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Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses

by Felix Adler · English · Gutenberg #37697 · 390,114 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses

Author: Felix Adler


        
Release date: October 10, 2011 [eBook #37697]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37697

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREED AND DEED: A SERIES OF DISCOURSES ***




Produced by David Widger






CREED AND DEED

A SERIES OF DISCOURSES


By Felix Adler


1880




PREFATORY NOTICE.

The lectures contained in the following pages are published by request
of the society before which they were delivered. Those on Immortality
and Religion have been considerably abridged and condensed. The
remainder have been allowed to retain their original form without any
serious modification. The First Anniversary Discourse reviews the work
of the year, and gives a brief account of the motives which impelled the
society to organize and of the general animus by which its labors are
directed. The Lecture entitled The Form of the Ideal foreshadows the
constructive purpose of the movement. The articles on The Evolution of
Hebrew Religion and Reformed Judaism from the _Popular Science Monthly
(September_, 1876) and the _North American Review (July-August and
September-October)_ contain in the substance of several of the lectures
of last winter's course, and are reprinted in the appendix with the
kind consent of the editors. Rigid adherrence to the requirements of
systematic exposition is neither possible nor desirable in addresses of
the kind and has not therefore been attempted.

In giving this volume to the public I gladly embrace the opportunity of
expressing my sincere gratitude to those faithful and self-sacrificing
friends whose indefatigable labors have gone so far to win for a
hazardous venture the promise of assured permanence and satisfactory
development.

Felix Adler.

New York, September, 1877.




CREED AND DEED




I. IMMORTALITY

     "not by the Creed but by the Deed."

The Spciety which I have the privilege of addressing, has been organized
with the above for its motto. Some of my hearers have entirely abandoned
the tenets of the positive religions; others continue to hold them true,
but, are discouraged by the lack of spiritual force, the prominence
given to mere externals, the barren formalism in the churches and
synagogues. We agree in believing that theology is flourishing at
the expense of religion. It seems to us that differences in creed are
constantly increasing, and will continue to multiply with the growth and
differentiation of the human intellect. We perceive that every attempt
to settle problems of faith has thus far signally failed, nor can we
hope for better results in the future. Certainty even with regard to
the essential dogmas appears to us impossible. We do not therefore deny
dogma, but prefer to remit it to the sphere of individual conviction
with which public associations should have no concern. Far from
believing that the doctrines of religion as commonly taught are
essential to the well being of society, we apprehend that the disputes
concerning the "author of the law" have diverted the attention of men
from the law itself, and that the so-called duties toward God too often
interfere with the proper performance of our duties toward one another.
It were better to insist less upon a right belief, and more upou right
action.

In order to find a common basis whereon good men, whether believers or
unbelievers can unite, we look to the moral law itself, whose certainty
rests in the universal experience of civilized Humanity. We shall
hold questions of faith in abeyance, shall endeavor to stimulate the
conscience and to this end shall seek to awaken an interest in the grave
social problems of our day, which need nothing so much as a vigorous
exertion of our moral energies, in order to arrive at a peaceable
solution. To broaden and deepen the ethical sentiment in ourselves, and
to hold up to the sad realities of the times, the mirror of the ideal
life, is the object with which we set out. We do not therefore delude
ourselves with the hope that the ideal will ever be fully realized,
but are convinced that in aspiring to noble ends the soul will take on
something of the grandeur of what it truly admires. Starting with the
assumption that the doctrines of religion are incapable of proof,
it behooves us to show in one or more instances the fallacy of the
arguments upon which they are commonly founded, and we shall begin with
the doctrine of IMMORTALITY.

In approaching our subject we are first confronted by the argument
from the common consent of mankind. Like the belief in God, the hope
of immortality is said to be implanted in every human heart, and the
experience of travellers is cited to show that even the most barbarous
races have given it expression in some form, however crude. Aside from
the fact that the statement, as it stands, is somewhat exaggerated, we
will admit that the belief in a future state is widely current among
savage tribes. But the value of this testimony becomes extremely
doubtful on closer inspection. A brief account of the origin of the
conception of soul among our primitive ancestors, will make this plain.

If we observe a child in its sleep, some half articulate word, some cry
or gesture occasionally reveals to us the vividness of the dreams with
which the little brain is teeming. It is hardly doubtful that the child
mistakes the visions of its dream for actual occurrences, and attaches
the same reality to these miasmas of the stagnant night as to the
clear prospects of daylight reason. Even the adult sometimes finds it
difficult to clear his brain of the fancies which occupied it in the
hours of sleep. And the test of large experience can alone enable him to
distinguish between fact and phantom. I call attention to these facts,
because the phenomena of sleep and dreams seem to offer a satisfactory
clue to the naive theories of the lower races concerning death and the
after life. The savage indeed is the veritable child-man. His ardent
emotions, his crude logic, the eagerness with which he questions the how
and wherefore of nature, and the comparative ease with which his simple
understanding accepts the most fanciful solutions, all combine to place
him on the level of the child.

Aware that the body in sleep is at rest, while at the same time the
sleeper is conscious of acting and suffering, visiting distant regions
perhaps, conversing with friends, engaging in battle with enemies, the
savage reasoned that there must be a man within the man, as it were,--an
airy counterfeit of man which leaves its grosser tenement in the night,
and in the course of its wanderings experiences whatever the fortunes of
the dream may chance to be. Instances are related where the body was
prematurely disturbed, the inner man was prevented from returning to his
envelope, and death resulted. The shadow cast by the human figure, an
attenuated image of man, connected with the body and yet distinct from
it, afforded a curious confirmation of this artless theory. The Basutos*
affirm that a person having on one occasion incautiously approached the
bank of a river, his shadow was seized by a crocodile, and he died in
consequence. The story of shadowless or soulless men has been made
familiar to modern literature by Chamisso's well known tale. The
spectral man who severs his connection with the body during sleep,
remains concealed within it during the hours of waking, and in this
manner, the idea of a human soul as distinct from the body, takes its
rise.** It is easy to see how by extending the analogy, what we call
death must have appeared as only another form of sleep, and how the
theory of dreams gave rise to a belief in the continuance of life beyond
the grave. That sleep and death are twin brothers, was to the primitive
man more than mere metaphor. As in sleep, so in death, the body is at
rest, but as in sleep, so also in death, a shade was supposed to go
forth capable of acting and suffering, and yearning to return to its
former condition. The apparitions of the deceased seen at night by the
friends they had left behind, were taken to be real visitations, and
corroborated the assumption of the continued existence of the departed.
The ghosts of the dead were dreaming phantoms, debarred from permanently
returning to their abandoned bodies.

     * The dream theory seems to be the one generally adopted by
     writers on primitive culture. For an extended account of
     this subject vide the works of Tylor, Lubbock and Bastian,
     from which the illustrations given in the text are taken.

     ** Peter Schlemihl.

     *** The soul was believed to be corporeal in nature, only
     more vague and shadowy than the framework of the body, and
     distinguished by greater swiftness of locomotion.

The view we have taken of the origin of the conception of soul is
greatly strengthened when we consider the thoroughly material character
of the ghost's life after death. The ghost continues to be liable to
hunger, pain, cold, as before. But the living have shut it out from
their communion; in consequence it hates its former companions,
persecutes them where it can, and wreaks its vengeance upon them when
they are least prepared to resist it. In a certain district of Germany
it was believed that the dead person, when troubled by the pangs of
hunger, begins by gnawing its shroud until that is completely devoured,
then rising from the grave, it stalks through the village and in the
shape of a vampire, sits upon the children in their cradles, and sucks
their blood. When sated with the hideous feast, it returns to the
churchyard to renew its visits on the succeeding nights. In order to
hinder them from using their jaws, it was customary to place stones or
coins into the mouths of the dead before burial and the most grotesque
devices were resorted to, to prevent the much dreaded return of the
denizens of the tomb. In the middle ages the corpse was often spiked
down to hinder its rising. Among the Hottentots a hole was broken into
the wall, through which the corpse was carried from the house, and then
carefully covered up, it being the prevailing superstition, that the
dead can only reenter by the same way in which they have previously made
their exit. Among a certain negro tribe of Africa, the path from the
house to the grave was strewn with thorns, in the hope that the ghost
would find the path too painful, and desist. As late as 1861, it
occurred in a village in Gallicia, that the ghost of a dead peasant was
found to pursue the living, and the inhabitants rushing out to the grave
fearfully mutilated the body, to prevent it from committing further
injury.

The same conception, from a more charitable point of view, led to the
institution of regular meals for the ghosts at stated intervals. In
North-eastern India, after the body has been consigned to its final
resting-place, a friend of the deceased steps forward, and holding food
and drink in his hand, speaks the following suggestive words, "Take and
eat; heretofore you have eaten and drunk with us, you can do so no more;
you were one of us, you can be so no longer; we come no more to you;
come you not to us." In Eastern Africa, the Wanicas are accustomed to
fill a cocoa-nut shell with rice and tembo, and place it near the grave.
In the Congo district, a channel is dug into the grave leading to the
mouth of the corpse, by which means food and drink are duly conveyed.
The sense of decorum impels certain Turanian tribes to place not only
food, but even napkins, on the graves of their relatives. We cannot
resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from Mr. Tylor's
graphic account of the manner in which the Chinese feast their ghostly
visitors. "Some victuals are left over for any blind or feeble spirit
who may be late, and a pail of gruel is provided for headless souls,
with spoons for them to put it down their throats with. Such proceedings
culminate in the so-called Universal Rescue, now and then celebrated,
when a little house is built for the expected visitors, with separate
accommodations, and bath rooms for male and female ghosts." * In the
Alpach Valley of Tyrol, ghosts released from purgatory on the night
of All Souls, return to the houses of the peasantry. A light is left
burning in the dining room, and a certain cake, prepared for the
occasion, is placed upon the table for their delectation, also a pot of
grease for the poor souls to anoint their wounds with.

     * Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, p. 34.

Occasionally, to obviate the necessity of continued attendance upon
the dead, a single sumptuous feast is provided immediately after their
demise, and this is believed to cancel their claims once for all. In
this manner arose the custom of funeral banquets. In England, in the
fifteenth century, a noisy revel of three days' duration attended the
obsequies of Sir John Paston. The so-called Irish wake originated in
the same way. After the first outbreaks of grief have subsided, meat and
drink are brought in, chiefly the latter, and what was at first intended
for a parting entertainment to the dead, often ends in the boisterous
excesses of the living.

It is here proper to remark that the savage tribes who believe in an
after existence, do not in many instances claim this privilege for
themselves alone, but share it willingly with the lower animals and even
with inanimate objects. Weapons, utensils, and even victuals--have their
ghostly representatives like men. When a great chief dies, his widow is
often forced by public opinion to follow him to the grave, in order that
the departed brave may not be wifeless in the hereafter. But besides the
widow, his horse, his war-club, his girdle, his favorite trinkets are
buried or burned with him to serve his use or vanity in spectre-land.

From what has preceded, it must be clear that the savage's conception of
a ghost bears but a faint and distant resemblance to the idea of soul,
as it became current in the schools of philosophy; nor can the latter
derive support from the ignorant reasonings, the hasty inductions of
primitive man. On the lower levels of culture the idea of immortality
indeed is quite unknown. If the ghost continues its shadowy existence
after death, it is none the less liable to come to an abrupt end, and
then nothing whatever of its former substance remains; it is a pale,
filmy thing, exposed to the inroads of the hostile elements, surrounded
by numerous dangers, to which it may at any moment succumb. In the Tonga
Islands only the souls of the well-born are supposed to survive at all.
The common people have no souls worth speaking of, and when they die,
are completely extinguished. The ghosts of Guinea negroes are compelled
to approach the bank of the terrible river of death. Some of them are
thereupon wafted across to lead pleasant lives on the opposite side,
others are drowned in the stream, or beaten to atoms with a club. With
the Fijians it is always a matter of doubt whether a soul will succeed
at all in maintaining its feeble existence after it has left its
protecting house of sinew and bone. But they open a peculiarly dismal
prospect to wifeless souls. Nanananga, a fierce demoniac being, watches
for them on the shore as they approach, and dashes them to pieces upon
the rocks. The Greenlanders affirm that after death the soul enters
upon a long, lone journey over a mountain full of precipitous descents,
covered with ice and snow. The storms howl about its path, and every
step is fraught with pain and danger. If any harm happens to the poor
wanderer here, then it dies "the other death" from which there is no
re-awakening.

In the theories of a future state, as devised by the lower races, we are
at a loss to detect the germs of any more spiritual longings. Far from
looking forward with pleased anticipation or confidence to the world to
come, the barbarian shuddered as he thought of his approaching end,
and was loath to exchange the white and sunny world for the dreary
companionship of luckless shades. The life that awaited him was not in
the majority of instances a better or a higher life than this; not free
from the limitations of sense; no larger perfecting of what is here
dwarfed and crippled; it was lower, poorer, meaner; it was to the
present, what the pressed flower is to the full-blown rose; the same
in substance, indeed, but with its beauty perished, and its joyous
fragrance evanesced.

The argument from the common consent of mankind in truth deserves no
serious attention.*

     * The doctrine of spiritual immortality is not common to the
     human race.   The material life of the ghost bears no
     analogy to what we mean by the soul's continuance.    The
     continuance of the ghost's existence is not an immortal
     continuance.

The argument cannot be substantiated, it would prove nothing, if it
could. The general concurrence of the whole human race in any form of
error would not make that error less erroneous, and the testimony of
united millions against a solitary thinker might kick the beam when
balanced in the scales of truth.

When we behold an ignorant knave squandering his ill-gotten gains
on superfluities, while honest people are famishing for want of the
necessaries; when we see the unscrupulous politician outstripping the
deserving statesman, in the race for fame and station; when modest merit
shrinks in corners, and the native royalty of talent plays courtier to
the kings of lucre, we are reminded of the complaint of Job, that the
bad prosper, and the righteous are down-trodden, yet that they sleep
together in the dust and the worm covers them alike.

This evident disparity between virtue and happiness has led men to take
refuge in the thought of compensation hereafter, and the necessity of a
future state in which the good shall be rewarded, and the evil punished,
according to the verdict of a just judge, has been deduced even from the
apparent injustice of the present. Thus the very imperfections of our
own life on earth, afford a pretext for the most ambitious conceptions
of human destiny.

The argument from the necessity of reward and punishment is extremely
popular among the uneducated, since it appeals ostensibly to their sense
of justice and assures them that by the aid of Divine omnipotence, a
full correspondence between worthiness and happiness, though vainly
expected here, will be established in another sphere. It behooves us to
enquire whether there is anything in the nature of virtue, that demands
a correspondence of this kind.

The philosopher Epicurus was perhaps the first among the ancients to
take strong ground in favor of the utilitarian view of virtue. Pleasure,
he holds, is the purpose of existence, and virtue is thus reduced
to enlightened self-interest. There are different kinds of pleasure;
pleasures of the senses and of the soul. Epicurus points out that the
former cannot be considered true pleasures, since they defeat their
own end, blunting the capacity of enjoyment in proportion as they are
indulged, and incapable of affording permanent satisfaction. Himself
a man of refined tastes and fastidious habits, he shrank from the very
coarseness of the passions, and counselled moderation, friendship and
benevolence. But he refused to recognize in these virtues any intrinsic
value of their own, and lauded them only because in contrast to the
lower appetites, the enjoyment they afford is lasting and constantly
increases with their exercise. It is easy to perceive that when the
moral law is thus stripped of its authority to command, the choice
between duty and inclination will be governed by fortuitous preferences,
and not by principle. It then remains for each individual to decide what
form of pleasure may be most congenial to his temper and desires. The
philosopher will value the delights of contemplative ease, and of kindly
communion with his fellow-men; the passionate youth may hold that a
single deep draught from the chalice of sensual pleasure is worth more
than a whole lifetime of neutral self-restraint; "eat and drink" will
be his motto; "remote consequences--who knows? To-morrow we may die."
Moreover the doctrine of enlightened self-interest has this fatal
objection to it, that if consistently applied, at least among the
powerful of the earth, it would lead to consequences the very reverse
of moral. It is but too true that honesty is not always the best policy;
that fraud and violence, when perpetrated on a scale of sufficient
magnitude, (instance the division of unfortunate Poland,) are not always
punished as they deserve to be. Far from teaching the tyrant to subdue
his baser instincts, enlightened self-interest might rather lead him to
stifle the accusing voice of conscience, and to root out the scruples
that interfere with his ambition. Unless we concede that the moral law
has a claim upon us which the constitution of our nature does not permit
us to deny with impunity, and that its pleasures differ, not only in
degree, but in kind, from all others, virtue, while a necessity to the
weak, becomes folly in the strong; and Napoleon, that gigantic egotist,
was correct, when he called love a silly infatuation, and sentiment a
thing for women.

The principles of Epicurus not only adulterate the motives of goodness
with the desire of reward, but they make the reward of desire the very
sanction of all virtue, and thus deprive human nature of its best title
to nobility.

Truly disinterestedness is the distinguishing mark of every high
endeavor. The pursuit of the artist is unselfish, the beauty he creates
is his reward. The toil of the scientist in the pursuit of abstract
truth is unselfish, the truth he sees is his reward. Why should we
hesitate to acknowledge in the domain of ethics, what we concede in the
realm of art and science? To say that unselfishness itself is only
the more refined expression of a selfish instinct, is to use the term
selfish with a double meaning, is a mere empty play on words. We have
the innate need of harmony in the moral relations; this is our glory,
and the stamp of the Divine upon our nature. We cannot demonstrate the
existence of disinterested motives, any more than we can demonstrate
that there is joy in the sunlight and freedom in the mountain breeze.
The fact that we _demand unselfishness_ in action alone assures us that
the standard of enlightened self-interest is false.

And indeed if we consult the opinions of men, where they are least
likely to be warped by sophistry, we shall find that disinterestedness
is the universal criterion by which moral worth is measured. If we
suspect the motive we condemn the act. If a person gives largely for
some object of public useful ness or charity, we do not permit the
munificence of the gift to deceive our judgment. Perhaps he is merely
desirous of vaunting his wealth, perhaps it is social standing he aims
at, perhaps he is covetous of fame. If these suspicions prove well
founded, the very men who accept his bounty will in their secret hearts
despise him, and by a certain revulsion of feeling we shall resent his
action all the more, because, not only is he destitute of honorable
purpose, but he has filched the fair front of virtue, and defiled the
laurel even in the wearing of it.

We do not even accord the name of goodness to that easy, amiable
sympathy which leads us to alleviate the sufferings of others, unless it
be guided by wise regard for their permanent welfare.

The tattered clothes, the haggard looks, the piteous pleading voice of
the pauper on the public highway may awaken our pity, but the system of
indiscriminate alms-giving is justly condemned as a weakness rather than
a virtue.

On the other hand obedience to duty, when it involves pain and
self-abnegation, seems to rise in the general estimation. Clearly
because in this instance even the suspicion of interested motives is
removed, since hardship, injury in estate and happiness, and even the
possible loss of life, are among the foreseen consequences of the act.
It is for this reason that the Book of Martyrs has become the golden
book of mankind, and that the story of their lives never fails to fill
us with mingled sorrow, and admiration, and pride. They are monuments
on the field of history, milestones on the path of human progress. We
regard them and gain new courage and confidence in our better selves.
The blazing pyre on the Campo Fiore, whereon Giordano Bruno breathes his
last, becomes a beacon-light for the truth-seeker; the dying Socrates
still pours benignant peace over many a sufferer's couch; the Man of
sorrows, on Calvary, comforts the hearts of the Christian millions.
In the presence of these high examples the inadequacy of the selfish
standard becomes clearly apparent. We recognize what a sublime quality
that is in man which enables him, not only to triumph over torment and
suffering, but to devote his very self to destruction for the sake of
honor and truth. Freely must virtue be wooed, not for the dowry she may
bring; by loyal devotion to her for her own sake only, can she be won!

