Chapter 7

Do not be afraid, then, that any of the sanctities, any of the devoutness, any of the tenderness, any of the sweet sentiments, any of the loves, any of the charities, any of the worships of the past, are in danger of being lost. Why, these, friends, are the summed-up result of all the world's finest and sweetest achievement up to this hour; and our theories are only vessels in which we carry the precious treasure.

I am interested in having you see the truth of this universe, because I believe you will worship God more devoutly and love man more truly and consecrate yourselves more unreservedly to the highest and noblest ends, when you can think thoughts of God that kindle aspiration and worship, and thoughts of men as children of God that make it grandly worth your while to live and die for them.

Do you think there is going to be a poorer religion than there has been in the past? I look to the time when we shall have a church as wide as the horizon, domed by the blue, lighted by the sun, the Sun of Righteousness, the Eternal Truth of the Father; a church in which all men shall be recognized as brothers, of whatever sect or whatever religion, in which all shall kneel and chant or lisp their worship according as they are able, the worship of the one Father, cheered and inspired by the one universal and eternal hope for man.

Do not be afraid of the truth, then, for fear something precious is going to be lost out of human life. Evolution never gives up anything of the past that is worth keeping. It simply carries it on, and moulds it into ever higher and finer shapes for the service of man.

I intimated a moment ago? I wish to touch on this briefly for the sake of clearness that man, according to this new theory, does not need to be saved, in the theological sense, of course, I mean, because he is not lost. He has never been far away from the Father, never been beyond the reach of his hand, never been beyond the touch of his love and care. What does he need? He needs to be trained, he needs to be educated, he needs to be developed for man is just as naturally religious as he is musical or artistic, as he is interested in problems of government or economics, or any of the great problems that touch the welfare of the world.

Man needs churches, then, or societies of those interested in the higher life of the time, needs services, needs all these things that kindle and train and develop and lift him up out of the animal into the spiritual and divine nature which is in every one of us. So that none of the worships, none of the religious forms of the world that are of any value, are ever going to be cast aside or left behind.

But there is one very important point that I must deal with for just a little while. I will be as brief as I can.

I have been very much surprised to note certain things that have come out in the recent religious discussions. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, for example, has deprecated all talk in regard to matters of this sort, saying, in effect: What difference does it make? What is involved that is of any importance? Why not let everybody worship and believe as he pleases? A writer in the New York Times? I think perhaps more than one, but one specially I have in mind has said substantially the same thing. It does not make any difference. Let people worship as they please, let them believe as they please, let them go their own way. What difference does it make?

Friends, it makes no difference at all, provided there is no such thing in the world as religious truth. If there is, it makes all difference. Let us take this "Don't care" and "No matter" theory for a moment, and in the light of it consider a few of the grandest lives of the world.

If it makes no difference what a man believes in religion or how he worships or what he tries to do, how does it happen that we Unitarians, for example, glorify Theodore Parker, and count him a great moral and intellectual hero? Why should he have made himself so unpopular as to be cast out even of the Unitarian fellowship? Was he contending for nothing? Was he a fool? was he making himself uncomfortable over imaginary distinctions? Perhaps; but, then, why are we foolish enough to honor him?

Why is it that we glorify Channing, who at an earlier period was cast out of the best religious society of the world for what he believed to be a great principle? Why is it to-day that we lift John Wesley on such a lofty pedestal of admiration? He left the Church of England, or was cast out of it, went among the poor, preached a great religious reform, led a magnificent crusade, teaching a higher and grander spiritual religion, a religion of heart, of life, of character, against the mere formalism of the Church of his time. Was he contending about airy nothings without local habitation or a name? If so, why are we so foolish as to admire him?

Go back further to Martin Luther, putting himself in danger of his life, standing against banded Europe, and saying, "Here I stand: God help me, I can do no otherwise!" What is the use? What did he do it for? If it made no difference whether a man worshipped God intelligently or according to the things Luther thought all wrong, what was the difference? What was he contending about, and why does the world bow down to him with reverence and honor?

