RELIGION
FOR TO-DAY
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JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

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RELIGION FOR TO-DAY

BOOKS BY
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
The Revolutionary Function op
the Modern Church
Marriage and Divorce
Is Death the End?
New Wars for Old
Religion for To-day

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
Various Interpretations of the
Thought and Practise of
the New Religion
of our Time

BY
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1917

Copyright, 1917
Bt DODD, MEAD AKD COMPANY, Inc.

TO
THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS
OF THE
CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH
IN COMMEMORATION OF THE TEN
YEARS THEY HAVE SUSTAINED ME IN
THE MESSIAH PULPIT
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

PREFACE
The contents of this present volume comprise a list
of thirteen addresses, selected out of the many de
livered in the Messiah Pulpit, and elsewhere on mani
fold occasions, during the last ten years. These par
ticular addresses, with the exception of slight verbal
corrections, are printed here exactly as spoken to my
audiences. They are chosen for publication not be
cause of any connection with one another in form and
content; and no attempt has been made to arrange or
adapt them so that they may present a systematic
whole. Each has been included in this collection be
cause of its own especial character as a representative
expression of radical thought on religious questions of"
the day. In so far as they are subject to any kind
of classification, they have fallen naturally into four
groups. The first address, " The New Religion," may
be regarded as an introduction to, or summary of, the
general theme of the book. Then follow, in three ad
dresses, statements of certain principles underlying the
liberal religion of our time. The next three addresses
provide examples of certain aspects of the character
istic thought of this religion. The third group, also
of three addresses, embodies different illustrations of
that social application of religious idealism which con-

viii PREFACE
stitutes the distinctive feature of " religion for to
day." In the last group are three addresses, delivered
shortly after the opening of the Great War, which
may be taken as indicating one phase of the spiritual
reaction which followed upon this stupendous event.
It is obvious that this collection of addresses,
like every collection of the kind, lacks the merit
of presenting a systematic and thorough treatment
of the subject; and fails altogether to touch upon
certain important aspects of the subject, as for ex
ample, immortality. Serious as these facts are, they
are necessarily involved in the limitations of the scheme
here adopted, and must therefore in the beginning be
accepted and discounted. On the other hand, is the
unquestioned advantage of such a collection in open
ing up new lines of thought, in offering a viewpoint and
a method for the consideration of questions of religious
theory and practice, in quickening by flashlight sug
gestions a curiosity to know and understand the whole
system of thought, or gospel of religion, of which such
glimpses are the momentary and therefore imperfect
expression, and in communicating that contagion of
the free spirit which is the Alpha and Omega of true
religion not only to-day but yesterday and forever.
If these addresses do no more than turn an occasional
reader from the old religion to the new, help an oc
casional reader who has already abandoned the old to
find the new, persuade an occasional reader who has
found the new to rejoice and then convey the secret
pf his rejoicing to other hearts, I shall be well content,

PREFACE ix
One other motive underlies the publication of this
volume. On February 4, 1917, I shall complete ten
years of service in the Messiah Pulpit. It is my hope
that, to the dear friends who have "lent me (their)
ears " and shared with me their hearts during this
period, these addresses here collected may appear as
a kind of record of our long and happy association.
In this spirit and to this end, I have taken the liberty
of dedicating this book to my people. Sensible as I
am of the inadequacy of this slight offering, it gives me
comfort that I can here bear public testimony to my
gratitude and affection.

John Haynes Holmes.

Church of the Messiah
New York City
December 1, 1916.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
Preface  vii
INTRODUCTORY
The New Religion  . . 3
STATEMENTS OF PRINCIPLE
Truth, not Tradition  .27
Liberty, not Authority  51
Justice, not Charity  72
ASPECTS OF THOUGHT
The Dilemma of Denial  103
Is God a Personality?  130
The Modern Conception of Prayer  157
SOCIAL APPLICATIONS
The Church and the World  187
Legislation and Morals  210
The Crime of Caste  238
THE WAR
Man: An End, not a Means  265
The God of Battles  289
Is Christianity a Failure?  311

INTRODUCTORY

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
THE NEW RELIGION
It must be recognised at the outset of our discussion
of this subject, that, in the deepest and finest sense of
the word, the new religion is the same as the old
religion. There is a great truth involved in the majes
tic words of traditional adoration, " As it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end,
Amen." For religion, after all, has to do fundamen
tally with the attempt of the human soul to get into
right relations with God, and God, by the very nature
of his being, is " a constant quantity." " With him is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning." " He is
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." And the
same therefore must be the endeavours of men in every
age to find him, to know him, to love him, to serve him.
Nothing is more impressive in the modern study of
comparative religions, than the discovery of the essen
tial identity of these religions. Turn to the considera
tion of any people, no matter how remote, or of any
age, no matter how primitive, and you find that re
ligions are indeed many, but that religion itself is one!
Here in all cases do we find the recognition of some
kind of a supreme being, spiritual in nature, who is
regarded as the creator of the universe, the source of

4 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
living energy, and the ruler of the world. Here do
we find the deliberate and persistent endeavour to get
into relations with this deity — to understand his mind,
propitiate his favour, and serve his purposes. Here do
we find the august affirmation of the essential kinship
of humanity with God, and the consequent destiny of
every human soul to some kind of immortality. Espe
cially do we find the definition and inculcation of a rule
of life which is well pleasing unto God and therefore
necessary to happiness and prosperity in this world
and in the next. These are the essential ingredients
of religion as we have known it in the past. And what
is true of the past, is true also, we may be sure, of the
future. If religion is destined to endure, as I most
certainly believe that it is, it will continue to preserve,
through all the ages that are to come, exactly this
same content which I have just described. Religion
will always be the same in its search after God if haply
it may find him, in its hopeful expectancy of a life
beyond the grave, in its belief in the essential integrity
of the world, in its faith in the ultimate triumph of
good over evil, in its endeavours after the kind of life
which will bring salvation to the soul. Experienced
travellers have again and again borne testimony to the
fact that, in the strangest lands of earth, one can feel
at home in the public ceremonies of religion, for, how
ever unfamiliar the language and practices of devotion,
worship is still worship and prayer is always prayer.
And as with different places, so also with different ages !
If you and I were suddenly to be transported this day

THE NEW RELIGION 5
far back into the Athens of Pericles or the Rome of
Augustus or the Jerusalem of David, we would un
doubtedly find nothing so familiar as the temples and
their services. And if, in the same way, we were sud
denly to be transported far ahead into some distant
Utopia of the future, it is altogether certain that we
would recognise nothing so quickly as the religious
activities of the people. The religion of to-morrow will
be in all essentials the religion of to-day, just as the
religion of to-day in all its essentials is still the religion
of yesterday.
I have quoted the famous saying, " religions are
many, but religion is one." While recognising that re
ligion is indeed one and the same thing in every age of
human experience, it is important for us to recognise that
it is also true that religions are nevertheless " many ! "
Religion, in other words, which is permanent, works out
into all sorts and kinds of religions, which are passing.
Every age has its own particular ideas, experiences, and
hopes ; and inevitably these give different colour or shape
to the expression of the unvarying religious sentiment
of the soul. It was natural for the Greeks, who culti
vated fertile valleys and basked in pleasant sunshine, to
interpret religion in different terms of thought and
practice from the Iranians, who^ walked on rocky path
ways and wrestled with tempestuous skies. It was im
possible for the Romans, who became the masters of
the world and the builders of the greatest empire of law
and order that mankind has ever seen, to express their
religious emotions in the form of institutions and cere-

6 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
monials which would have much identity with those of
the Jews, for example, who were for centuries the
ravaged victims of every military conqueror of the East.
It was inevitable that the new ideas, which came rushing
into the minds of men like a loosened flood in the period
of the Renaissance, should lead to a transformation in
the field of religion no less revolutionary and epoch-
making than the transformation in the field of culture.
Religion in its essence is undoubtedly an abiding reality,
as I have said, but the conceptions of religion are as dif
ferent as the different environments in which men live,
the different experiences which they undergo, the differ
ent perspectives of knowledge and aspiration from
which they gaze upon the world. Religion is like a river.
The same great tide of water is sweeping on from the
springs in the distant mountains to the outlet in the sea.
But here it is " the still waters " by " green pastures,"
and there a foaming cataract between the granite walls
of a mighty canyon; here it runs smooth and clear
through sandy soil, there it is discoloured with mud or
turgid with the defilement of a city's refuse. The same
river is a hundred different rivers as it makes its way to
the sea by fields and mountains, through deserted for
ests and busy villages, by quiet farms and crashing
factories. And so with religion! Ever the same in
essence, it takes on a new and distinct character in
every country which it enters and in every age through
which it moves. " From epoch to epoch," says Maz-
zini, in his From the Council to God, " the pages of the
eternal gospel are turned; each fresh page, disclosed

THE NEW RELIGION 7
by the ever-renovated spirit of God, indicates a period
of progress marked out by the providential plan, and
corresponds historically to a religion. Each religion
sets before mankind a new idea — each is a fragment
of eternal truth. So soon as that idea, comprehended
by the intelligence and incarnated in the hearts of man
kind, has become an inalienable part of universal tra
dition, even as the mountain traveller, on reaching one
summit beholds another rising above him, so is a new
idea or aim presented to the human mind, and a new
conception of life arises to consecrate that idea. Hav
ing accomplished its mission, that religion disappears,
leaving behind the portion of truth that it contained,
and straightway a new religion appears ! " This
phenomenon of the passing in the permanent is what
we have in mind when we compare the religion of the
Babylonians with that of the Egyptians, or the religion
of the first century after Christ with that of the Middle
Ages. And this it is which we very particularly have
in mind, when we look into the future and try, as best
we can, to forecast the religion of to-morrow as con
trasted with the religion of yesterday and to-day.
It is doubtful if ever before, in the spiritual history
of the race, this question of the new religion was ever
so pertinent as it is at this present moment. Concep
tions of religion, as we have seen, have always changed,
as the ideas and experiences of men have changed.
But never have these changes been so fundamental and
so universal as to-day. It was this fact which
prompted Dr. Charles William Eliot to the writing of

8 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
his famous essay on The Religion of the Future. " The
nineteenth century," he says, " immeasurably sur
passed all preceding centuries in the increase of knowl
edge, and in the spread cf scientific inquiry and of the
passion for truth-seeking. . . . (My) observing and
thinking life has covered the extraordinary period since
the Voyage of the Beagle was published, anaesthesia and
the telegraph came into use, Herbert Spencer issued
his first series of papers on evolution, Kuenen, Robert
son Smith and Wellhausen developed and vindicated
Biblical criticism, J. S. Mill's Principles of Political
Economy appeared, and the United States, by going to
war with Mexico, set in operation the forces which abol
ished slavery on the American continent — the period
within which mechanical power came to be widely dis
tributed . . . and all the great fundamental indus
tries of civilised mankind were reconstructed." It is
evident that such changes as these, within the period
of a single life-time, have brought us a new world, and,
by the same token also, a new religion. What this
religion is, no man can say. It is still a matter more
of the future than of the present. But what this new
religion is destined to be, at some date not too far dis
tant, is a matter which is well within the range of rea
sonable speculation. Certain large characteristics of
the new religion of to-morrow have become manifest in
our time, just as, on an early day of the creation, cer
tain great continents lifted themselves out of the waste
of chaos, and straightway took form and content.
I. In the first place, I believe we may affirm that

THE NEW RELIGION 9
the new religion will be a scientific religion. For three
hundred years or more, the battle has been raging
between theology and science. At first the conflict
seemed to be concerned with the facts about the crucial
problems of the origin, destiny and character of the
world. On the one side was religion, with a great mass
of legends and traditions, gathered up from all sorts of
ancient sources, Jewish, classic, and barbarian. On
the other side was science with a rapidly accumulating
mass of facts gathered up from observatories,
laboratories, archaeological expeditions and historical
researches. In no single instance, so far as I know,,
did the traditions of the priest match with the con
clusions of the scientist. And it was the necessity,
thus created, of finding out which side of the contro
versy was to be trusted, that led to the discovery that
there is something more fundamental involved here than
any mere dispute as to doctrines and facts.
At the heart of this whole business is a matter of atti
tude or method. Are we to believe that truth has been
disclosed all at once in the past by some miraculous pro
cess of revelation, or are we to believe that truth is
disclosed little by little by the wholly natural and infi
nitely laborious process of observation, investigation
and experimentation? Is knowledge something that is
definite in amount and determined in character, or is
it something which is ever growing and unfolding as
man penetrates deeper and deeper into the constitution
of things ? Are we living in a world, wherein all things
past, present and future, have been disclosed, or are

10 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
we living in a world which, as Immanuel Kant put it so
vividly, is but a little island of the known, washed on
every shore by the vast waters of the unknown ? Is the
book of wisdom, written, closed and sealed for all eter
nity, or is page after page still being written with the
blood and tears of striving men? Here in this matter
not of fact but of attitude, not of conclusion but of
method, not of letter but of spirit, is the real issue in
this three centuries' old conflict between science and
theology. And it is an issue, let me state with all pos
sible emphasis, which has been definitely decided on the
side of science. Dr. Draper in his History of the Con
flict Between Religion and Science and Dr. Andrew D.
White in his History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, have together demonstrated that, on every
point where these two great interests have joined bat
tle, science has emerged triumphant. And it is this
which the religion of to-morrow, unlike most of the
religion of to-day, is going to recognise and acclaim.
The new religion of the future, as I have said, will be
a scientific religion. It will abandon to science once
for all the entire world of natural phenomena, and
accept as the basis of its own teachings the facts which
science discovers and establishes. It will abandon, in
its own particular fields of study, the whole theological
method of deduction from a, priori premises, and accept
and practise the scientific method of induction from
facts observed and tested. It will abandon that pre
sumptuous idea of a full, final and infallible revelation
which Herbert Spencer well dubbed "the impiety of the

THE NEW RELIGION 11
pious," and accept that attitude of reverent and yet
curious agnosticism which becomes a finite mind when
brought face to face with an infinite universe. Above
all, will it abandon its reverence of the past as the re
pository of divine truth, and look forward confidently
to the future for the apprehension of those hidden
realities which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor
the heart of man conceived." The religion of to-mor
row will have no quarrel with science, nor science with
religion. On the contrary, these two traditional
antagonists will become colleagues, working side by
side, in one common spirit of devotion, for the dis
covery of truth and the enlargement of life. And
this new alliance, in place of the old hostility, will
mean at least three momentous changes for the religion
of to-morrow.
(1) First of all, it will mean the end of those
numerous superstitions which have ever been the accom
paniment of the religious sentiment, and have made
religion quite as much a source of fear as of comfort
to the human heart. Out of the centuries gone by
have survived a thousand and one extraordinary ideas
about man's history in the past and his destiny in the
future. Some of these superstitions are based on
ancient legends of the race, the origin of which no man
knoweth at this time — some are the consequence of
dogmatic speculation or malevolent invention — all are
the hideous brood of ignorance and fear. And all are
put to flight by the scientific spirit which deals with
facts and not with fables. In this sense, the science

12 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of our time must be regarded as the great liberator of
the soul from the bondage of superstition into the free
dom of reality. The more we know the universe, the
more do we find that its laws are to be trusted —
" that its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its
paths are peace." Consider, if you will, the theologi
cal bogies that have been shattered, the ecclesiastical
tyrannies that have been overthrown, the human ter
rors that have been dissipated, not only by the facts
which science has revealed to us but by the method
which it has taught us, and at once you will see the
beneficent contribution which it has made to the religion
of to-morrow.
(2) In the second place, this union of science and
religion will end the reign of authority in the realm of
things spiritual. " The decline of reliance upon abso
lute authority," says Dr. Eliot, in his The Religion of
the Future, " is one of the most significant phenomena
of our time." This decline is to be seen everywhere —
in government, in education, in business, in the family.
But nowhere is it more marked than in the church.
The present generation has learned to distrust any
theory of the world which places authority in a book,
or an institution, or a creed; and this distrust is des
tined to increase, until it has been transformed into out-
and-out disbelief. Science is teaching once for all that
reason is the only criterion of truth — and the mind of
man therefore the only genuine seat of authority. All
of which means that the religion of to-morrow, like the
science of to-day, will be free from all external pressure,

THE NEW RELIGION IS
and thus be guided and controlled by nothing but the
inward impulse of the inquiring spirit.
(3) And' lastly, the establishment of a scientific
religion will mean the end of all bigotry and dogmatism.
No longer will the religious mind be closed to new
inquiry, and the religious hand be lifted to smite the
new inquirer. On the contrary, the religion of to
morrow will be as open to fresh revelations of God's
truth as any department of science which is known to
our age. Such persecution as the Catholic church
visited upon Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler because
of their searching of the heavens — such opposition as
the Protestant church offered to Darwin, Huxley and
Spencer because of their discovery and formulation of
the doctrine of evolution — will be utterly impossible
in the new religion which is even now dawning upon the
world. Thomas More, in his Utopia, prophesied very
definitely regarding the religion of the future. In some
things he was right, and in some things wrong. But
his vision was as accurate as it was beautiful when he
said of the Utopians — " This is one of their laws, that
no man ought to be punished for his religion. . . .
Every man might be of what religion he pleased, and
might draw others to it by the force of argument, and
by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness
against those of other opinions. This law was made
not only for preserving the public peace, but because
. . . the interest of religion itself required it."
II. When we have said that the new religion will
be a scientific religion, we have named only the first of

14 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
many changes that are destined to take place in the
gradual transition from the present to the future. As
a further characteristic of this new religion, I would
here name, in the second place, the moral sentiment.
The religion of the future will not only be scientific,
but it will also be dominated by the ethical as contrasted
with the theological point of view. Not much longer
will the church content itself with maintaining sacra
ments and rites and ceremonials of one kind and another
as the talismans of salvation. Not much longer will it
point to creeds and rituals as the sine qua non of reli
gious faith. Already have the great masses of mankind
in our age and generation decided that these things
have nothing essentially to do with religion in itself,
and, by severing their connection with the church, given
evidence of their contempt for an institution which does
those things which it ought not to do, and leaves undone
those things which it ought to do. The vital thing in
religion, we know to-day, is not faith, but character
— not acceptance of creeds, but obedience to the moral
law — not conformity to theological tenets and eccles
iastical obligations, but glad and free allegiance to the
spiritual ideals of the soul. Not what a man believes
or does not believe — not what he thinks or does not
think about the birth of Jesus, the resurrection of the
body, or the fall of man — not what he does or does not
do in relation to the traditional church practices of
worship, prayer and praise — but what a man is as a
man — the purity of his private life, the justice and
generosity of his relations with his fellowmen, the quick-

THE NEW RELIGION 15
ness of his sympathies, the sincerity of his convictions,
the integrity of his word and bond — this is the true
test of religion. Character is the great thing in the
practical life of the present day, and this will be the
essential thing, we may be sure, in the religion of to
morrow. Creeds and rituals and confessions — all
these are fated to disappear; and in their places will
remain the moral sentiment as the all-sufficient content
of religion.
If we desire any particular evidence of the certainty
of this transition from theology to morality, from
creed to character, we find it in abundance in the great
revival movement of the Rev. " Billy " Sunday, which is
now arousing such interest throughout the country.
This crusade has of course all the outward character
istics of the traditional revivals of the past. There is
the same crude theological teachings, the same clever
understanding of mob psychology, the same insistent
appeal to prejudice and fear. But he who thinks that
" Billy " Sunday is a mere reincarnation of Whitefield
and Evans — that this revival is only a duplication on
a somewhat larger and more vulgar scale of the great
revivals of the days gone by. — is very much deceived.
The one thing that is most remarkable about this
movement, to my mind, is not the personal power of
Mr. Sunday, not the marvellous machinery of organisa
tion which he has perfected, not the number of converts
whom he brings to " the saw-dust trail," but the ex
traordinary fact that here, amid all these traditional
and old-fashioned surroundings, there is being struck an

16 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
insistent note which has never been sounded before in
orthodox revivals. " Billy " Sunday thinks that he is
absolutely faithful to " the old-time religion." Noth
ing would shock him more than to be told that he is
himself a triumphant representative of that very kind
of new religion which he attacks with such bitterness
and hate. He uses all the old phrases, plays all the old
tricks, handles all the old paraphernalia. But at the
bottom of his work, all the same, is not theology, not
conversion, not faith in Jesus, not acceptance of the
cross, but, mirabile dictu! the moral life. The one
thing that " Billy " Sunday seems to be genuinely inter
ested in, is getting people to be decent. He spits his
venom upon those who, as liberals, identify religion
and morality. He ridicules, denounces and insults
those who declare that conduct and character are the
great things. He asserts with unexampled vividness
of phrase, that belief in " Christ and him crucified " is
the only road to salvation. But all this is mere imita
tion of ancient models : — mere " sound and fury signi
fying nothing." What he really cares about, as I have
said, is to get people to be moral — to be good parents
of their children, to be honest citizens in the community,
to be clean in their personal life, to stop drinking, to
avoid sensuality, to " cut out " frivolity, pleasure-seek
ing, and selfish indulgence, to pay their bills, to care
for their homes, to destroy the liquor traffic, to clean
up the town, to be decent generally. All of which
means that the Rev. " Billy " Sunday is not half as
orthodox as he thinks he is ! In spite of all the igno-

THE NEW RELIGION 17
ranee, vulgarity, cheap tricks and wild talk, this man is
a leader of liberalism, and is the most convincing evi
dence of which I know, that the new religion will mag
nify not theology but the moral sentiment, and thus be
primarily interested not in what a man believes but in
what he is !
HI. If " Billy " Sunday is the most brilliant kind
of witness to this second characteristic of the new
religion, he must be described, on the other hand, as
the poorest kind of representative of a third character
istic, of which I must now speak. The new religion,
as I have said, will be strictly ethical and not
theological in character; but it will emphasise a
type of moral life, which has never played any great
part in the history of traditional Christianity, and
which has no convincing example, so far as I know, out
side of the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel. I
refer to the fact that the religion of to-morrow is going
to be a religion of social, as contrasted with individual,
morality. The foreshadowing of this extraordinary
development from the idea of the individual soul to the
idea of the political, industrial and economic society in
which the soul has place, is seen in all of those various
social reform movements of our time which constitute
our age, as it has been so often called, " the age of the
social question." In the old days, all stress was laid
upon the individual as such. The principles of indi
vidual initiative, individual activity, individual respon
sibility, and individual salvation, were worked, figur
atively speaking, to death. " Each man for himself,

18 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
and the devil take the hindmost," this was the great
axiom of life in education, in politics, in economics,
and, by no means least of all, in religion. " Billy "
Sunday's work is a perfect illustration of what I mean
in this regard. Here he is as old-fashioned and tra
ditional as you please. His appeal is fundamentally
moral and not theological, as I have ventured to point
out — which is new ; but this appeal is aimed straight at
the isolated individual — which is as old as the per
nicious doctrine of future retribution. Never once
does he strike the social note, or sound the social chal
lenge. Save yourself, is the whole burden of his mes
sage! In other fields of activity, however, if not to any
great extent in religion, a revolutionary change in this
regard is taking place. We are awakening to-day to
the full import of the great principle, laid down by St.
Paul, so many centuries ago, that " no man liveth unto
himself." No man, we are now coming gradually to
see, can be saved alone. He is not saved, if he himself
gains a position of security, only to leave behind and
abandon to their fate the great mass of men. To save
ourselves is to save others. The process of service, sac
rifice and death for others' sakes is itself the process
of salvation. As John Greenleaf Whittier has put it so
effectively in his familiar couplet :
" Heaven's gate is closed to him who comes alone,
Save thou a soul and it shall save thine own."
But this is not the whole of our discovery, by any

THE NEW RELIGION 19
means. Beyond this, and infinitely more important, is
the discovery that men cannot be saved as individuals,
apart from the material and moral conditions of the
environment in which they live. To save a slum popu
lation from physical degeneration, moral corruption
and spiritual atrophy, we must not merely educate and
redeem the individual men and women, but first and
foremost, wipe out the slum. To save the little children
who crowd our juvenile courts, we must not merely
punish, teach and inspire the separate boys and girls,
but we must change their gutters into playgrounds,
their tenement abodes into homes of light, their scanty
food into abundant nourishment, their wretched pleas
ures into wholesome recreation. To save our drunk
ards, prostitutes and gunmen, we must not so much
rear mission-houses, rescue stations and reformatories,
as smash the saloons, abolish cruel and indecent condi
tions of labour, establish the minimum wage, solve the
vexed problem of unemployment, wipe out the curse of
poverty. Already we are convinced that the physical
diseases of our people are due almost exclusively to bad
environment — that such ills as tuberculosis, typhoid
fever, and infant mortality, for example, can never be
conquered until the multitudes live and labour under
conditions which are at least human. And in the same
way are we beginning to learn that the moral ills of our
people are rooted in the same polluted soil of environ
ment. Religion, like education, is no longer blind to
the moral and spiritual results of social maladjust
ment, industrial oppression, political injustice. Which

20 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
means that the religion of to-morrow, like the religion
of to-day in a few scattered churches of the land, will
be a religion of social1 change. The new religion will
concern itself not with theological error, or ecclesias
tical non-conformity, or even moral delinquency, but
with the crying evils of social disorganisation which
fill our hospitals with the sick, our asylums with the
feeble-minded and insane, our streets and tenements
with the poor, our prisons and reformatories with the
vicious and depraved. It will take up the fight against
poverty, bad conditions of labour, low wages and long
hours, indecent tenements and noisome slums, commer
cialised vice, rotten politics, selfish business, inequitable
taxation, war. It will concern itself not so much with
the individual, as with the social environment which has
so largely made the individual what he actually is. It
will centre attention not so much upon fitting men for
the life beyond the grave, as upon fitting the life that is
upon this- side of the grave for the decent happiness
and welfare of humanity. It will devote itself not so
much to the kingdom of heaven that may some day be
discovered far off in the distant skies, as to the kingdom
of heaven that may any day be actually established
right here and now upon the earth. Now is the day of
the Lord! Here is, or may be, holy ground! The
kingdom of heaven is at hand! This is the message
of this new socialised religion of to-morrow which, in
the space of a single generation, I believe, is destined so
largely to displace the old individualised religion of to
day and yesterday. All of which means that, in God's

THE NEW RELIGION 21
good time, will be fulfilled the immortal prayer of Jesus
— " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as
it is in heaven ! "
IV. This brings me directly to the last point in
regard to the new religion. If this religion is to
assume, to any very great extent, the characteristics
which I have described, it is evident, is it not, that most
of those features which have led to so many, if not all,
of the religious disputations of the past, will disappear ?
The history of religion, as we unfortunately know all
too well, is one long and almost uninterrupted story of
controversy, conflict, persecution and warfare. The
" one holy church," which every seer has beheld " in
rapt vision," has forever split itself up into hundreds of
factions, sects, denominations, each one of which has
been anathema to every other. People have been unable
to unite upon the articles of a creed, the order of a
ritual, or the character of a vestment, They have been
unable to tell, for example, whether God the Son is
correctly described as homoousion, or homoiousion.
They have been unable to agree as to whether the bread
and wine of the Lord's Supper is the actual body and
blood of Christ, or is only the symbol of these realities.
They have failed utterly to come to an understanding
upon the question as to whether there should be three
or four buttons on a certain ecclesiastical garment, or
no buttons at all. And since these matters are of great
importance, from the theological point of view at least,
men have disputed, and fought, and slain. With the
result pointed out by John Morley, in his biography

22 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of Voltaire, that " more human blood has been violently
shed (in the cause of religion) than in any other cause
whatsoever." Now in the new religion all these occasions of theo
logical wrangling and discussion will have no place. In
their stead will come, as we have seen, the interests of
science, the standards of morality, and the ideals of
social change. All the differing forms of the new
religion will be actuated by a common spirit, impelled
by a common interest, and directed to a common end.
Which means — paradoxical as it may appear — that
there will be no differing forms of this new religion!
Religions, which have always been so " many," will
slowly become merged into that " one " religion, which
has ever been so apparent in essence but never yet has
appeared in outward form. The religion of to-morrow,
in other words, will be a universal religion. Men will
differ in opinion and outlook, as they have always dif
fered. Different nationalities and races will have their
distinctive languages and ceremonials of worship. Dif
ferent philosophies will develop distinctive interpreta
tions of moral truth and social good. Prophets, new
and old, will have their separate groups of followers,
and build their separate churches. But sects as such
will be unknown; controversies, save for the love of
truth, will disappear; and religious warfare, that last
infamy of human ignorance and folly, will become noth
ing but a dreadful memory of ancient and less lovely
days. Men will behold, with ever more clearness, the
one God who is in all and through all and over all.

THE NEW RELIGION 23
They will feel, with ever greater intensity, the spiritual
kinship that binds them together into one great family
of this one God. They will hail together and work
together for the coming of that kingdom of God in
which men " from the east and from the west, from the
north and from the south," shall sit down together as
brothers and comrades. Every name of God will be
welcome to our ears, every prayer will express our
aspirations, every prophet will be our leader, every
altar will be our home. Religion will at last be one as
God is one, as the universe is one, as the heart of man is
one. " We have grown up under different influences,"
says William Ellery Channing. "We have different
names. . . . Diversities of opinion incline us to wor
ship under different roofs, or diversities of taste or
habits, to worship with different forms. But if we
purpose solemnly to do God's will, we are one church,
and nothing can divide us."
Such, so far as I can foresee it, will be the new
religion. It will be first of all a religion of science —
which means a religion cleansed of superstition, freed
from authority, and redeemed from intolerance! Sec
ondly, it will be a religion not of theology but of
morality — which means a religion indifferent to creeds
and rituals, and supremely interested in character.
Thirdly, it will be a socialised religion — which means
a religion dedicated not to the salvation of the indi
vidual in the world to come, but to the salvation of the
individual in the world that now is by the transforma
tion of this world from iniquity into righteousness.

24 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
And lastly, it will be a universal religion — which
means a religion of one humanity, united before one
altar, in the worship of one God.
I have called this the new religion! In the highest
and truest sense it is the old religion also, for it is this
religion which all good men have taught and practised
since first the world began. This is the one religion
about which I had so much to say at the beginning of
this address. It is new to-day — or to-morrow ! —
only as it is at last coming to its own after long,
long centuries of obscurity, misunderstanding and
abuse. One of the greatest of all religious leaders,
Theodore Parker, who taught this new religion " pure
and undefiled," summed up the whole problem when he
traced his teachings straight back to the "prophet souls
of all the years," and then, in his last days, declared,
" The religion I preach will be the religion of enlight
ened men for the next thousand years ! "

STATEMENTS OF PRINCIPLE

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION
In entering upon a discussion of the principles of the
new religion of our day, there are two roads which may
be followed. On the one hand, we may consider the
specific doctrines which are characteristic of this re
ligion — its idea of God, its conception of man, its
hope of immortality. In other words, we may define
the theology of the new religion. On the other hand,
we may consider the principles of this religion — the
ethical foundations upon which it is reared and the spir
itual heights to which it aspires. Without discussing
any of its particular doctrines, we may consider simply
those general ideas of thought and life of which these
doctrines are the outcome and expression. We may
inquire, that is, not how the new religion differs from
the old in the articles of its creed, but how it differs
from the old in its whole attitude and spirit.
Now it is this second road which I propose to follow
in this address ; and the first step upon this road I find
to be the affirmation that the new religion, as con
trasted with the old, is a religion of truth, and not of
tradition — a contrast which has a deeper and more
permanent significance than we commonly understand.
We are living in an age which has come to appreciate
the supreme value of truth, and which is dominated
therefore by no passion stronger than the passion to
27

28 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
find the truth. We understand to-day that the patient,
courageous, and unceasing search for truth is one of
the most inspiring achievements in the history of man
kind, and that without this search, we should still be
living as barbarians in an age of barbarism. The ideal
of truth, in other words, has become in our time a
common-place, and the path to truth a smooth and
well-travelled road. Every man to-day claims to be a
lover of the truth, and manifests, to some extent at
least, what Mr. Lecky calls " the essential character
istics of the spirit of the truth." He will " pause,"
that is, " before accepting any doubtful assertion, he
will carefully balance opposing arguments, he will probe
every anecdote with scrupulous care, he will endeavour
to divest himself of every prejudice, he will cautiously
abstain from attributing to probabilities the authority
of certainties." All this he will do, because truth is
now everywhere triumphant — so triumphant, that we
find it difficult to realise that truth was one of the last
ideals to gain the allegiance of the human soul, that the
truth-seeker has been regarded in nearly every age as
the enemy and not the friend of man, and that the
search for truth until very recent times has never been
conducted by the race as a whole, but only by those few
great martyr-heroes who have not been afraid to die
in order that humanity might live. Indeed, the love of
truth is so new and rare a thing, that it is not too much
to say that there have been only two periods in the his
tory of the western world when it really found any very
general recognition.

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 29
In the first place, there is that marvellous epoch of
enlightenment and culture, which we find in the Athens
of the fifth century before Christ. Here in a period
scarcely two generations long, we find a group of intel
lectual giants who stand unrivalled in later ages of
human history, and who are the dominating figures in a
period pre-eminently distinguished for its investigations
and discoveries of truth. It was the age of Protagoras
and the Sophists, who asked in reverence, what Pontius
Pilate is regarded to have asked in jest, " What is
truth? " It was the age of Anaxagoras, who boldly
declared that the sun was not the golden chariot of the
god of day, but only a red-hot stone, and who was ban
ished from Attica for the temerity of his utterance. It
was the age of Hippocrates, who took the first steps in
scientific medicine. It was the age of Socrates, the
apostle of knowledge; of Plato, the philosopher of
idealism; and of Aristotle, first to study scientfically
the phenomena of the natural world. It was an age
of such unexampled intellectual activity and achieve
ment, that the history of practically every branch of
human learning has its beginning with these ancient
Greeks. For the first time in the history of our race,
we find the pursuit of truth a passion, and loyalty
to truth a confessed religion.
The second great period of enlightenment was that
which opened in the early days of the fifteenth century,
and which is fittingly described as the period of the
Renaissance or " Revival of Learning." It is inter
esting to notice that this period of renewed search for

SO RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
truth was immediately dependent upon that period of
Athenian glory, which I have just described. For
twelve centuries or more, Europe, like the sleeping
beauty in the wood, had been slumbering under the
paralysing spells of mediaevalism. Then there came,
like the prince in the fairy-tale, partly from the Jews,
partly from the Mohammedans, and partly from the
Grecian fugitives from the east, the restoration of the
writings of Plato and Aristotle which, the world of
Christendom had totally forgotten during the period
of the Dark Ages. And lo ! in an instant, the mind of
Europe was awake. And what an age of revival and
even revolution it was! It was the age which saw
Marco Polo travel east into Asia, Columbus sail west
to America, and Vasco da Gama sail south around the
continent of Africa. It was the age which saw Coper
nicus and Galileo and Kepler study the movements of
the heavenly bodies, and overthrow the fallacies of the
Ptolemaic theory of the universe. It was the age which
saw Gassendi, by his investigation of atoms, lay the
foundation of chemistry ; and Harvey, by his discovery
of the circulation of the blood, lay the foundation of
physiology. It was the age which saw the beginnings
of modern philosophy in the writings of Descartes, and
the resurrection of science in the Novum Organum
of Bacon. It was the age which saw the emancipation
of scholarship in the rebirth of such universities as
those of Paris and Oxford, and in the persons of such
scholars as Colet, Erasmus, and Thomas More. Above
all, it was the age which witnessed the cataclysm of the

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 31
Reformation, which swept through the realms of Cathol
icism like a convulsive earthquake, shattering the power
of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England, Holland,
Germany, and Switzerland, and making possible the
great movement of Protestantism. It was the age of
scepticism and doubt and fresh inquiry. All the ac
cepted knowledge of the world was placed beneath the
microscope of investigation, and pitilessly tested as to its
validity. Traditions were thrown to the winds, dogmas
were flouted and scorned, nothing was accepted which
could not pass the examination of the reason. Men
were seeking for the truth, the whole truth, and noth
ing but the truth. For the first time since the days of
Periclean Athens, men were looking about them, star
ing the world in the face, putting every doctrine on trial
for its life, subjecting every theory to merciless scru
tiny and torture, thinking in all things for themselves.
And instead of holding fast to the old things simply
because they were old and had been accepted by the
fathers, they began to try all things, and hold fast only
to those which were good. The Renaissance was in
truth a rebirth. Nay more ! — it was the resurrection
of the human reason, which had its birth, we may say,
in the age of Pericles, and which had met its crucifixion
in the dark days of Rome and the Middle Ages.
This second period of enlightenment, which had its
dawning in the fourteenth century, so far from reaching
its close, as did the corresponding period of earlier
times, within the space of a few generations, is just now
in the flood-tide of its glory. The search for truth,

32 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
which the leaders of the Renaissance set on foot in their
times of storm and stress, has been continued unremit
tingly from their day to our own, and is being prose
cuted more faithfully to-day than ever before. The
nineteenth century was pre-eminently a century of
truth-seeking. Every possible sphere of human knowl
edge has' been investigated during the last one hundred
years, to its remotest part, and the pages of learning
written all anew. And not only have a myriad new
facts been added to our store of information, not only
have new theories of the universe and human life been
established, but what is infinitely more important, the
validity of truth and the obligation of finding truth
have been forever impressed upon humanity. Never
again can the love of truth be lost ; never again can the
search for truth be abandoned ! Humanity is now com
mitted to this goal as to the noblest of all ideals, and it
will march on and on, and ever on, until the deepest
depths have been sounded, the highest pinnacles scaled,
and the farthest bounds attained. Forever now shall
humanity cry out,
" O star of truth, down-shining,
Lead on, I'll follow thee."
Whatever may have been the struggle of truth, there
fore, in the past, to gain a place in the human heart,
and however prolonged and dark may have been that
period between the first era of intellectual illumination
and the second, there is no longer any doubt as to the
absolute character of her victory. Truth as an ideal

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION S3
is now established so that it shall never pass away.
The torch of knowledge has been kindled with so mighty
a flame that it can never again be extinguished. That
element, without whicii nothing henceforth can hope to
endure for a single instant, is conformity to truth ! —
and this is as true of religion as of everything else. A
religion which can hold the confidence of the modern
man must be a religion which is founded upon the basis
of truth and is inspired throughout by the love of truth.
Indeed, there is many a man to-day who has no religion
other than his absolute devotion to the truth, and who
would therefore refuse to recognise anything as. a
religion which did not sanctify this devotion with its
blessing. And yet it is just this devotion to the truth
— this " earnestness of inquiry " which Mr. Lecky
describes as " the essential characteristic of the love of
truth " — which organised Christianity has not only
refused to bless, but has actually cursed with the most
awful anathemas which she could frame.
For the relentless truth-seeker, who cares nothing
about the dogmas and traditions of yesterday, and con
cerns himself only with what his reasoning faculties are
telling him about the universe and human life to-day,
the Christian church has no place whatsoever. Now,
as always in the past, the church banishes from her
altars the man who asks a question, raises a doubt, or
starts an investigation. What could be more signifi
cant than the fact that the Dark Ages, when learning
was at its lowest ebb and the light of reason was burn
ing with the feeblest of flames, when all the splendid

34 RELIGION TOR TO-DAY
knowledge of the pagan world was lost and man knew
less and cared less about the world in which he was liv
ing than at any other time perhaps in human history,
when mankind was the unresisting victim of all manner
of fears and superstitions, were coincident with that
period of Christian history when the church was every
where supreme, when her cardinals dominated the court
of every king and her priests occupied the teaching
chairs in every school and university? What could be
more impressive than this fact, unless it be the further
fact that every forward step which has been taken since
the period of the Renaissance has been taken in spite of
the church's bitter opposition, and has been successfully
carried through in the face of her cruel and relentless
persecution? Read such a book as Dr. Andrew D.
White's History of the Warfare Between Science and
Theology, and see how the Christian church has been
fighting one losing battle after another in every field
of learning, during the past three hundred years, and
has been driven from one line of entrenchments, only to
retreat and give battle all over again in the next.
Nothing is more melancholy than the fact that nearly
all the great scholars of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were able to find
no place within the pale of Christianity, and therefore
did their immortal work outside instead of inside the
church. Take simply the more familiar names of the
great leaders of the world's thought in the last one
hundred years — such men as Darwin, Huxley, Tyn-
dall, Spencer, Mill, Renan, Lyell, Wallace, Herschel,

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 35
Hooker, to name only a few — and we find that almost
without exception these illustrious friends of humanity,
loyal seekers for the truth, devoted servants of God,
were the outcasts of the Christian world. Just think
of such a fact as that to which Dr. Moncure D. Conway
calls attention in his Autobiography, that " the three
men who chiefly moulded the thought of their gener
ation in England and America were all trained for the
pulpit — Darwin, Carlyle, and Emerson ; and they were
all shut out of it by their intellectual honesty and the
inability of the churches to recognise the superiority
of a great living oracle to the creeds of defunct crania."
What wonder, in the face of such facts as these, that
there have been men who have soberly declared that
Christianity has been more of a curse than a blessing to
the human race, and that if every church could be closed
to-day and every pulpit left forever empty, humanity
would gain immeasurably more than she would lose !
Indeed, from the standpoint of the present age,
which understands and appreciates the essential
validity of truth, nothing is more tragic than this phase
of Christian history ; and nothing is more natural than
the most unsparing, condemnation of the church for her
unwavering attitude of hostility. And yet, to the
advocate of the church, nothing could be more unjust
than such a condemnation as this. The church, you
say, the enemy of truth and the persecutor of truth-
seekers ? Not at all ! The church, if she is hostile to
anything, is hostile only to error ; and if she has perse
cuted anybody, has persecuted only those who have

36 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
taught error and thus have sought to lead the minds of
men astray. The truth? Why, the church has the
truth in her own especial keeping, and has had it there
for hundreds of years ! The truth is already known in
all its fulness through the special revelation of God
himself to the patriarchs and prophets and apostles of
old ; and therefore is all this so-called search for truth
in our day only so much unbelief, which is to be con
demned as dangerous to the welfare of the human soul.
The church, in other words, has always asserted just
what she asserts to-day, that God has revealed truth
once and for all, that this truth is preserved in what she
calls her sacred tradition, and that no further revela
tion is therefore necessary or to be expected. Any
thing in the researches of the scientists and philoso
phers, which is in contradiction to the tradition of the
church, is to be regarded not as truth merely because it
is new, but, for that very reason, if for no other, is to
be regarded as error. The church, in a word, simply
points to her tradition, as this tradition is embodied in
scriptures and in creeds, asserts that all truth is to be
found there and nowhere else, and refuses to recognise
the epoch-making achievements of the last three hun
dred years as anything more than so many grievous
mistakes, and " the passion of truth-seeking," which has
been responsible for these achievements, as anything
more than envy and deceit.
Here, now, between the position of the church and
that of the world at large, do we find the sharpest pos
sible contradiction; and yet both positions are deter-

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 37
mined by allegiance to what is called the truth. Here
is the church offering her tradition as true, and here is
the world offering its modern scientific discoveries as
true. Here is the church declaring that truth was all
revealed centuries ago by a supernatural process of
revelation, and here is the world declaring that truth is
being revealed here and now by the wholly natural
process of investigation and research. Here is the
church describing the disciple of truth as one who asks
no questions, raises no doubts, and accepts obediently
what is given him from the past, and here is the world
describing the disciple of truth as one who doubts
everything which is unsupported by trustworthy evi
dence, who accepts nothing which does not commend
itself to his reason, who has little reverence for preju
dice or tradition, and above all, is characterised by the
spirit of earnest and free inquiry. Here is the most
radical kind of disagreement — disagreement so radi
cal that the church has been forced to declare war upon
the world, and the world upon the church, and both in
the name of truth ! Each takes up its arms and shouts
that it comes " to bear witness to the truth ! " And
what wonder is it, in the face of this contention, that
we find the question of "jesting Pilate" springing to
our lips — " What is truth? "
Now in seeking to answer this question, and thus to
determine the age-long battle between science and
theology, we find that there are just two possible ways
out of our difficulty, and that each involves an undis
guised affirmation of faith in the reality of something

38 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
which cannot by any possibility be demonstrated. In
other words, as a pure act of faith, we must accept the
contention of the church, or we must accept the conten
tion of the scientific world. We cannot accept both,
nor can we find any middle ground between them.
In the one case, we will do what Mr. Gosse did, when
he found himself faced by this dilemma. Readers of
Mr. Edmund Gosse's remarkable book, entitled Father
and Son, will remember the problem by which the elder
Gosse found himself confronted. On the one hand, this
man was an ardent Calvinist, a devoted student of
Christian tradition, and an unquestioning believer in all
the familiar doctrines of the most extreme type of
orthodox Protestantism. On the other hand, Mr.
Gosse was an able and well-trained geologist, who had
for years conducted original investigations of the earth
strata on the western coast of England, and who was
familiar with all the revolutionary discoveries in the
geological field of Sir Charles Lyell and his contem
poraries. On the one hand, as he read the book of
Genesis, every word of which he believed to be directly
inspired by God, he was taught that all things were
created by the Almighty within a period of six days, at
a time not more than six thousand years ago. On the
other hand, as he read Lyell' s Principles of Geology and
studied the earth formations for himself, he was
taught that the earth had been in existence for unnum
bered millions of years, and had reached its present
state through a process of evolution, almost every step
of which was recorded in the formation of the soil.

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 39
Now, here, right in Gosse's own life, was the stupen
dous contradiction between tradition and science, of
which I have spoken; and in the apparent confusion,
there was only one thing which he believed to be finally
and forever true — namely the Genesis statement, that
" in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, tbe sea,
and all that in them is." This must be true, regard
less of everything else! But, if this be the case, what
about the evidences in the soil of progressive develop
ment through millions of years ? What about the gla
cial fissures and scratches on the cliffs, the piles of lava
from extinct volcanoes, the fossils of every sort in every
part of the earth, the foot-tracks of birds and reptiles
moulded in the rocks, the skeletons of mammoths and
dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures? What do
all these things mean? Nothing, said Mr. Gosse!
They can mean nothing in the face of " the one clear
and undisputed witness on the opposite side" — the
first chapter of Genesis. All these geological remains
are simply " appearances," and as such they were
brought into being, just as they stand to-day, during
the six days of creation, and are to be taken as having
no significance whatever. If we want to read into them
any such story of evolution as they seem to teach, why
we do this at our own risk. God has told us that he
made the world in a week's time some six thousand years
ago, and nothing that the earth contains, or seems to
contain, can be accepted as a refutation of that state
ment, which embodies the whole of truth.
It is seldom that we find the conflict between science

40 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
and theology so completely embodied in a single life as
in the case of Mr. Gosse ; and here, in his career, do we
have a perfect illustration of one way out of the diffi
culty which is before us. Mr. Gosse had implicit faith
in the tradition of the church as the test of truth, and
believed that this one witness counter-balanced every
thing which might be brought forward upon the other
side. If any fact in nature — a scratch upon a cliff
or a buried fossil — contradicted the church's tradi
tion, then the fact and not the tradition was to be
rejected. But always have there been men who have found it
impossible to follow this easy way out of the contradic
tion between science and theology. Such a man was
Thomas Huxley. Like Gosse, he was familiar with the
tradition of the church ; like Gosse, he was familiar with
the wonderful discoveries of modern science ; but unlike
Gosse, he could not make himself believe that these
geological and biological remains were merely " appear
ances," signifying nothing. He could not believe, for
example, when the tracks of birds and reptiles were
found in the soil, when fossilised bones were discovered
in certain caves bearing the very marks of hyenas'
teeth, when even the skeleton of a Siberian mammoth had
been unearthed with lumps of fossilised flesh bearing
the marks of wolves' teeth, that these things did not tell
the story that they seemed to tell — that God had
arbitrarily created such extraordinary phenomena for
no other purpose than that of telling a deceptive tale.
Huxley found it impossible to believe, in other words,

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 41
that the world is made up of a succession of isolated
phenomena, which at the best are mere " appearances."
He found it necessary to believe that these phenomena
were realities, or, more exactly, were the manifestations
of some great, universal and eternal reality which lies
behind. Every star that flames in its appointed path
way through the skies, every flower that blooms by the
wayside, every ray of light that pierces the darkness,
every wave that beats upon the shore, every fossil that
is buried in the earth, every fissure that is carved in the
rock — everything points to something beyond itself of
which it is the partial revelation.
The archaeologist, for example, excavating in the
sands of Egypt, brings to light some long-buried
inscription of the Pharaohs. The surface of the stone
bears nothing but a confusion of straight and crooked
lines, having as little meaning apparently as the pencil-
scratchings of a playing child. And yet the arch
aeologist knows that those markings are not simply a
series of meaningless lines but are the carefully written
letters of an alphabet, which spell to posterity the mes
sage of some great king. He knows, in other words,
that behind those lines there is some truth. And so he
examines and studies and thinks, he adjusts and com
pares and experiments, he deciphers, with infinite labour
and patience, one letter after another ; until at last the
alphabet is known, the language revealed, the words
made to speak their hidden message. And so with this
world of ours. As he gazed out upon this wonderful
universe, Huxley had faith to believe that each phe-

42 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
nomenon therein was a letter of the great message of
eternal truth; and looking within, into his own soul,
Huxley had faith to believe that his reason was a key
which was fitted to translate the mystery. Just as
Pharaoh had written his inscription upon the piece of
granite, so God has written his truth upon the pages
of the universe. And just as the archaeologist, by the
exercise of his reason, deciphered that inscription and
read its message, so the scientist, by the exercise of his
reason, can decipher God's inscriptions in star and
ocean, in flower and cliff, and reveal it to mankind.
Huxley, in other words, refused to believe that nature
lied; he had the faith of Wordsworth, that "Nature
never did betray the heart that loved her." Huxley
refused also to believe that the human reason was
deceptive ; he had the faith of the ancient Greeks that it
was the compass-needle pointing to the pole star of truth.
If a choice is necessary, therefore, said Huxley, between
the revelation of God as written in the book of Genesis,
and the revelation of God as written in the book of
Nature, if I cannot accept both because of their mutual
contradictions, if I must have faith in one to the exclu
sion of the other, then I prefer to accept the revelation
of the world of Nature. And if I must choose between
the testimony of church tradition and the testimony of
my own reason, then I choose my reason, as a great act
of faith in the integrity of the faculties with which I
have been endowed by my creator ; for I cannot believe
that God would wilfully endow me with a- faculty which
had no other function than that of leading me astray.

