terrible horses,
were overrunning Asia and threatening great

66 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Nineveh itself. The atmosphere, so electric
with impending change, could not but affect
Judaea and evoke prophetic utterance. First
came Zephaniah, with his wondrous song of
doom — the "Dies irae, dies ilia" — the re
quiem of woe familiar to the whole Christian
world. About 625 B.C., Nahum, in impassioned
sentences, predicts the fall of Nineveh, and
Habakkuk, eloquent beyond his contempora
ries, declares the retribution which shall humble
the pride of the Assyrian. But supreme over
them all, and yet the saddest, was Jeremiah,
who looked forward to the time when religion
should be free from all false restraints and be
established upon the law written in the heart.
II
The Discovery of Deuteronomy
In 621 B.C. a powerful revival broke out
in Judah, caused not by the thunder of the
prophets, but by the discovery of a roll in the
archives of the Temple. In the twenty-second
and twenty-third chapters of Second Kings
we can read the account of the epochal event.
Hilkiah, the high priest, places before King

THE BIBLE 67
Josiah the wonderful discovery, and the land
is aflame. This roll was the body of our pre
sent Book of Deuteronomy. When we seek
the origin of the code whose finding so stirred
the hearts of the nation to repentance, it
seems probable that during the persecutions
under Manasseh some unknown prophet, in
order to preserve the faith of the fathers, gath
ered together the manuscripts of the old law,
wrote down the traditions of ancient wisdom,
and made new apphcation of Mosaic princi
ples to the condition of the nation in his own
time. The whole he threw into the form of
three great orations and two poems, and hid
his work in the Temple library. When it was
found in the days of Josiah, it was as though
a holy past spoke to a recreant present. This
voice from the venerated centuries awoke the
nation to repentance and purification.
The discovery awakened intense literary as
well as religious activity. History was rewrit
ten under the inspiration of the lofty teachings
of Deuteronomy. Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
Kings, were all reedited. These Deuteronomic
writers were not interested in exact historical

68 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
investigation. They were not searching musty
documents to establish the exact occurrences
of the past. Quite the opposite was their spirit.
As teachers of spiritual truth, they would trace
the hand of God in history. Not the precise
details of former events, but the spiritual sig
nificance of Jehovah's dealings with his people
they would portray for the instruction of the
present and future generations. Their national
history appeared to them to teach one unmis
takable lesson, and the purpose of the Deutero
nomic historians was so to rewrite the annals
of the Hebrew people as to bring this lesson
into solemn prominence. It may be stated in
a sentence : Unfaithfulness to Jehovah is pun
ished by calamities ; obedience is rewarded by
material prosperity. The older histories were
edited to emphasize this philosophy, and facts
were modified and interpreted in its interest.
The desire of the Deuteronomic historians was
to abolish all local sanctuaries and to centralize
worship in the Temple at Jerusalem. These
local shrines had existed from antiquity, as the
early narratives clearly prove.
Yielding to the peculiar Jewish tendency to

THE BIBLE 69
think of all good laws as transmitted from the
fathers, these editors assumed that the statute
providing for one central sanctuary and for
bidding all others had been in operation since
the Temple was built, or even from the days
of Moses. Under this conception the Book of
Kings was rewritten and rulers were judged
according to their attitude toward the " high
places." As none of the kings of northern
Israel had worshiped at Jerusalem, but had
maintained local sanctuaries, they were all
condemned. This Deuteronomic rewriting of
Jewish records gives us a document called by
scholars " D," and is the third great constitu
ent element of the Old Testament histories.
It is prophetic in its spirit, but as its object is
to give prominence to the Temple and its wor
ship, it is priestly in its purpose. The central
ization of sacrifice or worship institutional
ized religion ; a distinction was made between
clergy and laity, and the church became inde
pendent of the state. The benefit of this was
apparent thirty-five years later, when the state
was destroyed and the church survived. Pro
foundly as the decrees of the code influenced

70 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
the religious life of the people in Josiah's day
and altered their historical books, it modified
quite as perceptibly the future of the nation.
Henceforth the Jewish faith rests heavily
on a book; writings may be appealed to as
against the living spirit; and the scribe can
rebuke the prophet. The externalism of a re
ligion, housed in a temple and expressed in a
ritual, will quell the spirit of prophecy. The
priest will yet come to his own.
Ill
The Captivity
Nevertheless, these same priestly elements
are to conserve, in the immediate future, the
very life of the prophetic religion. In 597 B.C.
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, carried
into captivity ten thousand of the flower of
the Jewish nation, and in 586 Jerusalem fell
before him, and forty thousand went to weep
by the waters of Babylon. It is an interesting
question to ask why these exiles were not ab
sorbed into the Babylonian civilization, even
as the ten tribes, who, upon their captivity,
disappeared entirely from history. Why should

THE BIBLE 71
northern Israel be lost and Judah survive?
The answer is that Judah had one hundred
and thirty-five years more of national life than
the northern tribes in which to fix more firmly
the racial characteristics. But especially they
carried with them into captivity a literature.
Besides the history of their nation, they had
Deuteronomy and the writings of the prophets.
This literature kept alive the fires of patriotic
devotion and perpetuated the traditions of the
people. The captivity in Babylon exercised a revo
lutionary effect upon the faith of the exiles.
Their hearts must have been shaken when they
first beheld the capital city of their conquer
ors. Authorities state that it covered an area
five times as great as London, and was sur
rounded by walls of incredible height and
thickness, pierced by a hundred brazen gates.
Contrasted with the majesty of this metropolis,
Jerusalem must have appeared a country vil
lage. The most conspicuous object in this
wonderful city was the temple of Bel, with its
numerous shrines, its elaborate altars, and its
golden statue of the deity, towering forty feet

72 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
in height. Even the splendor of Solomon's
Temple must have seemed tame before the im
perial magnificence of this conquering god.
There must have been deep searchings of
heart regarding the power, or even the reality
of Jehovah. Every earthly inducement would
lead the captive to forsake the national faith
and become identified with the customs and
faith of the victors. Judah was tried as in a
sieve, and only the pure wheat remained.
But the bitter experiences of the faithful
remnant deepened their insight into spiritual
realities and stung their genius into marvel
ous expression. Their calamities produced
great men and imperishable literature. Among
the captives was Ezekiel, both priest and
prophet. He was an ecclesiastical statesman,
cast in the same mould in which afterwards
were fashioned Hildebrand and Calvin. As Is
rael was no longer a nation, he would make it
a church. He would preserve the people by
organizing their lives about religious institu
tions. As there could be no temple, except at
Jerusalem, he would commit the people to the
continual service of Jehovah by inducing them

THE BIBLE 73
to keep his Sabbath. Their purity from sur
rounding contamination and their observance
of religious ceremonies would form their dis
tinctiveness as a people. But they were some
day to return. The books of the prophets
which they had brought with them clearly
foretold this. To prepare for that time and
the rebuilding of the Temple, Ezekiel issued a
unique code, describing the ritual and defin
ing the duties of priests, which is found in
the last eight chapters of the book bearing
his name. Closely allied with him there was
evidently a school of priests, who formed a
centre of literary activity. They embodied the
ancient ceremonial practices in a digest which
is called the "Holiness Code" (Leviticus 17-
26); they gave to the legal and ritualistic por
tions of the first books of the Pentateuch sub
stantially their present form.
Literature and spiritual insight, as well as
the formulation of the ceremonial law, were
the outgrowth of the Captivity. It was the
early faith of the Hebrews that Jehovah pun
ished sin with evil and rewarded virtue with
prosperity. Calamity, whether visiting the in-

74 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
dividual or the nation, was a sure indication
that the law had been transgressed. But in
the profound humiliation of the Captivity the
righteous people were punished, while great
Babylon, drunk with the wine of her fornica
tion, flourished in evident prosperity. Why do
the wicked flourish, while the innocent suffer ?
This question, as old as humanity, pressed it
self insistently upon the broken-hearted cap
tives. Their traditional solution of the pro
blem of pain, as the evidence of divine wrath
against an evil-doer, was evidently inadequate.
A more comprehensive answer, which should
fit a world where the godly are afflicted, must
be given. The sublime epic of Job is the solu
tion offered by some deep-souled captive as he
meditated on the strange ways of God. The
patriarch was a righteous man, sorely bereaved.
His three friends came with the miserable
comfort offered by the traditional philosophy
that Job's misfortunes were retributions for
his sin. Stoutly Job maintained his integrity.
Then Elihu, a young man, yet with truer in
sight than that of the three friends, threw
some light on the problem by affirming that

THE BIBLE 75
suffering is a method of divine discipline, a
test of character. The climax of the drama
is reached when God, who always utters his
deepest wisdom to man out of the storms and
contradictions of life, answered Job out of the
whirlwind, asserting that majesty before which
man always appears so pitiably insignificant.
The divine voice does not solve the problem
of pain, but it arouses in the sufferer such
a glorious sense of the presence of Jehovah
that the heart of Job is satisfied. "I have
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but
now mine eye seeth thee." The vision of God,
the assured conviction of his nearness and
goodness, is the result of afflictions nobly
borne, and is their compensation.
Carlyle calls the epic " Every Man's Book,"
for it deals with a question which confronts
every thinking man. The name of the author
has not come down to us, but he has be
queathed to us, not what was incidental to his
life, but his deep soul-struggle and victory.
He shows us how one man found himself
and found God. He also reveals the educa
tive power of trouble and its tendency, when

76 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
rightly endured, to change a formal faith in
God to a clear perception of his presence and
loving care. Some scholars put the date of the
book earlier, some later, than the Captivity.
But it surely expresses most powerfully the
experiences and questionings of that time when
the traditional theodicy was broken, and larger
visions of God and his purposes were inspired
in the greater minds.
Another majestic voice speaks out of this
darkness to hearten the distressed captives.
His name, too, has perished, but he is desig
nated variously as the " Second Isaiah," the
" Great Unknown," the " Prophet of the Ex
ile." His writings are to be found in the lat
ter part of the Book of Isaiah, beginning with
the fortieth chapter. The style of these chap
ters is so different from the language and
thought of the first section of the book, and
the historical situation is so evidently the con
dition of Babylon at the time of the impend
ing invasion of Cyrus, that it seems far more
probable that they are the utterances of an
unknown prophet in Babylon than that Isaiah
in Jerusalem looked forward over one hun-

THE BIBLE 77
dred and fifty years to encourage the pos
sible exiles. Certainly no prophet in the Old
Testament uttered more powerfully elemental
truths in language of refined and elevated
spiritual emotion than the unknown " Prophet
of the Exile." The burden of his message is
one of consolation. " Comfort ye, comfort ye
my people, saith your God."
This prophet is more than a comforter ; he
is also an interpreter. His insight into the
mysteries of suffering penetrated even farther
than that of the author of the Book of Job.
In his marvelous description of that mystic
figure whom he calls " the Servant of Jehovah,"
he declares that suffering is more than a dis
cipline of individual character; more than
the fiery way by which men are led into the
immediate presence of God ; it is often vica
rious. The innocent suffers for the guilty, and
by his stripes the sinful are healed. This is
strange doctrine ; an absolute breaking away
from the honored teaching that pain is God's
wrath on the evil-doer. " Who hath believed
our report ? and to whom hath this power of
the Lord been revealed ? " Paul echoed the

78 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
same faith when he exclaimed that the cruci
fied Servant is the power of God unto salvation.
Besides being a clear-visioned interpreter of
spiritual realities, the Prophet of the Exile
had a statesmanlike comprehension of the sig
nificance of contemporary events and their
bearing upon Israel's future.
IV
The Rebuilding of Jerusalem
The most commanding and admirable figure
of pagan Oriental antiquity was Cyrus the
Great, a prince wise in statecraft, invincible in
war, with a character so fuU-orbed and far-
shining that tradition has thrown around him
the charm of legend. As first Media and then
Lydia fell before the armies of the Persian,
the Prophet in Babylon exulted. Surely the
deliverer appointed by Jehovah had come. "I
have raised him up for victory and will make
straight his ways ; he shall build my city
again and he shall let my exiles go free."
This confident prediction was fulfilled. In No
vember, 538 B.C., Babylon fell, and, in the
spring of 537, Cyrus aided the Jews who

THE BIBLE 79
wished to return to the land of their fathers
by contributions from the royal treasury, and
even by restoring such of the sacred vessels
of the former temple as could be found. To
the number of about fifty thousand they re
turned. Doubtless as they set forth upon their
journey the mountains and hills broke forth
before them into singing and all the trees of
the fields clapped their hands. They found
Jerusalem a waste and the land desolate, yet
when the season of the Feast of the Taberna
cles was come, an altar had been reared on
the spot where had stood the altar of Solomon.
But so severe was their struggle to win a live
lihood from a reluctant soil that it was seven
teen years before the building of the Temple
began in earnest.
In 520 B.C. the great work was undertaken
with determination: Haggai and Zechariah
being the prophets who encouraged the
laborers. The Temple was completed in 516,
and fifty years later, when the hearts of the
people grew faithless, Malachi predicted a day
of judgment and the coming of Elijah to
purify the nation.

80 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
The wretched condition of affairs in Jeru
salem was known to the Jews in Babylon.
In the spring of 458 B.C. a company of about
seventeen hundred men, besides women and
children, set out for the home land under the
leadership of Ezra the scribe. Soon after his
arrival he caused to be read to the people,
during a national assembly, the Book of the
Law, i.e., the legislative portions of the Pen
tateuch, which had been compiled and elabo
rated by the priestly school in Babylon. Thir
teen years later Nehemiah, the cupbearer of
Artaxerxes, requested and received the com
mission of Governor of Judaea. In the follow
ing year 444, the people bound themselves by an
oath to observe the Book of the Law, even as
their fathers in the good old days under Josiah
had sworn to obey the Deuteronomic code.
The commanding authority now given to
the Law permanently determined the legalistic
character of the national religion. Naturally
the supremacy of legalism created a body
of priestly literature which reinterpreted the
whole history of the chosen people and gave
us the final form in which the Old Testa-

THE BIBLE 81
ment narratives have come down to us. We
have considered the documents " J " and " E,"
which gave us the early history of the people
in the free prophetic spirit, and the document
"D," comprising the Deuteronomic code. We
now have reached the period when a new nar
rative, known to scholars as " P," that is, the
priestly account of Israel's early history, as
sumes its final form. Its purpose is to tell of
the origins of the ceremonial institutions and
of the law. It recounts, in the first chapter of
Genesis, the divine institution of the Sabbath,
it dweUs on the origin of the rite of circum
cision, it furnishes a dramatic setting in the
scene at Mount Sinai for all priestly laws as
found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. In
the second half of the Book of Joshua it de
scribes the allotment of the land of Canaan to
the different tribes. The style of this narra
tive is stately and its conception of God is
most noble, as can be seen in reading the
opening verses of Genesis. It was not all writ
ten by one hand ; later additions were made,
but the early history of Israel was reshaped
into practically its present form somewhere

82 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
between 430 and 330 b.c. Thus the first
chapters of Genesis were written in a late
period of the nation's life.

The Night of Legalism
Out of this same priestly atmosphere came
First and Second Chronicles, and the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah. This period, which has
justly been called the night of legalism, marks
a distinct descent from the great day of the
prophets. From Moses to Jeremiah the moral
law was placed above ritualistic observance.
The supreme ideal was a righteous nation.
With Ezra we pass from Mosaism to Judaism,
when the ceremonial law was elevated to a
level with the Decalogue, and an aspiration for
a holy church displaced the ancient hope of a
righteous nation. Judaism soon degenerated
into Phariseeism, the scribes sat in the seat
of the prophets, and utterly failed to under
stand their freedom and moral elevation.1
1 I am not unaware that eminent critics give less import
ance to the influence of the Babylonish Captivity upon Jewish
religious thought than has been credited in the foregoing

THE BIBLE 83
The encasing of the soul of Israel in the
hard and narrow sheU of legalism did not,
however, pass without a protest. Especially
did the law which commanded the putting-
away of foreign wives evoke strong disap
proval. All Jews did not look upon aHens as
hated of Jehovah. One broad-minded, gentle
soul, who could not storm Hke a prophet, chose
a surer way of rebuking the intense fanati
cism of the time by writing an imperishable
idyl, telling the story of Ruth, a Moabitess,
who had been received in the days of the
fathers into the Hebrew commonwealth, and
through the grace of Jehovah had been an
ancestress of David himself. The truth of the
universal love of God, here embodied in so
charming a tale, must have entered into many
lowly doors and done much to mitigate the
intense hatred of foreigners.
The fierceness of this disdain finds expres
sion in the five chapters (9-14) which are
attached to the prophecies of Zechariah. They
pages, and that different dates are assigned to some books,
but I think the weight of authority sanctions the interpreta
tion I have given.

