Part 10

The first thing to be noted is the candor of the man, the great sincerity which marks whatever he says and does. His theology is simple; his creed, which is neither the Apostles' nor the Nicene, nor the utterances of modern pontiffs, but in a measure his own, is readily comprehended, and betrays a sweet reasonableness which invites the subscription of anyone without fear or trembling or convulsive revolution. And while some of his fundamental beliefs impinge against current prejudices and awaken enmities, he fearlessly submits them to the judgment and common sense of mankind. What he believes he preaches, and what he does not he rejects with all the vehemence of a man of conviction. Correct modes or forms of religious thought he conceives to be necessary, and the more so the firmer will be one's principles of duty. Yet essential and sanctifying as this is, more essential in his opinion is an honest mind,--a mind that is faithful in the pursuit of truth and true to its own convictions and inspirations. He believes that the most perfect man is he who is most diligent in duty and fervent in spirit; who incorporates the truth into his selfhood; who toils with a prompt and ardent devotion to know the truth, to maintain his opinions firmly, to diffuse and propagate them by every means consistent with a perfect character. With unselfish courage Mr. Savage resists every allurement to compromise. Never timid, never complaisant or patronizing, he exhibits some of the rarest virtues of the human mind. Oh that there were more like him in this indolent and obsequious world!

Compared with Mr. Savage's strength of character, how contemptible are some of the clerical and theological enigmas of our day. Waning and waxing periods are not uncommon in our pulpits and our schools of divinity. Now and then they diffuse a feeble as well as a strong glimmer of religious virtue, and too often become the presages of things with which we have no patience. It is painful to see preachers and professors, like chartered buffoons, suppressing the light of reason, intruding into places and folds to which they do not belong, and sanctioning what in their hearts they do not accept. Among our clergymen, where intelligence, character, and earnestness are everything, we witness a conspicuous lack of sovereign motives shaping and harmonizing life and doctrine. Nothing is more marked to-day in the American pulpit than theological insincerity and indifference to the obligation to preach only what is believed. Instead of feeling the might of conscientious will and the higher aspirations of the age, they are faint and muffled echoes of that moral force which has given efficiency to the Christian ministry. We still hear the boast that the ministry of to-day has outgrown the old Puritan austerity and the lines marked out in earlier and more rigorous periods. May we not admit also that the courage, the righteousness, and the heroic discharge of duty, by which the Puritan has attracted the attention and the admiration of the world, have lost something of their former greatness and power? Like hunters, too many preachers are on the scent, not for the truth, but for game,--for gain and earthly glory. To speak the truth might interfere with their vocation; it might throw out of market their stock in trade.

Yet ought not the preacher to stick to his text? So great an advocate of the truth should speak the truth and practise it. He should feel inspired with a strong and awful prepossession in its favor. He need not make pretension to infallibility, but we expect of him the absolute veracity of his sacred calling and learning. His living should never depend upon sustaining an error or an untruth. If it does, he does not deserve the name he bears, and is not in the strictest sense a teacher and leader of thought. We will excuse a deficiency of knowledge, but never a deficiency in character,--in the word and spirit of what he proclaims as the truth. Every truly devout minister of the Gospel should rise and erase this stigma from his profession. It is a humiliating reproach that any of this class of teachers lack true insight, truthfulness, and faithful service; that they mask their convictions, that they will not act out their opinions. This is a perversion of what man really is. It makes him a vanishing spirit destitute of true sentiment, character, and practical rectitude. Forms of worship and of religion may be temporary and change, but love of truth and conviction should always be an active power, uniform, eternal. Even in our theological schools, where the human spirit is supposed to be exorcised into worlds of graver and graver realities, we are just now learning some valuable lessons in the flexibility of theological opinion.

He who stands in a conspicuous place in any community will always be looked at. What he says and does will be judged by everybody. His person and life and character, his joys and sorrows, are things of public gossip and interest. And if the uniqueness of his position in society be due to some sacred calling, such as a teacher of religious truth, he evokes the highest esteem and expectations. All truth is sacred; and truth's propagator is expected to be, not only a truth-seeker, but a teacher of it in the interests of the public weal. The responsibility of this is distributed among all men, but nowhere is it so great as with the professed preacher and teacher of religious truth. He cannot absolve himself from it. It is the price he pays for his exalted privilege, his dignified position.