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 43
Now this is the way out of the contradiction between
theology and science, as I need not emphasise, which the
modern world has chosen to follow. Whether this way
is right or not, I am not now trying to demonstrate. I
am merely pointing out that, as between Gosse's faith
in the integrity of the book of Genesis, interpreted
through the creeds, and Huxley's faith in the integrity
of the book of Nature, interpreted through the human
reason, it has chosen the latter. During the long
period of the Dark Ages, the reason of man, as we have
seen, was dead, or slumbering. Credulity of the most
superstitious kind was the universal state of mind, and
therefore the whole tradition of the church, from
Ptolemy's system of the stars to Augustine's great
drama of the atonement, was accepted without ques
tion. Then, under the magic influence of the Revival
of Learning, there came the awakening of the human
intellect. Man began to look about him, to examine
the world in which he lived, to face the facts of life !
And lo ! the more he studied and investigated, the more
numerous became the contradictions which he discerned
between the world as it actually existed before his face
and eyes, and the world as the church said that it
existed. Between the teachings of tradition, in other
words, and the teachings of the active reason, the gulf
grew ever wider ; and, compelled to choose, seeing that
no reconciliation was possible, seeing that tradition
must yield to reason or reason to tradition, the world
gave its allegiance to the reason. It recognised clearly
enough, to quote Mr. Conway again, " the superiority

44 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of a great living oracle to the creeds of defunct crania."
It recognised that it was easier to believe that there was
a mistake in the church tradition than that Nature was
a lie and the reason a deceptive faculty. It recognised
that, if God had ever spoken to mankind, he must still
be speaking — as the poet has put it, " God is not
dumb, that he should speak no more " — and that
man's latest apprehension of God's word must be nearer
the truth of things than his earliest. And the choice
thus made between tradition and the reason has been
affirmed ever more strongly with the passing years,
until we can see, as is conclusively shown in Dr. Andrew
D. White's great book, that it is the verdict of history
and of experience that the church has lost her case.
Under these circumstances, it is evident, is it not,
that the new religion must be a religion founded upon
truth, in the modern scientific sense of that word, and
not a religion founded upon tradition? Whatever may
have been the case in the past, tradition can never again
hold the allegiance and respect of men. For what is
this thing that we call tradition, after all? What
authority does it wield and what sanctity does it carry ?
Is it the full, the final, and the infallible revelation of
Almighty God, with which the feeble knowledge of man
kind is to be silenced and confounded? On the con
trary, we know to-day that this tradition is only the
memory of what men thought about this world in the
third, the fourth and the fifth centuries after Christ.
We know that this tradition is nothing less than the
embalmed and mummified ideas which were active in

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 45
men's minds a thousand and fifteen hundred years ago.
And we know that the appeal to tradition is only an
appeal from the " living truths " of our time to the
" defunct crania " of eight, ten, and fifteen centuries
ago. And when we are asked to choose between what
men thought about this world in the fourth century,
for example, and what they think about this world in
the twentieth century, when we are asked to choose
between the dead ideas of a thousand years ago and the
living ideas of this present moment, when we are asked
to choose between the great students of yesterday and
the similarly great students of to-day, can there be any
hesitation in our choice?
The church's attempt to adhere to tradition is not
an attempt to adhere to God, but simply an attempt to
convince the world that the mediaeval monks and priests
knew more about the truth of things than the modern
scholars in our great universities. Why, if the world
should suddenly take it into its head to reject all the
facts of modern astronomy and return to the astrology
of the Chaldeans, if it should resolve to reject all mod
ern medical knowledge and return to the witch doctors
of the Middle Ages, if it should destroy all its railroads
and steamships and telegraphs and telephones, and
return to the means of conveyance and communication
in vogue in the days of the great military highways of
Imperial Rome, it could not do a more fatal and foolish
thing than to reject the vast stores of modern knowl
edge in favour of the tradition of the creeds.
And yet, is it not just this preposterous demand

46 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
which the majority of churches are tacitly or avowedly
making to-day upon the intelligence of man? Step
into any orthodox church of our time, and at once you
step out of the clear and bracing atmosphere of modern
times into the damp and musty atmosphere of the Mid
dle Ages. You hear phrases that are never used in any
other place, you are bombarded with ideas which could
not live in the sunlight and the open air, you are con
fronted by an interpretation of human history and a
philosophy of human life which exist only as the Egyp
tian mummies exist in our museums. Said Emerson, in
his Divinity School Address, more than seventy years
ago, " Tradition characterises the preaching of the cen
tury — religion comes out of the memory and not out of
the soul." And this is almost as true to-day as it was
then. It is now three hundred years and more since
the universality of natural law was established beyond
all peradventure of a doubt ; and yet, in the face of all
the facts, the church still persists in clinging to her
doctrine of miracles. It is now an even hundred years
since the Biblical scholars made untenable the theory of
the infallibility of the Scriptures ; and yet when a rash
clergyman declared at a meeting of the Episcopal Con
vention in Cincinnati, that the Bible could no longer be
accepted as true and perfect in every part, there was
an instant storm of protest, and a great assembly of
presumably educated men solemnly reaffirmed their
faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God. It is
now a full half-century since it was proved, in so far
as the human intellect can prove anything, that the

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 47
human race is not descended from a single pair which
was created out of the dust, but ascended by the slow
process of evolution, from lower forms of animal life;
and yet, when Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts ven
tured to suggest some years ago that the story of
Adam and Eve was an allegory, a half dozen of the
leading clergymen of New York, of various denomina
tions, took occasion to re-assert their belief in this
story as a piece of history. These doctrines, and all
the others which make up the content of Christian tra
dition, are simply not true, they have all been refuted
a thousand times, they are ignored in our schools and
colleges, and laughed at in our newspapers ; and yet the
church still teaches them and asks men to accept them !
I say to you, in all seriousness, that the church is dis
loyal to truth, she is engaged in the business of false
hood and deceit, she is a faithless witness unto God.
" Christianity," said James Martineau, " has been
mainly evolved from what is unhistorical in its tradi
tions, mistaken in its perceptions, and misapprehended
in the oracles of its prophets? ... It consecrates a
theory of the world's economy which is made up of illu
sions from obsolete stages of civilisation." And the
result? The result, says Martineau, " is the spreading
alienation of the intellectual classes of society from
Christendom, and the detention of the rest in their
spiritual culture at a level not much above that of the
Salvation Army."
It is needless to point out, in conclusion, that the new
religion will have nothing of all this. The new religion

48 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
will be the friend and not the foe of science, the minis
ters of this new religion will sit reverently at the feet of
those who know and understand the mysteries of life,
and the church of this new religion will fling away what
Emerson calls " the hoarded treasures of old rubbish "
with which her sanctuary is now encumbered, and put
in their place the newest treasures that the world of
modern learning has to offer. The new religion will
receive and embody in herself all that modern science,
modern history, modern philosophy have to teach.
For the basis of her theology, she will look not to Paul
nor to Peter nor to the apostolic fathers, but to Dar
win and Spencer, Baur and Strauss, Faraday and Kel
vin, and the other great scholars of our day. For the
structure of theology, she will use not the material
which was fashioned by the learning of Augustine and
Jerome, or of Luther and Calvin, but the material which
is being fashioned all anew to-day by the best scholars
in the best universities of the present time. She will
care not for the " defunct crania " of even the greatest
men, but for the " living oracles " of the present hour.
And, more than this, the new religion will always be
ready to move with the progress of the times, to throw
aside old theories as fast as they are discredited, and
to accept new theories as fast as they are approved.
Caring nothing for any prejudice however comfortable,
and having reverence for no tradition however old, she
will be moved always by the spirit of free inquiry, look
ing not to the past nor even to the present, but always to
the future. She will believe that more light and truth

TRUTH, NOT TRADITION 49
are yet to come out of God's holy word. She will seek
to " know the truth," that she may " bear witness to
the truth." And above all, she will welcome to her fold
all seekers of the truth, that they may labour within
and not without her portals.
And more than this even will she do. Not only will
the new religion accept the truth as it is given, and
open her gates to the seeker of the truth, but she will
also teach the world that no religious life is perfect
without the love of truth. She will teach that it is the
duty of every man, who yearns to unite his soul with
the divine spirit, to meet every problem of thought and
life with the open mind. She will instruct her members
not to ask, as questions arise, what does the church
teach? what does the creed affirm? what did the fathers
think ? what do I want to think ? — but to ask only,
what is the truth? She will lay upon her ministers and
laymen alike the obligation, not to defend the tradi
tion, support the dogma, or stand by the faith, but the
sacred and solemn obligation to defend and support and
stand by the truth, as, God helping them, they find the
truth. She will insist that membership in her commun
ion is determined not by loyalty to what has been in the
past, but by unswerving loyalty to what ought to be
to-day, and what will be to-morrow. She will lay upon
every soul the one command, Know the truth! — no
matter how many traditions are shattered, how many
treasures lost, or how many dreams dispelled.
This is the new religion, as the religion of truth.
And it is this new religion which is destined to win

50 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
again the loyalty and the love of men. Ralph Waldo
Emerson gave the conclusion of the whole matter many
years ago, when he said — alas! that the church has
not yet understood! — "Whenever a mind receives
divine wisdom, old things pass away — tradition, texts,
temples fall ; the mind lives anew, and absorbs the past
into the present hour^ ... If a man claims to know
and speak of God, and then carries you back to the
phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another
country, believe him not. . . . Whence this worship of
the past? The centuries are conspirators against the
sanctity and authority of the soul. . . . Say, hencefor
ward I am the truth's — henceforward I obey no law
less than the eternal law. I appeal from all your con
ventions and customs. I must be myself. I must fol
low truth."

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY
Liberty has for so long been a battle-cry both in
politics and religion, that it is astonishing to find how
slow has been its progress in the history of the human
race. It is only within a comparatively few years
that the divine right of a man to be free has been recog
nised in the field of politics; and even at this late day
this recognition has been granted only in those com
munities where enlightenment and culture have created
conditions favourable to the propagation of individual
independence. As for the field of religion, it needs no
argument to prove that authority is still triumphant,
and liberty almost everywhere unknown. The fact of
the matter is that, while the battle for liberty in the
political field is already far advanced and the fate of
emperors and kings, lords and nobles, is written in the
stars, the battle for religious liberty is only just begun,
and the struggle against popes and bishops, synods and
councils, is destined still to be bitter and long-continued.
The throne of political authority is already tottering
to its fall; but the throne of religious authority seems
still to stand as firm as the everlasting hills. We must
remember, however, that the battle for liberty is every
where the same; and, in God's good time, will every
where achieve the same great victory. Therefore if
51

52 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
we desire to learn what liberty is destined to mean in
the religious field, we cannot do a wiser thing than
turn, for a few moments, to the field of politics, and see
what the fight for liberty has there involved, and what
its victory has achieved for man !
" The struggle between liberty and authority," says
John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Liberty, " is the most
conspicuous feature in the portions of history with
which we are most familiar, particularly in those of
Greece, Rome, and England " — a statement which he
might very well have expanded to include all nations
known to the memory of man. For it is not too much
to say that the history of humanity is only the story
of one long struggle for liberty against authority.
Certainly this is the case in the field of government.
In every country, as it emerges from the impenetrable
darkness of remote antiquity, we find one uniform con
dition of associated life — on the one side, a vast
homogeneous people, shorn of every element of what
we know to-day as political freedom; and on the other
side, one supreme individual, in whose hands reposes all
authority over the men and women who live within the
bounds of his inherited domain or beneath the sway of
his conquering sword.
Of the origins of this supreme authority of the sov
ereign ruler, it is not necessary at this time to speak.
The studies of modern anthropology and sociology have
traced out the beginnings of political headship with
almost as great a degree of exactitude as geology, for
example, has traced out the beginnings of this planet

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 53
upon which we live; and the whole story is told, for
those who desire to read it, in such books as Tylor's
Primitive Culture, Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Laws,
and Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. It is
sufficient for us to remember the simple fact that when
history begins, we find, in all countries, the king exer
cising supreme sovereignty over his people, and this
sovereignty supported by the universally accepted the
ory that the king is at once the blood descendant and
the personal representative of the gods. The people, in
other words, have a king, and obey him without com
plaint, because they believe that he rules by what is
called " divine right."
We cannot better illustrate this primitive idea of the
king as at once the descendant and representative of
the gods, than by referring to a somewhat famous pas
sage in the second book of Homer's Iliad. The poet
is describing a great assemblage of the chieftains of
the Grecian army before the walls of Troy. Ulysses,
bearing the sceptre of " mighty Agamemnon," the king,
has gone about the camp, calling the heroes to the meet
ing, and. to each one he has given warning of Agamem
non's anger against the host —
" Beware [he says] lest his wrath
Fall heavily upon the sons of Greece.
The monarch, foster-child of Jupiter,
Is terrible enraged. Authority
Is given by Jove all-wise, who loves the king."
In obedience to this summons, the warriors come to-

54 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
gether in the assembly hall to listen to the judgment of
their " monarch." And when that judgment is spoken
by the angry king, there is only one of all the Greeks
who dares to stand upon his feet and challenge the au
thority which Agamemnon claims to exercise as " the
foster-child of Jupiter." This man is " Thersites, of
the clamorous tongue " ; and the poet, to discredit this
protest, and to make Thersites despicable in his read
er's eyes, says of him : " Of the multitude
Who came to Ilium, none so base as he —
Squint-eyed, with one lame foot, and on his back
A hump, and shoulders curving towards the chest."
And when Ulysses, angered at Thersites's protests
against the judgment of the king, raises his sceptre
and strikes him, wounded and bleeding, to the ground,
the poet describes the host of warriors as approving
the act, and bursting into shouts of laughter at the
cripple's discomfiture. And yet, in spite of the maj
esty of Ulysses and Agamemnon, and of the poet's ridi
cule, this same " squint-eyed " and humpbacked Ther
sites is one of the first voices, in the literature of the
world, to dispute the doctrine of the divine right ofN
kings !
This Homeric episode presents a true picture of an
tiquity. In the eyes of Homer, as of all the ancients,
such a king as Agamemnon was " the foster-child " of
the gods, and held his authority as the gift of heaven.
To revolt against the king was to revolt also against

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 55

the deities of Olympus, and was therefore the most
terrible offence of which any man could be guilty. It
was this idea of divine origin which made the king su
preme and the people everywhere subject to his author
ity. It was this idea which inspired such an utterance
as that of Caligula, when he wished that the Roman
people had but a single neck, that he might wring it.
It was this conception which led Louis XIV of France,
when asked what constituted the State, to reply in
scorn, " L'etat — c'est moi ! " It was this belief which
led the obstinate and pig-headed James Stuart of Eng
land to declare that, as it is blasphemy to dispute the
will of God, so is it criminal to dispute the will of the
king. And it was this same idea which induced Kaiser
Wilhelm of Germany to proclaim, only a few years ago,
his famous maxim — " Salus populi, regis voluntas."
Stephen Phillips, in his drama of Nero, portrays this
conception of the divine right of kings with great effect,
when he makes the youthful Emperor declare that the
gods have sent him to the earth, " that he may be a
joy to men"; and, when his words are silenced by a
clap of thunder, makes him rebuke the heavens that
they should interrupt his speech.
Now, it is this theory of divine right which has been
the foundation of all authority in the field of govern
ment, from the day of Agamemnon to that of Wilhelm
of Germany and Nicholas of Russia ; and the battle
for political freedom has simply been one long fight
against this superstition. It is interesting to note that
this fight begins comparatively early. Thus, Homer

56 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
recognises an existing protest, even though he ridicules
and condemns it, in his character of Thersites. We
find organised and scornful resistance to royal sov
ereignty in such a revolt as that of Harmodius and
Aristogeiton against the tyrants of Athens, and the
later close-bound democracy set up in that city. A
similar rebellion against divine right is seen in the ex
pulsion of the Tarquins from Rome in the fifth century
before Christ, and the establishment of the Republic.
With the conquest of the civilised world, however, by
the Roman Empire, and the succeeding period of the
Dark Ages, we find the doctrine of divine right fully re
established; and it was not until the thirteenth cen
tury, when the barons of England wrested the Magna
Charta from the unwilling hands of King John, that
we find another attempt to set over against the author
ity of a king the sovereign rights of a free people.
That great victory at Runnymede, however, was the be
ginning of the end of the theory of the divine right of
kingship; and, although many an ambitious monarch,
like James and Charles Stuart and George III, endeav
oured to reassert his claim to divine authority, and
many a gallant champion of the people's rights, like
Hampden and Cromwell and the elder Pitt, has had to
fight many a battle against these arrogant pretenders,
the issue was never again in any doubt, and the crown
ing triumphs of the nineteenth century were rapidly
being completed in our own day, in the abolition of the
English House of Lords, the establishment of parlia
ments in Russia and Turkey, the overthrow of Manuel

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 57
in Portugal, when the Great War put an end to the
movement.
It is such events as these which made possible the fa
mous incident which is told of Mr. Gladstone and Queen
Victoria. The great Premier, it is said, was insisting
with some heat that the Queen should sign a bill just
passed by the House of Commons. Victoria refused his
request, and, resenting his importunity, exclaimed, " Mr.
Gladstone, you forget who I am. I am the Queen of
England." To which Mr. Gladstone made, with splen
did emphasis, the immortal reply, " Your Majesty, you
forget who I am. I am the people of England." We
have only to compare this statement with the reported
saying of Louis XIV to comprehend what a transfor
mation has taken place, even within as short a space of
time as two hundred years, and to foresee how inevita
ble, in political society, is the triumph of liberty over
every kind of royal and autocratic authority.
What is it, we would next inquire, which has over
thrown this venerable doctrine of the divine right of a
king to rule his people, which is sanctified by unnum
bered ages of custom and tradition? In answer to this
question, we may say that, on the whole, two forces
have been operative.
In the first place, there is the negative fact that the
people, as they developed in intelligence .and culture,
came gradually to see that the king, whom they had
been taught to reverence as the offspring and repre
sentative of the gods, was, after all, an ordinary man,
who had arisen to his seat of power only by some acci-

58 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
dent of birth or fortune. When, for example, there
acceded to the throne of the Roman Empire such a
lunatic as Caligula, such a monster as Nero, or such a
childish imbecile as Elagabalus — when a king tram
pled upon the private rights of his people as did Tar-
quin Superbus, the last of the Roman kings, or the fool
ish Louis, who closed the awful reign of the Bourbon
house in France — when a monarch was overthrown
in battle and his throne captured by a mere adventurer
like Jehu of Israel, or Vitellius of Rome — when a king
was too young to rule, and some regent, like Catherine
de' Medici of France, or Richard III, of England, ex
ercised his authority in his stead — it was inevitable
that the people should begin to question the theory of
divine right. This degraded idiot, this wicked monster,
this arrogant tyrant, this rebellious soldier, this arbi
trary regent — is this the offspring and representative
of God? Is it possible that God has given his divine
sanction to such men as these — men who would be put
to death as a menace to the public welfare, were it not
for the fact that they were protected by the royal
purple? The kings, that is, by their incapacity, cru
elty, instability, were themselves their betrayers. Their
own words and deeds revealed them as nothing but ordi
nary men, who were raised above their fellows not by
the ordaining hand of God but by those accidents of
birth and fortune which, are human and not divine.
Therefore is it only natural to find such rebellions as
those in Athens and Rome, which led in very early
days to the establishment of republics.

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 59
The second force which led to the overthrow of the
theory of the divine right of kings was the positive
fact, that men came to recognise what may be called
the divine right of the common man to rule himself.
Every once in a while there would appear some man
of humble origin and station who seemed to be more
truly a representative of God than the anointed sov
ereign of the realm. What, for example, was the divine
right of Charles VII of France, as compared with the
divine right of Jqan of Arc, the peasant girl from the
village of Domremy ? And what claims to divine favour
had Charles Stuart, the King of England, as opposed
to those which were advanced by Oliver Cromwell, the
farmer of Huntingdon? Then again, it happened
every once in a while, that a throne would become va
cant, or the people, in wrath against the tyranny of
their sovereign, would declare the throne vacant and
pursue its occupant across the borders of the land, as
in the case of James II; and thereupon would be
brought to pass the strange event of a people's choos
ing their own king, and placing the crown upon his
head by their own popular decree.
By such occurrences as these, it was gradually im
pressed upon the human imagination that, if there was
any such thing as divine right at all, it was the divine
right of the people to rule themselves ; and, as the first
or negative fact, which we have mentioned, was the
usual motive underlying the revolts of ancient times, so
this second or positive fact was the usual motive under
lying the revolts of modern times. It was the idea,

60 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
slowly dawning upon the human consciousness, that
" all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among
these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap
piness, that governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed " — it was this idea which
led to the revolt of the thirteen American colonies
against the tyranny of George III; it was this idea, as
voiced by the eighteenth century Encyclopaedists of
France, which led to the uprising against the Bour
bons and the resulting horrors of the Revolution; it
was this idea which inspired the English Reform Bill of
1832 ; it was this idea which brought about the simul
taneous uprisings of the people in France, Germany,
Italy, and Austria in 1848 ; and it was this idea which
was stirring lately in Russia, Portugal, and Spain, and
planting in these nations the seeds of political and so
cial liberty. Partial liberty was achieved in ancient
times because unspeakable cruelty, disgraceful inca
pacity, and bold rebellions showed that the kings were
anything but divine in origin and character — that, in
a word, the whole theory of divine right was a baseless
superstition. Complete liberty is being achieved in
modern times because the theory of divine right, like
every other theory of special privilege, is crumbling
away before the modern conviction that equal oppor
tunity and perfect liberty are the divine right of every
man born into the world.
We have gone thus at some length into the history of
the progress of political liberty, for the reason that it

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 61
is synonymous, in practically every detail, with the
history of religious liberty. Spiritual authority, which
still lays its hand so heavily upon the souls of men,
has exactly the same origin — namely, the theory of
divine right — as political authority ; and, what is still
more impressive, the authority of the church is gradu
ally being destroyed to-day by the action of exactly
the same forces as have already proved the undoing
of the authority of the state. Men, that is, have been
enslaved religiously as a result of exactly the same
superstition which has enslaved them politically ; and
the same motives which led to the achievement of politi
cal liberty must at the same time lead to the achieve
ment of religious liberty. In other words, any man
to-day who accepts ideals of political liberty, must, if
he would be consistent, accept parallel ideals of re
ligious liberty, for they are identical throughout. In
fighting the battle for political liberty, man has un
consciously been fighting the battle for religious liberty ;
and the victory which has already been won in the field
of government is a certain prophecy of the victory
which is destined to be achieved in the field of religion.
We have said that the origin of religious authority
is the same as that of political authority. By this
assertion we mean to imply that the church, like the
king, has always ruled by virtue of what it calls its
" divine right." All peoples, as they emerge from the
darkness of antiquity, are found to be subject not alone
to the king, but also to the priest; and each of these
officials, the priest before his altar as well as the king

62 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
upon his throne, claims the right to rule as the di
vinely appointed representative of God. It makes no
difference whether the religious authority be that of
a priest or of a book, a prophet or a creed, the author
ity is in all cases founded upon this one universal idea
of divine sanction. The Catholic priesthood of western
Europe, the Greek priesthood of Russia, the Brahmanic
priesthood of India, the Buddhist priesthoods of China
and Japan, are all alike in tracing their right to exer
cise authority straight back to God, whose representa
tives they assume to be. The Koran, the five classics
of Confucianism, the Vedic hymns of India, the Avesta
of Persian Zoroastrianism, the Christian Bible — all
claim infallible authority over the human mind by
virtue of what is called their divine origin. Jesus is
at one with Buddha, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Moses,
Lao-tse, in being described by later ages as a divine
being, appointed by God for the guidance of the people.
The Christian church, in other words, is just like the
Moslem church and the Hindu church and the Jewish
church, in resting its foundations on the revealed word
of God. In whatever other ways they may differ,
these great world-religions are at least alike in this —
that they claim to have been divinely inspired, and
therefore to have the august right to exercise supreme
authority over the minds, the hearts, and the con
sciences of men.
Now in religion exactly as in politics, just so long
as this theory of divine right is recognised, just so
long as the Catholic believes that the bishop's laying on

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 63
of hands has lifted the priest above all other men and
endowed him to be the mouthpiece and instrument of
God's will, and the Protestant believes that the Bible
is different from all other books, since its words are
the very words of God himself, just so long will any
such thing as individual liberty in the realm of things
spiritual be manifestly impossible. But in religion,
exactly as in politics, this theory of divine right has
to-day been utterly discredited in the minds of all in
telligent people, by the same two facts, the one nega
tive and the other positive, which have served to dis
credit the exalted theory of .the divine right of kings.
In the first place, the church itself has been its own
undoing. Claiming to be of divine origin, the church,
like every other institution of our day, has been placed
beneath the microscope of investigation, and secular
history, archaeology, the higher criticism of the sacred
literatures, and the comparative study of religions have
united to prove that there is no religion on the face
of the earth which has, been immediately revealed to the
human heart, no church which is of divine origin, and
no ecclesiastical authority of any kind, therefore, which
has the right to control the thoughts and the lives of
men. Religion, be it natural or prophetic, ancient or
modern, pagan or Christian, is seen to be everywhere of
human origin, and entitled to demand the obedience of
men only as it claims and holds attention through the
truth of the doctrines which it teaches and the spiritual
beauty of the ideals which it sustains. It has been
established, for example, within the narrow bounds of

64 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
a single century, that the Bible, like the Koran or the
Avesta, is not uniquely divine, that it was written by men
as any other book has been written, that it is a selected
part of the literature of the ancient Hebrews and the
early Christians, as the dramas of Sophocles and the
orations of Demosthenes, the history of Livy and the
epistles of Cicero, are a selected part of the literatures
of Greece and Rome, and that it is to be venerated,
therefore, like any other literature, just to the extent
in which we find it uplifting and inspiring at the present
day. Again, it has been discovered in recent times,
that the Christian church, like any other social insti
tution, was organised and developed, in its' early years,
not by the omnipotent hand of God, but by the weak
and faltering hands of men; and that, like any other
human institution, it can command obedience and hold
allegiance only to the extent that it can convince the
human mind, by natural processes, of the validity of
its principles and the worth of its ideals. Still again,
we are learning more and more truly every day, that
Jesus, like Buddha and Zoroaster, has nothing partic
ularly divine in his origin, character and achievements,
as the legends would have us believe, but that he was
simply a man among men, one of the many influential
figures of human history, and that therefore his author
ity, like that of all other teachers and prophets, is not
obligatory as being exercised by divine right, but ob
ligatory only in so far as it can commend itself to-day
to the growing consciousness of the race. In short,
the divine right of a church, its creed and its Bibles,

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 65
its priests and its prophets, is exactly like the divine
right of a king ; each is a myth, a discredited tradi
tion, a superstitious inheritance from a superstitious
age, and the one should have no more part in modern
thought than the other.
The second or positive force which has overthrown
the pretentions of the church to divine authority is
again exactly parallel to that which has long since
destroyed the similar pretensions of royalty — namely,
the recognition of the essential equality of all men in
the sight of God. Against the infamous ecclesiastical
tyranny of the Roman church, Martin Luther affirmed
that wonderful battle-cry of the German Reformation,
" the priesthood of the common man." By that great
phrase, Luther meant that no church or priesthood had
any authority more divine in its origin than the au
thority which reposes in the breast of every individual
born into the world. Luther did not understand the
full implications of his own doctrine; he did not see,
for example, that " the priesthood of the common man "
involved the right of every man not only to establish
his own churches and choose his own officers, but to
interpret his own Bible and make his own creed. The
mustard seed, however, was planted, and it has been
growing through the ages into a mighty tree. To-day
we are beginning to see that there is nothing so divine
as human nature, that there is nothing so sacred as the
human soul, that God, if he is to be found anywhere^
must be found in the heart and mind of present human
ity. Everywhere we are beginning to see that there is

66 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
nothing which the world can add to what has already
been given by God to the humblest individual, and that
before the divine authority of the living soul the church
must crumble into dust, the priesthood fall, and the
creeds and Bibles vanish like a flaming scroll. Now,
as never before, we are beginning to see the truth in
the noble saying of Emerson, America's greatest
prophet of the soul, that " nothing is at last sacred
but the integrity of our own mind, that no law can
be sacred to a man but that of his own nature," that
" the one fact that the world hates is the soul, since the
soul forever degrades the past, turns all riches to
poverty, all reputation to shame, confounds the saint
with the rogue, and shoves Jesus and Judas equally
aside." It is by this same identical process of evolution
that the divine right of the church, like the divine right
of the king, has been destroyed; and authority, there
fore, in the field of religion, become as impossible as
in the field of politics. In religion, as in government,
there is nothing of divine origin but the individual
man; in religion, as in government, there is nothing
which is sacred, and nothing, therefore, which can ex
ercise authority, save the human soul; in religion, as
in government, in the case of the priest and the creed,
as in the case of the king and the royal edict, the
institutions of authority must go, and in their place
must come the dignity of the common man, who, in his
capacity as a child of the ever-living God, is at once

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 67
his own king and his own high-priest. In other words,
authority must yield to liberty!
That this fact is clearly apprehended and has al
ready been largely acted upon in the world of politics,
is evident. That it is very far from being apprehended
and acted upon in the world of religion is equally evi
dent. Still do men fail to recognise that the authority
of the church, like the authority of the king, is based
upon the identical superstition of divine right; still do
they fail to understand that the doctrine of the kingship
of the common man, which nobody disputes, at least
here in America, is synonymous with that of the priest
hood of the common man; and still do they fail to see
that the great conceptions of individual liberty inscribed
in the Declaration of Independence are just as true of
men in their relations as members of a church as in their
relations as citizens of a nation. While the political
fetters have been cast aside, the religious fetters, which
were fasnioned at the same forge and moulded by the
same workmen, are still worn without protest or indig
nation. Men who would die before they would yield
submission to a king, gladly yield submission to a pope ;
and men who would pour out their last drop of blood
before they would obey a royal edict, swallow a church
creed without turning a hair. And yet, slow as is the
progress of consistent thinking, and few as are the
people whose minds can move from a premise to a
conclusion, it must be obvious that, in religion as in
politics, authority must go and liberty be finally

68 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
achieved — that all men must eventually come, in the
church as in the state, " to speak and to do, as they
that shall be judged by the law of liberty." And this
means — what ?
It means essentially two things. In the first place,
it means that every man will insist upon his own en
joyment of absolute liberty of thought and speech.
It means that no man will accept the authority of any
written creed, even though it be backed by the au
thority of all the twelve apostles, and be offered as the
sole condition of salvation in the world to come. It
means that no man will yield obedience to a pope or a
bishop or a church council of any kind, but will de
cide for himself as to what he shall believe, how he
shall worship, and what he shall do in the service
of God and of his kingdom. It means that no man will
surrender his reason to the traditional authority of the
Bible, but will insist upon his freedom to glean from
the scriptures what he finds to be true and inspiring,
and throw away all the rest. It means that no man
will yield his reason and conscience to the authority
of Jesus. He will accept the teachings of the Naz
arene in so far as he finds them true to-day, he will
accept his moral principles and spiritual ideals in so
far as they satisfy the needs of the present hour, he
will follow in his footsteps in so far as his leadership
still seems wise and helpful; but of all these things he
will hold himself, and not the church or the creed, to
be the final judge. In short, religious liberty means
that a man will yield to no authority save that of his

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 69
own reason, and bow before no divine sanctions save
those of his own soul. It means that popes will be
dethroned and bishops disrobed, that creeds will be
forgotten and rituals discarded. It means that the
worshipper in a church, like the citizen in a democracy,
will be free to stand upon his own feet, to speak his own
message, and to follow his own conscience — free, as
Emerson puts it, to " obey no law other than the
eternal law."
But this " law of liberty " means more than this.
It means, in the second place, that a man will not only
insist upon the enjoyment of perfect liberty for him
self, but that he will also grant the enjoyment of per
fect liberty to his neighbour. It means that he will
give to his fellow-men exactly that degree of freedom
which he reserves to himself. It means that he will
allow his fellows to enslave themselves religiously, if
they so desire — to be free, that is, to forfeit their
freedom by voluntarily submitting to the tyranny of a
Roman priesthood or the equal tyranny of a Protestant
creed. It means that he will allow his neighbours to
outlaw themselves from all religion, if they so desire —
to be free, that is, to accept the gospel of atheism or
materialism without forfeiting any of their rights and
privileges in this world or in the next. It means that,
under the reign of this " law of liberty," persecution
will cease — not merely the persecution of the faggot,
the sword and the cross, but the equally cruel perse
cution of ridicule, denunciation, and social ostracism.
It means, in a word, that every man, enjoying liberty

70 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
himself, will respect the equal right of other men to
similar liberty. In the words of Robert Browning, in
his sonnet, " Why I am a Liberal " :
" Who is it dares hold, himself emancipate,
His fellow shall continue bound ? Not I,
Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom."
In such an ideal as this do we find the new religion
of liberty, as contrasted with the old religibn of au
thority. And in this ideal do we find as well that true
religion, for which the world has so long been waiting.
Religion has again and again been defined as the yearn
ing of the human soul for some kind of union in serv
ice and love with that infinite and eternal spirit which
constitutes the essence of all life. And what has done
so much to prevent this union of the soul of man with
the spirit of God, as the fetters of ecclesiasticism and
dogma, with which the church has chained the aspira
tions of the race? Is it not a significant fact that the
whole history of religious progress is. the history of one
long succession of revolts against the authority of some
established church by the prophet-heroes of the race?
The religious story of Israel is the story of the per
sistent battle between the Jewish hierarchy upon the
one hand, and, upon the other, that long succession of
inspired prophets, which began with Elijah and Elisha,
Amos and Hosea, and culminated in the sublime figure
of Jesus of Nazareth himself. The story of the
Protestant Reformation is the story of the revolt of

LIBERTY, NOT AUTHORITY 71
Luther and his comrades in many lands against the
spiritual tyranny of Rome, which for ten long centuries
had buried all of Europe in the dark dungeons of
mediaeval ignorance and superstition. The story of
Puritanism, which constitutes the noblest page in the
history of modern England, is the story of the fight of
those who called themselves " ye Lord's free people,"
not merely against Charles Stuart and his unwarranted
exercise of political authority, but also against Arch
bishop Laud and his unwarranted exercise of ecclesias
tical authority, and thus of a struggle not merely for
freedom to rule, but also for " freedom to worship
God." A man can no more unite his soul with God,
when denied religious liberty, than a bird confined in
a cage can wing its flight to the blazing sun. Every
step towards greater liberty is always therefore a step
towards God. The one declaration of St. Paul regard
ing Jesus, as we cannot too often remember, was that
he had made men free. The supreme declaration of
the new religion of our time is that it will enable men
to throw aside fetters forged by centuries of dogma,
and regain the freedom originally granted them by
Christ. The great call of this new religion is that
which was spoken by St. Paul, and reaffirmed by St.
James, " Stand forth in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free, and be not entangled again in the
yoke of bondage," that " ye may so speak and so do,
as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty."

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY
In the early days of the history of Christianity,
nothing so amazed the citizens of the Roman Empire as
the boundless charity which was practised by its ad
herents. It was this, perhaps, as much as anything
else, which set off the early Christians from their pagan
neighbours in the cities of Greece and Asia Minor, where
the early churches were established ; for charity, as we
know it to-day, after centuries of Christian experience,
was practically unknown in ancient times. The Roman
state, to be sure, was lavish in its gifts of grain to the
common people, and distinguished men, such as Julius
Caesar and Augustus, were accustomed to give dona
tions to the multitudes on occasions of great public re
joicing; but the gifts of the state were inspired more
by policy than by benevolence, and the Caesars, when
they scattered money to the shouting rabble, were
moved by pride rather than by pity. A few examples
of genuine pagan charity have come down to us in the
records of the past. Thus Nepos tells us that Epam
inondas, one of the noblest of all the Greeks, was
accustomed to ransom captives with his own money, and
collect dowries for poor girls. Plutarch narrates that
Cimon, the Athenian, was noted for his kindness in
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Tacitus
has described with enthusiasm how, after a dreadful
72

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 73
catastrophe near Rome, the rich threw open the doors
of their houses and taxed all their resources to relieve
the sufferers. But " there can be no doubt," says the
great English historian, Mr. Lecky, in his History of
European Morals, " that neither in practice nor in
theory, neither in the institutions that were founded
nor in the place that was assigned to it in the scale of
duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a position at
all comparable to that which it has obtained by Chris
tianity. . . . Christianity," he continues, " for the
first time, made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving
it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhorta
tions of its teachers."
This distinctive feature of Christian life is con
spicuous even in the earliest days of the new move
ment. In every church, a committee was appointed
to care for the widows and the orphans and the un
fortunate of every kind. Even in the days of bitter
persecution, regular collections for the relief of the
poor were received at the Sunday meetings. Before
many years had passed, a " vast organisation of char
ity, presided over by the bishops, and actively directed
by the deacons, ramified over all of Christendom, till
the bond of charity became the bond of unity." Fur
thermore, acts of notable private benevolence became
not uncommon, and institutions of mercy, which were
totally unknown to the pagan world, were established
in large numbers. Thus a Roman lady, named Fabiola,
founded at Rome, in the fourth century, as an act of
penance, the first public hospital ; and " the charity

74 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
by that woman's hand," says Mr. Lecky, " overspread
the world and will alleviate, to the end of time, the
darkest anguish of humanity." Other hospitals were
soon founded by St. Pammachus and St. Basil; and
St. Basil also erected at Caesarea what was probably
the first asylum for lepers. A monk named Thalasius
established an asylum for blind beggars on the banks
of the Euphrates. In the time of St. Chrysostom, the
church at Antioch, we are told, supported no less than
three thousand widows and virgins, to say nothing of
the strangers and the sick. Legacies for the poor be
came very common; and it was not at all unusual for
men and women, who desired to live a life of peculiar
sanctity, to bestow their entire properties upon
churches or monasteries for charitable uses. Indeed,
one of the chief causes of the extraordinary power ac
quired by the clergy, and the insidious corruption
which soon began to overcome them, was the gigantic
wealth which was placed in their hands as the trustees
of the poor by the sympathetic or the repentant or the
dying. What was true in the early days of Christian
ity has been true ever since, and is true to-day. The
essence of applied Christianity has been charity. No
man has ever been regarded as a true Christian who
has not given to the poor, and no church has ever been
regarded as faithful to its Christian task which has not
offered succour to the needy and distressed. Indeed,
so great has been the emphasis upon charity, and so
high has this activity been ranked in the scale of

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 75
Christian virtues, that the world has been all too ready
to pardon every other shortcoming for its sake. Many
a king has visited cruelty and oppression upon his
people, and yet has been applauded by his subjects be
cause he has given freely from his private purse to
the beggars upon the public streets. Many a priest
has been a worker of iniquity, and yet has been for
given because he has visited the sick and given relief
to the distresses of the poor. And many a millionaire,
right here in our country to-day, who has acquired his
enormous fortune by methods which it would be mild
to describe as robbery, is everywhere acclaimed as a
good citizen and a faithful Christian, because he builds
libraries, endows colleges, and establishes scientific, edu
cational, and philanthropic foundations. Charity, in
other words, weighs so heavily in the scale of Chris
tian virtues, that it seems to counterbalance everything
else. Well has it been said, that " charity covers a
multitude of sins " !
It is not without reason, however, that charity has
been thus exalted; for whatever we may think about
the quality of this virtue to-day, there can be no ques
tion as to the service which it has rendered in the past
to human happiness. Mr. Lecky is right when he says
that " no achievements of the Christian church are
more truly great than those which it has effected in the
sphere of charity." Even though the church had done
nothing else, it has here at least conferred a priceless
boon upon the human race. Nothing is more terrible
in ancient days than the indifference of mankind to the

76 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
needs of the poor and the sufferings of the weak.
Mercy seems to have been a quality which was then
unknown to the human breast. The exposure of un
welcome infants, the neglect of enfeebled old age, the
torture of captives and slaves, the hatred of the
labourer, the contempt for woman — all of these things
were the commonplaces of ancient civilisations ; and not
until Christianity came into the pagan world, with its
sense of the sanctity of human life and its great con
ception of human brotherhood, did the strong feel any
moral obligation for the protection of the weak, or the
rich for the redemption of the poor.
With the advent of Christianity, however, pity seems
to have been born into the western world. For the
first time it was realised " that it is more blessed to
give than to receive " ; for the first time it was under
stood that we must do unto others as we would that
others should do unto us ; for the first time it was seen
that we must love our neighbour — that, if he hungers,
we must give him food, if he thirsts, we must give him
drink, if he is naked, we must clothe him, if he is sick
or in prison, we must visit him. For the first time,
" the other man " was seen, and our moral obligation
to him was understood. It is no accident that Chris
tianity has inspired thousands of men and women, at
the sacrifice of worldly interest and personal comfort,
to devote their entire lives to the single object of
assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It is no acci
dent that it is the Christian civilisation which has cov
ered the globe with hospitals for the sick, schools for

justice, not charity 77
the ignorant, asylums for the insane, homes for the
orphan, the widow, and the aged, and charity organisa
tions for the relief of poverty and distress. It is no
accident that in every parish, throughout the Christian
world, however small or inconspicuous, there is a man
set apart from the ordinary walks of life as a minister
of religion, who is charged, among other functions,
with the care of those who are in distress of " mind,
body, or estate." All these things are only so many
expressions of that charity which has softened human
nature, opened the heart to pity and compassion, and
" united forever, in the minds of men, the idea of
supreme goodness with that of active and constant
benevolence." x Ask what distinctive contribution
Christianity has made to human history, and nine men
out of ten would cite the parable of the Good Samari
tan, who, unlike the Pharisee and the Levite, showed
mercy on the man " who fell among thieves." This is
charity; and it is this charity which has been the su
preme ideal of the Christian life ever since the day
when that parable was spoken, and is the supreme
blessing which the Christian church has conferred upon
the world. " Pure religion and undefiled before God
and the Father " is partly, no doubt, " to keep oneself
unspotted from the world " ; but first and foremost, as
the Apostle well pointed out, it is to " visit the father
less and the widows in their affliction."
Now it may seem strange, in view of all the good that
has been done in the world by the service of the Chris^
1 See Lecky's History of European Morals, vol, ii.