84 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
are not the words of that prophet, as most
scholars agree, but came out of the period
(300-280 B.C.) of unrest following the inva
sion of Alexander the Great. All the East was
being subdued by the leaven of Hellenism.
Judaism was fighting for existence, and the
bitterness of its hatred of foreign influences
preserved its life. Here is a characteristic out
burst of the feeling of those days : " And this
shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will
smite all the people that have fought against
Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away
while they stand upon their feet, and their
eyes shall consume away in their holes, and
their tongues shall consume away in their
mouth." Before the spirit of prophecy finally died
out of Jewish legahsm, it flamed up in a most
unexpected expression. Professor Cornill, to
whom I am indebted for much that has gone
before, declares that, after reading the Book
of Jonah at least a hundred times, he cannot
even now read it without deep emotion. " This
apparently trivial book," he says, " is one of
the deepest and grandest ever written." To

THE BIBLE 85
interpret the book as a Hteral record of facts
is to make both the book and ourselves ab
surd. It is either an allegory, or a satirical
romance. If the former, Jonah represents Is
rael, bigoted and selfish, called to declare
God's will to the Gentiles. Failing to fulfill
its world-wide mission, the nation is swallowed
up in the Babylonish Captivity, and belched
forth again. Even then Judah cannot believe
that God has any destiny but destruction for
the Gentiles. If the book is a satire, its essen
tial meaning is the same. It represents Israel
as too narrow to comprehend the wideness of
God's love, and the humanity and piety of
other peoples, being content to sulk by the
withered gourd, because the Gentiles are not
devoted to destruction. VI
Contest with Hellenism
Israel in its varied history had battled with
the nature-worship of Canaan, the idolatry of
surrounding nations, and the imposing pagan
ism of Babylon. Its fiercest and most dra
matic contest, however, was with Hellenism.

86 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Alexander had overrun the known world with
his armies. Upon his death in 323 B.C., at the
age of thirty-four, a struggle for authority
ensued which divided the empire into four
kingdoms, Judaea becoming an Egyptian prov
ince. For a hundred years the Jews acknow
ledged the sovereignty of the Ptolemies. In
198, to their unfeigned delight, they became
part of the kingdom of Syria. The presence of
the Greek in their land both charmed and ex
asperated the Hebrew. To some the extensive
culture, the brilliant social Hfe, the abounding
joy of this western people proved irresistible,
and they hastened to change their names from
Hebrew into Greek, renouncing the austere
rites of their country and assimilating foreign
thought and manners. Antiochus IV, mis
taking the surface movement for the drift of
the whole nation, rashly tried to obliterate the
Jewish faith, and even ventured to sacrifice
swine to Zeus on the altar of Jehovah. Under
the Maccabees the unconquerable spirit of the
Jews flamed forth, and for a brief period
Judah was freed from the oppressor.
In the heat of the contest the Book of

THE BIBLE 87
Daniel was written. The opening section is a
call to have faith in God, while the second
predicts the triumph of the Kingdom. It is
history written in the form of prophecy. The
actual author speaks in the name of a person
who had lived long before.
After this memorable utterance, two in
ferior books appeared: Ecclesiastes, reflect
ing the dominant mood of the corrupt Greek
period, which held all things to be vanity, yet
chnging through doubt and despair to faith ;
and Esther, a romance describing the unbend
ing pride of the Jew, his faith in Providence,
and his quenchless spirit of revenge, which
exulted that seventy-five thousand of the na
tion's enemies were put to the sword.
Passing thus in hurried review the main
events in the development of the Jewish peo
ple and the literary landmarks they set up, we
must not omit the Book of Psalms, a collec
tion of the religious lyrics of the Hebrew peo
ple from David to the revolution under the
Maccabees, voicing the passions and experi
ences of nearly eight and one half centuries.
Formerly it was believed that David, the sweet

88 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
singer of Israel, had composed most of the
Psalter. Probably not more than a dozen
psalms came from his lyre. The collection, as
it has come down to us, is practically the hymn-
book of the Second Temple. It is an anthology
of the sacred lyrics of the Jews, and preserves
for us an invaluable memorial of the spiritual
struggle and aspiration of a wonderful people,
covering nearly the whole period of their ex
istence as a nation. Proverbs, also, is an as
semblage of the crystallized practical wisdom
of the sages of Israel. They are more interest
ing and valuable to us than to our fathers,
for we see in them, not the keen common sense
of Solomon, but the gathered wisdom of eight
centuries. As we have journeyed with priest and pro
phet down the centuries of Hebrew history, we
have noted the growth of the majestic concep
tions of prophetism from Moses to the unknown
seer of the Exile. In Ezra and Nehemiah we
find the priest and the prophet, ritualist and
moralist, meeting upon even terms. With the
growing power of the priest, the vision of the
prophet failed. Elaborate ceremonialism and

THE BIBLE 89
the free spirit of prophecy did not agree. In
the turmoil of the Greek period, Phariseeism
replaced Judaism, and a further descent was
marked. It was surely a decline from Isaiah's
message of a Holy Nation to the Holy Church
of Ezra. Later, for Holy Church the Pharisees
substituted Holy Ego. In such extreme legal
ism the spirit of prophecy was smothered. Yet
God makes the bigotry, as well as the wrath, of
man to praise Him. We must not forget that
the impenetrable shell of Phariseeism preserved
the soul of the nation from the disintegrating
influence of Hellenism, until one should come
who was both prophet and priest, and who ele
vated the spirit forever above the letter when
he declared that " neither in this mountain nor
in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. But
the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth." VII
The New Testament
The reconstruction of the New Testament
has not been so thoroughly accomplished as

90 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
the remoulding of the Old. The traditional
view that the four gospels were written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is now pretty
generally abandoned. If the first genera
tion of Christians left any written records of
our Lord's life, none has come down to us
in its original form. Mark is considered to
be the oldest of the gospels. The author of
this book, probably John Mark, wrote down
the evangelical story as he had received it from
eye witnesses, from common report, and from
such written accounts as were extant, thus put
ting in permanent form a general scheme of
the ministry of Jesus. Our Gospel of Matthew
is a revised edition of Mark, enriched by the
insertion of material drawn from other sources,
prominent among them being a collection of
the Sayings of Jesus, coming not improbably
from the pen of Matthew himself. The Gospel
of Luke assumed its present shape by combining
parts of Mark with parts of other documents.
The substance of the first three gospels belongs
to the period just prior to the destruction of
Jerusalem. All scholars admit that in the
fourth gospel the life and words of Jesus are

THE BIBLE 91
much colored by the reflections and personality
of the author. The great body of conservative
critics places the book at the end of the first
century. The more radical and smaller school
dates all of the gospels so late as to give them
trifling historical value.
The chief sources of our knowledge of the
faith of the early church regarding Jesus and
the meaning of his work consist : (1) in the great
epistles of Paul, which antedate our earliest
gospel — Galatians being written about the
year 57, First and Second Corinthians in the
same year, Romans issuing a year later ; (2)
the material upon which our present gospels
are constructed, which came from those whom
Luke describes as " eye-witnesses and ministers
of the word " ; and (3) our gospels in the pre
sent form, which represent the faith of the
church in the generation succeeding the death
of the apostles. That faith has also received
noble symbolic expression in the Book of
Revelation, written to sustain the sinking cour
age of the church at the time she was suffering
persecution under Domitian, about the year
93. The dates of the various books is a ques-

92 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
tion to be debated in a classroom, and does
not belong to a popular discourse. It is suffi
cient to say that new light on the structure
of the New Testament brings out more clearly
the strong, wonderful outlines of our Lord's
character, and reveals the growing experience
of the church in his power as Saviour.

IV
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST

IV
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
Our theme this evening is the person of
Jesus Christ. We shall not attempt the ambi
tious task of proving his divinity, but shall
seek rather to indicate the modern method of
approach to the mystery of his nature, and
to interpret if possible the new light which,
hidden from our fathers, shines upon us in the
face of the Master. We tread a path back to
him such as has been trodden by no previous
generation, and the new approach discovers
hitherto unknown features in him who is the
central figure of the world. If you have walked
along the shore at night when the moon was
hanging low in the horizon over the sea, you
have noticed that a pathway of shimmering
silvery Hght led from you across the interven
ing waters to the Queen of the Night. As you
proceed, the trail of Hght changes with your
advance. Waves that a few moments before
were bathed in splendor are now lost in gloom.

96 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Before and behind there is darkness, but ever
between you and the glory that is in the sky
stretches the bridge of light. This experience
images the relation of Christ to his church.
Men of the first century looked upon the
Light of the World, and between their needs
and him there gleamed a shining way. Men
of the twelfth century gazed upon him from
a very different angle. The way that had been
glorious and clear to the believers of the first
century was in utter darkness to the Chris
tians of the Middle Ages, but, lo, a silvery path
led from him to their feet. The Christian of
the twentieth century does not stand upon
the spot where the fathers stood. He contem
plates the Master from a fresh point of vision.
Where his fathers saw Hght, to him there is
darkness. He does not come to the lordship of
Jesus along the way of the miraculous con
ception, the testimony of the angels and shep
herds, the wonderful works of healing, or the
proofs of the resurrection. That approach is
shadowy, but he has his own clear path back
to the Master, and it is not less glorious than
that which rejoiced the former generations.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 97
It was stated in the first lecture that what
ever new Hght has come to us regarding spir
itual realities has shone either through our
better comprehension of God's methods of
creating and sustaining nature and humanity,
or through our deeper insight into man him
self. Evolution and Personality are the master
words in modern thinking. It was also noted
that the new theology may be divided into
two schools : one approaching rehgious themes
along the leadings of the evolutionary hypothe
sis, the other emphasizing personality. Upon
both of these highways we shall walk this
evening. I
The New Approach through Evolution
The Christian evolutionist begins with the
assumption that God's method in nature and
history is progressive. The divine revelation,
therefore, must be progressive, for the Infin
ite can make himself known in the finite only
by successive disclosures. Such an ever enlarg
ing manifestation of the nature and purpose
of the Creator there has been. First came the
whirling star dust, then the habitable world,

98 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
then the earth green with vegetable life and
teeming with Hving creatures. FinaUy man
appeared, the highest form of life upon the
planet, and the culmination of an aeonian pro
cess. In each advancing step of creation more
of the power and wisdom of God shone through
his works. With the advent of man physical
evolution seems to have ceased. Progress since
his coming has been largely human progress.
Man's improvement has not been chiefly phys
ical, but inteUectual and spiritual. He has
developed as a person, increasing in his per
ception of truth and becoming more responsive
to the subtile pleadings of obligation. He has
risen superior to the world of instinct and en
tered a higher sphere where reason persuades.
He has exchanged the sovereignty of impulse
for the commands of conscience. In this higher
stratum in which his mind lives the authority
of force gives place to the authority of love,
and animal satisfactions become subordinate
to spiritual ideals and quenchless aspirations.
Man has passed the Hmits of the physical and
has been born into the loftier world of the
spiritual. Physically he is the last and finest

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 99
product of ages of material development;
spirituaUy he is a child in that vast world of
freedom, joy, love, righteousness into which
he has been ushered. It is not incredible,
therefore, that, having begun in this new
realm of the spiritual, he should grow up into
the fullness of his stature. " So in man's self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendor ever on before
In that eternal circle life pursues."
It is behevable that the house having been
completed, the children born into the house
wiU grow up into manhood and womanhood,
and wiU learn obedience to the father and the
art of living together.
Or, to state the thought in another form:
God, having begun a disclosure of himself,
first through nature and then through the con
stitution and history of man, will continue his
self-manifestation until all the fullness of his
being that can be revealed in human conditions
is made known. This perfected humanity is
the kingdom of God. It is a universal incar
nation of God in mankind. This divine hu-

100 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
manity is clearly promised in the Scriptures
and has been the dream of prophetic minds.
Christianity furthermore teaches that to bring
about this universal incarnation, God has incar
nated himself in an individual. It declares that
the Spirit of God, who moved upon the waters
of primeval chaos, and who has revealed him
self as spiritual light in every rational soul,
took full possession of one being, who was so
pure that through him shone the glory of the
Godhead, and so righteous that in him the
divine will was fulfilled.
It is sometimes claimed that the complete
man should come at the end and not in the midst
of the process. But it is perfectly scientific
that a single type should first appear as the
pattern and head of the humanity to be pro
duced. A vine-dresser in Concord, wishing to
produce a sweeter and more luscious grape
than any which grew in New England, made
some twenty-two hundred experiments. Fin
ally he crossed the wUd grape with the Isa
bella, and was rewarded by a grape of such
value that it has become permanent in our
markets. Other men, wishing to have this new

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 101
variety in their vineyards, were not so foolish
as to repeat Mr. Bull's experiments, hoping to
reach the same result. On the contrary, they
possessed themselves of a cutting from the
original vine, whose life was thus perpetuated
and multiplied until the Concord grape is
upon all our tables. It is by the production
and perpetuation of superior varieties that the
vegetable and animal kingdoms are improved.
By this same method is a new humanity be
ing created and made dominant. A man ap
pears unusual in excellence, a Moses, a Plato,
a Confucius. Others emulate his virtues, but
not afar off and apart from him. They draw
near with open minds to receive light and
power. The spiritual energy of the teacher re
produces his character in his disciples. They
are conformed to his likeness, and the world
is enriched with a new order of men. By this
method Christianity expects to cover the earth
with new creatures. In the fullness of time is
born the typical spiritual man, a variant from
the prevailing type. About him gather those
who feel the spell of his greatness. They do
more than imitate him. They put on his char-

102 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
acter ; they receive his spiritual energy; they are
engrafted into his being, and are transformed
into his image. Thus an original and distinct
type of man is produced, a new humanity of
which this archetypal man is the head.
But in what sense do we call Jesus the per
fect man ? There is no evidence that he was
the ideal of physical beauty. Neither have we
reason to assert that his mind was stored with
the learning of the world and that he was
complete in every mental faculty and grace.
We hold that he was perfect as a son of the
Father, and perfect as a leader of other men
into sonship. There was no flaw in his attitude
towards God and man. No fault was in his
spirit. He was complete in all those moods
and dispositions of mind which are acceptible
to God, and out of which naturally flow those
activities and refinements which perfect hu
man character. "Nature through all time,"
says Le Conte, " struggled ever upwards until
it attained life in organisms. The organic king
dom then struggled upwards until it attained
rational life in man. So humanity struggled
upwards until it attained divine life in Christ."

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 103
Or, to state the truth in another form, the Hf e
of God which is partially revealed in nature,
and which burns in some degree as spiritual fire
in every human soul, flamed forth at last in all
the glory that can shine through an individ
ual. This typical man conquers the world by
reproducing his character in a type of men
who shall inherit the earth.
If Jesus is highest in holiness and spiritual
elevation among men, it is certainly rational
to speak of him as " God manifest in the
flesh." As we know the Creator only through
his works, we shall receive our clearest insight
through his master-piece. The material uni
verse declares something of the power and
wisdom of its Maker; but the spirit of man
interprets, comprehends, dominates the world
of matter. The moral personality of man is a
loftier symbol than the physical world through
which to understand the Deity. There is no
thing which has so much of God in it as the
spirit of man. The spirit of man at its best
is necessarily God's clearest manifestation of
himself. No one of us will dispute the state
ment that humanity is at its best in the

104 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
spirit of Jesus Christ. Through him we get
our most unclouded insight into the divine
character. He who is highest in humanity is
our guide, interpreter, and lord, for we must
love and obey the highest when we see it.
Being the highest in humanity, he must be
the supreme revelation of God in the flesh.
Following this line of reasoning, how un
satisfactory it is to speak of the Eternal as
"Force," or as " Infinite Energy" ! These are
terms drawn from inanimate creation. Spirit
is the more comprehensive word. It is a no
bler and more significant word, and of spirit,
through our own consciousness, we have a more
intimate knowledge than of force. When we
call God a spirit, we are applying to the In
comprehensible One our most exalted symbol.
He is more than force ; he is not less than
spirit. When we have interpreted him through
the purest, holiest personality in history, we
have employed our best to think of the High
est. Into the infinite depths we have looked
with our clearest lens, and the light which
reaches us through that flawless medium can
not be ignored or denied.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 105
But while we acknowledge Jesus to be the
head of humanity and his spirit to be our loft
iest symbol of the divine, we are less anxious
than were our fathers to prove his separate-
ness from humanity. We certainly refuse to
debate concerning the same substance or like
substance. We realize that we do not know
the substance of a blade of grass, much less
do we pretend to distinguish between the sub
stance of spiritual beings. We find that na
ture is loath to draw hard-and-fast lines. The
mineral kingdom shades into the vegetable, the
vegetable into the animal. There is a wider
difference between the brain of a Shakespeare
and the brain of a Hottentot than between
the cerebral development of the lowest savage
and that of an ourang-outang. What we fail
to do in the natural world cannot with certainty
be performed in the spiritual.
" Draw if thou canst the mystic line
Severing rightly his from thine, —
Which is human, which divine ? "
All we can affirm with assurance is that dif
ference in degree makes ultimately a differ
ence in kind. Christ as the head of a new hu-

