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SERMONS OF A 
 CHEMIST 
 
 if BY 
 EDWIN E. SLOSSON, PH.D., LL.D. 
 
 Author of “Easy Lessons in Einstein,” “Creative Chemistry,” 
 “Major Prophets of Today,” etc. Editor of “Keeping 
 Up with Science,’ etc. Director of Science 
 Service, Washington 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 
 THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
 RAHWAY, N, J. 
 
TO 
 BROTHER ALFRED 
 WHOSE SERMONS WERE THE INSPIRATION OF MY YOUTH 
 AND TO 
 SISTER FLORA 
 WHOSE SYMPATHETIC ASSISTANCE HAS MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE 
 
 THE AUTHOR DEDICATES IT 
 WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/sermonsofchemist0Oslos 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A SERMON by a lay-preacher may be worth listening to. 
 It gives a parallax of thought and feeling as they appear to 
 the observers from two very different points of view. If 
 you wish to get the distance of a heavenly body, you know 
 that you must take two observations from remote points of 
 view,—in midsummer and midwinter, for instance. To get 
 the parallax of heavenly truths, you must take an observa- 
 tion from the position of the laity as well as of the clergy.— 
 Suppose a minister were to undertake to express opinions 
 on medical subjects, would you not think he was going 
 beyond his province?—said the divinity student. Let us 
 look at this matter—I said. If a minister had attended 
 lectures on the theory and practice of medicine, delivered 
 by those who had studied it most deeply, for thirty or forty 
 years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a year,—if 
 he had been constantly reading and hearing read the most 
 approved text-books on the subject,—if he had seen medi- 
 cine practised according to different methods, daily, for the 
 same length of time,—I should think, that if a person of 
 average understanding, he was entitled to express an opinion 
 on the subject of medicine, or else his instructors were a 
 set of ignorant and incompetent charlatans. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs. 
 
 These remarks by “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” 
 must serve as my justification for this book. 
 
 But today the clergy are not so jealous of their preroga- 
 Vi 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 tive as they were in the time of Dr. Holmes. In fact, I 
 think that they are inclined to the opposite extreme, that 
 they relinquish too readily their function as teachers of the 
 church and are too much inclined to call in a layman, dis- 
 tinguished in other fields, to express his amateurish views of 
 the theological and ethical questions on which they are by 
 training and profession the expert authorities. 
 
 Be that as it may, the preacher nowadays is not perched 
 so high above his parishioners as he was in former times, 
 and it is easier to climb from the pew into the pulpit. As 
 professor and as editor I have frequently been called upon 
 for talks in college chapels, and as elder or deacon in 
 Presbyterian and Congregational churches for the last thirty 
 years I have occasionally had to occupy the pulpit when 
 the preacher failed to appear or during an interregnum in 
 the pastorate. On such occasions it is the custom for kind- 
 hearted members of the congregation, seeing that the 
 speaker was no preacher but was doing his best, to come 
 forward and shake his hand and express the polite wish 
 that they could see the sermon in print that they might 
 preserve it and ponder it at leisure. 
 
 I have figured up that if all those who have expressed 
 such a desire would buy a copy of this book the sale of the 
 first edition is assured. Anyhow it is worth trying the 
 experiment. 
 
 EDWIN E. SLosson. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE 
 BIBLE x ” ; ; ; j 
 
 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DatLty LIFE 
 
 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER . : : : f 
 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD . 
 
 BLACK AND WHITE . ; : : : : : ; 
 FAITH : : 2 : : ; : . d : 
 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT . : ‘ : : ‘ 
 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING . \ : ; : , 
 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT . , 
 
 THE UsEs oF ADVERSITY . 4 d : ; 
 LOOKING BACKWARD AND LIVING FoRWARD : 4 
 INVERTED Hypocrisy . : : 4 : 
 
 TELLING THE TRUTH . 2 j . : : k 
 Tue Duty or INTELLIGENCE y ! : : p 
 THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS . ; : 4 : 
 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 THE EtHIcs oF EVOLUTION . : 4 ; 
 
 A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL . : : : 
 EAcH IN His OWN TONGUE . oyu ks 
 
 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN . : ; ; 
 
 Lest We FoRGET . : x ‘ ; , : ) 
 Tue NINE SONS OF SATAN . ‘ d 5 : ; 
 
 INDEX } : : i , : ‘ i ( y 
 vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 106 
 124 
 137 
 142 
 164 
 175 
 189 
 200 
 203 
 226 
 247 
 252 
 273 
 284 
 299 
 317 
 
eal 
 
 NOW ube 
 ees 
 
 s 
 
 
 
SERMONS OF A CHEMIST 
 
t i) 
 \oerulth 
 
 
 
THE CHEMISTRY OF THE GREATEST 
 MIRACLE IN THE BIBLE 
 
 And God formed man out of the dust of the ground. 
 Genesis 2:7. 
 
 I HAVE chosen this particular miracle for discussion 
 for three reasons especially. 
 
 First, because it is such a remarkable event in itself. 
 It is, as it seems to me, unquestionably the greatest 
 miracle narrated in the Bible or out of it. Not only 
 has nothing stranger occurred in the history of the 
 world, but nothing so astounding has ever been imag- 
 ined by any romancer. This truth is stranger than 
 any fiction ever devised. The gulf between animate 
 and inanimate matter is so great that we cannot con- 
 ceive, if we did not know it was true, that a clod should 
 ever feel and think. The more we study it the deeper 
 appears the mystery. There is no other subject prob- 
 ably which is engaging so much attention on the part 
 of scientists. The problem is being attacked on the 
 one side by chemists and on the other side by physiol- 
 ogists, but it is not at all solved. They are like work- 
 men tunneling a mountain, who have been working 
 from opposite sides for years but have not yet met and 
 cannot yet see through it. 
 
 The importance of this miracle appears, too, when 
 we think that if it had never occurred this world would 
 
 be a mere insensate ball of stone rolling through space. 
 3 
 
4 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 When we look at the stars on a clear night we count 
 thousands of these suns, each of which may have as 
 many planets as our sun. Yet of all the spheres in 
 God’s unmeasured universe this is probably the only 
 one on which this miracle of life has happened. All 
 worlds but ours are dead worlds. The chances against 
 such a thing occurring are millions to one. Yet it did 
 occur, and we here are living witnesses of it. It was 
 the birth, not of an individual, but the birth of all 
 mankind. 
 
 The second reason why I think this miracle may be 
 of interest to you is that it is of especial interest to 
 me. It is a chemical miracle. It is just as much a 
 chemical statement as that hydrogen and oxygen unite 
 to form water, and that wood burns to ashes, water, 
 and carbon dioxide gas, or that wine turns to vinegar. 
 It should be studied, tested, and examined in the same 
 way as any other phenomenon. It is because I know 
 something, although very little, about this miraculous 
 transformation that I choose it in preference to other 
 remarkable events belonging to departments of science 
 which I have not studied. 
 
 The third reason why I selected this miracle is be- 
 cause of its indisputability. No one can doubt that it 
 occurred. If I had taken other chemical miracles, for 
 example, the changing of the river Nile into blood, or 
 the water at the marriage feast into wine, it might 
 have been objected by some that they did not believe 
 it. Some might have said with great reason that in an 
 unscientific age we could not expect an exact state- 
 ment of facts which would withstand all the destructive 
 criticism of after ages. Others might have said with 
 
OUT OF THE DUST 5 
 
 equal reason that we are not expected to take literally 
 the legends of Orientals who are so much given to 
 allegory and metaphor. It would be useless for me to 
 talk about anything that you did not all accept as 
 literally true. And this particular miracle cannot be 
 doubted because we see it repeated all about us every 
 day, yes, even in our own bodies. For what was true 
 of Adam is true of us. Each one of us was created 
 out of the dust of the earth, not thousands of years 
 ago, but within the past few months. If any one raises 
 the objection that Adam did not exist, I will take in- 
 stead Adam Smith or any one you please. In the 
 original Hebrew, I have been told, “Adam” is not a 
 proper name; it is simply ““Man.” So far as we know 
 all men were formed from the dust of the ground, and 
 although it would be impossible to prove that Adam, 
 or some one else, was not created in a different way 
 from that described in the Bible, it is so improbable 
 as to be inconceivable. We have to accept this daily 
 miracle on faith, for we do not understand it. 
 
 God is the same yesterday, today and forever. His 
 laws are the immutable laws of nature. In him alone 
 there is no variation. If this were not so the world 
 would be a chance world where we could rely upon 
 nothing. Water might run up and down hill with equal 
 readiness. We might grow old one week and young the 
 next. We would plant wheat expecting a harvest in a 
 few months, but the seed might come up the next day 
 and then prove to be cabbages. It is only our faith in 
 the unaltering will of God that prevents us from ex- 
 pecting these things to happen. We do not know why 
 they don’t. We only believe they will not and never 
 
6 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 have happened. So we have no hesitation in saying 
 that Adam was created as we were, that is out of the 
 dust of the ground. 
 
 It is no less a miracle as a result of direct natural 
 causes. A natural law is simply a statement of what 
 will happen under certain circumstances; and this 
 miracle is an unexplained chemical action. It does 
 not make it less a miracle that it has happened many 
 million times since Adam. It makes a difference in 
 the surprise it causes in us, but the act is the same 
 whether repeated or not. If I should be able to change 
 lead into gold, just once, without knowing how I did 
 it, under such conditions that no one could doubt it, 
 I would be regarded as the greatest chemist in the 
 world. Would that reputation be lessened if I could 
 repeat it every day? Or if I could explain how I did 
 it? Or even if I could teach others how to do it? On 
 the contrary, the more times the act was repeated, the 
 more completely the process was explained, so that any- 
 body could do it, the greater would be the admiration 
 aroused. 
 
 So a miracle is not the less a miracle if it can be 
 explained. Not that we can really “explain” anything 
 ultimately, but many things we can understand suffi- 
 ciently to satisfy all except the most curious among 
 us, and that we call “explaining.” 
 
 Those among us whose God is Lord of the Unusual 
 and Inexplicable alone live in a constant state of fright 
 lest he should be eventually expelled from the universe 
 by the finite minds of men. They are lovers of dark- 
 ness rather than light, not because their deeds are evil, 
 but because their faith is frail. But science is like a 
 
NO LAWS IN NATURE vs 
 
 camp-fire on a dark night. As you throw more wood 
 on the flame, the lighted circle widens, but the sur- 
 rounding darkness expands in proportion and becomes 
 more impenetrable. As the area of enlightenment 
 spreads we come into contact with more mystery. 
 
 If a miracle is an event absolutely unique in the 
 history of the world, if it could never happen again 
 under any circumstances, then it does not matter in 
 the least whether it is authenticated or not. Science 
 can make nothing of it, not even the science of theology. 
 But if a miracle is a spectacular demonstration of a 
 universal law, then it is of permanent value to us. Its 
 value, however, is not at all dependent upon the pres- 
 ervation, or even the authenticity, of the record of that 
 particular instance. If some antiquarian should un- 
 earth a death-bed confession of Joseph Priestley stat- 
 ing that he had never discovered oxygen, and that his 
 paper, claiming that discovery, was a hoax, most chem- 
 ists would not care enough about it to read it. Priestley 
 may have been a fraud for all we know, but oxygen is 
 a reality as we all know. 
 
 Science is based not upon verified facts but upon 
 verifiable facts. It seems to me that religion rests 
 upon the same solid foundation. A transmutation 
 of bread and wine into flesh and blood is indeed mirac- 
 ulous and inexplicable, yet it is demonstrable and un- 
 deniable. Anybody can do it. 
 
 Some people have the idea that a miracle is a “‘viola- 
 tion of the laws of nature.” This is an absurdity 
 based on an exaggerated idea of what we call natural 
 law, a common misconception among those unfamiliar 
 with science. There are no laws im nature; there are 
 
8 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 laws of nature which we make for ourselves. Strictly 
 speaking, scientists do not discover the laws of nature. 
 They invent them to describe the facts they find. 
 These are mere descriptions of what has occurred in 
 the past, and what therefore we have reason to believe 
 will occur under the same circumstances in the future. 
 A book on chemistry or botany is merely a history, 
 after all. There can be no such thing as a violation 
 of natural law, because it is self-contradictory. If the 
 statement in a textbook is a true law there Is no excep- 
 tion. If there is an exception the statement is not a 
 true law. It must be revised. You can violate the 
 Volstead Act and it still stands on the statute books. 
 If you violate a scientific law you abolish it or rather 
 you show that it never existed. 
 
 Another absurd idea commonly heard is that because 
 a miracle is the direct act of God it cannot be the result 
 of natural causes. Everything that occurs is, in a 
 sense, the direct act of God since without him nothing 
 could happen or exist. Of the miracles of the Bible in 
 many cases we are expressly told that there was an 
 adequate natural cause. For example, the drying up 
 of the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over. If 
 it had not been expressly mentioned that this remark- 
 able effect was caused by an east wind some people 
 would have imagined it as the act of God reaching 
 down and damming up the waters with his own right 
 hand; or we would have had medieval artists painting 
 pictures of angels sweeping back the waters with big 
 brooms. 
 
 It is related in the book of Joshua that when the 
 Amorites were fleeing from battle, after having been 
 
STONES FROM HEAVEN 9 
 
 defeated by the Israelites, the Lord chased them all the 
 way up to Beth-horon and down on the other side, 
 to Azekah and as far as Makkedah, and cast great 
 stones down on them from heaven, and killed more of 
 them than the Israelites had slain by the sword. 
 
 Now imagine how an artist would represent that. 
 In the twelfth century he would have made a great 
 big old man with a long, white beard, throwing stones 
 out of an upstairs window at the flying soldiers. In 
 the sixteenth century he would have painted the Amo- 
 rites pursued by what he called angels, fantastic crea- 
 tures invented by himself, human beings with an extra 
 pair of limbs, feathered, attached to their scapulas 
 and held perpendicularly in such a way that they could 
 be of no kind of use for a support, since their pos- 
 sessors could neither flap them nor soar with them. 
 
 If the passage had been left without further com- 
 ment it would have been a stumbling block to Chris- 
 tian faith. Infidels would have jeered at it as im- 
 possible. Apologists would have tried to evade the 
 question in some way, or would have called it a viola- 
 tion of natural law and therefore a miracle. It was a 
 miracle, a wonder, and a sign, but it was not a viola- 
 tion of natural law, nor was it necessarily in any direct 
 sense more the act of God than everything else, for 
 the narrator goes on to mention incidentally the com- 
 parative number of persons killed, as he says, by these 
 hailstones. Reports of casualties from the victorious 
 side are always to be received with caution, as we 
 found in the late war, but the author evidently did 
 not think that by assigning a natural cause he was mak- 
 ing it less a miracle. 
 
10 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 A natural law is simply a statement of what happens 
 under certain circumstances. If we drop a stone, it 
 falls to the ground. ‘The scientific way of stating it 
 is that the stone and the world are drawn together by a 
 force proportional to the product of their masses and 
 inversely proportional to the square of the distance 
 between them. The theistic way of stating it is that 
 God puts the stone and the world together. Both are 
 true; neither is an adequate explanation. 
 
 The particular miracle we are considering is prob- 
 ably the most completely inexplicable of all chemical 
 actions. All we yet know is a little about the way the 
 process goes on, but the more we know of it the more 
 curious and marvellous it is. For example, the ma- 
 terials which go to make up our bodies are found in the 
 soil, the water and the air, and yet we are not able to 
 make use of them directly. All the chemical elements 
 of which we are made and which we have to get in 
 our food are contained in any handful of dust we may 
 pick up. Yet we cannot eat it, or if we do we cannot 
 use it to build up our bodies. 
 
 One of the most important elements of our bodies 
 is nitrogen, our most expensive foods are those that 
 contain it. Now the air is four-fifths nitrogen. Two 
 minutes’ breathing would supply our need for the day, 
 and with every breath we inhale enough nitrogen to 
 meet our bodily wants for hours, but we let all the 
 nitrogen out again without using a bit of it. The 
 reason is that man is a dependent creature. Plants 
 live off of the soi] and we live off of them. Most plants 
 even cannot use this free nitrogen of the air, but have 
 to have it prepared for their use in the ground. We 
 
THE DAILY RESURRECTION 11 
 
 are parasites of the plants, and if we eat animal food 
 we are parasites of parasites. So all the material of 
 our bodies comes ultimately from the earth under our 
 feet except the element oxygen which we get from the 
 air we breathe. Thirty times a minute we repeat this 
 miracle, some particles of non-living matter are drawn 
 into our bodies and become living matter, just as with 
 mathematical precision the reverse process is repeated. 
 Particles of carbon which have formed part of our 
 living bodies are thrown out with every breath and 
 sink into the Nirvana of the inanimate world, chang- 
 ing their allegiance from the animal to the mineral 
 kingdom. 
 