78 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tian church, that anybody should deny the supremacy
of charity among the virtues of the soul, or assert that
there is a better and higher duty to humanity that we
as good Christians can perform. And yet nothing is
truer than the fact that there have always been a few
great spirits who have seemed to be dissatisfied with
charity as the fulfilment of religion, and to be reaching
forth to some higher and nobler ideal of human service.
Always have there been certain brave and devoted men
who have gone out among the hungry and the naked,
the downtrodden and the oppressed, and asked if
charity was all that could be offered to these people,
if charity was really the fulfilment bf " pure religion
and undefiled," if charity was the ultimate way of ex
pressing the spirit of brotherhood and love. Indeed,
there have been some men who have even gone so far
as to suggest that charity meant the defeat and not
the victory, the nullification and not the fulfilment, of
religion ; and that the more generous was the charitable
service of the church, the more sure we could be that
the religion of the church was a mockery and a sham.
Paul had something of this feeling — that charity,
however cheerful and abundant, is not everything —
when he wrote that wonderful sentence in his first letter
to the Corinthians : " Though I bestow all my goods
to feed the poor, and have not love, it profiteth me
nothing." This sentence I could never understand as
a boy, since I naturally thought that " bestowing all
one's goods to feed the poor " was the whole of love.
But now I believe that the Apostle saw that charity,

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 79
which meant simply giving to relieve the necessities of
the poor, was not the highest ideal of the Christian life ;
but that beyond this there was that unmixed spirit of
love which, if acted upon, would see to it that there
were no poor who needed to be fed. St. Augustine,
that " ancient friend of the poor," surely had some such
idea as this — that charity was only a temporary
makeshift, and not at all the ultimate fulfilment of the
ideal of human service — when he said, " Thou givest
bread to the hungry ; but better were it that he never
hungered and thou hadst none to give him." This
remark clearly indicates that the great churchman be
lieved that it was good to give bread to the hungry, but
infinitely better if the poor man had his own bread,
and you had only enough bread for yourself, and there
fore none to spare for him — a condition of things
slightly different from that which actually exists to
day in modern society, or, for that matter, has ever
existed in the society of any age! There can be no
question as to what was meant by those church fathers
of the second and third centuries of our era who pro
claimed that charity was not a matter of mercy but
of justice, maintaining that all property is based on
usurpation, that the earth by right is common to all
men, and that no man can justly claim a superabundant
supply of this world's goods — a statement so similar
to the famous remark of the French socialist, Proud-
hon, that " all property is theft," that one can scarcely
believe that it comes from these early Christian sources.
There are evidently some Christians, in good and regu-

80 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
lar standing, who have been dissatisfied with charity;
some Christians who have seen some ideal of religion
beyond that of mere giving by those who have to those
who have not ; some Christians who have dared to think
that it would be infinitely better if there were a some
what more even distribution of material wealth, such
that there would be no poor to be relieved, and also
no rich to give relief. Charity is very plainly not the
final end and aim of true religion, if these teachers are
to be trusted.
We may, perhaps, be able to understand the feeling
of these men, in their dissatisfactionswith charity as the
ideal of religious service, if we consider for a moment
what are the conditions which make the practice of
Christian charity both necessary and possible. These
conditions, if I mistake not, are two.
First of all, in order that there shall be any such
thing as charity successfully practised, there must be
a class of people in society who have more money in
their possession than they really need!
Of course, the noblest kind of charity is that which
is given by those persons who have only a little, but
give with cheerfulness the little that they have. Jesus
never taught a more impressive lesson than when he
compared the rich people, who cast their generous offer
ings into the temple treasury, with the poor widow,
who threw in two mites, and pointed out that this poor
widow cast in more than the others, since " they cast
in of their abundance, but she of her want did cast in

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 81
all that she had." This was charity of a perfect type ;
and it is a charity which is by no means uncommon
among the poor in our tenements and slums, whose gen
erosity to one another in the hour of distress puts to
shame the generosity of those who live in comfort
and luxury. But charity on any extensive and ef
fective scale is absolutely conditional upon the owner
ship of great wealth by a selected portion of the com
munity. The charity, which builds its hospitals and
asylums, which endows its churches and its schools,
which organises and maintains its great public philan
thropies, is made possible only because certain persons
have enormous sums of money at their disposal, which
must be used for purposes of public benefit, or else lie
idle in their money-chests. This age has been called
pre-eminently the age of charity. At the close of
every year, we are invited to rejoice at the hundreds of
millions of dollars which have been given by our Car-
negies and Rockefellers for the uplift of humanity.
Unquestionably we must acknowledge a certain degree
of satisfaction that these immensely rich men feel
their public responsibilities and thus give generously to
the common weal; and yet must we recognise that this
age surpasses all previous ages in the magnitude of
its charitable enterprises, only because this age also
surpasses all others in the number and magnitude of
its private fortunes. It is true to-day, with our col
leges and foundations, as it was true yesterday, with its
cathedrals and monastic orders, that charity flourishes

82 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
most abundantly when wealth is accumulated most
abundantly in the hands of a few individuals or
families. This is the first of the two essential conditions of
charity. The second may best be given in the words
of Mr. Lecky, as written in his History of European
Morals. " Charity," he says, " finds an extended scope
for action only where there exists a large class of men
who are impoverished." Charity, in other words, is
immediately dependent upon poverty, and the more
charity there is, the more people there are who are
in a condition of misery and distress. If food is dis
tributed abroad by generous hands, it must mean that
there are thousands of people who are face to face
with starvation; if hospitals are built in our cities
and towns, it must mean that people are sickening and
dying all about us ; if millions of dollars are given every
year in charitable relief, it must mean that multitudes
of our fellow-men have not even the few pennies that
are necessary to keep body and soul together. It is
beautiful to see some sympathetic woman reaching down
an alms to the beggar by the highway, but what
about the beggar whose hand is uplifted to receive the
coin ? It is inspiring to see some wealthy man scatter
ing his millions, like some noble lord scattering gold
pieces to the rabble at his palace gate, but what
about the overworked and underpaid toilers in our
modern industrial life, who are the recipients of his
charity? It is wonderful to see the Good Samaritan,
but what about the man who fell among the thieves, was

justice, not charity 83
stripped of his raiment, and left by the roadside half-
dead? The one part of the picture is beautiful, only
because the other part is so hideous. After all, the fact
is evident that charity is abundant only because misery
is equally abundant; that millionaires build libraries
only because the people cannot build them for them
selves ; that philanthropists support hospitals, only be
cause the people cannot afford to pay for their own
physicians and nurses; that our stupendous charity
organisation societies give public relief, only because
thousands of men and women cannot earn enough
money in a ten- or twelve-hour day to live even in
tenements and slums. This age is indeed pre-eminent
for its charities, but only because it is equally pre
eminent for its misery and degradation.
Here, now, are the two absolutely essential condi
tions of extensive charity — first, the existence of a
small class of men who are immensely wealthy; and
second, the existence of a large class of men who are im
poverished. Without these two conditions of wealth
and poverty, existing side by side, charity would be
neither possible nor necessary. And it is just this fact
that has persuaded some of the greatest spirits of the
ages past to believe that there is something more vital
and more important in religion than any charity which
can be offered to the unfortunate and the suffering.
It is all right to give food to the hungry, but why
should some people be hungry, and other people have
more than they can eat ? It is all right to give clothing
to the naked, but why should some people be naked, and

84 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
others be clothed in purple and fine linen? It is all
right to give relief to the poor, but why should some
people be miserably poor, and others be so rich that
their gold and silver have become a burden? Is this
unequal distribution of this world's goods fair, and,
above all, is it permanent? Is it not true that wealth
and poverty, existing side by side, is an indictment of
religion; and the charity, which is made possible and
necessary by these conditions, an evidence of the fail
ure of religion? For what, after all, we may well ask,
is religion?Religion, on its practical or social side, was defined
by the greatest preacher that this world has ever seen,
as the unification of humanity — the brotherhood of
man. Jesus's conception of humanity was that of one
great family, bound together by the ties of love. God,
said Jesus, is a Father, and men are brothers one of
another; and, in accordance with this conception, he
dreamed of the coining of a time when men should come
from the east and from the west, from the north and
from the south, and all sit down together in the King
dom of God. Jesus looked upon all men as simply the
sons of God. He refused to recognise any distinctions
of class or colour, race or nationality. He disdained to
know either Jew or Gentile, bond or free. He de
clined to acknowledge any difference between rich and
poor, high and low. He ignored even the ties of family
kinship — for when he was besought by his mother and
his brethren to leave the multitudes and return to the
seclusion of his home, he opened his arms to the men

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY, 85
and women and little children who were gathered about
him, and declared that these were his mother and his
brethren? Jesus asserted that no man could be called
religious, however many prayers he spoke, however
many sacrifices he laid upon the temple altar, who cher
ished hate and practised greed against his fellow-men.
Religion, to Jesus, meant gentleness and good-will — it
meant service and sympathy and love. God as the
Father, humanity as the one great family of God, all
men as brothers one of another, love as the perfect law
of life, this was Jesus's conception of applied religion!
Now we only have to understand this conception of
religion as consisting of the realisation of human
brotherhood, in order to understand why it is that
charity, so far from being a fulfilment of religion, is
actually the sign and symbol of its failure. Charity,
as we have seen, can flourish only when society
is divided between poverty upon the one hand and
wealth upon the other. Now, if there is any one thing
which is absolutely inconsistent with religion as Jesus
understood it, and any one thing which makes impossible
the realisation of its ideal of human brotherhood, it
is this very fact of the separation of mankind into the
rich and the poor. It is not for nothing that, when
the rich young man desired to enter into the fellowship
of the disciples, Jesus insisted that he should sell all
his goods, and come to him with empty hands. It is
not for nothing that the early Christians declined to
hold any private property, but, upon their entrance
into the community, put all they had into the common

86 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
treasury. They knew, as Jesus knew, that, in the
Kingdom of God, there could be no rich and no poor.
They understood perfectly, as Jesus understood, that
the brotherhood of the Kingdom meant each for all
and all for each — that all must work and rest and
play and live and die together, and share and share
alike. The practice of charity began in the early Christian
communities, only because the ideal of brotherhood
broke down, and poor and rich began almost immedi
ately to appear; and charity increased in volume and
extent, only because this ideal became more and more
remote as time went on. " Charity," said Henry D.
Lloyd, in one of the most notable utterances that ever
came from his inspired lips, " charity is the bankruptcy
of brotherhood," and therefore the bankruptcy of
religion! It means that religion has failed, that it
has gone out of business, that it has passed into the
hands of a receiver! Charity, from the standpoint of
the true religion of humanity, is, at the best, only a
makeshift, an apology, an expedient. It is an attempt
to make an essentially wrong condition of things toler
able, until men can pull themselves together and make
it right. It is a confession that we have failed to make
good our religion, and are trying to cover up the
failure. If religion is ever to succeed, ever to fulfil its real
ideal, ever to build that Kingdom of God of which
Jesus loved to dream, it must do something more than
practise charity; something more than recognise the

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 87
existence of the rich and poor, and persuade the one to
give of their abundance to the miseries of the other;
something more than build hospitals and asylums,
establish charity societies and philanthropic founda
tions, give turkey dinners at Thanksgiving to the
hungry, and distribute presents at Christmas to the
needy. It must go behind the wealth and poverty
which make brotherhood impossible, and abolish them
utterly. It must seek the union of all men in the
circle of a common family, where differences of posses
sion shall be unknown, and charity therefore unneces
sary. It must seek, in a word, not the enlargement
but the elimination of charity. This is what Paul
meant when he said that it signifies nothing to give our
goods to feed the poor, unless we have that spirit of
love which shall make poverty impossible. This is what
St. Augustine meant when he said that it was good to
give bread to the hungry, but it were better if there
were no hungry, and we had no bread to give. This
is what the old church fathers meant when they said
that the real charity was a matter not of mercy but of
justice. And this is why the new religion of our time
turns away from charity as its ideal and appeals to
justice. For what is justice? Over the court-house of nearly
every city and town of this country, there stands a
familiar statue, which is supposed to be a symbolic
representation of the ideal of justice. The figure is
always that of a woman, whose eyes are blindfolded,
who holds in her right hand a sword, and in her left

88 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
hand a pair of scales. The blinded eyes signify that
justice is no respecter of persons, that she does not
even know who comes before her, whether rich or poor,
high or low, king or peasant, and that she will give
to all, therefore, a judgment which is unswerved by
prejudice. The pair of scales suggests that the bal
ances are held even for every one, and that judgment
will thus be determined by a law of right as infallible as
the law of gravitation. And the sword, of course, sug
gests that a judgment will be decreed which is un-
tempered by mercy.
Now this figure gives a. not inadequate representa
tion of the idea of justice. It suggests, does it not,
that justice is the logic of the soul — that spiritual
process which provides, like the analogous intellectual
process, that a certain moral conclusion shall invaria
bly follow a certain moral premise. Or, to put it as
Theodore Parker put it in his great sermon on Justice
and the Conscience, " justice is the natural law of the
soul " — that spiritual process which provides, like
the analogous material process, that a certain moral
effect shall invariably follow from a certain moral
cause. Justice has reference to merit and desert. It
means that a man shall reap only what he has sown,
receive only what he has earned, suffer only what
he has incurred. " Justice," says my dictionary, " is
the rendering of what is due or merited." " Justice,"
says Aristotle,, in his Ethics, " is that virtue of the
soul which is distributive according to desert."
" Justice," says Montesquieu, " is a relation of con-

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 89
gruity which really subsists between two things, and
which is always the same, whether considered by God,
or an angel, or a man." " Injustice," says the Mo
hammedan Koran, defining the opposite of true justice,
" is the grasping of that which belongs to another."
Justice, in other words, is a relation of exact corre
spondence between moral initiative and moral conse
quence. It means equal opportunity, the distribution
of reward and penalty according to desert, the bear
ing of our own burdens and only our own. It means,
to use ex-President Roosevelt's expressive phrase, " the
square deal " — or, to use the still more expressive
vernacular of modern slang, that each man " gets what
is coming to him," no less and also no more! The
poised scales in the uplifted hand of the goddess tell
the whole meaning of that justice which she is supposed
to represent.
Now, it is in order to secure this justice to every in
dividual, to provide that every man shall receive all to
which he is morally entitled and shall grasp nothing
that belongs morally to another, that governments are
established among men. " Justice," said James Madi
son, in one of his papers in the Federalist, " is the end
of government — it is the only end of civil society."
But this end of government, unfortunately, has never
yet been realised upon the earth. Always have there
been those who have enjoyed exemption from the stern
exactions of justice, and for one reason or another
have been granted what we know as special privilege.
The most glorious civilisation, in many respects, that

90 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
the world has ever seen — that of ancient Athens —
was enjoyed by a few hundred Athenian citizens, at the
expense of thousands and tens of thousands of abject
and persecuted slaves. In the ancient Republic of
Rome, lo say nothing of the later Empire, the privileged
person was the native Latin, who crushed beneath his
iron heel of conquest all the nations of the earth. In
the Europe of the Middle Ages, there was the privilege
of birth — a noble class, from the king upon the one
hand to the petty lord upon the other, enjoying privi
leges which were denied the great masses of the com
mon people. In England, for many centuries, the
favoured sons of fortunes were the landowners of the
kingdom; and it is only within recent years that any
body has dared to question the right of this com
paratively small group of wealthy men to hold the
privileges which have for so long been theirs. In
America, a country embarrassed by the survival of no
ancient rights, our special privileges have taken new
and unfamiliar forms. But they are here, as they are
everywhere, in the form of protective tariffs, perpetual
franchises, private land grants, and industrial monopo
lies. " The end of government," as James Madison put
it, may be " justice " ; but everywhere do we see this
end of government defeated by the encroachments of
special privilege. Always is there some kind of title,
or rank, or political power, or system of taxation, or
right of private ownership, which is granted to some
few individuals or families, and denied to all the rest.
Originally, these privileges may have had some moral

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 91
basis in the form of service rendered to the common
good; but all such service has long since disappeared,
and to-day these privileges rest upon no securer foun
dation than inheritance or tradition. In one aspect
or another, the picture drawn by Thomas Carlyle of
special privilege in France, just before the outbreak of
the Revolution, is typical of all ages and all countries.
" The widow," he says, " gathers nettles for her chil
dren's dinner, and a perfumed seigneur, lounging in his
palace, hath an alchemy whereby he will extract from
her every third nettle, and call it rent."
Now this reference of Carlyle's to the poor " widow "
and the " perfumed seigneur " shows clearly what we
have just begun to learn within comparatively recent
times, that it is these special privileges enjoyed by
the few — these privileges which constitute, as we have
seen, a nullification of that even-handed justice which
" is the end of government " — which are the ultimate
cause of those conditions of wealth and poverty which
make impossible the unification of humanity. We used
to flatter ourselves that the acquisition of great wealth
was to be attributed to the extraordinary diligence or
ability of the exceptional individual — that if a man
amassed his millions it was because he, as an individual,
was a " Napoleon of finance " ! But this comfortable
idea is now very rapidly disappearing from the minds
of men, especially in America. It is true, of course,
that the diligent man or the able man will gather more
money than the sluggard or the fool, and it is only right
that he should, inasmuch as justice means, in the words

92 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of Aristotle, " distribution according to desert." But
this truth cannot find any possible application to those
stupendous inequalities of possession which are one
of the most familiar facts of history. If a man was
wealthy in ancient Rome, it was because he was a man
of Latin birth or Senatorial rank, and was thus privi
leged to own immense estates in Italy and plunder the
provinces to his heart's content. If a man was wealthy
in mediaeval Europe, it was because he was a feudal
lord, who was served and supported by his thousands
of retainers. If a man is wealthy in England to-day,
the chances are that he is the owner of thousands of
acres of private lands which are untaxed by the
government. If a man is wealthy in America, it is
because he owns real estate, or has been granted a fran
chise, or collects rent, or owns a coal mine, or is one of
the swine who has his snout in the tariff trough. Go
behind any immense fortune, and you will find brains
and energy, to be sure; but mostly you will find privi
lege, the absolutely legal, but at the same time the
absolutely immoral, " grasping of that which belongs
to another." Every third nettle that the widow picks
for her starving children the " perfumed seigneur
lounging in his palace " has the privilege of snatching
from her hand in the form of rent. That, or some
thing closely akin to that, is the explanation of great
wealth !
And if wealth is thus to be explained, in the ulti
mate analysis, as the fruit of injustice, so also, of
course, is poverty. Just as we used to think that wealth

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 93
was due to an exceptionally high grade of individual
ability or morals, so also we used to think that pov
erty was due, in the same way, to an exceptionally low
grade of individual ability or morals. If a man was
poor, we used to say that it was because he was lazy,
or impoverished, or intemperate, or inefficient, or im
moral. But more and more in our day, for reasons
which I have no time to state at this time, this feature
of individual responsibility is beginning to disappear
from the problem of poverty, and the feature of social
responsibility to take its place. " I hold," says Dr.
Edward T. Devine, the leading social expert of New
York, " that personal shortcoming and depravity is
as foreign to any sound theory of the hardships of
our modern poor as witchcraft or demoniacal posses
sion — that these hardships are economic and social,"
and not individual! If a man is poor to-day, it may
be because he is lazy or inefficient or immoral. We may
freely grant the possibility — all the more willingly,
as the possibility is so slight; but the chances are ten
to one that social injustice and not individual deprav
ity is to blame. If a man is poor, it is because he can
not get to the land, or because he cannot get to the
machine; or, if he does get to the land, a good part
of his earnings are snatched from him in the form of
rent, and, if he does get to thr machine, an equally
large part of his earnings are snatched from him in
the form of profit. If a man is poor, it is because he
cannot get employment — because society will not let
him work; or, if he does find a job, because he cannot

94 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
earn a living wage. If a man is poor, it is because he
is burdened by low wages on the one hand, and high
prices upon the other; because he is physically weak
ened by long hours of toil and indecent living condi
tions, or physically crippled by industrial accident;
because he is old, and has been cast on the junk-heap
of modern industry ; because, out of the little that he
has, he is taxed to the limit for the support of vast
armaments of war, protected industries, and corpora
tion dividends. Poverty has little to do with the char
acter or the ability of the individual who suffers.
" Poverty," says Dr. Devine, " is in the main the story
of social injustice ... of adverse conditions over
which the individual who suffers is unable to exercise
effective control, but which are not beyond social con
trol. ... It lies not in the unalterable nature of things,
but in our human institutions, our social arrangements,
our tenements and slums and subways, our laws and
courts and jails, our politics, our industry and our
business." Every third nettle that the widow picks
for her starving children, the " perfumed seigneur "
has the privilege of snatching from her hand. That,
or something closely akin to that, is the explanation
not only of the wealth of the noble lord, but also of the
poverty of the wretched widow !
It is this special privilege which is the ultimate cause
both of poverty and wealth. If either of these evils is
to be abolished, it must be through the abolition of spe
cial privilege, which means the establishment of that
even-handed justice which is " the end of government."

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 95
And does not this make clear why the new religion
proclaims that humanity is to be " redeemed with jus
tice " and not charity ? The fulfilment of religion, as
we have seen, means essentially the establishment of the
brotherhood of man. The realisation of this ideal of
human brotherhood, as we have also seen, is simply im
possible, so long as society is beset by conditions of
wealth and poverty. Charity is the evidence of the ex
istence of these conditions, and therefore, as Mr. Lloyd
has said, signifies " the bankruptcy of brotherhood."
Charity, just because it depends upon the continuance
of these conditions of wealth and poverty which make
brotherhood impossible, is the only evidence that we
need that religion has failed to achieve its end. Any
religion which is satisfied to have a few men rich and
most men poor ; which is content to have some men roll
ing in luxury while others are suffering for the barest;
necessities of life; which is not at all disturbed that
some men should live in idleness and have everything,
and other men toil ten hours a day for seven days in
the week for fifty-two weeks in the year, and still have
nothing; which is not indignant that some men should
live in palaces and others in tenements, that some women
should be toys and others starve, that some children
should have every chance to live and others have every
chance to die ; which has no higher ideal, in the face of
the facts of modern social life, than charity — this
religion is no religion at all. It is only a mockery and
a sham of religion !
What true religion wants and will have is brother-

96 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
hood ! In order to get brotherhood, it must abolish the
wealth and poverty which separate mankind! In or
der to abolish wealth and poverty, it must abolish the
special privilege which produces both! And in order
to abolish this special privilege, it must seek the estab
lishment of that justice which is " fhe end of govern
ment"! Is not the lesson plain? Is it not evident
that what we want is not charity, but justice; that
justice which renders to every individual what is
rightly his due, which distributes the fruits of the
earth and the fruits of labour according to desert,
which provides that there shall be some congmity
between what a man gets and what a man gives,
which forbids that any one shall grasp what belongs
to another, which permits the widow to use for her
self all the nettles that she gathers for her children?
What we want is the justice which gives " the square
deal " to every man ; which means equal opportunity for
all and special privilege for none; which gives to all
what belongs to all, and to each what each has earned.
What we want is the justice which is truly blind to
persons, and holds the scales as even as the everlasting
stars. Give this, and wealth and poverty alike will
disappear, and charity become unnecessary. Give this,
and men will be drawn together as brethren in one com
mon family, " each for all and all for each." Give this,
and religion will for the first time be fulfilled in the
establishment of God's Kingdom upon the earth.
" Thou shalt be redeemed with justice," said Isaiah —

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 97
and only to-day is the meaning of his word becoming
clear !
Justice, therefore, is the watchword of the new re
ligion — that justice which means the end alike of pov
erty and wealth, and therefore the beginning of human
brotherhood. And what a change is accomplished by
this transition from the ideal of charity to that of
justice in our whole conception of the practical aspects
of religion?
In the first place, the new ideal wholly transforms
our attitude toward the poor. Whereas we have said
to the poor man in the past, " What do you need? " —
to-day we are going to say, "Why do you need?"
So long as a man is hungry, we will give him food ; so
long as he is naked, we will clothe him; so long as he
is in prison, we will visit him. Charity will continue
as long as misery endures. But more important to us
than the satisfaction of his wants, is the explanation
of his wants. More important than the fact that the
man is hungry, is the fact that he has been unable to
get employment, or, if employed, has been unable to
earn a living wage. More important than the fact that
the man is sick, is the fact that he has been unable
to buy adequate clothing because of the protective
tariff on wool. More important than the fact that
the man is in prison, is the fact that, as a boy, he was
denied full time in school, playgrounds, and a decent
home, and thus made a criminal in spite of himself.
The question which practical religion asked yesterday

98 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
was simply " What does this man need? " This same
question, of course, we shall continue to ask to-day.
But it will be immediately followed by the infinitely
more vital question, " Why does this man need ? " And
not until the second question, which concerns justice,
is answered as decisively as the first question, which
concerns charity; not until the crust of bread is fol
lowed by the living wage, the physician's drug by sun
light and fresh air, and the visit to the prison by the
playground and the home — not until then will the
new religion be content.
If this transition from the ideal of charity to that
of justice involves a change in our attitude toward
the poor, so also does it involve a change in our atti
tude toward the rich. For whereas we asked yester
day of the rich man, " Where can you give your
money? " to-day we are asking him, " Where did you
get your money ? " We are no longer interested in
how many libraries a man can build, or how many col
leges he can endow, or how many scientific and educa
tional and philanthropic foundations he can establish,
with the millions of dollars which he has accumulated.
The people are no beggars that they should appeal for
alms. Society is no pauper that it should depend upon
these gifts. We can build libraries and colleges and
churches for ourselves. What we want to know is
not how many libraries the spending of these mil
lions of dollars will give us to-day, but how many
human lives the earning of these millions took away
from us yesterday. What we are eager to discover is

JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 99
not how many souls the investment of this money in
colleges and churches will save next year, but how many
souls the accumulation of this money in business ruined
last year. What we must find out is not how the
multi-millionaire will give us his money in his old age,
but, what is infinitely more important, how this multi
millionaire stole this money from us in his youth.
''Where will you give this money?" — that is the
question asked of every millionaire to-day by the
clergyman and the physician and the college-president
and the charity-worker — and the question must be
asked, since the money must be given somewhere. But
the question which the prophet of the new religion will
ask is " Where did you get this money ? " — what hands
has it bruised, what backs has it bent, what eyes has it
blinded, what hearts has it broken, what lives has it
cost, what men has it robbed of their strength, what
women of their purity, what children of their beauty,
with what tears is it wet, with what blood is it stained?
These are the questions of the new religion — and not
until these questions are answered so clearly and de
cisively that in the future wealth will be as vile as pov
erty, will this new religion of social justice be content.
Lastly, this transition from the ideal of charity to
that of justice involves an absolute change in our
whole conception of the church and its relation to
society. It means that the church can no longer be
content to deal with individuals, but must prepare to
deal at first hand with society. It means that the
church can no longer be interested merely in the in-

100 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ward soul, but must be interested in the outward social
conditions which environ the soul. It means that the
church can no longer seek to save men out of the world,
but must endeavour to save the world itself, while men
are still living in it. It means that the church can no
longer keep itself apart from education and politics
and industry, but must enter into all these fields and
speak the word of God. It means at last, after nine
teen centuries of waiting, the Kingdom of God, for
which Jesus lived and died!
Such is the message of justice, and not charity, —
justice as the cure of the ills which make charity
necessary. And what is this but the message, in
modern phrase, of the brotherhood of man? Nor is it
so very modern, after all. Isaiah said, " seek justice,"
before he said, " relieve the oppressed." Micah com
manded that we " do justice," before he commanded
that we " love mercy." And it was Jesus who said
that we must " seek first the Kingdom of God." Char
ity must last so long as men are poor ; but if men are
ever to be " redeemed," it must be " with justice."

ASPECTS OF THOUGHT

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL
The present address is occasioned by a fact which
is more or less conspicuous, at the present time, in the
life of every minister. I refer to the fact that the age
in which we live, more truly perhaps than any other
period in Christian history, is an age of very general
unbelief. As I go about my work from day to day,
and associate with all sorts and conditions of men, I
am constantly being impressed by the number of peo
ple whom I meet, who not only have no interest in
organised religion, but no longer believe the great in
tellectual conceptions which are commonly associated
with religious thought. The idea of God and of the
soul, the hope of immortality, the faith in a divine
purpose, the confidence in human freedom, — all these
ideas, which constitute the essence of religion as a sys
tem of thought, and the glory of the religious life as
distinguished from the merely moral life, seem to be
gone; and they are gone, not because people are ig
norant or obstinate or irreverent, but simply and solely
because they insist upon being honest in their thought.
They deny these doctrines not because they want to
deny them, but because they have to deny them, in
order to be true to themselves.
The causes which have brought about this state of
unbelief are not far to seek. They may all be found in
103

104 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
that marvellous development of scientific knowledge
which distinguishes the nineteenth century as one of the
greatest epochs in the entire history of the human
race. This new knowledge of our time has affected
the religious conceptions of mankind, it seems to me, in
two ways.
In the first place, it has acquainted us with a vast
number of facts regarding the history and character
of the world in which we live, and the facts in every
case have been fatal to the dogmas of the old theology.
In physics and chemistry, in biology, psychology, as
tronomy, and geology, a new world has suddenly been
revealed unto our gaze; and this world, as I need not
point out, is wholly incompatible with those ideas of
God and the soul which have constituted for so many
centuries the very bone and sinew of Christian the
ology. The old conceptions of religion, in other words,
have simply disappeared before the modern scientific
discoveries of our time, just as a morning mist disap
pears before the blaze of a rising sun ; and, what is in
finitely more important, in the case of thousands upon
thousands of honest and devout persons, the loss of
these particular religious ideas has inevitably involved
the loss of all religious conceptions whatsoever. Un
able to believe in a God who is some kind of a magnified
supernatural anthropomorphic being, living away off
somewhere in the skies, they have ceased to believe in
the existence of a divine spirit altogether. Unable to
believe that God created the world in six days and
rested on the seventh, as is described in the first chap-

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 105
ter of Genesis, they have ceased to believe that God
has any creative relation to the universe whatsoever.
Unable to believe in the fall of man, the total depravity
of human nature, and the atonement of Jesus Christ,
they have ceased to believe that human life presents
any problem of moral and spiritual redemption. Un
able to believe in a heaven, where the good are received
into eternal glory, and a hell, where the evil are re
ceived into eternal pain, they have ceased to believe that
the human soul is destined to immortality. These peo
ple have lost the old theology, and they have not found
any new theology to put into its place. They have
lost one particular kind of religion, and thus are made
to believe that they have lost all religion altogether.
And they wander lonely and desolate along the path
ways of human experience, their ideals quenched, their
hopes destroyed, and their ambitions gone!
But this is not the only way in which these new
scientific discoveries have affected the religious concep
tions of our time. Not only have they acquainted us
with a vast number of new and revolutionary facts
which have undermined and destroyed the old theology,
without apparently bringing any new and better the
ology to put in its place, but, in the second place, they
have acquainted us with a new and revolutionary
method of inquiry and investigation. In the old days,
the theological method, which was based on the idea of
authority, was in the ascendent; but now the scientific
method, which is based on the idea of rationality, is
almost universal. Yesterday, men assumed, as a mat-

106 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ter of authoritative revelation, as a form of thought,
almost as a condition of existence, that God lived, that
the human soul was a reality, and that this soul was
destined to some kind of immortality; and then, from
these basic suppositions, which nobody thought of deny
ing, they made the logical deductions regarding the
facts of daily experience. To-day, we have just re
versed the process, and start out by assuming abso
lutely nothing. We come before the world with a mind
that is empty of all presuppositions whatsoever, and we
study at first hand the facts of life. We observe these
facts as best we can with the apparatus at our disposal.
Having observed the facts, we then proceed to correlate
and classify them, in order that some system may be
introduced into what seems at first to be a hopeless
chaos of disorder. And then, having observed and
classified the facts, we proceed forthwith to interpret
them — to find out, if possible, their significance —
to see what they mean, if anything, and where they
lead, if anywhere.
Now, it is just this new scientific method of inquiry
which has done so much to dispel the religious faith of
the human mind. The observation and correlation and
interpretation of the facts of life have seemed to lead
us only farther and farther away from the thought
of God and the hope of immortality. Everywhere, in
this world of experience, we look for God, but we do
not seem to find him. Everywhere we search for some
indications of the future life, but we do not seem to
discover anything which gives to us assurance that

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 107
" God created man to be immortal." On the contrary,
all the facts seem to point the other way. We know
that man has a notion of God, and cherishes a great
hope that, when he dies, he shall live again; but our
scientific method of inquiry seems to show us that these
are purely subjective fancies, and that there is noth
ing in the universe of real experience to correspond
thereto. " Man has an idea of God and immortality,
but, so far as we can see, the universe has no fact of
either." The famous astronomer of the first French
Empire, who said that he had searched every nook and
cranny of the heavens with his telescope and nowhere
had seen God, seems to have anticipated the experience
of many of us in this century of rigid and unrelenting
scientific investigation.
Here, now, in the great mass of new facts which have
been given to us, and in the new scientific method of
inquiry which is everywhere accepted to-day, are the
two great reasons, to my mind, why so prevalent a
spirit of denial is abroad in our time. Everywhere men
are denying the old beliefs, or, if they are not denying
them, are doubting them ; while it seems as though there
would soon be left no voice to repeat, in sincerity and
truth, the splendid credos of the Christian centuries.
The spiritual interpretation of life seems to have
broken down all along the line, and sheer materialism
to have usurped its place. Mephistopheles, the " spirit
which denies," according to Goethe in his Faust, seems
to have come at last into his own ; and his disciples are
everywhere to be heard declaring: There is no God

108 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
— Man has no soul — Immortality is a delusion and a
snare ! More truly to-day than in the day of Matthew
Arnold, the tide of religious faith is running out. You
remember how the English poet stood on Dover Beach,
and in the slow ebbing of the tide seemed to see the pic
ture of an ebbing flood of faith. " The Sea of Faith,"
he said — and more truly can we say it in this present
age —
" The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the fold of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
Now it is just this question of the denial of all these
spiritual verities of the ages which I want to discuss
at this time. And first of all, I must make an admis
sion which, to many of you, no doubt, will seem to give
my whole case away to the disciples of Mephistopheles.
I must admit, that is, at the very start, that I perfectly
well understand that it is impossible to demonstrate
that God exists, or that man is a spiritual creature,
or that immortality is true. If there is any bigger
fool than the man who says in his heart, " There is no
God," I believe that it is the man who says in his heart,
" I know that there is a God." When we come to the
bottom-rock question, Can we really know these things ?
we must all of us admit that we cannot know them at
aU. We must become reverent agnostics with old Soe-

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 109
rates, and confess that we know only as we know that
we do not know. To assert that we do know these
things is to say what is obviously not true, and to be
guilty of " that impiety of the pious," of which Herbert
Spencer speaks with such justifiable contempt in the
opening pages of his First Principles. In the Middle
Ages, of course, men believed that they knew these
things, because they also believed that these things had
been revealed to the holy church; and what was said
on the authority of the church was accepted without
any question as infallible. Then, in the years immedi
ately following the Renaissance, there came the period
of the decline and fall of the conception of authority,
and the gradual ascendency of the reason. Says Pro
fessor Thilly, of Cornell University, in a recent article
in the Hibbert Journal on " The Characteristics of the
Present Age," wherein he tells the story of this period
of history : " Reason became the authority in science
and philosophy. The notion began to prevail that
truth is not something to be handed down by authority
or decreed by papal bulls, but something to be acquired,
something to be achieved by free and impartial in
quiry. . . . This apotheosis of reason," he continues,
" is reached in the eighteenth century during the so-
called period of enlightenment — the self -conceited age,
as Goethe once called it. Reason now proudly sits
upon the throne once occupied by ecclesiastical author
ity, and in her supreme self-confidence believes herself
competent to solve all problems." But pride, in this
case as in every other, only goes before a fall. Be-

110 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ginning with Immanuel Kant's immortal work on The
Critique of Pure Reason, wherein he showed that the
human reason was incompetent to answer the great
questions of God, immortality, and the freedom of the
will, our age has grown ever more " sceptical of the
power of the human reason to reach a rational explana
tion of the universe as a whole." " Philosophy," says
Professor Thilly again, in this same essay, " has been
relegated with theology to the lumber-room of thought.
We cannot prove the existence of God, freedom, and
immortality. Such questions, and indeed all questions
of ultimates, are quite beyond our ken. We can know
only what we experience; we are limited to our sense-
perception, and even here we can reach only a high
degree of probability."
We must admit, therefore, at the very start, that
none of these great conceptions of theological specu
lation can be proved. We may observe facts as we
will, we may correlate these facts exhaustively, we may
interpret them according to the best categories of the
understanding; but no one of these processes of in
vestigation alone, nor all of them together, can lead us
into the realm of certain knowledge. On the basis of
pure reason, as the great Kant pointed out so many
years ago, we must answer to the questions, Does God
exist? Is the soul immortal? Is man free?* — We do
not know!
Such an admission, as I have said, may well seem to
give away our whole case to the atheists and material
ists. Once admit the impossibility of the rational dem-

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 111
onstration of ultimate truth, and it would seem indeed
as though the battle were already lost. I would hasten
to point out, however, that this is certainly very far
from being the case. It may be true that we do not
know that God exists, but this is very different from
the assertion that we know that God does not exist.
It may be true that we must admit that the reality of
the immortal life has not been proved, but this is very
far from admitting that the unreality of the immortal
life has been proved. When we assume toward these
ultimate questions, as every intelligent truth-seeker
must assume, the attitude of the reverent agnostic,
this means, not that these great speculations of the
religious consciousness have been laid aside as dis
proved, but that the case is still open, and that the
facts still await a final interpretation of their mean
ing. When we say that we do not know — let me
repeat ! — we mean not only that we do not know that
God exists, or that the soul is immortal, or that man
is free, but also that we do not know that God does
not exist, or that the soul is not immortal, or that man
is not free. We mean only that we can give no final
answer either positive or negative — that no certain
and absolute knowledge either one way or the other is
yet possible — and that in such a case our task is that
of observing, classifying, and interpreting ever more
and more facts, and finding out what constitutes, in
the light of these facts, the highest degree of prob
ability. Our problem is identical with that of the
detective, who is confronted with certain facts in a

112 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
case which may be that of murder, or suicide, or acci
dent. He searches every square inch of the scene in
volved; then he classifies and studies all of the facts
which he has been able to gather; and then knowing
nothing for certain, he asks himself the question, What
is the most probable theory to fit these facts, that of
murder, or suicide, or accident? So the student of
theology ransacks the universe in his search for facts ;
he correlates and studies these facts; and then, like
the detective, knowing nothing for certain, he asks him
self the question, What is the most probable theory to
fit these facts, that of theism, or atheism, or something
perhaps between?
Now it is when we come to this point of recognising
that our failure to prove the existence of God involves
also an equal failure to disprove the existence of God,
or, in other words, that we are confronted by what we
call an open question, it is then that we are able, for
the first time, to reveal the essential weakness of the
position of doubt, or even of denial. For we only have
to consider for a few moments what the doctrine of
denial really involves, to find ourselves face to face with
a dilemma of a most confusing and embarrassing char
acter. — In order to show you just what I mean by this
dilemma of denial, let us consider that one great ques
tion which lies at the heart of all religious faith, and
which is most commonly called into dispute at the pres
ent time. I refer of course to that deepest and highest
of all religious problems, the idea of God.
By the idea of God, we mean the idea of an infinite

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 113
and eternal spirit, in whom we live and move and have
our being. We mean that this world of organic and
inorganic life is an expression, on the one hand, of a
planning, ordering, directing spirit of Intelligence, and,
on the other hand, of a spontaneous, watchful, eager
spirit of Love. We mean that we believe that there is
living somewhere and somehow a thinking, loving, active
Divine Spirit, who constitutes in his eternal, infinite,
and omnipresent being, the reality of all things; and
who may be roughly described, perhaps, as bearing the
same relation to the material universe that our souls
bear to our physical bodies. Now it is just this con
ception of an overruling Intelligence and Love which
the atheist or the materialist denies. He asserts that
the facts of life, when viewed in the light of reason,
destroy this whole conception of God.
In the first place, he declares, this universe is not
so much an organism, as it is a machine ; and we need,
in order to explain its origin and progress, not a soul,
but only those mechanical laws and forces which have
been revealed to us so clearly by the chemists and physi
cists of the nineteenth century. Thus Prof. Ernst
Haeckel, in his Riddle of the Universe, speaking of the
origin of things, declares that he does not need any
hypothesis of God to answer the problem of the genesis
of the universe. I trace back step by step, he says, the
line of evolutionary progress, until I come to a great
void of empty space, which contains only one little
atom of matter and one little particle of energy. Drift
ing around in the great void, it chances at last, not by

114 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
design but merely by accident, that the atom of matter
and the spark of energy come together, and instantly,
in accordance with the fundamental law of life, the
evolutionary process is begun.
In the second place, not only does the materialist
declare that we do not need any thought of God in
order to explain the origin and development of the
material universe, but he also declares that, even though
we might think that we needed such a First Cause, as
the metaphysical explanation of things, yet the pro
cesses of life certainly give no evidence of being di
rected by a divine Intelligence and Love. What, for
example, he says, are we to think of the history of
evolution? Does this show any signs of being planned
and directed by a divine Intelligence ? Is this the kind
of method of accomplishing a specific end which would
be adopted by anybody who desired to lay claim to the
possession of even ordinary sanity? Could we con
ceive of any process which is more blundering, more
hit-and-miss, and, above all things, more wasteful?
The evolving ages have brought forth a man, but at
what a cost of blood and tears and agony — one achieve
ment at the cost of a million failures. What would we
think of a man, said the great Tyndall at one time, who
should desire to shoot a rabbit, and, instead of taking
a rifle and shooting the animal he was after, should
take a whole regiment of artillery and proceed to blow
the landscape to pieces? We would say that the man
was insane ; and Tyndall, answering his own question,

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 115
declared that this is just the insane thing that God
has been doing in his process of evolution.
Then, too, consider, if you will, those particular ob
jects which have been most frequently employed as the
evidence of a supreme Designer and Artificer existing
behind the material world. Here is the human eye, for
example! This has been offered again and again by
the believer as a triumph of intelligent planning and
skilful workmanship — a perfect adaptation of means
to ends. And yet, says the materialist, we know to-day
that the eye, as a matter of fact, is a very defective
organ ; so defective, that any master of optics who could
not plan and manufacture a better organ of vision than
the eye would be considered a disgrace to his profession.
And this is only one illustration among many ! Every
where, in the material universe, in short, we find not
order and system, economy and beauty, such as we
would expect in the work of an intelligent creator, but
disorder and confusion, waste and ugliness, imperfec
tion and incompleteness, defect of adaptation of means
to ends, blunders, failures.
Then, turning away from the question of God as In
telligence to the question of God as Love, what are we to
say as to the pain and the cruelty and the evil that are
implicit in the cosmic process — the cataclysms and dis
asters, the famines and pestilences, the awful agonies of
accident, old age and death? Do you mean to say that
we can reconcile these hideous facts with a God who is
described as a Father, and whose mercy is said to be

116 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
from everlasting to everlasting? The out-and-out der
niers of God's existence are not the only ones who have
been depressed and overwhelmed by the misery that
seems to be attendant upon existence. John Stuart
Mill, you remember, who believed most emphatically in
God, asserted that these facts proved that the Creator,
while all-loving, was certainly not omnipotent; and
William James, in our day, was so impressed, not only
by the disorder of the universe, but by its awful pain,
that while he clung to his faith in a divine principle, he
was forced to believe that this principle was either
pluralistic and thus divided against itself, or else power
less to do the things which, as the Creator and Ruler
of a universe, it wanted to do.
Here, of course, is a mere suggestion of the mate
rialistic argument. But even these few facts are suffi
cient perhaps to show some of the difficulties in the way
of an unquestioning theistic faith. These difficulties, of
course, do not disprove the existence of God, but they
certainly go far toward making such a divine reality
improbable. In other words, the facts of life make it
hard to believe in an all-wise, all-loving, and all-power
ful God; and, in the face of the fact that we do not
need him to explain the origin of things, it is only
reasonable, is it not, to deny his existence?
Now I am not going to stop to refute these various
objections to the belief in a God who is at once intelli
gent, merciful, and omnipotent. I am concerned at
this time not with answering the argument of material
ism but only with showing the dilemma into which this

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 117
argument inevitably leads us. And that it is a very
real and peculiarly embarrassing dilemma, becomes evi
dent when we ask the materialist what explanation of
the universe he has to offer in place of the theistic ex
planation which he has denied.
When we ask this question, we find, first of all,
that he fails utterly to give any explanation of the
origin of things. He takes us back, to be sure, to that
first atom of matter and that first particle of energy,
the alliance of which started the unfolding process of
evolutionary development; but nowhere, so far as I
know, has he ever attempted to answer the question as
to where this atom of matter and this particle of energy
themselves first came from, how they happened to be
floating around in the empty spaces of the universe, and
how, when they came together, there was a law of evolu
tion all ready to guide and control their future develop
ment. The predicament of the materialist, in other
words, is exactly that of the Hindoo philosopher, who
declared that the earth rested upon an elephant, and the
elephant upon a tortoise, but was so unkind as to leave
the tortoise, like Mohammed's coffin, hanging suspended
in mid-air.
But not pressing this point, — which, by the way, if
properly developed, is absolutely fatal to the whole
philosophy of denial — let us consider what this denial
of God really means from the standpoint of the world as
it exists to-day. If theism means that, behind the uni
verse, as the basic reality of life, there is an ordering
Intelligence and a brooding Love, atheism or material-

118 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ism must mean, as we have been seeing, that behind the
universe there is not an ordering Intelligence and not
a brooding Love. It denies that there is any mind or
being which is the cause and providence of the universe,
and which intentionally " produces the order, beauty,
and harmony thereof, the constant modes of operation
therein." Nay, it goes farther and denies that there
is any law, order, or harmony in existence, or any con
stant modes of operation in the world. The materialist
asserts that the universe is made up first of inert matter
and secondly of unconscious energy, and that every
thing that the universe contains is the mechanical re
sult of the constant interaction of these two realities.
If there is any beauty or order or harmony in the pro
cess, it was not planned or directed — planned, that is,
by no divine spirit of Intelligence and directed by
no divine spirit of Love. If such order or harmony
has appeared at all, it has come only as the result of
accident or chance* and is likely at any moment to dis
appear just as it has come. It is here in this word
" chance " that you come to the very heart of the phi
losophy of denial. Just as the essential feature of
theism is an overruling Mind, so the essential feature of
atheism is chance. Just as the world, according' to the
theistic point of view, is the result of a planning and
creating and guiding Intelligence and an ever-watching
Love, so the world, according to the atheistic point of
view, is the result of mere accident. Just as the uni
verse, according to the man who believes, is to be re
garded as the " handiwork " of God, so the universe,

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 119
according to the man who denies, is to be regarded as
a " fortuitous concourse of atoms." In the one case,
there is plan, conscious design, order, which could not
have been otherwise than it is ; in the other case, chance,
accident, fortuity, which could just as easily have been
something else as to be what it actually is. Here is
the fundamental difference between these two philoso
phies.1 Now suppose we test this theory of chance, which
is offered us by materialism as the only alternative of
the theistic hypothesis, by the actual facts of experi
ence in so far as we know these facts — and what is the
result? Turn, for example, to the field of astronomy ! Here
do we find ourselves in the midst of a great system of
stars, with a sun at the centre and numerous planets
round about. All of these planets are distributed in a
certain ratio of distance, and they move round the
sun with a certain velocity exactly proportionate to
their distance from the sun, and their relation to one
another. These planets move in paths of the same form,
they are controlled by the same laws of motion, they
receive and emit light in the same way. The laws,
which are the constant modes of planetary operation,
are exceedingly intricate, and yet they conform to the
point of absolute simplicity. And they are so exact,
and are obeyed with such perfect accuracy, that
" we may go back to the time of Thales, four hundred
* See Theodore Parker's Theism and Atheism, Centenary Edition,
pp. 64 and 65.

120 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
years before the birth of Christ, calculate the famous
eclipse of the moon which took place during his life
time, and find that it occurred just as the historians
of that day relate ; and we may go forward five years
or five hundred years or five thousand years, and cal
culate a future eclipse of the moon with the same preci
sion. Indeed so accurate are these laws that an astron
omer, studying the perturbations of a planet, may con
jecture the existence of another planet never yet dis
covered, and then, turning his telescope to the calcu
lated point in the heavens, fix his eye upon what the
eye of man has never discovered before." * And it is
this perfect system which the materialist must assert
is the result of chance, and shows no mind or purpose
whatsoever in the universe.
Or take the other process of evolution itself, which
is so often described as wasteful, blundering, and stupid !
Here, in the last analysis, do we see a process which
is as accurate and beautiful as the unfolding of a
flower from leaf to bud, from bud to blossom, from
blossom to ripening fruit. See with what precision the
inorganic has passed over into the organic, the vege
table into the animal, and the animal into the human.
See what an infinite variety of living forms have been
produced from which to make the selection of the best,
and how each form, even though finally rejected, has
played its part and done its work as an indispensable
member of the expanding whole. See how perfectly the
organism and its environment have interacted, and al-
iSee Parker's Theism and Atheism, p. 67.

THE DDLEMMA OF DENIAL 121
ways for the ultimate achievement of progress. See
the marvels of adaptation and the miracles of develop
ment. See how every step of all the process has been
in its final result an onward one, until at last the pin
nacle was reached in man, who stands at once as the
heir of all the past and the prophecy of all the future.
See with what perfection the survivals have been made
the survival of the fittest. See with what flawless
beauty the unfolding has gone on from one age to an
other, until the human soul at the heart of it all is dis
closed to the eye of heaven ! And all this line of evolu
tion, you say, which never seriously deviated from its
appointed path nor swerved from the direction of its
goal, is nothing but the result of accident and chance,
and might just as well have ended with the dinosaurs
and mastodons and saurians of the heroic age, or even
reverted to the protozoa in the primeval slime, as have
continued onward and upward to the glory of creative
manhood !
Or take the history of man himself — a wonderful
pageant of struggle and of triumph. See how, through
all the ages, men have slowly been fighting their way
upward from barbarism to civilisation. See how the
family has developed into, the village, the village into
the city, the city into the state, and the state into the
nation. See how kings have battled with kings, and
races warred with races. See how empires have tum
bled and kingdoms fallen to ruin. See how nations
have been extinguished and even races blotted out. See
how saints have lived and suffered, prophets spoken in

122 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
vain for truth, poets dreamed fruitlessly their lovely vi
sions, and martyrs died their agonising deaths. See
how the strong have crushed the weak, and the rich
ground the faces of the poor. See how wealth and lux
ury and ease have rotted the lives of men and sent them
to untimely graves. See how great clouds of darkness
have overwhelmed the light, wrong triumphed over
right, and error risen victorious over truth. And see,
too, how through all this welter and chaos of human
passion, the progress of mankind has still been on
ward and upward forever, light has still shone out of
darkness, and truth still inherited " the eternal years
of God." The history of manhood may be the result
of accident, and may perhaps be explained on the basis
of chance, but if so, then miracles have never ceased,
and the ways of fate are beyond all understanding.
Here, now, are only a few suggestions as to what it
means to test the philosophy of denial with the facts
of life, and is it not already evident that we are face to
face with an embarrassing dilemma? It may be, of
course, that all these wonderful phenomena, which I
have described, are the results not of intelligence but of
chance. It may be that it was chance which organised
the solar universe so delicately and so accurately that,
as Richard Watson Gilder puts it in his little poem,
" The Sun Dial," if the shadow on the dial varied even
by " the width of a child's eyelash,"
" The seas would devour the mountains,
And the stars together crash."