If thus it appears that not only is there nothing in the nature of
virtue to warrant a claim to reward, but that it is her very nature to
disclaim any reward, it will become plain that the problem, as stated
in the beginning, rests upon an entirely false foundation. That the
unrighteous and unprincipled should enjoy temporal happiness, does not
offend the law of justice. That you, my good sir, honest in all your
dealings, truthful in all your acts, should be unhappy, is greatly to
be deplored. Why evil and unhappiness should have been allowed at all to
enter a world created by an all good and all powerful Being may fairly
be asked. Why those who possess the treasure of a clear conscience
should not also possess the lesser goods of earth, is a question with
which morality is in no wise concerned.

Virtue can have no recompense, save as it is its own recompense, and
vice can receive no real punishment save as it is its own avenger.
The hope of immortality, in so far as it is based upon the supposed
necessity of righting in a future state what is here wrong, is therefore
untenable, for it is based upon the assumption of a wrong which exists
in the imagination merely. _And he who claims a reward because of his
virtue, has thereby forfeited his right to maintain the claim, since
that is not virtue, which looks for reward._

*****

Having endeavored to show that the joys of earth cannot be claimed as
the recompense of a moral life, we must yet admit that the desire of
happiness is altogether too strong and deep-seated in human nature to
be thus summarily dismissed. We seek happiness on its own account quite
apart from any title which virtue may give us to its enjoyment. Were we
created for misery? Does not the poverty and general unsatisfactoriness
of our present condition warrant us in expecting ampler fulfilment,
permanent bliss in an after life? I think we shall derive some
assistance in discussing this question, by attempting to resolve the
conception of happiness into its constituent elements.

Pleasure has been defined to consist in the satisfaction of any of man's
natural wants. The variety of our pleasures corresponds to the diversity
of our wants.

Food to the hungry, rest to the weary, are sources of pleasure. To feel
on some cold wintry day the genial warmth of true hearth fire creeping
into our blood, and the frozen limbs relaxing their stiffness, is
pleasure. All men admire the beautiful and delight in adornment. Even
the rude savage seeks to gratify his aesthetic tastes, so far as the
means which nature places at his command permit. The custom of tattooing
the skin is widely practiced among the lower races, and stars and
circles, trees and plants, and other ingenious devices are impressed
with laborious patience upon the different members of the body. The
chiefs of the Fiji Islanders, a nude and cannibal race, are represented
as wearing an elaborate head-dress of three and even five feet in
dimensions, and were accustomed to spend several hours each day, under
the care of the royal hair-dresser. Among civilized men the desire for
adornment finds vent chiefly in external objects, while every coarse
solicitation of attention to the person is shunned. Tastily decorated
houses, flowers, paintings, music, gratify our sense of symmetry, and
spread an atmosphere of culture and refinement in the vicinity of our
daily occupations. But there are deeper and purer joys in reserve. Man
is eminently a social being; he has the need of sympathy and depends
upon the affections of his fellows. The presence of cherished companions
and friends becomes a necessity to him; in absence he yearns for it,
and the lack of it is one of the most serious afflictions of human life.
"Woe unto him who, far from parents and loved kinsmen, a lonely life
must lead. His present joys devouring grief doth snatch. His thoughts
are ever straying in the distance back to his father's hall, where the
sun of life first rose upon him, and where children of the common
home, playfully, with gentle bonds, close and closer drew their hearts
together."* The tranquil delight which we derive from the enlargement of
intellect, and the exquisite inward satisfaction that results from high
fidelity to duty, may be mentioned as the last to crown the scale of
pleasures.

     * Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Act I.

Now, it is evident that all these elements of happiness, these diverse
rays that nowhere melt into the perfect light, are dependent upon the
physical organization of man, such as it is, even for their partial
attainment; of the lower pleasures, this is at once evident. But a
little reflection will show the same to be the case with the higher. If
we consider the aesthetic faculty, we find its gratification conditioned
by a physical basis. What were music without the ear; what the symmetry
of form, without the eye and touch? The intellect, in its turn,
fashions-the rough timber of experience, which an ever flowing stream of
sensation carries into the workshop of the brain. Can the mind feed upon
itself? Can the laws of thought act otherwise than upon the material
afforded by the senses? The same is also true with respect to our moral
qualities, and the exercise of the virtues is inconceivable beyond the
pale of human society. All virtue presupposes a tendency to err;
the failings and limitations of our mortal condition. Justice is the
adjustment of limitations common to all men in such manner that their
stress shall not bear more heavily upon one than upon the other. Love
is the expansion of one limited nature in another and their mutual
enrichment by such union. Charity, fortitude, continence, whatever we
applaud in human conduct, is but an indirect testimony to the natural
imperfections inherent in the human heart, and is accounted admirable
only in so far as it tends to ensure the best interests of the race on
earth. When therefore this body is corrupted, when we depart from out
the fellowship of men, the gratification of the appetites, the enjoyment
of beauty, the exercise of reason, and the practice of virtue become
alike unthinkable.

We desire larger happiness than we can here achieve; but because we
desire a thing, are we therefore at all warranted in believing that
we shall obtain it? Is the course of the world's affairs such as to
encourage so flattering an hypothesis? Is not the fatality that so often
attends our best efforts in this life, an argument against, rather than
in favor of increasing felicity in another? We should assume a wiser
attitude as against fate. There are those who fret under disappointment,
and murmur and rebel as if they had been defrauded of a right; as if
they had entered into a compact with destiny to their advantage, as if
the myriad worlds moved through space for their especial good. This is
an insane spirit. We need something of the vim of stoicism to grapple
with the difficulties of life; we need to cultivate a larger patience;
an humble spirit prepared for every loss, and welcoming every hour
of joy as an unlooked for gain. There are a thousand pleasures too in
little things which we, with the petulance of children, daily spurn,
because we cannot have all we ask for. In every stone there is
instruction, in every varying aspect of the sky there is beauty,
wherever men congregate and commune, lessons of wisdom are revealed to
the observer. The movement of everlasting laws quivers in the meanest
trifles, and the eternities, thinly veiled, look out upon us with their
solemn gaze from every passing mask of time. These let us study; art
will help us; science will open to us a wondrous chain of workings which
the mind cannot exhaust, and active exertions for the common weal will
give a generous glow to our lives, and still the unquiet yearnings which
we may never entirely set at rest. You have seen how the flowers grow,
how that many seeds are scattered and but few take root; how the germ
slowly and with difficulty develops. The rain waters it, the warm
sunbeam fosters it; storms sweeping over the earth, may crush it while
it is still a young and tender shoot. At last, sometimes after years of
preparation, it buds and opens and blooms and becomes a delight and a
glory, a fount of fragrance, a crown of beauty. A few days pass and
it droops; what the long process of time has slowly created, a single
moment may suffice to destroy; and yet though its time was brief, the
flower fulfilled its nature only in that passing bloom; all the previous
stages of its existence had a meaning only as they led up to this, the
final revelation of its purpose.

The bloom of human life is morality; whatever else we may possess,
health, and wealth, power, grace, knowledge, have a value only as they
lead up to this; have a meaning only as they make this possible. Nor
should we complain that the blight of death so quickly withers what the
course of threescore years has scarce sufficed to produce. In the hour
of our destruction, we will lift up our hearts in triumph--we have
blossomed! We have blossomed!

But it will be said, that the flower when it is wilted and withered
here, may be transplanted to fairer regions; that the soul may take
on new organs, when it has abandoned its earthly habitation, and in a
series of transformations of which, it is true, we can form no definite
conception, may enter afresh upon its struggles for worthiness in other
spheres. This is, indeed, the loftiest expression which the hope of
immortality has found. Unlike the arguments previously considered, it
is unalloyed by any selfish motive, is founded upon a really exalted
sentiment, and it is Love and Virtue themselves that here take up the
strain, and sing us their animating song of ceaseless progress toward
the good. The argument in this shape, involves the further question
whether the existence of an independent and indestructible soul is
assured, and upon this point the whole problem of immortality finally
hinges.

The question whether what we are accustomed to call the soul is a
distinct and indivisible entity, or merely the result of material
processes, has divided mankind for more than two thousand years, and
some of the ablest thinkers have ranged themselves on either side. As
early as the fifth century B. C. the philosopher Democritus propounded
materialistic doctrines among the Greeks. According to him, the soul is
a combination of smooth, round, polished and moving atoms, and to the
motions of these atoms the phenomena of life are to be ascribed.

Among the Romans, Lucretius advanced similar views. He took particular
pains to combat the "vulgar fear of death," protesting that the prospect
of dissolution would lose its terrors, did we not foolishly imagine
ourselves conscious of being dead, forgetting that death implies the
entire cessation of consciousness. The followers of materialistic
opinions among the ancients, were not a few. But during the ascendancy
of the Christian Church, these opinions retired into the background,
until in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were revived by
such men as Gassendi and La Mettrie, and others. In modern times they
have been widely spread.

The list of names on the opposite side is headed by Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, and embraces the great majority of writers and public
teachers, down to the present day.

It may appear strange that when the belief in immortality had once
become current, men should have been tempted to forego its pleasing
prospects, and even, with a certain vehemence, to urge their sceptical
views upon others. Let us consider for a moment, what it was that
induced the materialists to assume their position. The observed
correspondence between mental and physical phenomena doubtless led them
in the first instance to adopt their peculiar views.

We see in the tiny body of the new born babe, barely more than the faint
stirrings of animal life; months pass by before it is able to form any
clear conception of the persons and things in its vicinity, the simpler
mental processes appearing simultaneously with the growth of the bodily
organs. The intellect reaches its highest development in the age of
manhood and womanhood, when we stand in the maturity of our physical
powers. In that middle age of life lies, with rare exceptions, the best
work we are destined to accomplish. Having entered upon the downward
slope, our faculties gradually lose their vigor, until we sink into the
final stage of drivelling old age, and become feeble in mind, as we
are helpless in body. In this manner the close connection between our
spiritual and material parts, is brought home forcibly, even to
the unreflecting; as the one enlarges so does the other: as the one
diminishes so does the other: together they increase, together they are
weakened; the inference is drawn, shall it not be, that together they
will perish?

The phenomena of sleep and of coma seem to convey the same lesson. A
haze steals over our consciousness; sometimes settling into impenetrable
night; as the body for a time wears the semblance of death, so also
is the mind stupefied or completely paralyzed. Hours pass by; in the
interval, the business of the world has gone on as before, but to us
there has been only a void and utter blank. And thus it is said shall
there be a void and a blank in the tomb; time will pass by, and we shall
not know it; men will move and act and we shall be none the wiser for
it; it will be all like sleep, only that there will be no dreams.

And again when some malignant fever seizes upon the body and corrupts
the currents of the blood, how do the poor disordered thoughts dance
about wildly, driven by the lash of the distemper; how does the use of
stimulants besot the intellect, so that every higher power is deadened;
how in the wild ravings of the diseased brain, do we behold the hideous
mockery of mind.

And does not the grave itself testify loudly that the end is an end
indeed; the body falls to pieces, the dust commingles with the dust, and
nothing remains, nothing at least of which we can ever have experience.
Right or wrong, these facts impress the mind, and their leaden weight
serves to drag down our aspirations.

It is true, the considerations I have enumerated are based upon a mere
surface view of things, but the more accurate methods of science seem,
at first sight, to confirm the general conclusions to which they lead.
On this point, it would be well to dwell for a moment. John Stuart Mill
acknowledges that "the evidence is well-nigh complete that all thought
and feeling has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate
coincident and accompaniment, and that the specific variations, and
especially the different degrees of complication of the nervous and
cerebral organism, correspond to differences in the development of our
mental faculties."

The prodigious difficulties in the way of the study of the brain may
long retard the progress of the investigator, but for the purposes of
our argument we are at liberty to assume whatever is within the limits
of possible achievement. We may suppose that physiology will succeed
so far that the brain will be accurately and completely mapped out, and
that the motions of the atoms upon which the thousand varying modes of
thought and feeling depend, will be known and measured. In anticipating
such results, we have reached the utmost tenable position of
materialism.

But now to our surprise we discover that all this being allowed, the
ultimate question, what is soul, remains still unsolved and as insoluble
as ever. The unvarying coincidence of certain modes of soul with certain
material processes may be within the range of proof, but what cannot be
proven is, that these material processes explain the psychic phenomena.

If it is urged that the same difficulty presents itself in the
explanation of the most ordinary occurrences, this objection is based
upon a misapprehension of the point at issue.

The scientist cannot show why heat should be convertible into motion,
but how it is thus transformed is easy to demonstrate, and the exact
mechanical equivalent of heat has been calculated. But how certain
motions of atoms in the brain should generate, not heat, but
consciousness, but thought and love, is past all conception. There are
here two different orders of facts, having no common principle to which
they could both be reduced. There is an impassable gulf between them
which can in nowise be bridged over.

Nor would it avail us to endow the atom itself with the promise and
potency of intellect; we should thereby throw back the issue a step
further, and disguise the problem whose existence it were better to
plainly acknowledge. The broad fact of consciousness therefore remains
unexplained and inexplicable as before. Arrived at this limit, science
itself pauses and refuses to pass further.

Some of the leading naturalists of our day have lately expressed
themselves clearly and tersely in this sense. The eminent physiologist
Dubois Rey-mond denies that the connection between certain motions of
certain atoms in the brain, and what he calls, the primal, undefinable
and undeniable facts of consciousness, is at all conceivable.
Professor Tyndall in his address on "The scope and limits of Scientific
Materialism," explains his views with similar precision.

Were our minds so expanded, strengthened and illuminated as to enable
us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of
following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric
discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the
corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as
ever from the solution of the problem. How are these physical processes
connected by and with the facts of consciousness? I do not think the
materialist is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and
his molecular motions explain everything, in reality they explain
nothing.... The problem of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern
form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.

Now since it is impossible to demonstrate that the powers of mind are a
product of matter, the possibility undoubtedly remains that these powers
may continue to exist even after their connection with the physical
organism has been dissolved. If all the arguments that are commonly
adduced in support of the doctrine of a future life fall short of their
object, it is but just to add that every argument to the contrary is
equally devoid of foundation. The doctrine of immortality cannot be
disproved. Of the nature of soul we are in absolute ignorance we know
nothing; what is more, we can know nothing At this point we touch the
utmost boundary of human reason, and must be content to write mystery of
mysteries.

In the state of settled uncertainty to which we are thus reduced, the
shape of our opinions will be determined by the bias of our natures or
the influence of education. The sceptic will remind us of the points
in which we resemble all the perishable forms of nature and hold it
improbable that we alone should escape the universal law of dissolution.
Others will cling to the hope of continued life, even on the brink of
the grave, and the strong instinct of self preservation will give tone
and color to their religious beliefs. Deep philosophical speculations
are possible as to that ultimate source of being, that hidden light of
which both matter and mind are diverse reflections. And here too poetry
assumes its legitimate office. On the mists that cover the infinite
abyss, we may project whatever images, foul or fair, we list. Science
you may be sure will never disturb us. Dogmatic assertion however, on
either side is totally unwarranted: and the question of immortality (I
think we must sooner or later make up our minds to that) will remain an
open one. Certain, only, is the fact of our uncertainty.

If the conclusions to which we have thus been led, seem purely negative
in their bearings, they are none the less capable of certain positive
applications, which deserve our serious attention. The longing for
immortality has been developed into a morbid craving under the influence
of the current religious teachings, and has become a disturbing element
in human society. On more than one occasion it has imperilled the peace
of nations, and the doctrines of salvation became the watchwords of
contending armies. The doubtful chances of eternal felicity or damnation
became the one absorbing topic on which men's minds dwelt, and the wild
horrors of the Christian Hell have cast a gloom over many an innocent
life, and curtailed the scant measure of its earthly happiness. It were
something gained, if by a cool and dispassionate judgment the influence
of these dismal fantasies could be lessened, and men be freed from
their slavish subjection to phantoms born of their own distempered
imaginations.

Furthermore, it follows from what we have said that the belief in
immortality should not be inculcated as a dogma in our schools of
religion, and above all that the dictates of the moral law should in no
wise be made to depend upon it for their sanction. The moral law is
the common ground upon which all religious and in fact all true men may
meet. It is the one basis of union that remains to us amid the clashing
antagonisms of the sects. While dogma is by its nature, open to attack,
and its acceptance at all times a matter of choice, the principles of
morality have a right to demand implicit obedience, and should rest as
everlasting verities in the human heart. Let us reflect well before we
imperil the latter by the undue prominence which we give the former. It
is not needful to impart to a child the whole truth, but what it learns
should be wholly true, and nothing should be taught it as a fundamental
fact which it can ever in after years be led to call in question. How
often has it occurred that when the riper reason of the man has rejected
the tenets of the church in which he was educated, he has been tempted
to cast aside all the religious teachings of his youth, the moral with
the rest, as idle fable and deceit.

And lastly, friends, as we do not, cannot know, it is presumably wise
that we should not know. The vanity of all our efforts to grasp the
infinite, should teach us that on this island of time whereon we live,
lies our work. In its joys we may freely take delight; for its woes we
should reserve our sympathies, and in laboring to advance the progress
of the good we must find our satisfaction.

Before closing this subject however let us recall vividly to our minds
that the desire for continuance after death is capable of the most
noble expression, and of supplying us with wholesome consolation and
inspiriting motives to action. The individual passes, but the race
lives! There is a law in nature that no force is ever lost. The thousand
varying forms that ebb and flow around us are various only to our feeble
vision. At the core they are one, transmuted, yet the same, changing
yet changeless, perishing to rise anew. The law of the conservation of
energy holds good throughout the entire domain of matter. And such a law
too obtains in our spiritual life. The law of the conservation of moral
energy is no less an abiding truth; we are not dust merely, that returns
to dust; we are not summer flies that bask in the sunshine of the
passing day; we are not bounded in our influence by the narrow tenure
of our years. Say not when the sod has closed above those who have been
dear to you that all is gone. Say not that the grace and loveliness, and
wisdom that once dwelt within the pallid form is breathed away like
a hollow wind. Nor yet stand idly gazing upon the cloud-land of the
future, watching if you can trace perchance their shadowy lineaments
fading into the dimness of untried worlds. The dead are not dead if we
have loved them truly. In our own lives we give them immortality. Let us
arise and take up the work they have left unfinished, and preserve the
treasures they have won, and round out the circuit of their being to the
fullness of an ampler orbit in our own.

All the good that was in them lives in you, the germ and nucleus of
the better that shall be. All the evil that inhered in them shall be
cleansed away in you and your virtues shall be the atonement for their
sins. Thus shall the fathers live in the children, and from generation
to generation the bond that connects the past with the future remains
unbroken. They that have left you are not afar; their presence is near
and real, a silent and august companionship. In the still hours of
meditation; under the starlit night, in the stress of action, in trials
and temptations, you will hear their voices whispering words of cheer or
warning, and your deeds are their deeds and your lives are their lives.

So does the light of other days still shine in the bright hued flowers
that clothe our fields; so do they who are long since gathered into
the silent city of the dead still move about our houses, distributing
kindness and nobleness among our lives. So does the toll of the funeral
bell become an alarum to rouse us to more active effort and to the
nobler service of mankind.