The creed-test of the Andover theological school may be unwarranted at the present time. Yet while there is such a test, and the old creed comes up and insists upon being reaffirmed in its original meaning by each incumbent, we are bewildered the moment we attempt to harmonize what happened there recently with stalwart conviction and vital piety. Within a few months we have seen the Andover creed, over which there has been so much wrangling, and some of whose doctrines make the human heart to-day sink in despair, receiving unqualified indorsement. With unfaltering confidence this ancient creed was reaffirmed by a professor of that school of divinity without modifying the conditions of subscription. This surprises us. It may be that the recently inducted Professor of Sacred Rhetoric did not signify explicit allegiance to this creed, whose doctrines are so inflexibly maintained by our older theologians, but simply gave his assent, just as the clergy of the noble Church of England are giving their assent, but not their strict adherence, to the Thirty-nine Articles. And yet what is progressive orthodoxy, so boldly and ably enunciated, but a growing away from the old Andover creed?

Or is it only a question of emphasis, not of dogma? Are we to infer that the old dogma abides, while only the emphasis alters? It may be that progressive orthodoxy is not what it professes to be, that instead of giving religious thought a definite impulse and being a necessary onward step in sacred learning, religious thought is only receiving a richer and deeper volume as it lies in its old bed. Be this as it may, the verbal assent and subscription of the new incumbent gave fresh force to every dogma of the old faith. True, we could not expect him to be so recreant as to disown this venerable creed, to break the traditional thread and cease to be the heir of his sires.

Yet we should like to see progressive orthodoxy, or the New Theology, of Andover mean something; represent, without the slightest misgiving, some distinctive dogma, some fresh insight into religious truth. At present it is an unintelligible hypothesis. It does not appear to be definitely settled. A master hand has sketched it, but there are none to complete and make it triumphant. Why not go to the root of the matter? Progressive orthodoxy is yet only "in the air." On paper it is inspiring; in practice, a paradox to the discomfiture of every friend of the revival of religious thought. It is subtle and disputatious, and predicts for itself a reforming mission, but it has not the courage of its convictions; it looks like a clever juggling of divinity. We may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but unless we have deep convictions and feel the intensity of the principles we are attempting to promulgate, we are as sounding brass; we lower the dignity of truth and moral worth, we offend the purity of conscience. Filled with the ecstasies of an office while enacting an untruth is satanic; it is unworthy of any trained intelligence. Honest conviction is the indispensable condition of the preacher and teacher. Without it he compromises the sacred character of his particular commission, of his appointed trust.

All this is meant to throw light upon the artless simplicity, the outspoken but sensitive judgment, the indefinable strength of character, of the Rev. Mr. Savage. Beneath all he says and does we may see the calm utterance of unwavering convictions and an individuality unimpaired. He is thoroughly possessed with the sense of duty; he has his being there. There is nothing spurious in him; he disguises no hypocrisy. We see in him no secret acquiescence with what he cannot conscientiously accept. Always standing in the full light of the incomparable obligation and privilege of his work,--which is a cheerful, happy exercise, not a doleful and despondent one,--he influences the world not only as a teacher, but as a character. He proclaims the sanctity of his office not by a set of pious phrases, but by a spotless devotion to it, as the only way by which he most completely can subserve the public welfare. This perpetually invests the man and his ministry with interest and with an almost magic power.

The ethical intensity of Mr. Savage's character unfolds itself in his preaching as a consistent result. In the sermon the convictions of the man are not sacrificed. He puts more than words into his sermons; he puts himself. He speaks the truth "bluntly," as if it were not a hard but an easy attainment, and an element of human nature. Without pretension or self-exaltation, craving no man's praise and envying no man's distinction, he endeavors in an unwavering and high-spirited manner to disclose in his sermons the great verities, the substantial realities, of life.

In the broadest sense of the word Mr. Savage is not a man of scholarly attainments or tastes; not many are. He is nevertheless a highly cultivated man. Whether he addresses us through the faculties of speech or through his written compositions, we always feel the independence of his intellect, his delicate and discriminating moral sense, and his love of truth. His sermons, his public utterances, and his devout invocations exhibit a maturity of mind and a range of culture which enable him to impress other minds with whatever has possession of his own. In the pulpit, in authorship, in every mode of religious activity, we meet the cultivated, sincere, and reverent man. We feel the influence of his sympathetic mind and singular chasteness of spirit in hearty and symmetrical development. A culture like this, combined with a nature deeply religious, brings one into possession more or less completely of truths which make a direct appeal to the understanding. It has enabled Mr. Savage to enjoy a certain lordship in the realm of mind and mental life. He is an example of the dictum, that he who would think truly on spiritual things must first be spiritually minded. In both his acted and his written life he seems to comprehend and to realize the truth, to have reached the loftiest heights of fellowship with eternal wisdom. Judging from his own serene, unclouded, and practical vision of the truth, one is driven to the conclusion that he is proclaiming and formulating the ultimate gospel of mankind.