 This transformation from living to non-living matter 
 is just as great a miracle as the reverse process when 
 you think of it. If it is a wonder how we can live, 
 so it is equally inexplicable how we can die. Life and 
 death are the twin mysteries of the world. The double 
 miracle of death and resurrection is the regular rhythm 
 of life.t People say we die but once. Really we die 
 
 1 Does all this sound too rhetorical and metaphysical to be re- 
 garded as sober science? If so, I fear you have not kept up with 
 the trend of recent scientific literature. My language is tame and 
 prosaic compared, for example, with the following passages from 
 the latest and most authoritative work on the science of the 
 cell: 
 
 “It is perfectly correct, therefore, from this point of view to 
 speak of living and dead hydrogen atoms. We can even go farther 
 with the simile if we wish and say that when the living highly 
 reactive form of the atom passes to the dead, unreactive form, the 
 soul of the atom escapes at the moment of its death, for a ray of 
 light leaves the dying atom and travels onward in space, until per- 
 haps it encounters and is absorbed by some other dead hydrogen 
 atom, which it again raises to life by thus giving it a soul. What 
 
12 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 every few years just as entirely as we ever shall. 
 That is, in the course of a few years every particle of 
 our bodies becomes part of the soil and air as com- 
 pletely and in the same way as when we are buried. 
 We are dying all the time, sometimes rapidly, some- 
 times slowly, but always surely. If we should, for 
 a few minutes, cease to die we should cease to live. 
 That is, if we should cease to throw off the waste mat- 
 ter from our organism we could not receive new and 
 energy-bearing matter from the plant and animal world. 
 
 Suppose a miserly man should say to himself: 
 “What is the use of spending money for more food? 
 I will not waste my substance by throwing it out upon 
 the air with every breath. I will simply keep what I 
 have, for I am perfectly satisfied with it.” The man 
 would be dead in ten minutes, poisoned by his own 
 breath. We can only gain when we spend. “He that 
 
 is this soul? It is a minute portion of the luminiferous ether; of 
 time and space; of eternity and infinity. 
 
 “For us it is oxygen which thus summons the dead from the tomb; 
 which vitalizes the dead molecules and atoms. The energy is 
 stored in certain of the atoms of the molecules of protoplasm in 
 the form of widened orbits of rotation of the electrons. It is this 
 which gives them the power of reacting and of passing back to 
 the dead. When such electrons fall back to more stable con- 
 figuration, the atom and molecule reverts to the dead and inert 
 form such as we keep in bottles. It is the oxygen, then, which 
 vitalizes all animals; but it is from the sun that the vital, radiant 
 energy has come. It is in fact the luminiferous ether which has 
 made things alive, for the ether is the great storehouse of energy; 
 it is itself nothing else than space and time; energy and time. 
 Energy is but ether divided by time. Quantity of energy is quan- 
 tity of ether per second. So all goes back to the ether; infinity 
 and eternity. From it is derived our energy and life.”—PROFESSOR 
 A. P. Matuews of the University of Cincinnati in General Cy- 
 tology, pp. 28 and 92. 
 
CHANGING SKINS 13 
 
 loseth his life shall find it.” The molecules we give 
 off with our breath come back to us again charged 
 with new energy from the central power house, the 
 sun. The faster we die the more alive we are. 
 
 Not all parts of the body wear out equally fast. 
 The softer and more mobile tissues change most rap- 
 idly. The blood changes its composition constantly. 
 But even the particles of lime, carbon and phosphorus 
 in the solidest bone are constantly being taken out and 
 replaced by new ones just as a railroad bridge is re- 
 built, piece by piece, without tearing it down at any 
 one time. We get entirely new finger nails every four 
 or five months, and new toenails once a year. Our eye- 
 lashes last us only about a hundred to a hundred and 
 fifty days. We get a whole new skin oftener than we 
 get new clothes—that is, most of us—for that is re- 
 newed every month. The only part of the body that 
 is not completely changed in the course of a. few years 
 at the longest is the enamel of our teeth, and that is 
 why we have those two plagues of humanity, toothache 
 and dentists. 
 
 So it would seem that since we are not composed of 
 the same material we cannot be the same persons we 
 were years ago. According to this view no man ought 
 to be held to a contract longer than, say, seven years at 
 the most. If a man is arrested for a crime committed 
 ten years ago he can easily prove an alibi. He can 
 show that every particle which constituted the man who 
 did the deed has long since been dissipated and now 
 forms part of the air, the sea, and the soil. A man 
 never celebrates his silver, or even his tin, wedding 
 with the same woman he married. He may call her his 
 
14 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 wife still, but he is really not married to any part of 
 her—except as I said, to her teeth, and perhaps those 
 are changed. Speaking from a materialistic standpoint 
 a couple ought to have the ceremony performed over 
 again every few years so as to stay married. 
 
 Why is it that these things, which are literally true, 
 seem to us so absurd? It is because there is a fallacy in 
 the idea. It is the fallacy of materialism. We know 
 we are the same persons we were last year and the years 
 before. Although we may have changed, it is not be- 
 cause we have new finger nails, new eyelashes, new 
 bones, new everything. ‘That did not change us. We 
 know that if every particle of our bodies were sud- 
 denly replaced by new particles of the same kind we 
 would not know the difference. We would be the same 
 persons. In other words the person is something quite 
 distinct from the matter which composes his body. It 
 is a different body, but the same man. It was Heracli- 
 tus, one of the earliest of the Greek philosophers, who 
 first saw this and said, ‘“‘The water changes, but the 
 river remains the same.” 
 
 We care nothing, really, for the particular atoms of 
 carbon, of hydrogen, of oxygen, of nitrogen, that make 
 up what we mistakenly call ourselves. Let them go. 
 We can get more; or if we cannot we do not want to 
 keep these longer. We are not attached to the matter 
 of which our bodies are composed. In the course of a 
 few weeks or months, what is a part of me may become 
 a part of you: “ ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave 
 to thousands.” 
 
 We see how foolish were the Egyptians, who be- 
 lieved that for a resurrection of the individual it was 
 
MODERN EGYPTIANS 15 
 
 necessary to preserve intact the identical body of the 
 man who died; or, to speak more accurately, the last 
 of the many bodies which the man had in his lifetime. 
 They embalmed this body to prevent it from decaying, 
 they wrapped it in multitudinous folds of linen to pre- 
 vent it from being damaged, and built over it the pyra- 
 mids to shelter it from destruction. The character of 
 the protests against the disturbance of the Tutankh- 
 amen tomb shows that superstition still lingers. 
 
 Scarcely less grossly superstitious and materialistic 
 than the Egyptian is our own treatment of cast-off 
 bodies. We put them in elegant caskets to keep for 
 a few years the elements from being of further use to 
 the world. We transport them long distances that 
 their earth may mingle with the earth of some selected 
 spot. All this is antichristian in the extreme. If it is 
 true that matter composing the bodies of our dear ones 
 is sacred to us, we should not let it go to waste during 
 their lifetime. We should preserve in mahogany and 
 marble the breath, the hair, the nails, and all the ma- 
 terial which has formed part of those whom we love, 
 and has been cast away. From the standpoint of the 
 Bible our funeral customs are heathenish; from the 
 standpoint of science they are absurd and injurious; 
 yet in opposition to both we still cling to the supersti- 
 tions of materialism. 
 
 Our bodies do not belong to us; they are only rented, 
 and we are merely transitory tenants. Form is more 
 permanent than matter. The person persists while the 
 body disappears. At least, we know this is true while 
 we live, and we trust it is true when we die. Our bodies 
 are part of God’s modeling clay, which he is continually 
 
16 CHEMISTRY OF GREATEST MIRACLE 
 
 shaping into new and more beautiful forms; never 
 throwing any of it away, never wasting it, never leaving 
 it long idle. The vain thought of the pyramid builders 
 that they would baffle God’s plan and prevent the clay, 
 which once formed the body of Cheops, from being 
 ever again of use has proved fruitless. The clay of the 
 great Pharaoh has passed through thousands of trans- 
 migrations in plant and animal and mineral, more won- 
 derful than the path of the soul described in the Egyp- 
 tian Book of the Dead, since it was first placed in what 
 the priests of the day called its “eternal habitation,” 
 the most substantial structure ever raised by the hand 
 of man, the Great Pyramid. 
 
 Continuously, in and out, over and under, circle the 
 elements; never at rest, never the same, all bent on the 
 mission appointed them before the creation of the 
 world. Never faltering, never deviating, each atom fol- 
 lows the path through empty space marked out for it 
 millions of years ago; a path so complex that no mathe- 
 matician can calculate it for the thousandth part of a 
 second, yet so regular that no variation can be detected 
 in years. Back and forth without stopping moves the 
 shuttle of matter, eternally weaving the living garment 
 of God. No eye can follow its swift movement, no 
 imagination can conceive it, but all that is, is what it 
 seems to be. 
 
 As Jacob on his pillow of stone saw in his vision a 
 ladder with angels ascending and descending on it, so 
 we, with our vision clarified by science, can see the 
 atoms as the angels, the messengers of Almighty God, 
 ascending and descending through the scale of life, now 
 carried about by the air, then washed down by the rain, 
 
THE COMMONPLACE OF MIRACLE 17 
 
 then buried in the soil; then caught up by the hungry 
 rootlets and carried through the sap and stored in the 
 seed or the fruit; then rising to a fuller life in some 
 animal; then caught up and made part of the mecha- 
 nism of thought and feeling in man; then cast out with 
 the breath to begin again their wanderings; obedient to 
 God’s laws whether in high or low estate, equally doing 
 God’s service whether in the brain of a philosopher or 
 in the body of a microbe or buried in a rock, apparently 
 useless and forgotten for thousands of years. So for- 
 ever is repeated the miracle of the Garden of Eden 
 when God first formed man out of the dust of the 
 ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life and man became a living soul. 
 
 I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, 
 Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
 Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, 
 Walking Thy garden sti'l, communest with men, 
 Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 
 
 LOWELL. 
 
THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all for 
 the glory of God—I Corinthians 10:31. 
 
 THERE are two ways of looking at life that are com- 
 mon and erroneous. One is the materialistic, in which 
 people are so absorbed in their daily cares and trials, 
 or in their sordid aims and schemes, that they never 
 have time nor inclination to look beyond them. They 
 spend their time raking over their own muck-heap with- 
 out ever so much as glancing upward. They love the 
 world, its work, and its pleasures. They smile incredu- 
 lously when we would tell them of another and a 
 spiritual world. 
 
 The other class, that may be called of nobler mind 
 than the first, are still mistaken in their view of life. 
 They know of the spiritual world and long to live in it 
 wholly. They have had the heavenly vision, and hence- 
 forth despise everything earthly. They have looked on 
 the sun, and their eyes are dazzled so that when they 
 look down to earth again it seems very dark and 
 gloomy. By contrast with their high ideals, the reali- 
 ties with which they are surrounded seem poor, cheap, 
 mean. Nothing earthly is worth while. All their ef- 
 forts are to escape from the world, and since they can- 
 not yet enter a higher they seek to separate themselves 
 from this one as far as possible, lest they become con- 
 taminated. Their conception of religion is as a sort of 
 
 ecstasy, lifting them out of their daily life; not helping 
 18 
 
DAILY BREAD RELIGION 19 
 
 them in it. Everything religious must be kept sepa- 
 rate from everything secular. Religion put to practi- 
 cal use would be to them a degradation; like Pegasus 
 employed as a plow horse. Their religion must be in- 
 sulated from daily life lest it should leak away, like 
 electricity. Religion must be confined to a separate 
 place, special days, a different language, and particular 
 exercises. Now this latter class is far above the first. 
 They do see the spiritual, but they do not see its rela- 
 tion to the material. They have religion, but they 
 don’t use it. That is a great mistake; for that is what 
 religion is for. It is practical. It is intended for every- 
 day use. It is our daily bread, not a Sunday dinner. 
 It is not a means of escape from this miserable world, 
 but a way of living better in this world, and making it 
 less miserable. Religion is something to live by, not 
 merely to die by. It is primarily for this world, since a 
 large part of what goes to make up our religion will 
 probably be useless in another world, for instance, 
 almsgiving and churchgoing. The New Jerusalem is a 
 city without a church. Those whose religion is confined 
 to the church will not be at home in heaven. 
 
 Still the aim of a great many persons is to separate 
 religion as completely as possible from life. They have 
 done this in many ways. 
 
 First, by confining religion to certain individuals. 
 Finding it impracticable for all to live according to 
 their ideals, amid the struggles and temptations of ac- 
 tive life, it was decided better that a few should be re- 
 lieved of these struggles and temptations in order to 
 develop the higher life undisturbed, rather than that 
 piety should perish from the earth. So some of the 
 
20 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 early Christians became hermits in the deserts or on 
 mountain tops or pillars. It was the monastic idea. 
 They were called “The Religious” and had nothing to 
 do but be good and to pray for those who had not their 
 spiritual opportunities. ‘The idea is well expressed in 
 a French book I was reading recently, in which the 
 monasteries were called the lightning rods of the coun- 
 try. They averted the wrath of Heaven just as ten 
 righteous men would have saved Sodom. But it was 
 found in the Middle Ages that this isolation of a re- 
 ligious class results in extravagant and useless piety on 
 their part, and that the populace, deprived of associa- 
 tion with the more spiritual-minded members, became 
 ignorant and immoral. The double standard of moral- 
 ity is a mistake. But in our conception of the office of 
 the minister we keep much of the old feeling. We hire 
 a pastor to do our religion for us. We look upon min- 
 isters as forming a class with other ethics and other 
 duties than ours. Now it is, indeed, advisable that we 
 distinguish by title and position those who have spent 
 years in definite ethical work and study, and who have 
 been deemed worthy to teach by persons of authority 
 having the interests of God’s kingdom at heart. Such 
 men should be distinguished from others, however wise 
 and good, who have not had this training and indorse- 
 ment, just as the law requires a man to have studied 
 medicine before he may call himself “doctor.” 
 
 But there is no law of God that does not apply 
 equally to minister and layman. If the minister is 
 more strictly moral than his parishioners, as he gen- 
 erally is, it is not because he is under any obligation to 
 be so. Paying a man to be good for you is as bad as 
 
ALL SORTS OF PUPILS 21 
 
 paying a man to do your praying for you. You might 
 as well hire a man to breathe for you. Neither does 
 contributing to the support of a minister relieve you 
 from the duty of active religious work. That is laid 
 upon all Christians alike. It may relieve you from the 
 necessity of public and formal preaching, but the most 
 effective preaching is not always done from the pulpit. 
 It is done in the street, the shop, the schoolroom, to 
 an audience of one or two, and from all sorts of texts. 
 That ministry we can delegate to no one. 
 
 Neither can you hire a minister to do your thinking 
 for you. Every group of Christians should have a man 
 of technical theological training; it is a safeguard 
 against religious fads and fanaticism. The church is 
 right in insisting upon an educated ministry. But, 
 after all, every one has to construct for himself his 
 own theology. That is the prerogative of the Protes- 
 tant, for which our fathers fought and suffered. It is 
 the duty of the layman to devote what time he can to 
 the study of religion in order to form intelligent opin- 
 ions. This needs some insisting upon nowadays, as 
 laymen are neglecting the study of theology. 
 
 Another way of separating religion from life is to 
 confine it to special days. It has been found necessary 
 to a high civilization that certain days be set aside, by 
 mutual consent, in which the hurry and worry of busi- 
 ness shall cease and an opportunity be afforded for the 
 cultivation of the higher life. As in the Middle Ages, 
 when war was perpetually waged, the Popes at times 
 declared a “Truce of God,” when no fighting was al- 
 lowed, so we each week declare a “truce of God” dur- 
 ing which our industrial warfare shall be suspended. 
 
22 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 The Jews dedicated Saturday to this purpose, the Chris- 
 tians Sunday, the Mohammedans Friday. These days 
 were established, in part, as anniversaries, as we have 
 the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Armistice Day, 
 to commemorate our great wars. 
 
 But just as there are people who confine their pa- 
 triotism to the Fourth of July, so some persons keep 
 their religion in their Sunday clothes. Devotion on 
 any other day seems to them incongruous, if not sacri- 
 legious. The Sabbath is not an institution of theoretical 
 theology, but of practical religion. Its value lies in its 
 use. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath.” That is, man keeps the Sabbath for 
 his own benefit, not to glorify the institution, or to 
 commemorate the creation or the resurrection of Christ. 
 Keeping the Sabbath and going to church are not vir- © 
 tues in themselves, but means used for the cultivation 
 of virtue. 
 