II. RELIGION.

The question, Have we still a religion, propounded by David Friedrich
Strauss some few years ago, will long engage the attention of radical
thinkers. It is clear that to answer it satisfactorily we must
determine, in the first instance, what meaning ought rightly to be
attached to the term religion. In common parlance, it is often used with
reference to mere externals, a religious person being one who conforms
to the rites and usages of some particular church. On the other hand,
every innovation in the sphere of doctrine is branded as irreligious.
Thus Luther was deemed irreligious by the Catholics; St. Boniface by
the heathen Germans, Jesus by the Jews, Elijah by the servants of Baal.
There is not any single form, nor even a single fundamental principle
common to all religions. Religion is not identical with theology. It
is indeed often maintained that the belief in a personal God should
be regarded as the foundation and criterion of religion; but upon this
assumption, two facts remain inexplicable, the existence of religion
before ever the idea of a deity had arisen among men, and the existence
of what may be termed an atheistical religion, in conscious antagonism
to the doctrine of a personal God. Among the lower races we find men
worshipping, sacrificing and uttering their invocations to mountains,
fountains, rivers, rocks and stones: they know not a deity--sometimes
they have not even idols, and yet they certainly have, after a fashion
of their own, a religion. Again, Buddhism, while possessing a subtle
system of philosophy and an admirable code of ethics, starts with the
proposition that there never was a creation, and in consequence, never
a creator, and yet more than four hundred millions of the earth's
inhabitants call it their religion!

The question returns to us, What is religion? It is not creed; it is
not sacrifice; it is not prayer; it is not covered by the dogmas of any
special form of belief; it has acted as a controlling force in all ages,
in every zone, among all manner of men. Are we devoid of it? Of it? Of
what?

The feeling which the presence of the Infinite in the thoughts of man
awakens within him, is called, the feeling of the sublime. _The feeling
of the sublime is the root of the religious sentiment._ It assumes
various phases, and to these correspond the various religions. Let us
endeavor to enumerate some of the most prominent.

The feeling of the sublime is awakened by the mysterious. The indefinite
gives us our earliest presentiment of the infinite; the religion
of mystery is fetishism. The feeling of the sublime is awakened by
exhibitions of superhuman power. The religion of power is paganism. The
feeling of the sublime is evoked by vastness; the religions of vastness
are Brahminism and Buddhism. The loftiest type of sublimity is to be
found in the morally infinite. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have
sought to give it expression.*

     * We do not pretend that the above schedule is at all
     exhaustive. Various elements of the sublime, not mentioned
     in the text, have entered into the composition of each of
     the great religions. We have merely attempted to seize the
     more salient feature of a few leading types.

Let us discuss in the first place the origin of Fetishism. There are
certain natural phenomena that fill us with alarm, without our being
able to attribute the effect to any definite cause. The darkness of
night, the rustling of leaves, the moaning of the wind through the
forest, the wailing cry of certain birds, and the peculiar effects of a
gathering fog, are of this kind. I have had occasion to observe a little
child suddenly starting from its play with every sign of fear depicted
upon its countenance; the spasm passed away as quickly as it had come,
but was repeated at various intervals, until at last the child ran up to
me in uncontrollable alarm, and threw up its arms for protection: it was
a raw wintry day, a gusty wind blew fitfully against the windows; and
the dreary sound of the rattling panes could be distinctly heard in the
stillness of the room; on closer observation I noticed that the signs
of alarm in the child recurred with great regularity, as often as
this sound was repeated. In a similar way we may imagine our earliest
ancestors to have been affected by whatever was vague and mysterious in
nature. The sense of uncertainty occasioned in this manner, gave rise in
the primitive man to the first conceptions of mysterious powers beyond
him.

The invention, or rather the discovery, of fire tended still further in
the same direction. To us it is barely possible to imagine life without
this most useful of the elements. The wild beast flees fire and fears
it, man uses it, and it becomes the chief instrument of civilization.
But if we strive to picture to ourselves the state of the savage's mind
on his first acquaintance with fire and its properties we shall find
him utterly at a loss to account for. How will he regard this nimble,
playful being, so bright and yet so fearful in its ravages. Of the laws
of chemical action he has of course no conception, but he has sometimes
seen the lightning strike into the wood of the tree, and now from the
same wood he evokes the semblance of the lightning. He is twirling two
dry sticks between his hands; of a sudden, a lambent flame shoots forth,
seizes the wood, makes away with it, and leaves nothing but blackened
cinders behind. Whence did it come, whither has it vanished? Here was
a new mystery; a spiritual presence, latent in trees and stones; kindly
and beneficent at times, then again hostile and fiercely destructive.

The mystery of the preparation of fire is celebrated in the ancient
hymns of the Vedah. We there find its birth from the friction of the
double sticks described, and its properties rehearsed in reverent
language. It is invoked like any superior spirit to bless its votaries,
and to protect them from harm. The important role ascribed to fire in
the sacred usages of the ancients, is well-known, and the origin of fire
worship apparent.

The theory of dreams, to which we have referred on a previous occasion,
contributed in like manner, to extend the boundaries of the world of
mystery. Convinced that he bore within himself an airy counterfeit of
self, the savage attributed the same species of possession to things
animate and inanimate alike. Why should not beasts and rivers and stones
have their ghosts like man? Moreover, as to the ghosts of the human
dead, no one could tell where they might take up their abode. They
might be anywhere and everywhere. Their countless legions surrounded
the living in all places. They were heard shouting in the echo among
the hills; they were seen to ride past on the midnight gale. Often
they assumed the shape of birds and reptiles and beasts of prey. Those
creatures were singled out with a preference, whose movements and habits
suggested the idea of mystery. Thus the owl was supposed to harbor an
evil spirit, and the serpent was worshipped because of its stealthy,
gliding motion, its venomous bite, and the fascination in its eye.
Serpent worship existed the world over. Traces of it are preserved in
the literature of the Greeks and Romans, and it was practised even among
the Hebrews, as the Books of Kings attest. Among certain African tribes
it is still customary to keep huge serpents in temples, and priests are
dedicated to their service. Powerful animals also, such as the bear,
the lion and the tiger, were sometimes supposed to contain the ghosts of
departed chieftains, and were revered accordingly.

If we remember the unfriendly relations supposed to subsist between the
living and the dead, we may conceive the state of alarm in which our
primitive ancestors must have passed their lives on beholding themselves
thus beset on every side, with ghosts or demons in disguise. A thousand
fabulous terrors haunted their imagination. Wherever they turned they
suspected lurking foes; spirits were in the earth, in the air, in birds,
in animals, in reptiles, in trees. They could not move a step without
infringing on the boundaries of the spirit realm. Every object the least
extraordinary in size, or shape, or color, appeared to them the token of
some demon's presence, and was worshipped in consequence, not on its own
account, but because of the mystery which it suggested.

In this manner Fetishism arose. The fetish worshipper leaves his hut in
the morning, sees some bright pebble glistening on his path, lifts it
from the ground and says, this shall be my fetish. If he succeeds in the
business of the day, he places the little object in a shrine, gilds it,
brings it food, addresses his prayers to it; if it fails, it is cast
aside. Again, if after a little time the fetish ceases to fulfil his
wishes, he breaks it and drags it in the mire by way of punishment.

Such are a few of the gross and grotesque conceptions to which the
religion of mystery has given birth. It is true, to the educated mind
of the present day they will appear the very reverse of sublime. But
greatness is relative, and our own loftier conceptions of the sublime
are but the slow result of a long process of growth and development.


THE RELIGION OF POWER

It has often been said that fear is the beginning of religion; a
statement of this kind however, cannot be accepted, without serious
qualification. There is a sense of kinship with the great, in whatever
form it may appear, of which even the meanest are susceptible. A nation
worships the hero who ruins it; and slaves will take a certain pride in
the superiority of their masters. It is not fear so much as admiration
of might which makes men servants of the mighty. The first tyrants on
earth were, in all likelihood, strong, agile, and brave men, possessing
in an extraordinary degree, the qualities which all others coveted. They
won applause, they were looked up to as natural leaders, and the arm of
force maintained what the esteem of their fellows had accorded in the
first instance. There is a touch of the sublime even in the rudest
adoration of force.

In the second stage of religious development, which we are now
approaching, the theory of possession discussed in the above, was
extended to the heavenly bodies, and the sun, moon and stars were
endowed with the attributes of personal beings. Hence the origin of the
great gods. As the sun is the most conspicuous body in the heavens,
the sun god figures as the central deity in every pantheon. The various
phases through which the luminary passes are represented in distinct
personalities. We find gods of the rising sun and of the setting
sun; gods of the sun of spring, summer and winter, gods also of the
cloud-enshrouded sun, that battles with the storm giants.

Since the hosts of heaven were supposed to be beings allied in nature
to ourselves, the action and interaction of the meteoric phenomena
was ascribed to personal motives, and the ingenuity of the primitive
philosophers was exhausted in finding plausible pretexts to explain
their attractions and repulsions, their seeming friendships and
hostilities. Thus arose the quaint and fanciful myths with which the
traditions of antiquity abound. Those problems which the modern mind
seeks to settle with the help of scientific investigation, the limited
experience of an earlier age was barely competent to attack, and it
covered with some pretty fiction, the difficulties which it could not
solve. The genealogy and biography of the sun-god formed the main theme
of all mythologies.

The daily progress of the sun through the heavens, is described as
follows: Each morning the golden crowned god leaves his golden palace
in the East, deep down below the ocean's waves; he mounts his golden
chariot, drawn by fiery steeds. A rosy fingered maiden opens the purple
gate of day, upward rush the steeds through blinding mist along the
steep ascent of heaven, down they plunge at evening into the cooling
waters of the sea; the naiads await the deity and bear him backward to
his orient home.

Again the fair youth Adonis is said to come out of the forest, where
nymphs had nurtured him. Venus and he hunt in joyous company through
wood and dale. One day Adonis is slain; the blood that trickled from
his wounds has turned the roses red, and the tender anemones have sprung
from the tears that love wept when she beheld his fall. The young god
who comes out of the forest is Spring; for a time he disports joyously
on earth, with love for his companion, but his term of life is quickly
ended. Spring dies, but ever returns anew. Among the Syrian women it
was customary for a long period to observe the festival of the Adoneiah;
with every sign of grief they first bemoaned the god's untimely death;
they beat their breasts, cut off the rich luxuriance of their hair;
showed upon his effigy the marks of the wounds he had received; bound
him with linen bands, anointed him with costly oil and spices, and then
buried him. On the seventh day the cry was heard, Adonis lives, Adonis
is resurrected from the grave. The story of a young god typical of the
Spring who suffers a premature death, and after a time resurrects from
the grave is well known in the mythologies of other nations.

The progress of the sun through the seasons is thus personified. The
rays of the sun are described as the locks of the sun-god's hair. When
the sun's heat waxes, these locks increase in abundance, when it wanes
they diminish, until in mid-winter the head of the sun-god is entirely
bald. At this season the god is supposed to be exceedingly weak, and his
eye, bright in the summer, is now become blind. He is far from his home,
and subject to the power of his enemies, the wintry storms. These traits
recur in the familiar Hebrew myth of Samson. The word Samson means sun;
he is bound with ropes, as is also the sun-god among the Polynesians.
The secret of his strength is in his hair. Shorn of this the giant
becomes feeble as a child, and is blinded by his foes.

But it is the sun in its conflict with the demons of the storm, the sun
as a warrior and a hero, that chiefly attracts the _religious_ reverence
of the heroic age. In nature there is no more striking exhibition of
power than is revealed in the phenomena of the thunder-storm. Even to us
it has not lost its sublimity, and a sense of awe overcomes us whenever
the mighty spectacle is enacted in the heavens. Primitive man had a far
deeper interest in the issue of the tempest than we are now capable of
appreciating. To him the clouds appeared to be ferocious monsters, and
when they crowded about the central luminary, he feared that they might
quench its light in everlasting darkness. The very existence of the
universe seemed to be threatened. The sun-god, the true friend of man,
however arises to wage war against the demons: a terrific uproar follows
and the contending forces meet. Do you hear Thor's far-sounding
hammer, Jove's bolt falling in the thunder clap: do you see Indra's
lightning-spear flashing across the sky, and piercing the sides of the
storm dragon? The light triumphs; the tempest rolls away, but presently
returns to be again defeated. In this way arose the transparent stories
of Jupiter's conflict with Typhon, his precipitate flight, and his final
victory; the story of Indra's warfare against the writhing serpent,
Vritra, and numerous others that might be mentioned. It is the sun-god
who flashes the lightning and hurls the thunder. To him men owe the
maintenance of the order of existence. He is the mightiest of the gods.
Fighting their battles on high, he is invoked by the warriors to aid
them in their earthly-conflicts; he takes precedence of all the other
deities; he the strongest god is raised to the throne of the celestial
state.

Now if we study the history of these deities, their intercourse among
themselves and with men, we find them to be no more than colossal images
of ourselves cast on the mists of the unknown. It is our face and form
that Jupiter wears; the echo of our wishes comes back to us in his
oracles. "If horses and cows could draw their gods," an ancient
philosopher has pointedly said, "as horses and cows would they draw
them." The gods share our passions, the good and the evil, distinguished
only in this, that what we feebly attempt, they can execute on a scale
of gigantic magnitude. They love and bless and shower a thousand gifts
upon their worshippers; but they can hate also; are vain, vindictive,
cruel.

The gods demand tribute. Like the kings of earth, they received the best
share of the spoils of war and of the chase; and gold and silver also
was deposited in their sanctuaries. Perfumed incense and dainty cakes
were placed upon their altars. The gods are hungry, they must be fed.
The gods are thirsty, and certain strong narcotic beverages were brewed
especially for their benefit. For this among the Hindoos the juice of
the soma plant was mixed with pure milk.

The gods demand blood. The wide prevalence of human sacrifice is the
saddest fact that stains the annals of religious history. Among the
Fijians the new boat of the chieftain was not permitted to venture upon
the waves until it had been washed with human blood, in order to secure
it against shipwreck. Among the Khonds of India, we learn that the body
of a human victim was literally torn in pieces and his blood mixed
with the new turned clod, in order to insure a plentiful harvest. It is
estimated that at least twenty-five hundred human beings were annually
sacrificed in the temples of Mexico. Human sacrifice was known among
the Greeks, and its practice among the Hebrews is recorded in the Hebrew
Bible.

When the manners of men ameliorated, and gentler customs began to
supplant the barbarous usages of an earlier day, the tyranny of the
gods was still feared, but various modes of substitution were adopted
to appease their jealousy of human happiness. In India we are told, that
the god of light being displeased with the constant effusion of blood,
commanded a buffalo to appear from out the jungle, and a voice was heard
saying, sacrifice the buffalo and liberate the man.

Another mode of substitution was to give a part for the whole. Some one
member of the body was mutilated or curtailed in order to indicate that
the person's life was in reality forfeit to the god. Among certain of
the aboriginal tribes of America, the youth, on reaching the years of
maturity, was forced to place his hand upon a buffalo's skull, and one
or more joints of the finger were then cut off and dedicated to the
great spirit. There were other modes of mutilation of which I dare not
speak, but I will briefly add that the so-called rite of the covenant,
which is practised among the Jews even at the present day, rose in
exactly the same manner. Of course the original signification of the
custom has been forgotten and a purely symbolical mean-ing has been
attached to it. Nevertheless, its continuance is a disgrace to religion.
The grounds of sanity on which it is urged, are not in themselves
tenable, and if they were, religion would have no concern with them. It
is but a fresh instance of the stubborn vitality which seems to inhere
in the hoary superstitions of the past.

Occasionally, when a whole people was threatened with destruction, some
prominent and beloved individual was selected for sacrifice, in order
that by his death he might save the rest. The same feature was also
introduced into the legends of the gods. Philo tells us that the great
God El whom the Hebrews and Phoenicians worshiped, once descended to
earth, and became a king. This El was the supreme deity. He had an only
son whom he loved. One day when great dangers threatened his people,
the god determined to sacrifice his only begotten (--Greek--) son and
to redeem his people: and year by year thereafter a solemn festival was
celebrated in Phoenicia in honor of that great sacrifice.

The religion of force has left its dark traces in the history of
mankind. Even the higher religions accepted, while they spiritualized,
its degrading conceptions into their systems. Slowly only and with the
general spread of intelligence and morality, can we hope that its last
vestiges will be purged from the minds of men.

Vastness is an element of the sublime. In the religious conceptions of
the Hindoos we find it illustrated. It entered alike into the system of
the Brahmin and of the Buddhist, and determined their tone and quality.
A certain fondness for the gigantic, is peculiar to Hindoo character.
Witness the almost boundless periods of their ancient chronology;
the colossal forms with which the remains of their monuments and
architecture abound. A great Aryan nation having advanced from the
waters of the Indus to the shores of the sacred Ganges and having
subdued the natives by the force of superior numbers or bravery,
had learned to forget the active pursuits of war, and yielded to the
lassitude engendered by the climate of their new settlements. Around
them they beheld a rich and luxuriant vegetation; birds of rare and
many colored plumage, stately trees rising from interminable jungles.
Ravishing perfumes lulled their senses as they reposed in the shade of
these fairy-like forests. It was a land suited to dreamy contemplation.
Here the philosophic priests might dwell upon the vastness of the
Universal, and the imagination bewildered by the ever shifting phenomena
of the scene might well seek some principle of unity which could connect
and explain the whole. Brahma was the name they gave to the pervading
Spirit of All things. From Brahma the entire order of existence has
emanated; the elements of material things, plants, birds, beasts and
men. The lower castes came forth first and are nearest the brutes;
the castes of free-born workmen, and of warriors next, the priests and
saints last, in whom the world's soul found its loftiest expression.

To Brahma all things must return. Passing through an endless series of
transformations, and paying in the long and painful interval the penalty
of every crime it has committed, the migrating spirit of man is led back
at last to its primal source, and is resolved in the Brahma whence it
arose. The connection between individual and universal life was thus
kept constantly in view. The soul in the course of its wanderings might
pass through every conceivable mode of existence; might assume the
shape of creeping plants and worms, and wild animals; might rise to the
possession of miraculous powers in the heavens of the Rishis, while its
final destiny was to be reunited with the One and All.

The Buddhist Nirvana resembles the Brahma in being accounted the
ultimate principle of the world. When in the sixth century B. C. the
royal Hermit of the Cakyas revolted against the cruel despotism of the
priesthood, the legend relates that the sight of suffering in the forms
of sickness, old age and death, roused him from a life of indolent
pleasure, and impelled him to seek a remedy for the ills of human life.
His counsels were sweet and kindly; he taught self-control and wise
moderation in the indulgence of the passions, and brotherly help and
sympathy to lessen the evils which foresight cannot avert. He lifted
the degraded masses of the Indian land from out their dull despair; he
warred against the distinctions of caste, he took women and slaves for
his companions, he was a prophet of the people, whom the people loved.
But even to him the ills of this mortal condition seemed little when
compared with the endless possibilities of future ill that awaited
the soul in the course of its ceaseless transmigrations. He yearned to
shorten its weary path to the goal; and the mystic methods by which he
sought to enter Nirvana were a means adapted to this end. Nirvana is
the beginning and the end of things. Nirvana in which there is neither
action nor feeling; in which intelligence and consciousness are
submerged, appeared to this pessimist preacher the last, the only
reality. Life is a delusion, real only in its pains: the entire
cessation of conscious existence, is the solution he offers to human
suffering.

Nirvana is the universal--its conception is vast and dim; it hovers in
the distance before the pilgrim of the earth; there will he find rest.