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 123
It may be that it was chance that controlled, from be
ginning to end, the process of evolution, so that, as
William Watson puts it, in his poem, " The Hope of
the World," it was
" Some random throw
Of heedless Nature's die
That from estate so low
Uplifted man so high.
Through untold aeons vast
She let him lurk and cower;
'T would seem he climbed at last,
In mere fortuitous hour,
Child of a thousand chances, 'neath the indifferent sky."
It may be that it was chance that was behind the
strange and wonderful march of historic events through
the uncounted ages of the past. All this may be true !
But I for one must confess that I find it harder to be
lieve this interpretation of the facts, than to believe,
in the face of such blunders and imperfections as the
world may seem to contain, that God lives and controls
the progress of creation. Grant all the difficulties that
the materialist puts in the way of your theistic faith.
Grant that, from one point of view, the world seems in
complete, imperfect, cruel, wasteful, stupid. Grant
that it would indeed seem as though a divine and eternal
Intelligence, all-powerful and all-loving, could have
made a better job of it. Grant all these objections,
I say! And yet, when you contrast these difficulties,
which are involved in the belief in God as the ruling
principle of the universe, with the difficulties which are

124 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
involved in the alternative belief in blind and heedless
chance as the ruling principle of the universe, I contend
that the theistic faith is simplicity itself. Say what
you will, when I look at the heavens above my head,
some day when the sun is high in a sky of perfect blue,
or some night when a million stars are shining in the
blackness like a million candles, I know that the Psalm
ist was near the truth when he said, " The heavens de
clare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his
handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech, and night
unto night showeth knowledge." Say what you will,
when I meditate upon the story of evolution, and con
sider "A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod  "
I know that the poet was right when he declared that we
should call this not merely evolution but God. Say
what you will, when I read in the silent watches of the
night the magic story of mankind, read how men have
lived and suffered and died, borne witness to the truth
and perished, fought for righteousness and expired,
struck a blow for freedom and disappeared, — and then
consider what is the outcome of it all, I know that the
poet is again right when he declares that in and through
and over all our human life is a " Power that makes for
righteousness " ! I see the difficulties in the way of be-

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 125
lieving in God, but I see also the difficulties in the way
of not believing in God. Neither theory answers all
questions; neither hypothesis satisfies all doubts. But
when you put God over against chance, Intelligence
over against accident, Love over against blind energy,
as the explanation of the facts of life, then I for one
find it easier, simpler, more rational to believe in God.
When you can show me that a man can throw down
upon a table a handful of wheels and springs, and that
some day by chance they will fall into the shape and
fashion of a watch, and proceed to keep accurate time ;
when you can show me that a painter can take his
colours and throw them upon a canvas, and some day by
chance they will fall into the perfect beauty of a Ra
phael Madonna, or a Corot landscape; when you can
show me that a printer in his printing-room can throw a
font of type upon the floor, and the letters some day
will fall by chance into a Shakespeare's Hamlet or a
Milton's Paradise Lost; when you can show me that an
army with its brigades, regiments, and companies can
march into battle with no single officer in command of
any single body of men, and can some day by chance
win a victory over a Bonaparte or a Marlborough;
when you can show me that these things are possible,
then I will at least be ready to believe that this universe
in which we live may possibly be the product of acci
dent and not of a divine Intelligence and Love. How
impressive was the recorded testimony of Alfred Russel
Wallace ! Here was one of the greatest scientists of our
age — a man to whom all the pages of human knowledge

126 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
were open and by whom they were carefully read — a
man forever immortal as the co-discoverer with Darwin
of the truth of evolution. In his old age, as the
ripest fruit of all his learning, he published a great book
entitled The World of Life; and he declared, as the
final conclusion of all his studies, that this world of
life is " a manifestation of creative power, directive
mind, and ultimate purpose." And this, not because
it had been proved, but simply because it was sensible !
Such is the dilemma of denial, as illustrated by
the thought of God. The philosophy of denial shows
us that there are very real difficulties in believing in
God ; but it shows ps also that there are greater diffi
culties in not believing in God. And what is true here
of the thought of God is true also of all the other prob
lems of existence. Nothing is easier than to show that
it is impossible for a reasonable man to believe in im
mortality, unless it be to show that it is impossible for
a reasonable man not to believe in immortality. Noth
ing is more certain than the unreasonableness of believ
ing in the freedom of the will, unless it be the unreason
ableness of not believing in the freedom of the will.
Nothing is more ridiculous than belief, unless it be un
belief. You satisfy yourself, in the face of all the con
trary facts of life, that you cannot accept these great
articles of faith — you fortify your doubts and but
tress your denials — and then comes to you the experi
ence that came to the Bishop in Robert Browning's
poem, " Bishop Blougram's Apology." — " How can we

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 127
guard our unbelief? " queries the Bishop ; " how make
it bear fruit to us ? "
" Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus ending from Euripides —
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears,
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps."
It must by now be evident what I mean by the dilemma
of denial. I mean simply that in trying to save us from
the very real difficulties involved in believing in God, and
immortality, and human freedom, the philosophy of de
nial finds itself confronted by the dilemma of getting
us into worse difficulties than those from which it would
extricate us. It is hard to believe these things, but
it is harder not to believe them. And if you ask how
it is that many of the greatest scientists have allowed
themselves to be trapped by this dilemma, you will find
that it is only because they have not been faithful to
their own profound principles of scientific inquiry. For
what do they do in their laboratories, when they have
a set of facts before them which they are trying to ex
plain? They adopt one theory after another as prob
able explanations of these facts. Each one has its
difficulties — and they choose the one which has the
fewest difficulties as the one which has the highest de-

128 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
gree of probable truth. If this theory, like the others,
still has difficulties, then the scientist assumes, not that
the theory is untrue, but that his vision is scant and
his knowledge limited, and that with deeper vision and
wider knowledge the difficulties will disappear. So with
these great hopes of religion. The theories of God and
immortality and the rest have their difficulties ; but they
explain the known facts of life better than any other
theories which have ever been conceived by the mind of
man, and therefore have the highest degree of probable
truth. If the difficulties seem great, we must remember
that finite minds are here confronting infinite realities,
and that eyes which can see only a little way are gazing
into infinite distances; and that, if we could know all
and see to the end, the difficulties might melt away.
We must remember that eternal light is being reflected
through temporal minds, and therefore is stained, dis
torted, dimmed, as the sunlight which struggles faintly
through a dusty window. Whenever I am tempted to
be troubled because I cannot answer all the questions
which are raised up by my belief in God, I think first
of the difficulties that are raised by my denial of God ;
and secondly I think of those glorious lines from
Shelley's "Adonais":
" The One remains, the many change and pass ;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

THE DILEMMA OF DENIAL 129
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction, which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that maintaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."

IS GOD A PERSONALITY?
The question as to whether God is a personality or
not, is one which seems far removed from the realities
of human life and the practical problems of every day
existence. We are tempted to protest that this prob
lem is a pure matter of philosophical speculation, and
that it makes not the slightest difference to our moral
and spiritual interests as individuals whether it is an
swered in the affirmative or in the negative. What of
it, if God is a personality? And what of it also, if he
is not?
At first sight it may seem as though this protest
against the remote and inconsequential character of
our subject were well-founded. If we will only pause
for a moment, however, before giving expression to
our impatience, and look into this matter with a little
sympathy and care, I am positive that we shall find that
this inquiry as to whether God is a personality or not
is one of the most vital and important to which we can
possibly give our attention. For upon the answer to
this question there depend in no small measure the
validity and permanence of all that we have come to
mean by religion. If God is not a person, if the di
vine spirit in whom we live and move and have our
being is not personal as we are personal, if the funda
mental reality which is in all and through all and over
all cannot be addressed by the personal pronoun and
130

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 131
cannot be accurately described as a Father and a
Friend, then why should we build our churches, or speak
our prayers, or join in our public services of worship,
or do the deeds of righteousness and love? What is a
prayer but a mockery, if there is nobody who listens to
the words we utter? What is a church but a monument
to superstition, if there is nobody who cares what is
done before its altars? What are the sacrifices of the
prophets and the apostles and the martyrs but so much
waste, if there is nobody on whose behalf and for whose
sake the sacrifices are paid ? The thought of God as a
personality is a necessary condition of everything that
is contained within the field of religious experience.
If this thought can be justified, then every idea and
practice of religion can be justified against the most
violent assaults of its enemies ; but if this thought can
not be justified, then the whole fabric of religion must
tumble like a house of cards. Professor Hocking, of
Harvard University, sums it all up in a single sentence
in his recent book on The Meaning of God in Human
Experience, when he says, " The alternative to the
thought of God as Person is the thought of him as Sub
stance, as Energy, and chiefly as Law." Just stop and
consider for a moment what it would mean for us to
try to obey the will of Substance, or love Energy,
or worship Law, and you will have some idea at least
of how near this question of the personality of God
really comes to the heart of religion. We are wasting
no time, we are engaging in no vain speculation, we are
wandering not far from the basic realities of life, in

132 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
seeking to discover what reason we have for thinking
of God as a person and worshipping him in very truth
as " our Father who (is) in heaven"!
As our very first step in the discussion of the prob
lem which is before us, as in the discussion of every
problem of which I have any knowledge, it is important
that we should define the terms which we are using, so
that we may not become involved in unnecessary mis
understanding and confusion. Before we ask, in other
words, if God is a personality, we must make it per
fectly clear as to what we mean by personality.
As ordinarily used, the word " person," or " per
sonality," has a material or physical content. When
we think or speak of a certain person, we always have
in mind a being who has a definite form and shape, and
occupies a specific locality in space. We distinguish
this person from all other persons by certain character
istics which are distinctive of his physical appearance,
such as the colour of his hair, the shape of his nose, and
the outline of his figure. This person is subject to all
sorts of restrictions and limitations, and is exposed
to all sorts of perils and disasters. He is handsome
or ugly, he is well or sick, he is whole or maimed, he is
living or dead. These are the elements, wholly out
ward and physical in their nature, as you can see, which
go to make up the meaning of the word " person " as
it is used in common parlance. This interpretation is
seen in its extreme form when I speak of " my person "
with reference only to my body, or use the stereotyped
legal phrase of " crimes against the person," with spe-

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 133
cific reference to attacks upon one's physical integrity.
This, I take it, is the common idea of personality;
and right here do we find the explanation of the fact
that there was never before a time in the whole history
of human thought, perhaps, when men found it so diffi
cult to conceive of God as a personality as they do to
day. The Greeks had no trouble in matching up their
idea of God with this understanding of what is meant
by personality. They thought of their gods frankly
and openly after the analogy of human beings. Zeus,
Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephaestos, all the inhabi
tants of Olympus, had separate and distinct individu
alities, and walked and talked with men as easily and
naturally as men walked and talked with one another.
The same thing is true also of the ancient Hebrews.
We find in the Old Testament one deity in place of many
deities, and this Jehovah, as he is called, is a much
loftier being, from the moral point of view, than any
that can be found in the Greek or Roman pantheon.
But he is still a god who can walk in the Garden of
Eden like a tired man " in the cool of the day," talk to
Moses upon Sinai like the commander of the host, and
appear to Isaiah in the Temple like a great king upon
his throne.
Now all such conceptions as these have of course be
come impossible at this late day. We think of God, if
we think of him at all, as a kind of spirit which is im
manent in the things of sense, but which has no such out
ward or visible form as we have learned to associate
with the idea of human personality. I suppose that

134 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
there are still some people in the world to-day who
think of God, as most children certainly think of him,
as a great ruler who has hands and feet, and speaks
with a voice, and looks upon the universe with eyes, and
hears the prayers of men with ears. But most of us
have certainly passed beyond these crude conceptions
for good and all. We may think of God after the like
ness of a man, and address him as we would address a
fellow-being — but this is only because we are unable
to think and speak in any other way. At heart, we
know that God, if he exists at all, is spirit, and thus
cannot rightly be conceived in any way after the phys
ical appearance of a human being. " The advance of
religion," says Professor Hocking, with perfect ac
curacy, in the book to which I have just referred, " has
been very largely from personality to impersonality."
As our knowledge of the universe has increased and our
conception of life has widened and deepened, the idea
of God has become in our minds ever more indefinite, in
tangible, almost unreal, as it has become ever more spir
itual, until to-day we have come to the point of denying
that God is a personality altogether. He is Energy, he
is Law, he is Spirit, he is an all-pervasive Presence, if
you will, but he is not a person as we commonly employ
that word in our daily intercourse with men. Indeed,
it would seem, as Professor Hocking intimates, that
" impersonality " is the fundamental attribute of God,
as he is understood and interpreted and approached
at the present day.
Here, now, is a very real difficulty in the way of any

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 135
favourable answer to our question, Is God a Personal
ity? — but it is a difficulty which is involved not in our
conception of divinity, but in our conception of person
ality. Thus far we have been interpreting personality
in material or physical terms. But now I want to ask
if this is really the way in which personality should be
defined? Is this idea of personality as having to do
with the form and features of a human body the only
one that can be accepted, or indeed is it one which
can rightly be accepted at all? Is this really what we
mean by " personality," or is it only what we think
we mean in the free-and-easy language of the street?
A suggestion that this interpretation of the word is
very far from being either definite or fundamental, is
given by the fact that rocks and trees and especially
animals have all the characteristics which we have just
been associating with a human personality, and yet we
never think of regarding them as persons. In order
to show, however, with perfect clearness how remote
is the true conception of personality from the body,
and everything pertaining to the material attributes
and relationships of the body, I want to stay right
here in our own field of human experience, and show
what we mean by the word " personality," when we use
it carefully and scientifically.
In the year, 1811, there was living in the wilderness
of western Pennsylvania, a young girl by the name of
Mary Reynolds. One morning, long after her habit
ual time for rising, she was found lying in a deep sleep,
from which it was impossible to rouse her. After some

136 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
eighteen or twenty hours, she awakened naturally, but
in a wholly unnatural state of consciousness. She knew
nothing, remembered nothing, recognised nothing. She
had apparently never seen her parents, brothers, sisters,
and friends before — had never known them — was not
aware that such persons had ever existed. To the
scenes by which she was surrounded — the house, the
fields, the mountains — she was a total stranger. She
was even ignorant of all that she had been taught from
childhood — she could not speak or even connect words
with things. She had not the slightest consciousness
that she had ever existed previous to the moment in
which she awoke from her mysterious slumber. " In
a word, she was an infant, just born, yet born in a con
dition of maturity."
The change in her mental state, however, was not
the only transformation which had taken place. More
remarkable even than her ignorance was her altered
disposition. Hitherto she had been taciturn and re
served, with a marked tendency toward melancholy and
morbid introspection. Now she was cheerful and buoy
ant to an extreme degree. She was extravagantly fond
of company, and yet just as fond of the world of nature,
to which she had hitherto been indifferent. In all of
her emotions, as well as in her thought, she " was totally
and absolutely changed."
This strange condition of new birth, if I may call
it such, continued for about five weeks, during which
the girl came to know her family and friends, and was
taught again to read and write. At the end of this

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 137
time, however, there came another period of protracted
slumber, and when at last she awoke, she was herself
again. She instantly recognised her brothers and
sisters as though nothing had happened, and immedi
ately took up the thread of the old life just where it
had been dropped five weeks before. She now had all
the knowledge which she had possessed previous to the
strange interval of transformation, but not the slight
est trace of a recollection of what had happened in
this interval. She was only surprised that in what to
her was the space of a single night, so many things had
changed, especially in the outer world of nature. And
of course, along with the rest, her natural disposition
returned just as it had been before.
All went well for a brief time, when again there came
the mysterious slumber, and the girl awoke in her sec
ond state, and took up her new life just where she had
left it when she had passed from that state some weeks
before, and again not knowing anything that had in
tervened between these two periods of sleep. And so
began a long series of alternations from one state to an
other, which continued at intervals of varying length
for fifteen or sixteen years, but finally ceased when she
attained the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, leaving the
girl permanently in her second state. In this she re
mained without any further change during the last
quarter of a century of her life.
I have referred somewhat at length to this story of
Mary Reynolds, which is told in detail in Professor
James's Principles of Psychology, for the reason that

138 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
# is a perfect illustration of what is really meant by
personality. Here do we see that, from the psycho
logical standpoint, at least, personality has nothing to
do with the body or any of its parts. During all of
the successive alternations of these fifteen or sixteen
years, Mary Reynolds was exactly the same person, if
I may so express it, so far as her face and figure were
concerned. She had the same hair, the same eyes, the
same voice, the same hands and feet, the same facial
outline and physical form, in the one state as in the
other. A person looking at her mere personal appear
ance, without any knowledge of her mental condition
or emotional reactions, could have no means of know
ing whether she was in the first state or in the second.
And yet psychologists agree that this is a case of
" dual personality " — that right here, in this same
identical physical organism, there are two persons in
stead of one. At one moment Mary Reynolds was
Mary Reynolds ; at the next moment, Mary Reynolds
was not Mary Reynolds, but somebody else. Here in
the same body, at intervals of a few weeks, were
two persons, separate and distinct. And the remark
able fact is that nobody thought of confusing these
two persons, or ever failed to recognise these two
persons, merely because the physical features were the
same in both cases. All of which means, does it not, if
it means anything at all, that by personality we most
certainly do not mean a human body or any of the
physical features of a human body?
The case of Mary Reynolds, like every similar case

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 139
of " dual personality," proves conclusively, whatever
else it may or may not prove, that a person, funda
mentally speaking, is not a material figure which occu
pies so much space, presents a certain outline, and
moves in a certain way — that a person is not some
thing material at all, but something spiritual. A per
sonality is not the body, but the life within the body,
the soul which inhabits the body. The person is the
Self, the Ego, the I — that inward centre of conscious
spiritual life which thinks and wills and loves — which
thrills the pressure of the hand, kindles the light in the
eye, and moves the lips with ordered speech — which
remains steadfast and unafraid while the body is bruised
by accident or ravaged by disease — which can even
take the body, like a tool to be used, or a weapon to
be broken, or a sacrifice to be offered up for the sake
of the dreams and visions of the spirit, and throw it
carelessly away — which fills the body with life while it
is present, and leaves it cold and dead as clay when
it departs. It is true, of course, that it is the almost
unvarying rule for a single body to be the tool or me
dium or tenement of a single personality, or self — and
thus have we been tempted into the easy error of think
ing that the body is itself the personality. But it only
needs an exceptional incident like that of Mary Rey
nolds, as indeed it would seem to have needed only the
very commonplace incident of death, to show us our
mistake. Personality, at bottom, is not material but
spiritual. A person, in the last analysis, is not a body,
but a soul! All of which is clearly enough revealed,

140 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
even in our common speech of every day, when we say,
This man has personality ! — by which we mean that
he has that peculiar spiritual power which leaps like
flame from soul to soul, and makes a man a leader
of his kind!
Now here is what I believe to be the essence of
personality. And right here do we find how far we
were from the truth when we defined personality in
material and physical terms, and how unreal therefore
was our difficulty in regarding God as a personality.
God, by the very definition of his being, is a spirit. So
also is a person, by the very definition of his being, a
spirit likewise. And since spirit, so far as we have
ever been able to discover, is always one and the same
thing in this great universe of ours, what could be more
natural, or indeed inevitable, than that God should be
a person after the analogy of a human personality?
May it not be true, in other words, that in the realm of
theology exactly as in the realm of geometry, things
equal to the same thing are equal to each other? Cer
tainly this is possible. There is no initial difficulty in
the way of this interpretation of divine personality as
there was in the way of the other. It is entirely reason
able to believe, as it was not reasonable to believe in the
earlier instance, that God may be a person. This much
is at least established by our argument up to this
point. Now it only remains to show that there is very
good evidence for believing that this is actually the
case — that God not only may be a person but is a
person — to complete my argument.

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 141
In order to see with perfect clearness the indications
that God is a person exactly as we are persons,
it will be necessary to consider what are the distinctive
marks of personality. Why do I assume, for example,
that you are a personality, as a stone, or a tree, or a
dog, is not a personality? This question is answered
by showing that you display certain characteristics in
the course of your individual activity, which are not
displayed by the stone, or the tree, or the dog, and
which clearly indicate, as nothing in the existence of
these objects indicates, the essentially spiritual basis
of your life. Now if God is a personality, as you are
a personality — and that is the thing that we want to
prove, if possible! — then it is reasonable to suppose,
is it not, that his spirit will display the same distinctive
characteristics as your spirit. Or — to reverse the
argument ! — if we can find in the material universe the
same characteristic marks of the spirit that we find
in the case of a human body, then we have a right to
believe, have we not, that in this universe, as in this
body, there is immanent exactly the. same type of per
sonality. The same facts, in other words, must lead us
back to the same conclusion. If the divine spirit acts
the same as the human spirit, then we may justly say
that the one is as much personal as the other.
I turn therefore to the question, now, as to what are
the distinctive marks of personality? And in reply
I state that these marks are three in number.
In the old days of the famous Eden Musee, on
23d Street, there was located in one of the upper rooms

142 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
a world-famous mechanical chess-player. Here, before
a chess-board, there sat a large waxen figure, robed
without in impressive Turkish garments, and filled
within with elaborate machinery. This machinery, it
was said, was so cleverly devised, as to enable the figure
to play a game of chess which would usually defeat the
best efforts of even the most skilful experts. We go to
the Musee, sit down and start a game — and, little by
little, we begin to wonder, and then to grow skeptical,
and then at last to protest openly. Here is a game, we
say, the development of which is determined not at all by
mechanical rules, nor even by the hazards of chance, but
strictly by the mental processes of the players. And
yet here we are asked to believe that this dummy figure,
which is playing the game so well that we are being
speedily and ignominiously defeated, is a machine and
nothing more. Impossible, we say ! It takes brains to
play chess. This mechanical figure is a mask. There
is a person concealed somewhere about this mysterious
Turk, who is thinking rationally, and is revealing his
presence, in spite of himself, by the movements of the
pawns and bishops upon the board !
Now right here, in this illustration, do we see
the first mark of personality — namely, rationality.
Whenever we see a living creature who shows by his
actions that he can carry on the logical processes of
thought, we say at once that he is not a creature but
a person. Nay more, whenever we see the evidences of
reason or intellectuality at work, as in the case of the
mechanical chess-player, we agree at once that these

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 143
evidences prove the presence of a personality, even
though we have no other visible signs of this presence.
All we need is the sign that thought is acting upon
things, to convince us that we are face to face with a
person !
But while rationality may thus unquestionably bring
us face to face with a person, it just as unquestionably
fails to bring us face to face with the whole person.
We felt this strongly enough as we played chess with
the mechanical chess-player. We (knew that we were
playing not with a machine but with a person, because
we could see the evidences of the person's thought ; but
we felt a sense of uncanny mystery all the same, for the
simple reason that these evidences of thought revealed
only a part of the personality with which we were en
gaged, and this the less important part. This revela
tion of personality, indeed, was so unsatisfactory that
we felt more sense of personal companionship in our dog
than in this hidden mind which moved piece after piece
upon the chess-board with unerring accuracy and pre
cision. This brings us at once to what I regard as the sec
ond mark of personality — namely, feeling. A full-
rounded personality is characterised not only by power
of thought but also by capacity for emotion. A per
son not only reasons, but he also loves. So important,
to our minds, is this element of personality, that when
we see such a creature as the dog, who has had his
instincts developed, through long association with hu
manity, into a kind of rudimentary affection and loy-

144 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
alty, we are tempted to endow him with personality
and treat him exactly as we would treat a human being.
And in the same way, when we see a person who is de
fective on the emotional side of his nature, we feel that
his personality is just to this extent imperfect, and the
man himself to the same extent not a man. It matters
not how great may be the intellectual endowment or
how stupendous the power of thought, if a man shows
no emotion in the art-gallery or the opera-house or out
in the open fields, if he uncovers no sign of the great
deeps of joy and sorrow and spiritual aspiration, if he
reveals no capacity for friendship, and if he is never
moved to sacrifice by devotion to some great cause,
then we feel that we have a right to regard him, from
the point of view of personality, as just as much a de
fective as a man who is feeble-minded.
A striking illustration of this fact is shown in the
case of Herbert Spencer. This man was the greatest
thinker that the world has seen since Aristotle — per
haps the greatest thinker that the world has ever seen.
But on his emotional side, strangely enough, he was
hopelessly deficient. He had no appreciation of paint
ing or literature or music, and never knew what it was
to gaze upon a lovely vale or on a lofty mountain with
rapture. He had no enduring or necessary friendships,
and no liking even for children. Never, from the be
ginning to the end of his more than eighty years, did
he look upon a woman to love her. And the one time
in his life when he abandoned his own work to serve
a public cause, he describes in his Autobiography as " a

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 145
generous mistake," and " the most unfortunate inci
dent " in his career. Admire this man as much as we
may, or must, as a great thinker, we simply cannot love
him. And for this all-sufficient reason do we agree to
describe him as personally defective. Cbmpare his
spirit with that of Christ, and we may see at once the
part that emotion plays in the make-up of personality.
Then there is a third mark of personality which is.
perhaps the most fundamental of the three. If you will
recall to your minds, once again, the case of Mary Rey
nolds, you will remember that this young woman was
characterised by the alternating presence of two per
sonalities. Now why, let me ask you, do we agree that
in her case there were two personalities, and not one,
or even three? The answer to this question is to be
found in the fact that the basic characteristic of per
sonality is unity. All the thoughts and emotions of a
person, when he is a person, fit in together, like the parts
of a machine, and constitute a perfect whole. There
can be no question about your personality or mine, for
the reason that everything we do and say and feel com
bine naturally together into a unity, and make a single
impression on the spectator. In the case of Mary
Reynolds, however, it was different. Here was a series
of thoughts and emotions on the one side which did not
fit in at all with a companion series of thoughts and
emotions on the other. The one series constituted a
unity, and the other series also constituted a unity;
but the two together constituted not a unity,
but a duality. Therefore was there no choice but to

146 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
say that in Mary Reynolds's life there were two per
sonalities, instead of one. And of course these were
seen to be no more than two for the simple reason that
every thought and emotion that the girl ever had could
be co-ordinated in the unity of the one personality or
the other. The final and fundamental mark, therefore,
of personality is unity. If a person is truly and wholly
a person, there is always behind all thought and emo
tion one mind, one purpose, one will, one soul, one
spirit — a single, undivided self !
Here, now, are what I have called the three marks of
personality — in the first place thought, in the second
place feeling, and in the third place unity. These are
the signs or evidences in human life which show me that
a person is a person.
This brings me to the final question of all — ¦
namely, the question as to whether these marks or
signs can be seen in the universe in such wise that
we can believe that God is a person as you and I are
persons. If the spirit of God is personal, then God
will manifest himself, as we manifest ourselves, in these
three ways which I have indicated. The world will
show itself to be at once an expression of a planning,
ordering, directing spirit of Intelligence — of a spon
taneous, watchful, eager spirit of Love — and of an all-
embracing, all-harmonious spirit of Unity. If we find
that the marks of these things are on the universe, then
we have a right to assert that God is not only spirit
but personality ; and we have a right to love him, to

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 147
call upon him, and pray to him, with " quietness and
confidence forever."
To take the last of these three marks of personality
first, I suppose that there is nobody at this late day
who will deny that the universe is characterised by the
mark of unity. There was a time, many centuries ago,
when the world seemed to be such a chaos of confused
and antagonistic forces, that men found themselves
obliged to believe that there was not one mind but many
minds, at the heart of things. Hence the strange
and awful polytheisms which were so prevalent among
ancient peoples! Then, too, there was a time when,
men thought that it was impossible to reconcile what
seems to be the good upon the one hand with what
seems to be the evil upon the other, and we find as
a result those dualistic philosophies and theologies of
which Zoroastrianism is the most familiar and impres
sive illustration. But now, of course, all such specula
tions as these have been rendered forevermore impossi
ble by the discoveries and investigations of modern
science. During the last three centuries or so, we have
been gradually extending the borders of human knowl
edge. And every step which has been taken during this
period of time into the realm of the unknown, has been
straight in the direction of the great truth of Unity,
until to-day men are ready to assert that they know, if
they know anything at all, that the universe, as the
very word itself clearly indicates, is a unity. Long
since has it been demonstrated that all the movements

148 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of the world, in both its organic and inorganic phases,
are controlled by one supreme and universal Law, which
constitutes a harmony so perfect that it is possible to
think of " the music " not only " of the spheres " but of
all created things. ' Long since has it been made known
that the various forces which are active in the world
about us — such as light, heat, electricity, magnetism,
— are not different forces at all, but only so many
different expressions of one and the same great energy,
and thus that we have a single Force exactly as we have
a single Law. And now, in our own time, has come the
demonstration of the final truth that the matter, which
constitutes the stuff or substance of the universe, is
not composed of some seventy or more different atoms,
as the old chemistry has always taught us, but is itself
one, since we know it to be possible to transform one
atom into another, exactly as we transform one force
into another. Thus as a result of such achievements
as these, do we find ourselves confronted to-day by one
Substance, one Force, one Law. We know ourselves
to be living in very word and truth, in a universe!
This is the one great demonstration of modern science
— the one principle or truth which finds universal ac
ceptance by the modern mind. Those who are farthest
removed from the influences of religion, and who are
most bitterly opposed to all that we mean by the idea
of God, are among the very first to assent to this great
conception of the Unity of the World-Substance, the
World-Order, and the World-Life. This, says such an
atheist as Ernst Haeckel, in his History of Creation

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 149
and again in his Riddle of the Universe, is " the basic
fact " of present-day knowledge — and then does he
go on to describe his materialistic philosophy by the
immensely significant term of " Monism " ! This man,
and others like him, would undoubtedly refuse to speak
with Tennyson of
" One God, which ever lives and loves " ;
but they would not hesitate a moment to repeat his
phrase ". . . one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."
What is true here of the mark of unity is true also,
I believe, in equal measure of the mark of Rationality,
although I am well aware that opinion is by no means
so unanimous upon this point as upon the other. To
my mind, however, it is just as necessary to see thought
behind the movements of the universe in which we live,
as it is to see thought behind the movements of the me
chanical chessman with whom we played our game.
The so-called Argument from Design was once thought
to be a perfect demonstration of the existence and ac
tivity of a Divine Mind; and even now there is much
in this old-fashioned point of view which is valid and
impressive. How wonderfully does James Martineau
touch upon this fact in his great Study of Religion!
" If we give to the word ' Intellect,' " he says, " its
wider scope and include in it the movements of thought

150 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
which result in great works of art, who can deny that
the creative genius of Nature ever transcends its in
tending skill? What sublimer architecture than the
dome of the midnight sky! what richer picture-gallery
than the sunset effects on the same landscape through a
single year! what more pathetic drama than the story
of human life, forever enacted on the stage of ten thou
sand homes! Of these . . . , all our Art is but the
copy; and he is the greatest master in this field, who
most patiently studies the combinations of the world,
and gains the deepest insight into this language of ex
pression. Of all that we can know, of all that we can
admire, the original lies in the universe around; they
are the prototypes of all intellectual relations ; and
how can they be Thoughts in their reflections, unless
they be so in their incidence? . . . With what consist
ency can we do homage to the discoverer of Law, and
see no wisdom in its Institution? and crown with bays
the brow of a Dante or a Shakespeare for reading to us
the poem of the world, yet have no reverence for the
Author of its harmonies ? "
Thus has man ever seen evidence of the Divine Mind
in the perfect handiwork of the creation. But to-day,
as we know, this argument from design has been al
most completely superseded by the new science and phi
losophy of evolution. The world no longer appears to
us as a design, but as a growth. The simile of the
watch, as John Fiske puts it, has been replaced by the
simile of the flower. For a time it was believed that
this new evolutionary conception made the hypothesis

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 151
of a Divine Intelligence behind the universal order ab
surd, and the hypothesis of a Divine Mechanism inevi
table. But to-day we are beginning to see that quite
the contrary is the case! What stronger evidence of
a Divine Mind do we want than that which is contained
in the long process of evolution? See how the inor
ganic has passed over into the organic, the vegetable
into the animal, and the animal into the human. See
with what persistence the process has gone forward
from age to age, until at last the spiritual reality at the
heart of it all was brought to light ! What a magnifi
cent conception is here! What a stupendous achieve
ment do we behold! What a mark of Thought, and
Plan, and Intellectual Purpose is this! What wonder
that the earliest scientist and the latest philosopher in
the field of evolution, while far apart on nearly every
other point, are united in a common conviction that the
universe is the product of a Divine Mind ! Said Alfred
Russel Wallace, after a lifetime of the most painstaking
study of natural phenomena : " I argue that these
phenomena necessarily imply first, a Creative Power,
which so constituted matter as to render these marvels
possible ; a Directive Mind, which is demanded at every
step of the process we term growth ; and lastly an Ulti
mate Purpose in the very existence of the whole vast
life-world in all its long course of evolution." And
this idea is echoed by Professor Henri Bergson through
out his whole new story of evolution, which he describes
as nothing more nor less than the result of the creative
impulse and creative struggle of a central intelligence.

152 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
" Life," he says, " is of the psychological order. . . .
Consciousness is at the origin of life " !
Here now have we found the mark of Unity and the
mark of Thought, or Rationality! Now what about
the third mark — that of Feeling, or Emotion, or
Love? In answering this inquiry, we come, as we have seen,
to the most important element of personality — and
that element, also, let me confess frankly, which it is
hardest to discover in the universal order. For here
we pass altogether out of the realm of intellectual
speculation or demonstration, into the realm of pure
experience. We cannot stand aloof and prove by log
ical processes that love lies at the root of things. We
cannot seize upon the world and demonstrate by the
laboratory method that love is there. We have got
to plunge into the flood of world events, as a swimmer
might plunge into a stream, and experience this Divine
Love, if it is there at all, at first hand. We have got
to feel it for ourselves, and know that it is there because
it has entered into us and we have entered into it.
We have got to follow in good earnest Bergson's method
of intuition, and know the truth not by arguing about
it, but by living it. And it is just here that most of
us fail, for our intuitions are weak, and our experiences
are shallow. We live our little lives in our obscure and
narrow portions of the world. We skim over the sur
face of existence, never sinking to any great depths.
We have our annoyances and our troubles, and now
and then some heavy sorrows. And in it all we try to

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 153
find some evidence of the Divine Love, of which we have
heard so much, and fail completely. Or perhaps we
even go so far as to find evidence that there is a prin
ciple of cruelty or hate in the world, instead of the
reported principle of love — and believing that our
experience is of course infallible and final, we confi
dently declare that there is no such thing as love.
But why, pray, should we presume to believe that our
own individual experience can settle this great problem
of existence? Why should we trust our feelings in this
matter, in a way and to an extent in which we never
think of trusting them in any other matter? When I
go into an art-gallery and find that I do not like a pic
ture which has received the unqualified encomiums of
unnumbered generations of artists and critics, I am
just humble enough to believe that the men who have
loved and admired the picture all these years are right,
and I am wrong. When I go into a concert-hall, and
hear with complete indifference a symphony which is
regarded by all authorities as one of the greatest ever
written, I at once assume that my indifference is a
proof not that the symphony is overestimated, but that
I still have something to learn about music. When I
stand in the vale above Tintern Abbey, and look with
unmoved heart upon the scene which stirred the soul
of William Wordsworth to ecstatic rapture, I am con
fident not that the vale is not beautiful, but that I am
so dull and stupid and inexperienced that I cannot see
and feel what is really there all of the time in spite of
me. The blind man can tell us nothing about the light

154 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of the sun; the deaf man can prove nothing about
the song of the skylark; the one word of Jesus about
the lilies of the field outweighs centuries of silence from
the dull peasants of the Palestinian plains. And so it
is with my failure to find the Divine Love in and through
the world of life. Over against my failure, is the un
questioned success of thousands upon thousands of
men and women, who have lived more greatly, and loved
more deeply, and suffered more terribly, than I. These
men and women rise up and say that the world is full
of love. These men and women look sorrow in the face,
and still declare that life is worth the living. These
men and women are beset by every disaster, and stricken
by every sorrow, and destroyed by every cruelty, and
still they bear glad witness to the fact that God is good.
Now here to my mind is experience that is valid,
here is testimony that is unanswerable, here is revelation
that is certain. Against all the denials and doubts and
failures of all the little souls who have lived timidly and
hoped faintly, and who from out their weakness and
their fear have borne witness that they have seen
no indication in the world of the Divine Love, I summon
the saints and seers, the prophets and martyrs, the
poets and painters, of all ages and all places, who have
cried unto God out of the depths, and have received
in answer the assurance of his mercy. The Psalmist
is right when he says, "Like as a Father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him."
Jesus is incontrovertible when he declares that " God
is love." Our own Whittier has summed it all up,

IS GOD A PERSONALITY? 155
when he writes in the meditative moments of his old
age:
" That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Show rounding into calm;
" That more and more a Providence
Of Love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good."
Here, now, in the universe are Unity, and Thought,
and Feeling. Here do we see one unified principle of
life; here do we see thought acting upon things; here
do we see " a Providence of Love, making the springs
of time and sense sweet with eternal good." Here in
the universe, in other words, are the same marks of
personality that we find in and through ourselves.
And here therefore is the evidence, is it not, that God is
a personality as we are personalities ? God is one as we
are one ; God thinks as we think ; God loves as we love ;
God lives and moves and has his being just as we live
and move and have our being. Therefore do I venture
to conclude, by the sure processes of logic, that if we
are persons, God must be a person too. I do not mean
by this assertion, of course, that God is what we are,
and no more. He is not only all that we are spirit
ually, but infinitely and eternally more besides. But so
far at least as our spirits reach, we may truly say,
that he is what we are. As we are persons, so he is a
person. Which means that when we look upon a man,

156 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
we see a reflection of God; and when we think upon
God, we see a projection of man.
And this means what, to our religion? It means
everything to our religion ! It means that our religious
consciousness is valid; that our instinct of prayer
and worship is sound; that our dependence upon the
divine wisdom and love is not in vain. It means that
God hears, God sees, God cares. It means that God
is our Father, that we are his children, and that all
the life and faith and love of millions of human hearts
are justified at last.

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER
It needs no very great amount of argument to point
out the fact that, during the last generation or so, a
great change has gradually been coming over our ideas
and practices' of public and private prayer. In the
old days, prayer was the simplest, easiest, most natural,
and most commonplace expression of religion. In its
spontaneous observance on all occasions of individual
and social life, it seemed to be something almost in the
nature of an instinct. Men prayed as naturally and
inevitably as they breathed, and sometimes, I imagine
it must be confessed, with as little thought. But al
ways in the great moments of experience, however it
may have been at ordinary times, the utterance of
prayer was a sincere and heartfelt expression of the
soul. It was the one avenue by which religion was en
abled to enter freely and fully into the daily lives of
individual men and women; and the one way, also, in
which religion again and again seized upon the race and
moulded its destinies to abiding good or ill. Prayer, in
other words, has been a real thing in the past. The
great men of the world have been men of prayer, and
the great movements in the evolution of humanity have
been initiated and accompanied by prayer.
But all this now is wholly changed. It has long
since become a truism, has it not, that men do not pray
as they did formerly, and that our age is no longer,
157

158 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
therefore, an age of prayer. Family prayers, which
were once a practically universal custom in Christian
households, are now so exceptional as to be conspicuous.
Many of us are trying, partly out of reverence for
tradition, and partly because we trust our intuitions
more than our intellectual convictions, to teach our
children to pray in the old, familiar, simple way, but
how many of us can truly say that we continue the
practice ourselves? Now and then, to be sure, there
come moments of bitter trial and sore distress, when
the old instinct revives and it seems as though nothing
but prayer can appease the agony of the mind or satisfy
the longings of the soul — but how many of us find it
easy, even on such occasions, to take the posture and
speak the words of divine petition? And what is true
here in our individual experience is true also in our
associated life. Prayer-meetings have disappeared
from many even of our most orthodox churches, and
where they still survive they show every evidence of de
cay. We still maintain unimpaired the order of prayer
in the services of public worship in our churches, but
more than one right-minded person has confessed to me
that he finds it " a bore " ; and the hour at which most
people arrive in their pews would seem to indicate that
they do not regard the opening portions of the service
as very important. And, in the same way, we still go
through the performance of invoking the blessing of
God upon our public gatherings of all descriptions.
Nobody would think of such a thing, for example, as
opening a political convention or a legislative session

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 159
without the regular prayer of the duly appointed chap
lain. But is it not significant of the temper of our age
that the one clergyman at the Baltimore convention of
1912 who had the " good sense," as we were told, to
make his prayer short, was rewarded with a burst of
applause so hearty and spontaneous that it was made a
subject of newspaper comment throughout the land ; and
that when it was moved some years ago, in the United
States Senate, that the prayers of the retiring chaplain
be gathered and printed in a volume for permanent
record, the motion was defeated on the ground that so
few of the honourable senators had ever been present
to hear the prayers, it was not worth while to preserve
them? The fact of the matter is — try to disguise it as we
may with our pretentious hypocrisies and our easy
shams ! — we are no longer taking the practice of
prayer very seriously. We are finding it more and
more difficult to reconcile the idea of prayer with the
new scientific and philosophic knowledge of our time.
Deep down in our hearts we are cherishing certain very
definite doubts of the efficacy of prayer, and thus, as a
natural consequence, gradually allowing its observance,
both public and private, to fall into neglect. Whether
we like it or not, whether it is a healthy sign or not, it
would still seem to be true that the age of prayer is
closed forever, and the men of prayer the heroes of an
elder day.
In order to understand this remarkable change in
the religious experience and habit of the race, it is nee-

160 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
essary to consider for a few moments some of the objec
tions to prayer which have arisen in our time, and
which have done more than anything else to bring
about this transformation of which I have been speak
ing. In the first place, we find it difficult to-day to believe
that the affairs of men here upon the earth are of such
large importance in the eyes of God that he has nothing
more important to do than to listen to our complaints
and give answer to our petitions. It was easy to
believe that God was heeding our prayers when the
earth was regarded as the centre of the universe, and
the salvation of men's souls the central problem of
cosmic history. But it is not easy to cherish this
belief when we stand confronted by the vast reaches
of the universe which have been unfolded before our
gaze by the researches of modern science. Here are
the heavenly spaces all about us, stretching out so
many millions of miles in every direction that the mind
of man is unable to comprehend their magnitude, and
our little planet one of the smallest and least important
of the unnumbered stars by which they are everywhere
illumined. Consider the great ocean which rolls be
tween this shore and the continent of Europe ; imagine
in the midst of that ocean a little piece of seaweed
floating upon its waves; and you will have a very ex
aggerated idea of the importance of this earth from
the standpoint of the surrounding universe. Then im
agine that this seaweed is peopled by myriads of infini
tesimal creatures; ask yourselves of how much impor-

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 161
tance these little animals are from the standpoint of
the world-problems with which you and I are concerned ;
and you will have some conception, perhaps, of how
large the affairs of man must appear in the cosmic
vision of God. The extent' of the universe in space
and time, which has been discovered and explored by
the great sciences of our day, is so enormous that man
has shrunken to a position of utter insignificance,
and, in the face of this result, it is difficult indeed to
believe that God can be very much concerned with the
petty desires and aspirations of our individual lives.
In the second place, the old conception of prayer
has been discredited by what we know as " the uni
versality of natural law." We know to-day, if we
know anything at all, that this vast material universe
is controlled throughout by unchanging and unchange
able laws. There is no remotest corner of all the im
measurable infinities of space, and no briefest fraction
of a second in all the unending eternities of time, which
are subject to disorder, or even momentary interfer
ence from without, but all things, in the most distant
star in the heavens as on this whirling earth, and in
the earliest moment of cosmic history as at this latest
moment of recorded time, are subject to the unvarying
and perfect uniformity of law. When this great fact
was first revealed to the world, it was believed for a
time that it meant the elimination of God from the
universe, and the establishment of the philosophy of
atheism. Now, however, we have come to see that
there is nothing essentially irreconcilable between the

162 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
thought of God and the thought of a universe which
is always moving in accordance with unvarying law.
On the contrary, this natural law, of which we speak,
is not to be regarded as alien to God at all, but only
as something which marks the uniform channels of
activity into which God is directing the impulses of
his creative energy. There are various ways of ex
plaining this relationship between the life of God upon
the one hand and the reign of law upon the other.
John Fiske tells us that a natural law is nothing more
nor less than the statement of the particular way in
which God always chooses to act. When we discover
the operation of some natural law, as Kepler discov
ered the law of planetary motion, or Newton the law
of gravitation, or Spencer the law of evolution, we
are simply discovering the principle to which God has
decided to conform his life; and when we formulate
these laws into a system and declare that this system
marks the uniform procedure of natural forces, we are
simply telling the way in which God " lives and moves
and has his being." God can only act in one way, says
Fiske, because he is not whimsical or capricious but
perfectly wise, and knows therefore just what he wants
to do and just how he can do it. To ask him to re
verse his constant method of action in any particular
case is to ask him to reverse himself, and condemn him
self. James Martineau has interpreted this fact in a some
what different way. " The universality of law," he
says, in one of the profoundest passages he ever wrote,

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 163
" is God's eternal act of self-limitation, or abstinence
from the movements of free affection, for the sake of a
constancy that shall never falter or deceive." M. Berg
son comes to identically the same conclusion, but sub
stitutes the element of compulsion for that of free
choice. God, he says, is confronted, in his creative
work, by certain definite conditions of reality, and he
finds it necessary to conform to these conditions. This
means that natural laws are nothing but the revelation
of the adaptations which the spirit of life finds it neces
sary to make in its struggle with dead matter. We
may explain this phenomenon, therefore, in one way,
or we may explain it in another, but the cosmic fact
remains always the same — that the laws of this uni
verse are changeless, for the reason that God, from
choice as most of us would put it, or from compulsion
as I imagine Bergson would put it, is always moving
along certain precise lines and working in a certain
definite way. " God is the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever ! . . . With him is no variableness, neither
shadow of turning ! "
Now it is evident, is it not, that this principle of
the uniformity of divine activity, founded upon the
scientific demonstration of the universality of natural
law, is fatal to the old idea of prayer. In what way
can a spoken prayer, for example, so change the at
mospheric conditions that a period of drought can be
transformed into a period of rain? How can a verbal
petition even to God so alter the physical conditions
of seed and soil and nourishment as to change the bar-

164 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
renness of a famine-stricken country into the full har
vest of abundant crops ? How is our prayer to change
the laws of wind and wave in such fashion that the
safety of a friend upon the seas can be assured?
How can the prayers even of an entire nation achieve
a victory upon the field of battle, or save a much-loved
President from the consequences of an assassin's bul
let? These are events which follow upon certain well-
understood causes, and the sequence between cause and
effect here, as everywhere else in the world of nature
and of human affairs, is invariable. As well expect,
by means of prayer, to swing a planet out of its ap
pointed orbit, to bid the " mountains to be cast into
the midst of the sea," or to destroy this earth and
make it vanish into space, as by prayer to bring one
drop of rain or one ray of sunshine from the skies, to
stay the action of a raging storm, or to win a victory
upon the field of battle.
Moving now from the field of science to the field of
religion proper, we encounter a third difficulty in the
way of the old idea of prayer. I refer to the fact
that a prayer, which is devoted to instructing God as
to our troubles and beseeching him for relief, would
seem to imply a lack of faith in his omniscience on the
one hand, and his beneficence upon the other. If we
really trust in the wisdom and goodness of God, why,
let me ask you, should we pray at all? Why should
we not surrender ourselves absolutely to God's keep
ing, and rest there without petition of our own? God
is wise, we say; then why should we ask him to send

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 165
rain to end the drought, for surely he must know of
its occurrence, and be permitting its continuance for
reasons which we know not of, but which are satisfac
tory to him? God is merciful; then why should we
beseech him to guard us from some impending calam
ity, for he surely would not wantonly compass our
destruction? God, we believe, "doth not afflict will
ingly, nor grieve the children of men " ; then why should
we pray him to save our loved ones from death upon
the seas, for " surely he knoweth our frame, he remem-
bereth that we are dust " ? It is perfectly evident, is
it not, that the old idea of prayer is inconsistent with
our professed trust in the power and the goodness of
God. Petitions that he will do this or will not do that,
show only that our faith in him is not as absolute as
we would fain believe.
As a fourth objection to prayer, I would refer to the
very practical difficulty that God could not answer
prayer, even if he desired to do so, owing to the con
fusion of human wishes. Here are millions of men
upon this planet, of different races and nationalities,
of various habits and tastes and inclinations, with
diversified interests and ambitions, oftentimes diamet
rically opposed in their hopes and aspirations, and
yet all of them praying that God will do as they desire.
The farmer wants rain for his crops, and the picnic
party wants fair skies and warm sunshine. The
schooner beating up the coast wants a wind from the
southwest, and the schooner sailing down the coast
a wind from the northeast. The Frenchman wants vie-

166 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tory to rest upon the tricolour, and the German upon
the Prussian eagle. Which prayer shall God answer;
how shall he choose; to whom shall he give his favour?
Was not Lincoln right when he pointed out in his Sec
ond Inaugural Address, "Both North and South pray
to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the
other. . . . The prayers of both could not be an
swered " ?
Lastly, passing from the realm of theory to the realm
of fact, there is that difficulty which has assailed so
many devout and trusting hearts — namely, that if
God heeds the prayers we speak, why does he not an
swer them more often? Many a believer who knows
nothing of the speculative objections which we have
been considering, has been led unwillingly from
faith to doubt by the hard, cold fact that few
prayers are ever really answered. We hear, every
now and then, of wonderful things that have been
accomplished by prayer; but very seldom do we
hear of the things which prayer has failed to accom
plish. And yet I venture to assert that for every one
prayer which has seemed to be answered, there have
been thousands and tens of thousands of prayers which
have manifestly not been answered. Think of how this
entire nation united in one great prayer that the life
of President McKinley might be spared, and then recall
how that prayer was left unanswered! Think of the
agonising prayers which must have mounted heaven
ward from the deck of the Titanic as she slowly sank
her great hulk beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 167
— and yet no answer ! Think of the prayers that were
spoken by a million sufferers in the flood-stricken
regions of Indiana and Ohio some years ago — and yet
nothing done to stay the mad progress of the waters !
If God can answer prayer, then why, in the name of all
that is merciful, did he turn a deaf ear to such pitiful
entreaties as these? We do not need to theorise about
this problem. In spite of occasional coincidences and
marvels, we all of us know, as a plain matter of fact,
that prayers are not answered; and this, I doubt not,
has done more than everything else put together to
discredit the idea, and end the practice, of public and
private prayer.
These are the main objections which are being of
fered to-day to the idea of prayer, and which are stand
ing in the way of the continued practice of prayer.
And what is to be said as to the validity of these objec
tions ?
In the first place, it must have impressed us all that
every one of these objections to prayer is based upon a
very definite and particular interpretation of the mean
ing of prayer. Behind all of these difficulties which I
have named are the ideas that God, in his relation to
the universe, is a great ruler or king, who, like an
earthly sovereign, can do anything that he pleases
within the borders of his dominions — that it is the
business of men, if they want anything to come to pass
in their own individual lives or in the world at large, to
tell God what they want and try to persuade him to
grant it — and that prayer is only the practical me-