106 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
manity is in another order from that lower
kingdom whose headship was in Adam. He
is the first born among many brethren. He is
humanity realized, and God revealed in human
condition. II
The Uniqueness of the Personality of Jesus.
Let us turn from a consideration of the
unique place which Jesus holds in the evolu
tion of the race to contemplate the mystery
of his personality. The mood in which most
men to-day study his life is very different from
the characteristic mood of a few generations
ago. Our fathers were attracted by the super
natural portents attending his birth ; they were
amazed at his sovereign power over nature and
demons ; they believed that the resurrection of
Lazarus, and his own physical ascension, pro
claimed him Lord of life and of death. To this
generation the miraculous is not a help to
faith, but is rather a hindrance. It adds to our
problems by making us question the credibil
ity of the records. We believe in the mighty
works of Jesus because we believe in him.
Such a tremendous personality must have had

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 107
extraordinary and beneficent power over the
infirm. Yet few acknowledge his spiritual
preeminence through the wonder of his mir
acles. Jesus himself appears to have wished
the evidences of his authority to rest upon
other grounds than the mighty works. " Be-
Heve me that I am in the Father, and the
Father in me ; or else believe me for the very
works' sake."
Without raising the question of his miracu
lous power, we ask, What was there in the per
son of Jesus which compels us to bow before
him and acknowledge him as Lord and Master?
We cannot completely answer this question,
for criticism has no spectrum to separate the
colors composing the Light of the World.
But there are some truthful affirmations to
be made, which help us to comprehend the
uniqueness of Jesus.
Note first the phenomenal clearness and
permanency of his consciousness of God's
presence and character.
We have reason to believe that while ani
mals are conscious they are not self-conscious.
In man we find a sense of selfhood, a feeling

108 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
of freedom and of moral responsibility, which
give him a realization of his individuality.
Mingling with this perception of selfhood there
is in most men a perception of God. A multi
tude can say with Webster that the greatest
thought which enters their minds is the thought
of their personal responsibility to Almighty
God. To the saints there come luminous mo
ments when their minds are pervaded with a
sense of the reality of the spiritual world. God
becomes more real to them than the sensuous
world. He is exceedingly sweet and precious
unto them. They perceive his goodness en
folding all things. All the leaves of their ex
perience are bound together in one volume
of love. An elevated joy surges through their
being. To the spiritually gifted these hours of
exalted feeling and of penetrating insight are
not rare. In such a mood Isaiah saw the world
filled with God's glory, and Whittier wrote
" The Eternal Goodness."
And even to minds that are not distinct
ively religious these intuitions are granted in
moments when the fountains of the great deep
are broken up. St. Gaudens, writing in the

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 109
midst of his grief over his friend Bion's death,
said : " We know nothing, but a deep convic
tion came over me like a flash that at the bot
tom of it all, whatever it is, the Mystery must
be beneficent. It does not seem as if the bot
tom of all were something malevolent, and the
thought was a great comfort." Mr. E. L. God-
kin, the late editor of the " Nation," had little
of the mystic in his nature, yet in the time of
sorrow the vision splendid was not withheld
from him. " I know," he wrote, " that things
happen for the best, and that our lives are or
dered by a beneficent hand. When my little
darling left her father's house for the last time
on Friday, I felt assured that somewhere a
wiser and better father awaited her, and that
in his hands she would one day become all,
more than all, that I rashly and fondly hoped
to see her in mine."
This sense of the reality and goodness of
God, which comes to most men in the profound
experiences of joy or sorrow, and which comes
to the supreme prophetic spirits in larger meas
ure and at more frequent intervals, was to
Jesus a permanent possession. The presence

110 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
of God was as real to him as were the moun
tains round about Jerusalem. He lived and
moved and had his being in a vivid realization
of the Divine Fatherhood. His vision of the
Eternal Goodness was not an intuition born
of an exalted mood ; it was a clear and steady
spiritual perception. He did not, like others,
mount into this sphere of knowledge in golden
moments, only to sink back to a lower level of
thought and feeling. In this lofty zone he
dwelt habitually. God-consciousness apparently
marks as distinct an advance over self-con
sciousness as self -consciousness rises above mere
animal-consciousness. Dr. R. M. Bucke, de
scribing what he calls cosmic consciousness, but
which I prefer to call God-consciousness, writes:
" Cosmic consciousness in its more striking in
stances is not simply an expansion or extension
of the self-conscious mind with which we are
familiar, but the superaddition of a function
as distinct from any possessed by the average
man as self-consciousness is distinct from any
function possessed by the higher animals. . . .
The prime characteristic of cosmic conscious
ness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is,

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 111
of the life and order of the universe. Along
with the consciousness of the cosmos there oc
curs an intellectual enlightenment which alone
would place the individual on a new plane of ex
istence — would make him almost a member of
a new species. To this is added a state of moral
exaltation, an indescribable feeling of eleva
tion, elation, and joyousness, and a quicken
ing of the moral sense, which is fully as strik
ing and more important than is the enhanced
intellectual power. With these come what may
be caUed a sense of immortahty, a conscious
ness of eternal life, not a conviction that he
shall have this, but the consciousness that he
has it already." This superadded conscious
ness of the order and beneficence of the cos
mos, which has come in rapt moments of vis
ion to many minds, was in Jesus a sovereign
and habitual consciousness. Purified from
every element of hysteria, it was in him a sane,
healthy, unclouded conviction of spiritual
reality. Moreover, this Divine Reality which he be
held in abiding vision was not merely an en
compassing presence, or the moral governor

112 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
of the universe. To Jesus, God was ever the
Father. Not the depth of God's wisdom or the
vastness of his power, but his inexhaustible
solicitude was constantly in Jesus' thought.
This was not because our Lord was exempt
from hardship, and enjoyed exceptional favors.
He was an hungered, weary, and depressed, yet
he trusted in the Father's care. In those last
dark hours which tested his soul to the utter
most his faith failed not. Even in the treach
ery of Judas, the malignity of the priests,
the ingratitude of the multitude, he saw the
Father's hand holding the cup to his lips. He
felt to the full the enormity of the power of
the world's sin, his own spiritual isolation, the
adamantine hardness of the nation's heart, the
frailty of his disciples, the seemingly over
whelming defeat which had met his efforts to
establish the kingdom ; yet in the very hour
of apparently irretrievable disaster he insti
tuted a memorial to celebrate his victory. It
was as though Napoleon amid the rout of
Waterloo had requested his staff to rear on
that field a monument to his triumph over the
allied nations. In the blackest moment of his

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 113
tragedy Jesus delivered his spirit into the
Father's hand. His knowledge of God was so
comprehensive and intimate, so superior to
that of the greatest of the prophets, that he
declared : " No one knoweth who the Father
is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him."
AUied to this sense of the divine father
hood, and growing out of it, was the realization
of his own sonship. Jesus conceived himself
to be Hving a life of implicit trust and perfect
obedience. He knew the Father's will and did
always the things which pleased him. He
lived the life of a true son. He was conscious
of a life of perfect spiritual union with God.
This conviction of sonship gave him his vic
tory over Satan in the wilderness, and sus
tained him in Gethsemane and on the cross.
The present generation of Christian think
ers is the first since apostolic days which has
asserted that Jesus is the Son of God on ethi
cal in preference to metaphysical grounds.
It is maintained that by the clearness of his
knowledge, and the perfectness of his obedi
ence, Jesus achieved and demonstrated a spirit-

114 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
ual union with God which was that of a perfect
son to the Father. He believed himself to be
identified with God in will and affection ; and
his unfailing purpose for his disciples was that
they should love as God loves, pity as God
pities, forgive as God forgives, and serve as
God serves, so that they too should be the sons
of the Highest. It was this unbroken con
formity of purpose and feeling with the nature
and will of the perfect Father in heaven that
the disciples beheld in Jesus, and the percep
tion confirmed their faith in him and his mis
sion. Because of this obedience they believed
that God had highly exalted him and given
him a name above every name. We know too
little about what is deepest in man, and what
is deepest in the universe, to talk wisely of
the likeness of substance of the soul of Jesus
with the substance of the Spirit of God, and
his unlikeness to the substance of the spirit
which is in man. We are on much surer
ground when we shift from the metaphysical
sonship which our fathers affirmed so dogmat
ically to an ethical union, as of father and son,
subsisting between God and Jesus, a relation-

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 115
ship sustained by abundant evidence. This is
much safer than to talk in learned ignorance
of the consubstantiality of Christ's nature with
that of God. A complete spiritual union indi
cates an ontological oneness. We can see the
former, but cannot prove the latter. Yet that
God was in Christ is the corner stone of faith
to-day, as it has been in all the Christian cen
turies. We beheve that the mind correctly
reasons when it concludes that the light which
was in him could have come only from the
Eternal Fountain. We believe that the true
deduction to be drawn from such a character
as his is that he was Light of Light ; the ful
ness of God, living in human conditions.
The approach to .Christ's nature and place
in the spiritual economy through the con
templation of his unshadowed fellowship with
the Father is a surer way than the commoner
method of arguing his divinity by affirming
his sinlessness. When one undertakes to prove
such a negative as sinlessness the task is enor
mous. The data are lacking. There are thirty
silent years. Of the period of his public min
istry only a few incidents have come down to

116 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
us. Christ himself has nowhere unequivocally
asserted his absolute perfectness in every
thought and word and deed. His impenitence
is indeed most anomalous. It is contrary to
the experience of all the saints. The more
commanding and intimate the sense of a holy
God the more keenly does the pure soul real
ize its unworthiness. Yet from the lips of the
one who dwelt most constantly in the ineffable
glory of the divine presence there escapes no
cry of repentance, no petition for forgiveness.
This certainly is unique in the records of holi
ness. But our philosophy does not compass all
the depths of personaHty. It may be that the
very majesty of the sense of divine love and tri
umph, which was pecuhar to Jesus, swaUowed
up regret for any momentary aberration which
might have occurred in moments of childish
immaturity, or of physical exhaustion. We
cannot prove that every deed of his through
out his whole earthly career was plumb with
the straight line of duty, or that no rebellious
thought was for a single moment cherished.
It is hard to demonstrate that, in that eternal
circle life pursues, he did not swerve for a

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 117
single instant from the centre. Our inference
from his impenitence may simply indicate our
ignorance of the workings of a mind that re
posed perfectly in a knowledge of God's fa
therly love. Christ's sinlessness may be a fact,
but the assertion is an inference from insuffi
cient data, and the issue is too momentous to
rest upon an unstable deduction. We are on
different ground, however, when we maintain
that, whenever we get a glimpse into Christ's
inmost soul, we find an abiding consciousness
that he is living a life of trust and obedience,
living as a son should live amid the bewilder
ments and temptations of the world.
To live the life of a son in the Father's
world, and under the conditions which the
Father appoints, this is the perfect life. A life
of complete trust and steady obedience, which
pours itself out to the uttermost in loving serv
ice, cannot be surpassed in the sphere of re
ligion. Beyond this there is nothing higher
or more divine.
Jesus had a unique sense of mission. Others
have beHeved that they had a divine call to a
specific task. The prophets felt that the bur-

118 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
den of the Lord was upon them. Paul sought
to apprehend that for which he had been ap
prehended. Bismarck was convinced that he
was raised up for the unification of Germany.
But the sense of mission in Jesus was different
from the call of others. He felt that he stood
in a relationship to God into which no other
had been called, and upon him there rested a
weight which had burdened no other shoul
ders. He was the Messiah. He f ulfiUed in him
self the righteousness after which the holy
ones in Israel had yearned. Moreover that
righteousness he could communicate. He could
save others by an impartation of himself. He
came to found a kingdom. He was arrested
upon the charge of claiming the title of king,
and the accusation he did not disavow. Upon
this charge he was convicted and sentenced,
and over the cross to explain and vindicate
his act, Pilate wrote : " The King of the Jews."
Some one has weU said, "Jesus did not die
for a metaphor." He was persuaded that his
mission was to establish a kingdom. But how
marvelous was his conception of this kingdom !
It was to be world-wide in extent. Its monarch,

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 119
unlike other founders of empires, would not be
the head of a long dynasty of kings, but in his
own person would reign forever and ever. Not
only would he be supreme in authority and
power, but every subject would be conformed
to the character of the king. Not only would
he be sovereign over the conduct of men, but
his personal influence would lead captive every
thought and bring into obedience every emo
tion. So conscious was Jesus of absolute sov
ereignty under God that he would brook no
compromise. If the sacred books contradicted
his teachings, he abrogated them. He de
manded unconditional surrender. " Leave all,"
he said, " and follow me ! " " Whoso loveth
father or mother more than me is not worthy
of me ! " To reject him was doom and outer
darkness. To receive and obey him was to en
ter into life eternal. President King has well
said : " Jesus has such God-consciousness and
such sense of mission as would topple any other
brain into insanity, but only keeps him sweet,
normal, rational. ... In the very act of the
most stupendous self-assertion, he can still de
clare himself to be preeminently the meek and

120 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
lowly one, and can carry our conviction both
of his meekness and of his power to give rest
to all. For my own part, I cannot see that the
world offers anywhere a comparable phenom
enon." Ill
Jesus meets our Religious Needs
We have approached the person of Christ
along the road of the evolutionary hypothesis,
and have affirmed that it is reasonable to be
lieve that God, having begun to reveal himself,
imperfectly in nature and more perfectly in
man, would complete his work and manifest
himself in perfected humanity. Jesus is the
type and the creator of the sons of God. As
the supreme personality he is God's clearest
voice to men. He is the disclosure of what
man can be, and of what God is in character
and purpose. We have also studied Christ's
own consciousness of himself and have ob
tained some glimpses of its uniqueness. An
other avenue of approach is through our own
personalities. We validate his mission by re
cognizing his ability to satisfy our profound-
est spiritual needs.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 121
Man is a thinker. He finds himself in a
mysterious and often terrible universe. He
receives cruel blows and drinks deep of the
cup of bitter disappointment. In passion and
often in despair he flings his challenge into
the darkness. What is the meaning of life?
What is the nature of that Reality which at one
moment fondles him and in another breaks
him down ? What is the goal of Hf e ? What is
the significance of sorrow ? Whither lead the
gates of death ? One can endure any severity
of discipline, if only he has a reasonable ex
planation of its significance. These words of
Chesterton win my hearty assent : " There are
some people — and I am one of them — who
think that the most important thing about a
man is stUl his view of the universe. We think
that for a landlady considering a lodger it is
important to know his income, but stiU more
important to know his philosophy. We think
that for a general about to fight it is import
ant to know the enemy's numbers, but stiU
more important to know the enemy's philo
sophy. We think the question is not whether
the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but

122 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
whether in the long run anything else affects
them." What a man really believes about him
self and his destiny, and the nature of the
forces which work upon him, is of the utmost
moment. To man, the thinker, Jesus has given
an interpretation of the nature of God, the
dignity of humanity, the meaning of pain,
which carries conviction because it is the most
rational that can be given, meeting aU the pro-
f oundest necessities of our beings. He puts the
puzzle of life together so that it makes sense.
Therefore we believe his insight to be true.
Man is a Hving will. He energizes towards
ends which he conceives to be worthy. Jesus
meets man, the toiler, with the noblest object
of endeavor which can possibly be presented
to the human wfll. Seek ye first the sovereignty
of God in your own lives, and in the Hves of
others, and aU needful things shall be added
unto you. No more inclusive, exalted, and
satisfying goal could be offered than this. It
awakens all the latent chivalry of the spirit.
Man has a heart. He feels his dependence up
on a Power greater than himself; he is conscious
of coming far short of his ideals; he suffers un-

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 123
der a sense of defeat in his spiritual warfare.
He needs a Comforter, a Redeemer ; One whose
love wiU not let him go ; One who will forgive
his sins and help him toward righteousness.
Henry Ward Beecher has expressed in words
which wfll become classic his finding of God
and the meaning of life through Christ : " I
know not what the tablets of eternity have
written down, but I think, when I stand in
Zion and before God, the brightest thing
which I shall look back upon will be the blessed
morning in May when it pleased God to reveal
to my wandering soul the idea that it was his
nature to love a man in his sins for the sake
of helping him out of them ; that he did not
do it out of compliment to Christ, or to a law,
or a plan of salvation, but from the fullness
of his great heart ; that he was not a being made
mad by sin, but sorry ; that he was not furious
with wrath towards the sinner, but pitied him.
. . . And when I found that Jesus had such
a disposition, and that when his disciples did
wrong, he drew them closer to him than he
did before ; and when pride and jealousy and
rivalry and all vulgar and worldly feelings