Unlike the Western nations, the Hindoos regarded the idea of immortality
with dread and terror, rather than pleased anticipation. The highest
promises of their religion, were intended to assure them that they would
cease to continue as individual beings or cease to continue altogether.
Peace in the tomb when this present toil is over seemed to them the
most desirable of goods, and a dreamless sleep from which no angel trump
should ever wake the sleeper.

"Two things," says Kant, "fill the soul with ever new and increasing
admiration and reverence; the star-lit heavens above me, and the moral
law within me."*

     * Kant's Works (Rosenkranz edition) vol. viii. p. 312.

The Hebrews were the first to lend to the moral ideas a controlling
influence in the sphere of religion. Let me attempt to briefly sketch
the origin of Monotheism amongst them, as numerous considerations
elsewhere recited in detail, have led me to conceive of it. The
religions of the Semitic nations who surrounded ancient Israel were
intensely emotional in character, and their gods were gods of pleasure
and pain. In the temples unbounded license alternated with self
sacrificing asceticism. The lewd rites of the goddess of love must
be regarded as typical of the one; the slaughter of sons in honor of
Moloch, of the other. Now the Hebrews have been distinguished for the
purity of their home life from a very early period of their history. The
high value which they set on male offspring, the jealous vigilance with
which they guarded the virtue of their women are alike illustrated in
the narratives of the Bible. The more gifted and noble minded among
them, beholding their domestic feelings outraged by the prevailing
religions, rebelled against the gross conceptions of idolatry. How could
they offer up their beloved sons for sacrifice, how could they give
over their wives and daughters to shame? The controlling force of their
character determined the doctrines of their creed. Judaism became, so to
speak, a family religion. Jehovah is conceived of as the husband of
the people. Israel shall be his true and loyal spouse, the children
of Israel are His children. The image of Jehovah is that of the ideal
patriarch. Like the patriarch, he is the head of the spiritual family
of man. Like the patriarch in ancient times, he is the lawgiver and
the judge; He is the guardian of domestic purity. The word for false
religion in Hebrew signifies fornication. "Contend against your mother,"
says Jehovah, "for I am not her spouse, nor she my wife." "My people
lust after false gods, for the spirit of impurity has seduced them." And
the day of the triumph of the true religion is thus predicted: "On that
day thou shalt not call me any more my Baal, (paramour) but thou shalt
call me my husband, and I shall wed thee in justice, etc." Thus the idea
of Jehovah sprang from the soil of the family, and the conception of a
divine father in heaven was derived from the analogy of the noblest of
moral institutions on earth. The spiritual God of the Hebrews was the
personification of the moral Ideal.

Like his relations to the chosen people and to mankind in general,
the relations of the Deity to the external world were described in
accordance with the demands of the Ethical Law. Two things morality
insists upon; first, that the natural in its coarser acceptation shall
be subordinate to the moral. Secondly, that in the scale of values
itself shall occupy the highest rank, and that the purpose human life on
earth can only be a moral purpose. As the mechanism of nature is not of
itself calculated to harmonize with the purposes of spirit, it behooves
that the spiritual God shall possess a power over matter adequate to
enforce the claims of the moral ideal, such power as only the creator
can exert over his creatures. Hence the doctrine of the creation. And
again the state of perfection to which the human heart aspires can only
be attained through the instrumentality of supreme wisdom, power and
love, in a millennial age when the scheme of the universe will be
perfected in the reign of absolute justice and peace. Hence the doctrine
of the Messiah. Both doctrines are the typical expression of a moral
need.

In the opening of Genesis we read a description of the making of the
world. All was wild vast chaos, and darkness brooded over the abyss,
when the Spirit of Jehovah breathed on the waters; a single word of
command and light penetrated the gloom, the waters divided, the great
luminaries started forth on their course; the earth clothed herself in
verdure, and the forms of living beings sprang into existence. The words
"God saw everything he had made and behold it was very good," contain
the gist of the narrative. In Zephaniah and Isaiah we read: "On that day
I will turn to the people a pure language that they may all call upon
the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent." "No one shall then
do evil, no one hurt in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."

These visions are not true in the sense of historical occurrences past
or future. That the world was ever created out of nothing, what human
understanding can conceive of it? That a time will come when society
shall be so transformed that the pure language of love alone shall be
spoken, who that is instructed in the failings of our finite nature can
credit it? They are true in the sense of ideals; true, with the truth
of poetry, bodying forth in concrete shape the universal yearnings of
mankind.

There is also another element of belief associated with the doctrine of
the Messiah, which still more plainly illustrates the typical value of
religious tenets. In the coming week the churches throughout Christendom
will rehearse the story of the passion and the death of their founder.
Mournful chants and lamentations will recall every circumstance of the
dark drama that closed on Calvary. That tale of harrowing agony still
moves the hearts of millions as though it were a tale of yesterday. It
is the symbol of the suffering and the crucifixion of the whole human
race. "Ah, but our griefs he has borne, our sorrows he has carried, he
was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities."
Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the author of these lines
transcribed in them the sad experience of the reformers of his day. He
does not refer to any one Messiah; he speaks of that legacy of sacrifice
which is the heritage of the great and good, the world over. For who can
help us when we are plunged in deepest anguish, when it seems as though
we must sink under the load of trouble, but one who has endured like
trials, endured and triumphed over them? It is the martyrdom of the pure
that has redeemed mankind from guilt and sin? There is this constant
atonement of the strong for the weak, of the good for the evil. As old
Paul Gerhard has it in his seventeenth century hymn:

     "When utmost dread shall seize me,
     That human heart can know,
     Do thou from pain release me,
     By thy great pain and woe."

The teachings of religion then have their source in the aspirations
of the human heart; are the echoes of our wishes and our hopes. Not
valueless on that account, but valuable only in so far as they express
in noble types, noble aspirations of our souls. It were sad indeed if
morality depended upon the certainty of dogma. On the contrary it
is true that all that is best and grandest in dogma, is due to the
inspiration of the moral law in man. The time will come when the tenets
of faith will no longer be narrowly understood as now; and while
their influence will still be great, they will cease to be harmful
and confining. They will be used as rare imagery, to deck the sublime
meanings which they symbolize; not as vessels that contain the absolute
truth, but as choice and beautiful vases, fit to hold the ever fresh and
ever blooming flowers of the ideal.

The dogmatic assertion of religious teachings we hold to be a serious
evil, and dogma as such we cannot accept. Its influence in the past has
been pernicious, and is so at the present day no less. It has inflamed
the hatred of man against his brother man, it has led to the fatal error
of duties toward a personal Creator, distinct from our duties toward our
fellows: it has perverted the moral sense, by giving to the concern of
future salvation, a degree of prominence before which the interests
of the present life sink into comparative insignificance; it does not
afford us a common basis whereon we could unite, for it is by nature
uncertain and calculated to provoke dissensions. On the other hand we
behold in conscience the root of whatever good religion has achieved,
and the law of conscience must suffice to guide and elevate our lives.
To refresh the moral sentiment is the one thing needful in our time, and
indeed presents a task on whose accomplishment the highest interests of
society depend. Time will show that a simple appeal to duty will surely
suffice to lead men to more earnest exertions toward the good. Time will
show that those who know no other mode of salvation than the salvation
which is attained by works of love, will be at least as active in the
pursuit of virtue as those who put their trust in faith.

The gold of morality has been variously coined in the world's religious
systems. Various have been the symbols that were stamped thereon, and
various the images of the King in whose name it was issued, but
their value so far as they had value was in the moral gold that they
contained, and in naught else. Let Liberalism stamp its coin with the
Eagle of Liberty only, in its ethical teachings it will still retain the
substance of all religion.

Dogma we will keep in abeyance,--this is our point of departure, and
the deed superior to the creed. Be it ours to hold high the moral ideal,
whether we clothe it with personality or not. Be it ours to act divine
things, no matter how we regard divine mysteries. Be it ours to help in
lifting up the fallen, to lend free utterance to the complaints of
the oppressed, to brand the social iniquities of our time, to give our
hearts warmth and the labor of our hands to the cause of their redress,
and to push on with whatever power we may, the progress of our race
toward those high and holy goals of which the dreamers dream, the
prophets prophesy.




III. THE NEW IDEAL

The old religions and science are at war. With pitiless consistency
science directs its attack upon their vulnerable positions. The
conception of inexorable law subverts the testimony of miracles; the
fond belief in truths divinely revealed fails to withstand the searching
analysis of historical criticism; the battle of science is yet far from
being won, but from our standpoint the issue cannot appear doubtful. It
behooves us therefore to inquire into the moral bearings of the general
result thus far achieved and to review what we have lost and won.
Shall we succeed thereby in allaying the sense of alarm that is wont
to agitate the timid heart when it beholds so much that it confidently
believed a part of the everlasting verities of life, sink back into the
gulf of uncertainty and doubt?

We are standing at the portals of a new age, and new conceptions have
arisen of the purpose which we are here to accomplish and of the means
of help we can command in the attempt to realize our destiny. These
new conceptions we call The New Ideal. It is the purpose of our present
discourse to compare some salient features of the old and new.

The old and new Ideals agree in looking to an Infinite beyond the
borders of experience, for it is in the nature of the ideal to lift us
above the merely real. They differ in the direction in which they
seek their object, and the bias which they consequently give to men's
thoughts and actions. Theology, perceiving the inability of reason to
solve the problems of the beginning and the end, yet unable to
restrain a desire to know what is really unknowable, has impressed the
imagination into its service, and drawn a picture of the transcendental
world, conforming indeed to the analogies of man's terrestrial
existence, but on this account all the more adapted to answer the wishes
of the masses of mankind. Enough for them that they feel the need of
believing the picture true. We of the New School are, if possible,
even more profoundly convinced of the limitations of human reason. We
cheerfully accord to the religious conceptions of the past a poetic
value; they are poetry, often of the sublimest kind; but we cannot
deceive ourselves as to the noble weakness of the heart to which they
owe their origin; we cannot forget that in their case alas the wish
has been father to the thought. To us the mystery is still mystery--the
veiled arcana are not revealed, the riddle is unread. But we are not
therefore filled with terror or dismay. In the moral nature of man we
discover a divine element. In the voice of conscience we hear the voice
of the present divinity within us, and we learn to regard this mortal
state of ours as a channel through which the currents of Eternity ebb
and flow ceaselessly. The divine nature is not far off, nor beyond the
sea; in our own hearts on our own lips!

But let us seek to scrutinize the distinctive features of the old and
new more closely. The old ideal was supernatural in character, it taught
man to regard his life on earth as a brief, temporary transit, himself
an exile from the Kingdom on high. The concerns of the present world
were in consequence deemed of secondary importance, and the eye dwelt
with anxious preference on the dim chances of the hereafter. Where the
hope of immortality has been prominently put forward by any religion,
the effect has thus but too often proved disastrous to the progress and
security of society. It is well-known by what painful penances the monks
of the Middle Ages sought release from the trammels of the flesh,
how they affected to despise the ties of domestic affection, how they
retarded the advancement of knowledge, how the passions which they
sought in vain to suppress often recoiled upon them with fearful
retribution, and gave rise to disorders which seriously undermined
public virtue.

But not only has supernaturalism tended indirectly to weaken the springs
of virtue, it has called into being an order of men whose very existence
is a standing menace to the freedom of intellect and the rights of
conscience. The distance between the Creator and his creatures is so
great, that the intervention of some third party is deemed necessary
to mediate between the finite and the Infinite. The priest steps in to
perform this office, and his influence is great in proportion to the
value of the services which he is supposed to render. Furthermore it
is believed that the personal deity requires the performance of certain
actions in his honor, and what these actions are is again left to the
priest to determine. In this manner the ceremonial part of religion
grows up, and acquires a degree of importance fatal to the moral life.
The duties toward God transcend the duties toward man, and but too often
usurp their place.

The Bible likens the relations of man to God to those of a child to its
father. It is true supernaturalism has often proved a valuable stay to
those already morally strong, and it were absurd to deny that under its
fostering care many of the noblest qualities that distinguish the filial
relation have been developed in the lives of religious men. It is from
no lack of appreciation on our part that we have dwelt on the evils
rather than the blessings it has brought. But in acknowledging that we
have really lost the sense of protection, the childlike trust which lend
such rare beauty to the character of many ancient models of piety, we
deemed it important to point to the shades that darken the picture
of the * supernatural religions, its lights are made the theme of a
thousand discourses week after week, and are hardly in any danger of
being speedily forgotten.

From the back-ground of the old Ideal stands out in bold relief the new.
It is the reverse of supernatural; if it takes pride in anything, it is
in marking a return to nature. Trammels of the flesh, contamination of the
body? There is nothing it tells us in itself contaminating. The body is
not alien to the mind, it is the seed plot from which mind flowers out
in every part. Regard the form of man, observe the quick play of the
features, the expressive smile, the speaking glance, every attitude,
every gesture full of meaning, the whole body irradiated as it were,
with the indwelling intelligence. And so the passions too which we are
wont to associate with our corporeal nature are but the rough material
from which the artist soul behind them fashions its immortal types of
beauty and of holiness. There is a graceless innuendo in the term nature,
as of something hard, gross, material. In truth, nature is the subtlest,
most ethereal presence of which we catch a gleam only at rare intervals,
the reflex of a hidden light that glimmers through the facts and motions
of the world. Take the nature of water for instance. Is it in the
hydrogen, in the oxygen, in the single atom? Not there, yet there!
somewhere hovering, imponderous, elusive. It comes nighest to the senses
when the atoms act and react upon each other, in the flow of mighty
rivers, in the leap of cataracts, in the turmoil of the sea. Or the
nature of the tree; is it in the roots, in the trunk, in the spreading
branches, the leafy crown? Perhaps in the fruit more than elsewhere the
hidden being of the tree comes forth into external reality, and opens
to the eye and touch. In action and fruition the deeper nature appears.
Thus in the outward world, and thus in man. Our soul-life, too, is a
flowing stream, whose power is not in any part but in the ceaseless,
changeful motion of the whole, that forms a strong spiritual current on
which our thoughts and sentiments move like swimmers toward an infinite
sea. And like a tree are we, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the
spreading branches of imagination, the fibrous roots of the lower
instincts, that bind us to the earth. But the moral life is the fruit we
bear; in it our true nature is revealed; in it we see the purpose of
our being fulfilled. So when we speak of a return to nature, it is this
higher nature to which we refer, whose origin we know not, but whose
workings we feel, and know them by the token of the sweet satisfaction
they afford us to be the crown and glory of our lives. The old Ideal
emphasizes the Eternal that is without us; the new the Eternal that is
within ourselves. The old styles us exiles from the kingdom of truth;
the new summons us to be the banner-bearers of truth; the old points to
a heaven beyond the earth, the new tells us that our earth too is a part
of the heaven, a light-world, among endless worlds of light.

If secondly we consider the means of support at our disposal in
the pursuit of the ideal, we find prayer in universal use among the
adherents of the old. Prayer in the sense of supplication, has been
defined as "a request made to the Deity as if he were a man." And truly
the language of prayer often tallies with this description. "Let me
succeed in this undertaking," prays the Indian, "that I may slay my
enemy and bring home the tokens of victory to my dear family, in order
that they may rejoice together. Have pity on me and protect my life,
and I will bring thee an offering." Some such inducement as the last is
frequently coupled with the petition, "Here is an offering for you, O
God! Look kindly towards this family, let it prosper and increase, and
let us all be in good health." "Let me come upon my enemies speedily,
let me find them sleeping and not awake, and let me slay a good many of
them." "I pray for cattle, I pray for corn, I ask also for children, in
order that this village may have a large population, and that your name
may never come to an end, for of old we have lived by your favor, let us
continue to receive it. Remember that the increase of our produce is the
increase of your worship, and that its diminution must be the diminution
of your rites." Among the Hindoos the efficacy ascribed to prayer was
such that the gods themselves were deemed powerless to resist it, and
the mystic invocations of the priests exerted a fateful influence on the
destinies of the world. The ancient and modern literature of the Hebrews
likewise testifies to their faith in prayer, and Christianity has
herein followed if not outstripped their example. In case of drought
the following prayer is offered in many of our churches: "Send us, we
beseech thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rain and showers that
we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort and to thy honor."
In case of storms: "We humbly beseech thee to restrain these immoderate
rains, wherewith for our sins thou hast afflicted us, and we pray thee
to send such seasonable weather that the earth may in due time yield her
increase for our benefit." In case of famine, "Increase the fruits of
the earth by thy heavenly benediction, and grant that the scarcity
and dearth which we now most justly suffer for our sins, through thy
goodness may be turned into plenty." In case of sickness, prayers are
offered for the recovery of the sufferer.

Against all these forms of petition the modern view of life emphatically
protests. It starts with the grandest of scientific generalizations,
that of the universality of nature's laws. These laws cannot be broken;
they govern the course of the planets as they revolve through space,
they appear in the slightest eddy of dust that rises on our streets. The
world is a Kosmos; to pray for a change in its arrangements is to pray
for its destruction. The rains come when they must come, and the earth
yields or withholds her crop, as a system of causes determined from
immeasurable aeons of time prescribes. Is the God to whom men pray
so poor a workman that he will change the mechanism of the Universe at
their bidding? If all that is, is his work, why then the drought is
his work, and the famine, and the sickness are his work, and they are,
because he has willed that they should be. "The gods help them that
help themselves." We are placed in a world with which we are but half
acquainted; our business is to know it thoroughly. All the history of
mankind from the beginning has been a series of tentative struggles to
acquire this precious knowledge, and we have made indeed some headway.
We began by defending ourselves against the attacks of wild beasts; we
tilled the soil; we invented tools, we formed communities, we moderated
the friction of social intercourse; we discovered the talisman of
science, and the Aladdin's lamp of art. In the treatment of disease also
a great advance has been made. When the Mayflower reached the American
continent, she found a bleak and barren shore, full only of graves. A
great epidemic had swept over the Indian tribes, and the natives fell
like dead flies before the scourge. They had charms and prayers; these
did not help them. We have accomplished a little; we are bound to aim
at more. Why then call in the supernatural? It will not come, though we
call never so loudly. The vain attempt does but keep us from that which
is more needful, active exertion and strenuous efforts at self-help.
But we are told that our success is poor at best, and that in the vast
majority of cases, all our exertions avail nothing: moreover it is said
that man is too frail and feeble a creature to depend upon himself alone
in times of trial, and that prayer, whether it be answered or not, is
valuable as a means of consolation that soothes and stills the heart. It
is but too true that our achievements fall far short of our desires. Let
those that do not, cannot pray, seek support in the sympathies of
their kind, and where self-help fails, mutual help will offer them an
inexhaustible source of strength and comfort. As for that species of
prayer which is not addressed to a personal God at all, but claims to
be an aspiration, an outpouring of the spirit, we do fail to see how it
deserves the name of prayer in any sense. The use of the vocative,
and of the pronoun thou is certainly calculated to mislead, and the
appearance of inconsistency is hardly avoidable.