168 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
dium for conveying this information and persuasion to
the ears of God. Prayer, in other words, from the
point of view of these objections alleged against it, is
nothing more nor less than a petition addressed to God
for the bestowal of earthly favours. It is a request
upon the part of man that God relieve him of some
evil, or reward him with some blessing — that God
change the order of physical phenomena or interfere
with the progress of human events, at some particular
time, or in some particular place, for his own personal
benefit. Nor is this an unfair or inaccurate interpre
tation, for certainly we must all of us admit that this
is what the ordinary man in all ages has understood by
prayer, and that this is the kind of prayer which has
generally been offered in the past, and is still being
offered to-day.
Man has always had an unalterable conviction that,
if he wanted anything especial in this world, he would
sUrely get it if he only prayed long enough and hard
enough to God ; and therefore have prayers, in the past,
been one long succession of petitions for certain changes
for the better in man's physical condition, in the mate
rial and social environment in which he has been living,
and in the issue of the human events in which he has
been involved. Thus men, as we have seen, have prayed
for rain in a period of prolonged drought, for food in
a time of famine, for safety in the hour of urgent dan
ger. They have prayed that the sick might be made
well, that those upon the sea, or in perilous places of
storm and flood, might be protected from disaster, that

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 169
victory might come upon the field of battle in time of
war. Nor have prayers of this kind wholly ceased,
even in this age of spiritual indifference. Only a few
years ago, at a time of serious drought in Kansas, the
governor issued a proclamation, asking the ministers
of the state to unite on a certain Sunday in prayer
to God for rain. I have myself heard a minister
pray during a great famine in India, that God would
bring food to the hordes of that starving country,
even as he sent the ravens to feed Elijah in the desert.
At this very moment, in all the Christian churches
of England, France, Russia and Italy, are prayers
being spoken for the success of the allied armies in
their struggle against the legions of the Central Em
pires. That God will interfere in some way with the course
of natural or human events for the benefit of man, has
been the burden of all the prayers of all the ages past.
Thus it was that when Prof. John Tyndall, in 1872,
wished to assail the validity of prayer, and show his
contempt for its observance, he offered his famous
" test " — that two exactly similar wards of a hospital
be filled respectively with an equal number of patients,
afflicted with the same diseases, and, so far as possible,
in the same general condition of depression or convales
cence; that the one ward be placed in the hands of
clergymen, and the patients treated by nothing but the
prayers of these men for their recovery, and the other
ward removed from all religious influences, and the
patients treated by the best skill and knowledge of

170 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
trained physicians ; and that a careful record be kept,
for purposes of comparison, of the deaths and recov
eries in each ward. This is what prayer meant to
Prof. Tyndall, and this was the way, to his mind, to
prove that it was nothing but a superstition.
Now it is against this particular conception of
prayer as a petition addressed to God for interference
with the orderly processes of natural phenomena, that
these objections, which I have been discussing, are all
of them directed. And I believe that we must admit,
in all frankness, that, from this point of view at least,
these objections are every one of them unanswerable.
It is the very general recognition of this fact, which
accounts for the sweeping changes which have come in
our habit of prayer during the last two generations.
We are convinced to-day that prayer, such, as has been
practised for unnumbered centuries in the past, is lit
erally of no avail. Tyndall was right when he chal
lenged the church with his " prayer-test," and the
church showed that it did not believe its own profes
sions when it declined to pick up the gauntlet. We see
clearly enough to-day, if we never saw it before, that
there is only one kind of prayer that can effect any
thing in the physical world, and that is the prayer not
of words but of deeds. The only prayer that can save
a barren land from famine is the digging of irrigation
canals. The only prayer that can save a storm-tossed
ship upon the seas is the vigilance of the captain upon
the bridge and the discipline of the crew upon the
decks. The only prayer that can persuade God to

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 171
bring victory upon the field of battle is the genius of
the general in command and the perfect valour of the
soldier in the ranks. Cromwell knew what he was doing
when he commanded his soldiers not only to pray but
to keep their powder dry. Bayard Taylor was right
when he said that " labour is the truest prayer."
Emerson was only anticipating our most extreme mod
ern thought upon this question, when he said, in his
essay upon " Self-Reliance," " As soon as a man is at
one with God he will not beg. He will then see prayer
in action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his
field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with
the stroke of the oar, are true prayers heard through
out nature." This whole transformation which has re
cently come over our conception of prayer, under the
influence of such considerations as I have just been
discussing, is beautifully illustrated by the familiar
story of the little girl and boy who were in great fear
of being late to school. " Oh, let's stop," said the girl,
as they ran along, " and pray God to get us to school
in time." " No," said the boy, a true son of his gen
eration, " let's run as fast as we can, and pray while
we're running."
From all this the conclusion would seem to be inevi
table, would it not, that the practice of prayer is for-
evermore impossible for all intelligent and right-minded
persons. It would seem that the change which has
come over our individual and social practices in regard
to prayer, during the last few years, is wholly benefi
cent, and that it is earnestly to be desired that we shall

172 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
soon have the courage to eliminate the custom of prayer
from our public services of worship as completely as
we have already eliminated it from our private houses.
This is certainly the case if prayer is to be understood
as meaning only what Prof. Tyndall understood it to
mean when he proposed his famous " prayer-test " to
the English people.
But let me say right here, without any further post
ponement of the issue toward which I have been moving
all this while, that I for one have very serious doubts
if this idea of prayer as a petition to God to do some
thing for man in the outward material world is all that
is contained in this great phenomenon of religious ex
perience — or, indeed, is properly contained therein at
all ! This is the idea, to be sure, which has been domi
nant in the minds of men ever since the first savage
lifted his hands in prayer to God for vengeance upon
his enemies or protection from the tempest. This is
the idea which has found expression in the public and
private prayers of unnumbered generations of men, as
any reading of human history will clearly show. Prof.
Tyndall was undoubtedly reflecting the idea of his own
and every other age, when he saw in this religious prac
tice nothing but a method for the healing of disease.
But we find ourselves shaken just a bit in this connec
tion, it seems to me, when we turn from the supersti
tions of the multitudes and the traditions of the church,
and mount into the serene and lofty atmosphere of the
great prophetic souls of the eras gone.
I examine in my library some of " the prayers of the

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 173
ages," as we might call them — the prayers which are
recorded from the lips of men like Buddha and Socra
tes and Jesus, Augustine and St. Bernard and St.
Francis of Assisi, John Fox and John Wesley, Bishop
Butler, Cardinal Newman, and Theodore Parker —
men of all ages, all variations of belief, and all diver
sities of religious custom. Many of these prayers are
expressed in the crude and superstitious language of
the days in which they were spoken; and all of them
fall again and again into the ignoble attitude of peti
tion which we have been discrediting. And yet the
impressive fact remains that the predominating spirit
of these utterances is something wholly different from
anything that we have thus far considered. If we
mean by prayer nothing more than a request to God for
the stilling of a storm or the winning of a battle, then
the utterances of these great souls are not prayers.
But if, on the other hand, these utterances must be
regarded as prayers in the real sense of the word, then
the idea of prayer is something infinitely more sublime,
more tender, and more august than anything we have
yet described. And I believe that this latter is the true
horn of the .dilemma ! I believe that we have been deal
ing with a conception of prayer, which, however fa
miliar or Universal, is altogether inadequate. I believe
that the objections which we have very properly levelled
against this conception have been objections not to
prayer in itself, but to a false idea of prayer which has
unfortunately found lodgment within the human mind.
I believe that prayer, when rightly understood and

174 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
practised, is the noblest act of which a human being is
capable, and is something absolutely essential to the
purity and integrity of the soul. And I believe that
it is the task of our age, not to get away from the
idea and practice of prayer altogether, because a false
conception of its observance has been impressed upon
our attention, but to get back to that true spirit of
prayer, which is reflected in the utterances of all the
great soUls of the centuries gone by, and then yield
ourselves to this spirit " in spirit and in truth " !
And what is this true spirit of prayer, of which I
am speaking? We may perhaps get at what we are
after most readily by a process of analogy.
Here, we will say, is a man who has a passion for
beauty, and desires to give outward expression to his
passion by becoming a painter. What, now, does he
do ? He becomes a student of art ; for the prosecution
of his studies, he betakes himself to the great gal
leries of the world, where are gathered those paintings
which have most nearly approximated to the artistic
ideal; and there he gives himself to the meditation and
study of their greatness. For days and weeks together
he yields himself to the creations of Raphael, Michael-
Angelo, Da Vinci, Titian, his mind absorbing the won
ders of their beauty, his soul suffused ,with the marvels
of their perfection. And gradually his soul begins to
grow; he begins to climb up, step by step, toward the
heights on which these great artists lived, until at last
he begins to see the visions which they saw, to, compre
hend the ideals of beauty which they expressed, and

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 175
finally to be able to set forth, more or less imperfectly,
these visions and ideals for himself. By the constant
contemplation, that is, of the great paintings of the
world the student of art finds himself gaining such in
sight and consecration, that in time he is himself
equipped for the creation of similar works of beauty.
Witness how, as a young man, Burne-Jones worshipped
at the shrine of Rossetti, studied the master's canvases
by day and dreamed of them by night, until his soul
had itself mounted to the heights and gained the power
and the vision that it sought.
Again, here is a young man whose soul yearns to
express itself in music. He also becomes a student
and makes it his business to seek out the great musi
cians of the past and of the present, to study .their
symphonies and oratorios and operas, to attend con
certs where his soul may be lifted up by the power of
great orchestras and choruses, and thus at last, like
Elijah of old, to be transported, as by a chariot of
fire, into the heaven of his desires. Little by little,
through such a process as this, he begins to understand
and to feel, and, best of all, to find power for himself
to pour forth his soul in the divine melody of song.
The spirit of music, in other words, through much
meditation and communion, is conjured at last to
enter into his life, as the spirit of art was made to
enter into the life of the painter, and there give inspira
tion to his labours. Witness, for example, how Richard
Wagner worshipped at the shrine of Beethoven, through
many a year of eager longing and patient hope, until

176 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
at last the master's soul became as his own, and he
himself the master of a later day.
Now here, in exactly the same way, are men and
women who are striving, some eagerly and some indif
ferently, to understand the secret of spiritual life, by
which I mean the life of " love, joy, peace, long-
suffering, gentleness, meekness, faith, temperance."
Students of life as the others are students of art and
of music, they look abroad over the world in which
they are living, and they find that every minutest par
ticle of this world is tingling with that divine spirit of
life which we call God. Here, they know, in this eter
nal, infinite, and loving spirit, " in which [they] live
and move and have [their] being," is the ideal life of
the universe, and therefore the ideal life of man; and
it is the secret of this life which they are yearning to
gain for the upbuilding of their souls and the perfect
ing of their lives. And how shall they possess them
selves of this spirit of ideal life if not by following the
example of the artist in his quest of beauty and the
musician in his quest of song? Just as the student
of art gains his power to paint his canvases by long
and patient communion with the spirit of beauty, as
this spirit has become incarnate and thus revealed in
the supreme artistic geniuses of the world — just as
the student of music finds his ability to pour forth his
soul in immortal harmonies by patient meditation upon
the spirit of great music, as this spirit has become
incarnate and thus revealed in the great masters of the
ages past — so also may we be able, to some extent, to

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 177
realise and fulfil the divine life by meditating upon the
deep and high things of the spirit as these are revealed
first, perhaps, in the great and pure souls of history,
but ultimately, of course, in nothing short of the being
of Almighty God. As the artist communes with per
fect beauty, and so is himself able to paint — as the
musician communes with perfect song, and so is him
self able to sing — so also may we commune with per
fect truth, perfect justice, perfect love, and so our
selves be able to live! And what is this meditation,
this communion, of which I speak, but prayer — just
such prayer as you and I offer up in our churches
and sometimes in our homes — just such prayer as the
great prophets of humanity have ever offered to their
God? What have we been doing in our prayers but sitting
like the student of art, in rapt contemplation before
the picture of God, as our Father who is in heaven,
and having our souls, like the soul of the artist, charged
with the supreme beauty and sublimity of this concep
tion? What have we been doing in our prayers but
sitting like the student of music, listening to the divine
melody of the voice of God, and having our lives trans
figured by the ravishing and inspiring wonder of it all?
What is any prayer but the losing of ourselves, as stu
dents of life, in the thought of God, as the student of
art loses himself in the thought of beauty or the stu
dent of music in the thought of song? What is any
prayer, spoken in public or in private, in the church or
in the closet, " uttered or unexpressed," but our feeble,

178 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
halting human way of meditating upon God, commun
ing with God, surrendering to God, trying as best we
can to see and hear and know God, and thus transform
our souls into the likeness of his spirit?
Prayer is meditation, communion, self-surrender.
It is " the soul's sincere desire " to be like God. It is
the meeting of spirit with spirit — the spirit of man
with that spirit of God which is " nearer [to us] than
breathing, closer than hands and feet." Emerson has
given us the final definition and justification of prayer,
in his famous saying, that " Prayer is looking at life
from the highest point of view." When we pray we
consciously withdraw ourselves for a moment from the
world, that we may go to a high place, as Jesus
went on to the Mount of Transfiguration, and look at
life from this viewpoint — the viewpoint not of time but
of eternity, not of earth but of heaven, not of matter
but of spirit, not of man but of God. " Prayer," I
repeat, " is looking at life from the highest point of
view " — it is the attitude of reverence before, and sur
render to, all that is better and higher than ourselves.
It is thinking on " whatsoever things are true, whatso
ever things are honest, whatsoever things .. are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." " Think
on these things," said St. Paul — in other words, pray
— and behold the God of Peace shall be with you !
Here is what I regard as the true conception of
prayer — certainly that conception which has been
understood and expressed by the great prophetic souls

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 179
of the past. And notice now, if you will, how directly
opposed is this conception to that more familiar idea
of prayer against which we found so many serious
objections. Prayer, as it is still understood, unfor
tunately, by the overwhelming majority of men
throughout the world, is nothing more nor less, as we
have seen, than a petition addressed to God for some
transformation of the orderly process of nature, some
interruption in the unvarying sequence of cause and
effect, some interference with the natural course of hu
man events, which will redound to the benefit of the per
son who is praying. Prayer, as commonly practised
both in the past and in the present, has concerned itself
exclusively with such phenomena as rainfalls, storms,
cataclysms, sickness and disease, the issues of battle,
the fall of dynasties and kingdoms, — things " of the
earth earthy." It has been our persistent and insis
tent request for changes in the physical and social
world — or, as we would express it in theological terms,
for a change in the mind or the will of God.
Now all this is completely reversed by this new con
ception of prayer, which I have just been trying to in
terpret. A prayer, from the new point of view, is an
effort not to change God, but to change ourselves.
It is an endeavour not to adapt the mind of God to our
selfish ambitions and trivial desires, but to adapt our
minds to the august will of the Most High. It is an
attempt not to persuade God to reduce the universe
to the measure of our existence, but to persuade our
souls to be enlarged to the measure of the divine pur-

180 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
pose. We pray not in order that we may " reconcile
the ways of God to man," as Alexander Pope put it,
but, on the contrary, that we may reconcile man to the
unchanging ways of God. Prayer, when truly under
stood and practised, is concerned not with the physical
but with the spiritual world; it seeks a change not
in the outer but in the inner realm; it is directed not
at the mind of God but at the heart of man! When
George Washington knelt in the snows of Valley Forge
and lifted up his soul to God, he prayed not in order
that he might persuade God to bring victory to his
arms, but in order that, by his contemplation of the
divine presence and his surrender to the divine pur
poses, his faltering soul might be transformed from
weakness to strength. When Socrates offered up his
prayer to the gods of Athens, under the shadow
of the famous plane-tree on the banks of the Ilissus
River, he prayed not because he thought he could
persuade the deities to alter their will toward him,
but rather because he knew that the very fact of his
meditation upon the divine wisdom and his acceptance
of the divine will would give him courage to meet the
fate which was impending. When Benjamin Franklin,
rationalist and scholar, arose at the opening session of
the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and sol
emnly moved that the deliberations of each day be
opened with prayer to God for his blessing and his
guidance, he was not thinking that such prayer would
persuade God to interfere in any personal way >with
the destinies of the new republic, but he was most cer-

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 181
tainly thinking that such prayers would remind the
assembled statesmen that God lived, and that they must
seek, in his name and for his sake, to find the true and
do the right. Here do we have true prayer — the
prayer that has been offered by all the great souls in
all the great moments of experience. And the prayer,
let me point out, that never goes unanswered! For
always " does the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask him."
The whole contrast between the old and the new,
the false and the true, is given to us in impressive form
in the famous scene in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Here, in the moment of his awful agony, as you will
remember, the Nazarene offered up two prayers to God.
The first was the prayer of his weakness and fear;
and the second, the prayer of his strength and faith.
In the one he prayed that the cup might pass from him
— that God, in other words, would interfere in some
way with the dreadful doom which seemed to be await
ing him, and enable him to escape from the hands of
his enemies — just the kind of prayer against which
we have been objecting so strenuously. This attitude,
however, lasted but for a moment. Almost at once did
he free himself from the terror which was threatening
to overwhelm him, and rising to those sublime heights
with which his soul was so familiar, he breathed forth
that prayer which stands, I believe, as the noblest and
truest which ever fell from human lips. " Neverthe
less," he said, conquering his momentary weakness,
" not as I will, but as thou wilt." The surrender of

182 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
man to God — the plea not to change God's will, but to
do God's will — this is prayer ! As Tennyson puts it :
" Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours to make them thine."
Here, now, is the true conception of prayer — the
prayer which moves in the realm of things spiritual and
not physical, and works its changes in the soul of man
and not in the mind of God! And here in this con
ception of prayer, which is so complete a reversal of the
popular idea, do we find at once the solution of all the
difficulties of which I spoke at the beginning of my ad
dress, and thus the justification of prayer as the nat
ural, spontaneous, and indeed inevitable expression of
the soul's life. So complete is this justification of
prayer, that it seems to explain and to redeem even the
crudest and most childish of human petitions unto God.
The prayer for rain can bring no rain, but by calling
to men's minds the thought of an all-wise God, it can
reconcile them to enduring the drought with patience.
The prayer on shipboard, as the vessel reels and shivers
beneath the blast of the storm, cannot still the hurri
cane nor quiet the waters, but it can still the fear and
quiet the anguish which are surging within the hearts
of the terror-stricken passengers, by lifting their souls
to the contemplation of the peace of God's over-brood
ing spirit. The prayer on the eve of battle can insure
no victory on to-morrow's field, but it may stir the
hearts of the soldiers with such devotion to the God of
battles, that nothing can withstand the violence of their

THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF PRAYER 183
assault. The prayer for the loved one who is ill, can
never cure the disease, but by calling to mind the
" refuge " and the " strength " of God, it can give com
fort to the sufferer in his affliction and help the watcher
to endure with patience the long ordeals of the day and
the trying vigils of the night. The one thing that men
need in this world to make their lives pure and strong
and true, is the consciousness within their souls of the
ever-living God; and any prayer, however crude its
phrase or childish its thought, which serves to create
this consciousness within the soul, is to that extent at
least worth while. It is useless to think that God can be
persuaded by our prayers to suspend one single law
on our behalf, and it is criminal to wish that he could
do so ; but it is only truth to say that, by our prayers,
we may bring ourselves into the knowledge and the
love of God, and therewith gain more and better help
than if suddenly every law in all the universe were
altered to our benefit. The turn of one little button on
the wall of my house sends the electric current cours
ing through every wire, and brings light to every
nook and cranny of the place. Prayer, it seems to me,
is the little button by which the love of God may be
diverted from the power-house of his spirit and carried
into every remotest corner of the human heart. If the
button remains untouched, the home remains in dark
ness ; so, if prayer is never offered, the human heart is
never lighted with the divine presence. But the power
house of God is always there, and it only remains for
me — not God ! — to say as to whether the eternal life,

184 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
there ceaselessly being generated, shall bring its heat
and light and power into my life.
Prayer, therefore, is a permanent expression of the
soul's life. All the objections which can be urged
against it are objections against the misconceptions
which have been placed upon it. Rightly understood,
it is the attempt of man to find and to know and to
love God, and to make his will to be at one with God's
will. As William Watson puts it so impressively in
his little book on Prayer: "The purpose of prayer
is not to change the will of God, but to make us fulfil
it. The more intimate our friendship with God, the
more wisely shall we pray. We shall discern some
thing of the design God is working out in us, and we
shall pray not because we want something, but because
we are eager to take the full profit of our heritage and
cultivate that spiritual kinship with God which the
world tempts us to forget." From this point of view
the practice of prayer is a spiritual necessity, and its
neglect, as we witness it to-day, a spiritual calamity.
For what after all, in the words of Tennyson,
"... are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?]
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

SOCIAL APPLICATIONS

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD
The subject, the " Church and the World," is one which
would seem to be about as general in character as any
that I could bring to your attention. It is not my
purpose, however, to discuss this subject in any ab
stract way. On the contrary, it is my desire to speak
as directly as I know how to do — to make this address
to be not a statement of theory, but a confession of
personal faith.
I want to state what I think of the church as a
human institution, how I interpret the place of the
church in the great world of human affairs, what I
feel is the duty of the church and of its ministry in
relation to the stupendous problems of social idealism
which press so heavily upon us in this age. Again
and again, people ask me why I am so " extreme " in
my views on these problems. They wonder why I ex
pose myself to the ridicule and abuse which always
fall upon men who take the fanatical attitude, as they
call it, toward the questions of the day. They plead
with me to recognise the facts of life, to adapt my
ideas and ideals to the possibilities inherent in these
facts, and thus to achieve the saving reputation of
common-sense. To all such inquiries and appeals I
want this address to be an answer. I speak of the
general problem of the " Church and the World," only
as a means of speaking of the specific and personal
187

188 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
problem of my professional life. I am giving here
my confessio fdei; and it is my hope, when you have
noted its articles, that you will know, even if you can
not accept, the principles which have long determined,
and I pray may ever determine, my conduct as a min
ister of religion.
If we turn to the history of the Christian church,
from the standpoint of the general problem of its
relation to the outer world of practical affairs, we
shall find that its attitude has been determined by one
or the other of two great theories or doctrines of ecclesi
astical life. These theories have never been clearly dif
ferentiated from one another — they intermingle in
nearly every period of church history. Indeed, thu
story of the church might be not inaccurately inter
preted as the story of a" perpetual grapple and conflict
between these two conceptions. But for my purpose
in this address they can be separated, and each de
scribed in terms of sharp distinction from the other.
On the one hand, as it is hardly necessary for
me to point out, the church has been guided by the
idea that it must be separated from the world — must
be as far removed as possible from the affairs of men.
This is the idea that prevailed in the early years of
Christian history, and very largely explains the re
fusal of the apostles and their successors to identify
themselves in any way with the contemporary life
of the Roman Empire. When these early Christians
fled to abandoned fields outside the city walls, took
refuge in humble homes on inconspicuous streets, even

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 189
buried themselves in the dark corridors of the cata
combs, to hold their meetings, they were undoubt
edly seeking to escape the pains of persecution; but
these acts may well be taken also as symbolical of
the determination of the followers of Christ to cut
themselves off as far as possible from all connection
with the followers of Caesar. This idea of separa
tion or remoteness was also dominant in the Middle
Ages, and of course explains the innumerable con
vents and monasteries, each one of them a " refuge"
from the world, which came in time to stand as
the most distinctive institutions of mediaeval life. And
even in our own day we still find this idea present
in the world of Christendom, as witness the orders
and fraternities and sisterhoods which are so inter
esting and, I may add, impressive a feature of the
modern so-called " high-church " type of Christianity.
In all these phases of religious life, we have the same
basic conception of the church, and of the relation
of the church to the political, social and economic
environment. The church is to be regarded as a
thing apart — an institution separated utterly from the
world. It is a shrine — a sacred spot not to be known
of those who walk the familiar ways of daily life — a
" holy of holies " to be seen only by steadfast souls
who have abandoned the world and entered, as if by
anticipation, into the very courts of heaven.
If we examine, now, into the origin of this doc
trine of the church's relation, or lack of relation, to
the world, we shall find that it is a reflection

190 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of two very distinct theological ideas. In the
first place, there is what we know as the " other-
world " conception of the universe. According to this
idea, this present world is only a temporary abiding-
place, full of temptations and miseries, doomed in
evitably to more or less speedy destruction. In the
early days of Christianity, it was believed that this
hour of destruction was near at hand — " within the
life-time of those now living," it was said. With the
passing of one generation after another, however,
and the ever-recurring postponement of the antici
pated last day, it came to be believed that this cata
clysmic hour was destined to be far removed into
the future. But at the heart of both conceptions was
the belief that this present world is a temporary and
therefore insignificant affair. The real world, the
true life, the Kingdom of God, is over there, beyond
the grave. This world is at the best a portal to this
next world, at the worst a barrier against it. To
overcome this world, this is the great desideratum!
To escape from this world, as Bunyan's pilgrim,
Christian, escaped from the City of Destruction, this
is " a consummation devoutly to be wished." Such an
achievement, however, is not possible until God has
bestowed upon us the boon of death. Therefore do
we have the church — an ark amid the storm, a re
fuge from oppression, a " shadow of a great rock in
a weary land." For ages has the church commended
itself as this way of escape from the ills of life.
And of course, by very virtue of this function, has

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 191
the church found it necessary to keep remote from
the affairs of life — to cut itself off from all connection
with the world of common things. It is with the
church as with the life-boats of an ocean liner, to use
a familiar but vivid illustration. The steamship,
mortally wounded by collision with an iceberg, we
will say, is on the point of foundering. Whether she
will sink in ten minutes or in ten hours, nobody can
tell. But that she is doomed to destruction, is evi
dent; and it is equally evident that those who desire
to be saved must take to the life-boats. And it is the
one condition of the salvation of these life-boats,
that they shall be cut loose from the stricken liner.
Out upon the sea they must go, to await the arrival of
the rescue ship, or to make their slow and painful
way to the nearest shore. So with the church, or the
churches ! They are the life-boats, and the world the
sinking vessel. To cut loose and to stay apart, is the
one imperative necessity for these boats if their pre-
. cious freight is not to be lost. Hence the remote or
separated church, of which the hermit's cell in the
desert, or the monastery walls in the forest glade or
on the mountain-side, is the perfect symbol.
But there is a second idea which has led to this
separation of the church from the world. I refer to
the idea that the world is not only transient but
wicked, and that the servants of God must avoid con
tact with it in order to keep their hands clean and their
hearts pure. The desire to enter heaven by antici
pation, so to speak, and thus be saved, has been the

192 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
compelling motive, I have no doubt, with thousands
and tens of thousands who have fled to the sanctu
aries of prayer and praise. But quite as com
mon has been the desire to avoid sin and the
temptations that lead to sin. Here is the world, a
wicked place wherein one may survive, to say nothing
of prospering, only by compromises, evasions, out-
and-out wrong-doing. Here, on the other hand, is an
artificial community, established quite apart from the
community of the world, wherein temptations and
therefore the occasions of error are altogether elimi
nated. Here is a place where all our problems are
solved, our difficulties removed, our sins forgiven.
Here is a place where we can live as we would choose
to live, as " heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."
It is obvious, of course, that such a place can be main
tained thus sacrosanct, only by rigidly excluding from
its borders all the contaminating influences of the
outside world. It must banish the world, shut it out
altogether, keep itself apart from the ways and deeds
of men. But such a sacrifice of vital connection with
practical affairs is worth making, if only for the sake
of this purity of life which is achieved. Hence the
remoteness of the church from the world, of which I
have been speaking. The early Christian, worship
ping in his grotto or catacomb, refusing to pay taxes,
to engage in the ordinary social and political life of
the empire, even to enlist in the army which was
fighting on the frontiers for the protection of the
realm against barbarian invasion, is a perfect em-

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 193
bodiment of this conception of remoteness for the
sake of purity of life. Still more extreme is the Egyp
tian hermit, walling himself up in his lonely cell, so
that he may not touch even so much as the little
finger of the passer-by who gives him food or alms.
In every case do we have a church keeping its de
votees apart, that they may live not according to
the customs and laws of men, but according to the
will of God alone!
It is for these two reasons, in the main, that the
church has at various times and in many places with
drawn from the world and maintained itself remote,
or isolated, from the everyday affairs of human kind.
The consequences of this policy have been both good
and bad. On the one hand, there can be no question
that this attitude of aloofness from the world has re
sulted in an elevation of sentiment, a purity of ideal
ism, and a thoroughgoing consistency of principle,
on the part of the church, which have seldom if ever
been attained when the church and the world have
been more closely inter-related. You may search the
history of Christendom in vain for a clearer witness
to the truth and a nobler devotion to the right, for
example, than were manifest in the days of Roman
martyrdom, and in certain periods, both early and
late, of the unworldly Middle Ages. On the other
hand, however, it is certain that there was evil in
this withdrawal of the church from the world, and
that this evil on the whole much more than counter
balanced any good which was involved. What are

194 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
we to say, for example, of that notorious double
standard of morals, by which a man determined his
conduct inside the church by one code of ethics and
his conduct outside the church by another and quite
different code of ethics, or by which a priest was per
mitted to do as a citizen in the community what he
never would have been permitted to do as an officer
of the church? It is doubtful if any development of
Christianity has been more corruptive, and therefore
disastrous, than this. We see its disease-like rav
ages all through the period of the Dark Ages; and
it is a phenomenon which still survives as the beset
ting plague of the sincerity and power of the Chris-
tain life. Praising God on Sunday and worshipping
at the throne of Mammon on Monday, giving char
ity to the poor through church collections and rob
bing the poor through low wages and high prices,
forgiving your enemies in the cathedral and putting
them to the sword on the field of battle — this it is
which is the occasion of laughter to the unbelievers
which are on earth and of tears to the angels which
are in heaven. But that it is bound to follow upon
any attempt for any reason to sever the church from
the world, to divide the area of human experience into
two parts, the sacred and the profane, is as inevitable
as that the night shall follow upon the day. Never
until men are made to see that the church and the
world are one, will they be persuaded to apply to
their life among their fellows those exalted standards
of duty which we inevitably identify with the will of

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 195
God. When we have the church humanised by the
world, and the world spiritualised by the church, then
we shall have that union of the law of God and the
laws of men which will eliminate all double standards
of conduct, and give to us that redeemed society which
will be God's kingdom established upon earth.
More serious, however, than this or any other par
ticular evil which has followed upon the separation
of the church and the world, is the spectacle of the
abandonment of the world to its unhappy fate by a
church absorbed in the selfish aims of its own se
curity and honour. Here- is society, with its injustice,
its corruption, its poverty, its diseases, its " wars and
rumours of wars." Here are the multitudes of men
and women subsisting as best they can in ignorance
and sin. Here are all the want and misery and death
which go to make up the sum total of human suffer
ing. And here, on the other hand, is a church which
deserts the world as Bunyan's pilgrim deserted his
wife and family — a church which flees the presence
of those who need so sorely a physician, as the friv
olous story-tellers of Boccaccio's Decameron fled the
plague-ridden streets of mediaeval Florence. The
church is beautiful, to be sure, but what means this
beauty, when outside its walls is ugliness triumph
ant ? The " courts of the Lord " are full of peace, but
of what avail when the ways of men are full of con
tention and bloodshed? Here within the sanctuary
are praises and prayers and long sweet hours of medi
tation, but what are these but blasphemies when

196 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
without the sacred places men kill their fellows,
women sell their bodies for a price, and children lift
their voices in vain for bread? If there is one enor
mity upon which the religious prophets of all ages
have heaped with one voice and one heart their un
ceasing, unsparing, uncompromising denunciations,
it is this enormity of an isolated church, indifferent
to, or at least apart from, the sufferings of men and
the evils of society.
It is this which kindled the lips of so ancient a
prophet as Isaiah, When he denounced " the multitude
of the sacrifices " of Israel, " the burnt offerings of
rams, and the fat of fed beasts .... the vain obla
tions .... the appointed feasts," and called upon
the worshippers of God to " cease to do evil, learn to
do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed." It is
this which kindles the lips of so modern a prophet as
Rabindranath Tagore, when he bids his people to
" leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads,"
asks whom they are worshipping " in this lonely dark
corner of a temple with doors all shut," and reminds
them that God " is where the tiller is tilling the soil
and the pathmaker is breaking stones ... he is with
them in sun and shower and his garment is covered
with dust." It is this which moved our own prophet,
Edward Carpenter, when he looked upon York Minster
" solid and ghostly in the pale winter morning ....
all desolate, vast and desolate .... the murmurs of
the outer world fainting along the roof like the mur
mur of the sea in some vast sea-shell," and then looked

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 197
" without, (where) the people are dying of cold and
starvation." And this it is which was in the infinitely
compassionate heart of the Master when he rebuked
the Pharisees for giving tithes of " mint and anise and
cummin " and neglecting " the weightier matters of the
law, justice, mercy and faith." A thousand prophets
and ten thousand burning speeches of these prophets,
might be cited in denunciation of a church which seeks
to save itself by abandoning the world, and the word
of all would be to the same effect — " If thou art offer
ing thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that
thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy
gift before the altar and go thy way ; first be reconciled
to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."
It is this persistent preaching of the true prophets,
in pity of an abandoned world, which has stirred the
church from its isolation, and slowly but surely brought
it back into touch with humanity. Certainly it is this
prophetic doctrine of applied religion which I had in
mind, at the opening of this address, as the second of
the two great theories or doctrines of ecclesiastical
life which have determined the attitude of the church
in relation to the outer world. Just as the theory of
separation has taken the church away from the world
at various times and places, so also has the theory of
identity, or co-operation, brought the church back into
touch with human things. And never, I believe, at any
previous period of Christian history, has the church
been brought so near to social facts — become so thor
oughly "socialised," as we like to phrase it — as it

198 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
has to-day. At the present time, the justification of
religion to the modern mind is very largely sociolog
ical, and not theological. The significance of re
ligion is described to-day almost exclusively in terms
of service, and not of doctrine. Not those who " cry
Lord, Lord," but those who seek " to do the will of
(the) Father which is in heaven," are in our own age
alone accepted as the genuine disciples of the Master.
The church, isolated from the world in the early and
Middle Ages, for the reasons which I have stated, has
now been brought back into the world — and this with
such thoroughness of method and enthusiasm of spirit,
that it is altogether probable that the breaking of this
union by divorce will never again be allowed to take
place !
That the change from a church separated from the
world to a. church united with the world, on the basis
of religion applied, is a great achievement, productive
of incalculable good to both the church and the world,
nobody would think for a moment of denying. That
this good, however, is unmixed with evil, may well
be doubted. Certainly one unfortunate consequence
of this restoration of the church to the world, unfore
seen, so far as I know, by any of the great prophets
of the past, is becoming more and more evident in our
time, and constitutes to my mind one of the most dis
turbing factors in the development of the modern
church. I refer to the fact that the church, in coming
back into the world, in order to save the world from
its miseries and sins, is slowly and unconsciously being

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 199
made over into the likeness of the world. The church
is being dragged down by the world to its own level
of degradation, wickedness and hypocrisy, instead of
the world being " lifted up " by the church to new
levels of honest thought and noble feeling. The
world, in other words, is bringing corruption to the
church, instead of the church bringing salvation to
the world.
In the early days of Christian history, when
the church and its members were far removed
from the social realities of the time, Christianity was
characterised by certain unalterable standards of in
dividual conduct, certain august ideals of social life,
certain dreams and visions and spiritual laws, which
were inherent in the very idea of God and the very
example of Jesus Christ. These standards and ideals,
these dreams and visions and laws, from the stand
point of the world, were impracticable and therefore
foolish. Any attempt to apply them to the problems
of human existence was impossible. Therefore the
world not only would not adopt them, but refused
even to pay attention or reverence to them. And
it is just because the early church regarded these
divine principles as dearer than its own life, and its
own mission as the bearing witness to these prin
ciples, undiminished and untarnished, at any cost, that
it tended to draw one side from the main currents of
existence, hide within its shell, so to speak, and wait
until the world was ready to receive its whole gospel.
Now, with its return to the world, the church finds

200 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
its principles as impracticable, as fantastically ideal
istic, as ever. But, believing that it must identify it
self with the world, must apply these principles if it
is to justify its existence at all, it forthwith proceeds
not to lead the world, or drag the world, up to the sub
lime elevation of its own idealism, but to make over
this idealism, to compromise it, qualify it, minimise
it, so that it may come into reasonable touch with the
world, and thus meet it on its own terms. It is this
which has resulted in the spectacle which has long
disgraced the pages of church history, and is still be
fore us at the present moment, of a church which, in all
branches of its denominational life, is ready for noth
ing more quickly and surely than an opportunity to
dilute its gospel, to lower its standards, to make its
ideals practical by eliminating their specifically ideal
istic features and thus making them unrecognisable as
ideals. " I have learned to be all things to all men,"
said St. Paul, with quite another motive in view than
that which we are now considering. And it is just this
lesson of being " all things to all men," in the bad
sense of the phrase, which the church has learned
with a vengeance, to its own indescribable humilia
tion! What compromise of individual ethics has
been too shameless to receive the apology, if not the
sanction, of the church? What practice of social life
has been too cruel to escape the blessing of God's
house? What law or custom or institution of politics
and industry has been too oppressive to be unworthy
of the support of the ministers of Jesus Christ? Every

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 201
sin has at one time or another had its priestly apolo
getic, every abomination its ecclesiastical benedic
tion. And all because the church has sought, and
seeks to-day, to be practical, to get results, to meet
the world where it thinks it can lead the world. With
the result that it has forfeited its leadership, cast away
its authority, sullied its purity, and — sorrow's crown
of sorrow ! — has achieved as a matter of fact, no more
results than the church of an older day, which refused
to trail its garments in the mire.
The church in this age, as in the past ages, just be
cause of its compromises, its surrenders, its practica
bilities, is very largely a " kept church," an institution
" bought and paid for," with no other mission in life
than that of serving the pleasure and defending the
interests of those who seek favours for a price. Bernard
Shaw is an accurate reporter of the situation in his
biting paragraphs on the church and the world in
his " Preface " to Major Barbara. " Churches are
suffered to exist," he writes, " only on condition that
they preach submission to the state as at present capi-
talistically organised. The Church of England itself
is compelled to add to the thirty-six articles in which
it formulates its religious tenets, three more in which
it apologetically protests that the moment any of these
articles comes in conflict with the state (.. e., the world),
it is to be entirely renounced, abjured, violated, abro
gated and abhorred, the policeman being a much more
important person than any of the Persons of the Trin
ity. And this is why no tolerated church .... can

202 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ever win the entire confidence of the poor. It must be
on the side of the police and the military, no matter
what it believes or disbelieves; and as the police and
the military are instruments by which the rich rob and
oppress the poor, ... it is not possible to be on the
side of the poor and of the police at the same time.
Indeed, the religious bodies, as the almoners of the
rich, become a sort of auxiliary police, taking off the
insurrectionary edge of .poverty with coals and blank
ets, bread and treacle, and soothing and cheering the
victims with hopes of immense and inexpensive happi
ness in another world, when the process of working
them to premature death in the service of the rich
is complete in this (world)."
And to this we must now add, as Mr. Shaw has
added in his " Preface " to Androcles and the Lion,
the indictment of the church's attitude on the ques
tion of war — the surrender of the church in every
land and in every age, to the war-lords of the world.
If there is anything that it would seem that the
church must denounce, or, if not denounce, at least
refrain from defending, extolling, aiding and abetting,
it would seem to be that slaughter of the battle-field
which is the violation of brotherhood and the sub
version of the divine rule of a universal God. And
yet the church to-day and yesterday, with few excep
tions, lifts its voice not on behalf of conciliation and
goodwill, but on behalf of enmity, hatred, collective
homicide. " If Christianity were now abolished and
exiled by the Defence of the Realm Act," says Mr.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD
Israel Zangwill, in his The War for the World, " there
would be no difference whatever visible in the function
ing of the state and the prosecution of the war." And
all because, as I have been saying, the church has been
willing to sell its birthright for the mess of pottage
known as practical results. All because the church has
been willing to compromise every principle, to qualify
every ideal, to voice " the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men."
"At the outbreak of the war," says the Dean of Dur
ham, England, with more frankness than is used by
the ordinary prelate, " men awoke to the discovery
that Christendom was really swayed by motives which
had no pretence of being Christian, and that the
churches had become parasitic, bestowing their facile
consecrations on every national ambition, and failing
to rebuke any national crime."
Now it is just at this point, and on this particular
matter, that I would speak my protest. I believe most
emphatically that the church should not in any sense
be apart from the world, but on the contrary should be
in the world, lead the world, change the world, rebuild
the world. If there is any one gospel that I am here
in this pulpit to preach, it is the gospel of " social
religion," which is the gospel of a church come into
the world, in the spirit of Christ, to save the world.
But I also believe most emphatically that the church
should come into the world not to accept the standards

204 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of the world as the basis of relationship, but to set
its own standards, without surrender of a single jot or
tittle of their absolute idealism. I confess that I can
see no distinctive mission for the church in the world
save that of an institution dedicated to the perfect
ideal, the absolute principle, the unalterable law of
the spiritual cosmos. I confess that I can see no
justification for the church save as a witness of that
eternal and infinite God, who is the same yesterday,
to-day and forever, " with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning." There are plenty of other
forces in the world to point the way of expediency, to
show the goal of practicability, to preach the easy
gospel of adaptation, compromise, evasion. It is not
difficult to find business men to remind you of the
truth of the saying that " business is business " — not
difficult to find politicians to show you the prosperous
ways of falsehood and deceit, not difficult in this age
to find defenders of patriotism, preparedness and wars
for righteousness. The world is full of these expo
nents of expediency as a sound philosophy of life. The
church only loses itself in the crowd when it joins the
witness of its voice to the vociferous clamours of the
hour. It is only doing shamelessly in the name of God,
forsooth, what men themselves are doing, without any
necessity of spiritual prompting, in the name of their
own selfish interests and desires. What the world
.needs, what the world must have if it is to be saved
spiritually, is men, or institutions, which will proclaim
justice though the heavens fall — which will declare

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 205
that " right is right since God is God," and will " sink
or swim, live or die, survive or perish," on the merit
of that simple proposition — which will set up as the
guiding principle of their lives the affirmation of the
prophet, Balaam, " I cannot go beyond the word of
the Lord, my God, to do less or more." And where
shall the world find the satisfaction of this great need
if not in a church which is unswervingly faithful to
the best, the highest, the truest that has ever been re
vealed to it from the mind of God?
It is this conviction of mine about the duty of the
church and of its members to preach ideal truths
and espouse ideal causes, with no question about
feasible methods and practical consequences, which
dictates my conduct in my profession. I believe in
all seriousness that I am a minister of a church not
of New Yorkj or America, or Unitarianism, but of
God. I believe that I am pledged, by my ordination
vows, to proclaim not the passions and prejudices
and whims of men, but the perfect will of God so far
as it is given to me to see that will. I believe that it
is my duty, as a minister of religion, to serve not the
interests of any class, or any nation, or any social
order, but the interests of that Kingdom of God which
has not yet been established upon earth. It is not
for me, as the minister of the church, to consider
whether a certain individual act is unavoidable, but
only whether it is wrong. It is not for me to ask
whether a certain social reform is impracticable, but
only whether it is just. It is not my business to ex-

206 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
plain or apologise or excuse or palliate; rather is it
my business to define the standard, point the ideal,
declare " Thus saith the Lord ! "
Is it a question, we will say, of human freedom — the
freedom of woman from social disabilities, of the black
man from social outlawry, of the Jew from prejudice
and oppression, of the workingman from wage slavery?
Then it is not for me to bother with the difficulties in
the way of emancipation, the dangers involved in lifting
the yoke of bondage, the losses suffered by those now
happily placed in positions of privilege and power.
Rather is it for me simply to make plain that free
dom to-day, as yesterday, is a condition of " life more
abundantly " for men and women, the fulfilment of
that will of God which is " the law of liberty," and
therefore a principle which must be universally es
tablished. Is it the question of poverty? It is not
for me to show how inevitable is poverty as a social
phenomenon, to emphasise how impracticable if not
impossible is every method which has ever been de
vised for its abolition or considerable amelioration,
or to bid men to be patient under the burdens of
wretchedness which poverty imposes upon them.
Rather is it for me to point out, without qualification
or evasion, that poverty is a crime, a preposterous
defiance of divine providence, an impossible obstacle
to the establishment of God's kingdom, and some
how, some way, must be destroyed. Or take the
question of war ! Shall I use my position, as a minis
ter of religion, to outrival the diplomats, warriors

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 207
and munition manufacturers of our time in praising
war as sometimes beneficent, or excusing it as some
times necessary, and in using my utmost powers to in
duce men to enter the ranks of war when hostilities
have come upon the world? War may be as inevi
table or as sublime upon occasion, as you please. It
may be as glorious to defend our country or invade
another's country, as the poets have told us for un
numbered years. Every proposed method of abolish
ing war may have long since proved a failure. But
I am here to proclaim the fatherhood of God, the
brotherhood of man, the law of love. These know
no exceptions, no qualifications — they are as unalter
able as the laws which hold the planets in their courses.
And with them the phenomenon of war under all con
ditions and in all places is absolutely inconsistent.
This message may be unpatriotic, impracticable, dan
gerous. I would not deny the accusation. But this
does not in any way alter the fact that this message
is the only message which can find any place in re
ligion. Therefore is it the only message which I, as
a minister of religion, have a right to preach, with
out betraying the trust committed to my charge. A
friend of mine in England, a minister of a Unitarian
church in one of the largest cities in the kingdom,
has beautifully defined the duty of the minister in time
of war, in a recent letter — " We believe," he says,
" that it is not the business of the Church of Christ
anywhere to preach war (even in time of war) or to
help war, but persistently to preach peace, and love,

208 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
and reconciliation, though it may be to deaf ears and
maddened brains."
Such is my interpretation of my task as a Chris
tian minister. Of course, at bottom, I would go much
farther than this. I would assert that it is the duty
of every man, just because he is a man and therefore
a child of God, to stand for the uncompromised ideal
— to " hew to the line, let the chips fall where they
may " — to be a fanatic, if you will. Such men, hated
and despised of their own time, have -in later times
been seen to be the saviours of mankind. But this
wider question I do not at this moment consider. My
concern is with the church and the world, with the
minister as a leader of the church in the world. And
I say to you that it is his duty to proclaim and serve
the absolute ideal. That this ideal will be perfectly
realised now is not to be expected. It is the tragic
irony of life that, with society now ordered as it is,
no one of us is able to live the ideal which we see.
But the ideal is there, as God is in his heaven. And
it is the church's specific and glorious task to keep this
ideal as the treasure of the Most High, and commend
it to the heedless world. It is the recognition of this
fact that, in an earlier time, led men to make the
church a place remote — they sought to save and serve
the ideal apart from a lost world. But this to-day we
cannot do. The church must be in the world — in it,
but not of it. It must be in it, and yet above it, as the
star is above the trackless sea; in it, and yet beyond
it, as the mount of vision is beyond the rocky steep.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 209
This it is which Jehovah spoke to Solomon, at the
dedication of the temple upon Mt. Zion. " If now
thou wilt walk before me with integrity of heart and
in uprightness, even thou and this people, then will I
hallow this house which thou hast built, to put my
name there forever; and mine eyes and my heart will
be there perpetually. But if ye shall at all turn from
following me, ye or your children, then ¦ shall this
congregation be a proverb and a by-word among all
people." That " this congregation " may not " at all turn
from following " God, but " walk before (him) with
integrity of heart and in uprightness," and that God
may thus " hallow this house," and " put (his ) name
here forever " — this is my prayer. I beseech you to
join in this prayer, and to labour unceasingly for its
fulfilment.