124 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
rankled in their bosoms, he opened his heart
to them as medicine to heal their infirmities;
when I found that it was Christ's nature to
lift men out of weakness to strength, out of
impurity to goodness, out of everything low
and debasing to superiority, I felt that I had
found a God. I shall never forget the feelings
with which I walked forth that May morning.
The golden pavements will never feel to my feet
as then the grass felt to them ; and the sing
ing of the birds in the woods — for I roamed
in the woods — was cacophonous to the sweet
music of my thoughts ; and there were no forms
in the universe which seemed to me graceful
enough to represent the Being, a conception
of whose character had just dawned upon my
mind. I felt when I had, with the Psalmist,
called upon the heavens, the earth, the moun
tains, the streams, the floods, the birds, the
beasts, and universal being, to praise God,
that I called upon nothing that could praise
him enough for the revelation of such a nature
as that in the Lord Jesus Christ."
Multitudes have accepted Christ as the reve
lation of God because in his deeds of service

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 125
and his spirit of grace they behold the God
after whom their hearts yearn. They make
the words of Arthur Hallam their own: "I
Hke Christianity because it fits into aU the
folds of one's nature."
Jesus not only interprets God, he brings
God near. There went out from him an influ
ence that made men think of the eternal. In
him there was a glory that lifted men's thoughts
to a light that is not upon sea or land. If we
hold a diamond in the sun, its fire and beauty
impress us with the worth of the jewel. If in
stead of a diamond, we use a crystal prism,
the wonderful colors revealed cause us to ex
claim on the glories of the light rather than
the beauty of the glass. Moses, Plato, Shake
speare amaze us with the depths and brilliancy
of humanity ; but the flawless purity of Jesus'
soul carries our thoughts immediately beyond
itself to the Light which shone through it. He
surrounded the men who accompanied him with
the atmosphere of the eternal world. " We be
held his glory," said the Apostle, " the glory of
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth." " We behold the light of the glory

126 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
of God in the face of Jesus Christ," writes Paul
out of his own spiritual experience. The King
of Glory will come into the life of the indi
vidual and into the courses of history, if the
gates of truth lift up their heads to admit him.
A mental image held vividly in the mind re
leases the latent energies of the will and quick
ens the flow of the emotions. Truth firmly
grasped by the understanding fills the willing
heart with the spirit of truth. The vision
splendid sends redeeming power into the soul.
When the disciples beheld the glory of God in
the face of Jesus, the spirit and power of God
came upon them. They were baptized with the
spirit of the truth which their wondering minds
had apprehended. New power always is released
among men by new knowledge, whether that
knowledge be of electricity, or of God. God
has been in the hearts of men from the crea
tion, but only when the persuasions of his love
and the mercy of his righteousness were mani
fested in Christ did his strength work more
abundantly, and a new era dawn upon the
earth. Jesus augmented the power of the im
manent God by revealing him, and with the

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 127
new vision there came the added might of the
Spirit of Truth. Thus Christianity has been
the most revolutionary force which has made
for righteousness, peace, and goodness.
Moreover, the religion which sprang from
the activity of Jesus will do for the faithful aU
that religion can be expected to do. We often
lay upon our faith too heavy a burden. We
seem to think that because we are Christians
we should be immune from trouble, and should
be prosperous and happy. We are apt seriously
to question the reality of our spiritual convic
tions when the battle goes against us. Religion
Hke aU the finer influences has its limitations.
Music wiU comfort and inspire men, but it wiU
not plough their fields. Literature will afford
pleasure and instruction, but it wfll not propel
a locomotive. Religion does not add a cubit
to our stature, or extra talents to our minds.
It does not put necessarily a dollar in our
pockets, nor save us from misfortune. Its office
is distinct and circumscribed. It interprets the
meaning of life. It creates ideals and elevates
standards. It declares and strengthens the
highest_ motives. It brings men into those

128 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
moods and dispositions in which the mental
faculties work at their best. It gives myste
rious strength to the will and dauntless courage
to the heart. It saves men from the guilt and
power of sin. It deals directly with the inner
life and only indirectly with conditions. Jesus
will do for the soul that comes within the circle
of his splendor and power all that can be legit
imately required of religion. He proves his
divinity by lifting men into the divine.
In conclusion, let me beg of you not to
make him a problem. Do not let the mystery
of his person become one more vexing ques
tion in your spiritual life. He is not another
problem, but the solution of problems. Con
sider him not as a mystery, but as a key to
the profoundest mysteries. He solves more
problems than he raises. He is not the puzzle
of the world, but the Light of the World.
Whoso follows him shall not walk in darkness,
but has the light of life.
" I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise."

V
GOD AND SALVATION

GOD AND SALVATION
Has the modern mind in aU its searchings
throughout the universe formed a new concep
tion of God? Has it formulated novel argu
ments for his existence ? Has any new Hght
streamed upon us from nature and the per
sonal spirit of man — those two windows by
which humanity looks out into the infinite ?

The Nobler Symbols of God
We may safely affirm that modern science
has furnished us with nobler symbols of the
wisdom and majesty of the Creator than was
known to men of other days. Their snug little
universe, fashioned six thousand years ago by
a fiat of the Almighty, has been enlarged by
measureless diameters. If the Psalmist could
exclaim, " For the Lord is a great God ! " how
much more can we, who have received the mar-

132 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
velous revelations of the telescope and the
microscope ! Our thought is lost in the im
mensities above and below us. No genera
tion has been granted such symbols of the
greatness of God. While the scientists have
enlarged our vision of the wisdom and the
vastness of the Creator, New Testament schol
ars have called our attention to the preemi
nence which Jesus gave to the fatherhood of
God. This new perception has caused men of
to-day to replace the dread God of Calvin
ism with the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. The modern Christian attempts
to weave the thought of the divine fatherhood
into the conception of the infinite and eternal
reality revealed to us by science. In fusing
these two visions we find a God whom we can
both love and adore. II
New Conceptions of God
The Puritans thought of God as the dread
sovereign who ruled the affairs of men from
his awful throne. Torday we are more inclined
to think of him as an animating and omnipre-

GOD AND SALVATION 133
sent Spirit, dwelling in his world as the human
soul lives in our bodies. In thus emphasizing
the immanence of God we are returning to the
convictions of the third and fourth centu
ries when the church was pervaded by Greek
philosophy. From the fifth to the nineteenth
centuries Christianity has been largely under
the dominance of Roman methods of thought,
and has apprehended God as a greater Caesar
governing the world from above the stars.
The revived emphasis on the indwelling God
has modified inevitably many doctrines of
the church. It has obliterated the distinction
between the sacred and the profane. To us
every fragment of life seems like the piece
of cloth which David held up before the as
tonished eyes of Saul at Engedi — a part of
the king's robe. The pagan religions are not
considered to be the work of demons, but are
studied that we may learn the many ways by
which the Divine Spirit searches for all the
children of God.
In this strong new emphasis upon the im
manence of the Deity lurks the menace of
pantheism. Freedom of the will with its ad-

134 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
venture and risk, its heaven and hell, often
seems to be submerged in the ordinary courses
of nature. Sin is frequently shorn of its hor
ror, being appraised as "good in the making,"
" truth partially understood," " a mistaken
search for God," " the absence of light."
When we seek to learn the prevafling idea
of the transcendent God, we find a distinct
line of demarcation separating our intellectual
leaders. They differ in their starting-points.
One group of thinkers begins with the sub
lime postulate of a perfect God. From him
nothing can be taken and to him nothing can
be added. He is perfect as a circle is perfect.
Full-orbed in joy and power and wisdom, he
lives in the timeless, spaceless world, holding
all things present in his thought. What seems
to us imperfect is made perfect in him. The
chief end of man is so to purify his soul by
the divine grace that he may look into the
undimmed glory of the Eternal, and lift a
song of everlasting praise for the wonder of
the Everlasting Love. The perfect God may
be enjoyed, praised, and loved, but to augment
his fullness is impossible.

GOD AND SALVATION 135
The other group begins with man. They
are somewhat afraid of metaphysical specula
tions, and are more anxious to know what hu'
manity is, and what it has learned. Generally
they prefer psychology to philosophy. They
have a profound reverence for what the spirit in
man reports. They believe that the affirmations
of the spirit are that freedom is real; life is a
venture and its risks are genuine ; evil is a rug
ged fact ; there is something in this universe
that is brutal and devilish ; being contrary to
the will of God, it must be overcome, and the
battle challenges human heroism and divine
sacrifice. They declare that truth is to be
learned by experience. What works well in the
long run is true. They refuse to let their minds
wander far from the consciousness and the ex
perience of men. They find that God as he has
been revealed in the process of an evolving
universe is a batthng, patient, conquering God.
Limited and constrained he appears to be within
his own creation. Thwarted apparently at a
miUion points, he divines fresh ways of ad
vance. Like a general assaulting impregnable
works, he is often baffled by the fortunes of

136 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
war, but the campaign goes on. Through the
ages one increasing purpose runs, the plan is
unfolding, the fight is real, and the garments
of the conqueror are dyed in blood.
A multiplying number of men beheve that
the God we know in experience is a militant
God. Every dedicated soul is conscious that
the conflict, in which he is enlisted, between
right and wrong is not a sham fight. Real
issues both for himself and God depend upon
his fidelity. The values are of such worth that
he must sacrifice all things, even life itself, to
win them. If he is faithless, he does not feel
merely that he has lost something. He has
been untrue to God. He has betrayed a Cause.
He has quenched the Spirit. The Deity is con
ceived as carrying on through the ages a task
of supreme moment, and the activities of men
either help or hinder him.
There is a tendency to question whether
God can predict the movements which man in
his freedom will make. The directions and
plans of the campaign are conditioned by the
fidelity and competence of men. They may
elect to go before the king and make straight

GOD AND SALVATION 137
in the desert a royal highway, or they may make
the path circuitous and difficult. They may
smooth the road of redemptive grace, or they
may compel the Redeemer to toil up Calvary,
bearing a cross. The methods of God change
with the volitions of humanity. Professor
James uses the illustration of a skilled chess
player engaged in a game with a novice. The
expert cannot tell every move which the be
ginner wfll make. His plan is contingent upon
the play of his opponent, yet he is sure to win.
His fore-knowledge is of the result rather than
of each particular action. God knows the end
from the beginning, but man has a vital part
in the game.
Freedom in a true sense makes man a crea
tor. He can do more than discover truth and
rejoice in it. He makes it. He is able to fash
ion beauty where there was ugliness. He causes
light to shine in darkness. He extends the
domain of justice. He builds up a kingdom
of righteousness. He adds his own original
contribution to the temple of God. Thus he
augments the power of the Almighty. He in
creases the available righteousness in the uni-

138 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
verse. He swells the aggregate of its good
ness. Such a militant idea of the import of
Hf e promotes efficiency and courage — the two
characteristic virtues of our time. McAndrew,
in Kipling's famous poem, thinks of the divine
government under the figure of an immense
stationary engine,
" Enormous, certain, slow," —
each part exactly fitted to its place, everything
foreseen and provided for, working perpetu
ally, yet neither enlarged nor diminished by
its ceaseless toil. That Calvinistic idea of God
is repudiated by a growing number of people.
To them the universe is still in the making.
The Eternal is really accomplishing something
in time. His goodness is to be known in his
achievements. His character is to be seen in
his activities rather than contemplated in his
timeless attributes. He is to be caUed good,
not because logically all perfections are in
him, but because his good-will is displayed in
a struggling world.
However defective this view may be con
sidered as a final philosophy, it is a tremen-

GOD AND SALVATION 139
dous stimulus to activity. Our saints to-day are
not cloistered contemplatives ; they are soldiers
adding to the glory and power of God by
bravery in his wars. They beheve that in the
moral energy of a righteous man the Supreme
Will experiences an increment of strength.
In philosophy these two schools are broadly
distinguished as Absolutists and Pragmatists,
or as Monists and Pluralists. One contemplates
God's completeness, the other his struggle.
The main body of believers belongs to neither
extreme, but, accepting Robertson's well-
known dictum that "truth is made up of
opposite propositions, and is not found in the
via media between the two," they work under
the inspiration which comes abundantly from
each group of thinkers, quite content not to
solve the paradoxes of truth.
IH
New Reasons for Faith
The materialistic interpretation of nature,
so ably defended a century ago, is a wan
ing philosophy. "The idea," says Sir Oliver
Lodge, " that the world as we know it arose

140 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
by chance and fortuitous concourse of atoms
is one that no science really sustains, though
such an idea is the superficial outcome of an
incipient recognition of the uniformity of na
ture." The foUowing charming anecdote of
Kepler shows the instinctive revolt of the
mind which laughs this hypothesis out of
court. " Yesterday, when weary with writing,
and my mind quite dusty with considering
these atoms, I was called to supper, and a
salad I had asked for was set before me. It
seems, then, I said aloud, that if pewter
dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops
of vinegar and oil, and slices of egg had been
floating about in the air from all eternity, it
might at last happen by chance that there
would come out a salad. Yes, says my wife,
but not so nice and well dressed a salad as
this of mine is ! "
Matter when closely studied fades away
into vortices of energy, and the energy every
where works in such a purposeful manner
that one, constitutionally inclined to faith,
finds it easy to believe that the immanent Rea
son and Purpose is not less free, righteous,

GOD AND SALVATION 141
and consciously intelligent than the highest
of his creatures.
The doctrine of evolution has given us an
argument for the existence of God which to
my mind is of convincing weight. Mr. Fiske
states it in his little volume entitled " Through
Nature to God." " One of the greatest con
tributions ever made to science," he declares,
"is Herbert Spencer's profound and luminous
exposition of life as the continuous adjustment
of inner to outer relations. ... If you come
upon a dog lying by the roadside and are in
doubt whether he is alive or dead, you poke
him with a stick ; if you get no response, you
presently conclude that it is a dead dog. . . .
The growth of a plant is in its ultimate analysis
a group of motions put forth in adjustment
to a group of physical conditions in the soil
and atmosphere. . . . All life upon the globe,
whether physical or psychical, represents the
continuous adjustment of inner to outer rela
tions. The degree of life is low or high accord
ing as the correspondence between the internal
and the external relations is simple or complex,
limited or extensive, partial or complete." The

142 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
lowest form of life reacts only upon the grosser
impacts which come from its immediate neigh
borhood, but a higher form, like a keen-eyed
vulture, relates itself to the far distant. Em
bryology has given us the wonderful fact that
sight and hearing were slowly differentiated
from the sense of touch. Light shining upon
some exceptionally sensitive dermal sac gradu
ally developed the organ of vision, and the
living creature acquired the power to adapt
itself to distant objects. " The ear was formed
in response to the outward existence of acoustic
vibrations, the mother's love came in answer
to the infant's need, fidelity and honor were
slowly developed as the nascent social life re
quired them. Everywhere the internal adjust
ment was brought about so as to harmonize
with some actually existing external fact. Such
has been nature's method, such is the deepest
law of life that science has been able to detect.
At that critical moment in the history of our
planet, when love was beginning to play a part
hitherto unknown, and notions of right and
wrong were germinating in the nascent human
soul, we see it vaguely reaching forth to some-

GOD AND SALVATION 143
thing akin to itself, not in the realm of fleet
ing phenomena, but in the Eternal Presence
beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas was
achieved in correspondence with an Unseen
World. That the ideas were crude and child
like is what might be expected. The cardinal
fact is that the crude childlike mind was grop
ing to put itself into relation with an ethical
world not visible to the senses. Religion thus
ushered upon the scene coeval with the birth
of humanity has been the largest and most
ubiquitous fact connected with the existence
of mankind upon the earth. Now, if the rela
tion thus established in the morning twihght
of man's existence between the human soul
and a world invisible and immaterial is a rela
tion of which only the subjective term is real
and the objective term is non-existent, then, I
say, it is something utterly without precedent
in the whole history of creation. Of all the
implications of the doctrine of evolution with
regard to man, I believe the very deepest and
strongest to be that which asserts the Ever
lasting Reahty of Religion." In a word, as the
eye is the response of man to the light, the

144 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
ear his reaction upon acoustic vibrations, so
his sense of God and of a supreme moral uni
verse is the answer of his soul to an existing
reality. May we not complete Mr. Fiske's argu
ment and believe that as the light has devel
oped the perfected eye of the body, so God,
whose brooding over the human spirit has pro
duced the response we call faith, will increas
ingly perfect that response until faith becomes
spiritual intuition, and the sublime prediction
of the prophets be fulfilled in a redeemed
humanity that shall see God face to face, and
know even as also it is known.
The knowledge that religion is the universal
response of the human soul to the Unseen
Presence makes the modern man disinclined
to consider his faith as resting upon anything
so unsubstantial as arguments, which if refuted
leave him spiritually undone. He is more in
clined to believe that in the process of liv
ing he experiences the Presence, and that his
reasoning is only an awkward attempt to ex
plain to himself what he has learned through
living. He is confident that his mind works
in the presence of an Intelligence higher than