Why are we fools enough to honor the men who were burned at Oxford? Why do we honor to-day the line of saints and martyrs? Why do we look upon Savonarola with such admiration?

To go back still farther, why was it that the early Christians were ready to suffer torture, to be racked, to be persecuted, to be thrown into kettles of boiling oil, to be cast to the wild beasts in the arena? Were they contending for nothing at all? If it makes no difference, why were they casting themselves away in this Quixotic and foolish fashion and, if there was nothing involved, how is it that these names shine as stars in the religious firmament of the world's worship?

Go to the time of Jesus himself. A young Nazarene, he leaves his home in Nazareth, joins the fortunes of John the Baptist. After John the Baptist had been fool enough to get his head cut off contending for his theory, Jesus takes up his work, dares to speak against the temple, dares to challenge the righteousness of the most righteous men of their time, dares at last to stand so firmly that he is taken out one afternoon and hung upon a tree on the hill beyond the walls of the city, the one supreme piece of folly in the history of the world from the "Does not make any difference" point of view.

Is there any truth involved? Does it touch the living or the welfare of the world? If not, why, then, are these looked upon as the grandest figures since the world began? Are all men fools for admiring them, except these wiseacres who stand for the theory that it makes no difference and who ought not to admire them at all?

Suppose you apply the principle in other departments of life. We had a tremendous issue in this city and country last fall over the financial question. Would it have made any difference which side won? If it was just as well one way as the other, why not let the people who clamored for silver have silver, those who wanted greenbacks have greenbacks, and those who desired gold have gold? What was the use of troubling about it? We thought there were principles involved.

Take it in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory, the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward"; a hundred advancers of these different schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia prevail, or these here in the United States which we are so foolish as to laud and pride ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great human contests about nothing at all?

Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of God or he is not. Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and curse of God, or he did not. God has sent angels, breaking into his natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified, dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.

These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal death, and God has provided only one way for his escape and salvation, then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it or not?

And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man, whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible incubus of dread and fear?

Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence, their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste, the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need to be done!

These are the questions involved in discussions as to what God is and has done and is going to do with his world.

The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at the disposal of God for the service of our fellows.

O star of truth down-shining, Through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask but 'neath your guidance My pathway may appear. However long the journey, How hard soe'er it be, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance Can never lead astray, However ancient custom May tread some other way. E'en if through untrod desert Or over trackless sea, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. The bleeding feet of martyr Thy toilsome road have trod; But fires of human passion May lead the way to God. Then, though my feet should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. Though loving friends forsake me Or plead with me in tears, Though angry foes may threaten To shake my soul with fears, Still to my high allegiance I must not faithless be, Through life or death, forever Lead on, I'll follow thee.

DOUBT AND FAITH-BOTH HOLY.

THE object of all thinking is the discovery of truth. And truth for us, what is that? It is the reality of things as related to us. There has been a good deal of metaphysical discussion first and last as to what things are "in themselves." It seems to me that this, if it were possible to find it out, might be an interesting matter, might satisfy our curiosity, but is of absolutely no practical importance to us. I do not believe that we can find out what things are in themselves, in the first place; and I do not believe that, if we could, it would be of any service to us. What we want to know is what things are as related to us, as touching us, as bearing upon our life, upon our practical affairs.

Once more: there has been a good deal of discussion as to whether the universe is really what it appears to be to us. They tell us that it is quite another thing from the point of view of other creatures, to beings differently constituted from ourselves. Again, all this may be. It might be interesting to me, for example, to look at the world from the point of view of the fly or of the bird or some one of the animals; but, again, while it might satisfy my curiosity, it could be of no practical importance to me. It might be very interesting to me to know how the universe looks from the point of view of an angel. But, so long as I am not an angel, but a man, what I need to know is what the universe is as related to man.

So truth, I say, then, is the reality of things as related to us.