LEGISLATION AND MORALS: CAN WE MAKE
PEOPLE GOOD BY LAW?
My subject is the general problem of " Legislation and
Morals " ; or, more specifically, the discussion of the
question as to whether we can ever hope to make people
good by due process of law.
This question is as old, in Christian history, as the
discussion by St. Paul, in his epistles to the Galatians
and to the Romans, of the relation between what he
called the Law upon the one hand and the spirit of
Christ upon the other. Five hundred years, however,
before these letters were written, this same problem
was a favourite subject of discussion among the
philosophers of Athens, and became the central theme
of the greatest book which any one of these philoso
phers ever produced — namely, the Republic of
Plato. How much farther back this question goes I
cannot say, nor is it perhaps necessary that we should
ascertain. For what concerns us here is not the fact
that this problem as to the relation between the legis
lation of the state and the morals of its citizens is
as ancient as Plato or perhaps even Moses, but the
fact that this problem is modern as well as ancient,
and is pressing upon our attention to-day more
insistently perhaps than ever before in the whole
history of the world. For we are living in an age, are
we not, which is pre-eminently an age of legislation.
210

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 211
Here in the United States, for example, we have the
national Congress in Washington, sitting most of the
time from year's end to year's end, and no less than
forty-eight independent legislatures, sitting some of
them at intervals of three or four years, but many of
them at some period every year — and all of these
various legislative bodies pouring forth laws just as
fast apparently as they can be drafted and enacted.
Never before, we are told by competent historians,
have men been so obsessed with the idea that all the
problems of life, both individual and social, can be
solved for all time by the simple process of legislation,
as they are to-day. Under the steady pressure of
public opinion, thousands of new laws are being placed
upon the statute-books every year; and the great
majority of these laws pertain not at all to the tradi
tional task of raising and expending money for the sup
port of the ordinary functions of government, but to
the newer task of regulating and controlling the daily
conduct of the people, in order that evil may be
abolished and good may be established in its place.
The number of hours that men and women shall
work (per day or per week), the wages which they shall
receive for their labour, the age at which children
shall be allowed to go to work, the amount of air and
light in our factories and houses, the quality of the
food that we eat, the character of the clothing that
we wear, the conditions under which we shall be
allowed to read books or see plays at the theatre, the
physical condition of candidates for marriage, the

212 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
hour at which children shall be taken off the city
streets, the length of the sheets upon the beds of
hotels, and of course the immemorial problems of
drink and gambling and prostitution — all these and
countless other details bf private and social life are
being taken within the pale of legislation, so that the
task of knowing what is legal and what is illegal is
really becoming one of the most serious problems of
existence. Whenever we see an evil, or think we see
an evil — pass a law against it ! This seems to be the
great ideal of our time; and most of us seem to be
pretty definitely of the opinion that if we can only
get laws enough enacted to cover every evil of human
life, the millennium will forthwith be ushered in. The
establishment of the Kingdom of God, in other words,
is postponed by nothing more serious than our failure
to provide an all-inclusive and therefore perfect legal
code. Now it is just this amazing development of legis
lative activity within recent years which has made
the old question as to the relation between legislation
and morals, as I have said, one of the most press
ing problems of our age and generation. For in
spite of the very strong popular trend in favour of new
and better laws, there is still a very large and respect
able body of persons who have no faith at all in the
efficacy of legislation as a moral agent. These per
sons hold the categorical opinion that you simply
cannot make people good by law — that you cannot
transform character by fiat! You may pass as many

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 213
laws as you please — you may establish any political
and industrial order that you may think wise — you
may bring in the Kingdom of God by legislative
enactment till the crack o' doom — but human nature
is still human nature, the bad man is still the bad
man and the vicious woman still the vicious woman,
and therefore all your laws must remain ineffectual
and all your elaborate social schemes go absolutely for
naught. Men are exactly the same men under the
laws of to-day, as they were under the laws of yester
day, and therefore the status of individual character
and the actual condition of morality remain to all
intents and purposes the same. Utopias -have been
established before now. More than one group of men
and women has come together, has adopted an ideal
code of law, and has then proceeded to show the world
how the fruits of the spirit flourished in such a favour
able legal climate. But every such community has
sooner or later broken down, for no other reason
under heaven than that men were men, and women
women, and its members therefore the same imperfect,
quarrelsome, jealous, ambitious, sinful persons within
the Utopia that they had been in the outside world
which knew nothing of perfect laws. The long and
short of the matter is that the problem of morals is a
problem not of society at all, but of the single individ
ual. The task of making people good is a task which
takes us not into the field of social order, but into
the field of spiritual purpose. The only way to
achieve any sure and lasting moral progress is to deal

214 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
direct with the human heart. We must take hold
of the individual man, and change his selfishness
into unselfishness, his greed into generosity, his hatred
into love — and this means not laws or statutes, not
executive decrees or judicial decisions, but the old
and well-tried processes of moral and religious edu
cation. If a man hates the good and loves the evil,
it makes little difference what we do in the line of legis
lation. He will still remain a creature of darkness and
not of light. And if a man loveth righteousness and
hateth iniquity, then again it makes little difference
what may or may not be our laws. This man will still
remain a son of God and a servant of all good. The
essential thing is the attitude of the soul — and this
can be strengthened in its good, or transformed from
evil into good, not by laws of any kind, but only by
those sweet and gracious influences of the spirit which
have ever played upon mankind in some degree or
other, and never wholly without avail.
An impressive illustration of this point of view
was furnished us not long ago, it so happened, by
a striking article in an issue of the Forum magazine,
by the well-known ex-Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, Mr.
Brand Whitlock, on that most discouraging and
appalling of all moral problems, the social evil. In
the discussion of the question as to what we can do
in the way of grappling with this evil, Mr. Whitlock
refers in scathing terms to the various vice commis
sions, which have been doing such systematic work in
recent years, and especially to the Chicago Vice

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 215
Commission, with its declaration that the social evil
must be met by a policy of " constant and persistent
repression," in the hope of an ultimate " annihilation
of prostitution." No one of these commissions, says
our author, (least of all the Chicago body,) has any
thing to recommend, after all their months of investi
gation and discussion, but more laws and a more rigid
and continuous enforcement of these laws. All
unattended boys and girls must be sent home by
the police at nine o'clock at night; there must be no
seats in the public parks in the shadows ; there must be
a special morals police squad to handle the traffickers in
this hideous trade; the sale of liquor in houses of ill-
fame must be prohibited; dance-halls must be regu
lated and guarded; steamboats, employment bureaus,
and lodging-houses must be more carefully inspected;
assignation hotels must be closed and kept closed!
These are the recommendations of our commissions,
says Mr. Whitlock — " more law and more hounding
by the police." And he goes on to give it as his opin
ion that such an appeal to legislation, for the solution
of this evil, is bound to fail to-day, just as it has always
failed " with all the machinery of all the laws of all the
lawgivers in history." Solon tried every device in
the Athens of his day, and failed completely to
accomplish anything. In Rome there were the sever
est repressive laws in all the ancient world, and yet
Gibbon tells us that immorality was always at its
height when the laws were most rigorous and their
enforcement the most terrible. Charlemagne tried

216 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
the same policy, and had to confess himself defeated.
Philip II, of Spain, tried to do what his father, Charles
V, had failed to do, but he found that his untiring
efforts were without avail. John Calvin in Geneva
was as remorseless in his treatment of prostitutes
as was Peter the Great in Russia, but the only result
of his inquisitions was to make Geneva the vilest city
in all of Europe. The English Puritans whipped
the prostitute, pilloried her, branded her, imprisoned
her, and for a second offence put her to death — but it
amounted all to nothing. And what are we doing at
this very moment, but following exactly the same
policy, along somewhat gentler and more humanita
rian lines? In every city in America prostitution is a
crime; and yet every police station in every one of
these cities has an accurate list of the houses of ill-
fame in its particular precinct, prostitutes are among
the most familiar figures upon our streets, and Mayor
Whitlock testifies to the fact that one night, when he
was in the night court of Toledo, he saw a magistrate
fine a street walker, and then suspend the fine so that
she might go out and " earn " enough money to pay
the fine!
Nothing that mankind has ever tried along these!
lines, says Mr. Whitlock, has been of the slightest avail
in solving the problem of prostitution. And what is
true in this case is true also in the case of such familiar
evils as gambling and drinking. The resort to law
and the enforcement of law is not only useless but
worse than useless. It not only fails, but time and

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 217
again it actually stimulates and intensifies the evil
which it is supposed to correct. In the great majority
of cases, of course, the law is not enforced. Where
an honest attempt is made at enforcement, it is
usually unsuccessful, and nothing more is accom
plished than to drive the evil to cover, where it flour
ishes more abundantly and under more dreadful
conditions than ever before. And in the few isolated
cases where the enforcement of the law is success
fully accomplished, the only result is to scatter the
evil into new places, whither the law and its
minions cannot follow. Thus do saloons ring the
border of a no-license town; thus does such a sup
pression of gambling as was achieved by Gov. Hughes
drive the gamblers into burglary, highway robbery,
white-slave trafficking, and other more terrible forms
of crime; thus does the closing of a house of prosti
tution drive the inmates into tenements, lodging-houses,
and apartments. Mr. Whitlock tells a wonderful story
in this connection of Golden Rule Jones, of Toledo.
Once during the mayoralty of this remarkable man,
he was visited by a committee of ladies and gentlemen,
with the demand that he obliterate the social evil, off
hand and instantly. These reformers were simple,
brief, and to the point. The laws were being broken,
and it was his duty to enforce them.
"But what am I to do with the women?" inquired
Mayor Jones.
" Have the police drive them out of town," was the
triumphant reply.

218 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
"But where shall I have the police drive them?"
persisted the Mayor. " Over to Detroit, or Cleveland,
or merely out into the country? They have got to go
somewhere, you know."
This was a detail of the business which had escaped
this delegation of citizens, and there was silence.
" I'll make you a proposition," continued Golden
Rule Jones, true as always to his name. " You go
and select two of the worst of the women, and I'll
agree to take them into my home and provide for
them until they can find some other way of making
a living. And then each one of you take one girl into
your home, under the same conditions. And then to
gether we'll try to find homes for the rest."
The men and women in the delegation looked at
him, says Mr. Whitlock, then looked at each other, and
seeing how utterly hopeless it was to deal with so
strange a man, they went away!
Now right here, in this episode, do we have the
whole issue, as it is seen at least by the man who
believes that you cannot make people good by law.
After you have passed all your legislation against
your evils, and then enforced the legislation to the
limit, there still remain to be considered the persons
who were engaged in these evils. The law has done
nothing whatsoever to change the character of these
persons, and make them better. It has simply
driven them from their familiar haunts, like the beetles
from a lifted stone; it has broken up their business
and their pleasure; and it has cast them out upon

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 219
the world, to pursue their evil practices in other
places and in other ways. They are the same kind of
persons, laws or no laws, enforcement or no enforce
ment; and they are going to continue to be the same
kind of persons, and live the same kind of lives,
without the law, or with the connivance of the law, or
in defiance of the law. Not one law which has ever
been passed in any age, and not one officer who has
ever been appointed to enforce this law, has ever made
an evil person good. It has simply neglected this
person, or outlawed him, or harried him, or persecuted
him, or destroyed him — and all for the sake, as Mayor
Gaynor used to put it, of " outward decency and
order." A more ineffectual policy, or, still worse, a
more cruel policy, cannot be imagined. In every
case of this kind, after all, it should be the people that
should interest us, and not the conditions surrounding
these people or produced by these people. And if
these people are ever to be saved, as well as the con
ditions changed, we must have resort to something
else besides law and its enforcement. Somehow or
other, the farther one penetrates into this problem
of morality, the nearer we seem to come to the human
soul as the kernel and core of the whole business;
and the more we listen for the right word of counsel,
the more clearly we begin to hear the far-off whis
per of the voice of God. Is not such a man as Dr.
Richard C. Cabot right, after all, when he says of
prostitution that it " can be attacked only in the
individual soul, and by the individual soul over-

220 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
mastered by God " ? And is not this same direct,
and personal, and divine remedy the final cure, not
only of prostitution, but of every spiritual ill to which
human flesh is heir?
There can be few persons who will not see, just as
I see, the cogency of this argument, and be inclined
therefore to accept the conclusion that people cannot
be made good by law, after all, and that all our enthusi
asm to-day for new and better legislation is a kind
of frenzied madness. What answer is there, for in
stance, to Brand Whitlock's simple historical state
ment that the policy of hostile legislation has had an
unbroken record of failure from Solon's day to our
own? What could be plainer than the psychology of
the principle that morality pertains to the inner life
of the soul and not to the outer life of the social order,
and that we must overcome evil with good, therefore,
by spiritual and not by social processes! And then,
too, even if these two facts were not quite as obvious
as they actually seem to be, must not our hearts be
touched by the cruelty which is involved in the policy
of passing a law against a certain evil, and then using
this law as a club to beat out the brains of a practi
tioner of this evil? Could anything be farther from
the spirit of Christianity, which finds its true expres
sion not in the old law, an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth, but in the new dispensation, " Neidier
do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more " ? Is not
Brand Whitlock right when he says of prostitution —
and practically of every other evil — " If the world is

.LEGISLATION AND MORALS 221
ever to solve this problem, it must ... do away
with its old laws, its old cruelties, its old brutalities,
its old stupidities, and approach the problem in that
human spirit which I suspect is so very near the divine.
Once in this spirit, society will be in a position to learn
something from history and from human experience,
and what it will learn first is that puritanical laws, the
hounding of the police, and all that sort of thing . . .
have never lessened prostitution, but on the contrary
have increased it. . . . Why is it constantly necessary
to do something to people? If we cannot do anything
for them, when are we going to learn to let them
alone? "
Now all this sounds very convincing, to say the
least. And yet I must confess that there is one very
quiet assumption involved in all this argument against
the efficacy of legislation as a moral agent, which makes
me hesitate to accept the conclusion which is offered.
I refer to the fact that, in all that is said by Brand
Whitlock and persons of his way of thinking upon
this question, it is assumed that the men and women
who are involved in these various evils, of which we
have been speaking, are bad in character and need
therefore, by some process of reformation, to be made
good. The very way in which these persons force
their opinion upon us, by asserting that " you cannot
make people good by law," shows that they believe that
there are certain people in the world who must be
made good, because they are now bad, and that the
repressive legislation which has been enacted and en-

222 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
forced in all the ages of the past is the method which
has been followed for effecting this great end.
Now as a matter of fact, if there is any one thing
which is becoming increasingly apparent in this great
age of ours, it is this — that, with very few exceptions,
there are no people in the world who can be set down
and classified from the very start as bad. For thou
sands of years, of course, we have been told by the
Christian church that everybody was conceived in sin
and born in iniquity, and that the whole problem of
life was that of saving souls Which were doomed to be
lost; and every field of thought has inevitably been
more or less influenced by this theological point of
view. We have had endless talk about incorrigible
children, and bad women, and criminal types; and
we still hear these human figures referred to in our
time as though they were actual realities and not pure
figments of the imagination, or nightmares of an igno
rant theology. But to-day, wherever the best thought
of our time has extended its influence, this idea that
there are any such realities as good people and bad
people has wholly disappeared, and we find it safest,
as well as most charitable, to talk about brothers, or
comrades, or children of God — or just simply peo
ple, without any descriptive adjectives whatsoever.
Take, for example, this very matter of prostitution,
about which we have just been speaking. What is more
remarkable, in the findings of these very vice com
missions, about which Brand Whitlock speaks so
slightingly in his article above referred to, than the

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 223
discovery that the women who make a living by selling
their bodies, are not bad women at all, as they have
been erroneously described for so many generations,
but just women, with the ordinary passions and
desires and weaknesses and problems of ordinary
women. At the great Brussels Conference for the
Prophylaxis of Syphilis and Venereal Diseases, held
in 1899, it was repeatedly stated that the number of
women who went into prostitution willingly, and re
mained in it when they had a chance to escape, was
astonishingly small. The Chicago Vice Commission
found many girls who were physically abnormal or
mentally subnormal, and a few who described them
selves as " born bad " or " actually immoral," but it
testified that the great majority of girls "were vic
tims of conditions and circumstances for which they
were less responsible than their families, their employ
ers, or the community." And this conclusion is ex
actly in accordance with the findings of Miss Maude
Miner, who is doing such remarkable work with way
ward girls in New York at Waverly House. " The
large number of these girls," she says, in the
Second Annual Report of her institution, " are not
guilty of moral obliquity because they are actually
bad, vicious, or depraved. In my work with girls
during the last five years, I can truthfully say that
I have seen very few who could be so classed. Many
have drifted into the life through weakness of will or
through domination by a stronger will. With the
larger number there seems little room for reasonable

224 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
doubt that their wrongdoing has been due to the condi
tions under which they live and work and play."
Another illustration of this same fact comes to us
from the field of juvenile delinquency. In the past it
has been almost universally assumed that children, or
the great majority of them at least, are naturally
depraved. I know of nothing more terrible in all the
history of humanity than the suffering which has been
deliberately and even conscientiously visited upon
little boys and little girls under the mistaken notion
that they were bad, and that their badness must be
whipped or starved or frightened out of them. Think
pf the little bodies that have been bruised, the little
minds that have been terrorised, the little hearts
that have been wounded and brutalised and broken,
all because we have thought these youngsters were
vicious. Now, however, thank God, all this super
stition is passing away. We know to-day that
children are just children, that is all, and that there is
not so much as a single naturally evil propensity in
any one of them, who is normally born. What men
have interpreted as incorrigibility is only ignorance,
curiosity, physical exuberance, animal spirits. " Boys
as such are never bad," says the well-known super
intendent of the Parental Republic in California.
" I have learned," he continues, " that the boys who
are called bad are simply the victims of circumstance
and environment." Judge Lindsey, of Denver, Colo
rado, bears constant witness to the same fact, and has
proved his faith in the case of hundreds of juvenile

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 225
delinquents who have come before hira for trial in the
Denver Court. And we all know, of course, of the
remarkable work of Dr. Barnado, who organised his
famous system for taking the boy criminals out of
the slums of the great cities of England, and sending
them to farms in Australia, South Africa, and Canada.
Nearly 50,000 apparently hopeless boys, morally
speaking, have been disposed of in this way, and in
their new surroundings less than two per cent, have
shown any tendency to revert to their earlier criminal
practices. And this same discovery, let me say, is just now
being made also in the real field of criminology. For
centuries, the mature criminal, like the bad woman,
or the incorrigible child, was regarded as wilfully
depraved, and as a result was treated with indescrib
able cruelty. In the nineteenth century came Lom-
broso, with his theory of "the criminal type," which
threw the responsibility back from the individual to
his family. To-day, however, we are rapidly abandon
ing this new idea of inheritance, along with the old
idea of moral depravity, as a general explanation of
criminality, and are coming to regard the criminal
as the victim not so much of heredity as of environ
ment. There are plenty of criminals, of course, who
are physically and mentally defective, just as there
is a sprinkling of criminals in every prison who are
out-and-out moral perverts. But the average crim
inal is a perfectly normal man, whose fate is wholly
to be explained by the fact that he has never had

226 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
a chance, or has been led astray by degrading and
corruptive influences. Take, for example, the typical
case cited by Prof. Scott Nearing in his valuable little
book on The Super Race. Here is a so-called criminal
in court, to answer to the charge of entering a lodging-
house and stealing three pairs of trousers and a coat.
On examining his record, it is found that last year he
attempted to steal an automobile, and before this had
served a two years' sentence for grand larceny. A
thoroughly bad man, we say ! But hold on a minute —
let us see what is the story of this man's life! On
making an investigation, it is discovered that he was
born in a wretched slum, and into a vile room up three
flights of dirty stairs in the rear of a tenement. His
father, a dock labourer, earned about $300 a year on
an average. Oftentimes, in periods of unusual stress
or occasional idleness, money would run out, the gro
cer would refuse credit, and the family would go
hungry. It was during one of these periods of semi-
starvation that this criminal, then an urchin nine
years old, stole a banana from a freight car, and was
sent to jail. He was confined with older criminals,
and speedily taught the art of pocket-picking and
shop-lifting. Released at the end of two months, and
having nothing to do and no place to go, he instinc
tively tried the tricks which he had learned as the
easiest means of keeping body and soul together.
Soon detected stealing a pocket-handkerchief, he was
returned to prison, and there took his post-graduate
course in the ways and means of professional crime.

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 227
What wonder that he is now here in the dock, con
fessing to the latest of the long series of his crimes,
and awaiting calmly the latest of his punishments !
Now right here, in such examples as these, which
are fast becoming the commonplaces of our time in the
fields of sociology and penology, do we have convinc
ing illustration of the fact, which I would impress upon
your minds at this point, that there are no people
who are wholly bad and who need therefore to be
made good by law, or religious education, or personal
influence, or any other system of reformation. Elimi
nating that small minority of persons, born in every
generation and in all walks of society, who are phy
sically abnormal, or mentally defective, or morally
degenerate, we can say of people generally that they
represent nothing more nor less than a mixture of
good and bad impulses. In every one of us there is
the downward tendency toward the life of physical
indulgence, selfish ambition, personal aggrandisement
and power; and in every one of us also there is
the upward tendency toward the life of devotion,
self-sacrifice, love — all that we know, in short, as
moral and spiritual idealism. There is no one of us so
good but what he has his inward struggles against
selfishness, deceit, and lust. There is no one of us
so bad but what he has his moments of noble striving
for the true, the beautiful, and the good. The best
of us embody the inherent possibilities of all that is in
the worst; and the worst of us contain the inherent
possibilities as well of all that is in the best. St.

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
Paul never wrote a truer word than when he depicted,
in his letter to the Romans, the awful struggle that
is going on in every one of us all the time between what
he called the flesh and the spirit.
Now it is people of this kind, who are both good
and bad, and not people who are wholly the one
thing or the other, who are being born into this world
of ours. Some of these people are born into an
environment of such a character that, from the very
earliest years on, they find every good impulse of their
natures fostered and encouraged, and every bad
impulse withered and repressed. Their homes are
full of sunshine and fresh air, abundantly provided
with food and clothing and similar necessities of life,
and radiant in every nook and corner with the bright
influences of affection, beauty, and quiet leisure. The
streets upon which they walk are clean; the schools
which they attend are uncrowded; the neighbourhoods
which they frequent and the companions with whom
they associate are far removed from every factor of
social life which is ugly, sordid, and debasing. As they
grow to early youth, they are introduced to art, litera
ture, and music; they are sent to colleges and uni
versities; and when at last they reach manhood or
womanhood, they venture forth upon life's highway
fully armed and equipped for the great adventure
which lies ahead. It is seldom that we find children,
reared under such social conditions as these, before the
bars of our juvenile courts; seldom that we find girls
who have thus been sheltered and nourished, walking

LEGISLATION AND MORALS
upon our city streets in quest of business ; seldom that
we find boys who have thus been trained and equipped
entering voluntarily upon a career of crime. And
the explanation is easy! It is not that these persons
are any better morally than other people — they are
normal, that is all! It is simply that, like flowers
planted in fertile soil and bathed in sunshine and
fresh air, they have known an environment which has
fostered all the good that there was in them, and
blighted all the bad. It is natural to be good under
such conditions — so natural, that when some unfor
tunate goes wrong, we find ourselves inevitably talking
about " bad eggs " and " black sheep."
But how is it with the people who are born amid
other circumstances — those hordes of men and women
in city slum and rural cottage who constitute the
great majority of humanity? These people, like these
others of whom I have just been speaking, find within
themselves the same natural mixture of good and bad.
But instead of being helped by the social conditions
into which they are born, and amid which they live
and work from day to day, they find, on the contrary,
that every influence is dead against them. Some
there are among these denizens of earth who are
born with indomitable and unconquerable wills, and
these succeed in winning out even against the most
terrific odds. And the world immediately does the
grossly inhuman thing of citing these exceptional
moral geniuses as proof that everybody can win out
in the economic and spiritual struggle, if they really

230 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
want to — as though everybody could be a Shake
speare, or a Napoleon, or a Lincoln, by simply trying
good and hard! The fact of the matter is that the
great majority of men and women are simply average,
that is all, and when they find themselves living in
an economic and social environment which is ugly,
unhealthy, and degrading, they go to pieces — first
physically, and then slowly but surely morally! Do
you wonder that the juvenile delinquents of Man
hattan, with very few exceptions, are all produced
by three specific neighbourhoods of the city, small in
area, but unspeakably congested in population? Do
you wonder that Miss Miner points out, as the most
significant thing in the whole problem of prostitution,
that " nearly all the girls " who go wrong are girls
who have had to earn their living, ill-prepared and
under unfavourable conditions? Do you wonder that
the great majority of criminals are men who come
from certain very definite strata of what we know
as the lower classes of the population? Born into
crowded homes which give no access to fresh air and
sunlight, and which are filled with dirt, disease, and
decay of every kind; denied clean and nourishing
and adequate food; neglected and abused by parents
Who are worn out by exhausting and ill-paid toil;
playing in dark tenements and dirty gutters and never
in green pastures and by still waters ; put to work in
sweatshop or factory or store at the very age when
freedom and joy are the natural accompaniments

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 231
of existence; living in small rooms crowded with
boarders as well as members of the family, where all
personal privacy and all standards of ordinary
decency are absolutely precluded; overwhelmed, in
short, from the very hour of birth, by all the condi
tions which grinding poverty makes inevitable in a
great city to-day — what wonder that they go wrong
sooner or later? What wonder that bad impulses
grow, and good impulses wither and disappear?
What wonder that the girls find it easy to become
prostitutes, and the boys find it easy to become
criminals? Why, when I consider the way the ma
jority of people in this world have to live, when I
consider the ceaseless struggle which they have to
make for bread, when I consider the things of beauty
and joy and love which they are denied from year's
end to year's end, when I consider the degrading
influences of physical depression, mental darkness, and
spiritual atrophy which assail them every moment of
every day — my wonder is not that so many of them
give way morally, but, on the contrary, that so many,
in spite of every adverse condition, actually succeed
in living pure, honest, upright, righteous lives. Do
you ask me if I believe in the divinity of human
nature? I answer, yes! And if you want to know
the grounds for my belief, I point you first of all not
to the classic achievements of the martyrs and the
saints and the heroes of ancient days, but to the
martyrs and the saints and the heroes of our own day,

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
who are facing the indescribable horrors of economic
dependence, and still, in spite of all, are keeping
sweet, brave, and true!
Now right here, in such facts as these, perhaps, do
we begin to come in sight at least of an answer to
our question about " Legislation and Morals," which is
very different from the one offered in the early part of
this discourse — an answer, indeed, which is as differ
ent as the question itself is now seen to be different.
There is no out-and-out problem here of taking a bad
man and making him good. If that has got to be done,
a surgical operation, a stay in a sanatorium, a visit to
a revival service, a course in moral education, a gift
of personal friendship, any one of these things may be
efficacious, according to the circumstances of each
particular case, but certainly not a new act of legis
lation. But the real question, I repeat, is not that of
making bad people good, but of taking ordinary,
everyday people, who are simply an average mixture
of good and bad desires, and giving them a decent
chance to do the right thing. Here are conditions
all about us, in this social life of ours, which are
certain on the one hand to weaken moral fibre and
wither spiritual desires, and on the other hand, to
tempt every frailty and foster every evil impulse.
To stand up straight under such conditions is difficult
and not easy — to stumble and fall under such condi
tions is easy and not difficult. If these depressing and
corrupting conditions were ineradicable, if they could
not be improved in any way, if they were rooted deep

LEGISLATION AND MORALS
in the unchanging order of things, we might try as
best we could to reconcile ourselves to the inevitable.
But these conditions are not ineradicable — they are
not beyond the possibilty and practicability of radical
improvement! They can be changed, and changed
not by relying upon the good-will of individuals, who
in the great majority of cases are helpless to do any
thing as individuals, but by relying upon the due
processes of law, which represent not only ^he good
will but the power of the community as a whole.
It is impossible for us, as single members of a com
munity, to wipe out slums and destroy tenements —
to secure parks and playgrounds and recreation centres
— to improve factory conditions and abolish the labour
of little children — to lower the hours of toil and raise
the wages of all workers, men and women alike — to
guarantee to every living soul an equal economic op
portunity, and a fair and even chance therefore in
the struggle for existence — to establish and maintain
such a social system that no one person shall be handi
capped, or morally tempted, and no person also unduly
protected and favoured. It is impossible for me to do
any one of these things alone, just as it is impossible
for you to do any one of these things alone. But it is
not impossible for you and me together to do these
things. And the only effective way for us to proceed,
in a government of law, is to see to it that the law
is expressive of our will in this particular, as it is,
or should be, in all others. And it is when we do this
very thing — abolish social conditions which destroy

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
life and corrupt morals, by passing and enforcing
tenement house laws, and health laws, and labour
laws, and factory laws, and pure food laws, and
minimum wage laws, and all the rest — it is then I
venture to assert that we are going a long ways in the
direction of making people good, or at least of pre
venting them from being bad, by law.
It is true, of course, that we cannot legislate mor
ality, but what we can do is legislate conditions that
foster morality. We cannot enact virtue by passing
laws, but we can enact conditions which make virtue
an infinitely easier and more natural thing than vice.
We cannot prevent men from yielding to temptation
by legislative action, but we can remove all unnecessary
temptations from them. We cannot by any law or
code or sign, by any legislative measure, executive
proclamation, or judicial decision, redeem a single lost
soul, but we can by one and all of these processes
prevent that soul from becoming lost in the beginning.
Nothing that we can tlo, through the machinery of
government, can prevent a woman from "becoming a
prostitute if she really prefers that life, or a man from
becoming a criminal, if he really desires to follow
that career. But much that we can do, through the
machinery of government, will make that deliberate
choice of evil as remote and hideous and indeed un
thinkable a thing as it is at this very moment in
the case of the boys and girls in your families and
mine. Human nature is easily influenced by its social
environment either upward or -downward. If our leg-

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 235
islation is wise and its enforcement rigid, we can create
an environment which shall influence human nature
always toward the good and never towards the evil.
And just to the extent that this is done, I venture
to assert that it is accurate to say that we are making
people good by law !
Here, now, is a very different answer to our ques
tion from that offered by Mr. Brand Whitlock and
those who think as he does. And yet I wonder, after
all, as I have already intimated, whether it is the
answers which are different, or the questions which
the two sides have been considering. In all that Mr.
Whitlock has said about the folly and impossibility of
trying to make people good by law, he has had in
mind the police laws which are aimed at punishing
people after they have committed their offences — and
I suppose that there is no one of us who would not
agree with what he has said about laws of this char
acter. But in all that we have been saying about the
wisdom and possibility of trying to make people good
by law, we have had in mind the social laws which
are aimed at eradicating the conditions which induce
people to commit offences in the beginning. Mr.
Whitlock and his associates have had in mind the
laws which punish the sinner, which are as old as
time and have an unbroken record of failure. We
have had in mind the laws which prevent the sin by
removing the occasion for the sin, which are as new as
the new era in which we are living, and, if the new
penology and sociology are proving anything, are fast

236 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
demonstrating their success. We have been talking
therefore about very different things, and I doubt,
after all, if we are so very far apart. I quoted Mr.
Whitlock, a few moments ago, as saying, you will
remember, Why is it constantly necessary to do some
thing to people? Why cannot we do something for
them? And what is this, I ask you, but the very
policy for which I am pleading? The one way to do
something for people — to help them to be brave and
strong and clean — is to give them a fair and honest
chance. This is what we can do, and are doing, by
our social legislation. And this it is which I have
in mind when I say that it is possible, indeed neces
sary, to make people good by law !
And it is this very discovery that legislation has
much to do with morals, which very largely explains, I
imagine, the social enthusiasm and social consecration
of oUr time. Our social reformers are not putting all
these laws upon the statute books, because they have
nothing better to do. They are not studying condi
tions and formulating legislation to meet these con
ditions, for the fun of it. On the contrary, they are
giving their lives to this great work of lawmaking
because they see that this is the road which leads
straightest and surest to the Kingdom of God on
earth. A great faith has in our time taken possession
of humanity — namely, that men can be, want to be,
and will be, good, if only they have a chance. A
great determination has in our time taken possession
of humanity — namely, that men shall have a chance to

LEGISLATION AND MORALS 237
be as good as they can be and want to be. The social
legislation of our time is at once the evidence of this
faith and the measure of this determination.

THE CRIME OF CASTE, OBL BARRIERS
TO BROTHERHOOD
I have more than once in my preaching laid it
down as a fundamental proposition that the whole
problem of human existence is none other than that
of finding a way of living together in peace and happi
ness in a common world. There is nothing particu
larly original or new about this idea. Jesus certainly
had it very distinctly in mind when he spoke of God
as a father, of men and women generally as the chil
dren of God's spirit, and of society as one family in
God. But it is a doctrine well-worth emphasising
now and then, all the same. Here we are the inhabi
tants of one little planet, moving on its way through
the spaces of the heavens like a ship upon its voyage
across the seas. No one of us can leave this planet
without perishing, any more than a passenger can
leave a vessel in mid-ocean without similar disaster.
No group of us can exterminate another group with
out bringing so great a flood of misery upon the world
that the victor is well nigh as great a sufferer as the
vanquished. We deceive and envy and abhor, we
hate and declare war and fight; but when each has
done his worst against the other to the point of ex
haustion, we meet in council, and do at the end what
might have been done just as easily in the beginning
— arrange the terms under which we shall live to-
238

THE CRIME OF CASTE 239
gether beneath one sky and upon one earth. Germany
is now striving its utmost to " strafe " England, Eng
land in turn is now straining every nerve to crush
and destroy Germany; but even though everything
else be uncertain, this at least is sure, that when the
war has been fought to its conclusion, England and
Germany will be found to be living in the same world
under terms that have been mutually agreed upon.
Living together, in other words, in some degree of
brotherhood, is the normal relationship of human ex
istence. As one writer has recently put it in the
Hibbert Journal, " Volcanoes may throw up their tons
of fiery matter, earthquakes make foundations shiver,
tempests turn the sea into rolling ridges, but all settles
again. So war and the pride of empire, blood and
iron and ' the will to power,' have their day of destruc
tive triumph; but they pass, and the friendly human
helpfulness rebuilds the ruin they have wrought."
It would seem now, in the face of such an un
doubted truism as this, that men would long since
have worked out a method of organisation which would
enable them to live together in some degree of peace
and harmony. It would not seem over-difficult to
find those principles of goodwill which are the con
ditions of fraternal association. Not only, however,
has this not been done, but the exact opposite seems to
have been more or less deliberately attempted. De
spairing of brotherhood, men seem to have made up
their minds that the only way to live together, para
doxical as it may sound, is to live apart ! Thus great

240 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
systems of government have been conceived on the
basis not of bringing men together into one great
family, but on the contrary of separating them into
certain carefully defined and rigidly circumscribed
classes, of castes. This is the theory of Plato in his
Republic. The Athenian philosopher had a perfectly
clear idea of the meaning and value of society — no
man, he declared, could realise his virtue in isolation.
But his ideal society, like the " omnis Gallia " of Julius
Caesar, was divided into three parts. In the first
place, there were " the philosophers," as he called
them, who constituted the intelligence of the commu
nity, and whose duty it was to rule. In the second
place, there were the warriors, who constituted the
power of the state, and whose duty it was to guard.
And lastly, there were the merchants, artisans, farm
ers, and slaves — the lower classes — whose duty it
was simply to serve and obey the rulers and guardians
who were above them. Every child was educated by
the state, and upon coming to maturity, was assigned
to that class for which, by native endowment, he
seemed to be best fitted. Once assigned, there was
no escape from one class to another, for the division
into the three castes, which I have named, was of the
most uncompromising character. " Any intermeddling
in the three classes," said Plato, " or any change
from one class to another, is the greatest harm to the
state, and may with perfect propriety be described
as evil-doing." *
1 See The Republic, Book IV, 434,

THE CRIME OF CASTE 241
But it is not only in books that such a division of
the social whole as this is seriously undertaken. In
dia to-day, as for unnumbered centuries in the past,
is the crowning example of all that we mean by
" caste " as contrasted with " brotherhood." Here do
we find society divided into four classes instead of
three, as in the Utopia of Plato. At the top are the
Brahmanas or philosophers, to whom are " assigned the
duties of reading the Vedas, of teaching, of sacrificing
of assisting others to sacrifice, of giving alms if they
be rich, and of receiving gifts if they be poor." Next
come the Kshatriyas, or soldiers, whose duties are " to
defend the people, to give alms, to sacrifice, and to
shun the allurements of sensual gratification." Then
come the Vaisyas, or farmers and merchants, who
" cultivate land, keep herds of cattle, carry on trade,
and lend at interest." And lastly, there are the Su-
dras, the great submerged, whose duty it is to " serve
the before-mentioned classes without depreciating
their worth." A passage in the Vedas speaks of
these separate groups under the analogy of the phys
ical organism. "When they divided man, how many
did they make him? " is the question. And to this
there comes the answer, " The Brahmana was his
mouth, the Kshatriya was made his arms, the Vaisya be
came his thighs, and the Sudra was born from his feet."
The difference between the Brahmana and the Sudra is
certainly as the difference between the head and the
feet. Thus, to cite a single example, whatever crime a
Brahmana may commit, his person and property are not

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
to be injured; but the goods of a Sudra may be seized
by a Brahmana at any time, and his person is always
in servitude. The gulf between the first three classes
of Hindus is deep and broad, and crossed only under
certain rigid restrictions of marriage and personal
association. Between these " wearers of the sacred
thread," however, and the fourth and lowest class, the
gulf is absolute. Once a Sudra, always a Sudra —
an outcast from the privileges of earth.
In such a hard-and-fast social organisation as this,
now, do we have what must be regarded as an open
contradiction of everything that we have come to mean
by human " brotherhood." Imperfect as are our ap
prehension and application of Christian ideals, it would
be as impossible to establish this caste system of India
in our western civilisation, as to substitute for the exist
ing constitution of New York State the constitution of
Plato's ideal republic. And yet how many and how
rigid are the class-distinctions which we recognise, and
how far therefore are we still removed from that family-
idea of which I spoke to you at the beginning. Go
to Europe to-day, when the heat of war seems to have
welded the people of each one of the belligerent coun
tries into a single mass of action and emotion, and
you will find on every side the survivals of the mediaeval
feudal system which once divided the king from the serf
as absolutely as the Brahmana is divided from the
Sudra. And even in this America of ours, the common
meeting-place of all the tribes of earth, the "melting-
pot " in which are merged the races, religions, nation-

THE CRIME OF CASTE 243
alities of five continents, there are appearing evidences
of class-distinction, class-feeling and class-struggle,
which may well make us tremble for the fate of our
beloved democracy. Not yet have we attained to the
accomplishment of a true society. Not yet do we
understand, in all its fulness, the great idea of a human
family. The Fatherhood of God is still a dogma —
the Brotherhood of Man is still a dream. We are a
caste people, and not a Christian people. And the con
ditions of our caste, the barriers to our Christian
brotherhood, are the things which I would discuss in
this address.
First of all among these conditions which divide one
man from another by the barrier of caste, is the fact of
colour. Strange, is it not, that so slight a thing as
the hue of a man's skin, should separate the human
family into alien and hostile groups ! Yet in all prob-
_ ability it is just here, in the chance complexion of a
face, that the very failure of the ideal of brotherhood
had its beginning. Certainly it is not without sig
nificance that the very ancient Hindu word for caste
is " varna," and that this word in its primitive form
means " colour." And just as it is interesting to note
that this cause of separation goes back to the very
origins of society, so also is it interesting to note that
it survives to-day, in all its pristine vigour, in that na
tion which is the youngest of all the great nations of
the modern world, and which has done more than any
other, perhaps, to wipe out unworthy and unreason
able distinctions between men. The United States is

244 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY,
here the great offender — not because the citizens of the
United States are naturally more prejudiced in this di
rection than other men, but rather because there are
conditions in the United States which pertain in no
other portion of the habitable globe. In those coun
tries where white men predominate, there are not enough
black men or yellow men to constitute a problem ; and
vice versa, in those countries where black men or yellow
men predominate, there are not enough white men to
constitute a problem. It is only in the United States
that the races stand face to face in numbers upon both
sides that are formidable, and as a consequence present
for solution such a problem of racial adjustment as
the world has never before encountered in all its cen
turies of history. So long as the black man was in
slavery, of course, the problem of relationship did not
exist, any more than there exists to-day a problem of
the relations between a man and a horse. The Negro
was a beast of burden, a piece of property, a labour
machine — and there the thing began and ended.
When, however, the Negro was emancipated, and thus
lifted by a single stroke of the pen of Abraham Lincoln,
to the high dignity of manhood, there came a different
situation upon the instant. In the beginning of this
new period of history, when the Republican leaders
were in the saddle, there was an endeavour to extend
to the freedman the privileges of citizenship, and thus
admit him, so to speak, to the bosom of the political
family. With the failure of this endeavour and the re
sulting restoration of self-government in the South, the

THE CRIME OF CASTE 245
Negro was thrust down, by one device or another, into
the position of an inferior; and he stands to-day just
as truly a member of a caste as any of the Sudras of
distant India. All the restrictions of the caste system
upon marriage, upon the professions, upon social inter
course, especially that implied in eating and drinking,
are here definitely established. Furthermore, that pe
culiarly loathsome feature of caste society in Europe —
the Ghetto — is here finding its beginnings in the segre
gation ordinances, which confine the residences of Ne
groes to certain wards of a city, or certain counties of
a state. And then in addition, there are developing
here, in the relations between whites and blacks, cer
tain new features of outlawry which are altogether
distinctive of America. Such are the familiar " Jim
Crow " laws, separating the races as they travel in
public conveyances — the laws denying the Negro ad
mission to schools, libraries, theatres, and public parks
— the laws excluding the Negro as a Negro from the
privileges of the ballot — the laws forbidding to the
Negro equal rights of property, business opportunity,
and personal liberty. Hard as it is to reconcile with
the ideals of our government and our religion, the cold,
hard fact still remains that the black man in this " land
of the free and the home of the brave," in this year
of our Lord 1916, is branded as an alien, cast down
as an inferior, refused admission into the political and
spiritual household of America. By every law that can
be enacted, by every custom that can be imagined, he
is denied that equal opportunity of "life, liberty and

246 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
happiness," which is granted to the humblest of the
white men who come to our shores from the nations of
Europe. In large portions of the South, the Negroes,
if not actual slaves, are certainly not even peasants;
rather are they peons or serfs, who exist like the masses
of the Middle Ages by the grace and at the behest of
the rulers of the land. All of which means that we have
already, well-developed, the conditions of a caste system
of society. Like the Jews and Samaritans of ancient
Palestine, the whites have no dealings with the blacks !
Now as one who was bred in the State of Massa
chusetts, and who has coursing in his veins the blood
of two generations of abolitionists, I was for many
years an unrelenting critic of our southern fellow-cit
izens whom I held to be largely responsible for these con
ditions. As time has gone on, however, and I have
grown a little older, I have gradually become more char
itable in my judgment — for two reasons at the very
least. In the first place, I have observed that the
northerner, who talks so much about justice for the
black man, develops exactly the same attitude toward
the Negro population as the southerner whenever and
wherever that population becomes numerous enough to
constitute a social and industrial problem. It is not
too much to assert that in many ways the lot of the
Negro in certain portions of the North to-day is con
siderably harder than it is in the South. And in the
second place, I have observed with great interest in
recent years the development in California of the same
colour problem which has long existed in Alabama, Mis-

THE CRIME OF CASTE 247
sissippi and adjacent states, with the single exception
that the colour in this case is yellow and not black. In
other words, our southern fellow-citizen is not different
in any way from the rest of us in other sections of the
country. We are human, every one, which means in this
particular case that we all proceed to do exactly what
he has done when we find ourselves face to face with the
problem of the colour-line. Wherefore does it behoove
us very carefully to heed the injunction, that we " judge
not, that (we) be not judged."
But while my attitude toward the persons who are
involved in this direful problem, has changed very
greatly in recent years, my attitude toward the problem
itself remains to-day what it has always been. To out
law a man from our society, to close to him our in
stitutions and professions, to stamp him forever with
the brand of inferiority, because of a personal char
acteristic for which he is not responsible, which he
cannot change, and which has no remotest connection of
any kind with his essential character as a man, is to
my mind not only ridiculous but wicked. It is as ab
surd and unjust to doom one man to social degradation
because his skin chances to be black or perhaps yellow,
as it would be to doom another man to similar degrada
tion because he chanced to have red hair, or carry a
mole upon his cheek. In neither case is any attention
paid to those qualities which are essential to the dig*
nity of manhood; and in both cases is condemnation
passed upon an entire group of persons, without re
gard for individual exceptions. As to whether the dark

248 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
races are equal, from the intellectual and moral point
of view, to the white race, I do not know. There
are plenty of scholars who assert that they are not;
there are other scholars, like Prof. Boas of Columbia,
for example, who declare most emphatically that they
are. For myself, when I see the marvellous progress
which the Negroes have made in this country during
the last half century under the most serious disad
vantages ; when I consider the men whom they have pro
duced — prophets like Frederick Douglas, statesmen
like Booker Washington, educators like Major Moton,
poets like Paul Lawrence Dunbar, scholars like Prof.
DuBois, musicians like Samuel Tayler Coleridge — and
then, when I look across the seas to the Empire of
the Mikado and see what the Japanese have done in the
space of a generation, I am tempted to believe that the
colour of the skin has little to do with the basic ele
ments of genius and character. But in neither case
does this question touch the real heart of our problem.
If the coloured races are equal to the white, they are
entitled, of course, to equal opportunity with the white.
If, on the other hand, the coloured races are inferior
to the white, then are they entitled by way of compen
sation to something more than equal opportunity. But
the important thing to note is, as Edmund Burke points
out in his famous speech on Conciliation with America,
that there is no just method of drawing up " an indict
ment against a whole people." It is a crime to thrust
down an entire group of persons into a pit of degrada
tion, from which no escape in individual cases is toler-

THE CRIME OF CASTE 249
ated. Inferior or not inferior, the way must be kept
wide open for every black man and yellow man, like
every white man, to attain the utmost fulfilment of his
powers under the most favourable circumstances; and
when such fulfilment has been realised, personal recog
nition and association must be granted as freely in the
one case as in the other. It is not surprising, to my
mind, that, when the apostle Philip was ordered by " an
angel of the Lord " to " go toward the south . . . from
Jerusalem to Gaza," and discovered that his mission
was to " a man of Ethiopia," he " preached Jesus " unto
the Negro as freely as though he were a white man, and
going side by side with him into the water, baptised him
gladly in the name of the Lord !
Turning now from the castes which are established
on the line of colour, I come to a second barrier to
brotherhood — namely, that of creed. If it is surpris
ing that one man should refuse to have anything to
do with another man, because of the colour of his skin,
it is even more surprising, to my mind, that he should
refuse to have dealings with him because of the char
acter of his opinions. And yet, as a plain matter of
history, nothing has created such bitterness between
man and man, and thus dug such wide and deep gulfs
of separation, as matters of political and theological
belief. Examples of this kind of caste organisation,
on the basis of creeds, are so abundant as to be well-
nigh embarrassing. But we do not have to look very
far for that particular example which is most signifi
cant and terrible. I refer of course to the endless

250 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
persecution of the Jews by those who acclaim themselves
the followers of the gentle Nazarene.
I suppose that, in all fairness, we must say that the
Jews are not wholly unresponsible for the conditions of
caste-life which have been their destiny in all ages of
Christian history. There is no question but what the
Jew's belief in his unique character as " the chosen
people " of the Lord, his rigid fidelity to his own pecul
iar customs of daily life, his steadfast refusal to as
similate in any fashion with the people among whom his
lot has been cast, have all played their part in bringing
down upon his devoted head such a storm of hatred and
abuse as has been borne by no other single people since
the beginning of the world. But when you have said the
most and the worst that can be said about the exclusive
ness of the Jew, you have left altogether untouched that
thing which is the central factor in the persecutions of
outlawry and death which he has suffered. At the heart
of the whole wretched business is the resentment of the
Christian against the Jews' repudiation of Jesus, and
the determination of the Christian to wreak vengeance
upon those whom he regards as spiritually guilty of
the Master's crucifixion. Nothing is too bad for the
man who believes what the Jew believes, and does what
the Jew is not unwilling to do. Therefore is this
unhappy people cast altogether out of the circle of
Christian charity. They are thrust into nameless
Ghettos, burdened with legal disabilities, outraged in
property and in person. Again and again, as in Spain
in the Middle Ages, they are expelled from their homes

THE CRIME OF CASTE 251
and driven into wildernesses and deserts. Again and
again, as in Russia yesterday, they are set upon by
the Black Hundreds, and murdered, men, women, and
children, in cold blood. Again and again, as in the
Great War at this present time, they are the playthings
of contending armies — the folk whom none may de
fend, and all may plunder and destroy. To us here in
America, these things seem far away and therefore as
unreal as a parable or legend. We cannot imagine suf
fering such horrors as these which have been the bread
and meat of the tribes of Judah for centuries gone by —
much less can we imagine inflicting such horrors upon
others, even Jews. And yet, in our feeble and timid
way, are we not ourselves persecutors, and under the
conditions of our free democracy, do we not do all that
in us lies to reduce our Hebrew brethren to the condition
of a " despised and rejected " caste? In how many of
the high-toned clubs of New York, are Jews admitted on
the same terms as Gentiles? In how many of our sum
mer hotels can a man of Hebrew extraction find hospi
tality? In how many of our colleges are Jewish boys
received by their fellow-students without discrimina
tion? Why is that when Mr. Brandeis is appointed to
the bench of the Supreme Court by President Wilson,
it is regarded as a matter of great public importance
that this lawyer is a Jew? In America, as in Russia,
the Jews compose a caste, and receive all the disabilities
and degradations which belong to such a position. To
the limit of our daring, and within the recognised re
straints of our law and custom, we scorn these people,