Lastly, the old Ideal was stationary, retrospective; it placed its
paradise at the beginning of human history. In the far off past it
beheld our best and loftiest hopes anticipated and realized. Then the
full significance of life had been reached; then the oracles had spoken
loudly and clearly whose faint echoes now float like memories of
half forgotten melodies to our ear; then the imperishable truths were
revealed in those olden, golden days. Not so, says the new Ideal. Rude
and wretched were the beginnings of mankind on earth, poor the mind, and
void the heart. Far from being exemplary, the ideas of right and wrong
entertained by our earliest progenitors were infinitely below our
own. Not indeed, that the substance of the moral sentiment has ever
perceptibly changed. The inherent principle of right remains the same,
but it assumes higher forms and is applied on a wider scale as the race
advances. Thus the commandment not to kill a being like ourselves was
recognized from the first, but in the earliest times, only members of
the same family were esteemed beings like ourselves; to kill a neighbor
was not wrong. The family widened into the clan, the clan into the
people, and all the nations are now embraced in the common bond of
humanity. Thus step by step the life of the clansman, the fellow citizen
and at last of every human being came to be regarded as sacred. From a
common centre morality has developed _outward in concentric circles_.
In different ages also different virtues predominated. Patriotism was
esteemed highest in the Roman world; self-sacrifice and chastity in the
first Christian communities. But whatever had thus been gained was not
thereafter lost. Each age added its own to the stock of virtue; each
contributed its share to swell the treasure of mankind. The struggle for
existence that raged fiercely on the lower levels of culture, loses its
harsher aspects as we advance upon the path of civilization. The methods
of force by which the unfit were eliminated are gradually falling into
disrepute, if not into disuse. At last the good will survive because
of its own persuasive excellency. The conflict will become one of ideas
merely, an emulous peaceful contest for the prize of truth.

That the manners of the modern world have indeed become ameliorated, our
own brief experience as a society serves to illustrate. A few centuries
ago, such an enterprise as ours would never have been attempted, or if
undertaken, would have been speedily crushed by the arm of authority or
the weight of prejudice. We will not say that bigotry is dead; the fires
of persecution still slumber beneath their ashes, and now and then start
up into pretty bonfires to amuse the idle crowd; but the time has
gone by when they could mount on funeral pyres--they can kindle
conflagrations no more.

The new Ideal is progressive. Whatever we have achieved, it tells us
there are larger achievements yet beyond. As we rise in the scale of
moral worth, the eye becomes clearer and wider of vision. We see in
remote ages a race of men freer and stronger because of our toils, and
that is our dearest hope and our sweetest recompense that they shall
reap what we have sown.

The old and the new Ideals will struggle for the mastery; that which is
stronger will conquer as of old, in the struggle for existence. But the
new hope fills us with trust and gladness that that which is true will
be strong.




IV. THE PRIESTS OF THE IDEAL

It is with good reason, that the very name of the priesthood, has become
odious to the modern mind. How has their fanaticism drenched the earth
with blood, how has their unbridled ambition sown seeds of discord
among the nations; how lamentable a commentary is the record of their
frailties upon the assumption of superior sanctity and God-given
authority. Yet it is not the priestly office, but its abuse, which has
proved of evil, nor has the time yet come, when the ministry of priests
can be safely dispensed with. There shall come a new Ideal to attract
men's reverence and a new service of the Infinite and a new priesthood
also to do its ministry. It is of this modern priesthood, I would speak.

Fear not that I am about to advocate a return to that system of
spiritual bondage, from which we have but just escaped. The priests to
whom we allude shall not be known by cassock or surplice. It is not
at the altar they shall serve, least of all shall they have dogmas to
communicate. They shall not be more than human, only if possible more
human. Priests have we of science, we name them so; men whose whole soul
is wrapped up in the pursuit of knowledge: priests of art, who dedicate
their lives to the service of the Beautiful, priests also of the Moral,
artists of the Good, sages in the science of Virtue, teachers of the
Ideal.

Let us consider for a moment, in order to illustrate our meaning, the
life of one such priest, whose fame has come down to us undimmed by the
corroding influence of time--the life of Socrates. He held no office, he
ministered at no shrine, yet he was in the true sense a priest. A plain
unpretentious man, content to live on coarse fare, inured to want,
homely in appearance, using homely language; nothing had he in
appearance to attract; yet the gay youths left their feasts and frolics
when he approached, and the busy market-place was hushed to listen
to the strange wisdom of his sayings; there was indeed a singular and
potent charm in this man's soul. He had a great need of righteousness,
wonderful, how he awakened the same need in the hearts of the Athenian
burghers of his day. He was the reverse of dogmatic. In comparison with
the vastness of the unknown, he was wont to say, all human knowledge
is little even to nothingness, he did not assume to know the truth, but
strove to assist men in finding truths for themselves. He had his own
enlightened views on questions of theology. But far from desiring to
convert others to his convictions, he rather sought to divert their
attention from those mysterious problems, in which men can never be
wise, problems that are no nearer their solution today, than they were
two thousand years ago. To those who questioned him concerning religion
he replied: Are ye then masters of the humanities, that ye seek to pry
into divine secrets? His father had been a fashioner of statues before
him, he was a fashioner of souls! This Socrates was condemned to suffer
death on the charge of atheism, and met his fate with the calmness of
the philosophic mind. If death, he said, is progress to untried spheres,
then welcome death! If it is sleep only, then also welcome death and its
deep repose. All the tokens of the priest were fulfilled in him. He was
true to himself and unbared to others the veiled truths of their own
higher nature. He was a loftier presence on earth, a living flame fed
from its own central being, a sun to which the world turned and was
thereby enlightened. We perceive then, that what we desire is not a new
thing. There has been this service of the Ideal from the earliest times.
Only a new plea would we urge for larger fidelity to that which the best
have striven for, and which under new conditions it will be the glory of
our age to approach more nearly.

The priest shall be a teacher of the "Ideal," but what is the Ideal and
how distinguish it from the Real. Regard the trees, behold their number,
the wondrous plenitude of their kinds.. There is the lithe and slender
pine, the mighty oak, the stately palm, the tender willow. Alike
yet most unlike. And who has ever seen the perfect tree! Observe the
expressive features of the human face. How many thousands of such faces
are born into the world each year and yet no two alike. By what fine
shades, what scarce perceptible curves, what delicate touches has
nature's chisel marked them each apart. Graceful forms and lovely faces
there are, yet perfect none. Now the Ideal is the perfection of the
Real. To find it we must go beyond the Realities. We study the nature of
the tree, of man. We note the suggestions of the various parts, complete
and produce them in utmost harmony, each perfect in itself, each serving
by its own perfection, the rounded symmetry of the whole. In the image
thus created we grasp the ideal form. Art with its genial enchantments,
creates such images and gives them permanence in pure types of immortal
significance. Art is idealism of form.

The intellect also, which looks out from behind the features, the
indwelling man, exhibits the same twofold aspect of the Real and Ideal.
Our real thoughts are incomplete and inadequate. We are led astray a
thousand times by false analogies, we are decoyed into the labyrinths
of fancy, we become the victims of impression, the toys of circumstance.
But deep down in the basic structure of the mind are true laws, unerring
guides. Logic expresses them, logic is the idealism of intellect.

And lastly we recognize the same distinction in the realm of feeling.
To the untutored caprice, the overmastering impulse, in brief to the
realism of the passions is opposed the law of right feeling, which
ethics expresses. Ethics is the idealism of character. We call this last
the capital revelation of man's nature. The moral law is not derivative,
it can not be proven, it can not be denied. It is the root from which
springs every virtue, every grace, all wisdom and all achievement. An
attempt has indeed been made to base morality upon a certain commonplace
utility, but true morality scorns your sad utilities. That is useful,
which serves an object besides itself, while morality is itself an end,
and needs and admits no sanction save its own excellency. As it delights
the man of science to expand his judgment in ever wider and wider
generalizations, as the larger thought is ever the truer thought, so is
there an exquisite pleasure and an unspeakable reward in expanding the
narrow consciousness of self in the unselfish, and the larger emotion
is ever the nobler emotion. We speak of the moral Ideal, as The IDEAL,
because it expresses the central idea of human life,# the purpose of our
existence on earth. To expound and illustrate its bearings on our daily
duties, our joys, our griefs and our aspirations, is the scope and limit
of the priestly office.

The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. Before it nothing is
petty or indifferent, it touches the veriest trifles and turns them into
shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the
fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns. It tells us, that nothing
shall be for its uses only, but all things shall take their tone and
quality from the central idea.

When we build a house, it shall not be for its uses only. We shall have
kitchens and drawing rooms and libraries and pictures and flowers, if
possible. But the house, with all its comforts and luxuries, is mere
framework, and our words and doings construct the true, the spiritual
home. When we sit down to table, it shall not be for the use of the
food and the flavor of the wine only, but morality should preside at the
feast and lend it grace and dignity. Morality does not mope in corners,
is not sour nor gloomy. It loves genial fellowship, loves to convert
our meanest wants into golden occasions for joy and sympathy and happy
communion. Manners too are the offspring of character. We do not rate
highly the dry and cheerless conventionalisms of etiquette, but in
their origin, they were the fruit of truth, and love. The rules of good
breeding may be reduced to two; self-possession and deference. As when
a public speaker loses his self-control, his own uncertainty is quickly
communicated to his audience, and he forfeits his influence over his
hearers; so the same cause produces the same effect in every lesser
audience that gathers in our parlors. Society says to you: If I shall
trust you, you must begin by trusting yourself. The man of the world
will enter the palace of the prince and the cottage of the peasant with
the same equipoise of manner. If he respects himself, there is no
reason why he should stand abashed. Self-possession is essentially
self-respect. Deference, too, is a primary condition of all courtesy.
It teaches us to concede to others whatever we claim for ourselves; it
leads us instinctively to avoid loudness, and self-complacency. It is
expressed not only in the polished phrase, but in mien, attitude, every
movement. Self-possession and deference of manner are both the outgrowth
of moral qualities, the one depending on the consciousness of personal
worth, the other inspired by an unselfish regard for the well-being of
others. From these two it were possible to deduce the rules of a
new 'Chesterfield,' which should be free from all the conceit and
affectation of the old. Unfortunately, manners are no longer the natural
outpouring of heart-goodness. Men attire themselves in politeness as
they do in rich apparel; they may be as rude as they please, the year
round, they know they can be fine on occasion. Moreover in the home
circle, where the forms of courtesy are quite indispensable to prevent
undue friction; to send the light of grace and poetry into a world of
little cares; to fill the atmosphere of our daily surroundings as
with the fragrance of a pervading perfume; they are yet most commonly
neglected. The word manners has the same meaning as morals. When we
shall have better morals, we shall have truer and sweeter manners.

The Ideal which thus seeks to interpenetrate the most ordinary affairs
of private life, stands out also in the market place, in the forum, in
the halls of legislation, and setting aside the merely useful, exhorts
men to return to permanent values. That is the ideal view of politics
which teaches us to hold the idea of country superior to the utilities
of party, to exact worthiness of the public servants, to place the
common good above sectional animosities and jealousies. That is the
ideal view of commerce, which impels the merchant, while seeking
prosperity by legitimate means, to put conscience into his wares and
dealings and to keep ever in sight the larger purposes of human
life. That is the ideal view of the professions, which leads their
representatives to subordinate the claims of ambition and material gain
to the enduring interests of science, justice, and of all the great
trusts that are confided to their keeping. And he therefore shall be
called a priest of the Ideal, who by precept and example will divert us
from the absorbing pursuit of the realities and make plain to us that
the real is transitory, while in the pursuit of the Ideal alone we can
find lasting happiness. For the realities are constantly disconcerting
us in our search for the better. They are so powerful, so insistent; we
think them every thing until we have proved their attractions and find
them nothing. We have that only which we are. But the common judgment
holds to the reverse; we are only what we have. And so the turbulent
crowd plunges madly into the race--for acres, for equipage, for
well-stocked larders, for office, for fame. Good things are these, as
scales on the ladder of life, but life is somewhat more than acres and
equipage and office and fame. Seldom indeed do we truly live. Often are
we but shadows of other lives. We affect the fashions not only in dress
but also in thought and opinion. We are good or bad, as public opinion
bids us. The state is ruined, the church is corrupted, and the world's
giddy masquerade rushes heedlessly on. Give me one who will think Having
and Seeming less than Being; who will be content to be himself and a
law unto himself and in him I will revere the ideal man. Before him the
shams and mockeries of existence shall sink away. He will look into his
own soul and tell you the oracles he has read there, and you will hear
and behold your own heart. He will plant the sign of the Eternal on a
high standard and call unto a people that strays in the wilderness to
look up to that and be saved. The old and the young will he instruct,
and they shall love him, for his words will be an articulate cry to the
dumb voices in their own breasts. This is the be-all and end-all of his
mission,--to make them acquainted with themselves. Do you know he will
say, what a power is in you, what a light is hidden in the deep recesses
of your nature. Artists are ye all to whom your own soul is given to
mold it into beauty. Happy, happy indeed if you seek no other reward
but the artist's joy in his work and know that to be your glory and your
recompense.

It is well, that there should be priests appointed to bear such messages
to us from time to time as we rest from our toil; to bring us face
to face with the inner life. But there are special occasions in these
passing years of ours, when the ideal bearings of life come home to us
with peculiar force and when we require the priest to be their proper
interpreter.

Marriage is one of them. We often hear it said that marriage is a mere
legal compact. The state, it is true, has a vital interest in protecting
the purity of the conjugal relation and may prescribe certain forms to
which its citizens are bound to conform. But has the meaning of the new
bond been indeed fully expressed, when the magistrate in the court room
has pronounced the young man and the maiden to be now husband and wife?
Among the ancient Hebrews youths and young girls were wont to meet
on the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the year, the day of
purification from sin, to cement their affections and plight their
troth. For marriage itself was esteemed an act of purification. Marriage
is the foundation of all morality. Its celebration does not end with the
wedding day: it is a constant celebration, a perpetual intermarrying of
two souls while life lasts.

Not the state only, but humanity also, that ideal state of which we are
all citizens, has an interest in the contract. A new sanctuary is to be
reared sacred to the ineffable mysteries of the home-life; in the home
with all the tender and holy associations that cluster about it let it
be dedicated. The supreme festival of humanity is marriage. There shall
be music and joy and a white-robed bride with myrtle wreath; and solemn
words to express the solemn meanings of the act.

At the grave also is the office of the priest, When some dear friend has
been taken from us, when the whole earth seems empty for the loss
of one and the pillars of existence seem broken, he shall say to the
grieving heart: Arise, be strong. He shall bid your brooding sorrow
pause. He shall speak of larger duties, which they you mourn have left
you, as their legacy. Larger duties: this is his medicine. You are not
free, you poor and sadly stricken friends to stand aside in idle woe,
but you shall make for the departed a memorial in your lives and assume
their half completed tasks. So the loss, though loss it be, will purify
you, and vim and vigor be found in the consolations of the Ideal. We
trust that we have used the term priest in no narrow restricted sense.
It is not the hierarchies of the past or the present of whom we have
spoken. The priest is not superior to his fellow men, nor has he access
to those transcendental regions which are closed to others. His power
is in this, that he speaks what all feel. And he shall be counted an
acceptable teacher, then only, when the slumbering echoes within you
waken to the music that moves and masters him.

There have been those, whose lives were molded on such a pattern among
the clergy at all times, and it is this circumstance, that has attracted
the reverence of mankind to the priestly office.

Noble men were they whose love burst through the cramping fetters of
their creeds, apostles of liberty, missionaries of humanity.

But there is one other trait necessary to complete the picture. The
priest of the Ideal must have the gift of tongues and kingly words to
utter kingly thoughts. In the philosophy of Alexandria it was held, that
before the world was, the word was, and the word created a universe out
of chaos and the word was divine. With that heaven-born energy must he
be filled, and with a breath of that creative speech must he inspire.
No tawdry eloquence be his, no glittering gift of phrase or fantasy, but
words of the soul's own language, words of the pith and core of truth.

The image of the Ideal priest which I have attempted to draw is itself
an ideal image, nowhere realized, never to be fully attained. But it
is to it that the priests of the new age will strive to come near and
nearer, and that will be their pride and their happiness, if they can
become in this sense friends and helpers of their kind.

In the eyes of the dogmatist they are strangers out of a strange land of
thought. If you ask them for their pass word, it is freedom, if you ask
for their creed, it is boundless. The multitude seeking to compress
the infinite within the narrow limits of the senses, must needs have
tangible shapes to lay hands on, names if nothing better. But the Ideal
in the highest is void of form and its name unutterable. We will ascend
on the wings of the morning, we will let ourselves down to the uttermost
depths of the sea, and know it there. But chiefly within ourselves shall
we seek it, in ourselves is its shrine. The time will come when single
men shall no more be needed to do its ministry, when in the brotherhood
and sisterhood of mankind all shall be priests and priestesses one to
another, for all their life shall be a song of praise to the highest,
and their whole being shall be consecrated and glorified in the immortal
service of deathless Ideals.




V. THE FORM OF THE NEW IDEAL




A NEW ORDER.

I AM aware that there exists a deep seated prejudice in the minds of
many of my hearers against what are called the forms of religion. We
have too long experienced their limitations and restraints, not to be
jealous now of our hard won liberties. But let us ask ourselves what
it is that alienates our sympathies from the ritual and ceremonial
observances of the dominant creeds? Is it the forms as such? Is it not
rather the fact that to us they have become dead forms: that they no
longer appeal to our sentiments, that they fail to stir, to invigorate,
to ennoble us? We have not cast them aside lightly. Often have we
entered the house of worship, prepared to be drawn back into the
influence of its once familiar surroundings: we beheld again the great
assembly, we heard the solemn music, we listened to the preacher as he
strove to impress upon a silent multitude, the lessons of the higher
life. But in the prayers we could not join, and the words to which
the music moved we could not sing, and the maxims of the preacher were
couched in language, and enforced with doctrinal arguments that touched
no chord in our hearts. We left disappointed, we had received no help:
if this were religion, we felt ourselves more distant from religion than
ever before.

On the banks of the Euphrates there flourished of old an extensive
colony of Jews. A "Prince of the Captivity" revived the memory of the
vanished glory of King David's house. High schools were erected that
afforded a common centre to the scattered members of the Jewish Faith.
In these the people beheld at once their bond of connection with the
past, and the pledge of future restoration to their patrimony. In the
early part of the middle ages, a prayer for the health and prosperity of
the presidents of the high schools was inserted into the liturgy. Well
nigh eight hundred years have elapsed since these dignitaries, and
the schools themselves, have ceased to exist, yet the prayer is still
retained, and may be heard repeated on any Sabbath in the synagogues of
the orthodox--a prayer for the health of the Prince and the high schools
on the Euphrates that vanished from the face of the earth eight hundred
years ago. Thus do religious forms continue to maintain themselves long
after their vitality is perished and their very meaning is forgotten.
But if the prevalent forms have ceased to satisfy us, can we therefore
dispense with form altogether? If the house that has given us shelter is
in ruins, shall we therefore live in the woods and fields, or shall we
not rather erect a new mansion on a broader foundation, and with firmer
walls? It has been the bane of liberalism, that it was simply critical
and not constructive. Your thought must have not wings only, but hands
and feet to walk and work, to form and reform. Liberalism must have its
organs, must enter the race with its rivals; must not criticise only,
but do better. Liberalism must pass the stage of individualism, must
become the soul of great combinations. What then shall be the form
adequate to express the new Ideal?

The form of any religion is the image of its ideal. To illustrate what
this means, let us consider for a moment the origin of the synagogue and
the church.

The orthodox opinion that Judaism was revealed to Moses fourteen hundred
years B. C. is condemned by modern critics of the Bible. The following
are some of the considerations that have influenced their verdict.
First, we read in scripture that so late as the reign of David, idolatry
was still rampant among the Hebrews, and the attempt to explain this
fact upon the theory of a relapse, is contrary to the testimony of the
Bible itself.

Secondly: The name of Moses is unknown to the prophets, his ostensible
successors, a circumstance which would remain inexplicable if Moses had
indeed been the founder of monotheism.