GOD AND SALVATION 145
his own, and that he has his being environed
by a Will that everywhere constrains him. The
truth is that whenever a man lives deeply he
is conscious of touching a Reality which is
wise and beneficent. Usually he feels that he
is helped and guided. History is replete with
examples. Washington was so impressed with
the tokens of Providential direction in our
struggle for independence that he could not
refrain from uttering his convictions in his
inaugural as president. Lincoln was convinced
that in his dire need he received both strength
and wisdom. His state papers fairly pulsate
with this faith. Romanes, who certainly
sounded all the depths and shallows of atheism,
speaks his mature conviction when he says:
" There is a vacuum in the soul which nothing
can fill but God." The consciousness of the
highest human beings that they are guided,
comforted, strengthened by the Unseen Power
above man is validated by a great multitude
which no man can number.
A short time ago in a London book-stall I
chanced upon a brochure by an American
theologian — WiUiam Newton Clarke — which

146 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
set forth in a very convincing way the reality
of religion. The author compared the lives of
Huxley and Phillips Brooks. The men were
contemporaries. Each was famous in his chosen
field of activity. Once they met in London as
guests of Lowell. Huxley talked, Brooks was
silent. Huxley challenges our admiration for
the sturdy integrity of his character, his bril
liant talents, his sincere devotion to truth.
Trained in the laboratory, he applied to religion
the habits of thought which he had formed by
years of scientific investigation. The results
were unfavorable to religion, and he coined
the word "agnostic" to express his attitude
toward the supreme affirmations of the Chris
tian faith. In all this he was conscientious
and true to himself.
In this region of thought and experience of
which Huxley said he was ignorant, Phillips
Brooks lived and moved and had his being.
He was as conscious of the relationship of his
soul to God as he was of the relationship of
his body to the earth. " Rehgion," he affirmed,
" comes directly from the soul of God laid
immediately upon and pressing itself into the

GOD AND SALVATION 147
soul of every one of his chUdren." Again he
utters his own experience : " Less and less, I
think, grows the consciousness of seeking God.
Greater and greater grows the certainty that
he is seeking us and giving himself to us to
the completest measure of our present capac
ity. . . . There is such a thing as putting our
selves in the way of God's overflowing love
and letting it break upon us till the response
of love comes, not by struggle, not even by de
liberation, but by necessity, as the echo comes
when the sound strikes the rock." In the
sweet and precious sense of the encompassing
and inflowing love of God the famous preacher
lived. He proclaimed with ever increasing
power the reality of an abundant, free, glo
rious life of the loving soul in God. He spoke
not as the scribes, but with authority. Upon
these high certainties his spirit fed. He tested
them by the strain of life. The strength com
ing to him from the Unseen made his soul
virile and radiant, a glowing pillar of light
and hope. Such spiritual strength, sanity, and
beauty are not produced by hallucinations. It
is inconceivable that such a robust and sover-

148 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
eign spiritual life should be lived in a vacuum.
If atheism is true, then Brooks, and the in
numerable multitude of the most luminous and
commanding characters of history, grew up,
were vitalized, and became mighty in a realm
of nothingness. If atheism is true, the best
lives are nourished in a void. If God cannot
be known, then the glorious company of the
saints were not merely deluded, they could not
have lived. "If Brooks was right, Huxley
suffered limitations that robbed him of his
birthright. If Huxley was right, Brooks, by
all sound reason, was impossible. There is no
need of affirming atheism and materialism out
and out, in order to render Brooks and his
life impossible. Such agnosticism as Huxley's
will answer just as well. If one cannot legiti
mately affirm anything concerning the reality
of God, the soul, and the eternal life, then the
satisfaction, enthusiasm, exaltation of Brooks
in view of them was quite unjustified, and
can never be worthily entertained by a right-
thinking man. If all men thought as Huxley
thought, no man could ever live as Brooks
lived."

GOD AND SALVATION 149
One cannot refrain from asking, if this
world of rehgious experience in which the
great preacher lived was real, why was it closed
to Huxley? The answer is to be found in the
method each pursued. Brooks was a lover of
man and his works. While not blind to the
beauties of nature, he preferred cathedrals to
mountains. His interest was in man and his
experiences, rather than in nature and its
methods. The prolonged study he gave to man,
and human needs and satisfactions, made God
and the abundant life which the soul may live
in him very real. He was confident that the
higher faculties of our nature are correlated
with a Being who gives grace and strength.
He was certain that his own experience, and
the experiences of the faithful in all genera
tions, verified the essential truths of religion.
Huxley, on the other hand, was chiefly in
terested in the study of nature and its methods.
When he turned his attention to religion he
endeavored to explain the world of personal
relationships by the natural laws with which
he was familiar. He made the mistake of
applying the laws and methods of the physical

150 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
laboratory to the interpretation of man and
his experiences. This inevitably led to intel
lectual confusion. Fluids and gases are not
the measure of all things. There are forces
which do not dwell in matter. There are truths
which cannot be known by induction from
material facts. In Huxley's system of thought
there was no rational explanation for Phillips
Brooks, while in the philosophy of Brooks
there was room for Huxley and all his dis
coveries. Yet the great scientist lived too
deeply not to touch the Everlasting Reality
and to attain the strength, if not the joy of
faith. He was profoundly impressed with the
balanced justice of nature, and his confidence
in the goodness of the Unknown is beautif uUy
expressed in the words written by his wife,
which he requested to have engraved upon his
tombstone : —
"Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep;
For still He giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best."
Such a comparison as we have made deepens
the conviction that the chief differences be
tween good men lie quite largely, not in vital

GOD AND SALVATION 151
experiences, but in their methods of interpre
tation and in the language they employ.
IV
New Light upon the Nature of Sin
Sin and the sinner we have always with us,
but we view them in quite a different light
from that in which our fathers beheld them.
You are familiar with the ancient solution of
man's condition. "In Adam's fall
We sinned all."
Because of the first man's transgression the
poison of sin is in the blood of all his descend
ants. We all partake of his condemnation.
An evolutionist naturaUy finds the cause of
the world's evil elsewhere than in the sin of
Adam. Man, he believes, is emerging from the
brute. He is cumbered with a heavy animal
inheritance, retaining in his nature much of
the swine and the tiger. He is "stuccoed o'er
with quadrupeds," and these bestial passions
sweep him into much sin.
Moreover, being imperfect, his vision is not
clear, nor his wisdom mature, therefore his

152 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
moral judgments are often wrong and disas
trous. But with the fathers we recognize that sin
fulness is more than the result of animality
and of ignorance. There is in it an element
of perversity. Men deliberately centre their
lives upon self rather than upon God. They
put their wills in opposition to his purposes,
and close their hearts to the diviner influences.
Sin's tragedy consists in the fact that men
practically renounce God's sovereignty over
their lives, and seek, instead of his wiU, the
gratification of their own desires. Sin is self
ishness, and out of selfishness flows the tears
and anguish of the world.
In another respect are we antipodal to our
fathers. They considered sin to be natural to
a depraved humanity. We conceive it to be
unnatural. They said, " To err is human." We
affirm that to err is the denial of humanity.
They declared that the nature of man is evil.
We quote Aristotle's saying that the nature
of a thing is what it is at its best. We assert
that man in his true estate is a child of God ;
that when he sins he wanders away from his

GOD AND SALVATION 153
Father's house to dwell among the swine. But
he is still a son and the appeal is to be made
to his sonship. Sin is the repudiation of his
real nature, a severing of his essential relation
ships. Being thus a rejection of God's love
and a degradation of one's self, sin appears
more awful than it seems when considered as
the inevitable action of a demonized person.
Gladstone once said that the chief religious
characteristic of our day is " the waning con
sciousness of sin." Certainly that profound
sense of personal guilt of which we read in the
lives of the ancient saints is not a feature of
our modern religious life. We are less intro
spective and less critical of our moods. Yet
probably there never has been a time in his
tory when so many people felt the burden of
the evil of the world. In our day there is a
strong, deep, ever-increasing social conscious
ness. The realization of the evil condition of
men, and of our personal obligation to do a
man's share in bettering the Hves of the less
fortunate, has taken the place of that sense
of individual unworthiness before God to
which our fathers bore witness. We are less

154 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
alive than they to sin against God ; we are
more keenly aware of the crimes against hu
manity. The future generation which perceives
that whatsoever is done to humanity is done
to God will comprehend the more perfect
truth of which the thought of the fathers and
our own apprehensions are but segments.

New Conceptions of the Way of Salvation
In chemistry a slight change in the formula
produces vastly different results. A trifling
modification of proportion in the ingredients
affects the product. No one would affirm that
in the spiritual world an entirely new truth
had been discovered, or a unique power re
leased, analogous to the finding of radium
among the physical forces. Yet there has been
so marked a change of emphasis, and such a
readjustment of values, that both the philoso
phy and the experience of rehgion have been
altered. The former conception of salvation has been
revised. The generation preceding ours com
monly thought of salvation as future glorifi-

GOD AND SALVATION 155
cation. The saved were those who were sure
of going to heaven. To-day salvation is con
sidered rather as a present experience. The
saved are those who were once " consciously
wrong, inferior and unhappy, but are now con
sciously right, superior and happy" through
the influence of religion. We think of salva
tion in terms of character, not in terms of
condition. It is the adequate and symmetrical
development of one's nature. Even our ideals
of character have been modified, and I think
lowered. Edwards, like the spiritual leaders
of all the Christian centuries, aspired after an
habitual and almost superhuman exaltation of
soul, that he might live consciously in the pre
sence of God, and be one with him in desire
and purpose. The modern man is quite satis
fied to be decent and respectable. He desires
poise and balance rather than spiritual eleva
tion. Faith is as great a word with us as with the
fathers, but we use it in a somewhat different
sense. We are seriously trying to empty the
word of much of the content which it has held
for fifteen centuries, and to employ it in its

156 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
primitive and practical significance. Many gen
erations of men have considered faith as closely
akin to credulity. It has meant accepting with
out reservation a creed or a plan of salvation.
But that notion is rapidly changing. Faith
has to-day essentially the same significance in
religion as in business. It is insight plus valor.
You perceive certain conditions of the market
and you have the courage to take the risk.
There is a spiritual as well as a business judg
ment. You are confronted by ideals which you
perceive to be of superlative worth and beauty.
You recognize certain elemental laws which
should govern the actions of men. You can
not demonstrate with mathematical precision
the validity of these truths and ideals, but your
conviction of their worth is such that you give
them full loyalty. Life tests the accuracy of
your insight and faith becomes certitude.
But what does faith perceive and appropri
ate ? Paul has gloriously stated faith's object
in the triumphant sentence: "For the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free
from the law of sin and death." In the ma
terial world when a force is discovered working

GOD AND SALVATION 157
in an orderly and continuous manner its opera
tion is called a law. We speak of the law of
gravitation because we discern a force acting
in a predictable way. Now in nature there is
a power that works unceasingly towards dis
integration. This power of death is met and
overcome by another power operating in the
interests of life. Hence the earth continually
renews its beauty and fruitfulness through the
law of the spirit of life in the physical world.
In us there is a law working toward selfishness
and animaHty. It leads to sin and death. Just
as clearly do we recognize an upbuilding power
strengthening us in righteousness, goodness,
and truth. Matthew Arnold calls it " a Power,
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" ;
others denominate it " the spirit of the Living
God" ; Paul designates it as the "law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus." All those ener
gies which were manifested so wonderfully in
Christ are the redeeming forces in the world
of the spirit.
Faith is the insight which perceives and
the valor which appropriates this Spirit of
Life, whose persuasions and power we feel in

158 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
our own souls, whose glory shone in the face
of Jesus Christ, and whose ongoings have
marked the progress of the race. It is the ven
ture which the soul makes in obedience to its
intuitions. This vital conception of faith causes those
who hold it to affirm that church membership
should be conditioned only upon fidelity to the
spiritual realities manifested in Christ.
We have a longer look backward upon this
law of the spirit of life than was given to the
fathers. When science first unveiled to us the
Ulimitable past, we were dismayed before the
vision of the fearful waste and carnage by
which our present civilization was achieved.
The world of nature seemed antipodal in every
respect to the love revealed upon Calvary. But
profounder research has discovered that love
and sacrifice have cosmic roots. From the be
ginning the law of the struggle for Hfe has
been paralleled by the kindlier law of the
struggle for the life of others. Animal life has
been perpetuated because the strong have de
fended and cared for the weak. Through the
law of love mankind exists. The mother goes

GOD AND SALVATION 159
down to death for the chUd; the helpless in
fant lives because the basic law of the family
is gentleness, patience, and sacrifice. Famihes
have become tribes, and the tribes nations,
through the law of the family — mutual consid
eration and helpfulness — extending in ever
widening circles. Courtesy, integrity, cooper
ation are indispensable in a highly organized
social structure. The love that shone so glo
riously on Calvary is now seen to be woven into
all life as a law of existence, and to be having
increasing influence as humanity approaches
the divine likeness. In this new apprehension
of love as the architectonic law supporting all
life, we have an ampler illustration than was
given to men of other days of that spirit of
Christ by whom all things were created and in
whom aU things consist.
We have a broader as well as a more length
ened vision of the grace of God. It is not
many generations back since men believed in
a Hmited salvation. Less than a hundred years
ago the whole pagan world was considered lost,
and their religions to be the snare of the Evil
One. Our generation for the most part believes

160 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
that God is the Father of aU mankind, and that
his mercies are as wide as humanity. We as
sert with Paul that God has not left himself
without a witness in every heart, and we con
fess that Mahomet, Gautama, Confucius were
true, if partial, interpreters of the Eternal, and
that their religions represent genuine strivings
after God. What to our fathers
" seemed an idol hymn, now breathes of Thee,
Tuned by faith's ear to some celestial melody."
This broader conception of the divine indwell
ing fills us with a large hope for the salvation
of the world lying beyond the borders of Christ
endom. The great Catholic missionary Xavier,
sailing by some islands where he could not
land, dipped a brush in holy water and waving
it in the sign of the cross towards them, claimed
the inhabitants for the church. We would
claim them for God because they are his chUd
ren and in them his spirit strives.
The doctrine of the Atonement, which has
been the central teaching of the church from
the very beginning, has for us some new mean
ings. I will mention three insights into its sig
nificance characteristic of modern thought.

GOD AND SALVATION 161
The first was clearly formulated in this coun
try by Horace Bushnell, and was powerfully
proclaimed by Henry Ward Beecher and Phil
lips Brooks. It is the nature of God, they as
serted, to love men in their sins for the pur
pose of helping them out of their evil condi
tion. Love cannot fully disclose itself except
by suffering even unto the uttermost. Christ
by his death revealed that divine compassion
which loved us from the foundation of the
world, and which will not let us go, although
it pays the extreme cost. Jesus brought that
compassionate love so effectively into history
as to win multitudes to reconciliation with God.
Secondly, we think of the Atonement as an
eternal process. The three hours, suffering on
Calvary, was more than an event ; it was the
declaration of the holy love of the atoning
God which has been meeting sin from the be
ginning, is even now bearing its weight, and
will contend with it until the triumphant end.
As the eruption of a volcano reveals earth's
central fires, so Calvary manifests a sacrificial
love which from the beginning has been, is,
and will be forever, winning men into oneness

162 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
with God. The third insight has to do with
our part in wiping out the stain and overcom
ing the effects of sin. We have often heard
the older ministers declare that " Jesus paid
it all," and that our part was to accept a com
pleted work. Something was indeed done upon
the cross which needs not to be repeated. But
sin is still in the world, its stain is yet on men's
souls, its effects are piling up ever accumulat
ing iniquities. When one repents of his sin,
and sets himself resolutely to repair the dam
age he has done, or to add to the good of the
world, he has a sweet and consoling conscious
ness that he is working with God, that he is
bearing his share of the common burden of
humanity's sin, and that his own soul is being
knit by closer ties to an atoning Redeemer.
This consciousness of helping the Eternal Son
of God bear his cross inspired those noble
words of the apostle : " I fill up on my part
that which is lacking of the afflictions of
Christ." In our modern thought the Atonement is
not solely a transaction upon Calvary, making
possible the divine forgiveness of sins. It is

GOD AND SALVATION 163
rather a world process of recovering man to
his normal life with God, and of conquering
the moral evil of the world by the loyalty of
believers making effectual the sacrificial love
of the Father manifested in Christ.
VI
The New Vision of a Social Gospel
Very significant is the change of emphasis
from individual salvation to the establishment
of the kingdom of God. The apostolic church
was largely indifferent to the political and
economic conditions of the time. They were
looking for the immediate appearance of the
Lord. After the apostles and the apostoHc men
feU on sleep and until our own day the domi
nant thought has been that out of a ruined
world the church was to rescue every soul
which could be saved. The prevaUing cry has
been the one which went up from the stricken
field of Waterloo : " All is lost, save himself
who can ! " This is alien to the modern pulpit.
We teach that the individual cannot save him
self alone. One finds his Hfe by losing it in
self-forgetful service in the interests of the

164 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
kingdom. The modern Christian is taught to
turn his eyes away from himself and to catch
the glorious vision of a redeemed world. His
supreme duty is to bring the spirit of Christ
into his business and social relations. He must
seek to establish truth, justice, and righteous
ness within the sphere of his power.
The Reverend F. B. Meyer, who in his early
ministry was an individualist, in describing the
change in his own aims and methods, has aptly
chronicled the new ideals and efforts. "I used
to live," he said, " in a little hut on the road
between Jerusalem and Jericho so that I might
help travelers who had been beset by thieves.
But lately I have moved into Jerusalem itself,
and am hammering away at Caiaphas and
PUate to send a company of soldiers to root
out the whole nest of robbers!"