252 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
spit upon them, outlaw them. In New York as in
Kishinieff there is a Ghetto — and the difference in its
character is the difference not between the feelings of
Americans and Russians, but between the weapons of
persecution which are employed.
But it is not merely of the Jews that I would speak
in illustration of the kind of caste that exists on the
basis of religious creed. Let me ask you what we are
to think about the agitation which springs up peri
odically in this country, as in other Protestant coun
tries, against our brethren of the Roman Catholic
Church? The nature of this agitation I need not de
scribe at any length. It takes the form of such a news
paper as The Menace. It conducts secret and un
scrupulous campaigns against candidates for political
office who are guilty of the crime of being Catholics.
Once in a while it breaks out openly in such an organisa
tion as the American Protective Association, of unholy
memory. But always its purpose is the same — to
brand the Romanist with the brand of Cain, and make
him " a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth." And all
on the ground, forsooth, that the Roman priesthood is
corrupt, that the Roman hierarchy is secretly hostile
to our American democracy, and that no man can hon
estly be an American and a Romanist at the same time !
Now that the Catholic clergy are far from perfect I
can readily believe; that the Catholic Church in spirit
and in principle represents the exact antithesis of the
free, progressive ideals of America, I must admit; and
that I, as an individual, could not be an American and

THE CRIME OF CASTE 253
a Catholic at one and the same time, I cannot deny.
But that every priest is a sinner after the flesh, and
every Catholic layman is a secret traitor, I frankly
find it impossible to believe. If I had no other evidence
before my eyes than the history of Catholicism since
this war started — the refusal of Pius X to bless the
arms of Austria, and his death from a broken heart over
his failure to prevent war, the unfaltering fidelity of his
successor, Benedict, to the universal ideals of his church
— the noble letters of Cardinal Mercier in protest
against the German violations of Belgium — the won
derful appeal of the Belgian clergy to their colleagues
of the Empire — if I had no other evidence than this, I
would have enough to confute the movement in this
country to reduce the Catholics to the condition of
pariahs. After all, I cannot get away from the idea
that Catholics, after the analogy of Jews and Negroes,
are Americans before they are Catholics, and men be
fore they are Americans. There are fundamental hu
man qualities in us all — and among these qualities are
" love, joy, peace, long-suffering, prudence, gentleness,
faithfulness, meekness, temperance," against all of
which, we are told, " there is no law." A man is not
deprived of these qualities, if he is born a Catholic,
neither does he put aside these qualities, if he becomes a
Catholic. Nothing is more ineradicable within us than
our humanity. Everything else is superficial in com
parison. See this, trust this, rest in this — and behold,
the caste of Catholicism, like the caste of colour, be
comes intolerable. " Beloved, now (at bottom), we are

254 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
the sons of God," and it doth not greatly matter what,
aside from this, we may or may not be !
But it is not in colour and creed only that we find the
conditions of what I have ventured to call the crime of
caste. Fully as important as either one of these con
ditions which I have mentioned, at least from the stand
point of the future, are the class distinctions which di
vide men on the basis of occupation or social standing.
In Europe, these distinctions, as we know them to-day,
had their origin in that feudal system which was the only
government that the peoples of the continent knew
for a period of at least five hundred years. At the
top was the king, with the great company of princes,
dukes, and bishops of the land. Then came the more
or less independent burghers, in the various ranks of
merchants, artisans and apprentices. Beneath these
were the free peasants. And then came that great
mass of serfs who were attached to the soil, and thus
were little better than slaves. In the heyday of its
prosperity, this was a system of caste almost as rigid as
that of India ; and it is interesting to note how, in this
late age, when feudalism as a form of government has
long since disappeared, the outlines of the system still
survive. Take England, for example. Here at the top
are the lords — dukes, counts, barons, almost without
number — who live on the land, monopolise the offices of
the army, and enjoy all to themselves the upper of the
two houses of the imperial legislature. Then come the
bankers, manufacturers, brewers, and professional men
who enjoyed, until a comparatively few years ago, al-

THE CRIME OF CASTE 255
most a monopoly of the House of Commons. Then
comes what is known as the great middle class — the
traders and small merchants, who are themselves divided
into various subsidiary classes. Thus, in a drama of
English life recently produced in this country, a certain
character, on the occasion of her marriage, begins at
once to " lord it " over her sisters, and when asked for
an explanation of her pride, points out with great
emphasis that, whereas her sisters are still the daughters
of a retailer, she is now become the wife of a wholesaler,
which unquestionably makes all the difference in the
world ! Then below the traders come the labourers and
farmers. And last of all, that unhappiest of English
classes outside the wretched dregs of the city slums, the
starving agricultural labourers of the country-side.
The rapid extension of democracy in England in
recent years has, of course, done a great deal in the
way of tearing down the barriers of separation be
tween certain of these classes which I have just now
described. What is even more important in this direc
tion, however, is the development within the last one
hundred years of what we know to-day as capitalism,
which is redistributing all the ancient classes of society
into the two hitherto unknown classes of capitalist or
employer on the one hand, and labourer or employe on
the other. And it is here, in this new division of the
social whole, that class as a condition of caste organisa
tion is becoming manifest in our own country. America,
of course, has never known the distinction between lords
and commons, or burgher and peasant. For a time

256 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
there was practically no difference between capitalist
and labourer, so few in the early days were accumula
tions of capital and so free the conditions of advance
ment from one status to the other. But to-day all this
is changed. In America, exactly as in England and
France and Germany, the development of class-con
sciousness between employer and employe has been the
most important historical event of our time. To a
greater extent than most of us realise, I believe, we
are developing, in all our capitalistic countries, a gulf
of separation between those who invest and those who
labour, which means a caste organisation of the most
threatening description. That this gulf, if allowed to
widen, means the death of our democracy, and the end
sooner or later of our civilisation, are among the least
of the dreadful prophecies that must be made about it.
And just in this one fact is the light that burns as
clear as a beacon in the darkness of the labour-struggles
of our time. These struggles are interpreted again and
again as the selfish attack of the have-nots upon the
haves — as a blind endeavour of the proletariat to seize
the riches which they themselves have been unable to
earn, and which they envy in the hands of others —
as a mad expression of the lust and cruelty which are
latent in the heart of the primitive man. At bottom,
however, there is something far deeper and finer than
anything of this kind. In its naked reality, this labour
struggle is nothing in the world but an instinctive revolt
against the doom of caste — it is a passionate sac
rifice for the ideal of brotherhood. It is only the

THE CRIME OF CASTE 257
latest and, in some ways, the mightiest of the battles
which man has been fighting since the beginning of the
world to tear down the artificial barriers which cut him
off from brotherly relations with his fellows. At one
time, it was the fight of the slave against the master ;
then it was the fight of the subject against the king;
now in our time it is the fight of the labourer against
the capitalist. And always, in every form, is it the
fight to tear down what divides, to smite the fetters of
caste, to establish a veritable family of brethren. If it
is true that the few are plucked down from their high
estate, it is also true that the many are lifted up from
the pits of degradation in which they languish. And
always is the resultant redistribution of society on the
common level of equal opportunity and power, the salva
tion of the race. The caste of colour and of creed are
bad enough, heaven knows ; but neither one of these
conditions of alienation, to my mind, is so fatal to
human welfare as the class distinctions between high
and low, great and small, capitalist and labourer, em
ployer and employe. Our labour battle is terrible —
it is an indictment of our intelligence and goodwill
as a people that we solve this problem in no more
wholesome and happy way. But infinitely better is
this struggle, than the slow hardening of our two
great social classes into the castes of the rich and of
the poor. Better the earthquake than the glacier —
better the throes of birth to newness of life than the
still, cold torpor of perpetual death !
This brings me to the last barrier of brotherhood

258 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of which I would speak in this address — namely,
the barrier of wealth, or, as I would like to call it,
somewhat vulgarly perhaps, the barrier of cash. It
would seem at first sight, perhaps, as though this
condition or line of caste were the least harmful of
any that I have mentioned. And yet I must admit,
for my own part at least, that this is the one of all
the four, of which I have the most unsatisfactory
understanding, and with which most certainly, I have
the slightest sympathy. Thus, I think I know what
is meant by a sincere person who argues, not from
prejudice but from science, that the Negro is a human
of an inferior type, and is to be regarded therefore as
a menace to a white civilisation. I am sure that I un
derstand the attitude of my friend who declares that
it is quite impossible for the American democracy and
the Catholic hierarchy to exist together side by side
within the borders of the same land. I am confident
that I can enter into the mind and heart of the man
who condemns the activities of labour, and regards the
subjection of labour to capital as the condition of a
stable society. All of these positions I can understand
and even sympathise with — although no one of them,
as I have shown, is my own. But when I come to
the man who bases his claims for superiority not
on the character of his race, or the truth of his
creed, or the prestige of his class, but on the mere sum
of money which he possesses — money which he may
have made himself, but which is quite as likely to be the
earnings of other hands — money which may be the fruit

THE CRIME OF CASTE 259
of honest labour or skilful administration or inventive
genius, but is quite as likely to be the product of luck
or out-and-out robbery — > money which may be used as
an instrument of love, and thus to the blessing of man
kind, but may quite as easily be used as an instru
ment of power, and thus to the despoiling of man
kind — I find a man with whom it is almost impossible
for me to sympathise. Just as there is nothing so de
lightful as the man who, with large wealth in his pos
session, remains an essential democrat, scornful of the
false distinctions which he might purchase with his
money — so is there nothing, to my mind, quite so
loathsome as the man, or the woman for that matter,
who on the basis of nothing in the world but cash as
sumes the power of leadership and social control. We
all of us recognise the especially unworthy character of
this type of caste — hence our contempt for the " fads
and fancies " of the nouveau riche, our hatred of the
snob and the cad, and our persistent refusal to take
seriously a so-called " society " here in America which,
in contrast to the lordly society of England or of
France, rests upon no prouder foundation than that
of the money coined out of oil-wells, hogs, or steel-
rails. Whenever I look upon these aristocrats of cash
who never lift anything heavier than a cigarette or a
golf-club, or give their minds to anything more impor
tant than steering a yacht, whose chief boast is that
they never did a day's work in their lives, and whose one
particular horror is that of association with the " great
unwashed " — I always find myself thinking of Shake-

260 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
speare the poor player, of Robert Burns the peasant
ploughman, of Abraham Lincoln the ignorant rail-split
ter, of Thomas Edison the train-boy, of Jesus of Naz
areth the carpenter ! The whole trouble with this mat
ter of cash, as a condition of caste, is that it fails
to touch, even remotely, those things which really con
stitute what we mean by manhood and womanhood.
If there is anything that is alien to the glories of the
spirit, it is this purely material talisman known as
money. There are rich men who are men in every sense
of the word — there are poor men who are men in
every sense of the word. But the manhood in each
case is something altogether apart from the accident
of cash. And yet it is this which comes nearer to
constituting what we know as caste here in America
than anything else which could be named. So far
as we have any aristocracy in this country, it is an
aristocracy not of brains as in India, not of birth as
in England, not of achievement as in France, but of
that sordid thing, money. Here more truly than in
the twelve millions of our Negroes, the fifteen millions
of our Catholics, the thirty millions of our labourers,
here, in these little groups of the " four hundred," in
this city or in that, is the real menace to our civilisation.
The worship of money, with its resulting caste of cash,
ruined the Roman Empire, and it is not inconceivable
that it may yet ruin the American democracy.
Such are the lines of caste — the barriers to
brotherhood — which I would emphasise. It must
have become evident to you, as I described each one,

THE CRIME OF CASTE 261
that the same great evil is inherent in them all. It
makes no difference whether it be colour, or creed,
or class, or cash — we have in each case a distinction
between man and man, which recognises as important
that which is superficial, accidental, or temporary, and
ignores as of no concern that which is fundamental, es
sential, and eternal. It is only when we look at the
surface of things that we can divide men into groups
and rate them as superiors and inferiors. When we
pierce beneath the surface, and come face to face with
the realities of life, we see that men are simply men,
endowed with the same abilities, burdened by the same
woes, beset by the same temptations, doomed to the same
destiny. What Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice,
says of the Jew, must be said of every despised race
of humankind. " Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a
Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas
sions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weap
ons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same
means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and
winter, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not
bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? "
Humanity, with all its common goods and ills — this,
after all, is the only thing that counts. And there is
but one caste which is consistent with this — namely,
the caste of character. " The good, the kind, the brave,
the sweet " — these are the superior ones of earth. And
behold, the paradox ! that this very distinction of soul
which separates these men and women from their fel-

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
lows, in a great aristocracy of the spirit, unites them
again to all their kind by the bond of joyful love. " He
that is greatest among you shall be your servant."
To be great, is to be lowly — to be exalted, is to be
humble — '- to be the son of God, is to be the brother of
mankind. That caste, therefore, is alone valid, which -
conquers caste. That aristocracy is alone just which
is democracy.
" Then, brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother !
For where love dwells, the peace of God is there,
To worship rightly is to love each other;
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer."

THE WAR

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS
These are few questions which have been more widely
discussed among church historians and theologians in
recent years than the question as to what is the greatest
of the blessings which Christianity has conferred upon
the human race. The answers to this question have at
times been various, but in nearly every case the con
clusion has been reached, sooner or later, that this bless
ing is an idea, and that this idea is to be found in the
great conception of the sanctity of human life. Mr.
Lecky, in his History of European Morals, puts this
sublime idea first among what he calls " the priceless
blessings (which) European civilisation (has) bestowed
upon mankind " ; and all competent authorities, with
whom I chance to be acquainted, are in agreement with
him upon this point.
If we seek the origin or cause of this idea, we shall
find it without any question in the revolutionary inter
pretation of human nature which was inherent in the
teachings of Jesus and his immediate successors. Pre
vious to the advent of the Nazarene, men were regarded
almost exclusively in the mass, and were therefore looked
upon as having little or no significance as individuals.
Of course there were always certain favoured men, like
the kings and the priests, who were set apart as chosen
beings, and sometimes regarded as divine. But the vast
majority of mankind were never raised to any dignity
265

266 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
of recognition or of power. They were simply the
common herd — the hoi polloi, as the Greeks called them
— " the hewers of wood and the drawers of water," as
they are described in the Old Testament. As contrasted
with the kings and princes, they were like so many ani
mals, conveniently provided for the service of the
great ones of the earth, and in themselves of no more
distinctive value than " the ox (which) knoweth his
owner," and " the ass (which knoweth) his master's
crib." Plato, the greatest teacher of antiquity, inter
prets this whole idea of human nature with marvellous
clearness, in the parable which appears at the close of
the third book of the Republic. All men, he says, were
fashioned in the bowels of the earth, " from whence, as
soon as they were thoroughly elaborated, the earth, their
common mother, sent them to its surface." In the com
position of some few of these men, the gods mixed gold ;
and these are the ones who are of " the highest value "
and therefore competent to rule. In the composition
of others, the gods made silver an ingredient ; and these
are the ones who compose the class of guardians or
soldiers, who are charged with the task of protecting the
state from invasion. In the composition of the great
mass of men, however, there is involved no nobler ingredi
ent than that of iron or copper. These men therefore
are of little or no value, and must be doomed to the
degradation of toil in the field or at the workbench.
The rulers, says Plato, must " observe nothing more
closely . . . than the children that are born, to see
which of these metals enters into the composition of

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 267
their souls ; and whenever a child is born . . . with an
alloy of copper or iron, they are to have no manner of
pity upon it, but giving it the value (or lack of value)
that belongs to its nature, they are to thrust it away
into the class of artisans or agriculturists."
Now it was into a world, the finest mind of which
could reach no loftier conception of human nature
and human destiny than this, that there came the revo
lutionary ideas of Christianity. At the bottom of them
all was Jesus's fundamental conception of God as the
loving father of the race, and of men as the children of
his holy spirit. This divine relationship, which was
represented as belonging to all men, and not merely
to the disciples or even to the Jews, at once, of course,
put the precious gold, to use the Platonic phraseology,
into the composition of every human being, however
humble or insignificant from the worldly point of view ;
and thus inevitably gave a value to human nature in
every form and under every condition which it had
never had before. Every man was now raised to the
dignity of a child of God. Every man was now as
sured of his appropriate share of the love and care of
God. Every man was now infinitely precious in the
sight of God, even though he seemed to his fellow-
mortals to be of no more worth than the dirt under
their feet. Again and again did the Nazarene empha
sise the fact, as though he knew that it was difficult
for his contemporaries to understand, that even the
least among the sons of men were to be cherished and
not despised. " See that ye despise not one of these

268 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
little ones " — " It is not the will of your Father which
is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish "
— " Verily I say unto you that inasmuch as ye did it
not unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did
it not unto me " — these are among the most character
istic, as well as the most beautiful, of the sayings of
the Master.
Exactly this same point of view as to the worth of
human nature, is found in the letters of Paul, although
the language in which it is expressed is that of the
theologian rather than that of the popular teacher.
To Paul, even as to Jesus, all men are " the off
spring of God," and therefore of divine lineage. What
the Apostle to the Gentiles adds to the doctrine of the
Nazarene is the whole conception of the Atonement, by
which the worth of even the humblest and most sinful
individual is represented as so great that the sacrifice
of the Son bf God upon the cross of Calvary was
not too high a price to pay for his redemption. St.
John sets forth this same doctrine in his famous state
ment that " God so loved the world," — by which is
meant of course the people in the world — " that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
on him should not perish, but should have eternal life."
Other statements of this same idea are numerous. But
they all come down to exactly the same proposition, that
all men are related to God and thus have a spiritual
significance which is incalculable. They are divine be
ings, destined to immortality, " united to one another by
a special community of redemption." Not one can be

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 269
spared from the divine plan. Not one can be " cast
as rubbish to the void." The most wretched beggar at
the gate, like the most benighted heathen in a distant
land, has an eternal significance in his life which far
outruns anything that eye hath seen, or ear heard, or
the heart of man conceived. Every human creature is
made of gold, and therefore is every human creature,
like the favoured governors in Plato's ideal society, of
" the highest value."
It was out of this revolutionary conception of human
nature that there grew up that distinctively Christian
idea of the sanctity of human life, which constitutes,
as I have said, the greatest blessing that Christianity
has conferred upon mankind. What this regard for
human life really meant for the safeguarding of the
higher interests of the race was illustrated at the
very opening of Christian history, by the startling
declaration that it is a sin for one man to kill another
man for his amusement, or convenience, or the gratifica
tion of any selfish motive whatsoever.
That this idea was to all intents and purposes a
discovery of Christianity is conclusively shown by the
fact that never, in any part of the world or among
any race of men, has nature provided any instinctive
promptings in this direction. In the early stages of
barbarism, of course, man was little better than an
animal, and therefore was as ruthless and bloodthirsty
in his dealings with his fellows as any tiger of the
jungle. But what is surprising for us of this present
day to discover is that, even in well-ordered and

270 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
highly developed societies, where moral principles and
spiritual ideals have not been by any means unrecog
nised, there has been little if any improvement in this
direction. Among the noblest peoples of antiquity,
as also among some of our own ancestors of fairly
recent times, the wanton and indiscriminate killing of
men of some particular class or nation has been re
garded with no more compunction than the killing of
animals in the chase. The Greeks, who built the
Parthenon, and carved the Apollo Belvidere, slaugh
tered the "barbarians," as they called all foreigners,
whom they took captive in battle, with the same
indifference that they slaughtered beasts within the
shambles. The Romans put the populations of con
quered cities to the sword without a thought, killed
their slaves like so much vermin, and butchered
gladiators by the thousands to make a holiday. And
what the early Spanish conquerors did to the natives
of Mexico and Peru cannot be told upon the pages of
history, for the very horror of the telling.
Nor is it only the baser individuals or the unthink
ing multitudes who have been thus guilty of what we
would regard to-day as the most hideous kind of
cruelty. On the contrary, the best men of the times,
those who in all other respects must be regarded as
conspicuous for their humanity, have been the very
ones who have supported the violent destruction of
human life and themselves oftentimes engaged in the
practice. Thus Samuel, as we are told, was outraged
by the kindness of Saul in sparing the lives of the

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 271
captured Agag and his Amalekites, and himself seized
the conqueror's sword and " hewed Agag in pieces
before the Lord." Plato described infanticide, or
the exposure of unwelcome and unfit infants, as not
only a defensible but a commendable practice. Cato,
" the noblest Roman of them all," always got rid of
his aged and useless slaves by selling them to some
slave-driver who was willing to beat the last few
ounces of strength out of their wretched bodies.
Pliny, the scientist and philosopher, applauded the
games in the arena. Titus, a gallant soldier and per
haps the most high-minded of all the emperors who
sat upon the throne of the Roman Empire in the
first century after Christ, visited so perfect a venge
ance of fire and sword upon the helpless inhabitants of
Jerusalem, that the siege of the holy city has been
remembered from that day to this as one of the most
terrible events in the history of the world. The fact
is that, in times past and apart from the influence of
Christianity, human life has never been regarded as in
any sense sacred and therefore in itself entitled to
protection. When the pupil of Socrates and the
writer of the immortal Dialogues could see nothing
wrong in the taking of a little child from its mother's
arms and exposing it to death upon some bleak
hillside, it may not be regarded as surprising that
the great masses of mankind have been slow to rise
to universal standards of justice and compassion.
Now, the advent of Christianity was remarkable
for no one thing more truly than the absolute break

272 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
which it signalised with this whole attitude of the
ancient world upon the question of regard for human
life. The ancient commandment, " Thou shalt not
kill," was now interpreted from a universal point of
view which had been hitherto unknown, and was made
to apply for the first time to all men everywhere,
regardless of race, colour, nationality, or condition.
To destroy life under any circumstances or for any
purpose was a sin, to be avoided as one would avoid
the plague. In accordance with this sublime con
viction, the Christians assailed with the greatest
courage and determination many of those extraordi
nary practices which are now regarded as so hideous,
but which were very generally accepted as more or
less praiseworthy or at least venial by the society
of the first century after Christ, and were never seri
ously brought into disrepute or even question until
the advent of this religious movement. Thus, the
Christians denounced the practice of abortion " with
unwavering consistency and with the strongest em
phasis." They condemned infanticide as an unspeak
able enormity, and were active in furnishing shelter
and protection to abandoned children. They swept
away, by the consuming fire of their hostility, that
crowning shame of a decadent civilisation, the gladi
atorial games. " There is scarcely any single reform
so important in the moral history of mankind,"
says Mr. Lecky, in his History of European Morals,
" as the suppression of the gladiatorial shows, and
this feat must be almost exclusively ascribed to the

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 273
Christian church." And the same thing must be
said in regard to the emphatic condemnation by
the early Christians of suicide. Many of the pagan
moralists were opposed to the act of self-destruction,
and argued ably and untiringly against it. But the
fact remains true, none the less, that not until Chris
tianity appeared with the reinforcement of its power
ful message of the sanctity and inviolability of the
soul, did this offence come to be regarded with that
abhorrence which is so characteristic of Christian
history. Against all such cruel practices as these did the
Christian movement throw the whole weight of its
influence in these primitive days of its organisation
and development. Time and again even more ex
treme positions were taken in antagonism to accepted
custom. Thus many Christians, like Tertullian in
the second century, Origen in the third century,
and Lactantius as late as the fourth century, taught
the unlawfulness of human bloodshed of every kind;
and those who followed such teaching, and they were
by no means few, resolutely refused to take up arms
as soldiers, to serve the state as public executioners,
or even to bring a capital charge against an offender.
The opinions of Christians, however, on these more
delicate questions, were not unanimous; and it must
be admitted, with however much reluctance, that
when the church gained supreme ascendency in the
latter part of the fourth century, it speedily retreated
from these extreme positions of its more consistent

274 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
teachers, which were so hard to reconcile with existing
conceptions of national and social security. Nay,
more than this, from the fatal moment of its triumph
in the Roman world, the whole history of Christianity
becomes very largely the pathetic and shameful story
of the church's compromises with its own doctrine of
the inviolability of human life, and again and again its
betrayal of the whole idea. Indeed, it seems almost
ridiculous to talk about Christianity as an influence in
the direction of safeguarding human life from wanton
destruction, when we think of Peter the Hermit
preaching the first crusade against the Infidels of the
East, of the blind Bishop of Paris riding into the battle
of Agincourt with his mail-clad body lashed to his
charger and his battle-axe bound to his uplifted hand,
of Pope Innocent III forcing the slaughter of the
Albigensian peasantry upon the unwilling soldiers of
Philip Augustus, of Torquemada revelling in the mon
strous horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, which is
estimated to have brought death, in its most horrible
forms, to no less than 350,000 men and women.
Crusades, holy wars, autos-da-fe, persecutions, heresy
hunts — these are the familiar events of Christian
history, are they not? And they are the very things
also, are they not, which would seem to convict
Christianity, above all other organised movements
that the world has ever known, of the grievous sin of
inhumanity? "In the name (of this religion)," says
that sober historian and literary critic, Mr. John
Morley, " more human blood has been violently shed

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 275
than in any other cause whatsoever." All this is
lamentably true! And yet it must not be forgotten
that the failure of the practice does not alter in the
slightest degree the power and the promise of the
preaching. At the bottom, the gospel of Christ empha
sises nothing more clearly than this great conception
of the sanctity of human life; and from this there fol
lows no corollary more certain than that of the in
violability of human life from wanton outrage and
destruction. In the beginning of its history, before
the era of its worldly conversion, the apostles of this
gospel lived up to this idea, at the peril always of cruel
suffering and sometimes of cruel death. From that
day down to our own, the world has made immeasur
able progress away from the callousness and cruelty
of ancient times to the quick sensitiveness and sym
pathy of our own. Things which were done with
the cordial approval of the best men of Greece and
Rome seem now so terrible as to be literally impossible.
Things which are done to-day for the safeguarding of
human life would have seemed to the ancients to be
examples of nothing but the most preposterous kind of
sentimentality. Only in such perplexing survivals as
lynching, capital punishment, international warfare,
is the record of attainment still incomplete. And in
seeking out the various influences which have worked
together for the good of this large expansion of " the
quality of mercy," we shall find none, I believe, to
be rightly more conspicuous than this original and
persistent Christian doctrine of the sanctity of human

276 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
life. Again there comes to our minds the immortal
saying of the Master, which has never been wholly
forgotten or ignored even in the darkest ages of his
tory : " It is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven that even one of these little ones should perish."
Here, now. is one of the inestimable achievements
which is to be credited to this sublime conception of
human nature, which is so uniquely characteristic of
Christianity. No sooner, however, do we realise
how far the world has gone in this direction of safe
guarding human life, than we are immediately tempted
to wonder as to why it has not gone a good deal farther.
For surely we have very little imagination if we believe
that death is the only, or even the worst, violation
which can be offered to the sanctity of the individual
soul. For in what does the greatness and glory of the
soul consist, if not in those spiritual capacities and
powers which are its heritage from that divine and
eternal spirit, with which it is related, to use the
familiar figure of Jesus, as the branches are related
to the vine? "Every human being," says Channing
in his discourse on Slavery, " has in him the germ of the
. . . idea of God ; and to unfold this is the end of his
existence. Every human being has in his breast the
elements of that divine, everlasting law ... of duty ;
and to unfold, revere, ohey this, is the very purpose
for which life was given. Every human being has the
idea of what is meant by truth, . . . and is capable
of ever-enlarging perceptions of truth. Every human
being has affections, which may be purified and ex-

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 277
panded into a sublime love." " Such," says Channing,
" is our nature." These are the capacities which
distinguish us from the animals. These are the
qualities which make us worthy to be called the sons
of God. These are the things which make it possible
for every man, as their possessor, to be regarded as a
being of infinite worth and sanctity. And these are
the very capacities, be it noted, which, because of
their essentially spiritual nature, can be destroyed in
far other ways than that of the mere killing of the
body. To " perish " in the sense that Jesus used the
word, is not merely to be cut off before the Psalmist's
span of threescore years and ten has been attained.
To die before one's time is- by no means the most
dreadful fate which one can meet. Far worse than
this is to live in the purely physical sense of the term
— to get up in the morning and to go to bed at night,
to eat and sleep and work and strive — and yet to be
denied any opportunity to fulfil those higher qualities
of the spirit, the possession of which constitutes the
whole of our claim to manhood. To have no chance
to unfold the idea of God within the soul, to revere and
obey the thought of duty, to know truth and pursue it,
to receive love and bestow it, to see visions and dream
dreams, " To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"
to have no chance to do these things, which are
the be-all and end-all of human existence, this it is to
perish! And he who denies this opportunity of spiri-

278 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tual growth and attainment to " even the least " among
his fellow-beings is guilty of outraging and destroying
their lives, even though he satisfies, with all a mother's
tenderness for her babe, the merely material demands
of physical survival. Not for nothing did Jesus say,
in warning to his disciples as they set forth to preach
his gospel to all the world, " Be not afraid of them that
kill the body, . . . but rather fear him who is able
to destroy (the) soul."
Now it is just here, in this necessary extension of
the great principle of the sanctity of human life from
the life of the body to the life of the soul, that Christi
anity has failed most conspicuously to fulfil consist
ently and courageously its own gospel of redemption.
The most notable instance of this failure is of course
to be found in the abominable institution of chattel
slavery, which a true prophet of God, like John
Wesley, could call nothing less than " the sum of all
villanies," but which the church, in its organised
capacity at least, has always excused and frequently
defended. The crime of slavery was not to be found
in any of the physical sufferings or perils which were
involved in this system of enforced labour. The
slaves might die like rats, as they undoubtedly did on
the slave ships plying between Africa and the home
markets, or they might be cared for and protected
with the greatest consideration, as they undoubtedly
were on many of the plantations in the South before
the war. But the basic iniquity of slavery remained
unaffected in either way. What makes this institu-

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 279
tion the most dreadful that human history has ever
known and what has banished it from every remotest
nook and corner of the civilised world to-day, is the
fact that the ownership of one man by another denies
to the first man the opportunity to live his own life, to
develop his own powers, to realise the hopes and faiths
of his own soul. A human being, by virtue of these
very attributes of the soul which distinguish him as a
human being, is plainly destined to obey a law within
himself. " He was made for his own virtue and happi
ness." He was equipped for the fulfilment of his
own desires and ambitions. He is a person and not a
thing, by which we mean that he is an end in himself,
and not a mere instrument or means to some other end
unrelated to himself. And now are all these personal
rights, which belong to a man as a moral being, stolen
from him by this institution of which he is made the
helpless victim. No longer can he think his own
thoughts and manifest his own emotions. No longer
can he gratify his own desires or seek attainment
of his own ends. No longer can he have a place
in the sun for the building of his own great city
of the light. He cannot will, he cannot love, he
cannot even lift his voice. He belongs to another,
like a tool or a beast of burden. He is owned,
used, and at last worn out for another's work
and another's purposes. "Plainly . . . made to
exercise, unfold, improve his highest powers, made
for a moral and spiritual good," made to be an end in
himself for the creative energy of God, he is degraded

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
from his high rank in the universe of the spirit, and
made to serve as an instrument or means for the use
of another no better than himself. Is not this " per
ishing" of the worst description? Could any mere
physical extinction more utterly outrage and destroy
a man than this life which is no life ? Is not Channing
right when he declares that this death in life " is the
greatest violence which can be offered to any creature
of God"?
So obvious is the attack upon the sanctity of
human life which is involved in the institution of
slavery, that nowhere in the modern world can there
be found anybody so mean as to do it reverence.
But everywhere in' the modern world can there be
found institutions which embody exactly this same
principle of reducing a man from an end in himself
to a means toward some other end, which has long
since made chattel slavery so odious. All around us
men are perishing not in body but in soul, because of
the stupidity, the selfishness, the injustice of individual
men or of social systems.
Take, for example, our whole method of handling
prisoners and prisons! Here is a man who comes
before a court for trial for some offence against the
law. The very fact that he is here in the dock proves
that he is ignorant, and needs instruction; or that he
is physically diseased or mentally deficient, and needs
individual attention; or that he has faults of temper,
and needs moral correction; or that he is the victim of
a bad environment, and needs the uplifting influences

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 281
of good surroundings. Instead of diagnosing his case
as we would diagnose the case of any applicant at the
clinic of a hospital, we put this man on trial from the
standpoint not of his condition but of the facts of his
wrongdoing; and then, if he be declared guilty, we
at once proceed to rob him of all the rights and privi
leges of his manhood by shutting him up in a cage like
a wild beast and chaining him to a work-bench like a
slave. From the moment he enters the walls of the
prison, to which he is doomed, he ceases to be an end
in himself and becomes a means to some other end
which he does not see and cannot understand. He is
stripped of his outward marks of personal identifica
tion so effectively that, for example, when Mr. Thomas
Mott Osborne went to Auburn Prison for a week, he
was twice able to pass the inspection of some of his
closest friends and associates without being recognised.
He is denied all the ordinary and necessary expressions
of personality — he cannot talk, suggest ideas, write a
letter or receive a letter save at inhuman intervals,
take spontaneous exercise in the open air, make
friendships and pledge loyalties. He is robbed of all
privileges of personal convenience and habit, and
ruthlessly fitted into the unvarying routine of a
prescribed system of life. In his eating, sleeping,
waking, walking, working, he is reduced to the con
dition of a mere automaton. He labours, but it is for
the state without decent recompense or reward. He
breathes, but it is at the convenience and on the terms
of the warden and his officers. We take the offender,

282 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
who is shown by his crime to be lacking in certain
essential qualities of character, and then, instead of
nourishing the few qualities that he has, and adding
to them others that he knows not of by judicious and
humane processes of education, scientific training, and
personal influence, we proceed to do all we can to
destroy the few rags and tatters of personal initiative,
moral freedom, and spiritual idealism that still show
him to be a man. We strip him of the inherent right
of his God-given manhood to be regarded and treated
as a divinely precious end in himself, and we reduce
him to the degrading position of being a means to the
attainment of our profit, our security, and our peculiar
whims of right and .wrong — with the result pointed
out by Oscar Wilde in unforgettable phrase in his
Ballad of Reading Gaol:
" The vilest deeds, like prison weeds,
Bloom well in prison air,
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there."
Again, as another illustration of this violation of
the sanctity of the individual soul by degrading a man
to the position of a mere instrument or tool, take the
present system of industry which prevails the world
around. There was a time, and it was not so very
long ago as centuries are numbered, that a workman
could find in his handiwork food for his soul and joy
for his heart. This article which he produced was a
permanent monument to the skill of his hands and

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS
the fertility of his brain. It was his in the sense that
the canvas was the painter's and the statue was the
sculptor's. It might be the humblest object imaging
able — a shoe, a coat, a chair, a table-spoon — but into
it went his life, and through it was his " apology "
spoken to the world. Those were the days when
humble builders made the cathedral at Rheims, when
unknown wood-carvers reared the Hotel de Ville at
Louvain, when forgotten weavers produced the
tapestries of France. Those were the days when Hans
Sachs sang his Meister-songs as he cobbled at his
bench, when Josiah Wedgewood won immortality in
his pottery, and Robert Collyer smote with joy the
glowing horseshoe upon his anvil.
But all this has now gone by with the coming of the
factory and the establishment of the wage system of
employment. To-day the typical worker rises at the
blowing of the factory whistle — trudges to his place
by the great machine, where he makes some thou
sandth part of a finished article which he never sees — ¦
toils amid dirt and noise through nine or ten hours of
the weary day -t— and then at the fall of darkness takes
himself homeward to his wretched tenement, ex
hausted and dispirited. On Saturday night he counts
over his wages, and finds just enough money to keep
rude fare upon his table and a roof over the heads of
himself and his family, with scarce a penny over for
recreation, the visitation of illness, or the long weeks
of unemployment. Day in and day out, year in and
year out, he labours at his monotonous and soul-killing

284 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
task, until old age reduces him to pauperism or the
care of his overburdened children, and death at last
releases him from the prison chamber of the world.
Thus do tens and hundreds of thousands of men and
women spend their days — mere cogs in the great
machines of industry, mere tools for the doing of the
work from which other men make their profits, mere
instruments or means for the realisation of that remote
end of creating and piling up wealth, of which they are
forever forbidden to have a share. It is amusing to
talk of slavery being dead — as though the marks of
slavery were the chain-gang, the auction-block, the
overseer's whip. Slavery exists wherever men are
bound to tasks which are not their own, wherever they
receive no equable share of the wealth which they
create, wherever they go and come, sleep and wake,
are employed or unemployed, according as another
man may decide. Look at the thousands of little
children who labour every day in mine and factory, at
the cost of health, knowledge, and sound morals —
look at the hundreds of thousands of women who rush
to the sweatshops, in order that their homes may not
be snatched from them and their children starved —
look at the millions of men who labour for a lifetime
and never have a piece of handicraft or even a piece
of money to keep as their reward. How many of these
multitudes of workers are living their lives as they
would like to live them? How many of them are
satisfying any of the hunger of their hearts or reaching
to any of the visions of their souls? How many of

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 285
them are " ends " in the sense defined by Channing that
they fulfil " the fundamental law of (human) nature
that all (their) powers are to be improved by free
exertion " ? Are they not all slaves and puppets and
beasts of burden? Are they not all living a life which
spiritually is death? Are they not all being sacrificed
as means to such extra-human ends as business,
profits, industrial prosperity, wealth? We think it
terrible when we look back to the days of Greece and
Rome, that Plato could commend infanticide, and
Aristotle abortion, and Pliny the gladiatorial games.
But as sure as progress is progress, and enlighten
ment enlightenment, that day is coming when our de
scendants will look back upon these days and marvel
that we could not see the abomination of the industrial
conditions of wage-hire !
And right here, let me point out, in this fundamental
distinction between man as an end and man as a means,
do we also find what will some day be recognised as
the unanswerable indictment of war as a method of
settling disputes between the nations of the world.
That men are slaughtered on the battlefield is not the
first nor yet the last argument against war. This
phase of the tragedy is terrible, of course. But there
has never been a time when men have not been willing
to die for the sake of some great cause, and death
under such circumstances is an easy as well as a
glorious thing.
What makes war horrible and, as I would put it,
inexcusable, is the gathering up of unnumbered mil-

286 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
lions of men, by tyrants who have dynastic ends to
serve or governments which have foolish and immoral
alliances to maintain, and the hurling of them into the
battle like so much shot and shell, without asking their
consent and for the sake of no cause with which they
can have the slightest connection. That men should
serve as so many swords in the hands of kings in the
days when infanticide was practised and captives
slain in cold blood, is understandable. But that men
should be similarly degraded to a level with guns and
bayonets in this enlightened age, well-nigh passes
comprehension. And yet it is only sober truth to say
that this kind of degradation is more universal in our
time than even in the darkest days of Rome and the
Middle Ages. Think of the systems of conscription
in vogue for a generation past in Germany, France,
Russia, and Austria, which have forced grown men to
leave their places in the university, or at the work
bench, or in the home, and prostitute themselves to
two or three years of marching on the drilling fields
and standing guard in the barracks! Think of the
system which made it possible for the governors of the
European nations to call every man to the colours on
the first days of August, 1914, and fire them into the
battle with as little consideration as you would feel
in firing a bullet from your musket. Right here
is the crowning indictment of war as it is being
fought to-day — that men are degraded to the posi
tion of mere instruments to serve the pride of kings
and repair the blunders of statesmen — that they are

MAN: AN END, NOT A MEANS 287
reduced to the level of mere shot and shell — that they
are torn from their families, robbed of their brains,
stiffened up like ramrods, decked out in the sham
finery of uniforms, tied to their fellows by the bonds
of discipline as puppets are tied together by leading
strings, and thus manufactured into a war-machine at
the cost of every human capacity that makes them to
be men and not things. Whether a soldier is slain in
battle or survives, is of little moment, from this point
of view of the essential sanctity of his spirit. The
thing to be noted is that he has been robbed of his man
hood, that he has perished as a human being, an immor
tal son of God, long before his carcass has been shot
to pieces in the trenches.
And so the illustrations of our modern violations of
the sanctity of human life might be multiplied. But
surely my point must by now be clear. Does it not
all come down to the simple fact that we have a per
verted viewpoint — that we are still in the position
of the old Romans of recognising certain ends as more
important than certain men, and of feeling justified
therefore in sacrificing human life to these ends as the
ancients sacrificed meat to idols? We do not kill men,
to be sure. Our way is more refined — we simply use
them as tools or weapons. But the result is exactly
the same. Property, social discipline, pleasure, con
venience, national interest, royal pride, these are ex
alted as the chief ends of existence, and man is de
graded as a mere means for the attainment of these
ends. The body, in accordance with our greater ten-

288 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
derness these days, is saved from destruction, but the
soul is slaughtered without compunction. The perish
ing, in other words, which Jesus said it was not the
will of our Father which is in heaven that " even the
least " of men should suffer, still goes on !
Hence the need of a deeper understanding of the
Christian Gospel, and a more consistent application
of its ideals. Hence the need of a spiritual awakening
which will teach us to safeguard human life from being
used, as early Christianity taught the Romans to safe
guard human life from being killed. At the heart of it
all is the necessity of learning that life is alone sacred
— that the only thing that matters in this world is the
soul — that man must be exalted and served even though
all else be denied or perish. We can spare wealth,
property, nations, but we cannot spare men. From the
least even unto the greatest, they must be saved!
The truth that I would convey is beautifully expressed
in the story of David and the well of Bethlehem. This
well was in the hands of the Philistines. Overhearing
King David express a wish for some water from the
fountain, " three mighty men broke through the host of
the Philistines, drew water out of the well, and brought
it to David," that he might drink. But David, we are
told, would not touch it, for to do so would be to
confess that he had a right to use these men as the
instruments of his. pleasure — as means to the service
of his ends. "Shall I drink the blood of men?" he
asked. And he gave answer by pouring out the water
upon the ground.

THE GOD OF BATTLES, OR THE RELIGION
OF WAR
There is no circumstance of the Great War in Eu
rope which is more interesting than the fact that, in
all the various countries involved, the organised forces
of religion are actively engaged in the prosecution of
the conflict. It is not too much to say that this war
is in many ways a religious war. Go into any of the
churches on a Sunday morning, in England, Germany,
or France, and you will be asked to join in fervent
prayers for the triumph of the national armies in the
field, and of course, as a natural consequence, for the
defeat and destruction of the armies of the enemy. Go
into some of these churches as in England for example,
and you will find the parish houses turned into munition
factories, and the boys and girls busily at work, under
the leadership of their ministers, in making weapons for
the soldiers. Go to the front, as in Russia for example,
and there you will see at the head of every regiment, as
it advances into battle, a priest of the church, bearing
a crucifix in one hand and an ikon in the other. Espe
cially in Germany have the practices of religion been
made an important function of the military life. Every
Sunday the soldiers are marshalled in the churches,
or if necessary in the open fields, for formal services
of worship. Every morning and evening, in barracks
and in camp, prayers are solemnly read by officers or
289

290 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
chaplains. Each soldier is carefully provided with a
little handbook of private devotions. And when al
together they march into battle, the psalms of Luther
are on their lips and the God of the Fatherland is in
their hearts. Certainly, in so far as religion can be
made to take its place and play its part as a vital
factor in a great war, it is not failing to do so in this
present conflict. From pleas of national defence and
self-preservation, the Great War in the early days
very rapidly swept on to the justification of lofty prin
ciples of liberty, democracy, and brotherhood. And
now, in these later stages of the strife, it has advanced
to the out-and-out basis of religious idealism. Saints
are appearing on the battlefield; miracles are being
worked by the spirits of the unf orgotten dead ; Jesus is
being hailed as the friend of violence ; and God every
where invoked as the inspirer and guardian of the
faithful. Religion is in the air. The cross, like the
crescent, is the symbol of bloodshed and conquest.
Not since the crusaders marshalled their hosts at the
call of Peter the Hermit, and marched away in the name
of God to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the profaning
hand of the Infidel, has the world been called upon to
witness so startling a manifestation of spiritual en
thusiasm in the field of war.
Now to many persons this identification of religion
with the dread work of destruction and death which
is now proceeding in Europe, is a fact which goes far
toward relieving the situation of its horror. Some
persons, indeed, are so impressed with the religious

THE GOD OF BATTLES 291
character of the war, that they have been tempted to
regard the conflict as primarily a blessing and not a
curse. It was from this point of view that one of my
colleagues in New York, last year, described the war
as the greatest blessing that the world has seen since
the Protestant Reformation. It was from this same
point of view that another of my colleagues, at a
somewhat later time, pictured the event as a supreme
instance of good and not of ill. Prior to the outbreak
of hostilities, these ministers argue, the world was given
over to the cult of materialism. The old motives were
forgotten, the old standards neglected, the old ideals
lost. The lust of wealth, the indulgence of the flesh, the
pursuit of pleasure and ease — these were the chief
ends of man in the first decade of the present century.
And coupled with these ends was an indifference to
fundamentals, a contempt of ancient sanctities, which
threatened a rapid dissolution of the intellectual and
spiritual integrity of the race. Then, with the shock
of an earthquake, came the war — and men awoke once
again to the realities which they had so long forgotten
or defied. Life all at once was plunged into depths
which it had not sounded for generations. At the same
time was it lifted to heights which the souls of living
men had never seen, and much less scaled. The ordi
nary business of existence became suddenly trivial —
the ordinary possessions of men's hands of no concern.
The peril that rode on every wind, the death that walked
on every street, the sorrow that knocked on every door
— these were the things that counted! And, behold!