Thirdly: Large portions of the Pentateuch were probably not composed
before the sixth or fifth century B. C, that is to say about a thousand
years after the time of Moses. The account they give of the early
history of the people is therefore open to serious and just doubt. The
prophets were the real authors of monotheism. The priestly code of the
Pentateuch does not represent the form of Judaism which they taught.
They are not chargeable with the technicalities and dry formalism of the
"Books of Moses." They were the avowed enemies of the priesthood and for
a long time engaged in fierce struggles with the ruling hierarchy. Their
doctrines were in the essence these: That there is a Creator, that he
is just and merciful, that the same qualities in man are the most
acceptable species of divine service, that God directs all events,
whether great or small; and that it is the duty of man to accept the
guidance of the Deity, and to follow with tireless diligence the clews
of the Divine Will. Jehovah is to be reverenced not only as a spiritual,
but also as a temporal sovereign, and the prophets are his ministers
commissioned to transmit his decrees to men. Thus Monotheism found
expression in the form of Theocratic government. It is true the heathen
world was not yet prepared to enter into so near a relationship with the
Creator. On this account the Jews were selected to be a typical people,
and the Kingdom of God was for the time being confined to them. It
is evident from the above that the order of the prophets was the very
mainstay of the Theocratic fabric. When these inspired messengers
ceased to appear, the conclusion was drawn that the Will of God had been
fully revealed. The writings of the prophets were then collected into
sacred books, and were regarded as the constitution of the divine
empire. When Jerusalem was destroyed, the sacrifices were discontinued
and Judaism was purged of many heathenish elements which had been
allowed to mar the simplicity of the prophetic religion. The synagogue
took the place of the Temple, and an intricate code of ceremonies was
gradually elaborated, intended to remind the pious Jew at all hours and
seasons of his duties toward God, and the peculiar mission accorded to
his people. The synagogue was a single prominent peak in the range
of the religious life, a rallying point for the members of the Jewish
community, a meeting house where they assembled to confirm their
allegiance to their heavenly King.

Now the cardinal point of difference between primitive Christianity and
Judaism related to the alleged abrogation of the ancient constitution
set forth in the old Testament. Christianity said: The Messiah has come;
the law of Moses is fulfilled; the King has issued a new constitution,
and sent his own Son to put it in force. The time has arrived when the
Kingdom of God need no longer be restricted to a single people. Jesus
who perished on the cross will presently return, and the universal
theocracy will then be proclaimed. But Jesus did not return, his
followers waited long and patiently, but they waited in vain. As time
rolled on, they learned to dwell less upon the expected Millennium on
earth, and to defer the fulfilment of their hopes to the life beyond the
grave. In the interval they perfected the organization of the church.
The Christian Ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven is that of a communion of
all saints under the sovereignty of God through Christ. The Christian
Church is designed to be an image of this Ideal, a communion of saintly
men on earth, accepting Christ as their Master. Christianity aspired to
be the universal religion; there should be no barriers any more between
man and man; the exclusiveness of ancient Judaism should be broken down;
yet withal the barriers of a new creed soon arose in place of the old;
the portals of the Kingdom of Heaven were rigidly closed against all who
refused to bow to the despotism of dogma; and the virtues of pagans were
declared to be shining vices. The moral teachings of Christ are gentle
and kindly, but in the doctrinal contentions of the Christians the
spirit of the Master was forgotten, and the earth was deluged with
blood. And now the new Ideal differs from Christianity in this, that it
seeks to approach the goal of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, not by the
miraculous interference of the Deity, but by the laborious exertions
of men, and the slow but certain progress of successive generations. We
have named the form of religion an image of the Ideal, yet an image poor
and incomplete at best, rather a symbol, a suggestion of what can never
be realized. In the realm of art we do not find the soul of beauty in
the colored canvas or the marble statue; these are helpful hieroglyphics
only, teaching those that can read their mute language to create anew
the ideal as it lived in the artist's soul, in the divine hour of
conception. Thus all form has its value only in what it suggests. Our
Ideal is that of the fellowship of humanity in highest wisdom, highest
truth and highest love. The form of this ideal therefore can be none
other than a new fellowship united by the higher truths and purer love
that make its bond to be a symbol of the highest! We are weary of the
unreal and untrue existence we are forced to lead; we are weary of the
emptiness of routine, weary of the false coin of reputation that passes
current in the market of vanity fair; we are weary of the low standards
by which actions are judged, and to which, to our dismay, we perceive
our actions insensibly conform. But the pressure of social influences
about us is enormous, and no single arm can resist it. We must needs
band together then, if we would achieve a higher life; we must create
for ourselves a purer atmosphere, if any rarer virtues are to flourish
in our midst; we must make our own public opinion, to buoy us up in
every loftier aspiration. Unions we want that will hold, not religion
as a duty, but duty as a religion; union to achieve a larger morality.
Three things morality demands of us as interpreted in the light of our
present social conditions: greater simplicity in manners, greater purity
in the passions, greater charity. The habit of luxurious living
is eating into the vitals of society, is defiling the family, and
corrupting the state. Let me not be falsely understood. All that is
luxury which political economists are wont to class as unproductive
consumption. In this sense, books, music and pictures are luxuries, and
who would be willing to forego them. It becomes us to the utmost of our
powers to satisfy the thirst for knowledge, and to educate the sense of
harmony: it is wise to expend generously upon every means of culture and
refinement. But this we must bear in mind, that there should be a rank
and a proper subordination among our tastes and desires. Now that is
luxury in the evil, in the debasing sense of the term, that we subvert
the natural order of our tastes, that we make the mere gratification of
the animal passions, the mere pursuit of wealth, the mere adornment of
our clay, main objects, while the graces of intellect perish, and the
adornment of the soul is neglected. Say not, we will do the one, and not
leave undone the other; for the inordinate degree to which the meaner
passions are developed, dulls our sense of loftier needs. We cannot
serve these two masters. Frivolous in prosperity, we become helpless in
adversity and perish inwardly, our growth stunted, our nobler sympathies
blunted, long before we are bedded in our graves. What single effort can
achieve a change? Fellowship, friends are needed, and a public opinion
on behalf of simplicity.

And purity in the passions is needed. An ugly sore is here concealed,
a skeleton in the closet of which men speak with bated breath. Is there
not such a thing as sanctity of the person! Did you not rebel against
human slavery because you said it was wrong that any being born in
the image of man should be the tool of another? And no arguments could
deceive you--not if the slave offered himself willingly to the yoke, and
rejoiced in his bondage. You dared not so sin against human nature, and
accept that offer. And yet New York has its slaves, Boston its slaves,
and every large town on the face of the wide earth has this sinful,
outcast army of slaves--tools, whom we have robbed of that which no
human being has a right to barter, the right to virtue at least, if not
to happiness. Call not that a law of nature, which is the lawlessness of
nature! Say not, it has ever been thus, and ever shall be! From depths
of vice which the imagination dare not recall, humanity has slowly risen
to its present level, and higher and higher will it take its course when
the conscience is quickened and true love expands. Fellowship is needed
to support this difficult virtue and a public opinion on behalf of
purity.

And charity, friends; not that which we commonly called charity; but
charity that prevents rather than cures. You pass through the lower
quarters of our city, you see the misery, the filth, the gaunt, grim
poverty, the careworn faces, the candidates for starvation. Starvation!
whoever hears of it? The newspapers rarely speak of it; here or there an
exceptional case. Nay truly, these people do not starve; they die of a
cold perhaps; the small-pox came and carried them off: diphtheria
makes its ravage among them. Ah, but was it not want that sapped their
strength, and made them powerless to resist disease? Was it not their
life of pinched pauperism that ripened them for the reaper's scythe?
Then pass from these sorrowful sights to our stately Avenue. Behold
the gay world of fashion, its painted pomp, its gilded sinfulness, its
heartless extravagance. Is not this an intolerable contrast? Shall we
rest quiet under the talk of irremediable evils? Is it not true
that something must be done, and can be done because it must? The
distribution of wealth they say, is governed by economic laws, and
sentiment has no right to be considered in affairs of business. But
where I pray you is the sentiment of brotherly love considered as it
should be? Educate the masses! But do we educate them? Stimulate their
self-respect and teach them self-help! But what large or effective
measures are we taking to this most desirable end? You cannot help,
good friend, nor I. But a dozen might aid somewhat, and a thousand brave
unselfish hearts knit together for such a purpose, who shall say what
mighty changes they could work. Surely fellowship is needed here, and a
public opinion on behalf of charity.

The "fine phrase," humanity has pregnant meanings. They stand for the
grandest, the sternest realities of the times. Purity, charity and
simplicity, these shall be the watchwords of a new fellowship, which
shall practice the teachings of humanity, that are vain as the empty
wind, if heard only and approved, but not made actual in our deeds.

And yet some will smile incredulously and ask, where are the men and
women prepared to undertake such a task? It is true, we must begin at
the beginning. From earliest childhood the young must be trained on
a nobler method, and in the ethical school lies the main work of
preparation. There every step in the course of development must be
carefully considered, vigilantly watched and wisely directed, to the
one crowning purpose of ripening the young minds and hearts for that
fellowship of love and hope.

A new fellowship, a new order, I say boldly, whose members shall not be
bound by any vows, which shall have no convents, no mysteries, but shall
make itself an exemplar of the virtues it preaches, a form of the ideal.
The perils that attend such organizations are great; we will not attempt
to underrate their gravity, but we believe they can be overcome. The
spirit of co-operation lends mighty momentum to every cause; it depends
upon the cause itself whether the influence exerted shall be for good or
evil. And there has been in history a single order at least of the kind
which I describe: "The brotherhood of the common life," it was called;
an order composed of earnest, studious men, to whom the upheaval of
Europe in the sixteenth century was largely due; a noble brotherhood
that prepared the way for the great Reformation. The Catholic orders are
dedicated to the world to come; the order of the Ideal will be dedicated
to the world of the living: to deepen and broaden the conscience of men
will be its mission.

The propaganda of Liberalism in the past has been weak and barren of
great results. Strong personalities it has brought forth; around these
societies have clustered and fallen asunder when the personal magnet was
withdrawn. What we need is institutions of which persons shall be merely
the exponents; institutions that must be grounded on the needs of the
present, and that shall last by their own vitality, to future ages and
to the increase of future good.

It is the opening of the spring.* After its long winter sleep, the earth
reawakens, and amid the fierce storms of the Equinox nature ushers in
the season of flowers and of summer's golden plenty. It is the day of
Easter. Loudly the bells are pealing and joyous songs celebrate in the
legend of "Christ risen from the grave," the marvel of the Resurrection.
What we cannot credit of an individual, is true of the nations. After
long periods of seeming torpor and death, humanity ever arises anew from
the dust, shakes off its slumbers, and clothes itself with fresher vigor
and diviner powers.

     * The above discourse was delivered on Easter Sunday, April
     1st.

Let the hope of the season animate us. Let it fill our souls with
confidence in our greater destinies; let it teach us to trust in them
and to labor for them, that a new Ideal may vivify the palsied hearts
and a new spring tide come, and a new Easter dawn arise over all
mankind.




VI. THE RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM OF WOMEN.

No thoughtful person can fail to appreciate the enormous influence which
women are constantly exercising for good and evil upon the destinies
of the world. The charms and graces of existence, whatever ennobles and
embellishes life, we owe mainly to them. They are the natural guardians
of morality, and from age to age the mothers of households have
preserved the sacred fire on the domestic hearth, whereat every virtue
is kindled. But they have also been the most formidable enemies of
progress. Their conservatism is usually of the most unreasoning kind,
and the tenacity with which they cling to favorite prejudices is
rarely overcome either by argument or appeal. They have been from
time immemorial the dupes, the tools, and the most effective allies of
priestcraft. Their hostility to the cause of Reform has been so fatal,
not only because of the direct influence of their actions, but because
of that subtle power which they exert so skilfully over the minds of
husbands, brothers and friends, by the arts of remonstrance, entreaty
and the contagion of their feeble alarms. The question whether their
hostility can be turned into friendship, is one of momentous importance
for the leaders of the Liberal movement to consider.

In the following we shall endeavor to make plain that the subordinate
position hitherto assigned to women, is the principal cause that has
impelled them to take sides against religious progress.

Among the primitive races woman was reduced to a condition of abject
slavery. Affection of the deeper kind was unknown. The wife was robbed
or purchased from her relations; was treated as a menial by her husband,
and often exposed to the most brutal abuse. As civilization advanced,
the marriage bond became more firm, and common interest in the offspring
of the union served to create common sympathies. Among the Greeks, the
ideal of domestic life was pure and elevated. The tales of Andromache,
Penelope and Alcestes illustrate the strength of conjugal fidelity and
the touching pathos of love that outlasts death. The Grecian home was
fenced about with scrupulous care and strictest privacy protected its
inmates from temptation. It was the duty of the wife to superintend
the internal economy of the household, to spin and weave, to direct the
slaves in their various occupations, to nurse them when sick, to
watch over the young children, and chiefly to insure the comfort and
satisfaction of her lord. His cares and ambitions indeed she hardly
shared. She never aspired to be his equal, and simple obedience to
his wishes was the supreme virtue impressed upon her by education, and
enforced by habit. Among the Romans, the character of the matron is
described in the most laudatory and reverential terms. Still the laws
of the Republic made woman practically the bondswoman of man. It is
well-known that our English word family is derived from the Latin
where it originally means the household of slaves. The matron too, was
counted, at least theoretically, among these slaves, and the right of
deciding her fate literally for life or death, belonged exclusively to
her husband. It is true in the cordial intimacy of the monogamic bond,
the austerity of usage, and the harshness of the laws are often tempered
by affection and mutual respect; yet we are aptly reminded by a modern
writer on this subject, that the law which remains a dead letter to
the refined and cultivated becomes the instrument of the most heartless
oppression in the hands of the vulgar and the passionate.

Among the Hebrews, a position of great dignity and consequence was
sometimes accorded to their women. The wives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
played an important part in directing the affairs of the Patriarchal
households. A woman performed the functions of judge and leader of
armies, women sat upon the throne, prophetesses were consulted in grave
matters of the State and of religion; in the absence of sons, the
Mosaic law guarantees to daughters the right of succession to the family
estate. The later writings of the Jews are likewise replete with noble
sentiments touching the sanctity of the conjugal tie. Many of the
ordinances of the Talmud depend upon women for their execution, and this
circumstance alone must have contributed to raise them in the popular
estimation. In every marriage contract a certain sum was set apart for
the wife, in case of her husband's death or of divorce. Still the right
of dissolving the matrimonial connection belonged exclusively to the
husband, although under certain conditions he could be forced by the
court to issue the "writ of separation." However the wife might be
honored and loved, she was ever regarded as man's inferior.

The influence of Christianity upon the position of women, was twofold,
and in opposite directions. On the one hand women had been among
the first and most devoted followers of Jesus; women were largely
instrumental in effecting the conversion of the Roman Empire, and in the
list of martyrs, their names shine preeminent. On the other hand, the
church in the early centuries cast an unpardonable slur on the
marriage relation. We read of young maidens fleeing the society of dear
companions and friends, to escape the temptation of the affections, of
faithful wives, filled with inexpressible loathing at a connection which
they deemed contrary to the dictates of religion, and deserting husbands
and children. The desire of love was poisoned with a sense of guilt. The
celibacy of the clergy, finally enforced by Pope Hildebrand, gave rise
to the most shocking irregularities. All this tended to degrade the
female sex.

At the time of the crusades a partial revulsion of feeling took place.
The spirit of chivalry entered the church, the character of woman was
transfigured, and the worship of the Virgin Mary spread in consequence
throughout Europe. A change in the education of girls was one of the
results of the rise of Chivalry. Music and poetry became its chief
elements; women were fed on intellectual sweetmeats, but strong and
healthy nourishment was still denied them.

In all the different stages of progress which we have thus rapidly
scanned, the assumption of man's superiority to woman was held as an
incontestible article of belief, and even the chivalric ideal is only a
more amiable and disguised expression of the same view.

What effect the disabilities under which they labored must have had upon
the religious life of women will readily be perceived. There are two
attitudes of mind peculiarly favorable to orthodoxy; the one a tendency
to lean on authority, the other a disposition to give free sway to the
feelings without submitting them to the checks of reason. Now it is
plain that the condition of dependence to which society has condemned
woman is calculated to develop these very qualities to an abnormal
degree. From early childhood she receives commands and is taught to
distrust her own judgment. When she enters the bonds of matrimony she
becomes dependent on her husband for support, and in the vast majority
of cases, his riper judgment shames her inexperience. In all graver
matters she must perforce defer to his decision. Accustomed to rely on
authority, is it surprising that in matters of religion, where even
men confess their ignorance, she should rejoice in the authority of the
priest, whose directions relieve her of doubt and supply a ready channel
for her thoughts and acts. Again the feelings are her natural weapons,
shall she not trust them! The stability and security of society are the
conditions on which her dearest hopes depend for their realization. Can
she welcome the struggles of innovation. All her feelings cluster about
the religious traditions of the past; all a woman's heart pleads for
their maintenance.

Now to confine the feelings of woman within their proper bounds, it is
necessary to give wider scope, and a more generous cultivation to her
intellect; in brief to allow her the same freedom of development as is
universally accorded to man. Freedom makes strong, and the confidence of
others generates an independent and self-reliant spirit in ourselves. It
is indeed often urged that woman is by nature the inferior of man. But
the appeal to physiology seems to be at least premature; the relation of
the size of the brain to intellectual capacity being by no means clearly
determined; while the appeal to history is, if possible, even more
treacherous, because it cites the evils engendered by an ancient and
long continued system of oppression in favor of the system itself.
Counting all the disadvantages against which woman has been forced
to contend, and which have hampered her every effort to elevate her
condition, it is truly marvelous, not that she has done so little, but
that she has accomplished that which she has. Even in the difficult art
of government she has earned well merited distinction, and women are
named among the wisest and most beneficent rulers of ancient and modern
times.* What the possibilities of woman's nature may be, no one can
tell; least of all she herself. As it is she is credited with a superior
power of intuition, a readier insight into character, a more complete
mastery of details. What larger powers now latent a broader culture will
bring to light, remains for the future to show.

     * J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women, p. 100.

But we are told that the sphere of woman's work is in the home, and that
properly to perform her vocation there, she does not need the vigorous
training required for men. That woman's mission ought to be and happily
is in the majority of cases in the home, no one will gainsay. At the
same time, we should not close our eyes to patent facts, facts such as
these; that the number of women whose mission actually does not lie in
the home, is exceedingly great; that according to the last census of the
United States, for instance, the female population of the State of New
York, is fifty-six thousand in excess of the male; that well nigh two
millions of women in this country are engaged in working for their
livelihood. Is it not cruel mockery to say to these women that their
business is in the household? If the condition of things is such that
they must seek outside labor; if we permit them to toil by hundreds of
thousands in the fields and factories, on what plea of right or reason
can we deny them admission to the higher grades of service? Is it not
simple justice to admit them to all the professions, and to allow them
the same advantages in colleges and professional schools as are enjoyed
by men?

We need not fear that the privilege will be abused. If women undertake
to engage in pursuits for which they are physically or mentally unfit,
the effect of competition will quickly discourage them, and here as
elsewhere, only the fittest will survive.