VI
IMMORTALITY

VI
IMMORTALITY
L? men were merely physical beings they
would never dream of immortality; if they
were wholly spiritual they would probably
never doubt it. Living on the borderland, hav-
ingbodies formed of the dust and spirits which
feel a kinship with something above the earth,
they alternate between faith and doubt. The
notion of an endless life grows out of our sense
of the Infinite. We are like men upon a small
island ; we walk but a short distance in any di
rection before we confront an unmeasured and
unsounded mystery. The infinite is all about
us. If we study the flower in the crannied
wall, our thoughts are soon lost in the incom
prehensible. When the dust at our feet is
analyzed it leads to the conception of vortices
of force; and if we probe for the secret of
force, we immediately stand in the presence of
the Eternal Energy. Every thoughtful man's
experience is that of the Hebrew sage : "I said,

168 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
I wUl water my best garden; and will water
abundantly my garden bed ; and lo, my brook
became a river, and my river became a sea."
This consciousness of the infinite, environing
life upon every side, awakens the sense of the
infinite within himself. Deep caUs to deep.
He feels Hke
" A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand
Left on the shore; that hears all night
The plunging seas draw backward from the land
Their moon-led waters white."
The thunder of the Eternal, which he hears in
his silent and meditative moments, arouses and
confirms an instinctive hope that he is not a
creature of a moment, but wUl live a conscious
life in that Eternal out of which he came and
to which he returns.
Like aU future events life after death is in
capable of proof. At its best it is a reasonable
anticipation, a faith which grows clearer and
stronger in the tests of research and experience.
Has modern investigation brought new oil to
feed the flames of our hope, or has its deeper
minings released noxious gases of negation to
extinguish the fires upon the altar?

IMMORTALITY 169
I
The Atmosphere of Faith
Before presenting any positive arguments
for immortaHty it may be weU to indicate an
atmosphere created by the newer knowledge
in which faith may Hve. I think we may affirm
without hesitation that nothing has been dis
covered by modern science, which makes belief
in a life after death irrational. The once for
midable atheistic dogma that there could be no
consciousness without brain has become out
worn. It has been demonstrated that the mo
lecular action of the brain cannot be translated
into terms of consciousness. You have not ex
plained thought by tracing the brain paths of
the molecules any more than you have ade
quately explained music by describing the
scraping of horsehair on the intestines of cats.
"Nothing," says Mr. Fiske, "could be more
grossly unscientific than the famous remark of
Cabanis, that the brain secretes thought as the
Hver secretes bUe. It is not even correct to say
that thought goes on in the brain. What goes
on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of
molecular movements, with which thought and

170 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
feeling are in some way related, not as effects
or causes, but as concomitants. . . . The ma
terialistic assumption that there is no such state
of things, and that the life of the soul accord
ingly ends with the life of the body, is per
haps the most baseless assumption that is
known to the history of philosophy." Professor
William James speaks in a similar strain:
"When the physiologist who thinks that his
science cuts off aU hope of immortaHty pro
nounces the phrase, ' Thought is a function of
the brain,' he thinks of the matter just as he
thinks when he says, ' Steam is a function of
the tea-kettle.' . . . But in the world of phy
sical nature productive function of this sort
is not the only kind of function with which
we are familiar. We have also releasing or
permissive function ; and we have transmissive
function." As when the trigger of the cross
bow releases the arrow, or a lens transmits the
light. "When," continues Professor James,
"we think of thought as a function of the
brain, we are not required to think of produc
tive function only ; we are entitled also to con
sider permissive or transmissive function."

IMMORTALITY 171
It may be that the brain permits a spiritual
energy within us to find expression, even as an
organ aUows one's emotions to utter them
selves. Injure the organ and the musician is
hampered in his self-disclosure. Or the brain
may transmit thought, as glass transmits light.
The condition of the glass determines the
light which shines through. Yet the glass does
not create the light. Evidently what we learn
in the laboratory neither proves nor disproves
immortaHty. The question transcends its sphere
and belongs to one of moral probability.
A real impediment to faith in immortal
ity is our inability to conceive it. We cannot
form a mental image of an existence separated
from the body. Our difficulty is often one of
the imagination. We are unable to make ap
pear real what lies beyond experience. The
imagination is unable to visuahze a life inde
pendent of time and sense. Paul met this
limitation by using the illustration of a seed.
Its corruptible body decays, but its vital germ
reappears in another form. In wireless tele
graphy modern knowledge has furnished us
with a stiU more forcible analogy. The elec-

172 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
trical fluid in the sender's instrument receives
impressions and a character, then leaving its
place of bondage and character forming, it
is committed to an ether, which eye hath not
seen, nor the heart conceived; ultimately it
finds an appropriate body where it can display
its character, and the memories which it has
never lost. In this flying message we have
thought, experience, character, maintaining
individuality without a body that is either
tangible or visible. Surely it is not incredible
that the spirit of man, loosed from its prison-
house and flying along the spiritual courses of
the world, may find a medium through which
it can body forth its life.
It is perhaps the testimony of our senses
which presents the most formidable obstacle
to our faith in immortaHty. We see men die
and the process of dissolution begin. Every
evidence of our senses indicates that death
ends all. But just here the advance of know
ledge comes to our aid. Accumulated experi
ence has taught us to trust the conclusions of
reason as against the witness of the senses.
Our sight informs us that the earth is flat ;

IMMORTALITY 173
our reason has forced us to believe that it is
round. The sun appears to move about the
stable earth ; reason affirms that the earth re
volves about the sun. Sense-perception bears
indisputable testimony to the solidity of a
piece of wood. It looks and feels like an inert
mass of substantial matter. But in the face
of the concurrent testimony of both sight and
touch, we credit the affirmation of reason that
the apparently motionless wood is composed
of centres of force, each separate from the
others, and related much as the planets are in
the solar system. If modern science has taught
us anything, it is that the senses are not infal
lible witnesses, and that it is admissible to trust
the deductions of the reason even against their
testimony. We are justified, therefore, in taking
the question of the continuity of life out of the
court of the senses, and of appealing to the
higher tribunal of the reason. We may even
go further, and declare that the senses, credible
within a limited sphere, are usually mistaken
in the higher issues. Things are not what they
seem. Not infrequently the fact is the reverse
of the appearance.

174 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Having prepared for an argument by re
moving the objection raised by the senses, and
by showing that materiahsm has failed to
prove that consciousness is the product of brain
activity, and having lessened the difficulty of
the imagination by presenting the analogy
of wireless telegraphy, we come to the more
positive part of the discussion, and ask what
effect the evolutionary hypothesis has had upon
faith in immortality. I think it has greatly
strengthened that faith. II
Indications of Immortality furnished by Evolution
Evolution gives us a long look back into the
past. It unveils the primal fire mist, it reveals
a cooling earth, the coming of vegetable and
animal life. Millions of years were consumed in
this upward movement of creation. The ages
toiled, aeon succeeded aeon before the world
was fitted to be the habitation of man. With
the advent of humanity physical evolution
ceased. All subsequent progress has been
human progress. Natural selection, having
framed man's body, began to work upon his

IMMORTALITY 175
brain. Man's growth has not been in increased
bodUy stature, but in mental and spiritual
power. At first a feeble creature, he has fought
a steady and increasingly victorious battle
against nature and against his own brute ten
dencies. At infinite cost he has erected his
civilization. With pain inconceivable he has
thought out and established his institutions.
Yet he has paid the price willingly, for he
has been sustained by a deep conviction that
his efforts served a Power not himself. He
has not worked merely for his own comfort ;
he has fought in the name of God. He has
labored under the compulsion of a heavenly
vision of personal and racial victory over sin
and death. He has felt that he was fighting no
sham battle. Immense issues hung upon his
fideHty, and his devotion augmented the glory
of God.
A man, standing in the twentieth century,
and gazing back over the long, toilsome, costly
process from the fire-mist up to primitive man,
and from primeval man to our present highly
organized society, cannot readily believe that
he is contemplating the haphazard whirl of

176 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
unintelligent forces. It has not been a simple
game of chance; the dice have been loaded.
There has been an increasing purpose running
through the ages, working towards man and
the fulfillment of his destiny. Surely the un
folding purpose prophesies an outcome worthy
of the process. If materiahsm is right, and
humanity returns to the dust from whence it
came, and the earth is at last only a burned-
out cinder ; if the struggle of the ages, the
prayers of the holy, the sacrifice of martyrs, the
trust of the faithful, the aspirations of saintly
minds, the devotion of the brave, ultimate in
dust and ashes, then we are put to " perma
nent intellectual confusion." The ages have
toiled and brought forth nothing. The Eternal
has blown a soap bubble, and painted it with
wondrous colors at awful cost of agony to the
iridescent figures, and then allowed it to burst!
The wisdom, power, and sacrificial love, re
vealed in the long and orderly upward move
ment, create the expectation that the culmina
tion will be worth the cost.
It may well be replied that this argument
simply indicates that the world process must

IMMORTALITY 177
have a meaning, and that that meaning may be
in God himself, apart from humanity, for his
glory and not for our gain. But certainly it is
impossible for us to conceive of any outcome
in which humanity does not share, or to believe
the Eternal to be a Moloch, who satisfies him
self and consumes his laborers.
The evolutionary hypothesis, however, en
ables us to make the application more per
sonal. There was a time when the highest form
of Hfe upon the planet was a jelly-like mass,
floating about in the water. It was without
power of locomotion, sightless, senseless, ca
pable only of absorbing such food particles as
the primeval ocean drifted against it. What
IntelHgence coming to this planet from another
sphere would have ventured the prophecy that
an object so lowly could give birth
" To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Home " ?
Yet the push of nature was behind it. As the
centuries and millenniums passed, life acquired
the power of locomotion ; it developed the
faculty of vision ; it accumulated experiences,
becoming conscious and then self-conscious ;

178 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
it attained the noble faculty of reason ; it dis
tinguished sensations, and choosing between
them, became aware of freedom and of respon
sibility to select the best; it formed glorious
ideals of a nobler self ; then it began to crave
to be fashioned in the likeness of the Perfect
Righteousness, and to commune with the In
finite Goodness ; and to crown all these mar
velous achievements it dreamed of immortal
ity ! In this steady acquisition of riches there
is a foreshadowing of the future. If life in
its long upward journey has acquired locomo
tion, sense-perception, reason, consciousness,
self-determination, a feehng of moral respon
sibility, it is not incredible that when it thirsts
for immortality the craving is a prophecy that
the desire wiU be satisfied. Having achieved
so much, the dream of continued existence is
surely rational. Life has already made the
journey from the mollusk to the mind of Plato
and the heart of Paul. The past at least is secure.
Having gathered such amazing spoils, it is not
unreasonable to believe that this instinctive
reaching-out for greater things in the future
is indicative of a still further advance. If Hfe

IMMORTALITY 179
has become personal in man, it is not strange
if his anticipation of a life everlasting suggests
that he has secreted the power of perpetuating
that self through the night of death.
Evolution furnishes another argument for
faith. Man stands confessedly at the head of
the animal kingdom. He is the culmination of
an age-long process of development. Yet it is
just as evident that he has hardly begun his
moral growth. Sovereign in the animal world,
he is a child in the spiritual. Standing upon
the mountain peak of nature, he stretches out
his hands towards a higher world, whose breath
he feels upon his brow. Below him is the
sphere of instinct, force, necessity, appetite,
impulse. Above and within him he perceives
a diviner sphere of Reason, Righteousness,
Love, Liberty, Aspiration. In this supernatu
ral order, whose laws are so contradictory to
the physical, be is but a child. Greatest in the
range of the material, he is the least in the
kingdom of the spiritual. It is surely not in
credible that if the ages have put him on the
summit of the natural, he shall yet climb the
heights of the spiritual. If the physical evolu-

180 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
tion has been completed, why should not the
spiritual be also perfected ?
in
Arguments drawn from the Nature of Man
A more comprehensive study of the nature
of man has led to some valuable results, and
to a restatement of our reasons for faith in a
future life. Investigation, however, has as yet
brought no scientific proof. The Society of
Psychical Research, composed of some of the
ablest scientists in England and America, has
been seeking to ascertain whether the aUeged
communications from the departed are actual
disclosures of living personalities beyond the
veil, or are to be accounted for in other ways.
The society has expended twenty-five years in
patient pioneer work. It has learned much of
the telepathic power of the mind, and some
thing of that part of our being which Hes
below consciousness, and which is frequently
called the subliminal self. Up to the present
time no indisputable proof of survival has
been produced, yet the evidence accumulated
encourages hope that this field wiU not prove

IMMORTALITY 181
barren. To use the figure with which Sir
Oliver Lodge is credited, " As we tunnel the
mountain, we seem to hear the picks of those
who are digging from the other side." Pro
fessor James asserts, " I myself feel as if an
external will to communicate were probably
there . . . but if asked whether the will to
communicate be Hodgson's or some mere
spirit counterpart of Hodgson, I remain un
certain and await more facts, facts which may
not point clearly to a conclusion for fifty or a
hundred years."
We do not rest our hope of survival so heav-
Uy as did our fathers on the bodily resurrection
of Jesus. Evidence which was sufficient to per
suade men in apostolic times must lose some
thing of its convincing power as it recedes into
the distance. We have learned that love and
desire may be satisfied with evidence which
is not indisputable to those farther removed.
Most Christians to-day believe in the resur
rection of Jesus because they believe first in
immortality. If man, they reason, is immortal,
then truly the supreme man is not sleeping
under the Syrian stars. Less often than form-

182 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
erly does one hear arguments for the future
life which are based upon the proofs of the
empty tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem.
That the modern man's statement of his
faith is not entirely a repetition of ancient
arguments is seen in the use of a new term
which he has introduced. Seldom does he
speak of the immortality of the soul. Soul is
an abstract word. It lacks definite content.
Personality is preferable, as being more con
crete and definable. We know persons, but
souls are hidden. We call a man a person be
cause he has self-consciousness; he preserves
his identity through all his earthly exist
ence, even though every particle of his body
changes; he can in a large measure dominate
his environment, and win victories over tem
poral conditions; and more than all he has
virtue or moral value. Self-consciousness,
identity, self -determining activity, worth, these
are the elemental factors of personality. Man
is not a delicately constructed monument of
dust. He has "a central core of spiritual life."
The universe does not work through him as
natural impulse, but is grasped and appropri-

IMMORTALITY 183
ated into his personal being. He thinks of
himself as an original source of energy, and
as physical force cannot be destroyed, he does
not consider himself to be credulous in hoping
that the original kind of force which he knows
as his personality shall endure.
But man realizes that he is only an incom
plete person. He has not yet attained to the
fullness of his stature. His powers are not yet
developed. He is only partially free. There is
a greater possible self enfolded in the actual
self. "Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be."
He feels the pressure of the ideal. He is
" Galled with his confines, and troubled yet more with his
vastness.
Born too great for his ends, never at peace with his goal."
The best men are not supremely interested in
the mere continuity of this present imperfect
self. They yearn for a completion of being.
They demand a conception of life as a whole,
which shaU make this present existence signi
ficant and well worth while. They feel that
the chief object to be desired is not contin
uity of life, but a certain quality of life. The
saints have hungered not for length of days,

184 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
they have passionately craved what the New
Testament calls " eternal Hfe," " Hfe indeed,"
the "abundant life." The One who attained to
this fullness of life most completely assumed
immortaHty as a necessary presupposition. He
apparently took it for granted, as an architect
presupposes space in projecting a cathedral.
One is surer of his postulates than of the con
clusions of his reason. To Jesus this way of
living was of such infinite value, the soul liv
ing the abundant life was so rooted in God,
and saturated with his presence, it was so fully
a partaker of the divine nature, that to think of
it as the plaything of time and accident was
impossible. The persons thus nourished upon
eternal reahties must Hve a life eternal in its
quality. Our Lord, whose spirit derived its vitality
from no temporal sources, assumed continued
superiority over physical dissolution. He be
lieved that God's children would all grow up.
What in him, the perfect personality, was an
unargued conviction, in imperfect men is a
premonition. Knowing our lives to be incom
plete and fragmentary, we instinctively antici-

IMMORTALITY 185
pate an opportunity for them to come to their
fullness. Tennyson has given classic expres
sion to this hope and to the reasons upon
which it is based : —
" Here sits he shaping wings to fly :
His heart forbodes a mystery :
He names the name Eternity.
" That type of Perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find.
He sows himself on every wind.
" He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And thro' thick veils to apprehend
A labor working to an end."
Man, sitting here in the dust in all his incom
pleteness, is conscious of undeveloped powers.
He feels himself made for a grander destiny
than any he has yet experienced, and the
thought of something above time, eternity, is
born. Imperfect, he dreams of the Perfect,
and without visible reward, freely gives him
self to the attainment of ideals. Conscious of
these ideals, aspirations, and imperatives within
him, he perceives a Friendly Power in the uni
verse working toward great ends. "This in
stinct for a future life," Tennyson once said,

186 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
" is a presumption of its truth." And no one
has stated more forcibly than he that deep
spiritual intuition, which high souls have, that
Hfe will come to its fulfillment : —
" The wages of sin is death : If the wages of virtue be dust,
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm
and the fly,
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just :
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky :
Give her the wages of going on and not to die."
Tennyson with strong conviction reasoned
of a life to come, but Browning asserted it as
an inevitable presupposition. He considered
man too great a being to be held in the bounds
of the physical and temporal. His thoughts
are scarcely to be packed into a narrow act,
his unmeasured thirst for good causes him to
transcend his past, while "In man's self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendor ever on before."
Our life here is a broken column, an unfin
ished circle; —
" It is God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthly."