 Then there are those who separate religion from life 
 by confining it to particular places and ceremonies, who 
 believe that a prayer said in a church reaches God more 
 surely than one said in the workshop; that a certain 
 spot of ground or building must be used for religious 
 service; that particular kinds of clothing, music, in- 
 tonation, find special favor in the sight of God by rea- 
 son of some mysterious fitness quite apart from their 
 appropriateness to the devotional mood, or the reli- 
 gious associations connected with them. Under the in- 
 fluence of a sixteen-foot organ pipe, one may easily 
 mistake the palpitation of his diaphragm for the shiver- 
 ing of his soul. 
 
 We are all inclined to separate religion from life by 
 
IN A STRANGE TONGUE 23 
 
 giving it a special vocabulary of its own. Religious 
 phraseology is conservative because we dislike to 
 change those forms of speech with which our deepest 
 thoughts and emotions are intimately connected. The 
 emotions are the foundation of religion, are most easily 
 controlled through association, and this is dependent 
 upon fixed forms. But the language of everyday life 
 changes, and so, in time, it comes to pass that we have 
 two languages, a sacred and a secular, hieroglyphic and 
 demotic. This would not matter so much if all were 
 brought up in the church; but they are not. The ma- 
 jority of the people in our country do not understand 
 this “church language.”” That is one reason, I think, 
 why preaching fails to reach and move those who have 
 not been trained in the church. We talk to them in a 
 foreign tongue. The greatest revival on record was on 
 the Day of Pentecost: that was when every man heard 
 preaching in his own tongue, wherein he was born. 
 
 We may think this an insignificant matter, but that 
 is because we, who have heard and used this language 
 from childhood, do not realize how strange and un- 
 familiar it sounds to the world outside, nor how repel- 
 lent even a slight quaintness of phraseology is to the 
 average man. The popular distaste for poetry and sci- 
 ence is because both make use of an unfamiliar vocabu- 
 Jary. Read some of our hymns, or listen to sermons, 
 with a view to seeing how they would strike you if you 
 were not accustomed to the religious vocabulary, and 
 had no associations with the words. How much of it 
 would you understand, or be attracted by? 
 
 There is a group of artists who paint modern scenes 
 with Christ introduced as one of the characters, eating 
 
24 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 at the table of a poor mechanic, in blouse and overalls, 
 or healing the sick in a city hospital. Dagnan-Bouveret 
 and L’Hermitte so present Christ in modern settings. 
 The artists of the Renaissance painted Christ in this 
 way, surrounded by their own friends and neighbors. 
 Now, however incongruous this may be from an artis- 
 tic or historic standpoint, it is religiously correct. Every 
 well informed person believes in the historical Christ; 
 but Christians believe also in the Christ of today. 
 What we need is to get a correct idea of what Christ 
 was to his contemporaries, and then imagine what he 
 would do if he were living now. Not Jesus the Jew 
 of nineteen hundred years ago, transferred bodily to 
 our midst, but in the form in which he would appear, 
 if he came on earth today, a modern man, without a 
 trace of the antique or outlandish in language, dress, or 
 bearing. In so far as we can realize that, we are Chris- 
 tians knowing Christ. 
 
 We can realize Christ as a God in heaven more easily 
 than as a man in the world, especially in our modern 
 world. We cannot comprehend the real incarnation; 
 how the Word which we reverence could become flesh 
 which we despise; how the New Jerusalem can descend 
 upon this filthy earth. This mingling of the divine and 
 the human baffles our comprehension. We are slow to 
 understand that by these metaphors is meant not a 
 degradation of the divine, but an elevation of the hu- 
 man; the spiritualization of daily life. The unique 
 thing about Jesus was that his religion was a 
 part of his daily life. Others have preached, perhaps 
 as eloquently; none has lived so eloquently as he. His 
 position on earth was not so different from ours as we 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 25 
 
 sometimes think. He was not a priest nor minister, in 
 the modern sense. He did not baptize, did not even 
 have a church, did not preach regularly. He simply 
 went about doing good; teaching informally, casually, 
 when there was opportunity, helping people out of 
 trouble, denouncing wrong when he thought it would 
 do any good. Just what we all have a chance of doing; 
 just what we all should do. 
 
 Even his mighty powers were applied to such pur- 
 poses as we should apply our lesser ability. The 
 miracles related of him were never spectacular, nor pre- 
 arranged. They were merely helpful and casual; pro- 
 viding a lunch on the hills when the people were tired 
 and hungry, assisting fishermen who were out of luck, 
 going into the kitchen to help a perplexed and embar- 
 rassed housewife when the wine ran low—pure friend- 
 liness and neighborliness. | 
 
 He preached, yes, but as willingly from a well-curb 
 as from a pulpit. He took a text from the Scriptures 
 sometimes, but more often from field and orchard. He 
 saw “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 sermons in stones, and good in every thing.” There is 
 usually some one ready to criticize a modern preacher 
 who follows this example. Christ’s favorite place for 
 meditation was among the hills and groves. He did 
 not often go into the temple to pray, but rather to the 
 olive grove. Now there is nothing sacred about olive 
 trees. It is a Palestinian equivalent to our apple or- 
 chard. No special place, no stated time, no formal 
 phrases were sacred to him; all was equally sacred. 
 
 The aim of Christ was not to establish a religion for 
 recluses, nor to introduce a new ritual. It was to spir- 
 
26 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 itualize daily life. There are two acts closely connected 
 with our animal natures: eating and washing. I have 
 heard people object to eating and drinking in public, 
 asserting that such processes, as is already the case with’ 
 cleansing of the person, should be carried on in private, 
 Byron could not endure seeing a woman eat. Marcus 
 Aurelius felt that he had reached the height of pan- 
 theism when he was no longer disgusted at the sight of 
 dirty bath water. Now, it is these two necessary but 
 vulgar acts that Christ chose to show forth the highest 
 spiritual truths, and which have become the chief cere- 
 monials of the church. Baptism is symbolic washing; 
 the washing of the body to represent the purification of 
 the heart. The communion service is symbolic eating 
 and drinking; to represent our daily dependence on 
 God for our spiritual as well as our material food. 
 These acts that God hath cleansed let not man call 
 common or unclean. 
 
 Whether Christ intended eating the bread and drink- 
 ing the fruit of the vine, and washing of the disciples’ 
 feet to be ritualistic practices of the future church is a 
 point on which doctors disagree, and which therefore 
 it would be unbecoming, even unsafe, for a layman to 
 discuss. It is of no practical importance, anyway, or 
 Christ would have been explicit. What he evidently 
 did mean is very generally overlooked—to make every 
 meal a memorial. It was a consecration, not of the par- 
 ticular food eaten by the twelve, or that officially 
 blessed in church, but of all food partaken of by his 
 followers. ‘For as often as ye eat this bread and drink 
 this cup’’—that is, whenever we partake of the articles 
 of daily diet—‘tye do show forth the Lord’s death.” 
 
GRACE BEFORE KISSING cf 
 
 Whenever we eat we are to remember that we receive 
 from the same source our spiritual nourishment. There 
 is nothing peculiarly sacred about bread and wine. 
 They might have been potatoes and tea if these had 
 been known then in Palestine. ‘Whether, therefore, ye 
 eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of 
 God.” 
 
 Sacred days, sacred places, sacred words, are easy 
 to get and keep. What we have not but ought to have is 
 a sacred everyday life. Let us not keep our religious 
 life separate from our ordinary life. Let us mix them. 
 We are not, indeed, always in the same mood; some- 
 times we are sad, sometimes gay; sometimes serious, 
 sometimes frivolous. But these moods are not irreli- 
 gious, and we need never part company with religion 
 in them. We are not always inclined to ponder upon 
 the deeper problems of life and destiny, nor is it desira- 
 ble that we should be; this is not the whole of religion. 
 But we should not go where we cannot take God with 
 us; nor do anything upon which we cannot ask his 
 blessing. 
 
 We may ask God’s blessing upon the gayest feast. 
 Charles Lamb said he felt more inclined to give thanks 
 when he opened a new book than when he sat down at 
 the table. He would be quite right in doing so. There 
 is a story told of a Puritan divine who asked a blessing 
 and returned thanks before and after receiving the 
 first kiss from his sweetheart. If that strikes us as 
 ludicrous the fault is with us, not with the divine. Ifa 
 man cannot combine his religion and his love-making, 
 it indicates that the one or the other is of the wrong 
 kind. 
 
28 THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF DAILY LIFE 
 
 We are not purely physical nor spiritual, but a com- 
 pound of both, and we must submit to our conditions. 
 Browning in a beautiful simile, too long to quote, repre- 
 sents man as a swimmer immersed in the water and 
 supported by it—as we are supported by the material 
 world—but he can get his head up into a purer and 
 finer atmosphere to breathe. As soon, however, as he 
 struggles to leave the water, he sinks beneath the sur- 
 face instead. So, in order to breathe the air, he must 
 remain in the water. 
 
 We must learn to use both the spiritual and the 
 material, to see the divine meaning in nature. We need 
 greater faith in God; not a distant God, distant in time 
 or in space, but a God who is not far from any one of 
 us; for in him we live and move and have our being, 
 apart from whom we are literally nothing. We must 
 believe in the Immanent God, great enough to hold the 
 world in its orbit, and great enough to teach the tad- 
 pole how to swim; a God who does not keep himself 
 apart from this world which we call bad, but which he 
 created and called good. We need the faith that sees 
 God, not only in the miraculous, but in the common- 
 place; in the rain and the dew as well as in the thunder 
 and the whirlwind; which sees “every common bush 
 afire with God.” 
 
 So many people have tried their hand at a definition 
 of religion, that I also will attempt it. Religion is the 
 perpetual realization of God; the spiritualization of 
 daily life. 
 
 Christ would not pray that his disciples be taken 
 from the world, but that they might be sanctified in the 
 
HIS KINGDOM ON EARTH 29 
 
 world, working each at daily, trivial tasks, to the end 
 that his kingdom should come and his will be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven: aiming to make 
 
 Our common daily life divine, 
 And every land a Palestine. 
 
THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, 
 which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the 
 whole was leavened—Luke 13: 20-21. 
 
 THE complaint is often made that the work of the 
 church is being taken from it by the state and kindred 
 organizations. The statement has some justification; 
 the complaint has none. One of the functions of the 
 church is to discover new duties, to develop new and 
 startling extensions of old ethical principles, to apply 
 them, and to teach them to the world as a whole. 
 
 In business circles the man who fills this office is 
 called the promoter. He is a man well endowed with 
 the commercial imagination, who has a deeper insight 
 into conditions and possibilities, who discovers new 
 openings in business, who starts new enterprises, dem- 
 onstrates their practicability, and places them on a 
 sound financial basis. 
 
 What the promoter is in the business world the 
 church is in the ethical world. It has been and should 
 always be the pioneer, the innovator. By the church 
 aggressive I mean, of course, that minority, that very 
 small minority, which, led by religious zeal, undertakes 
 tasks which seem to the world foolishness—for the first 
 few hundred years. That any person should devote his 
 life to the care of the sick and the permanently dis- 
 abled; that buildings should be erected where the blind, 
 
 the deaf, and the insane are housed and well treated; 
 30 
 
CHRISTIAN PIONEERING 31 
 
 that defenseless women and children should be given 
 a protecting refuge; that the criminal should find sanc- 
 tuary; all these appeared very strange and vain pro- 
 ceedings when they were novelties. Now every civ- 
 ilized state provides for them on an elaborate and ex- 
 pensive scale as part of its ordinary duties. Asylums 
 and hospitals, reformatories and humane prisons, all 
 such were started by a few men of aspiration and in- 
 spiration in the face of ridicule and contempt, but are 
 now maintained as a matter of course by ordinary men 
 with no higher ideals than the average. Numerous fra- 
 ternal and benevolent societies, sometimes composed 
 and controlled by men who are not at all religious, are 
 doing very efficiently the kind of work which was once 
 confined to persons of exceptionally altruistic nature. 
 The church is not designed to do all the good work of 
 the world, but merely to show how it should be done, 
 and the more it can get out of those not in sympathy 
 with its newer and higher ideals the better. The great- 
 est captains of war and industry have been those who 
 could get others to do most of what they wanted done. 
 
 It is not only in religious matters that the church has 
 been the leader. The world laughed at the church for 
 centuries because it hoarded books and wasted the time 
 of those devoted to its service in copying and studying 
 the writings of the Greeks and the Romans. Instead 
 of cultivating the ancient and honorable profession of 
 fighting, these deluded creatures illuminated manu- 
 scripts, painted walls and composed music. But finally’ 
 when the time came, art, drama, music, and architecture 
 burst from the monastic cell as a butterfly from its 
 chrysalis, spreading its beautiful wings in the open. 
 
32 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 Schools and colleges are now supported by all the 
 people. Everybody, whether fond of reading or not, 
 recognizes the usefulness of printing presses and libra- 
 ries. Once it was only the fanatical missionary who 
 took any interest in anthropology, who noted the lan- 
 guage of barbarous races, observed their customs and 
 preserved their primitive mythology. Now we have 
 bureaus of ethnology and societies devoted to the study 
 of folklore. It was the church which first recorded and 
 regulated marriage; now it is done by the state. Even 
 our form of representative government, with its unique 
 harmonizing of unity and adaptability, is a gift from 
 canon law to civil law. The idea of internationalism, 
 the conception of the brotherhood of all men, was a 
 religious innovation, which now many secular agencies 
 are striving to put into effect. Most of the arts and 
 several of the sciences had their origin in religion, 
 though both arts and sciences are apt to forget their 
 ancestry. 
 
 The church has often fiercely objected to this taking 
 over by other organizations of its peculiar functions 
 just when they become most profitable and fashionable, 
 but this protest was wrong and useless as well. Ideas 
 cannot be patented, and no form of trust can monopo- 
 lize good deeds. The church must not object to rivals, 
 nor expend much energy in getting credit for what it 
 has done, but must go on conquering new fields, and 
 So prove its reason for existence. 
 
 For the church as a leader there is more demand 
 than ever before; for the church as a follower there is 
 no vacancy. As a duplicator, as a drag, the church 
 looks sadly out of place; but a church with imagination, 
 
THE ETHICAL INVENTOR 33 
 
 with ideals, will make its own place. The moral world 
 is not finite; there are always new lands, new conti- 
 nents, to discover. The world will not listen to a church 
 which has only platitudes to teach; truths which every- 
 body accepts, however little they may be practiced. 
 When the world on the whole approves of what the 
 church is doing it is a sign that the world has caught 
 up with the church and it is time for the church to take 
 a step in advance. 
 
 As it may shock some, who have not thought about 
 the matter, to have it suggested that there can be any 
 progress in ethics, and that the highest morality does 
 not consist in following conventional precepts and prac- 
 tices but sometimes involves a departure from the 
 mores, from the mode and manner of the time, I will 
 quote a passage from The Alchemy of Thought, by Dr. 
 L. P. Jacks, Principal of Manchester College, Oxford, 
 and editor of the Hibbert Journal, for it contains the 
 best elucidation of this point that I have ever read: 
 
 We are apt to believe that great good will be done by 
 inculcating the precept “Imitate the Good Samaritan.” 
 That some good will be done by the mere repetition of this 
 precept at appropriate times and by duly qualified persons 
 need not be doubted; at the same time it is equally certain 
 that much harm will be done by exaggerating the good 
 which this precept can do. Nothing, in fact, could better 
 illustrate the limitations of fatuous morality and the dan- 
 gers of forgetting them. For how are we to imitate the 
 Good Samaritan, and what would imitation of him really 
 involve? The splendid thing about the Good Samaritan 
 was that he refused to imitate anybody. Had his morality 
 been of the imitative order he would have done after the 
 
34 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 manner of the Priest and the Levite, who were actually 
 following approved exemplars of their time and place. So 
 long, indeed, as our deeds of charity are mere imitations 
 of somebody else, no matter of whom, the principle of our 
 conduct is far nearer to that of the Priest and the Levite 
 than to that of the Good Samaritan. When he showed 
 mercy on the wounded man he was not imitating another 
 Good Samaritan who had done the same thing on a pre- 
 vious occasion; nor was he remembering some precept 
 which had been drilled into him by the masters of his 
 youth or the pastors of his manhood. He was the first. 
 His action, far from giving effect to any fixed rule that 
 might have been taught him by contemporary moralists, 
 was a flat violation of the respectable moral opinion of 
 that time and place. A person who assists a wounded man 
 today and thinks he is thereby imitating the Good Sa- 
 maritan is therefore making a mistake, which, though it 
 may flatter his self-conceit, vitiates his moral judgment. 
 To do this act for the first time, in defiance of the accepted 
 traditions of your race, is one thing; to do it for the ten 
 thousandth time with the felt approval of the world at your 
 back, is another thing. In no relevant sense is the second 
 an imitation of the first. All the “subjective” factors of 
 the two situations are different. Our pleasant conscious- 
 ness that this kind of conduct has been sanctioned by the 
 highest authority, ratified by the moral judgment of ages, 
 celebrated in art, proved sound in principle by science, and 
 commended by the most illustrious philosophers—need it 
 be said that of all this there was no faintest glimmer in 
 the mind of the Good Samaritan? In place of it there 
 was, I suspect, an uncomfortable feeling that if his best 
 friends saw that he was after they would cut him for- 
 ever. 
 