I must make another remark here, in order perfectly to clear the way. Philosophers and scientific men, a certain class of them, are perpetually warning us of the dangers of being anthropomorphic. Some one has said, "Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." This means, as you know, that we look at things from the point of view of ourselves. We see things as men, as anthropoi. This has been erected in certain quarters into a good deal of a bugbear in the way of thinking. We are told we can never know the universe really, because we shape everything into our own likeness, we are anthropomorphic, we look at everything from the point of view of men.

I grant the charge; but, instead of being frightened by it, I accept it with content. How else should we look at things except from the point of view of men, since we are men? We cannot look at them in any other way. Let us be, then, anthropomorphic. The only thing we need to guard against is this: we must not assume that we have exhausted the universe, and that we know it all. This is the evil of a certain type of anthropomorphism. But I cannot understand why it is important for us to be anything else but anthropomorphic. I want to know how things look to a man, what things are to a man, how things affect a man, how I am to deal with things, being a man.

This is the only matter, let me repeat again, which is of any practical importance to us, until we become something other than men.

Truth, then, the truth that we desire to find, is the reality of things as related to us. Now doubt and faith are attitudes of mind, and are neither good nor bad in themselves, either of them. They are of value only as they help us in the discovery of this reality about which I have been speaking. If a certain type of doubt stands in our way in seeking for truth, then that doubt so far is evil. If a certain something, called faith, stands in the way of our seeking frankly and fearlessly for the truth, that is evil. If -doubt helps us to find truth, it is good: if faith helps us to -find truth, it is good. But the only use of either of them is to help us discover and live the truth.

The attitude of the Church and by the Church I mean the historic Church of the past towards doubt and faith is well known to us. It has condemned doubt almost universally as something evil, sinful. It has extolled faith as something almost universally good. But in my judgment and I will ask you when I get through, perhaps, to consider as to whether you do not agree with me the trouble with the human mind up to the present time has not been a too great readiness to doubt: it has been a too great inclination to believe. There has been too much of what has been called perhaps by the time I am through you will think miscalled faith; and there has been too little of honest, fearless, earnest doubt. This is perfectly natural, when you consider how the world begins, and the steps by which it advances.

Let us take as an illustration the state of mind of a child. A child at first does not doubt, does not doubt anything. It is ready to believe almost anything that father, mother, nurse, playmate, may say to it. And why? In the first place it has had no experience yet of anything but the truth being told it; and in the next place it lives in a world where there are no canons or standards of probability. In the child- world there are no laws, there are no impossibilities, there is nothing in the way of anything happening. The child mind does not say, in answer to some statement, Why, this does not seem reasonable. The child's reason is not yet developed into any practical activity. The child does not say, Why, this cannot be, because there is such a force or such a law that would be contravened by it. The child knows nothing about these forces or laws: it is a sort of a Jack- and-the-Beanstalk world. The beanstalk can grow any number of feet over night in the world in which the child lives. Anything is possible. If father and mother and nurse tell the child about Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a pack of toys on his back, it does not occur to the child to note the fact that the chimney flue is no more than six inches in diameter, and that Santa Claus and his pack could not possibly pass through such an opening. All this is beyond the range or thought of the stage of development at which the child has arrived.

So in the childhood world. As I said, anything may happen. But you will note, beautiful, sunny, lovely as this childhood world is as a phase of experience, as a stage of development, sweet as may be the memory of it, yet, if the child is ever to grow to manhood, is ever to be anything, ever to do anything, it must outgrow this Jack-and-the- Beanstalk world, this Santa Claus world, this world in which anything may happen, and must begin to doubt, begin to question, begin to test things, to prove things, find out what is real and what is unreal, what is true and what is untrue, must measure itself against the realities of things, learn to recognize the real forces and the laws according to which they operate, so as to deal with them, obey them, make them serve him, enable him to create character and to create a new type of civilization, new things on the face of the earth.

Now what is true of each individual child has been true of the race. The world started in childhood; and for thousands of years it believed very easily, it believed altogether too much for its good, it believed altogether too readily. Naturally, perhaps, necessary in that stage of its development; but so long as it remained in that stage there was no possibility of its becoming master of the earth.