But aside from those who are destined to remain single, and considering
the seven millions of women, or more, who will become wives and mothers
of families; is not the demand for higher education equally imperative
in their case? Young girls are but too often educated to be the
agreeable companions, rather than the partners of their future husbands.
They receive sufficient instruction to give them a general acquaintance
with the surface of things, but not sufficient to develop what ought to
be the chief end of every scheme of education--a permanent intellectual
interest in any one direction. Much time is wasted on minor
accomplishments. At an age when the young girl is still totally
immature, she is often withdrawn from the influence of her preceptors,
and hurried from dissipation to dissipation, to tread the round of
society's gayeties, and to inhale the poisonous atmosphere of flattery
and conventional falsehoods. She enters a new world. The contrast
between the restraints of school life, and her novel sense of
consequence intoxicates her; the desire for pleasure becomes a passion;
the books of useful information, that never possessed a real charm for
her, are cast aside, and the literature of the sentiments alone retains
its attractions during the remainder of life. It is not astonishing
that those whose minds are thus left barren, should employ their leisure
hours in frivolous or vicious occupations; that an exorbitant luxury,
the sign at all times, of deficient culture, should have infected the
community. It is not wonderful that when the trials of life approach,
these women grasp wildly at the nearest superstition, and prostrate
themselves before any idol of the vulgar, in their blind ignorance and
credulity.

I have said that higher education can alone make marriage what it ought
to be, for it is not fancy or the glow of passion that can bind the
hearts together in lasting wedlock. The marriage bond has deeper
meanings. Two souls are united, each to be all in all to each. Here
shall be the very consummation of love; love, that precious boon that
assuages every pang, and stills every grief, and triumphs over sickness,
sorrow, and the tomb. All nature's symbols fail to express its fulness;
it has the hope of the dawning day; it has the tender pathos of the
light of the moon; it has the melody of birds, the mystic stillness
of the forest, the infinity of the fathomless sea! Bounteous love,
how inexhaustible are its treasures! The fires of the passions kindle
affection, but cannot secure it. If there be only the stubble of desire
in the heart, that will quickly be consumed; if there be veins of true
gold there, that will be melted and refined. Years pass, youth fades,
the attendant train of the graces vanishes, loveliness falls like a
mask, but the union only becomes firmer and trustier, because it is a
union, not of the sentiments merely, but of the souls. The wife becomes
the true sharer of her husband's thoughts; mutual confidence reigns
between them; they grow by mutual furtherance; each sees in each the
mirror of his nobler self; they are the true complement one to the
other. Who does not know that such unions are rare! Common sympathies,
common duties do indeed create a tolerable understanding in most
households; but that is not wedlock that men and women should jog on
tolerably well together for the better part of a lifetime.

The modern mind is constantly broadening; new facts, new discoveries are
constantly coming to light, and loftier problems engage the attention
of thinkers. If woman would not be utterly left behind in the race, then
must she make an effort to acquire more solid knowledge, and educational
reform is the first step in the cause of woman's emancipation. The
electoral franchise, and whatever other measures may be included in
the popular phrase of "Woman's rights" should be reserved for future
discussion. If practicable at all, they are assuredly for the present of
secondary importance.

Permit me to close by briefly formulating a few points that seem to me
to deserve special consideration in this connection.

Woman, like man, should comprehend the age in which she lives and the
great questions by which it is agitated. To this end a knowledge of
history, and chiefly the history of her own nation, is requisite. She
should learn to understand the principles of the language she speaks,
and the literature in which it is preserved, not from dry text-books,
but from the living works of the authors themselves. She should be able
to pass an intelligent judgment upon the political issues of the day,
that take up so large a share of men's conversation, and to this end
the rudiments of political science might profitably be taught her.
She should possess sufficient familiarity with the natural sciences to
comprehend at least the main results of scientific investigations, and
a training of this kind would have the further advantage of accustoming
her mind to the methods of accurate thinking. She should gain some
knowledge of the human body and of the laws upon which its health
depends. Is it not strange that this important branch of knowledge is
so generally neglected in the training of those who are to be mothers of
the future generation? How often would proper attention to a few simple
rules of hygiene prevent sickness; how often would more efficient
nursing avert death, where it is now freely allowed to enter. Then too
the outlines of pedagogy should be included in a course of advanced
instruction for women. Mothers are the educators of the children, but
the educators themselves require to be educated.

If the intellect of girls were braced and stimulated in this manner,
they would exhibit greater self-possession and self-reliance in their
later lives; they would be less apt to be deluded by false appeals to
the feelings: "the woman's view" would be no longer proverbial for the
weaker view; the whole of society would feel the beneficent change, and
the problem which we set out to discuss in the beginning would in due
time solve itself.

We do not for a moment apprehend that the increased cultivation of
the intellect would entail any loss of sweetness or of those gracious
qualities that make the charm of womanhood. Wherever such a result has
been apparently observed, it is safe to ascribe it to other causes.
Truth and beauty are far too closely akin in their inmost nature to
exclude each other. Nor do we fear that the intensity of moral feeling,
for which women are distinguished, would suffer under the restraining
influence of reason's guidance. The moral feelings would indeed be
purified, elevated and directed to their proper objects by the judicious
use of reason; they would not therefore be enfeebled. In the past,
the conservatism of women has been a mighty obstacle in the path
of progress. It is but just to add that at the dawn of every great
religious movement which promised the moral advancement of the race,
gifted women, rising above the weakness of their sisters, have been
among the earliest to welcome the new hope for humanity; have been among
the most ardent, the most self-sacrificing of its disciples. The Liberal
movement of our day also is essentially a movement for larger morality,
and more and more as this feature will be clearly developed, may it hope
to gain the sympathies of brave and good women to its side. In their
support it will behold at once the criterion of its worthiness, and the
surest pledge of its ultimate triumph.




VII. OUR CONSOLATIONS

     {A discourse delivered on Sunday, April 29, 1877.}

We go out in these balmy days of spring into the reviving fields, and
the eye drinks in with delight the fresh and succulent green of the
meadows; the willows begin to put forth their verdant foliage, the
brooks purl and babble of the new life that has waked in the forest:
be glad, all nature cries, summer is coming. And the freshness of the
season enters into our own hearts, our pulses beat more quickly, our
step is more buoyant. We remember all that is joyful in existence; the
arts that embellish, the aspirations that ennoble, the affections that
endear it. Golden the future lies before us; our very cares lose their
sombre hues; like the golden islands of cloud that glow in the glory of
sunset skies.

But beneath the fair semblance of nature that for a time deludes our
senses, a dark and terrible reality is concealed. Observe how pitilessly
the destructive elements pursue their path, the earthquake the tornado,
the epidemic. A few months ago a rise of the sea swept away two hundred
thousand human lives in the course of a few hours. Myriads of sentient
beings are daily cast up in the summer to perish with the first breath
of cold. In the animal world, the strong feed upon the weak, and the
remorseless struggle for existence extends even into the sphere of human
activity. At this very moment the whole of Europe is filled with
anxious alarm in view of an impending war of conquest. While industry
is paralyzed, while trade is at a stand-still, while a virulent disease
generated by starvation has broken out in Silesia, and the workmen
of Lyons have become dependent on the public charity of France, the
resources of nations, already well nigh exhausted, are drained to
prepare for the emergencies of conflict. With a secret thrill of terror
we read that beds for the wounded and millions of roubles for hospital
appliances are being voted by the municipalities of Russia. Readily the
imagination can picture to itself what these ghastly preparations mean.
It is true, so long as all is well with us, the larger evils of the
world do not greatly disturb our equanimity. Man has the happy faculty
of abstracting his attention from things remote. The accumulated woes of
a continent affect us less than some trifling accident in our immediate
vicinity. But when the messengers of evil have cast their shadows across
our threshold, when calamity has laid its heavy hand upon our shoulder,
it is then that the general unsatisfactoriness of life recurs to us with
added force in view of our own experience; the splendor fades from the
surrounding scene; every dark stain takes on a deeper blackness, and the
gloom that comes from within fills and obscures the entire field of our
vision. We have sustained financial loss, perhaps we are harrowed by
domestic discord, we are suddenly stricken in the midst of health, and
drag on long years as hopeless invalids, or worse still, we stand at the
bedside of some dear friend or kinsman, see him stretched upon the rack
of pain, and can do nothing to alleviate his sufferings; we see the end
slowly nearing; but oh, the weary waiting, the patient's agonizing cry
for death, the cruel struggle that must still intervene. And when at
last, it is over, and we have laid him away under the sod, and returned
to our desolate homes, what hope remains! Whither now, we ask, shall we
turn for consolation? Is there no outlook from this night of trouble? Is
there no winged thought, that will bear us upward from out the depths;
is there no solace to assuage our pangs?

Among the means of consolation commonly recommended the doctrine of
Immortality seems to be regarded as the most appropriate and effective.
It is needless to lament; the deceased has entered a better life. Yet a
little and you will join him to be no more parted. Nor can we deny that
to those who cordially entertain it, the belief in the soul's
immortal continuance becomes a source of pure and inexpressibly tender
satisfaction. But with a certain class of minds--and their number, I
believe, is on the increase--the consoling influence of this doctrine is
marred by the fatal uncertainty in which the whole question is involved,
and which no efforts of man have ever yet, nor ever will, avail to
remove. Christianity indeed claims to have settled the point. The Deity
himself, it avers, intervened by direct revelation from on high, to set
our doubts at rest, and Jesus when he arose on the third day forever
deprived the grave of its sting and took away our fears of the tomb. But
to those who read the books of revelations with unbiased mind, the fact
of their human authorship becomes sadly apparent, and the resurrection
itself is as difficult to prove as the doctrine which it is designed to
substantiate.

In modern times spiritualism has likewise endeavored to demonstrate to
the senses the existence of a world of souls beyond our own. But
the phenomena on which it lies are in part disputed, in part the
interpretation put upon them, must, to say the least, be regarded as
premature.

Moreover we should remember that even if by some unknown means the fact
of immortality could be established, the question of our re-union with
friends in the hereafter, in which alone the heart of the mourner is
interested, would still remain an open one and might be answered in the
negative. The belief in immortality has been held in this way by some of
the greatest intellects of the human race, Spinoza among the rest. If we
knew that we shall continue to live, we should not therefore know how
we shall continue to live. Perhaps it might prove that all our previous
connections would be severed; and who can tell what new phases of
existence, what endless metamorphoses might await us among the infinite
possibilities of Eternity.

So deep seated is the sense of uncertainty concerning our fate beyond
the tomb, that no religion, however great the control which it exerted
over men, has ever been able to banish it entirely from their hearts.
The most ardent Christian is hardly less anxious than the infidel to
retain those who are dear to him in life. He prays as fervently for
their health as though their present state were the sum total of their
existence. And yet he should rather hail the day of death as a day of
thanksgiving, and rejoice that those whom he loves have been translated
to a sphere every way so much more desirable than our own. No, the
natural feeling cannot be suppressed, loss is felt to be loss, and death
remains death. No hope of a happier condition in the world to come, no
confidence in the promises and prophesies of faith, can efface the sense
of present bereavement, and as we all alike feel it, so are we all,
believers and unbelievers, interested in seeking the means of its
present relief.

Some of the most fervid, religious natures of the past endeavored to
escape the sorrows of the world by having recourse to the cruel remedy
of asceticism. The ascetic ponders the origin of suffering; he sees
that the desire for pleasure is the cause of pain. Were we not eager to
possess we should not regret to lose. He cuts the gordian knot saying,
abjure desire! When you cease to want, you shall no longer be bruised.
There are certain wants inherent in the body--the want of food,
drink, sleep; the heart has its needs--friendship, sympathy; the
mind--knowledge, culture. All these should be subdued. We should eat
and drink the coarsest in quality and the least possible in quantity; we
should avoid the attachments of love; we should be poor in spirit, and
despise wisdom. The ascetic ideal took firm root in Christianity at an
early period of its history. The extravagance of the Egyptian anchorites
is well known. The "pillar saint," St. Simeon, who is said to have
passed some thirty years of his life on the summit of a column twenty
yards in height, taking only the scantiest nourishment, eschewing
ablutions, covered with filth and sores, was worshipped as a holy man by
the multitude and his example was followed by others, though with less
rigor, during a period of nearly a thousand years. Among the Hindoos,
too, the ascetic ideal acquired a baneful ascendency. We can hardly
credit the tales that have come to us concerning the insane fanaticism
which raged amongst this people. To what tortures of body and soul did
they subject themselves, what cruel ordeals did they invent in order to
steel themselves against the inevitable sufferings of life. It was their
beau-ideal to achieve a state bordering upon absolute unconsciousness,
in which the power of sensation might be entirely blunted, and even the
existence of the physical man be forgotten.

This, indeed, is a capital remedy, a species of heroic treatment that
attains its end. Man becomes passive in pain, incapable of sorrow,
unmoved by any loss. But with the pains, the joys of existence have
likewise fled. The human being walks as a shadow among shadows, a
soulless substance, the wretched semblance of his former self. Who would
not rather bear the heaviest ills that flesh is heir to, than purchase
his release at such a cost.

And now in setting forth our own view of this mighty problem of human
sorrow, let us bear in mind that our private hardships and those general
evils which we see enacted on a scale of such appalling magnitude in
the world around us, must be considered together, for the same cause
constantly gives rise to both. It is of the utmost importance that
we should weigh well what we have a right to expect, and ponder the
conditions on which humanity holds the tenure of its existence. Perhaps
our deepest disappointments are often due to the fact that we ask more
than we have any legitimate title to receive, and judge the scheme of
the Universe according to false analogies and preconceived notions which
the constitution of things does not bear out. We are subject to two
laws, the one the law of nature, the other that of morality: the two
clash and collide, and a conflict ensues. Theology labors to show that
this conflict is apparent rather than real, to admit it would seem to
impugn the justice of the Deity. Thus we read in the Old Testament that
when the sufferer Job protested his innocence, his friends assailed his
veracity, and persisted in holding the bare fact of his misfortune as
unimpeachable evidence of his sinfulness. And thus the Psalmist assures
us, that he has grown old and never seen the righteous man in want. The
experience of the Psalmist must have been limited indeed! The conflict
exists, however it may be denied. Nature is indifferent to morality,
goes on regardless. The great laws that rule the Kosmos, act upon this
planet of ours, nor heed our presence. If we chance to stand in the way,
they grind us to pieces with grim unconcern: the earth opens, the
volcano sends forth its smoldering fires, populous cities are
overwhelmed, locusts devastate the country; they do not pause before the
field of the righteous; they have no moral preference. The seeds of
disease also are scattered broadcast over the land, and the best, often
those whom we can least afford to lose, are taken. These are the hostile
forces, and against these man must contend. To them he opposes his
intellect, his moral energy; he seeks to adapt himself to his place in
the universe. He discovers that these foes are blind, not necessarily
his enemies, if he can trace their path. If he can read the secret of
their working, they cease to threaten him; he holds them with the reins
of intellect, and binds them to his chariot, and behold like swift
steeds they carry him whithersoever it pleases him, and on, on, they
draw his car of progress. In this manner the sway of man's genius is
extended on earth. Already life is far easier than it was among our
ancestors ten thousand years ago; the epidemic is checked by wise
sanitary regulations, greater justice prevails in government, and the
means of happiness are extended over wider areas of the population. What
we thus behold realized on a partial scale, we conceive in our visions
of the future to be indefinitely prolonged, the course of development
leading to higher and higher planes, healthier conditions, wiser laws,
nobler manners. The moral order will thus increase on earth. The moral
order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth, and to
bring on the triumph of intellect over mechanism, of responsible
morality over irresponsible force, is our mission. The purpose of man's
life is not happiness, but worthiness. Happiness may come as an
accessory, we dare never make it an end. There is that striving for the
perfect within us: in it we live, by it we are exalted above the clod;
it is the one and only solace that never fails us, and the experience of
progress in the past, the hope of greater progress in the future, is the
redeeming feature of life. But the condition of all progress is
experience; we must go wrong a thousand times before we find the right.
We struggle, and grope and injure ourselves until we learn the uses of
things. Pain therefore becomes a necessity, but it acquires in this view
a new and nobler meaning, for it is the price humanity pays for an
invaluable good. Every painful sickness, every premature death, becomes
the means of averting sickness and death hereafter. Every form of
violence, every social wrong, every inmost tribulation, is the result of
general causes and becomes a goad in the sides of mankind, pressing them
on to correct the hoary abuses it has tolerated, the vicious principles
of government, education and economy to which it has conformed. Wide as
the earth is the martyrdom of man, but the cry of the martyr is the
creaking of the wheel which warns us that the great car of human
progress is in motion.

If we keep duly in mind the position which the human race occupies over
against nature, we shall not accuse fate. Fate is our adversary; we
must wrestle with it, we are here to establish the law of our own higher
nature in defiance of fate. And this is the prerogative of man, that he
need not blindly follow the law of his being, but that he is himself the
author of the moral law, and creates it even in acting it out. We are
all soldiers in the great army of mankind, battling in the cause of
moral freedom; some to fight as captains, others to do valiant service
in the ranks; some to shout the paean of victory, others to fall on the
battle field or to retire wounded or crippled to the rear. But as in
every battle so too in this, the fallen and the wounded have a share
in the victory; by their sufferings have they helped, and the greenest
wreath belongs to them.

It is strictly in accordance with the view we have taken, that we behold
in the performance of duty the solace of affliction. All of us have
felt, after some great bereavement, the beneficent influence of mere
labor: even the mechanical part of duty affords us some relief. The
knowledge that something must be done calls us away from brooding over
our griefs, and forces us back into the active currents of life. The
cultivation of the intellect also is a part of man's duty, and stands us
in great stead in times of trouble. We should seek to accustom the mind
to the aspect of large interests. In the pursuit of knowledge there is
nothing of the personal: into the calm and silent realm of thought the
feelings can gain no entrance. There, after the first spasms of emotion
have subsided, we may find at least a temporary relief,--there for hours
we drink in a happy oblivion. But more is needed, and the discharge of
the duties of the heart alone can really console the heart. There is
this secret in the affections, that they constantly add to our strength.
Constant communion between allied natures leads to their mutual
enrichment by all that is best in either. But when the rude hand of
death interferes, we are as a stream whose outlet is barred, as a
creeper whose stay is broken. A larger channel is needed then into which
the waters of our love may flow, a firm support, to which the tattered
tendrils of affection may cling anew. True, the close and intimate bond
that unites friend to friend can have no substitute, but the warm love
that obtains in the personal relations may be expanded into a wider
and impersonal love, which, if less intense, is broader, which, if less
fond, is even more ennobling. The love you can no longer lavish on one,
the many call for it. The cherishing care you can no longer bestow
upon your child, the neglected children of the poor appeal for it; the
sympathy you can no longer give your friend, the friendless cry for it.
In alleviating the misery of others, your own misery will be alleviated,
and in healing you will find that there is cure.

This remedy is suggested in an ancient legend related of the Buddha, the
great Hindoo reformer, who was so deeply affected by the ills of human
life.* There came to him one day a woman who had lost her only child.
She was wild with grief, and with disconsolate sobs and cries called
frantically on the prophet to give back her little one to life. The
Buddha gazed on her long and with that tender sympathy which drew all
hearts to him, said, "Go my daughter, get me a mustard seed from a house
into which death has never entered, and I will do as thou hast bidden
me." And the woman took up the dead child, and began her search. From
house to house she went saying, "Give me a mustard seed, kind folk, a
mustard seed for the prophet to revive my child." And they gave her
what she asked, and when she had taken it, she inquired whether all were
gathered about the hearth, father and mother and the children; but the
people would shake their heads and sigh, and she would turn on her way
sadder than before. And far as she wandered, in town and village, in
the crowded thoroughfare, and by the lonely road side, she found not the
house into which death had never entered. Then gradually as she went on,
the meaning of the Buddha's words dawned upon her mind; gradually as she
learned to know the great sorrow of the race every where around her,
her heart went out in great yearning sympathy to the companions of her
sorrow; the tears of her pity fell free and fast, and the passion of
her grief was merged in compassion. She had learned the great lesson of
renunciation; had learned to sink self in the unselfish.