 How, then, can we imitate the Good Samaritan? We 
 imitate him, not by reproducing his act, but by being just 
 
THE PHARISAIC PUBLICAN 35 
 
 as original, just as creative, just as indifferent towards 
 fatuous morality as he was. 
 
 If rules for imitating the Good Samaritan are to be 
 framed and “taught” by way of moral education either to 
 children or adults, these rules must take the form of telling 
 us how to be morally original. And this, it will be ad- 
 mitted, is impossible. 
 
 The point is sufficiently important to deserve a second 
 illustration from the same source. Were one asked to de- 
 scribe the most odious form of hypocrisy conceivable, we 
 should surely point to the man who deliberately repro- 
 duces the part of the Publican in the parable and deliber- 
 ately abjures that of the Pharisee—the man who says in- 
 wardly, “I thank thee, O God, that I am not as yonder 
 Pharisee. I don’t fast twice a week; I don’t give tithes 
 of all I possess, but duly, and at the proper time, I smite 
 upon my breast and cry, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ 
 The splendid thing about the Publican—and here he re- 
 sembles the Good Samaritan—was that he smote upon his 
 breast before any authority had laid it down that this was 
 the correct thing for a man in his position to do. Surely 
 we are well advised in not imitating the Publican; even 
 fatuous morality would shrink from such advice, though 
 what other advice it can give is hard to say. 
 
 The problem of the church is the same as that of a 
 government, that is, how to secure minority rights with- 
 out surrendering majority rule. Progress comes only 
 through minorities. Whenever a new idea comes into 
 the world it has a majority of 1,750,000,000 against it, 
 for a new idea comes into the mind of one man first. If 
 they are actively hostile or inertly indifferent the new 
 idea is crushed out or dies out before it gets a start. 
 To follow Pope’s rule, 
 
36 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
 Nor yet the last to lay the old aside, 
 
 would absolutely put a stop to all progress. 
 
 Yet ninety-nine per cent of all the new ideas that 
 come into the head of the wisest man are wrong and 
 deserve to die in infancy. The question is to find out 
 which one is fit to survive. The majority is always 
 wrong in regard to the one particular minority that 
 holds the better view, yet the majority is always right 
 in regard to most of the various other and divergent 
 views. 
 
 “New truths begin as heresies and end as supersti- 
 tions,’’ says Huxley, and that applies to science, poli- 
 tics, and religion equally. ‘‘New occasions teach new 
 duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,” says Lowell, 
 so ethics must continually progress to keep up with the 
 advance of the world. That does not mean the repudi- 
 ation of former principles or the loss of earlier gains. 
 Comparing a textbook on chemistry or biology today 
 with one of fifty years ago, you would hardly think 
 that they dealt with the same science. You might 
 suppose that the slate had been wiped clean of all the 
 old, but if you look more closely you will see that all 
 the old facts have been incorporated in the new theo- 
 ries and that surprisingly few of the old statements have 
 been found to be so false that they had to be discarded. 
 Science grows like a snowball, englobing what has 
 gone before. 
 
 Science is by definition established truth, yet it is 
 continually undergoing disestablishment. Science is 
 never so sure of itself as when it is changing its mind. 
 
IS THE CHURCH LEADING? 37 
 
 Scientists have two functions in the world; to conserve 
 and to discover, to hold on to what has been gained and 
 to reach out for something new. The two tasks fall 
 naturally to men of different temperaments, the first 
 to teachers and the second to investigators; rarely 
 does a man excel equally in both. 
 
 The history of religion seems to me to resemble the 
 history of science, both in its method of progress and 
 in the two types of temperament. Happy is the church 
 that can keep its priest and prophets within its fold and 
 working with reasonable harmony for its advancement. 
 
 Some years ago, when I was on the editorial staff of 
 the Independent, we asked our readers to vote on the 
 question of who were the greatest living Americans, 
 who were the most valuable men among our contem- 
 poraries, the real leaders of the nation? In canvassing 
 the ballots I was surprised to find that out of more 
 than a thousand votes, widely scattered among many 
 nominees, there were only three clergymen named, and 
 these had very few votes, although the subscribers of 
 the periodical were mostly church members. I think 
 it safe to say that never at any time in the history of 
 the country from the landing of the Pilgrims to the 
 death of Phillips Brooks would a referendum of this 
 sort have had such a result. This seems to indicate, so 
 far as it goes, that the leaders of thought and action 
 today are not found in the ministry so much as for- 
 merly. 
 
 Professor Van Tyne of the University of Michigan 
 has for years been delving into the origin of the 
 American Revolution and he finds it chiefly in the non- 
 conformist churches. Seventy-five per cent of the pa- 
 
38 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 triots who attained distinction enough to leave bio- 
 graphical data were Congregationalists and Presby- 
 terians. The sentiments and phrases that were em- 
 bodied in the resolutions and speeches of the revolu- 
 tionists were, he finds, taken directly from sermons. 
 Where did Patrick Henry get his radical opinions and 
 fiery language? Why, from his pastor. The outburst 
 of anti-monarchical sentiment, the challenge of the di- 
 vine right of kings, the assertion of the natural right 
 of the people to govern themselves, the language and 
 ideas that so astonished the ruling classes of England, 
 were familiar folk-phrases to the Americans. The revo- 
 lution consisted mostly in carrying into effect what 
 they had been taught from the pulpit. 
 
 Now, we may safely assume that some other revolu- 
 tion is at the present time in the process of incubation, 
 some movement that will change the course of our 
 history as much as did the separation from the Eng- 
 lish crown, though I would not presume to say what 
 it will be, or even guess whether it will be in the field 
 of politics, industry, social life, economics, education, 
 ethics, or religion. But what I want to know is whether 
 the historian who writes about that revolution in the 
 future will be able to find it forecast in the sermons of 
 today. Will he find that the preachers of the present 
 were the prophets of the better order of things which we 
 trust will be the outcome of the next great change, 
 whatever it may be? Will their pulpit utterances be- 
 come the slogans of the coming reformation? 
 
 In the intellectual crisis of the present, which comes 
 from the sudden influx of novel and unassimilated facts 
 and theories from scientific research, we are not getting 
 
THEOLOGIANS WANTED 39 
 
 the help that we have a right to expect from those who 
 now occupy our pulpits, and I fear that we shall get 
 still less from their successors. For, either from lack 
 of taste or from defect of training, the graduates from 
 our best theological seminaries do not seem to be con- 
 cerned with such questions. The theological students 
 I meet nowadays are good fellows, earnest, energetic, 
 devout, ambitious, and liberal-minded. They seem to 
 be smartly up-to-date and keenly alive on all topics but 
 one, and that is theology. Most of them do not seem to 
 have any or any interest in any. By theology I do not 
 mean a particular system of dogmatic doctrine but 
 rather the habit of thinking about the fundamentals of 
 faith and reason, about the metaphysics that lie at the 
 base of physics, the psychology that controls character 
 and motivation, the personal philosophy that is the 
 compass of conduct. It is the schools of science, not 
 the schools of theology, that are turning out the thinkers 
 in such fields. 
 
 We are in the midst of the greatest revolution of 
 thought that the world has ever seen, the Einstein 
 theory of relativity, the Planck theory of quanta, the 
 chromosome theory of heredity, the hormone theory of 
 temperament, the new knowledge of the constitution 
 of the universe and of the workings of the human mind. 
 These ideas will influence the philosophy, theology, 
 religion, and morals of the future as much as the Coper- 
 nican theory influenced those of the sixteenth century, 
 and the Darwinian theory, of the nineteenth. Such 
 questions would have aroused the keenest interest in 
 the minds of men like Edwards, Berkeley, Calvin, 
 Aquinas, Augustine, or Paul. They would have 
 
40 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 delighted to work out their ethical implications. A 
 student of engineering or biology will sit up half the 
 night discussing these theories, and their application to 
 life, but your modern theological graduate is bored by 
 them. He has learned how to give the glad hand to the 
 strangers at the church door and can teach Boy Scouts 
 how they should salute the flag—things that a pump- 
 handle or drill-sergeant could do as well—but he is not 
 qualified to lead his people through the mazes of modern 
 thought. Since sermons have become sociological in- 
 stead of philosophical, serious-minded people are going 
 elsewhere to get their metaphysics and often getting a 
 poor brand of it from unqualified dispensers. When a 
 young preacher does touch upon such topics—which 
 fortunately is seldom—he is apt to reveal a materialis- 
 tic conception of matter that sounds amusingly anti- 
 quated to his scientific hearers. 
 
 The Committee of Inquiry on “The Teaching Office 
 of the Church” appointed by the Archbishops of the 
 Church of England, admitting “the failure of the church 
 to obtain a hearing for its message,” ascribed it pri- 
 marily to the fault of the theological teaching. The 
 Committee on Evangelistic Work reported that “if the 
 Church is to preach to this generation an evangel that 
 will grip, it must come in some real sense as ‘news’; 
 news powerful enough to change the whole mental and 
 spiritual outlook.” 
 
 If the church is to be anything more than the Boost- 
 ers’ Club of Zenith City there has got to be some hard 
 thinking done by those at the head of it during the next 
 twenty years. Somebody has got to seize hold of these 
 new conceptions and point out their moral applica- 
 
PRIESTS AND PROPHETS 4] 
 
 tions. Otherwise somebody else will make immoral 
 applications of them. Unless the preacher gets accus- 
 tomed to deep diving while he is young, he is apt to 
 swim shallower and shallower as he gets on in life. 
 Unless he has once thought things through for himself 
 he will be at the mercy of every passing fad that blows. 
 Theological schools ought to teach theology. 
 
 Eloquence of tongue and charm of manner will not 
 compensate for want of thought. In time any congre- 
 gation will tire of a diet exclusively of boneless sermons 
 stewed in cream. 
 
 The living church must have its school of prophets as 
 well as its caste of priests; its innovators as well as its 
 conservators. Among the ancient Hebrews priest and 
 prophet were quite distinct, and indeed often at odds. 
 The modern minister is expected to combine the two 
 functions, which is difficult if not impossible, for they 
 require different types of temperament. The priest is 
 the official guardian of the established church. He 
 conducts its ceremonies, manages its finances, maintains 
 its traditions. It is his duty to transmit to each succes- 
 sive generation the winnowed wisdom of the fathers, 
 to see that no accent of the Holy Ghost is lost by this 
 heedless world. 
 
 The prophet is a man of different character and other 
 duty. It is his task to arouse the people against unsus- 
 pected sins, to sting them from their apathy and pre- 
 vent formalism from putting the church to sleep, to 
 apply the eternal principles of righteousness to present 
 crises, to point out the consequences of prevailing or 
 proposed policies, and raise new standards of ethics. 
 He is the radical, the agitator, the nonconformist, the 
 
42 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 iconoclast. He does not appeal to tradition; he does 
 not rely upon the law or cite precedent. He speaks as 
 one having authority, and not as the scribes. But al- 
 though he may denounce the established church of his 
 time as an obstacle to progress, yet he builds upon it 
 for the foundation of his new order and must in turn 
 establish some institution of the sort to make his mes- 
 sage a permanent power in the world. 
 
 We find a similar differentiation of function in other 
 fields: in politics, where we find the spellbinder, who is 
 sent around the country in the campaign, and the dis- 
 trict leader, who knows his ward man by man and 
 keeps the machine running between campaigns; in 
 science, where the original genius absorbed in research 
 must be supplemented by the teacher who is as much 
 interested in his students as he is in his subject. 
 
 In the modern Protestant churches the two func- 
 tions and types are distinguished, rather imperfectly, 
 by the terms pastor and preacher. The priest, or pas- 
 tor, should be a man who is esteemed and loved by all. 
 He should be the guide, philosopher, and friend of 
 young and old. It is more important that his judgment 
 should be sound than that his ideas should be original. 
 It is not necessary, and perhaps not desirable, that he 
 be a genius, unless a genius in common sense and friend- 
 liness. We go to his study, not to have epigrammatic 
 eloquence fired at us, but to receive commonplace con- 
 solation for our commonplace sorrows and common- 
 place correction for our commonplace sins. He must 
 be preéminently a practical man, able to manage the 
 business affairs of the church. He must conduct the 
 services of the church with a dignity and propriety all 
 
RADIO FOR MODERN PROPHETS 43 
 
 the more required where the ritual is simple and flexible. 
 He must know his people, their home life, their busi- 
 ness life, their spiritual life. He must have the ability 
 of a general or captain of industry to be able to set 
 each man and especially each woman where he or she 
 can do the most good. 
 
 The prophet, or preacher, may be lacking in some or 
 all these virtues and yet be capable of doing a great 
 work in the world. It is a pity for a man of eloquence 
 and insight to be put out of the pulpit because his books 
 do not balance or he cannot remember whether the 
 Smith child is a boy or girl. There are so many people 
 in the world who can balance books and remember the 
 names of the Smith children, and so few who can inspire 
 and stimulate us. The preacher of the Prophetic type 
 must make bitter enemies as well as devoted disciples, 
 as he handles live issues without gloves. He is apt 
 to be touchy and temperamental. Carlyle was a typical 
 prophet and he was, on the best authority, ‘‘gey ill to 
 live wi’. And no matter how great his genius, the 
 preacher cannot be relied upon to turn out annually 
 fifty-two or one hundred and four sermons of equal 
 originality and eloquence. Four new ones a year is as 
 much as we have a right to expect from any man. 
 
 For that reason it is not fair to confine the great 
 preacher to one pulpit, even in a city where he preaches 
 to a procession. To get the best out of both the pas- 
 tors should be permanent and the preachers peripatetic. 
 Perhaps the radio will prove to be the solution to this 
 old problem. By this means we may listen to the best 
 preachers of any denomination, or of none, either in- 
 dividually or collectively, while the local pastor stops 
 
44 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER | 
 
 trying to compete with them and confines himself to 
 the ministry of his flock. 
 
 The fault I have to find with the preachers is that 
 they are too unselfish and self-effacing. The modern 
 minister is willing to sacrifice to the desires of others, 
 not only himself, but the best interests of his church. 
 He will allow ‘the enrichment of the service” to the 
 point of intellectual impoverishment. He may still sit 
 upon the platform but can hardly be said to occupy the 
 ‘pulpit. He does not even get as much of a chance to 
 talk as a toastmaster at a banquet. And if the choir 
 wants to display a special anthem he will obligingly cut 
 down his sermon from twenty to thirteen and a half 
 minutes, or omit it altogether. 
 
 He will surrender his best chance at systematic in- 
 struction, the adult Bible class, to a fluent realtor, law- 
 yer, or storekeeper, who has no training in what he 
 undertakes to teach. Now a devout layman of this sort 
 may be able to contribute mightily to the education of 
 the congregation by the lessons in practical ethics that 
 he has derived from his observation and experience in 
 the world of affairs, but it must make a minister miser- 
 able to hear him misinterpret Scripture, misrepresent 
 historical circumstances, and misconstrue theological 
 questions that have been studied for centuries. 
 
 People think they are cheated unless a lecturer gives 
 them at least an hour and a quarter. A university pro- 
 fessor has fifty-five minutes to devote to the elucidation 
 of a single point. The preacher, who has more intri- 
 cate and more vital themes to expound and impress, 
 should have at least as long. It is a practical impossibil- 
 ity to explain and develop a subject in its proper pro- 
 
BIBLE READING WITHOUT COMMENT 45 
 
 portions in a quarter of an hour. In the days when 
 sermons were a power in the life of our people the 
 preacher measured his remarks by an hourglass on the 
 pulpit, and turned it over if he found he needed more 
 time to do justice to his topic and his congregation. 
 
 The consequence of this relinquishment by the mod- 
 ern preacher of the essential part of his job is that most 
 grown-up Christians nowadays have no grown-up re- 
 ligion. The childish ideas and forms that they learned 
 —perhaps—in the home or Sunday School are not ade- 
 quate to meet the intellectual difficulties and moral 
 temptations of after life. Naturally they come to think 
 that there is nothing to religion more than what they 
 were taught in childhood. 
 
 I call the educational the essential part of the 
 preacher’s job, because he is the only person in the 
 church who is qualified and trained to do it. Other 
 members of the congregation can visit newcomers and 
 even console the sick. Theological training is not nec- 
 essary to manage the organization and finances. Any 
 layman can baptize in an emergency. A justice of the 
 peace can marry. But probably there is no one in the 
 church who knows so much about the Bible, the his- 
 tory of the church, the principles of theology and the 
 applications of ethics. There is no use having an 
 educated minister if you do not make use of his edu- 
 cation. 
 