Note, for example, the state of mind of the old Hebrews, I use them merely as an illustration, because you are familiar with their story as told in the Old Testament. Similar things are true of every race on the face of the earth. They knew nothing about the real nature of this universe. They knew nothing about natural forces working in accordance with what we call natural laws. Consequently, they lived in a child- world, a world of magic and miracle, a world in which anything might happen. It did not trouble one of the people of that time to be told that, in answer to the prayer of one of the prophets, an axe-head which had sunk in the water rose and floated on the surface. There were no natural laws in his mind contradicted by an asserted fact like that. It never occurred to him to be troubled about it. There was nothing very startling to him in being told that the sun stood still for an hour or two to enable a general to finish a battle in which he was engaged. He did not know enough about the universe to see what tremendous consequences would be involved in the possibility of a thing like that. He was not troubled when you told him that a man had been swallowed by a great fish, and had lived for three days and three nights in its stomach, and had come out uninjured. There was no improbability in it to him. Simply, a question as to whether God had chosen to have the fish large enough so that it could swallow him. To be told again that a human body that could eat food and digest it, a body like ours, might rise into the air and pass out of sight into some invisible heaven, not very far away, there was nothing incredible about it. He knew nothing about the atmosphere, limited in its range so that it would be impossible to breathe beyond a certain distance from the planet. He knew nothing about the intense cold that would make life impossible just a little way above the surface.

The world in which our forefathers lived until modern times was just this magic, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk world, a world without any impossibilities in it, without any improbabilities in it. All this thought of the true and the untrue, the possible and the impossible, the probable and the improbable, is the result of the fact that man has grown up, has left his childhood behind him, has begun to think, has begun to study, has begun to search for reality, to find out the nature of the world in which he lives, the forces with which he must deal, to understand the universe at least in some narrow range, measured by his so-far experience.

The world, then, until modern times has believed too readily, has accepted things too easily. Let us note, for example, what have been called by way of pre-eminence the Ages of Faith, the Middle Ages, the age, say, from the seventh or eighth century until the thirteenth or fourteenth. What was characteristic of those ages? Were they grand, noble? They were ages of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, of immorality, of poverty, of tyranny, of degradation. Almost everything existed that men would no longer bear to-day; and hardly any of the grand things that characterize modern civilization had then been heard of.

Where did this modern civilization of ours begin? Did it ever occur to you that it began when men began to doubt? It began, we say, with the Renaissance. What was the Renaissance? The Renaissance was the birth of doubt, the birth of question, the demand on the part of men, who began to wake up and think, for evidence. It was the beginning of the scientific age, the birth of the scientific spirit which has renovated, re- created, uplifted the world. Men began to think, to look about them, and to prove all things. And instead of holding fast all things, as they had been doing in the past, they began to hold fast only the things which they found by experience, and after testing and trial, to be good.

Here began, then, the civilization of the world; and all that is finest and highest in industry, in education, in discovery, in the whole external civilization of the world, came in with the coming of this spirit that questions and that asks for proof.

I do not wish you to understand me as supposing that all kinds of doubt are good, equally good. The Church, as I said a little while ago, has been accustomed to teach us that doubt was wrong; and there are certain kinds of doubt that are morally wrong, certain kinds of doubt that are disastrous to the highest and finest life of the world.

I wish now to analyze a little and define and make clear these distinctions, that you may see the kind of doubt which is evil and the kind of doubt which is good.

There are doubts which spring out of the fact that men, under the influence of personal interest, as they suppose, or strong desire, wish to follow certain courses, wish to walk in certain paths; and they doubt and question the laws, moral or mental, religious or what not, which stand in their way, which would prohibit their having their will. As an illustration of what I mean, suppose a man is engaged in a certain kind of business, or wishes to manage his business in a certain kind of way. He suspects, if he stops and thinks about it, that the interests of other people may be involved, that the way in which he wants to conduct his business is a selfish way, that the interests of other people may be injured, that the world as a whole may not be as well off; but it seems to be for his own advantage.