IMMORTALITY 187
Modern scholarship has, indeed, thrown
light on the essential nature of personality and
has made us realize that after aU we are only
potential persons. The gap between what we
are, and what we aspire to be and know we
ought to be, is making the present generation
feel the need of a future to make life rational
and complete. " TU1 it is felt," says Martineau,
"that heaven is needed to complete the his
tory of earth, till men become conscious of
capacities for which their present sphere of
action is too contracted, till the wants of the
inteUect and of the affections cry aloud within
them for the boundless and the eternal, the
distant words of Christian promise will die
away, ere they reach their hearts."
This premonition of a future, which has
been characteristic of humanity, is rendered
aU the more credible when we reflect on the
richness of man's equipment. We are too roy-
aUy gifted for a successful and contented
animal existence. The very wealth of our re
sources unfits us for a prosperous physical life.
We should be better animals were we less
splendidly endowed.

188 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
" Know, man hath all that Nature hath but More,
And in that More lie all his hopes of good."
If life is adjustment of inner relations to outer
relations, and that which is outer is simply the
material, then this More misshapes him. Take
out his reason and replace it with a few strong
instincts, and he would make fewer mistakes.
Put a sensitive impulse in the place of con
science, and he would doubtless walk easier
in the way of life and with less suffering ;
quench all aspirations and destroy the power
of framing ideals, and he would be far health
ier and happier. It is the More which brings
into humanity most of the sickness, all of the
agony of remorse and the torment of guilt,
all of those longings and desires which keep us
in perpetual discontent. The brute is much
better adapted than man to a purely material
environment. Man is too opulently dowered
for a life that is of the earth earthy. As an
animal he is not a success. Nature in too
ambitious a mood has made a magnificent
mistake. But may not this More, — conscience, rea
son, imagination, free will, thirst for the best,

IMMORTALITY 189
— which misfits man for a merely physical
existence, relate him to a world that is above
the physical? May not this More be prophetic
of something beyond ? We are, even now, liv
ing in our second life. In our former or pre
natal state we had an existence which was
both adapted to its environment and was form
ing faculties for the life we are now living.
Our eyes were wonderfuUy fashioned while
we were yet in the darkness ; our ears were
framed in the silence ; our limbs were moulded
when they were not needed. These were all
prophetic of a life to come. The eye indicated
that some day we should live in a world of
light ; the ear betokened a place of sound ;
the limbs promised a condition of activity and
freedom then unpossessed. We died to that
embryonic life, and through pain were born
into a world where the More, superfluous in
the old environment, became the faculties by
which we now live in a world of light and
music and freedom. Why is it not reasonable
to believe that our spiritual faculties — our
thirst for holiness, our visions of God, our
dream of eternity, our sense of the moral

190 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
framework of the universe — are premonitory
of that higher state of being for which the
holiest have always yearned ? The Christian
faith affirms that the process and discipline of
life is unveiling a spiritual image within us.
This spiritual self is correlated to a spiritual
world, diviner than this, where it shaU come
to the fullness of its being. If we hold this
faith, we have a rational explanation of the
meaning of hfe and of its discipline. Set this
faith aside, and we have to explain a creature
with the life of a worm, and yet with the en
dowments of one of the sons of God ! We
must explain a profligacy of nature which
overloads with fine wealth, and a wantonness
of nature which, having given superlative
gifts, ruthlessly disappoints that which has
been the life and confident faith of the holiest
spirits. We believe in immortaHty because we trust
the fidelity of the Eternal Power by whom all
things were created. We have been fashioned
in the womb of the universe. Its life is within
us and its nature has been stamped upon us.
What is deepest in man bears the pledge of

IMMORTALITY 191
that which is deepest in the universe. What
is wrought in the fabric of our being has been
given us by the Power which made us. The
Creator has certainly placed deep within us a
sense of the infinite. He has given to us the
forward look. He has inspired our dreams of
the Perfect. He has bestowed upon us the
reahzation and the love of values which are
in themselves unconditioned by time and su
perior to it. " That religious instincts," says
Lecky, " are as truly a part of our nature as
are our appetites and our nerves, is a fact
which all history establishes, and which forms
one of the strongest proofs of the reality of
that unseen world to which the soul of man
continually tends." These instinctive faiths in
the future, and in the worth of the spiritual,
are the promises of God, and out of his royal
bounty he wiU fulfill them. Every discovery
we make reveals to us that the universe is
immeasurably richer in possibilities of bless
ing than we imagined. If Nature is always
more opulent than we supposed, surely life, the
crowning glory of nature, will not be poorer
than our hopes. God is not mocked, neither

192 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
does he mock us. Who of us can fail to agree
with these convincing words of Martineau? —
"If the celestial hope be a delusion, we
plainly see who are the mistaken. Not the
mean and groveling souls, who never reached
so great a thought ; not the drowsy and easy
natures, who are content with the sleep of
sense through life, and the sleep of darkness
ever after ; not the selfish and pinched of con
science, of small thought and smaller love ; no,
these in such case are right, and the universe
is on their miserable scale. The deceived are
the great and holy, whom all men, aye, even
these very insignificants themselves, revere;
the men who have lived for something better
than their happiness, and spent themselves in
the race, or fallen at the altar of human good:
— Paul with his mighty and conquering cour
age ; yes, Christ himself, who vainly sobbed his
spirit to rest on his Father's imaginary love,
and without result commended his soul to the
Being whom he fancied himself to reveal. The
self-sacrifice of Calvary was but a tragic and
barren mistake ; for Heaven disowns the god
like prophet of Nazareth, and takes part with

IMMORTALITY 193
those who scoffed at him and would have him
die ; and is insensible to the divine fitness
which even men have felt, when they either
recorded the supposed fact, or invented the
beautiful fiction, of Christ's ascension. Whom
are we to revere, and what can we believe, if
the inspiration of the highest created natures
are but cunningly devised fables? But it is
not so : and no one who has found true guid
ance of heart from these noblest sons of
heaven, will fear to stake his futurity, and the
immortal Hfe of his departed friends, on their
vaticinations. These, of all things granted to
our ignorance, are assuredly most like the
hidden realities of God ; which may be greater,
but will not be less, than the prophets and seers
have foretold, and even our own souls, when
gifted with the highest and clearest vision, dis
cern as truths not doubtful or afar off."
Our faith in a life hereafter rests ultimately
upon our trust in the fidelity of the Living
God. He has given us the wonderful gift of
personality, though as yet we are in the germ ;
he has laid his law upon us to live a life which
in its nature is superior to time, and is but im-

194 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
perfectly realized in time; he has given us
a spiritual equipment which unfits us for a
merely physical existence, but which relates us
to a system above the material order, and is
prophetic of a Hfe to come ; he has consumed
countless ages in bringing man thus far on
his journey and the pilgrimage is still in pro
gress. The goal will be reasonable and good,
commensurate with the cost of the process.
Our Maker implanted the dream of a splendor
beyond, and created those conditions out of
which grew our hope of reunion with those
who have gone before. He
" forged that other influence
That heat of inward evidence
By which [we] doubt against the sense."
Assuredly the desire he has implanted wUl be
satisfied according to the greatness of his
wisdom and his loving power.
We often hear men declare that they have
no wish for a future Hfe ; they are wilhng at
any time to lay down the burden; and the
thought of an endless sleep is sweet to them.
We all have these moods, but they are moods
of depression. They result usually from disap-

IMMORTALITY 195
pointment, or lowered vitality. John Adding-
ton Symonds was expressing the feelings of a
sick soul when he wrote : " Until the immor
tality of the individual is irrefragably demon
strated, the sweet, the immeasurably precious
hope of ending with this life the ache and
languor of existence, remains open to bur
dened human personalities." When life is at
its best we are eager for further venture. It
is when we are finding our lives by losing
them in service that we are glad to continue
in the wars of God, and anticipate the joy and
vision of the redeemed. Whatever may be the
varying inclination of the individual, it is
indisputable that the race has had a strong
premonition of a future which will fulfill and
explain this life.
Belief in the life hereafter is not only a
reasonable hope, it is more reasonable than its
opposite. It is reasonable to trust in the high
est in man — his ideals, hopes, spiritual intui
tions, and reasoned faiths ; the highest in his
tory — the universal faith of the supreme souls
as against the materialistic and narrow views of
the lowest; the highest in the universe — the

196 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
justice, righteousness, and reasonableness of
God. " A king was sitting with his warriors
round the fire in a gloomy castle. It was night
and winter. Suddenly a Httle bird flew in at
an open door, and flew out again at another.
The king spoke, and said : ' This bird is like
man in the world ; it flew in from the dark
ness, and out again into the darkness, and was
not long in the warmth and light.' 'King,'
replied the oldest of the warriors, ' even in the
dark the bird is not lost, but finds its nest.' "
rv
Modern Ideas of the Future
We are less certain than our fathers of the
condition of those who have passed beyond the
veU. With the law of growth so ineffaceably
impressed upon our minds, we cannot think
of the redeemed as being immediately per
fected. Development seems to be the prescribed
method of life, and we conceive of all pure souls
as mounting an ever ascending pathway of
power and joy. The vast prison-house of tor
ture, whose material flames and endless tor
ments so scared the men of other days, is rapidly

IMMORTALITY 197
fading from the thoughts of men to-day. That
men in that other life wUl reap the harvests of
the seeds sown here, we all believe, but of the
nature and conditions of that reaping we have
no more knowledge than our fathers had. Some
among us hold to the ultimate annihilation of
the incorrigibly wicked. God, so runs the ar
gument, is the life of the world. The person
who fails to live a Hfe in God by faith, or
who bars the doors of the soul to the Divine
Spirit, is not in vital connection with the
source of all spiritual life, and finally goes
where the flame of a candle goes when it goes
out. Others cherish the hope that every wan
dering soul will finally seek and find the way
of life. Men are made in the image of the In
finite Reason ; wUl they not all at length act
in reason and in righteousness ? Jeremiah saw
a potter in Jerusalem take the vessels that had
been marred in the process of making, and
put them again upon the wheel to be fashioned
into other vessels. If the potter can work
his will with the refuse, cannot the good will
of God take humanity's broken lives and re
form them into objects of use and beauty?

198 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
Many Christians to-day utterly refuse to draw
the line of opportunity at the grave. They be
lieve that there is no warrant for the dogma,
either in Scripture or in reason, that probation
ends at death. Their hope follows the broken
vessel " Into that sad obscure sequestered state
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
He else made first in vain ; which must not be."
Still others recognize the possibility that man
in his freedom may persist in evU choices and
thus enfold himself in darkness and in misery.
Men to-day are not inclined to dogmatize upon
what takes place in the great Beyond. They
trust the good and the evil alike to the justice
and the mercy of God.

VII
IMPROVEMENT

VII
IMPROVEMENT
In closing this series of famUiar talks I wish
to make what the Puritan preachers caUed the
"improvement." Having unfolded their doc
trine, they applied it rigorously to the minds
and hearts of their hearers. The contempla
tion of lofty themes is valueless unless what
is a truth to the reason becomes a law to the
wUl. There are four considerations which I
would leave indelibly impressed upon your
minds. The first is that profound saying of
Goethe's : —
" Mankind is always progressing,
But man is always the same."
If humanity is advancing in knowledge, we
must expect ever changing conceptions, and
enlarged interpretations of the significance of
life and the mystery of nature. Our little sys
tems must have their day and cease to be. New
light will come with every forward movement.

202 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
But man is always the same. His deep needs
change not. The fundamental laws of his be
ing are permanent. The generations slake their
thirst at the same fountains ; they see the same
unfading Light; they are sustained by the
same unexhausted Strength. We have what our
fathers had, and any spiritual advance of which
we may boast is simply a stronger and larger
grasp upon truths which are the permanent
possession of the race. Forms of worship, sys
tems of philosophy, ecclesiastical organizations
are fashioned and pass away, but the essential
elements of religion abide. Therefore, whUe
we expect to have new theologies ever replac
ing the old, we must remember that beneath
all divergencies of creed and forms of insti
tutions we belong to a vast brotherhood of
good men. When one doubts the creed in
which he was reared he has not necessarily
outgrown the religion of his fathers. He may
as easily cast off the intellectual conceptions
of former generations as a tree sheds its leaves.
But let him not imagine that he has become
superior to those needs which have revealed
themselves in every earnest soul in aU the cen-

IMPROVEMENT 203
turies. Neither in his conceit let him dream
that he has opened undiscovered sources of
grace and strength. He may think he has laid
aside the Christian faith when he has only cast
off his boyish notions of religion. There is a
faith common to all good men. All spiritually
minded persons stand in the holy succession
of the prophets and apostles. Their differences
arise mainly from diversities of temperament
and pecuharities of speech. If we could under
stand one another, we should be surprised to
learn how much we have in common. As Car
lyle said of his friend John Sterling : " We
agree in everything except our opinions."
A second thought should be remembered.
If we have any reason for being, it is that we
grow up, and do our part in making the world
better. We are here to achieve a masterly and
symmetrical development of our personalities,
and to do good. It was a poet's true instinct
which led Keats to write : " Call the world a
vale of soul-making. Then you will find out
the use of the world." Man is the measure of
all things. Nothing is valuable except as it
makes for manhood. "Men are not here to

204 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
make money, but money is here to make men."
It was a clear-thinking student who said, " Man
exists in order to grow better, and the world
exists in order to help him."
If, and this is our third suggestion, a man
is in this world for self-development and for
service, we have a sure test of what is essen
tial and of what is non-essential in rehgion.
We often hear the assertion of different sects
that belief in certain dogmas is necessary to
salvation, or that specific rites are indispens
able. We have at hand a very ready probe
for these claims. Whatever ideals, opinions,
principles enter vitaUy into character to affect
it for good are essential ; all else is of subor
dinate importance. For example. What a man
practically believes and lays to heart about the
nature of God reports itself ineffaceably in
character. Firm belief in the divine right
eousness and benignity makes for a nobler
manhood than the opinion that the Eternal
is unconscious Caprice. An ideal of hohness
and an ideal of wealth shed a different lustre
upon the devotee. But the quantity of water
used in baptism is not evidenced in life. Two

IMPROVEMENT 205
men may be equally devout and good, although
taking opposite sides in the dispute regarding
the faU of man. Apostolical succession may
be necessary to an ecclesiastical system, but
its belief and practice do not develop the
finer Christian graces. Are we not justified
in affirming that whatever manifests itself in
virility and beauty of character — such as
faith in a good God, belief in the supremacy
of those moods and spiritual forces which are
covered by the name of Christ — is essential
to religion ; while all else, though important to
a system of thought, or a form of government,
is subordinate ? Is it not pitiable that the di
visions of Christendom arise from causes so
insignificant, that most of them may be rele
gated to the Hmbo of the non-essential ? They
are the grief of angels, and will be the scoff
of posterity.
The fourth truth which I would call to your
minds follows naturally from what has been
said. If we are in this world to come to the
measure of the stature of the fullness of our
personality, and if whatever is vital to religion
discloses its worth in its effect upon character,

206 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
then it is evident that we may have certitude
regarding the fundamentals of religion. This
is well to remember, for too often the impres
sion is given that religion after all is but a
grand Surmise. I confess that I have little
sympathy with the oft-quoted words of Ten
nyson : —
" We have but faith : we cannot know ;
For knowledge is of things we see."
The poet would use language scientifically,
but he conveys a false impression. He leaves
us feeling that in spiritual matters we are in
fants crying in the night, while in mundane
affairs we walk in the light. It is the speech
of a bewildered soul groping in the dark
ness. Not thus would Christ have employed
the word "know." He knew God and the sanc
tions of the spiritual world. He was as certain
of the unseen mansions in which his higher
nature dwelt in fullness of strength and joy as
he was of the temple in Jerusalem. The men
of imposing and luminous religious characters
of all times have considered the physical as the
veil hiding the verities of the spiritual world.
The temporal phantasmagoria will soon pass