 The practice or legal requirement of reading pas- 
 sages of the Bible in the schools without comment is 
 supposed by some of its advocates and opponents to be 
 a Puritanical custom. On the contrary it would have 
 shocked the Puritans, who required their ministers to 
 
46 THE CHURCH AS A PROMOTER 
 
 expound the chapter section by section as they read. 
 “This form of Scripture-reading was deemed the only 
 fitting method by the New England pastors, ‘dumb- 
 reading,’ or reading without comment, being supposed 
 to savor of the liturgical usages from which they had 
 fled.”* If a minister does not give this aid in the 
 understanding of the Biblical lesson we might as well 
 have a phonograph in the pulpit. 
 
 In comparing the pictures of New York City as it was 
 fifty years ago with the New York of to-day the most 
 striking difference is in the sky-line. Then the homes 
 and buildings were all low, only a few stories, and the 
 most prominent edifices were the churches, which raised 
 their spires high above all the rest. Nowadays in a 
 view of the city the churches are almost out of sight, 
 hidden away as they are between and behind the office 
 skyscrapers and apartment houses. A stranger judg- 
 ing by this picture would say that the churches had 
 sunk into insignificance. 
 
 But that would be wrong. The churches are there, 
 more of them than ever, larger than ever, busier than 
 ever; only they are less conspicuous. They have no 
 longer the monopoly of the heavenward impulse. They 
 no longer dominate the city, and they may more easily 
 be overlooked. | 
 
 The problem of the church is how to make the 
 best of the situation and how to maintain religion as a 
 vital factor in modern life when it has ceased to be the 
 most prominent. This is not necessarily an unfavorable 
 condition of affairs for religious progress. When we 
 
 1 Williston Walker, History of the Congregational Churches in 
 the United States, p. 238. 
 
ROOM AT THE TOP 47 
 
 look back over the history of Christianity we find most 
 to regret and apologize for in the times when the church 
 occupied a commanding position and brooked no ri- 
 valry, while the periods when the pure spirit of Chris- 
 tianity was most manifest were those in which the 
 church was relatively less conspicuous. ‘The church 
 does not now suffer from any form of persecution, nor 
 does it offer such worldly advantages as to draw to it 
 the selfish and ambitious. Freed, then, on the one 
 hand from dangers of malice and envy and on the 
 other from the greater danger of becoming the tool of 
 secular powers, it has the opportunity of developing in 
 accordance with its own inner ideals and of achieving 
 its own peculiar aims. 
 
 Since the church has been largely relieved of the 
 educational and eleemosynary burdens, which it for- 
 merly had to bear alone, it may again become the 
 pioneer, pressing forward into unexplored territory and 
 gaining higher ground. If the church is crowded out 
 from its previous occupations, there is always room at 
 the top. 
 
PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, 
 God dwelleth in us... Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the 
 Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God—John 4:12, 15. 
 
 Once a little girl was observed sitting on the floor 
 furiously drawing a picture with colored crayons on a 
 big sheet of cardboard. Her mother asked her: “What 
 are you doing?” 
 
 The little girl answered: “I am drawing a picture of 
 God.” 
 
 The shocked mother remonstrated: “But nobody 
 knows how God looks.” 
 
 The little girl wet her crayon in her mouth and 
 dashed it again at the paper as she replied: ‘They will 
 when I get through.” 
 
 Here as usual the child reflects in miniature the child- 
 hood of the race. The prehistoric cave-dweller, who 
 daubed his deity on the rough rock walls in charcoal 
 and red ocher, had the same confidence in his ability 
 to portray the unseen object of his adoration and got 
 much the same result. 
 
 And all through the centuries since, men have never 
 ceased in their efforts to depict and describe their ideas 
 of divinity, to confine infinitude in the finite form. 
 Looking back over the pictorial evolution of theology 
 we should discern in the background the African fetish; 
 the meteorite fallen from heaven and the fulgurite 
 
 formed by the thunderbolt; the Egyptian dung beetle 
 48 
 
SEEKERS AFTER GOLD 49 
 
 and cat-headed goddess; Pheenician Baal and Astarte, 
 divinities of cruelty and lust; Hindu Kali with her 
 necklace of human skulls and Siva with his obscene 
 emblems; Buddha of the lotus flower and Allah of the 
 sword; the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians and 
 Briareus of the hundred arms; the human, all too hu- 
 man, gods of the Greeks and Romans; the paternal 
 and maternal elements of the Christian iconography; 
 the abstractions of the metaphysicians, the ineffable 
 visions of the mystics, the mathematical formule of 
 the men of science. 
 
 This composite picture, as we decipher it from the 
 palimpsest of the past, reminds us of the sketches that 
 we see in the museum, where the artist has retained 
 every pencil mark that he has made from the first vague 
 outlines to the finishing touches, each limb surrounded 
 with a haze of false drawing, of strokes astray; but 
 out of them has gradually emerged the final form. So 
 man works over the canvas on which he is drawing the 
 picture of God, all races, generation after generation, 
 adding new lines, erasing wrong lines, here a little, 
 there a little, revising, rectifying, improving as his 
 vision clears and his ideal develops. It is “the method 
 of trial and error,” by which the artist, the scientist, 
 and the theologian gradually approach the truth. 
 
 Nobody knows how God looks now. But they will 
 when we get through. If not the human race will have 
 been frustrated in its highest aspiration. 
 
 The history of religion is an incessant struggle be- 
 tween iconoplasm and iconoclasm, the alternate making 
 and breaking of images of God. Each may be in its 
 turn a step in advance. For in all forms of human 
 
50 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 progress it is sometimes necessary to demolish the old 
 in order to erect the new in its place. An inferior idea 
 of God is often an impediment to the establishment of 
 a purer conception. Materialism is always an obstacle 
 to idealism. 
 
 The most dramatic scene in this age-long warfare of 
 the newer and higher ideal of divinity with the estab- 
 lished one was that which took place on the slopes of 
 Mount Sinai. After Moses had gone up into the moun- 
 tain in search of a new revelation of God the children 
 of Israel, in despair of his return, went to his brother 
 Aaron and asked him to make them an image of the 
 God who had brought them up out of the land of 
 Egypt. And Aaron did the best he knew to satisfy 
 their natural longing for an object of worship. He did 
 what many another religious leader has done, yes, is 
 doing even now; for, not having the prophetic fore- 
 sight, he turned to the past for his inspiration. He 
 melted up their golden earrings and made them a calf 
 after the model of Apis. Also following the religious 
 precedent of their times, the people worshiped by feast- 
 ing, drinking, and dancing naked before their idol. 
 
 In the midst of this orgy Moses appeared on the 
 mountain-side bearing in his arms a new manifestation 
 of deity, no golden bull, no image of any kind, but a 
 plain tablet of stone on which was inscribed a pure 
 ethical code, the ten commandments, the first two of 
 which prohibited the form of worship which was being 
 practiced in the valley before him. 
 
 In the first encounter, as is common in a conflict be- 
 tween the new and the old in religion, the old won. 
 The tables of stone were smashed. But, as is also usu- 
 
THE UNBROKEN COMMANDMENTS 51 
 
 ally the case, the victory later turned toward the new. 
 Moses ground and burnt the molten calf and made the 
 children of Israel swallow it. Then he went back up 
 the mountain and got another copy of the ten com- 
 mandments inscribed upon the stone. God is very 
 patient. Often as we break his commandments he 
 writes them over again, word for word the same. How- 
 ever we may caricature him in our representations, he 
 unweariedly continues to present to us the perfect 
 model for our imitation. 
 
 The second edition of the ten commandments became 
 the accepted code of the Israelites and has descended 
 through them to us. The second of the command- 
 ments, forbidding the artists to meddle with theology, 
 freed the chosen people from danger of degeneration 
 of their ideal of deity through attempts at its materiali- 
 zation. 
 
 Some historians attempt to explain the comparative 
 purity of Semitic religions by saying that the Semites 
 had a natural genius for monotheism. This is nonsense. 
 Those Semitic peoples which did allow idols had as bad 
 religions as anybody. Judaism and Mohammedanism 
 remained pure because they kept literally the law 
 against images of any kind. The Jews, like everybody 
 else, have a natural tendency to relapse into earlier and 
 inferior forms of religion. Their history in the Old 
 Testament records a constant struggle against reversion 
 to idolatry, and being deprived of idolatrous objects of 
 worship by the law, they have regarded the book of the 
 law itself with a reverence sometimes approaching 
 adoration. 
 
 We are no longer in danger of a relapse into idola- 
 
52 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 try of the older sort, but still the artist has to be 
 watched, for he has still power to pervert pure religion. 
 The rise of art often means the decline of devotion. It 
 is the sculptural and pictorial forms of art that are 
 most dangerous to religion because of their inveterate 
 tendency toward a crude anthropomorphism. The ar- 
 chitectural and musical forms of art are free from this 
 and only become injurious when they absorb and dis- 
 tract attention from the religion that they are designed 
 to serve. Excessive devotion to the art side of reli- 
 gion is apt to lead to luxury, exclusiveness, and sensu- 
 ousness. It makes religion a matter of pleasurable 
 emotion instead of dutiful action. It substitutes feel- 
 ing for doing. It exalts esthetics and subordinates 
 ethics. 
 
 In the early stages of religion art may be an aid, but 
 in later degrees of development art is apt to become 
 its enemy. The Greeks could not rise to the heights 
 of stoicism because their artists were too clever. Stat- 
 uary and poetry constantly recalled them to the crude 
 conceptions and low morality of their primitive my- 
 thology. Plato recognized this impediment to the higher 
 life of his people and so refused to admit to his ideal 
 Republic the works of Homer, Hesiod, and A‘schylus 
 because they gave false and degrading pictures of God. 
 
 Lucretius, who wrote his poem “On the Nature of 
 Things” to abolish belief in all gods from the mind of 
 mankind, begins it with a hymn to Venus. The paint- 
 ers of the Renaissance made their mistresses the ob- 
 jects of adoration to the ignorant multitude by using 
 them as models for their madonnas. Savonarola pro- 
 tested at the time against the custom of the Florentine 
 
THE MATERIALISM OF ART 53 
 
 artists of painting pictures of the Virgin in the allur- 
 ing guise and well-known features of prostitutes. 
 
 The founders of religions have been men of such in- 
 sight that they were able to see the reality behind ap- 
 pearances, the eternal in the ephemeral. Their follow- 
 ers, lacking their vision, have endeavored to represent 
 the spiritual conceptions of their master through the 
 symbolism of metaphors and pictures. To do this they 
 must call to their aid the artists, who as a class are 
 men deficient in imagination, and who, being congeni- 
 tally incapable of perceiving the inner meaning of 
 things, have in compensation acquired dexterity in de- 
 picting their superficial aspects. They concern them- 
 selves with form and color, the accidental and temporal 
 appearances of objects, and disregard their permanent 
 principle and purpose. In fact artists of the modern 
 school boldly avow that their pictures have no message 
 or meaning whatever and are to be looked upon purely 
 as combinations of shades and tints on flat canvas. 
 They have deliberately aimed at divesting their pic- 
 tures of all intellectual and spiritual content, and have 
 been remarkaby successful in achieving their aim. 
 
 Then, too, artists are naturally materialistic and con- 
 servative. Matter is their medium and their appeal is 
 to the senses. Their ears are deaf to the music of the 
 spheres and they hear only air vibration of a frequency 
 between 16 and 40,000 per second. Music is the least 
 intellectual and most sensuous of the arts. It is in- 
 capable of conveying an idea unaided and yet is power- 
 ful in arousing emotion. Therefore it is capable of 
 carrying and enforcing the ideas imposed upon it by 
 words, suggestion, or association, Music is what is 
 
54 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 called in radio the “carrier wave.” Graphic and 
 glyptic art is conservative because it uses the familiar 
 forms of the past. Painters and sculptors have their 
 eyes turned backwards, and it is very difficult to get 
 them to comprehend and present the conceptions of the 
 present and the ideals of the future. A false and tra- 
 ditional way of drawing the human figure, eyes front, 
 face profile, trunk front and feet side view, was main- 
 tained for thousands of years throughout the history 
 of Egyptian art. Artists drew the galloping horse in 
 an impossible attitude for thirty-seven centuries, from 
 the Mycenzan period down to thirty-five years ago, 
 when the motion-picture photographer set them right.’ 
 The architects give us public buildings that fit us about 
 as well as the hermit crab his shell. For instance, their 
 idea of a bank building is a Greek temple, although 
 the Greeks detested banking. If an artist wants to 
 symbolize modern warfare he paints a sword, if he 
 wants to symbolize literature he paints a plume, al- 
 though these are not the implements now used in fight- 
 ing and writing, and are mostly meaningless to us. 
 These obvious observations should not be construed 
 as a condemnation of art or a criticism of artists. They 
 could not change their natural temperament without 
 ceasing to be artists. But it is necessary to see the 
 limitations of art to understand why it has been so 
 often a drag upon religion and why religious reform- 
 ers, such as Moses, Zoroaster, Plato, Mohammed, and 
 the Puritans, have viewed it with suspicion as likely to 
 pervert spiritual ideals in the portrayal of them. 
 
 1Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, Science from an Easy Chair, Second 
 Series, p. 52. 
 
ART FOR THE UNIMAGINATIVE 55 
 
 We give different meanings to the same word accord- 
 ing to our temperament and disposition. Take, for in- 
 stance, electricity. To the scientist electricity is E=IR. 
 To the practical man electricity is the radio and the 
 dynamo. To the artist electricity is a beautiful woman 
 flying through the clouds with a wire in her hand. All 
 three conceptions are perfectly proper in their places. 
 No one of them tells what electricity really is, or com- 
 prises all it means to the modern world, but of the 
 three there is no doubt that either the conception of 
 the electrician, who regards it as a mathematical rela- 
 tion, or that of the practical man, who thinks only of 
 what it does, is more adequate than that of the artist, 
 and if we should allow allegorical figures to take the 
 place of mathematical formule in science it would fall 
 as low as ever religion did in its most debased period. 
 
 The desire for a pictorial representation of an ab- 
 stract idea or a spiritual concept is due to lack of 
 imagination. A person of good taste would rather have 
 no picture of his mother than one of these “crayon 
 portraits” that are thrown in when you buy the frame. 
 So, too, any one endowed with spiritual insight feels 
 a repugnance at the sight of any portrait of God, for 
 even one by the best of painters is rather a hindrance 
 than an aid to devotion. 
 
 Pictures of Jesus may give us a more realistic idea 
 of his life and times, and so aid us in the interpreta- 
 tion of his teachings. But generally the aim of the 
 artist is not historic accuracy but more or less symbolic 
 representation. Then, too, the points selected for em- 
 phasis are necessarily the less essential elements and 
 therefore tend to distract attention from the important 
 
56 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 lessons. The larger proportion of the pictures of Jesus 
 present him at his birth and death, but Jesus as a babe 
 in arms or tortured on the cross gives us no idea of 
 the gospel taught by Jesus as a man. 
 
 A good example, or rather a bad one, of what the 
 artist does to theology when he has a free hand is one 
 of the most recent pictures of God in one of the finest 
 of our public buildings by one of the greatest of Ameri- 
 can painters, Sargent, in the Boston Public Library. 
 Here the dogma of the Trinity is represented by three 
 ugly men wearing a single suit of clothes. Whatever 
 conception we may get from the Gospels of the person- 
 ality of Jesus, certainly the least unlike is a Byzantine 
 king with a gilded plaque around his head, holding up 
 his fingers to symbolize a doctrine, as though he were 
 a deaf and dumb man. The only “proof text” I can 
 think of giving any ground for depicting him as a 
 Byzantine king is the parable of the unjust judge. If 
 this conveys any idea at all it is a wrong idea. The 
 real meaning of the second commandment is “Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness against thy God.” 
 
 Possibly all the pictures of God that have been made 
 since the world began, horrible or grotesque as some of 
 them seem to us, had in their prime conception some 
 sincere religious motive. Perhaps we might go so far 
 as to say that they conveyed in the language of their 
 time an idea of some real aspect of the manifold mani- 
 festations of divinity. The savage makes his mumbo- 
 jumbo so hideous and cruel that he is almost frightened 
 at it himself, still more his tribe who have not seen the 
 image in the making. But the fear of the Lord is the 
 beginning of knowledge, for out of fear grows awe, and 
 
ANGELS AND AVIATORS +7 
 
 out of awe reverence, and out of reverence devotion. 
 
 Two things we should do in regard to all the ancient 
 idols, whether Baal the cannibal or Balder the beauti- 
 ful: we should recognize their intent and therefore ap- 
 preciate them; we should recognize their inadequacy 
 and therefore reject them. He who overthrows an idol 
 is more pious than he who erected it, provided he has a 
 better image ready to put in the emptied niche. 
 