292 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
as by some new and strange baptism of the spirit, men
remembered God, and turned to him with one accord for
guidance and protection. The very horror of this war,
we are being told on every hand, has brought its certain
compensation in a rebirth of the religious conscious
ness. The souls of men, after far wanderings in the
wilderness of materialism, have found Sinai, and seek
again the holy presence which comes only in the flame
of lightning and the crash of thunder.
Now that there is much truth in this interpretation
of the European situation, goes without saying. Mil
lions of men and women, in all the belligerent coun
tries, are undoubtedly living more deeply and cer
tainly more terribly than they have ever lived before.
Thousands of men and women are facing reality for
the first time, and by this experience being moved to
unfamiliar emotion and activity. But to identify this
awakening of the human spirit, under the dreadful
stimulus of war, with religion in the true sense of that
word, and to declare that in the agony and passion
which are now tearing the souls of men in France,
Belgium, Germany and Russia, we see a genuine expres
sion of the spiritual life, is to my mind an opinion
which is as preposterous as it is cruel. That there is
a religion of war, I have no doubt. That this religion
of war has been stirred within men's hearts to-day as
it has not been stirred in many centuries, I am reason
ably certain. But that this religion has anything to do
with the religion of Jesus and his fellow-prophets —
that it has any connection with the spiritual idealism

THE GOD OF BATTLES 293
which is the end and aim of our faltering endeavours
in times of peace — that it is a renaissance of the soul
which is to be welcomed as a blessing to mankind — all
this I would most emphatically deny. In the prayers
and praises of this war, we see not the sudden overthrow
of the materialism, immorality, indulgence of the peace
ful years preceding the great cataclysm. On the con
trary, in the blindness of these prayers, in the madness
of these praises, we see the triumph and apotheosis of
this very corruption of the spirit which we have so
long been deploring. This war marks not the recovery
of men's souls, but their collapse. It shows not the
revival but the loss of religion. It means not the dis
covery but the abandonment of God. Men are calling
upon God, to be sure, as they have not called for gen
erations. But it is the God of Battles whom they
seek. And this God of Battles, let me tell you, is a
deity who is as alien to true religion as that other pagan
monster known as Mammon, whose worship by mankind
has for so long been the despair and degradation of
our times.
In order to see how different is this religion of war
from all that we imply by religion in the accurate
meaning of that great word, let us compare the spirit
ual ideas and ideals of men to-day, as they live under
the stress and strain of battle, with these same ideas
and ideals as they, appear in the normal experiences qi
men, and especially as they have been built up in the
dreams and visions of the great prophets of the race.
Take, in the first place, our idea of God! At the

294 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
very heart of this idea lies the conception of a deity
who is the universal Father of mankind. Very clear in
the minds of men, for ages past, has been the thought
of God as an all-pervasive presence in the physical
universe. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit,"
asks the Psalmist, in one of the noblest religious poems
ever conceived by the human mind, " or whither shall I
flee from thy presence. If I ascend up into heaven,
thou art there; if I make my bed in the grave, behold,
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
There was a time when different gods, not only for
every country, but every mountain, every river, every
tree, occupied the imaginations of men's hearts. But
little by little these multitudinous deities were all merged
into the one God whose presence is as high as heaven, as
deep as hell, and as wide as the swinging orbits of the
stars. And along with this conception of the one
God of a universal creation has come as well the twin
conception of the one Father of a universal humanity.
Men stand before many altars, and offer many prayers
in many languages. Their practices of worship are as
different as their habits of daily life. If names are
to be trusted, a new god, like a new king, must be
recognised and worshipped with the crossing of every
boundary line between land and land. But names and
prayers and ceremonies we know to be mere illusions.
In the hearts of men, as in the wide spaces of the heav
ens, there is but one God, and to him and him alone are

THE GOD OF BATTLES 295
offered the prayers of northern Esquimaux and southern
black, of Chinese and Indian, of Teuton and Slav. St.
Paul has given immortal expression to this supreme idea
of one universal deity, in his letter to the Ephesians,
where he speaks of " one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through
all, and in all."
Now this idea of the " one God and Father of all,"
which constitutes the essence of what we mean by
religion in its best and highest estate, is the very idea
which finds no place in the religion of war. The uni
versal Father, who is so near to all our hearts in the
blessed days of " peace on earth, goodwill toward men,"
disappears when the call to arms is sounded; and in
his place appears the dread God of Battles. Nay, there
appears not one God but many gods — for this God of
Battles, let it be noted with all care, has as many differ
ent persons as there are different countries engaged in
the strife of war. Such conflict as is now being waged
in Europe, in other words, means not only a loss of all
that we mean by the great doctrine of the Fatherhood of
God, but an immediate reversion to the swarming poly
theisms of the ancient days of barbarism. Nobody can
look at Germany and Russia and France at this mo
ment, for example, without seeing in the religious life
of these contending nations a recrudescence of those
various tribal deities which once characterised the re
ligious faiths of men. Just as Jehovah, in the history
of Israel, was the God not of men in general but of the
Israelites in particular, and every nation against which

296 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
the Israelites waged war had its own particular deity,
like Dagon of the Philistines, Chemosh of the Moabites,
Bel of the Babylonians, so the God worshipped by the
French, we will say, is the God not of humanity but of
France, and the enemies whom France is fighting are
serving other and alien gods. Each nation, to be sure,
pretends to be worshipping the " one God and Father
of all " — there is no open recognition of a distinctively
national or tribal deity. " All pray to the same God,"
said Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Ad
dress ; " the prayers of both cannot be answered." But
the point to be noted is, that each nation approaches
God and prays to God, as though God were its own
peculiar possession, and had its interests and not the
interests of humanity very particularly at heart. All
of which means, as a matter of fact, that the one God
and Father of men has been lost from out men's hearts,
and in his place has appeared a throng of deities, each
one of which is the enemy of all the others! There
is war in heaven, as well as on the earth. The Germans,
as the most thorough-going of all the belligerent peo
ples, give us the clearest idea of this reversion, under
the degrading stimulus of war, to the worship of tribal
gods. They seem to believe, with an astonishing kind
of consistency, that they have a monopoly of God —
that God is limiting his love and guardianship to the
German people — that God has set up the Kaiser as a
kind of vice-regent of the Most High to conquer and
rule the world. This is certainly the view of Wilhelm
II, if not of all his subjects. " We Hohenzollerns," he

THE GOD OF BATTLES 297
has said more than once, " take our crown from God.
On me the spirit of God has descended. I regard my
whole task ... as appointed by heaven. Who op
poses me I shall crush to pieces. Remember that the
German people are the chosen of God." No other coun
try of our time has given, nor do I believe would be
able to give, so bare-faced and shameless a confession
of tribal worship as this from the lips of the Prussian
King; and yet, within very definite limitations, what is
true of the Germans in this regard is true of all the
peoples against whom the Germans are contending.
The religion of war has banished from his throne within
the human heart the universal " God, the Father," and
placed in his stead the God of Battles, who is as
numerous, as I have said, as the nations which are
in arms. At one fell swoop, we are back in the days
of Saul, when Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, re
vealed unto the king of Israel the word of Jehovah,
" Go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare them not ; but slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and
ass." In the second place, as another fundamental con
ception of true religion, take that idea of the universal
Brotherhood of Man, which follows as an immediate
and inevitable corollary upon the idea of the universal
Fatherhood of God. It is no accident that the same
great teacher and apostle of religion who affirmed the
existence of the " one God and Father of all, who is
over all, and through all, and in all," also declared

298 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
that " God hath made of one blood all nations of men,
for to dwell on all the face of the earth." These two
things inevitably go together, for if God is one, then
man, as the son of God, is also one. His spiritual
kinship with the source of life makes distinctions and
separations between races and religions, nationalities
and classes, forevermore impossible. The important
thing about a man is not that he is white, or Christian,
or German, or Caucasian, nor yet that he is blacky
or Mohammedan, or Japanese, or Mongolian. The
important thing about a man is that he is a man —
that he has a soul within his body, which is akin to
the souls of other men — and that he is a member
therefore of a human family which is as inclusive as
the population of earth. More and more clearly, with
passing time and mounting progress, has this idea of
the unity of mankind, which is what we mean by the
great word, humanity, been made manifest to our hearts.
More and more surely, under the influence of this idea,
have racial prejudices, national hostilities, class jeal
ousies, been disappearing. And behind all that has
been seen and gained, is the faith of religion that men
are at bottom sons of God, who find their essential unity
in the oneness of his holy spirit, and therefore brothers
one of another.
And now comes the Great War, and with it a religion
of war which denies the fact of brotherhood, and di
vides men once again into warring camps ! Men are no
longer primarily men; they are first of all Germans,
or Russians, or Frenchmen. Men are no longer living

THE GOD OF BATTLES 299
in a world of men ; rather are they citizens of England
or Austria or Italy, owing no loyalty or love to any
but their fellow-countrymen. Men are no longer broth
ers in origin, character and destiny; on the contrary,
they are enemies, who seek to rise by another's fall,
and live at the price of another's death. Everywhere
throughout Europe, where wars have been declared and
rumours of war are heard, is the supreme idea of spirit
ual unity lost in the nearer idea of national diversity,
and all the realm of brotherhood contracted within
the narrow sphere of boundary lines between state and
state. It is to the Germans again that we have to go
for a perfectly logical statement of this principle.
Thus General Bernhardi, speaking in his famous book on
Germany and the Next War, of the relation between
Christianity and warfare, takes pains to point out that
the precepts of the religion of Jesus can be applied only
to the relations existing between men who are citizens
of the same country, and not at all to the relations
existing between citizens of different countries. Inter
national war is entirely consistent with Christianity, for
the reason that Christianity is intended to be practised
only within, and not across, the borders of a state.
" Christian morality," says the General, in his opening
chapter, " is based, indeed, on the law of love . . .
(But) this law can claim no significance from the re
lations of one country to another. . . . Christian mor
ality is personal and social, and in its nature cannot be
political. Its object is to promote morality of the
individual, in order to strengthen him to work unselfishly

300 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
in the interests of the community." Which, being in
terpreted means, that every sentiment of brotherhood,
every ideal of spiritual kinship, must be confined to the
individuals within the nations, and never extend beyond
the borders of one's native land. The Jews can have no
dealings with the Samaritans.
Nor is this any mere counsel of perfection. On the
contrary, the very moment that war is declared, how
are all relations of amity and goodwill suspended be
tween the citizens of the belligerent countries! The
Englishman is under no further obligation to be cour
teous and helpful to the German, nor the German to the
Englishman. The Frenchman caught in Germany or
the German in France, after war is declared, is immedi
ately an object of suspicion, and is sooner or later ar
rested and confined as a common criminal in a concen
tration camp. French women of culture and sympathy,
invited to attend the Women's Peace Congress at The
Hague, reply with scorn, " How would it be possible,
in an hour like this, for us to meet women of the enemy's
country? " An English nurse, living in a country con
quered and controlled by the Germans, is caught serving
the interests of the wounded soldiers of her country, out
of sheer sympathy for weakness and distress, and is shot
to death as though she were guilty of some unpardon
able sin. In an instant, as though blood had been poi
soned, former neighbours are transformed into enemies,
and old friends into mortal foes. Acts which would con
stitute outrageous offences in times of peace, now under
the influence of the religion of war, become strangely

THE GOD OF BATTLES 301
creditable. Says a traveller in France in the days imme
diately preceding the outbreak of the great war between
the nations, " In time we reached Belfort (where) train
after train kept pouring in from all parts of France
with passengers bound for Switzerland. . . . They were
mostly Germans hastening out of France. To remain
in France longer was dangerous, for the war fever was
spreading, and that meant that friendly men would soon
become beasts, and no German's life would be secure.
. . . The French had been kindly the night before, but
now the kindliness had changed into a wild rage against
Germans. It began to be noticeable at Belfort, and
even German women and babies were liable to violence
and insult. War in our days knows no manners, no
humanity, no religion. ... It was only the day before
in a cafe in Paris that I heard a Frenchman say that
he would like to have the job of splitting every German
baby in two with a sword." Thus does the religion of
war make brotherhood a sin, and the conception of hu
manity a mockery and sham. It is the universal verdict
of centuries of criticism, that the story of the Good Sa
maritan is the crowning expression of the religious ideal.
But from the standpoint of war and its obligations, it is
plain that this parable must yield place to the tale of
Samuel, hewing Agag into pieces before the Lord.
Again, take the whole conception of love, which most
of us accept as the practical expression of all that we
mean by religion. How does this word shine upon the
pages of the Bible, how does it leap from the lips of the
holy prophets which have been since the world began,

©OSS RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
how does it come as the " living water " to those who
would drink and never thirst again ! The whole mean
ing of his gospel Jesus sums up in the two great com
mandments of love — " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind
and all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself."
The whole content of his message, St. Paul sets forth
under the terms of faith and hope and love, and " the
greatest of these," he declares, " is love." And finally,
as the perfect expression of the Christian religion, we
have the words of St. John, " If we love one another,
God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us. For
God is love ; and he that abideth in love abideth in God,
and God in him. If any man say, I love God, yet hat
eth his brother, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
cannot love God whom he hath not seen." Turn to
any of the great prophets of religion in ancient or in
modern times, and I venture to say that love is the one
word which they would choose as most adequately and
completely carrying the burden of their cry. Study the
lives of men, from the standpoint of spiritual perfection,
and I have no doubt that we would all of us apply the
famous test of Abou ben Adhem, who was blessed of
God because he loved his fellow men. St. Paul summed
it all up for all time, when he affirmed that " love is the
fulfilling of the law."
Love, therefore, must be taken in the truest sense
of the word, as a basic factor, perhaps the one basic
factor, of the practical religious life. That is, if we

THE GOD OF BATTLES 303
understand the religious life as it is commonly under
stood by normal men under normal conditions of exist
ence ! But not so with the religion of war ! For here,
strange as it may seem, it suddenly becomes our duty
not to love, but to hate, not to serve but to kill, not to
cherish but to destroy. The best illustration of this
fact is seen in that ghastly product of the war-litera
ture of the past year, known as the Hymns of Hate.
Most of us associate these hymns with Germany, be
cause of that stupendously virulent poem of Lissauer,
which went round the world in a single week. No one of
us was left unacquainted with the terrific lines, wherein
the German poet chanted the hatred of his people for
the people of England :
" Come, let us stand at the Judgment place,
An oath to swear to, face to face,
An oath of bronze no wind can shake,
An oath for our sons and their sons to take.
Come, hear the word, repeat the word,
Throughout the Fatherland make it heard.
We will never forego our hate . . .
We have all but a single hate . . .
French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
And the time that is coming Peace will seal.
You will we hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate.
Hate by water and hate by land,
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of millions, choking down.

304 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe, and one alone —
England!"
Certainly the war has produced nothing more appall
ing than this passionate outburst of revenge. But it is
only fair, in justice to Germany and all concerned, that
we should not forget that other nations in this great
struggle have produced Hymns of Hate, which are only
less terrible than this of the German poet because their
writers have not the genius of Lissauer. Indeed it is
considerable of a commentary on the boasted fairness
of our newspaper press, that this German " Hymn " has
been dinned into our ears until they are wellnigh para
lysed, while other hymns of the same character, pro
duced by the Allies, have been left to fall into oblivion.
How many of us remember, for example, the hideous
song of hate against Germany which was chanted by
William Watson, of England, in the early days of the
war? And how many of us have ever heard at all of
that dreadful poem of Henri de Regnier, of France,
which is worse than the Lissauer " Hymn " to the extent
that it is not merely a summons, but a pledge. Let me
read it to you, and, as I read, ask yourselves what you
would have thought of it, if it had come not from France
but from Germany. It is called The Oath, and reads
as follows: " I swear to cherish in my heart this hate
Till my last heart-throb wanes;
So may the sacred venom of my blood
Mingle and charge my veins!

THE GOD OF BATTLES 305
May there pass never from my darkened brow
The furrows hate has worn!
May they plough deeper in my flesh, to mark
The outrage I have borne !
By towns in flames, by my fair fields laid waste,
By hostages undone,
By cries of murdered women and of babes,
By each dead warrior son, ....
I take my oath of hatred and of wrath
Before God, and before
The holy waters of the Marne and Aisne,
Still ruddy with French gore;
And fix my eyes upon immortal Rheims,
Burning from nave to porch,
Lest I forget, lest I forget who lit
The sacrilegious torch! "
No man, I believe, can look upon stricken France, after
two years and more of dreadful war, without feeling his
blood tingle at these lines of hate. There is more rea
son, infinitely more reason, for this " Hymn " than for
the barbarous " Hymn " of Lissauer. And yet one
has but to contrast these lines, " Lest I forget," with
Jesus's cry " Forgive them, Father," to understand
something at least of the difference between the religion
of peace and the religion of war.
Not all, however, of our story has yet been told.
There still remains to be considered for a moment that
aspect of religion which is known as the moral law. In
every religious system, of which we have any knowledge,

306 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
there has developed out of long trial and experience a
body or code of individual and social morality, which
has been accepted by men as the guide of conduct and
the standard of character. From the theological point
of view, this code of ethical law has been interpreted to
men's minds as a revelation of the will of God. From
the psychological point of view, it has been interpreted
as a reflection of man's inward experiences of happiness
and distress. From the sociological point of view, it
has appeared as an embodiment of the wisdom which the
race has accumulated through many ages as the result
of prosperity and disaster, of victory and defeat.
Whether we accept one theory of this origin of the moral
law or another, it still remains true that man finds him
self in possession of a careful formulation of things
which are right and things which are wrong, that man
receives and holds this formulation as a law which
may be violated only at the peril of salvation, and that
man recognises behind this formulation a divine com
mand or will which gives to it its ultimate and perfect
sanction. Hence the precepts of Confucius, the truths
or paths of Buddha, the suras of Mohammed, the com
mandments of Moses, the Golden Rule and the Beati
tudes of Jesus ! These moral laws are the teachings of
different men, they come down to us from different peri
ods of history, they set forth the aspirations and prin
ciples of widely-separated peoples and civilisations.
But in spite of all diversity of origin and character,
there is underlying them all a certain uniformity of idea
which constitutes one of the most remarkable facts of

THE GOD OF BATTLES 307
history. Running through all ages and all nations, are
these great ideals of conduct, these great laws of right
and wrong, which vary as little as the light which shines
from one star to another. Thou shalt not kill, thou
shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou
shalt not covet — these are the commandments which
characterise not merely the religion of Israel but the
religion of men everywhere. All experience shows the
wrongness of these sins. Every mind revolts from the
iniquity of these offences. Or, speaking finally in re
ligious terms, all men have heard within their souls the
word of God speaking these commands of good and evil.
The world is at bottom moral and not merely material.
The stars are swayed not merely by physical but by
spiritual forces. As Emerson puts it, in immortal
verse : " Out of the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below
The canticles of love and woe."
Now the remarkable thing about the religion of war
— the one final testimony to the truth which I am most
anxious to impress upon your minds — is the fact that
this so-called religion exactly reverses all the precepts
of right and wrong which have come to man from the
universal conscience of the race, or from the central
mind and will of God, and lays upon his startled soul the
grim command to make evil henceforward his good.

308 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
The ethical code of the soldier, that is to say, is the pre
cise opposite of the ordinary ethical code of the ordinary
man under ordinary conditions. It is the soldier's duty
to steal — steal and destroy anything that belongs to
the enemy and can serve in any conceivable way the in
terests of the enemy. It is the soldier's duty to bear
false witness — to tell a lie on every occasion when the
enemy may be deceived and thereby led astray. It is the
soldier's duty to kill — to commit murder by wholesale
for the destruction of the enemy and the furtherance of
his own cause. These dreadful crimes, be it noted, are
not laid upon the soldier as possibilities, or alternatives,
or examples of better or worse. They are commands,
imperatives, duties — obligations as insistent as any
of the ten tables of the law. The soldier must be a thief,
a liar, a murderer, else is he not a soldier. These are
the laws of war, as the other and more beneficent laws are
laws of peace — and these laws must be obeyed as
truly in the one case as in the other. The God of Bat
tles, in other words, is a God who is served by deceit,
violence, dishonour, cruelty, lust, murder. AH of which
means that he is not God at all, but the Devil ! For do
you remember how John Milton makes his lordly Satan
talk, when the fallen angel has been cast out of heaven,
and lies prostrate in the depths of hell? These are the
words of " the Arch-Fiend," as set down in Paradise
Lost — :
" Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure

THE GOD OF BATTLES 309
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist ....
Farewell remorse ! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my Good."
Here, now, are some of the things which distinguish
the religion of war from religion as we ordinarily know
and practise it. In the place of the " one God and
Father of all," it gives us a world of many gods. In
place of the great brotherhood of man, it gives us a
human family divided into warring clans and hostile
tribes. In place of love, it gives us hate, as " the great
est thing in the world." And in place of good, it gives
us evil as the law of the Most High. We only have to
study such contrasts as these for a moment, I believe,
to understand that, in spite of the devotion of churches
and the enthusiasm of priests, the religion of war, as a
plain matter of fact, is not religion in the true sense of
the word at all. Religion has to do with God, the
Father of men, whose will is love and whose work is good.
The religion of war, on the contrary, as Milton so
clearly reveals, has to do with Satan, " the Adversary "
of men, whose will is hate and whose work is evil. Which
brings me, by still another line of approach, to that doc
trine which is the supreme conviction of my life these
days, that religious men, Christian men, cannot have
anything to do with war ! For it is the business of re
ligionists, of Christians, to " have no other God " be
fore God, to " live at peace with all men," to " love one

310 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
another," to obey the moral law. And these are the
very things, please note, which they cannot do in time of
war. Therefore do I come in conclusion to that dilemma
which I have presented so many times before — the
choice between religion and war, between Christ and
Caesar, between the God of Love and the God of Battles.
One of these, and not both, must we choose. For " no
man can serve two masters; either he will hate the
one and love the other ; or else he will hold to the one
and despise the other." And oh, as we value our own
souls and the souls of all men everywhere, let us be
careful how we choose, for as we choose, so, we may be
sure, shall we also live.
"As (our) gods (are), so (our) laws (are); Thor the
strong could reave and steal,
So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's
eager keel;
But a new law came when Christ came, and not blame
less, as before,
Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths
to Thor."

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 1
I am profoundly moved as I stand in my familiar
place this morning, and think of all that has occurred
in the world of human affairs since last we met to
gether. It was only a few weeks ago that I was preach
ing to you in confidence and good cheer, the eternal
gospel of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. At that
time there was peace on earth, and so far as we could
see there was goodwill toward men. To be sure, there
was a serious revolution under way in Mexico; there
were rumours of trouble in the Balkans, as there have
always been rumours of trouble in that particular por
tion of Europe; and we were told that civil war was
threatening in Ulster over the passage of the Irish
Home Rule Bill. It is also to be remembered that
Europe was an armed camp from end to end, just as she
has ever been since the Congress of Berlin. But over
the great nations of the world, as over some country
hillside on a hot afternoon of mid-July, there brooded
peace. Business and pleasure were alike following their
accustomed activities in England, France, Germany and
Russia. Our friends and kinsmen journeyed across the
seas by the thousands, to visit cathedrals, museums, and
familiar playgrounds, as they had done every summer
for more than a generation past. And as the crown-
i The first sermon preached in the Messiah pulpit after the out
break of the Great War. 311

312 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
ing events of the European holiday, there had been ar
ranged two international peace conferences — one in the
city of Constance, and another in the city of Vienna.
To-day, however, with a suddenness and a complete
ness which are absolutely incredible, the entire situation
has been changed. In place of peace, we have war ; in
place of goodwill among men, we witness the greatest
orgy of hatred, lust, and strife that the history of the
world has ever known. Europe is no longer merely an
armed camp, but, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean,
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caucasus Mountains, is
become a battlefield. From twenty to twenty-five mil
lions of men are at this moment under arms. From one
million and a half to two millions of men are locked in
mortal combat on the plains of northern France,. The
losses of property and of men are already so great that
no one has been able to estimate them. In the battle of
the Marne alone, if conservative figures can be trusted,
thirty times as many men were killed and wounded as
at, the battle of Jena, twelve times as many as at the
battle of Austerlitz, and five times as many as at the bat
tle of Gettysburg, the greatest conflict of the nineteenth
century. And this was but one battle on one corner of
the widely-extended field of combat, and in itself but
the beginning of the struggle. Already we have heard
of horrors too stupendous even to be understood; and
the next gale that sweeps from the marshes of east
Prussia, or the waste lands of Galicia, or the smiling
vineyards of France, may easily bring to our ears news
infinitely worse than anything that we yet have heard.

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 313
What will happen to-morrow morning, what the outcome
of it all will be, what will be left when the last gun has
been fired and the last soldier slain, no man can say!
But that we are witnessing the greatest war since the
passing of Napoleon, confronting the most complete and
universal upheaval of ordered life since the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire, facing the largest losses of
blood and treasure that mankind has ever endured —
all this is absolutely certain !
A thousand questions of the first importance have
been raised by this sudden convulsion which has seized
upon our modern world — no one of them so vital or so
embarrassing, at least from our particular point of view,
as that relating to Christianity. Do we not have here,
it is being said on every side by Christians and non-
Christians alike, a final and perfect demonstration of the
failure of the Christian religion ? Here has Christianity
been preaching its gospel of peace and goodwill for
nineteen hundred years. For sixteen hundred of these
years at least, the Christian church has been the might
iest organised power for good or ill that humanity has
known. To-day it represents, all things considered, the
largest, wealthiest, most widely extended and deeply
rooted institution in the world. Seven of the eight na
tions now engaged x in the struggle for armed supremacy
are nominally Christian. Five at least of these nations
support great ecclesiastical establishments for the prop
agation of the religion of Jesus, as a regular part of
the machinery of government. In two of these na-
i September, 1914.

314 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tions, the head of the state is at the same time the head
of the church, and the official representative therefore of
Christ and the custodian of his gospel. It is amid such
professions and conditions of adherence to his person
and to his church, that we see the world of Christendom
plunged into a war of such barbaric fury as even the so-
called world of paganism has never equaled! Nine
teen hundred years of preaching and praying, of mar
tyrdom and sacrifice — and this is the result ! Nine
teen hundred years of scholars giving of their learning,
priests of their devotion, kings of their power, the multi
tudes of their hard-earned substance — and to no other
end but this ! What wonder that an acute observer and
valiant prophet, like Mr. H. G. Wells, is moved to as
sert, at this crisis of human agony, that he finds it " an
extraordinary thing to go now and look at one's parish
church and note the pulpit, the orderly arrangement
for the hearers, the proclamations on the doors, to sit
awhile on the stone wall about the graves and survey
the comfortable vicarage, and to reflect that this is just
the local representation of a universally present organ
isation for the communication of ideas, that all over
Europe there are such pulpits and such possibilities of
gathering, and seeing that they gather nothing and
(accomplish nothing)."
It would be foolish to blind our eyes to the fact that
Christianity is facing to-day the most serious crisis of
its history. The question as to the failure of Christian
ity, to be sure, has been asked many times before this.
It has been asked again and again, for example, when

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 315
an individual who has professed to be a Christian goes
to pieces morally, or when a whole society, like that of
18th-century France, is rotten with corruption. It has
been asked more frequently and more emphatically when
such an obviously unchristian institution as chattel
slavery has been allowed to flourish under the shadow
and even with the blessing of the church. It has been
asked with peculiar insistence in our own day, when
poverty, disease, labor oppressions, prison abomina
tions, city miseries of various kinds, are seen to flourish
in open and flagrant violation of the basic principles
which are supposed to be characteristic of the religion
of the Nazarene. But never before has this question
been driven in upon our minds and hearts with such ir
resistible power as it is to-day by the indescribable and
inexcusable outrages of this universal war. Does not
the mere fact of such a recrudescence of barbarism as
this prove, beyond any question, that Christianity is at
the worst a positive evil and at the best a mere futility ?
Does not the inability of the church to stay this conflict
in the beginning, and now to bring it to a speedy end
or at least to mitigate in some measure its accompanying
horrors, demonstrate with precision the permanent fail
ure of the church as an organisation for human better
ment? Why use this tool, or wield this weapon, or
travel this road, any longer? Why not frankly admit,
in the face of such a disaster as this, that Christianity
has done nothing to destroy prejudice, soften enmity,
banish lust and hatred from the human heart, and turn
to other and more promising means for establishing jus-

316 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tice, brotherhood, and peace among the nations of the
earth ? The rains have descended, the floods have come,
the winds have blown, and behold this house tumbles
straightway into hopeless ruin ! Which proves, does it
not, that it was founded upon nothing better than the
sands of ignorance and superstition?
It is this question of the failure of Christianity, so
forced upon our attention by the fearful events of this
unhappy day, that I propose to consider in this address.
And in order that we may not go sadly astray in our
consideration of the problem involved, I want to make
perfectly clear at this point what is implied, scientifically
and philosophically, by this phenomenon which on the
one side appears to us as failure and on the other side
as success. What do we mean by success, and what
do we mean by failure?
In my endeavour to answer this question, let me take
my starting point from a statement of Mr. Herbert
Spencer in his Principles of Ethics. In one of the open
ing chapters of this great work, in discussing the dis
tinction between a thing which is good and a thing
which is bad, he states that a material object is good if
it fulfils the purpose for which it was intended, and
that it is bad if it fails to fulfil this purpose. Thus
he says, to quote his own words, " A good knife is one
that will cut; a good gun is one that will carry far
and true; a good house is one that yields the shelter,
comfort, and accommodation sought for " ; and a knife
or a gun or a house is called bad, if it fails to fulfil
these specific purposes. In the same way, continues

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 317
Mr. Spencer, if " from lifeless things we pass to living
ones, we similarly find that these words in their current
applications refer to efficient purpose. The goodness
or badness of a pointer or a horse, of a sheep or an ox,
ignoring all other attributes of these creatures, refers
to the fitness of their actions for effecting the purposes
men use them for."
Exactly this same distinction can be made in regard
to the problem of success and failure. Indeed, Mr.
Spencer intimates as much when he says later on, in this
same chapter which I am quoting, " that we call things
good or bad according to their success or failure."
From this point of view, if we want to know whether a
certain thing is a success or a failure, we must first
find out the inherent purpose of the particular object
which is under investigation, and then, in the second
place, put the object to the practical test, to see if this
inherent purpose is fulfilled. Thus, to use some of the
examples suggested by Spencer, I hold in my hand here
a knife and I want to know if that knife is a success.
In determining this question, I first ask myself what
a knife is for ; and then concluding that its purpose is
that of cutting wood and other material, I at once pro
ceed to open a blade, and see by actual experiment what
its qualities are in this direction. If it cuts quickly and
smoothly, I call the knife a success; if not, I have no
hesitation, whatever its merits in other directions, in
calling it a failure. So with a gun, which I understand
to be an instrument for discharging a bullet into a
distant target. In determining the question of the

318 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
merit of my rifle as such an instrument, I instantly pro
ceed to load and fire ; and according or not as my ball
goes far and true, I call the gun a success or a failure.
And the same thing is true of a house or a building.
In the city of Boston, for example, there is a famous
Public Library. From the point of view merely of its
beauty as a building, the structure ranks as one of the
two or three supreme masterpieces of American architec
tural achievement. In studying it as a library, however,
we remember that its one specific purpose as a building
is not to be beautiful and impressive but to facilitate
the storing and handling of large quantities of books.
And when we discover the fact, long notorious in Bos
ton, that it is difficult to store or handle books in this
library with convenience or despatch, we at once declare,
in spite of the dignity of its entrance portico, the won
der of its staircase, and the greatness of its mural
paintings, that the building is a failure, after all. The
whole phenomenon of success and failure, in other words,
is wrapped up in the question of the practical working
out of inherent purpose. The crucial test is the prag
matic test of workableness. Does an object like a
knife, or an organism like a hunting dog, or a movement
like democracy, actually fulfil the inherent purpose for
which it is intended and to which it is dedicated? Does
it work as it ought to work, do the things it ought to
do, achieve the end it ought to achieve? If so, then it is
a success ! If not, then it is a failure !
Now the application of all this to the problem of the
success or failure of Christianity is of course evident.

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 319
If I understand Christianity at all, it is the purpose of
this religion to carry out the one great and sublime pur
pose supremely manifest in the word and work of Jesus,
although not by any means limited to this one teacher
— that of binding men together in permanent relations
of peace and brotherhood through the operation of the
spirit of love. Its object is not to build churches, or
establish hierarchies, or write and defend creeds ; not to
put the name of Christ into any state or national con
stitution; not to force allegiance to Christ upon any
willing or unwilling convert in India or Patagonia ; not
to lay down the acceptance of any interpretation of
Christ's person as the condition of salvation in this
or any other world. The purpose of Christianity is
simply to increase the sum total of goodwill in the hearts
of men, and thus the sum total of genuine happiness, se
curity and peace in the world; to extirpate hate and
foster love; to banish prejudice and suspicion, and
establish sympathy and understanding; to allay vio
lence and discord, and cherish gentleness, meekness, and
sacrifice " for others' sakes " ; to exalt the dignity of
human nature, maintain the equality of men in the do
main of the spirit, reveal that sense of brotherhood
which will disarm injustice, overthrow oppression, and
banish evil from the inhabited world; to bring in that
Kingdom of God, that democracy of man — call it what
you will — which means a social order determined and
controlled not by fear, or greed, or pride, or " wicked
ness in high places," but by the simple and noble prin
ciples of the spirit which we have come, through long

320 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
tradition, to associate with the life and teachings of
Jesus. If Christianity does these things, it is a success,
no matter what it does or does not do in other ways. If
Christianity does not do these things, then it is a failure,
no matter how many or how glorious its churches, how
numerous or how ardent its converts, how loud or how
long its cries of adoration unto God. " Not every one
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king
dom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven."
Now when we come to the all-important question as
to whether or not, in actual practice, Christianity has
done these things, and can thus be judged to be a
success or a failure from this one essential point of
view, I find myself brought inevitably to two very defi
nite conclusions.
In the first place, I find that, wherever Christianity
has been given a fair and honest trial, it has proved to be
a success in every sense of the word. To our question,
Is Christianity a Failure? the answer has often been
made, as we know, that one cannot say whether Chris
tianity is a failure or not, as it has never been tried !
This answer is witty just to the extent that it is untrue.
Christianity has been tried — in most places and at most
times feebly, timidly, half-heartedly, but even so, suc
cessfully ; in some few places and on some few occasions,
enthusiastically, courageously, devotedly, and always
thus, triumphantly. Jesus tried Christianity, even if
nobody else did, and with results so momentous that the
date of his birth is regarded by more than half of hu-

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 321
manity as the turning-point in the history of the race.
But Jesus, to his own glory be it said, was not the last
nor yet the first to try this great method of human
living. Moses tried it, when he led Israel out of the
land of bondage and flesh-pots, and gave to his people
those immortal laws which Jesus declared could all be
summed up in the commandment, " Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God, with all thy mind and all thy heart and
all thy soul and all thy strength; and thy neighbour as
thyself." Isaiah tried it, when he bade his people not to
trust in chariots because they are many and horsemen
because they are strong, but to turn rather to the Holy
One of Israel and trust in him alone. Socrates tried it,
when he listened to the still small voice within his breast,
and commended to his disciples his precepts of the
virtuous life. Marcus Aurelius tried it, when he
learned to possess his own soul amid the temptations
of the Roman palace and the trials of the German biv
ouac, and to rule his people with equity and compas
sion. St. Ambrose tried it, when he refused to allow the
great Emperor Theodosius to bring his gift to the altar
until he had first reconciled himself to his brethren, the
people, whom he had outraged with violence and oppres
sion. St. Francis tried it, When he cast away the wealth
and comfort into which he was born, and went out lit
erally naked to live the life of poverty and obedience.
William Penn tried it, when he came unarmed into the
wilderness of Pennsylvania, and lived at peace with the
Susquehanna Indians. David Livingstone tried it, when
he lost himself in Africa, and bound to him with ties of

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
undying love the ruthless savages of the jungles. Leo
Tolstoy tried it, when he put on his peasant shirt, took
in hand his flail and spade, and by the sheer power of ab
negation, non-resistance, and universal sympathy, so
plead the cause of brotherhood that his became the
mightiest voice of the nineteenth century. Jane Ad-
dams tried it, when she established Hull House and made
friends with the friendless hordes of the Chicago slums.
Thomas Mott Osborne tried it, when he immured him
self within prison walls for a week, and found the pure
gold hidden away in the hearts of the toughest convicts
of Auburn. Thousands of men and women, in all ages
and among all peoples, unknown and unremembered,
have tried this Christianity, of which we speak so slight
ingly. And always, without exception, these disciples
have proved that Christianity does the very thing which
it was intended to do, and therefore is a success !
Nor is it only in private life and by separate in
dividuals that Christianity has been thus successfully
applied. More widely than most of us have ever real
ised, Christianity has been tried in the vast areas of
social life, and large domains thereof have been brought
under the sway of Christ's law in their spirit and their
fundamental structure. Turn, for example, to Prof.
Rauschenbusch's book entitled, The Christianising
of the Social Order, and read his impressive chapter
on " the Christianised sections of our social order,"
wherein he enumerates one by one the various institu
tions of society which have to some degree been Chris
tianised, and to just exactly this same degree have

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE?
demonstrated the success of Christianity as a working
formula of life.
The first institution which he mentions, and by all
odds the most typical, is that of the family. In its
earliest stages the family was anything but a lovely or
beneficent relationship. Having its origin in pride and
brutish passion, held together by stern force and utter
selfishness, it worked out inevitably in the end into the
most dreadful forms of despotism and exploitation.
The servants in the household were invariably slaves,
whose comfort and even lives were at the free disposal
of the master. Wives were seized as booty in war or
purchased openly like cattle, and represented no higher
end than the gratification of sex desire, the breeding of
children, and a certain amount of unpaid labour-power.
The children, especially the girls, were so much cap
ital, to be utilised, as Rachel was utilised by Laban,
for the profit of the father. Now and again these in
tolerable conditions were ameliorated by the develop
ment of real affection between husband and wife, parents
and children, master and servants. But at bottom
the family represented nothing but primitive force and
brutality; and had any old patriarch, like Priam or
Jacob, been told that the introduction of love and gen
tleness into the relationship, would not only ennoble the
persons involved but actually strengthen the family as
an institution, he would have laughed the ridiculous
proposition to scorn.
And yet this is just exactly what has taken place.
Slowly age by age, as Prof. Rauschenbusch points out,

324 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
the family has become Christianised — by which we mean
that the simple principles of Christian living have been
applied to the human relationships involved. " The
despotism of the father, fortified by law, custom, and
economic possession, has passed into approximate equal
ity between husband and wife. The children have be
come the free companions of their parents, and selfish
parental authority has come under the law of unselfish
service. Economic exploitation by the head of the fam
ily has been superseded by economic co-operation and
a satisfactory communism of the family equipment.
Based on equal rights, bound together by love and re
spect for individuality, governed by the law of mutual
helpfulness, the family to-day furnishes the natural
habitation for a Christian life and fellowship." In
this field of social experience, in other words, Christi
anity has been tried with seriousness and sincerity.
And lo ! it has worked. It has elevated and not lowered
the standards of life, it has purified and not corrupted
the relations of men and women, it has ennobled and
not degraded the personalities involved, above all it
has fostered the general order and stability of the family
as an institution, and added immeasurably to the sum
total of peace, joy, and goodwill among men. Here
in this most intimate and therefore most difficult form
of social relationship, Christianity has been tried, and
here it has been demonstrated, to the extent of its ap
plication at least, a triumphant success.
What is true here of the family is equally true,
although to a lesser degree, with certain other great

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 325
institutions of our social life. In the field of organised
religion itself, in the field of education and enlighten
ment, more narrowly in the field of politics, still more
narrowly in the field of industry, the application of
the Christian principles of life have been, or are being,
tried. And in every case, without exception, the trial
proves successful. It is true that nowhere is the ap
plication complete, and for this reason, and just to
this extent, is the success of Christianity nowhere com
plete. The application, after all, even in such an insti
tution as the family, is still only in process, owing to
our half-hearted acceptance of the precepts of the
Nazarene, and our almost hopeless timidity in putting
these precepts into practice. But so far as the process
has gone, it has been uniformly successful, and gives
every warrant for the confident expectation that further
and more extensive application would be immediately
followed by further and more extensive success. Every
honest trial of Christianity, either in private or social
life, only adds to the impressiveness of the demonstration
that Christianity works. Every rigorous attempt to
live the law of love only proves the truth of Jesus's
immortal prophecy that " he that heareth these sayings
of mine and doeth them, I will liken unto a wise man,
which built his hp*ise upon a rock: and the rains de
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house, and it fell not : for it was founded
upon a rock." Survey the whole area of our civilisa
tion, study carefully the conditions which there prevail,
and then ask if Prof. Rauschenbusch is not right when

S26 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
he lays down the assertion that those domains of human
life which have come to some extent under the sway of
Christianity, interpreted in the larger spiritual sense
of the law of love, " are by common consent the source
of our happiness and the objects of our pride, while
those portions of the social order which are still un-
christianised are the source of our misery and the cause
of our shame."
This observation brings us now directly to the
second of my conclusions in regard to the problem of
the application of Christianity as the test of its success.
I have already endeavoured to demonstrate that, wher
ever Christianity as a law of life has been sincerely
and courageously applied, it has worked. I would now
add to this the second and complementary principle,
that any other law of life, when sincerely and courage
ously applied, has not worked. Christianity in other
words is not only a success, but it is the only thing
in the whole history of humanity which is a success.
Take, for example, those very facts which are most
commonly, and may I add, most strangely cited as evi
dences of the failure of Christianity!
Here is a man who, after long years of professed
devotion to the church, goes morally to pieces ! Here,
we say, is evidence of the failure of Christianity ! But
if we come to examine the exact conditions of this
offender's life, I wonder if we shall find so much evi
dence of the failure of Christianity, as evidence of the
failure of something else. I usually find, when the life
of such a man is investigated, that, whatever his theo-

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 327
logical professions or ecclesiastical associations, he has
been practising not justice, mercy and good faith at
all, but lust, greed and hate. He has been exploiting
and not serving his fellow men, seeking the augmentation
of his powers and possessions at the expense of the
public welfare, violating every principle of fair-dealing,
every precept of sympathy, every ideal of brotherhood,
in his selfish pursuit of his own prosperity and happi
ness. And in the end, of course, his course has brought
him nothing but tragic failure. But this failure is the
failure not of Christianity, but of that neglect or even
defiance of Christianity, which has been the consistent
practice of this ruined life. This unhappy man built
his house not upon the rock of love but upon the sands
of hate, and it was inevitable, sooner or later, that it
should fall.
Or take the great fact of poverty, which is being
frequently cited in our own age and generation as a
crowning illustration of the failure of Christianity. It
is true that in a truly Christian world no such horror
as the swarming multitudes of the poor could exist
for a single instant. But how long since, let me ask, has
the industrial or economic world, to which the phenom
enon of poverty properly belongs, been entitled to be
regarded as in any sense of the word Christian? As I
look at the various spheres of life, where men have
ordered relationships with one another, I find no sphere
from which the precepts of Christianity have been, and
in a large measure still are, more absolutely excluded
than from what we know as the economic order. " In-

328 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
dustrial life has been for centuries the unregenerate
section of our social life." It has been the exact
antithesis, for example, of the Christianised institution
of the family. In place here of co-operation we have
had competition, in place of concord we have had
struggle, in place of the Golden Rule we have had the
rule of gold. Selfishness and not sacrifice has been
the dominating motive of existence, profit and not
service the one great aim of endeavour, money and not
men the basic standard of activity. Every relation
ship in the economic order has been characterised in
the past by the absence and not the presence of Chris
tian standards and ideals. In his relations with his
competitors or associates the business man has obeyed
the law not of love but of tooth and nail, which finds
expression in the unchristian maxim " every man for
himself, and the devil take the hindmost." In his re
lations with his employes, he has obeyed the law not
of brotherhood but of exploitation, which works out
into the hideous economic doctrine that labour is a
commodity, to be purchased, like other commodities, in
the cheapest market. And in his relations with the
consumer, he has obeyed the law not of service but of
profit, which is formulated in the repulsive phrase,
caveat emptor, " let the buyer beware " ! The whole
atmosphere and substance, all the law and all the life,
of the world of industry is summed up in the cynical
observation so universally familiar, " Business is busi
ness " — by which it is meant that business, whatever
else it may be, is certainly not charity, or love, or

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 329
fellowship, or brotherhood, or any other sentimental
nonsense commonly associated with the Christian re
ligion. Now here do we have one clearly defined sphere of
life wherein men have attempted to get along without
any regard for the spiritual laws laid down by Jesus.
And the result of it all is seen in the moral degra
dation of the few at the top and the material and moral
degradation of the many at the bottom. Poverty with
all its attendant agonies — tenements, slums, child la
bour, industrial accidents, defenseless old age, unem
ployment, tuberculosis, prostitution, death — this is the
perfect demonstration of the failure not of our Chris
tian civilisation, but of that great section of our civil
isation which is triumphantly unchristian. Its suffer
ings and miseries, corruptions and contagions, are the
fruit of our neglect and defiance in the economic realm
of Christianity. It is the curse of God upon the brow
of Cain. And it is the glory of our time, let it be
said in all justice, that the world is awakening to this
fact and demanding that poverty shall go. Let it be
noted, also, as signifying the true relation between
Christianity and poverty, that the world is seeking its
deliverance from this horror not by abandoning Chris
tianity as a failure but by clinging to it as a success
wherever tried, and extending it to this as it has already
been extended to other fields. Nothing is more re
markable to-day than the sincere endeavour of our more
enlightened business men to put into practical operation
in their factories, their offices, and their railroads, the

330 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
basic precepts of the religion of Jesus, unless it be
the success, in the terms of prosperity, happiness, and
general goodwill, which this endeavour is achieving.
For the first time in the history of the world we are be
ginning to-day to see the end of poverty — and this be
cause we are for the first time beginning to see the
identity of Christianity and sound economics.
Exactly the same line of argument must be laid down
in regard to this fearful war which is at this hour
ravaging the world. How is it possible for any sane
man to see in this awful carnival of blood and iron
an evidence of the failure of Christianity? I see in
this stupendous tragedy the failure of battleships and
standing armies to safeguard international peace; I
see the failure of militarism to train great peoples in
the virtues of gentleness and honour ; I see the failure
of secret diplomacy to guide the nations in the paths
of amity and co-operation; I see the failure of polit
ical autocracies to maintain the true welfare of the
people whom they claim to rule by divine right ; I see
the failure of commercial interests to bind the nations
together by the bonds of profit and exchange; I see
the failure of a social order to prosper on the basis of
greed, hatred, and oppression; I see the failure of the
idea that force can rule the world and so ruling bring
happiness and health to men. All these failures I see.
But nowhere do I see a failure of Christianity! For
when and where has Christianity had any part in the
governance of peoples ? When have kings or emperors
ruled in the spirit of the carpenter of Nazareth? When

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 331
have statesmen lifted their gaze from sordid pictures
of material aggrandisement to loftier visions of a uni
versal humanity? For forty years — ever since the
close of the Franco-Prussian War — the nations of
Europe have been rearing the edifice of social order
not on the rock of brotherhood and love, but upon the
sands of force, conspiracy, and pride. In the closing
days of July, 1914, the rains of hatred descended, the
floods of greed came, the winds of fear blew, and to
gether they beat upon that lofty structure. And it
fell ! And in all the blood and tears, agony and shame
of this black hour of human history, we see how great
is the fall thereof. "War," said William Ellery
Channing, "will never yield but to the principles of
universal justice and love, and these have no sure root
but in the religion of Jesus Christ."
O my friends, there is no failure in Christianity ! If
the test of success be the power to fulfil inherent pur
pose, Christianity is the one stupendous success of all
the ages. If there is any failure here at all, it is the
failure of men and women as individuals, and of the
church as an organisation, to take Christianity seri
ously, to preach it courageously, and to practise it
uncompromisingly. You and I as Christians fail often
enough, because of our little faith. The church, as
the organised body of Christians, fails often enough,
because of its ignorant or corrupted confidence in the
things of this world. The whole history of Christianity,
from one point of view, is the story of the failure of
the church to hear the sayings of the Master and

RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
then to do them. Nor is this failure all a matter of
the past. Woful was the failure of the church to
speak and act, when the war-lords of Europe lifted
their swords and sounded the call to arms! Woful
is its failure to-day in blessing the banners of the
combatants and praying God for victory upon this
army or upon that! But the failure of the feeble
individual or the misguided church has as little to do
with the perfect truth of Christianity, as the dirty
windows of my room have to do with the dazzling ra
diance of the sunlight which struggles through its un
washed panes. Many hopes and many dreams have
been shattered in the last few weeks. The wreck and
ruin of this stupendous conflict is not merely that of
cities, fields, and ships, but that also 'of systems of
thought, principles of action, visions of the mind and
faiths of the heart. But despite the sneers and scoff-
ings of the hour, Christianity is not to be numbered
among the losses of mankind. More truly than ever
do we see and can we know to-day that love is the
greatest thing in the world, that the law of Christ is
the law of life, that the truth divinely taught and
divinely lived by the Prince of Peace
" is still the light
Which guides the nations groping on their way."
This is my answer to our question, Is Christianity
a Failure? Wherever in private or social life it has
been tried, we find peace and joy and love supreme.
Wherever in private or social life it has been neglected

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE?
or defied, we find discord, misery, and hate. In the
face of such results, shall we be persuaded to abandon
Christianity or shall we be persuaded to cling to it,
speak for it, work for it, more devotedly than ever
before, in the confident assurance that it and it
alone is the hope of the darkened world? This
is no time for faltering or dismay. It is true that
hatred and lust are ravaging the earth, that the brute
passions of the jungle are loosed to do their worst,
that savagery is for the moment triumphant. But in
all this we see the failure not of Christianity but of
barbarism, not of Christ but of Caesar, not of the law
of love but of the policy of blood and iron. A social
order which knows not Christ has finally and forever
crashed to ruin, and in the agony of its downfall is
the challenge to those who believe in him to bring in
his Kingdom upon the earth.
The message of the hour, therefore, is clear, the path
of duty plain. Through the cruel days and bitter
nights of the awful years that are now impending, while
men die in blood upon the field of battle and women
die in tears within the stricken home, while little children
whimper in fear and cry to ears that cannot hear
and seek with faltering feet for paths now strangely
lost, while fields are blasted like a desert, inhabited
places laid waste, and the very heavens blotted out
in smoke and leaping flame, while
" Our world has passed away
In wantonness o'er thrown,

334 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone,"
let us here in the safe refuge of this favoured land,
do that which it is alone left us to do — bear witness,
through the spoken word, the toiling hand, the loving
heart, to our abiding trust in the law of love as the
rock upon which to rear the new society that must some
day rise out of the ashes of the old. The time will
be long, the work hard, the agonies immeasurable. But
on some glad day " the tumult and the shouting " will
die, " the captains and the kings depart." And then,
if we have been faithful to the heavenly vision, we shall
make the stricken world to see that, amid all its blood
and tears and wreckage,
" Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
A humble and a contrite heart."
Do you remember the parable, told long years ago
by the assassinated Jaures, of the enchanted forest which
" in a single day burst forth into magnificent flower
ing " under the gracious influence of the April sunshine?
Full many a time, in the harsh tempests of winter, this
sunshine must have seemed to be a failure. But at last,
in God's good time, it proved itself to be the source
of life, and behold ! all the forest became beautiful with
" joy and peace." Jaures called this sunshine the
Ideal of Justice; I call it Christianity, or the law of
love. But call it one thing or another, like him we
hail, in trust and hope, amid the darkness of this night

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAILURE? 335
of raging storm, " the sunbeam " that shall some day
charm the forest of human misery into the blossoming
paradise of brotherhood and peace !

THE END

YALE UNIVERSITY L