IMPROVEMENT 207
away : indeed, it is continually passing ; it is
the Unseen that is known and abiding. No
religious mind of genius and experience would
admit that it is surer of what it beholds with
the bodily eyes than of what it sees with the
spiritual intuitions. " I know " is the familiar
expression of the chief leaders in the realm
of the spiritual, and not for a moment would
they, or should we, be willing to give that
strong word to be the exclusive possession of
the senses. The religious man may have a cer
tainty of spiritual things, which lies deeper in
his heart, and is more authoritative over his
conduct, than is his certainty of what his eyes
perceive. Without stopping to quibble over
the definition of a word, I think we are justi
fied in declaring that we have real certitude
of what enters vitally into character and con
duct. Whatever stands the test of life is true.
Falsehood does not form strong men. Error
does not permanently enrich existence. The
form in which we hold this germ of truth may be
ludicrous, yet if our belief ministers to human
well-being, the Eternal is in it. Our concep- j,
tions may be utterly inadequate, but we know

208 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
that we have a firm grasp on Reality, if our
religion comes into our lives as strength and
light. There are two quite distinct types of men
in the world, and their apprehension and ex
perience of religion differ according to their
peculiar temperament. Kipling, in one of his
most virile poems, designates them as the sons
of Mary and the sons of Martha. With them
we are familiar. One, fine-grained, mystical,
fond of study and lofty speculation, who sees
the soft light of the ideal falling upon the
stern realities of the world ; the other, hard-
headed, practical, self-sufficient, whose relig
ion is to do his duty, tell the truth, and help
his neighbors. The church has been largely
controlled by the sons of Mary, and in their in
terests. They, for the most part, have preached
the sermons, written the hymns, elaborated the
creeds, which the sons of Martha have only
half understood and less than half beHeved.
They have named the saints, and made their
remarkable conversions and ecstatic experi
ences the standards of the religious life. Many
a full-blooded, healthy son of Martha, being

IMPROVEMENT 209
Httle interested in what he heard at church,
having no keen sense of sin, and feeHng no
sweet consciousness of forgiveness, has felt
that there is little in rehgion for him. Relig
ion has been so exclusively interpreted in the
language of the mystic that many practical
men have felt that it is the luxury of a tem
perament and not a necessity of human na
ture. AU of you, as practical men doing the hard
work of the world, would probably classify
yourselves as the sons of Martha. Will you
permit me, therefore, to state, as weU as I may,
what I conceive to be those simple, universal
elements which are the essence of religion and
which make their appeal to that in all men
which Hes deeper than temperamental peculi
arities ? Of rehgion there are many definitions
current in our time. It has been called the
"life of God in the soul of man"; "moral
triumph through the vision and grace of the
moral deity " ; " the life and experience of the
human soul in relation to higher spiritual
Being." But Carlyle's rugged statement prob
ably makes the strongest impression upon the

210 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
practical mind : " The thing a man does prac
tically lay to heart and know for certain, con
cerning his vital relations to this mysterious
universe, and his duty and destiny there, that
is in all cases the primary thing for him, and
creatively determines all the rest. That is his
religion." Rehgion as thus defined is a con
viction issuing in a vital relationship to God
and men. It is man's attitude towards what is
above him and around him. Now there is only
one attitude for a sensible person to take to
wards that Power which alone is great. One is
foolish to stand erect in the pride of self-suf
ficiency, confident that he is master of his fate
and captain of his soul. A slight blow on the
temple easily shatters this dream of egoism.
Every true man recognizes that he is not his
own. He came forth from the Eternal, and to
the Eternal Will he must adjust himself. He
knows that his supreme duty is to conform his
character to the character of the Highest. He
surrenders himself to the purposes of God and
tries to be the man God would have him be,
and to do the work which he believes the All
Wise has assigned. "God whose I am and

IMPROVEMENT 211
whom I serve," is a thought constantly in his
mind. He reahzes that he is only a bond serv
ant to a Lord ; he is a voice or a hand to the
Vast Soul that works in him and through him.
He does his work as ever in the Great Task
master's eye.
Out of this attitude of loving obedience
springs that superlative motive which is every
where commanded in the Scriptures. The ul
timate authority for right conduct, sanctioned
by both the Old and New Testaments, is never
economy, or popularity, or policy, but always
the wUl and the character of God. The Jews
were to be holy as God is holy. They were
not to reap the corners of their fields nor to
glean the vineyards, but to leave the rem
nants for the poor and the stranger, not be
cause this generous policy would prevent labor
troubles, but because " I am the Lord thy
God," the Father of the needy and the Pro
tector of the stranger. If a man takes this at
titude of self-surrender towards God and en
deavors to conform his character and deeds to
the divine wiU, he is a religious man, whether
he be a Baptist, a Unitarian, or a Catholic.

212 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
The Christian man has certain moods and
dispositions which are habitual and character
istic. He does not act towards men out of his
hurt-bearing impulses, but his disposition is
one of good wUl, his prevailing moods are of
kindness and justice, his feelings are sympa
thetic and humane. The apostle set the stand
ard of this normal temper when he exclaimed,
" Let this mind be in you which was also in
Christ Jesus."
Besides having habitual relationships and a
prevailing mood, the religious man must be
dedicated to a Cause. Like his Master he feels
that he is in the world not to do his own will,
but to work with God. God's Cause is the sov
ereignty of the divine will, and the unveiling
of the divine likeness, in humanity. The re
ligious man beheves that he is not dealing
simply with details and with things ; he is co
operating with the divine Spirit that speaks
in his own soul ; he is laboring with that hid
den Reality which binds together and is work
ing through the scattered circumstances of
life. Therefore he relates his work, whatever
it may be, to God. Having found his task, he

IMPROVEMENT 213
brings it into connection with the divine pur
pose. Thus he develops his best nature. He
finds his life by losing it. Through self-for-
getfulness he comes to self-realization.
The most menial duty assumes dignity when
it is seen in its relationship to the kingdom
of God. Drudgery becomes endurable, and
even glorious, when performed in a lofty spirit,
just as the common soldier knows that the
routine of camp life is saved from meanness
by the nobility of the Cause for which he is
campaigning. Does not a man gain something
exceedingly valuable when, ceasing to consider
his work as a mere means of getting a liveli
hood, he labors under the inspiration of the
thought that his daily toil is related to the
good of humanity and the will of God? Sim
ple things are thus consecrated and the ground
upon which he stands becomes holy.
But the heart of religion lies deeper than
any truth of which I have yet spoken. If Jesus
came to the world and lived his beautiful life
of obedience to God and of neighborliness to
men, revealing those high moods which make
life abundant in joy and power ; if he held up

214 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
a vision of the kingdom of God and called
upon men everywhere to make this the first
object of their ambition ; if he did all this and
nothing more, he would be a taskmaster harder
than Moses. He would be a lawgiver with
more elevated standards, intensifying the mis
ery of our conscious shortcomings. But he
revealed a gospel, and not simply ideals of
character and conduct, so exalted as to be un
attainable. The gospel is that God helps men
to live the Hfe they ought to live. The su
preme service which Jesus rendered was to
awaken in men a vivid and commanding con
sciousness of the ever-present grace of God.
He made his followers feel that God cares for
the most insignificant life. Walking one day
in the market-place, he saw some sparrows ex
posed for sale. Two sparrows were sold for a
farthing, but five were given for two farthings.
The tiny creature was so valueless that in a
trivial two-farthing trade it was thrown in as
an extra. " Yet," exclaimed the Master, " not
one of them is forgotten in the sight of God ! "
The Father in heaven not only observes, he
searches for the lost, as a woman sweeps her

IMPROVEMENT 215
house for a small coin, as a shepherd seeks a
wandering sheep. The shepherd follows the
foolish and helpless sheep, at the cost of pri
vation and suffering, out into the night and
into the wilderness. You wiU notice that the
rescue does not depend solely upon the lost
sheep hearing the voice of the shepherd and
obediently following him back to the fold.
The shepherd is strong and the way, leading
o'er crag and torrent, is difficult. Christian art
has been true to the heart of the gospel in
representing the good shepherd carrying the
lost lamb in his arms. In him is the power that
seeks and saves. Or, to change the illustration:
A saUor falls overboard in the high seas and
the commander throws to him a life-line. If
the drowning man will cling tenaciously to the
line, he will be brought in safety to the vessel.
But the current funs strong, the waters are
cold, and his grasp is feeble. If his rescue
depends upon his abUity to cling to the life
line, the sailor is lost. But the commander
does more than throw out a rope. He orders
the lifeboat lowered, it draws near the strug-
ghng sailor, and the commander lays hold upon

216 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
him. Now, the salvation of the sinking man
lies, not first of all in his purpose to save him
self, it rests in the purpose and strength of the
commander. He is saved because neither height
nor depth can separate him from the might
of the compassion which has taken him in its
keeping. This crude illustration is to my mind
an expression of the grace and glory of our
religion. God, in his Son and in his Spirit,
searches for his lost ones. At extreme cost to
himself he lays hold of every willing life. It
was Christ's nature to love men in their sins
and to help men out of them ; it is God's na
ture also. His is a love that will not let us go.
Having loved his own, he will love them to
the end. The hope of redemption is not se
creted in the energies of the human will, but
in the Everlasting Love and power that pities,
and follows, and encompasses men with a per
fect defense. Man's fidelity to God is only part
of our religion. God's fidelity to man is its
abiding hope and unspeakable glory.
There is a still more practical way of stating
the work which religion does in remoulding
broken and imperfect lives. Professor James

IMPROVEMENT 217
has described regeneration as a process by
which " a self hitherto divided, and consciously
wrong, inferior, and unhappy, becomes unified,
and consciously right, superior, and happy, in
consequence of a firmer hold upon rehgious
reaHties." This is a forcible statement of the
every-day achievement of religion. Men are
aware that their natures are divided. The
flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit
lusteth against the flesh. Christianity unifies
the nature by bringing all its faculties into
subjection to a Master. It takes men who are
consciously wrong, and makes them consciously
right with God and men, through repentance
and the assurance of forgiveness. Inferior men
are endued with power to conquer themselves
and the hostile conditions of their Hves. Men
bitterly unhappy have been Hf ted into perma
nent moods of joy and serene courage. This
wonder is the familiar story of every Bowery
mission and of every living church. It is so
common that it fails to attract attention.
Science can explain the psychology of the
change, but it cannot work the miracle. It can
trace the process, but it cannot furnish the

218 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
power. Much less can it produce that knightly
passion, so characteristic of men reaUy regen
erated, to spend and be spent in the service of
others. In drawing this discourse to a close, I wish
to call your attention to a fact which is import
ant for men of mature years to keep in mind.
It is the prevalent opinion that youth is the
period of life which is exposed to the gravest
peril. If the young man can be gotten over the
slippery paths of the early years, and be well
settled in a profitable business, and in a com
fortable home, then the safety of his life is
assured. Like a tree planted by the rivers of
water, he wiU bring forth good fruit in its
season. But probably more men go wrong in
the midst of the years than in early man
hood, even as more ships go down upon the
high seas than founder when saihng out of
the harbor.
History sustains this contention. Consider
how many of the kings of Israel failed in
middle life. Saul in his young manhood was
the glory of Israel; in the fullness of his
strength he fell through self-will. Solomon

IMPROVEMENT 219
dedicated himself in youth to wisdom; in his
later years he was a far-famed voluptuary. If
many of the Roman emperors had died in
middle life, they would have left names of im
perishable honor. Benedict Arnold at twenty-
one, in like circumstances, would have exclaimed
with Nathan Hale, "I only regret that I have
but one life to give for my country." One of
the most brilHant editors of the past genera
tion began his career at Brook Farm. In his
early life he was an idealist as stainless as
Garrison or Phillips. After the Civil War he
dipped his brilliant pen in the gall of bitter
ness to defend the most debased political ma
chine of the day.
Literature teaches the same lesson. Dante
gives us his own experience when he writes as
the opening line of the "Divine Comedy";
"Midway in the journey of our life I found
myself in a dark wood, where the right way
was lost." Shakespeare at forty confronted
those stern powers which determine destiny.
Then he turned from lighter plays to the deep
themes of the tragedies. His great characters
were not young. Lear lost and found himself

220 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
in old age. The king in " Hamlet " murdered
his brother in that period of life when the hey
day of the blood is cool and waits upon the
judgment. Macbeth and his lady would not
have slain their king and guest in the more
generous days of youth. Macduff reveals the
cause of Macbeth's damnation.
" This avarice
Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root
Than Summer-seeming lust."
Tennyson represents Gareth as easily conquer
ing the Knight of the Morning Star, but the
Knight of Noonday is overcome with more
difficulty. The daily newspaper confirms the
testimony of literature and of history. The
forgers and defaulters of whom we read are not
usually young men. The financiers whose un
scrupulous practices have endangered the lib
erties of our institutions are men of ripened
experience. Our Pharisees are seldom in the
flush of youth.
Why do so many good men break down in
the midst of the years ? One reason is that the
temptations of middle life are deadlier than
those of early manhood. The sins of the

IMPROVEMENT 221
younger days grow out of the impulses of the
flesh. They are born of hot blood and of im
mature judgment. The perils of middle life
are of the spirit. They are less gross, but more
reptihan and insidious.
These are the years of waning enthusiasm.
Youth is generous and ardent, ambitious of
glorious achievement. Young men are sus
ceptible of moral appeal. By middle life one
has learned how mighty is the pressure to
bring one's ideals down to the dead level of
character. He finds that to follow his highest
conceptions of duty and honor involves con
stant misunderstanding and sacrifice. The
price he is paying for righteousness appalls
him, and he concludes to aim lower and be
more comfortable. Moreover, the years have
revealed his limitations. It is a serious moment
when a man realizes that he is only an atom.
Then he confronts the temptation to give up
lofty endeavor and to look first after his own
interests. It is a critical moment in the race
of life when one loses his first wind. He is apt
also to lose his enthusiasm and drop out of
the running. But if he resolutely continues,

222 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
he soon taps a fresh reservoir of energy and
presses on with vigor and joy. There is no
more crucial period in life than the period
when one's early enthusiasms are a spent force,
and one is learning to fall back on the steady
convictions of the spirit.
The fact that you and I are sober, industri
ous, and eminently respectable citizens in the
maturity of our powers does not prove that
in the essential qualities of manhood we may
not be inferior to men of less reputable lives.
We have passed creditably through the stormy
period of youth, and there is little danger that
we shall give way to the baser sensuous pas
sions. But are we meeting the perUs of middle
life with equal valor? Are our ideals of per
sonal conduct as lofty as they were twenty
years ago? Are our standards of thought and
action as elevated as then? Are we as respon
sive to the high calls of duty? Are we grow
ing broader in vision, more sympathetic of
heart, more consecrated in purpose? Or have
we settled down ? Are we on the march, or are
we making ourselves generally comfortable?
Are we pressing on towards a worthy goal, or

IMPROVEMENT 223
has the vision splendid faded into the light of
common day?
Let me bring these familiar talks, of whose
inadequacy I am all too conscious, to a close by
an illuminating quotation from Schleiermacher,
one of the most distinguished exponents of the
new theology in the nineteenth century. The
cardinal doctrine of this theology — the in-
dwelhng of the Spirit of God in the world —
so fiUed his mind with rapture that he uttered
these memorable words, which disclose the
spiritual enthusiasm which may come to those
who enter completely into the new light which
has fallen upon the old faith : " Unf eebled will
I bring my spirit down to life's closing period :
never shall the genial courage of life desert
me; what gladdens me now shall gladden me
forever; my imagination shall continue lively,
and my will unbroken, and nothing shall
force from my hand the magic key which
opens the mysterious gates of the upper world,
and the fire of love within me shall never be
extinguished. I will not look upon the dreaded
weakness of age ; I pledge myself to supreme
contempt of every toil which does not concern

224 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH
the true end of my existence, and I vow to re
main forever young. . . . The spirit that im
pels man forward shall never fail me, and the
longing which is never satisfied with what has
been, but ever goes forth to meet the new,
shall be mine. The glory I shall seek is to
know that my aim is infinite, and yet never
to pause in my course. ... I shall never
think myself old until my work is done, and
that work will not be done while I know and
will what I ought. ... To the end of my
life I am determined to grow stronger and
livelier by every act, and more vital through
every improvement. ... No event shaU have
power to disturb my heart; the pulse of my
inner life shall remain fresh while life en
dures." Such was the enthusiasm created in the
heart of one of the earliest expounders of the
new light, and such ardor and joy glows in
the heart of every one who sees "truth en
kindled along the stairway of the eternal
palace." THE END

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