 The first sculptor who put wings on the statue of 
 his god—I do not know if he were an Egyptian or a 
 Babylonian—meant well, and perhaps did well at the 
 time, though the harm he did lasts to this day. His 
 theology was better than his anatomy. At any rate 
 he was wiser than the other artists of his time who put 
 the head of a dog on the body of a man. He made 
 angels a little higher than man, and in so far he was 
 right. Doubtless there were some standing about to 
 criticize that no one would have ever seen a man fly. 
 To which the artist retorted, by his statue if not by 
 his voice: “Never mind. Men ought to be able to fly 
 and sometime they will.” He was right and those of 
 little faith were wrong. On the wings of the airplane 
 men have risen to the level of the ancient gods who 
 differed from man only in having the power of flight. 
 But the aviator, now we have him, does not appear to 
 us an angel. Sometimes indeed quite the opposite, as 
 when he sails over a city and rains down fire and brim- 
 stone on the just and unjust alike. 
 
 Probably the first airmen who dropped into an Afri- 
 can oasis or sailed over the Afghan mountains were 
 adored as divine. But why do we not hold the aviator 
 to be a god? Simply because our conception of deity 
 
58 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 has risen faster than the flight of man. The abode of 
 the gods was once placed on Mount Olympus, which 
 was less than ten thousand feet high. Modern airmen 
 have gone up three times as far, but found heaven still 
 above them. The thoughts of men have widened with 
 the process of the sun. 
 
 The other day I stood before a modern painting of 
 an angel, a gorgeous creature with wings that outshone 
 the peacock. An eminent scientist came up and looked 
 at it too; finally he said: “How can we expect our 
 young people to come into the church when it implies 
 believing in such anatomical monstrosities as that!” 
 Here is the curious case of an unknown heathen artist 
 who lived some ten thousand years ago blocking the 
 door to a modern American church in the twentieth cen- 
 tury. Such a winged man is as unbiblical as it is unbio- 
 logical. It is a conception foreign to both Christianity 
 and Judaism. The angels whom Abraham and Lot en- 
 tertained unaware ’* certainly did not wear wings, nor 
 apparently did those who sat at the sepulcher of Jesus. 
 When the angel of the Lord—or was it the Lord him- 
 self?p—appeared under the oak of Ophrah and Gideon 
 prepared a meal for him,? when Raphael hired out to 
 guide Tobit to collect a debt and get a bride at Rages 
 in Media,* they were obviously featherless bipeds. 
 Angels of the sort invented by the artists of the Dark 
 Ages would have created as much commotion in Pales- 
 tine as did the one the Vicar shot down as told by 
 Wells in The Wonderful Visit. 
 
 2 Genesis 18 and 19. 
 
 3 Judges 6: 11-22. 
 #Tobit 5:5. 
 
A ONE-INCH BOOKSHELF 59 
 
 What gives the Bible its unique value and its incom- 
 parable position among the sacred books of the world 
 is that it is not a single book but the long literature of 
 a race, not the work of one author like the Koran, or 
 the product of a particular period like the Rig Veda, 
 but a collection of the best thought of the most devout 
 of the Hebrews for some three thousand years. The 
 Bible is a history of that process that some call the 
 progressive revelation of God, and others, meaning 
 much the same, the evolution of religion. We could 
 not well spare any of its pages, even those that seem 
 to have no message for us, for we should miss a link 
 in the chain. 
 
 To those who read the Bible in its historical aspect, 
 and not as a unified code of doctrine, its apparent in- 
 consistencies cause no uneasiness. When we find that 
 different ages held different ideals and deduced from 
 them different conduct, we should endeavor to under- 
 stand and do justice to them all, without trying to force 
 a false consistency. The milestones of the highway are 
 of value just because they are not in the same place. 
 We must not misinterpret the Bible in defending it. 
 
 One of the most instructive lessons we get from the 
 Bible is to observe the various pictures of God as we 
 turn over its pages from Genesis to Revelation. Here 
 is one of the early pictures: 
 
 And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, 
 they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath 
 day. 
 
 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him 
 unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 
 
60 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared 
 what should be done to him. 
 
 And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely 
 put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with 
 stones without the camp. 
 
 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, 
 and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord com- 
 manded Moses.® 
 
 Contrast that with this picture of fifteen hundred 
 years later: 
 
 And it came to pass, that he went through the cornfields 
 on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they wert, 
 to pluck the ears of corn. 
 
 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they 
 on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? 
 
 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, 
 and not man for the sabbath: 
 
 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.® 
 
 The priestly picture of God is very different from 
 that of the prophets. Four of the five books of Moses 
 are largely taken up with an elaborate system of injunc- 
 tions and taboos, of sacrifices and sabbaths, and the 
 most appalling penalties are threatened‘ by Jehovah 
 upon any who may fail to follow the law and ritual in 
 every detail to the end of time. Yet a few centuries 
 later Isaiah, speaking in the name of the same Lord, 
 uses very disrespectful language of these sabbaths and 
 sacrifices: 
 
 5 Numbers 15: 32-36. 
 
 6 Mark 2:23-24, 27-28. 
 
 7 Deuteronomy 28:15-68. 
 
VAIN LIBATIONS 6} 
 
 “What care I for all your lavish sacrifices?” 
 the Eternal asks; 
 “T am sick of slaughtered rams, 
 of the fat from fatted beasts; 
 the blood of bullocks and of goats 
 is no delight to me. 
 Who asked that from you, 
 when you gather in my presence? 
 Crowd my courts no more, 
 bring offerings no more; 
 the smoke of sacrifice is vain, 
 I loathe it; 
 Your gatherings at the new moon and on sabbath, 
 I cannot abide them; 
 Your fasts and festivals, 
 my soul abhors them. 
 They are a weariness to me, 
 I am tired of them.” ® 
 
 The prophet Amos, too, reveals to us a God who cares 
 nothing for ritualism and much for righteousness: 
 
 “Your sacred festivals? I hate them, scorn them; 
 your sacrifices? I will not smell their smoke; 
 You offer me your gifts? I will not take them; 
 you offer fatted cattle? I will not look at them. 
 No more of your hymns for me! 
 
 I will not listen to your lutes. 
 
 No, let justice well up like fresh water, 
 
 let honesty roll in full tide. 
 I know your countless crimes, 
 your manifold misdeeds— 
 
 SIsaiah 1:11-14 (Moffatt’s version). 
 
62 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 browbeating honest men, accepting bribes, 
 defrauding the poor of justice.” ° 
 
 Here is a picture of God as he was known in the time 
 of Elisha: 
 
 And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as. he 
 was going up by the way, there came forth little children 
 out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go 
 up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 
 
 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed 
 them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two 
 she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children 
 of them.?° 
 
 Compare that picture with this, some nine hundred 
 years later: 
 
 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know 
 not what they do.** 
 
 Hear the prayer of David, “the man after God’s own 
 heart,’’ asking vengeance upon his enemies: 
 
 “Grant that his children be fatherless, 
 And that his wife be a widow, 
 Up and down may his children go begging, 
 Expelled from their desolate home. 
 May all that he owneth be seized by the creditor; 
 May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil. 
 May none extend to him kindness, 
 Or pity his fatherless children.” }* 
 8 Amos 5:21-24, 12 (Moffatt). 
 10 1T Kings 2:23-24. 
 11 Luke 23:34. 
 12 Psalm 109:9-12 (McFadyen’s trans.). 
 
TOO MUCH OLD TESTAMENT 63 
 And then listen to this: 
 
 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
 curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
 them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.?® 
 
 I was talking today with a Y. M.C.A. secretary who 
 had served with the American army in France and I 
 asked: ‘What in your opinion was the real cause of 
 the Great War?” The answer was: “The mistake of 
 the early Christians of incorporating the Old Testa- 
 ment in the canon of Scriptures on a parity with the 
 New. If they had treated it as the Council of Trent 
 decided to treat the Apocrypha, to be read for edifica- 
 tion, but not for the establishment of doctrine, the 
 Christian Era would have been spared much bloodshed 
 and persecution.” 
 
 This is not so heretical a view as it may seem to 
 some. In The Church Militant of the diocese of Wash- 
 ington for May, 1925, the Rev. Clarence W. Whitworth 
 in planning a curriculum for church schools in the 
 rural districts says: 
 
 You will notice that I have left no place for the Old 
 Testament. This is not an accidental omission. I am 
 profoundly convinced that the Old Testament is the source 
 of most of our spiritual disasters. While it has undoubted 
 spiritual value for the mature mind, it is so beset with 
 difficulties and even absurdities that it is almost certain to 
 create confusion and doubt. If it is handled at all, it must 
 be handled honestly and fully with all the assured results 
 of criticism and scientific research frankly dealt with. All 
 
 13 Matthew 5: 44. 
 
64 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 this can be done only with a mature mind. As for using 
 the “hero stories” of the Old Testament as a child’s intro- 
 duction to religion, I can imagine nothing more calculated 
 to make heathen out of children, and their general use is 
 doubtless why most of our children are heathen. 
 
 A little girl, reading her way for the first time 
 through the Old Testament, was much shocked at strik- 
 ing some such passages as I have quoted. She took her 
 perplexities to her father, a clergyman, who, without 
 endeavoring to explain them away, turned her atten- 
 tion to passages of a different tenor in the New Testa- 
 ment. After reading these she came to her father much 
 relieved in mind, and, climbing up into his lap, ob- 
 served: “Papa, God grew better as he got older, didn’t 
 he?” 
 
 That is one way of looking at it, certainly. Another 
 is that men got a clearer vision of Him in the course of 
 time. The imperfections we discern in the Deity are 
 due to defects in our own eyesight. 
 
 Our little systems have their day; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be; 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they."* 
 
 No one need have his faith shaken by the fact that 
 there are so many and so different pictures of God. 
 None of them can be complete and correct. None of 
 them is perhaps altogether false. Their diversity is not 
 only evidence of the sincerity of the artists but also a 
 proof of the reality of the object they depict. 
 
 14 “Tn Memoriam.” 
 
MANY PICTURES, ONE GOD 65 
 
 The teacher of a drawing class will arrange his stu- 
 dents in a ring and set a chair in the middle for them 
 to sketch. Every picture is different, if it be true. The 
 legs are of different length, the rungs have different 
 angles, the seat has a different shape. If the teacher 
 finds any two drawings just alike he knows that one of 
 the students is a cheat or a liar. He either has copied 
 from his neighbor or has drawn the chair from his 
 imagination. He has not depicted truthfully what he 
 actually saw but what he thinks he might have seen if 
 he had sat somewhere else. No picture of the chair in 
 all its aspects has ever been drawn or ever can be, for 
 no man has ever so seen it or can see it. The real 
 chair as a whole is invisible to mortal eyes, like all real 
 things. Mortal eyes can see only the surface and only 
 one side of that at a time. 
 
 So it is in theology. If all the pictures of God in the 
 world were alike, we should have good ground for 
 doubting the existence of God, for we should know that 
 all the pictures were blind copies of one, and the man 
 who made that one might have invented a fictitious be- 
 ing. But since men of the most diverse minds in all 
 ages and in every land have professed to have had some 
 sort of vision of God, and have tried in their various 
 ways by pen or pencil to depict what they saw, we must 
 believe that there is a reality behind all these repre- 
 sentations. More than that, we can get quite a clear 
 conception of that unknown God whom all men ig- 
 norantly worship if we diligently study the multiform 
 pictures of him that have been drawn by the priests 
 and prophets, saints and sages, mystics and philos- 
 ophers, poets and artists, of the last six thousand years, 
 
66 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 And, chiefly, its divinest trace, 
 In Him of Nazareth’s holy face. 
 
 We can discern in them certain common traits by 
 critically comparing and contrasting them, rejecting 
 some as worthless or imitative, accepting others at full 
 face value so far as they go. For we find that God 
 cannot be completely portrayed in any canvas, any 
 block of marble, any book. After all our labor we 
 come to the conclusion that God is essentially ineffable 
 and invisible and above all human comprehension. Can 
 man by searching find out God? Yet the search is not 
 in vain. 
 
 “No man hath seen God at any time.”’** Yet we 
 are told in the same volume*® that Moses, Aaron, 
 Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel 
 saw him at Horeb. Jacob named the place of his 
 wrestling Peniel because, as he said, “I have seen God 
 face to face, and yet I am alive!”**’ But when God 
 spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai he said: ** “Thou canst 
 not see my face: for there shall no man see my face 
 and live.” So Moses was put in a cleft of the rock and 
 covered with the hand of God till he had passed by. 
 “‘And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see 
 my back parts; but my face shall not be seen.” Yet 
 it was because Moses did not know how God looked 
 that he was warned against iconographic representa 
 tions: 
 
 15] John 4:12. 
 
 16 Exodus 24: 9-11. 
 
 17 Genesis 32:30 (Moffatt’s version). 
 18 Exodus 33:20, 23. 
 
UNCONSTRUCTIVE CRITICS 67 
 
 You saw no shape on the day when the Eternal spoke to 
 you out of the flames at Horeb; beware, then, of depraving 
 yourselves by carving an idol in the shape of any statue, 
 either male or female, or like any beast on earth, any bird 
 that flies, any insect crawling on the ground, or any fish 
 in the sea; beware of looking up to the sky and then, as 
 you see the whole host of heaven, the sun and moon and 
 stars, letting yourselves be allured to bend in worship of 
 them. The Eternal your God has allotted them for wor- 
 ship to all nations under the broad sky, but the Eternal 
 took you and lifted you from the iron furnace of Egypt, 
 to be a people of his own, as it is today.}® 
 
 Some say that the higher critics have gone too far. 
 It seems to me that they have not gone far enough. 
 We chemists regard analysis as merely the first step 
 toward synthesis. We take compounds apart, not from 
 idle curiosity to see what they are made of, but in 
 order that we may put the parts together again in some 
 new and better way. Children tear up books for the 
 fun of it and leave the floor all littered with scraps of 
 paper for somebody else to pick up. I don’t begrudge 
 the biblical critics their fun, but I do wish that some- 
 body would pick up their tatters and put them to- 
 gether and make something out of them. Perhaps that 
 is not their duty but the job of the theologian. But we 
 seem to be short of theologians nowadays, although 
 they were never more needed. 
 
 It is very ungrateful to find fault with the scholars 
 who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of the 
 Bible, toiling in the trenches under a tropical sun or 
 moiling over manuscripts in a museum. We must ad- 
 
 19 Deut. 4: 15-20 (Moffatt’s version). 
 
68 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 mire the ingenuity with which they run down every lit- 
 tle clew afforded by the forms of words or the style of 
 writing. It is to their labors that we laymen owe the 
 opportunity, that no previous generation ever enjoyed, 
 of getting close to the meaning of the text through 
 translations and of understanding its historic setting. 
 But it does seem to me that by long concentration of 
 their gaze upon the page they sometimes become a bit 
 nearsighted. They are too modest in thir aims, too 
 low in their ambitions. There is something higher 
 than higher criticism. 
 
 To be specific in my criticism of the critics, they are 
 too much absorbed in questions of authorship. From 
 a scientific point of view this seems absurd because it 
 makes no difference who wrote a thing if it is true, 
 and if it is not true it matters still less.?° If some censor 
 should go through a chemical library and blot out the 
 name of every chemist in every book, it would not make 
 any material difference in the value of the volumes. 
 It would merely bother us in looking up references. 
 No chemical fact would be lost. 
 
 Religion is real, whoever wrote about it. The Chris- 
 tian experience is verifiable by any one who cares to 
 try it. What we have learned about the ways of God, 
 whether we have got it from inspiration or from inves- 
 tigation, whether we have obtained it secondhand from 
 books written by fallible men or have derived it directly 
 from God’s own book of Nature, has become our per- 
 
 20 The proof-reader queries this, but on reflection I will leave 
 it as I wrote it. I mean that if what you are working on turns out 
 to be wrong you not only get nothing but are out your labor; so its 
 value is a minus quantity. 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF JESUS 69 
 
 manent possession and may be substantiated at any 
 time. 
 
 If a student browsing about the chemical library 
 comes across something that he does not believe and 
 takes it to the teacher, the teacher does not say, “Look 
 at the name of the author and doubt it if you dare.” 
 No, he says, ‘Go into the laboratory and try it for 
 yourself.” 
 