     * We have ventured to offer this interpretation of the
     legend in an article published in the Atlantic Monthly for
     June, 1875, from which the account in the text is taken.

From the depths of the heart the stream of grief rises resistless, the
dams and dykes of reason are impotent to stay its course. Prepare a
channel therefore to lead out its swelling tide away to the great ocean
of mankind's sorrow, where in commingling it shall be absorbed.

The consolations of the Ideal are vigorous: they do not encourage idle
sentiment: they recommend to the sufferer, action. The loss indeed as we
set out by saying, remains a loss, and no preaching or teaching can ever
make it otherwise. The question is, whether it shall weaken and embitter
us, or become the very purification of our souls, and lead us to grander
and diviner deeds, lead us to raise unto the dead we mourn, a monument
in our lives that shall be better than tiny pillared chapel or storied
marble tomb.

Thus from whatever point we start, we arrive at the same conclusion
still: "not in the creed but in the deed!" In the deed is the pledge of
the sacredness of life; in the deed is the reward of our activities in
health; in the deed our solace, and our salvation even in the abysmal
gulfs of woe. In hours of great sorrow we turn in vain to nature for an
inspiring thought. We question the sleepless stars; they are cold
and distant: the winds blow, the rivers run their course, the seasons
change; they are careless of man. In the world of men alone do we find
an answering echo to the heart's needs. Let us grasp hands cordially and
look into each other's eyes for sympathy, while we travel together on
our road toward the unknown goal. To help one another is our wisdom, and
our renown, and our sweet consolation.




VIII. SPINOZA.

Two centuries have elapsed since Spinoza passed from the world of the
living, and to-day that high and tranquil spirit walks the earth once
more and men make wide their hearts to receive his memory and his name.
The great men whom the past has wronged, receive at last time's tardy
recompense.

On the day that Columbus set sail for America, the Jews left Spain in
exile. Many of their number, however, who could not find it in their
hearts to bid adieu to their native land, remained and simulated the
practice of devout Catholics while in secret they preserved their
allegiance to their ancestral religion. They occupied high places in the
church and state, and monks, prelates and bishops were counted in their
ranks. Ere long the suspicions of the Inquisition were alarmed against
these covert heretics, and their position became daily more perilous and
insecure. Some were condemned to the stake, others pined for years in
dungeons; those that could find the means, escaped and sought in distant
lands security and repose from persecution. It was especially the Free
States of Holland whose enlightened policy offered an asylum to the
fugitives, and thither accordingly in great numbers they directed their
steps. Their frugality, their thrift and enterprise, contributed not a
little to build up the prosperity of the Dutch metropolis.

In the opening of the seventeenth century a considerable congregation of
the Jews had collected in the city of Amsterdam. There in the year
1632, the child of Spanish emigrants, Benedict Spinoza was born. Of
his childhood we know little. At an early age he was initiated into
the mysteries of Hebrew lore, was instructed in the Hebrew grammar, and
learned to read and translate the various writings of the Old Testament.
He was taught to thread his way through the mazes of the Talmud, and its
subtle discussions proved an admirable discipline in preparing him for
the favorite pursuits of his after years. Lastly he was introduced to
the study of the Jewish philosophers, among whom Maimonides and Ibn Ezra
engaged his especial attention. Maimonides, one of the most profound
thinkers of the middle ages, strove to harmonize the teachings of
Aristotle with the doctrines of the Bible. Ibn Ezra on the other hand,
was a confirmed sceptic. In his biblical commentaries he anticipates
many noteworthy discoveries of modern criticism, and his orthodoxy in
other respects also is more than doubtful.

In all these different branches of theology the young Spinoza made rapid
progress and soon gained astonishing proficiency. He was the favorite
of his instructors, and they predicted that he would one day become a
shining light of the synagogue. Not content, however, with this course
of study, Spinoza addressed himself to the study of Roman literature,
and with the assistance of a certain Dr. Van den Ende, who had at that
time gained considerable repute as a teacher of liberal learning, he
soon became an accomplished Latin scholar. He also took up the study of
Geometry and of Physics, and acquired considerable skill in the art of
sketching. His mind being thus stored with various knowledge, he was
prepared to enter the vast realm of metaphysical speculation and
here the works of Rene Descartes, preeminently engaged his attention.
Descartes, whose motto, _De omnibus dubitandum est_, sufficiently
indicates the revolutionary character of his teachings, was the leader
of the new school of thought on the continent. His influence proved
decisive in shaping the career of Spinoza. Bruno also deserves mention
among those who determined the bias of Spinoza's mind. I mean that Bruno
was among the first followers of Copernicus, proclaimed the doctrine of
the infinity of worlds and who himself inculcated a species of pantheism
for which he paid the last penalty at Rome in the year 1600, thirty-two
years before Spinoza was born. By all these influences the mind of the
young philosopher was widened beyond the sphere of his early education.
In the pursuit of truth he sought the society of congenial minds, and
found among the cultivated Christians of his day that intellectual
sympathy of which he stood in need. From the high plane of thought
which he had now reached, the rites and practices of external religion
dwindled in importance, and the questions of creed for which the mass
of men contend appeared little and insignificant. His absence from the
worship of the synagogue now began to be remarked; it was rumored
that he neglected the prescribed fasts and he was openly charged
with partaking of forbidden food. At first he was treated with great
leniency. So high was his credit with the Rabbis, so impressed were they
with his singular abilities, that they strove by every gentle means to
win him back to his allegiance. They admonished him, held out prospects
of honor and emolument; it is even stated that at last in despair of
reclaiming him they offered an annual pension of a thousand florins to
purchase his silence. Spinoza himself was keenly alive to the gravity
of his position. It had been fondly hoped that he would shed new lustre
upon the religion of Israel. He would be accused of vile ingratitude for
deserting his people. He foresaw the inevitable rupture that would cut
him off forever from friends and kinsmen, from the opportunities of
wealth and honorable position, and deliver him over to privation and
poverty. He himself tells us in the introduction of a work which had
long been forgotten and has been only recently rescued from oblivion,
that he saw riches and honor and all those goods for which men strive,
placed before him on the one hand, and a sincere life serenely true
to itself on the other; but that the former seemed veritable shams and
evils compared with that one great good. Nay, he said, though he might
never reach the absolute truth, he felt as one sick unto death, who
knows but one balm that can help him and who must needs search for that
balm whereby perchance he may be healed.

Great was the commotion stirred up against him in the Jewish community
of Amsterdam. One evening a fanatic assaulted him on the street and
attempted his life. The stroke of the assassin's dagger was successfully
parried. But Spinoza felt that the city was now no longer safe for him
to dwell in. He fled and for some time frequently changed his place of
residence, until at last he settled at the Hague where he remained until
his death. In the mean time the lenient spirit of the Jewish leaders had
changed into stern, uncompromising rigor. Observe now how persecution
breeds persecution. It had been the pride of Judaism from of old that
within its pale the practice of religion was deemed more essential
than the theory; that it permitted the widest divergence in matters of
belief, and granted ample tolerance to all. But these Jews of Amsterdam,
fresh from the dungeons and the torture chambers of the Inquisition, had
themselves imbibed the dark spirit of their oppressors. Uriel d'Acosta
they had driven to the verge of insanity and to a tragic death by their
cruel bigotry. And now the same methods were employed against a wiser
and greater and purer man, far than he.

On the 27th of July, 1656, in the synagogue of Amsterdam, the sacred
ark, containing the scrolls of the law, being kept open during the
ceremony, the edict of excommunication was solemnly promulgated. It
reads somewhat as follows:

"By the decree of the angels and the verdict of the saints we separate,
curse and imprecate Baruch de Spinoza with the consent of the blessed
God and of this holy congregation, before the holy books of the Law with
the commandments that are inscribed therein, with the ban with which
Joshua banned Jericho, with the curse with which Elias cursed the
youths, and with all the imprecations that are written in the Law.
Cursed be he by day and cursed by night; cursed when he lies down,
and cursed when he rises; cursed in his going forth, and cursed in his
coming in. May the Lord God refuse to pardon him; may his wrath and
anger be kindled against this man, and on him rest all the curses that
are written in this book of the Law. May the Lord wipe out his name
from under the heavens, and separate him for evil from all the tribes
of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament that are written in the
book of the Law. And ye that hold fast to the Lord God are all living
this day! we warn you that none shall communicate with him either by
word of mouth or letter, nor show him any favor, nor rest under the same
roof with him, nor approach his person within four yards, nor read any
writing that he has written."

When Spinoza heard of this anathema he calmly replied: "They compel me
to do nothing which I was not previously resolved upon." He retired
from the commerce of the world. He coveted solitude. Within his silent
chamber he moved in a world of his own. There in twenty years of patient
passionless toil he built up the mighty edifice of his system. It rises
before us as if hewn of granite rock. Its simplicity, its grandeur,
its structural power have been the wonder of men. I can offer only the
barest outline of its design.

Man's questioning spirit seeks to penetrate to the heart of Nature,
would grasp the origin of things. There is this mighty riddle: who will
solve it? Various attempts have been made. Pantheism is one. Spinoza was
the great philosopher of Pantheism.

Beneath all diversity there is unity. In all of Nature's myriad forms
and changes, there is a substance unchangeable. It is uncreated,
undivided, uncaused, the Absolute, Infinite, God. Thought and extension
are its attributes; it is the One in All, the All in One. God is not
matter, is not mind; is that deeper unity in which matter and mind are
one; God or Nature, Spinoza says. This is not the God of theology. God
is in the tree, in the stone, in the stars, in man. God does not live,
nor labor for any purpose, but produces from the necessity of his Being
in endless variety, in ceaseless activity. He is the inner cause of all
things, the ultimate Reality, and all things are as in their nature they
partake of him.

Man also is of God. The essence of man is in the mind. Man is a logical
being. God alone owns truth; in so far as man thinks truly and clearly,
he is a part of the infinite God. Logic is the basis of ethics. Spinoza
ignores sentiment, ignores art. Good and evil are but other names for
useful and not useful. But that alone is useful that we follow the
necessary and universal laws, seeking by the depth and reach of
intellect to know and understand.

Virtue is the pursuit of knowledge. There are three kinds of knowledge:
the blurred perceptions of the senses, the light of the understanding,
the intuition of intellect. The last is the highest.

Virtue is the sense of being; whatever heightens the joyous
consciousness of our active faculties is therefore good. The wise man
delights in the moderate enjoyment of pleasant food and drink, in the
color and loveliness of green shrubs, in the adornment of garments, in
music's sweetness. But our true being is to be found only in intellect;
hence, virtue the joy of being, is the joy of thought; hence, the bold
assertion--that is moral which helps, and that immoral which hinders
thought.

Man is a social being. As a drop is raised upward in the great ocean
by the onflowing of the wave, so the individual mind is exalted by the
presence and communion of congenial minds moving in the same current.

'Tis thus that Spinoza deduces the social virtues. Hate is evil at all
times, for hate implies the isolation and the weakness of the powers of
reason. We should reward hatred with love and restore the broken accord
of intellect. Love is the sense of kinship in the common search for
reason's goal--wisdom. That all men should so live and act together that
they may form, as it were, one body and one mind, is the ideal of life.
Friendship therefore he prizes as the dearest of earth's possessions,
and wedlock he esteems holy because in it is cemented the union of two
souls for the common search of truth. We should be serene at all times
and shun fear, which is weakness, and hope also which is the child of
desire, and haughtiness and humbleness and remorse and pity should we
avoid. But in stillness and with collected power shall we possess our
souls obedient to the laws of mind that make our being and helping when
we help for reason's sake. The passions bind us to passing phenomena.
When they become transparent to our reason, when we know their causes
then our nature conquers outward nature and we are masters, we are free.

Thus the emotional life is extinguished. The feelings lose their color
and vitality, become blank "as lines and surfaces," and man, freed from
the constraints of passion, dwells in the pure realm of intellect, and
in constant intercourse with the mind of God, fulfills the purpose of
his existence--to know and understand.

Against the blows of misfortune also reason steels us. Sorrow is but the
lurking suspicion that all might have been otherwise. When we come to
know that all things are by necessity, we shall find tranquillity in
yielding to the inevitable. For so God works by necessity. For all
things are in his hands as clay in the hand of the potter, which the
potter taketh and fashioneth therefrom vessels of diverse value, some
to honor and some to disgrace. And none shall rebuke him, for all is by
necessity.

When the body passes away the mind does not wholly perish, but something
remains that is infinite, an eternal modus dwelling in the depths of
the eternal mind. But though we knew not that something of the mind
remained, yet were goodness and strength of soul to be sought for above
all else. For who, foreseeing that he cannot always feed on healthy
nourishment, would therefore sate himself with deadly poison? or who,
though he knew that the mind is not immortal, would therefore lead an
empty life, devoid of reason's good and guidance? The wisdom of the wise
and the freedom of the free is not in the aspect of death but of life.
Religion and piety lead us to follow the laws of necessity in the world
where they are manifest, to dwell on the intellect of God, of God their
fount and origin.

But I forbear to enter farther into this wonderful system. We see a
giant wrestling with nature, seeking to wrest from her her secret.
Mysterious nature baffles him and the riddle is still unread. That
substance of which he speaks is no more than an abstraction of the mind
whose reality in the outward world he has failed to prove. He has also
erred in turning aside from the rich and manifold life of the emotions,
for the emotions are not in themselves evil, they are the seminal
principle of all virtue.

On pillars of intellect, Spinoza reared his system. Still, solemn,
sublime like high mountains it towers upward, but is devoid of color and
warmth, and even the momentary glow that now and then starts up in his
writings, passes quickly away like the flush of evening that reddens the
snowy summits of Alpine ranges.

Spinoza's name marks a lofty peak in human history. He was a true man;
no man more fully lived his teachings. If he describes the pursuit
of knowledge as the highest virtue, he was himself a noble example of
tireless devotion in that pursuit. He was well versed in the natural
sciences, skillful in the use of the microscope, and his contributions
to the study of the inner life of man have earned him lasting
recognition. Johannes Mueller, the distinguished physiologist, has
included the third division of Spinoza's _Ethics_ in his well known work
on physiology.

Religion, however, was Spinoza's favorite theme, that religion which is
free from all passionate longings and averse to superstition of whatever
kind. He was among the first to hurl his mighty arguments against
the infallible authority of the Bible, arguments that still command
attention though two hundred years have since passed by. Miracles, he
said, are past belief, the beauty of Cosmos is far more deserving
of admiration than any so called miracle could possibly be. He
demanded--this was a great and novel claim--that the methods of natural
science be applied to the study of scripture, that the character of the
age and local surroundings be considered in determining the meaning of
each scriptural author. In brief that a natural history of the bible,
so to speak, should be attempted. He claimed that the priesthood had
falsified the very book which they professed to regard most holy.
He denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and set forth in
singularly clear and lucid language the discrepancies in which that work
abounds. He closed the treatise in which these views are laid down--the
Theologico-political Tract--with a magnificent plea for liberty of
conscience and of speech. That state alone, he says, can be free and
happy which rests on the freedom of the Individual citizen. Where the
right of free utterance is curtailed, hypocrisy and shameful conformance
flourish, and public contumely and disgrace which ought to serve as a
mete punishment for the vicious, become a halo about the head of the
most noble of men. Religion and piety, he concludes, the state has a
right to demand, but nothing hereafter shall be known as religion and
piety save the practice of equity and of a wise and helpful love.

It was a bold awakening note which thus rang out into the seventeenth
century, and theologians were bitter in their replies. The book was
confiscated and Christian curses were added to Jewish anathemas. But
they failed to affect Spinoza.

Few men have suffered as he did. Few have preserved the same equanimity
of soul in the face of adverse fortune. Twenty years he dwelt alone. For
days he did not leave his student's closet, drawing his mighty circles,
intent on those high thoughts that formed the companionship he loved.
Those that knew him well revered him. De Witt the noble statesman, De
Witt who ended his days so miserably, torn to pieces by a maddened mob,
sought his counsel. Young ardent disciples from a distance sent him
words of cheer into his solitude. His soul was pure as sunlight, his
character crystal clear. He was frugal in the extreme: a few pence a day
sufficed to sustain him. Not that he affected austere views in general,
but the deep meditations that occupied his mind left him little time
or inclination for the grosser pleasures. His sense of honor was
scrupulously nice. Again and again did he reject the munificent pensions
which his friends pressed upon him; he would be free and self-sustained
in all things. In his leisure hours he busied himself with the grinding
and polishing of optical lenses, an exercise that offered him at once
the means of support and a welcome relaxation from the severe strain
of mental effort. His temper was rarely ruffled; he was placid, genial,
childlike. When wearied with his labors he would descend to the family
of his landlord, the painter Van der Speke, and entering into the
affairs of these simple people, he found, in their unaffected converse,
the relief he sought.

He valued the peace of mind which he had purchased so dearly. When the
Elector of the Palatinate offered him the chair of philosophy at the
University of Heidelberg on condition that he would so expound his
philosophy as not to interfere with the established religion, he
declined, replying that he could teach the truth only as he saw it, and
that evil and designing men would doubtless add point and poison to his
words. Yet he was fearless. When toward the close of his career,
his life was again imperiled, the grave tranquillity of his demeanor
inspired his agitated friends with calmness and confidence.

He had gained his forty-fourth year. For half a life time he had been
fighting a treacherous disease, that preyed in secret upon his health.
His life was slowly ebbing away amidst constant suffering, yet no
complaint crossed his lips and his nearest companions were hardly
aware of what he endured. In the early part of the year 1677 one day
in February, while the family of the painter were at church the end
approached. Only a single friend was with him. Calmly as he had lived,
in the stillness of the Sunday afternoon, Spinoza passed away.

He has left a name in history that will not fade. His people cast him
out, Christianity rejected him, but he has found a wider fellowship, he
belongs to all mankind. Great hearts have throbbed responsive to his
teachings and many a sorrowful soul has owned the restful influence of
his words. He was a helper of mankind. Not surely because he solved the
ultimate problems of existence--what mortal ever will--but because he
was wise in the secret of the heart, because he taught men to appease
their fretful passions in the aspect of the infinite laws in which we
live and are.

Sacred is the hour in which we read his Ethics. From the heat and glare
of life we enter into its precincts as into the cool interior of some
hallowed temple of religion. But no idol stands there; the spirit of
truth alone presides and sanctifies the place and us. The great men
of the past we will reverence. They are mile-stones on the highway of
humanity, types of the Infinite, that has dawned in human breasts. Such
an one was he of whom I have spoken. And more and more as the light
increases among men will all that was good and great in him shine forth
to irradiate their path. And as we stand here to-day on this day of
remembrance to recall his teachings and his example, so when other
centuries shall have elapsed, the memory of Spinoza will still live,
posterity will still own him, and distant generations will name him
anew: Benedictus--Blessed!




IX. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY

     {A discourse delivered on Sunday, December 31, 1876.}

"I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil, for verily I say unto you till
heaven and earth pass away one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass
from the law till all be fulfilled." "Resist not evil, * * * bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you."

In these sayings of Jesus the key note of early Christianity is struck.
It was not a revolt against Judaism, it was but a reiterated assertion
of what other and older Prophets of the Hebrews had so often and so
fervently preached. The law was to remain intact, but the spiritual
law was meant, the deeper law of conscience that underlies the forms of
legislation and the symbols of external worship.

There is a rare and gracious quality in the personality of Jesus as
described in the Gos

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