Some may sneer and scoff at his "deadly notions" and "perverted thoughts," but in his demand for personal life, development of conscience, and attainment in righteousness, his ministry is potent; its inspiration is constant. He believes and preaches only those truths which are possible to rational belief. With that exquisite instinct which characterizes all his thinking, he places, as if he were in apostolic succession, man's greatest need in coming to himself and in making religion inseparable from personal thought and character. Mr. Savage holds this forth as man's paramount task, to refuse which is alone to be faithless and hopeless and unforgiven. His idea of religion consists in nothing external or formal; nothing can avail with him but the culture of the soul and the quiet discharge of duty. It is his superlative merit that he enables one to feel his own capacity of thought as a positive and independent efficacy, and to rest upon the authority of his own conscience as the hope of glory and as a cooerdinating power with Holy Writ. He makes a broad survey of human nature, and commands men to traverse the whole range of their being and to call themselves to rigid account until the germs of moral debility are cast out of the heart. Man is not to waste his energies in grasping the immense and misty proportions of the beliefs of this or that traditionist or minute systems to which souls are often bent in unwilling conformity. The object of his ministry is to summon men to reckon with themselves every day, and to regenerate themselves by right thinking and by deeds of piety. In his opinion each person is a spiritual agency, a marvellous display of divine power and goodness, not only in the majesty of the truth which he apprehends, but in the dignity of the life which he may live. Temptation may open its alluring paths, evil may solicit us, sin may lead us astray, sorrow may drag us down; yet they need not. His public ministry is devoted to the infusion of this better sentiment,--that man is not the mere victim of circumstances, the necessary prey of temptation, or the helpless subject of wrong; that he need not contemplate life in indolent despair, but may check the dominion of sin and impurity, rise above not only intemperate indulgence, but every intemperate desire and impulse, and form dispositions of peculiar excellence, of original strength and beauty.

Mr. Savage's ministry, then, is full of truth and power. It is strongly personal and ethical. There is no abler advocate of this important truth and master-word of the Gospel and of religion. It is a divine truth ever working in him, breaking into utterances, and giving to his beliefs and his life the highest dignity. With him it is a persistent and overwhelming duty to give to his ministry this practical content, this ethical intensity. In this he is evangelical.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments assert or imply that without our personal agency, and without the truth in the substance and texture of our characters, there can be no spiritual elevation or final perfection. In the terms of the Scriptures the divine resources are infinite; but instead of overwhelming our personal agency or responsibility they make a stupendous demand upon us. The truth must be received with unhesitating acceptance and assimilated to our individual being.

To teach such consummate truths the Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., strong in every fibre of intellectual and religious faith, has devoted his talents, his strength, and his life, and for that reason he stands before the American people as one of their most noted preachers.

THE CIVIC OUTLOOK.

BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.

I. FRATERNAL GOVERNMENT.

The disposition to give due attention to the spirit of American institutions is one which needs cultivation. Government, looked upon only as machinery, may easily become a means for the accomplishment of ends very different from those intended by its designers. In this connection some recent utterances by Dr. Lyman Abbott are worthy of serious thought:

It is sometimes said that the majority rules in America, and it would be unfortunate if it were true. The French Revolution shows that no despotism of the individual is so cruel as the despotism of the majority. When the decisions of the majority or minority are supported by the whole people that is Americanism. Our democracy is not founded on the idea that our people make mistakes, but that the decision of all the people is better than that of one class, and that all the men are better judges than priests and kings and their instruments. Fraternal government is what we are trying to establish, and whoever strikes against the spirit of fraternalism strikes against the foundation of our government. We can get along with anything bad in our laws and correct it in our progress, but we can never live and prosper with the East arrayed against the West, the North against the South, rich against the poor, and labor against capital.

II. TRUE AMERICANISM.

Whatever other meaning may attach to the word Americanism, Dr. Abbott points to its best definition. But what he has in mind cannot be expected in the absence of a spirit which is made manifest in real fraternalism conjoined with faithful devotion to intelligent convictions of duty. This spirit will take patriotism out of the realm of mere sentiment into that of noble passion. It will give to citizenship so high a meaning that failures in civic duty will take on--as they clearly ought to do--the character of sins against one's own manhood and against the brotherhood of which the citizen is a member. If this spirit be underneath our laws and manifest in their administration, we need have little anxiety as to their statutory form. Political as well as scriptural wisdom expresses itself in the statement that the "letter" of the law kills, the "spirit" alone gives life.