 That is the scientific method, and that is the method 
 
 of Jesus. “If any man will do his will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak 
 of myself.” John sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask 
 if he were the Christ: “Then Jesus answering said unto 
 them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have 
 seen and heard.” ** It was the pragmatic test to which 
 he appealed, how his religion worked, the severest and 
 the certainest test in the world. Christianity, in so far 
 as it is truly Christian, rests upon the same solid foun- 
 dation as chemistry. 
 _ Fortunately most of the books of the Bible are 
 anonymous, and I am glad to see that the labors of the 
 critics have made even more of them anonymous by 
 casting doubt upon their putative authorship. That 
 gives the books a chance to be considered upon their 
 merits without prejudice for or against by reason of 
 the name traditionally attached to them, and it leaves 
 us free to devote our time to the more important ques- 
 tion of what they mean to us and how we can apply 
 them. 
 
 If I am shown the veritable desk on which Jefferson 
 wrote the Declaration of Independence I look at it with 
 
 21 Luke 7:22. 
 
70 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 curiosity and even experience a momentary thrill. But 
 I do not linger over it longer than sixty seconds, be- 
 cause the question I am interested in is not whether 
 this is the actual desk or a forgery, but whether the 
 Declaration is true or not. I do not mean whether the 
 charges against King George are exaggerated or exact, 
 for that is a purely historical question of no practical 
 importance today; but when Jefferson wrote, “All men 
 are created equal,” did he state a fact, and, if so, how 
 can we secure the “‘inalienable rights” to which we are 
 all entitled? Iam quite sure that Jefferson would like 
 to have us look at it in this way. 
 
 This is what I mean when I say that the biblical 
 critics do not go far enough to suit me. For instance, 
 I have just quoted Genesis 32: 30 on Jacob’s wrestle at 
 Peniel or Penuel. I look it up in Bacon’s Genesis of 
 Genesis and I find that he says that the passage is in- 
 terpolated by “EE, an Ephraimite prophetic writer, circ. 
 750 B.C.” in a document mainly by “J, a Judean 
 prophetic writer, circ. 800 B.c.”’ All right, Dr. Bacon, 
 I take your word for it, not being able to read the 
 original and not having any other higher critic at 
 hand. But if E took the trouble to interpolate this 
 passage he must have thought it important, and maybe 
 it is. He doubtless believed it, and I had just as soon 
 trust E as J, not knowing either of them and both hav- 
 ing lived a thousand years after the events they nar- 
 rate. Some critics say that the wrestling with the 
 angel was an allegory and that Jacob himself was a 
 mythic eponym. But that does not settle the question 
 even if I accept that view. The writer of that pas- 
 sage, whether he was E or J or X or Y, was real, even if 
 
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD 71 
 
 Jacob was an eponym, for the passage exists. What I 
 want to know is what it means when it says that Jacob 
 saw God face to face. Is that to be taken literally? 
 If Jacob could, why can’t I? How did the writer 
 reconcile this passage with those saying that no man 
 could see God and live? If he did not believe the op- — 
 posing passages, why did not he or some subsequent 
 redactor scratch them out when the manuscript passed 
 through his hands? 
 
 Each age paints its own picture of God. The deities 
 of one epoch become the demons of the next. The 
 devas were later called devils. The great god Pan of 
 the Romans becomes the Satan of the Christians. 
 
 But God hath not left himself without a witness even 
 among the Gentiles. The picture of Zeus in Cleanthes’ 
 hymn which Paul quotes with approval ”’ was a higher 
 ideal than Jephthah’s conception of Jehovah.** But 
 few of the Greeks rose to the heights of Cleanthes and 
 Zeus could not on the whole compare with Jehovah, as 
 depicted by their respective devotees. Jehovah ap- 
 pears from the first as a decent God, although a bloody 
 one, while Zeus had a past that he could never live 
 down. 
 
 To ascribe wings to God was a primitive inspiration. 
 To ascribe. morals to God was not thought of for a 
 thousand years after. 
 
 But in recognizing the superiority of the ideal of 
 divinity revealed in the New Testament over that re- 
 vealed in the Old, we must not ignore the truth that 
 resides in the latter. We must not forget Jehovah in 
 
 22 Acts 17:28. 
 23 Judges 11. 
 
72 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 our adoration of Christ. We must not let our love of 
 mercy obliterate our sense of justice. This needs some 
 emphasis now because there is a tendency to blot out 
 the severer aspects of the moral law with a smear of 
 sentimentality. In law the governor’s pardon follows 
 after the judge’s sentence. But we are in such haste 
 to assure the sinner of forgiveness that we do not wait 
 till he has been convicted of sin. 
 
 Why attempt to make any picture of God if we 
 know that the best picture must be to some degree in- 
 adequate and hence misleading? Because we must. 
 We can convey ideas only by symbols of some sort, 
 first pictures, later words; and the more abstract the 
 ideas the more essential, although the more inadequate, 
 is the use of symbols. 
 
 Xenophanes said that if cattle could paint pictures 
 of their gods they would be cattle gods. Very likely, 
 and very sensible of them, too. Much better than if 
 the cattle worshiped worms. But when man makes 
 gods of cattle as he did in Egypt, Assyria, and India, 
 he is demeaning himself, rejecting his birthright, re- 
 pudiating his race. The worship of the golden calf at 
 Horeb was worse than ordinary idolatry; it was also 
 backsliding. 
 
 Since man knows no higher creature than himself 
 upon the earth he can do no better than to use human 
 attributes in describing any higher being. This is what 
 the theologians call “‘anthropomorphism,” and the ques- 
 tion of the degree of anthropomorphism allowable has 
 been the chief point of dispute in religious controversy 
 to this day. The tendency is ridiculed by such paro- 
 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM IN SCIENCE 73 
 
 dies as: “An honest God is the noblest work of man.” 
 ‘(Man created gods in his own image, in the image of 
 man created he them, male and female created he 
 them.” 
 
 But so long as man remains manlike his ideas will 
 necessarily remain manlike. However he may receive 
 his vision of divinity, he must put it into words or pic- 
 tures or acts before it can be conveyed to others. The 
 spiritual ideal must be incarnated in a material form. 
 The unknown must be described in terms of the known, 
 the abstract in the concrete. 
 
 The same is true also in science. It shows itself in 
 biology, physics, chemistry, even mathematics and 
 metaphysics. Scientists are by no means so free from 
 anthropomorphism as they think they are. I remem- 
 ber my teacher in chemistry, Professor Nef of the Uni- 
 versity of Chicago, a scientist of the strictest sect, 
 would say in describing the transformation of a mole- 
 cule that he had drawn on the board: “The atoms are 
 uncomfortable when they are in this position. They do 
 not feel happy till they have rearranged themselves 
 so.” ** Goethe says truly: 
 
 “All natural philosophy is in the last resort only anthro- 
 pomorphism. We can at will observe nature, measure, cal- 
 culate and ponder it, but it always remains our impression, 
 our world. Man always remains the measure of all things.” 
 
 24 As I am preparing this for the press I happen upon another 
 example of unconscious anthropomorphism. E. J. Brockman in a 
 paper before the Baltimore meeting of the American Chemical 
 Society, 1925, says: “It is suggested that the formation of com- 
 plex compounds be due to an inherent desire on the part of the 
 atom of certain elements to complete its outer shell of electrons.” 
 
74 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 But as man in the course of ages becomes more ac- 
 curate in delineating the attributes of Deity he drops 
 his crude conception of God as merely a magnified 
 man. When this faulty picture of God has been super- 
 seded man loses with it certain of his sins. For in- 
 stance, blasphemy arises from an incorrect conception 
 of God, from crude anthropomorphism. A man may 
 shake his puny fist in the face of Omnipotence—if Om- 
 nipotence appears as a man like himself in every re- 
 spect except size. But if Omnipotence is conceived as 
 natural law, as an inexorable and impersonal force, 
 then there remains to man no course but humble sub- 
 missiveness and teachableness. A man may go up 
 boldly against an army of other men but he will not 
 beat his head against a stone wall unless he is insane. 
 Ajax defying the lightning is an heroic figure because 
 he conceived of lightning as jagged arrows in the hand 
 of Jove. But when Ajax comes to conceive of lightning 
 as a high potential difference in electromotive force be- 
 tween the clouds and the earth he no longer shakes his 
 fist at it. He puts up a lightning rod. A man may 
 curse God if he regards him as a tyrant, but it is im- 
 possible to curse the law of gravitation. If God is “the 
 invisible King’’ and physical laws merely his fiats, then 
 we are tempted to try to disobey them. But if physical 
 laws are merely the concise expression of the invariable 
 sequence of events there is no fun in defying them. 
 As man gets a clearer conception of the character of 
 the supreme Being blasphemy becomes not so much 
 wicked as simply absurd. 
 
 Law conceived as a command may arouse resentment 
 and rebellion. But one cannot get angry at an alge- 
 
EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTIANITY ay 
 
 braic formula. To the modern mind a natural law is 
 not a command, but a key; not a prohibition against 
 meddling with the secrets of nature, but a means of un- 
 locking them. The marvels of applied science which 
 make up our modern life show how much truer is our 
 idea of God in this respect than that of the ancients. 
 Kepler, when he discovered the law of planetary mo- 
 tion, cried: “I think thy thoughts after thee, O God.” 
 That we are at last in certain fields and to some degree 
 following the line of thought of the creative intellect is 
 proved by the experimental verification of our hy- 
 potheses. A child solving his problems in arithmetic 
 knows when he gets the right answer by finding that 
 it works backwards. In the same way we know when 
 we have got the right answer to any of the problems of 
 nature, for then the rule will work, and work both 
 ways, from theory to concrete application and back 
 again. 
 
 I hope you will not think I have talked too long and 
 tediously on this subject of symbolism. There is no 
 question more important to understand, since it is the 
 key to the history of religion and the key to other his- 
 tories as well. The religious wars—No, there are none 
 such; I should say, the wars about religions, have been 
 mostly quarrels over symbols; sometimes, sad to say, 
 over symbols which had lost their meaning to most of 
 the contestants. Symbolism of some sort we cannot 
 escape. We can only exchange one symbol for an- 
 other, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the 
 worse. An explanation is at bottom merely an ex- 
 change of symbols. 
 
 It will help to keep us tolerant if we bear in mind 
 
76 PAINTING THE PICTURE OF GOD 
 
 the possibility of two or more different but equally good 
 symbols for the same object, like two words for the 
 same idea, or two theories for the same phenomenon. 
 
 A symbol is like a pane of glass, something to be 
 seen through, not to be looked at. When it gets old, 
 dusty, and opaque, then it becomes the object instead 
 of the medium. Successive generations come to the 
 window through which their ancestors, or perhaps only 
 a single keen-sighted mystic, formerly saw the light of 
 heaven. But in the course of centuries the glass has 
 darkened, and become obscured by neglect to keep it 
 clean, or encrusted with the gold and gems with which 
 the pious devotees have adorned it. Still many come 
 and kneel before the window and go away pretending 
 that they too have seen the heavenly vision; and some 
 go away Sneering and, because they see nothing through 
 the glass now, they say that nobody ever did, that the 
 first man was a liar and all the rest were hypocrites. 
 
 Since symbols quarrel so, and material representa- 
 tions misrepresent materially, and idols are hard to 
 overthrow when once they get implanted, the safest 
 way is that prescribed by the second commandment, to 
 make worship aniconic. There are other and better 
 means of portraying God than by paint or chisel. 
 
 All truth, wherever gained, adds to our knowledge of 
 God. Every tiny gem of hard fact that science dis- 
 covers may add to the mosaic picture of God, though, 
 since the scientist rarely puts it in place himself, and 
 the theologian is apt to ignore it, such tessere mostly 
 lie about unused. 
 
 The institutions of society, the church, the home, the 
 nation, may be modeled after the divine ideal and may 
 
GOD MANIFEST IN MAN 77 
 
 be filled with the divine spirit and may be carrying out 
 the divine will—or they may be quite the opposite. 
 Woe unto us if our government or our business follows 
 a false god, if it depicts Moloch instead of God the 
 Father. 
 
 But it is not in nature and not in art that we can 
 find the best images of God. It is in man himself. As 
 we have seen, our idea of God must necessarily be an- 
 thropomorphic. Let us then accept this limitation and 
 take advantage of it to make humanity theomorphic. 
 It may seem absurd that a finite being should aim to 
 imitate infinitude. But a tiny pool may reflect the 
 whole of heaven, if it keep itself calm and clear and 
 peaceful, if it does not allow its own ripples to distort 
 the image so cast upon it from above. 
 
 Would you see God? Then ponder the saying of 
 Jesus quoted by Clement of Alexandria: “If thou hast 
 seen thy brother thou hast seen God.” 
 
 ““As many as received him to them he gave power to 
 become the sons of God.” Children take after their 
 father. Heredity is the only authentic proof of pa- 
 ternity. We are asked to make ourselves over in the 
 likeness of God. “Glorify God in your body and in 
 your spirit.” 
 
 If the Christian be not Christlike he has no right to 
 the name. He isa standing repudiation of the father- 
 hood of God. 
 
 What kind of picture of God are you displaying to 
 the world? 
 
BLACK AND WHITE 
 
 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
 hath shined in our hearts—II Corinthians 4: 6. 
 
 To hear colors and to see sounds is an experience not 
 vouchsafed to most of us. Yet we all do something of 
 the same kind that is quite as remarkable, we ascribe 
 colors to the ethical qualities. Universally do men call 
 goodness white and wickedness black. Angels and 
 devils, wherever they appear upon the surface of the 
 earth, are clothed in these colors with an appropriate- 
 ness that seems to be instinctive and inevitable. White 
 may be the color of mourning as it is in China. Black 
 may be the garb of respectability as it often is with us. 
 These are matters of custom. But when it comes to 
 ethics all men see alike and never confuse black and 
 white. To turn from the power of Satan unto God is 
 to turn from darkness unto light. 
 
 Wherefore this certainty about what no man can 
 prover Who has seen goodness that he can tell us 
 whether it be black or white? If we are endowed with 
 an ethical sense, which some dispute, the eyeball is at 
 any rate not the organ of it. What reason is there for 
 ascribing whiteness to goodness? None whatever. 
 But when we reverse the question, and ask is there any 
 reason for ascribing goodness to whiteness, we see at 
 once that there is. 
 
 For black is the most selfish of Poors and white the 
 
 most unselfish. They correspond then exactly with our 
 78 
 
POLYCHROMATIC ETHICS 79 
 
 conceptions of vice and virtue and the association of 
 ideas is inevitable, since our highest ideal of goodness 
 is perfect unselfishness, absolute altruism. “Freely ye 
 have received, freely give” is the injunction of the 
 Master. The white object obeys it literally. All the 
 light rays it receives, whatever their kind, whatever 
 their source, these it returns in full measure, undimin- 
 ished, unimpaired, equally, and in all directions. But 
 the black object does just the opposite. What comes to 
 it, it keeps. Blue rays, red rays, or any rays between, 
 all the colors of the rainbow, all that give beauty to 
 the world, when they come to a black surface are ab- 
 sorbed and are seen no more. Never again will they 
 flash about to gladden the sight and enlighten the mind. 
 Their doom is forever sealed. For over the black por- 
 tal is written, ‘“Ye who enter here leave hope behind.” 
 Black is the Mephistophelean color. It is the Spirit 
 That Denies. It is that which retains, destroys, anni- 
 hilates. 
 
 Our common parlance is wrong from the point of 
 view of the physicist. For black is to him not a color, 
 but the absence of all color, while white is a color, the 
 color, for it is all colors. A similar mistake was made 
 when the electricities were named by Franklin. It now 
 seems likely to turn out that “negative” electricity is 
 the only electricity there is, and “positive” electricity 
 is merely the absence of it. So light is the real thing; 
 pure disembodied energy, ever in motion, swifter than 
 aught else can be, flying through empty space without 
 retardation or deviations. But black is nothing but the 
 place where light has been stopped and killed; every 
 black object is its funeral pile. 
 
80 BLACK AND WHITE 
 
 “How far that little candle throws his beams! 
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” 
 
 mused sentimental Portia, having doffed her lawyer’s 
 robe. A trite thought, because a true one, that virtue 
 is always to be distinguished by its activity in radia- 
 tion, by the brightness and penetration of its beams, 
 by its effects upon its environment. It is, at any rate, 
 the best text we have of goodness. The particular vir- 
 tue Portia had in mind—was it Antonio’s generosity to 
 Bassanio or her own skill in foiling Shylock?—gave 
 forth its full one candle-power of light. But many a 
 16 c.p. incandescent or 1,000 c.p. arc fails to live up 
 to its rating when measured by this ethical photometry. 
 
 A bad deed cannot radiate. At most it is a stain, a 
 blot, which only becomes visible by contrast, which 
 must depend upon its eternal antagonist to give it 
 existence. Its influence is local, for the reason that it 
 is essentially ungenerous. Its blackness is confined to 
 itself. It has no power given it to shed darkness upon 
 surrounding objects, as everything white or colored has 
 of making all things about it more like itself. 
 