III. THE RIGHT SPIRIT IN CITIZENSHIP.

How the spirit of genuine citizenship is to be made ascendant is a question of increasing concern. It may nevertheless be doubted whether organized forces for its suppression do not, in the matter of painstaking and persistent energy and adroit management, excel the organized elements specially devoted to its cultivation. Citizenship activities, politically considered, for the most part are merged in the machinery of parties; and this machinery, instead of representing in its tenets the will of great bodies of independent and well-intentioned suffragists, is too often so manipulated by a few skilful and unprincipled political machinists as to represent their will instead. It is obvious that in so far as these clever machinists are able to run our politics to suit themselves, the very machinery through which the right spirit in citizenship must come to power, if at all, is turned into a means for its own suppression. It thus comes to pass that we have the pitiable spectacle of great party organizations through which masses of honest and patriotic citizens farcically--nay, tragically--cooeperate for the accomplishment of results, which, while secured through their votes and in their name, are in reality results of the clandestine and sinister work of a few men.

IV. REFORM IN PRIMARY ELECTIONS.

Plainly, if the right spirit in citizenship is to be ascendant, it must find some means of doing away with the boss system in politics. This system is made possible only by the ease with which primary elections are controlled by coteries of designing men. Here is a battlefield where the best and worst elements in our politics need to be brought into immediate and conclusive conflict. A system which foists upon the people as its candidates for office those whom they have had no real voice in choosing, and who are not worthy, represents an actual subversion of popular government, and calls for such a manifestation of the spirit of true Americanism as shall overthrow it once for all. This question is an overshadowing one. Pollution at the fountain means pollution everywhere. Men elected to office through shameful methods may sometimes be better than the methods by which they have profited, but they are not to be trusted. Their responsibility is to the "bosses," not to the citizens whose machine-directed votes elected them. The only sentiment to which they bow is that expressed by the leader whose favor bestowed, and whose hostility will deprive them of, official position and emoluments. The immediate outlook is not, however, without hope. Independent movements in several States are in progress looking to the complete uprooting of the boss system. In parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California, and in some of the Southern States "the Crawford County method," which takes the choice of candidates out of the hands of the few and places it in the hands of the majority of voters, is already being tried. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota similar methods have been the subject of legislative action, and satisfactory results are anticipated. This is a reform which should not be left to the advocacy of a few individuals, or to the members of a few organizations like the American Institute of Civics and local civic reform bodies. Members of these bodies have done much and will do more to promote it, but its final success depends upon the manifestation everywhere of an aroused public spirit whose demands cannot be denied.

V. CIVICS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Much progress has recently been made in educational provisions for the instruction necessary to qualify American youth for the intelligent and efficient discharge of civic obligations. The Patria Club of New York City, a strong body organized under the auspices of the American Institute of Civics and devoted to the objects which it represents, has offered prizes to the pupils in the schools in the vicinity of New York for the purpose of stimulating their interest in matters of government and citizenship, and has undertaken a similar work in connection with the charity industrial schools of that city. Of great importance is the action of the New York Board of Education looking to specific instruction in civics in all the city schools, and its later action in giving to this subject an important place in the curriculum of the high schools which are to be established the coming year. Another organization which contributes to the same results, the American Guards, is represented by battalions in several New York schools. This movement, which has already extended into many schools in different States, is under the fostering care of Col. H. H. Adams, an officer of the Institute of Civics. The guards are composed of boys who voluntarily devote a certain amount of time, out of school hours, to exercises promotive of a virile and intelligent patriotism. These exercises include military drill, and the youthful guards, in their becoming uniforms, develop a marked degree of manliness and self-respect. Two of the battalions are under the leadership of public-school principals, E. H. Boyer and D. E. Gaddes, councillors of the Institute of Civics. The guards participated in the ceremonies at the dedication of the Grant monument, and no organization in line attracted more favorable attention.

VI. RURAL INFLUENCES ON URBAN AFFAIRS.

It cannot be denied that the hitherto controlling power of voters in rural districts has frequently been used to the prejudice of city interests. Representatives from country regions have lent their aid in effecting vicious as well as wholesome changes in legislation affecting municipalities, and this aid has sometimes been secured by corrupt methods. It is nevertheless true that the average country voter and the average legislator who represents him sincerely desire to promote only such legislation as will be of highest advantage to urban communities. If their votes fail to secure this result it is more often because of insufficient knowledge of urban conditions and needs, than of indifference or corrupt influences.