 There is a proverb much heard nowadays that I 
 never could see the sense of: ““The pot can’t call the 
 kettle black.” Why not, I should like to know? The 
 kettle 7s black. It ought to be called black. Who has 
 a better right to speak with confidence about the faults 
 of the kettle than the pot, which has for years hung on 
 the same crane and inhaled the same smoke? Truthful- 
 ness is a virtue if smuttiness is a vice. If there is any- 
 thing that would make the pot seem less sooty in our 
 eyes it is giving us a clear reflection of the image of the 
 
THE POT AND THE KETTLE 81 
 
 kettle. Shall no one point out blackness anywhere un- 
 less he knows himself to be speckless? Would the pot 
 rise in our estimation if it followed the custom of its 
 critics and said, ‘““The kettle is white, as white as Iam?” 
 There is, strictly speaking, neither black nor white in 
 this world of ours. There are merely things darker and 
 lighter and variously colored. We all specialize in the 
 virtues, devoting our attention to such as suit our pur- 
 poses. Some of us favor the lower end of the moral 
 spectrum and display the red badge of courage. Oth- 
 ers cultivate the more delicate vibrations of the blue 
 end, purity, constancy, and truth. Most of us are 
 prismatic and changeable, flashing forth sometimes one 
 color and sometimes another; perhaps in the course of 
 a lifetime displaying them all, but never all at once and 
 equally in all directions. For the best of us reflect 
 brokenly and partially what comes to us from the 
 source of all goodness, the Sun of Righteousness. 
 
FAITH 
 
 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
 not seen——Hebrews 11:1. 
 
 EacH profession or school of thought has its own lan- 
 guage, its technical terms, its special phrases, that are 
 used with facility and understanding by the members 
 of that profession but which are not comprehended by 
 other people. And whatever is not understood is an- 
 noyingly offensive. “Shop talk” is always obnoxious 
 to all except the shopmen. We only partially under- 
 stand a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer when he is 
 talking on technical subjects. Science is a bore to most 
 people, largely because they don’t understand the lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Now, of all the sciences, theology has suffered most 
 from this lack of popular understanding of the techni- 
 cal terms because it is more important that everybody 
 should be able to understand a minister than that he 
 should understand a botanist or a physicist. I think 
 the repellent aspect of theological language has had a 
 great deal to do with keeping people out of the church. 
 Many a man has fought all his life against a creed 
 which he would accept at once if it were translated into 
 his own language. 
 
 I propose to give here a non-theological discussion 
 of a theological term, the word “faith.” The word is 
 largely a theological one but the thing itself is not 
 
 82 
 
THE FAITH OF A CHEMIST 83 
 
 merely theological. In fact the reason why I feel less 
 incompetent to discuss this subject than most others in 
 theology is that in my daily work I walk by faith and 
 not by sight. My tools and materials are atoms and 
 molecules, things no one has ever seen, and no one ever 
 can see. Every act is carried on in obedience to natu- 
 ral laws for which I know no reason; but if I should 
 lose faith in them it would be at the risk of my life. In 
 this, however, I am doing no more and no less than 
 every one else. Every one who lives must put constant 
 faith in the laws of nature. Unwavering, unquestion- 
 ing faith, blind faith, for nobody knows much about the 
 natural forces which he is nevertheless compelled to put 
 faith in. 
 
 The law of gravitation was discovered by Newton— 
 that is, our knowledge of it began with him; but men 
 knew it before by faith just as indeed they know it now. 
 A man puts faith in the laws of gravitation long before 
 he studies physics. You know that walking is simply 
 continual falling. You stand on one foot and throw 
 yourself forward, relying on the force of gravitation to 
 bring your body into position to be caught by your 
 other foot. Now if the force of gravitation should 
 change, becoming less or greater or reversed in direc- 
 tion, the result would be disastrous. So it is literally 
 true that we walk by faith and not by sight. 
 
 Every breath we draw, every mouthful we eat, is 
 taken with perfect confidence in the chemical laws that 
 govern the composition and reactions of air and food. 
 The farmer who plants his seed puts faith in more laws 
 of meteorology than the science of meteorology knows. 
 He puts faith in the botanical law announced at the 
 
84 FAITH 
 
 foundation of the world that every seed shall bring 
 forth of its kind. He is sure if he plants alfalfa it will 
 not come up turnips—but he does not know why. 
 Neither does anybody else. 
 
 There is a popular impression that scientific men do 
 not need to use faith because they understand the rea- 
 son for things. That is a great mistake. Nobody 
 really “understands” anything. We know the “how” of 
 a few things, the “why” of nothing. The law of gravi- 
 tation is simply the statement of a fact; it is not an 
 explanation. There is no theory of gravitation. The 
 only reason that I or anybody can give why a book 
 should not go up instead of down when J let go of it, is 
 that it always has gone that way. 
 
 A dog seeing the book go up and not down might 
 be so surprised that he would run and hide; an ignorant 
 man incurious in nature’s ways might wonder and talk 
 about it for a week; a scholar might spend a lifetime if 
 necessary in finding out more about it. The man who 
 has studied science does not know so very much more 
 than the man who has not, but he has a great deal more 
 faith. The unscientific man is credulous because of 
 lack of faith. He will invest money in a perpetual mo- 
 tion machine, he will employ a rainmaker to send a lit- 
 tle smoke up into the air, he will regulate his business 
 by a horoscope, he will buy a bottle of red liquid to 
 enable him to burn water in his motor or ashes in his 
 furnace, he will take a drug that is guaranteed to cure 
 all diseases, he does not question the possibility of get- 
 ting something out of nothing. 
 
 The scientist does not believe these things, but he 
 cannot tell why they may not be. He simply has 
 
THE DYNAMICS OF FAITH 85 
 
 greater faith in the constancy of natural law of which 
 these would be contradictions. 
 
 Are not the ways of God past finding out?  UIlti- 
 mately, yes, but still we can find out a great deal about 
 them. A chemical library gives a good deal of informa- 
 tion as to how God handles atoms and molecules; a 
 biological library, about how he constructs animals; a 
 historical library, about what he is doing with men. By 
 studying the past we can see what God has been doing 
 and by faith in his constancy of purpose we may antici- 
 pate what he is going to do. We may to some extent 
 interpret God’s purposes. This is of the greatest im- 
 portance, for it is right here that our part comes in. 
 When we find out what God wishes done, then we can 
 only show our faith in him by doing it. That is what 
 religion is, carrying out God’s purposes. That is what 
 we are here for, just as it is what the sun, moon, and 
 stars are here for. 
 
 As Blake puts it, 
 
 If the Sun and Moon should doubt 
 They’d immediately go out. 
 
 To know God and to do his will—that is the whole 
 duty of man. And the word “faith” covers. both, for 
 faith without works is dead—that is, there isn’t any 
 such thing as faith without works because we show our 
 faith by our works. 
 
 You must distinguish between faith and belief. A 
 great deal of trouble has come from confusing the two. 
 Faith involves action, it is a part of life, belief is a 
 purely intellectual process of much less importance. It 
 
86 FAITH 
 
 is not even necessary that they coincide. In science we 
 put faith in many things that we don’t believe. We 
 don’t believe that two parallel lines meet, we don’t be- 
 lieve that a circle is made of a lot of straight lines, we 
 don’t believe in the square root of minus one, we don’t 
 believe that space is curved, we don’t believe that the 
 ether is harder than steel and softer than air. But we 
 have implicit faith in all these because by using them 
 we are able to carry out our calculations to correct 
 conclusions. It is only by the use of incredible assump- 
 tions like these that the paths of the planets can be 
 calculated, or dynamos built, or the strength of bridges 
 determined. 
 
 The scientist must act as if certain assumptions are 
 true though often he can see no reason for them and 
 sometimes indeed they seem unreasonable. 
 
 One of the reasons why science is regarded by some 
 people as a rival and enemy of religion is that they 
 are misled by the idea that teachers of science spend 
 their time trying to persuade their pupils to believe 
 some thing or other. They do not realize that the 
 question of credence rarely arises in scientific affairs. 
 I taught chemistry for eighteen years, but it never oc- 
 curred to me to ask one of my students if he thought 
 the atomic theory was true. I should as soon have 
 asked him if the atomic theory was blue. I did not 
 care whether he believed the atomic theory or not. 
 That made no difference to me or to my students. All 
 I tried to do was to teach them to use the atomic 
 theory and to realize that if they did not they might 
 get blown up. 
 
 Faith is the stimulus and guide to action. That is 
 
EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN 87 
 
 why faith and works are so closely, if not inseparably, 
 connected. A mere intellectual belief may not have 
 any influence on conduct. “The devils also believe, 
 and tremble.” Trembling is not a form of action, al- 
 though many folks seem to think so. 
 
 The chemist believes that Faraday discovered ben- 
 zene a hundred years ago. Doubtless that is true, but 
 it does not matter much if the belief is false. We have 
 benzene now, whoever discovered it. But suppose the 
 chemist conceives the idea that he can make a new 
 compound out of benzene by treating it with an un- 
 tried chemical. He can hardly be said to believe in 
 this nonexistent compound; at least he has no right to 
 till the experiment is tried. He may frankly admit, if 
 you ask him, that the chances are ninety-nine to one 
 against his notion being true. It is merely an hypothe- 
 sis, an unproved proposition, an unsupported assertion, 
 an act of faith, which may or may not have the backing 
 of reason.’ In fact it may be contrary to the textbooks, 
 and so incongruous with the laws of nature, as held by 
 his colleagues and himself, that he is ashamed to men- 
 tion it to them. But he has faith enough in it to go 
 into the laboratory and try it, perhaps to work on it 
 for years. And his faith may be justified by its fruits. 
 He may make the new compound and it may trans- 
 form the world. That is the way science makes prog- 
 ress, or one of the ways. Man throws his mind for- 
 ward into the darkness, as a sailor his anchor; it 
 
 1 Even Bacon, the apostle of rational and orderly research, ad- 
 vises trying crazy and absurd experiments. See page 28 of my 
 Chats on Science, also the chapter on “How Scientific Inspiration 
 Comes,” which shows some curious analogies between scientific and 
 
 religious experience. 
 
88 | FAITH 
 
 catches onto something unknown and then he pulls 
 himself up to it by the rope of reason. 
 
 But some one may object that I have not said any- 
 thing about faith in God. It is true that I have not 
 mentioned faith in God, but that is what I have been 
 talking about all the time. If faith in the laws of the 
 material world and the laws, less known but no less real, 
 that govern the actions of human beings is not faith in 
 God, then I don’t know what it is. For the natural 
 laws that we are so proud of and which some men wor- 
 ship, are after all creatures of our own imaginations, 
 more or less crude representations of what we see and 
 hear. Our textbooks are but foggy photographs of 
 the acts of God, taken by the pinhole camera of the 
 mind of man. 
 
 The belief that God wound up the world in the be- 
 ginning and set it running and that it has been running 
 by itself ever since, except for a little regulating now 
 and then, is rank materialism. We believe in God the 
 Sustainer as well as God the Creator. We believe in a 
 God of the present—not merely a God who did some- 
 thing once but a God who does everything now. For we 
 can get no further back in our explanation of why the 
 book falls down than the simple fact that God put the 
 book and the earth together. That is the ultimate end 
 of all our knowledge, the goal to which all roads lead. 
 We can study how he puts them together, measure the 
 force and the speed, but why we shall never know. So 
 it is true that every one has faith in God to some extent 
 though he may not know it any more than he knows 
 that he walks by faith in gravitation; but there are de- 
 grees of faith. Some trust God a little, some more, 
 
FAITH IN THE MARKET-PLACE 89 
 
 none altogether. The Christian trusts God a little more 
 than others because he knows more about him. Faith 
 comes from acquaintance, from communion. 
 
 The definition of faith given by St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 greatest of medieval theologians, is a good one: “Faith 
 is the courage of the spirit which projects itself for- 
 ward, sure of finding the truth.” That is, faith is fu- 
 turistic and activistic. ‘This distinguishes faith from 
 belief, which concerns past events and is passive. 
 
 Our social life too involves constant faith. We some- 
 times hear a man say he has lost all faith in everybody, 
 but if you watch him you will see that his acts belie 
 his words. It is impossible to live among men without 
 faith in them just as it is impossible to breathe without 
 faith in the air. Such a man when he meets a stranger 
 does not turn round to see if he is going to stab him in 
 the back. Time was when men did do that, but no 
 one has so little faith now. Modern commerce is the 
 most remarkable example of the growth of faith with 
 civilization. It is only a few centuries since the Flor- 
 entine merchants conceived the idea of exchanging 
 promises instead of cash; now that is the way most of 
 the business is done. The greater the transaction the 
 less likely that there will be any hard money used. In- 
 deed, so rapidly does our faith increase that it is quite 
 within the bounds of possibility that in time no money 
 of intrinsic value, no gold or silver, will be actually ex- 
 changed in ordinary transactions. A bank is a temple 
 of faith. 
 
 I have heard men tell of bribery and corruption in 
 politics and end by saying that they had lost all faith 
 in the government, but I never dared to risk offering 
 
90 FAITH 
 
 them a greenback or a government bond to see if they 
 were really in earnest. Any one who puts a stamp on 
 a letter and drops it in the box puts faith in the govern- 
 ment. So too we may think and talk evil of our neigh- 
 bors, but we entrust them every day with our lives, our 
 fortunes, and our sacred honor. Civilization is simply 
 an education in faith. War and anarchy are alike due 
 to faithlessness. 
 
 Read the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, in which Paul 
 gives examples of what faith has done for the advance- 
 ment of his own race: 
 
 Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
 framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen 
 were not made of things which do appear... . 
 
 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a 
 place which he should after receive for an inheritance, 
 obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. .. . 
 
 By faith Moses ... forsook Egypt, not fearing the 
 wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing him who is 
 invisible. ... 
 
 By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry 
 land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. 
 
 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were 
 compassed about seven days. ... 
 
 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me 
 to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of 
 Jephthe; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 
 
 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
 ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 
 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the 
 sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant 
 in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 
 
THE EPISTLE TO THE AMERICANS 91 
 
 Our own history is as full of the marvelous achieve- 
 ments of men of faith as was that of the ancient He- 
 brews, and we should see it as clearly if only our his- 
 torians were as good as theirs. Let me continue the 
 list, not in parody, but in the same spirit as Paul. 
 
 By faith Columbus set out in an open boat to go 
 around the unknown world. 
 
 By faith the Pilgrim fathers left their homes and 
 landed on the stern and rock-bound coast of New Eng- 
 land. They sought liberty to worship God and became 
 our spiritual forefathers. 
 
 By faith Washington took up arms against an em- 
 pire whose morning drum-beats encircled the world. 
 
 By faith Jefferson bought the land wherein millions 
 now live, although people laughed at him for acquiring 
 useless and inaccessible territory. 
 
 By faith our fathers crossed the prairies as of old 
 their fathers crossed the sea, to make the West as the 
 East, the homestead of the free. 
 
 By faith a band of American missionaries went to 
 the cannibal islands and gave us Hawaii. 
 
 And what shall I say of those who by faith removed 
 mountains and bridged rivers; who brought waters to 
 a thirsty land and made the desert rejoice and blossom 
 as the rose; who gave sight to the blind, cleansed the 
 lepers, and caused the lame to walk; of those who went 
 over the sea to share the peril of oppressed peoples, 
 who suffered torment and death from fire and smoke; 
 those who took food to the starving in strange lands; 
 and those who went down into the sea in ships and up 
 into the air like eagles? 
 
 History is full of miracles wrought by faith; mira- 
 
92 | FAITH 
 
 cles of invention by men who had faith in the God of 
 nature, miracles of war by men who had faith in the 
 Lord of Hosts, miracles of philanthropy by men who 
 had faith in the All Merciful, miracles of reform by 
 men who had faith in the God of righteousness. 
 
 What is there that cannot be accomplished by faith? 
 The Bible says nothing. If any man does not believe 
 it, let him set the limits. Does he know how bad the dis- 
 ease that faith cannot cure, does he know how corrupt 
 the nation that faith will not regenerate, does he know 
 how wicked the heart is that faith cannot redeem? The 
 statements made in the Bible are very sweeping. “If 
 ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it.” 
 
 Now at first sight this puts the government of the 
 universe in the hands of every individual, of fallible 
 men with passions and prejudices, of men of different 
 opinions whose prayers would be contradictory. But if 
 we examine the words “in my name” we shall see it 
 means more than the formal words “‘for Christ’s sake” 
 with which we end our prayers. It means that the pe- 
 tition is made by a follower of Christ, by one who is 
 striving to bring his own will in harmony with the will 
 of God. The petitioner believes that his request is one 
 which would receive the indorsement of Christ, and if 
 it would not, he would be the first to wish it void. When 
 a man has faith to say that, his prayers will be an- 
 swered. He shares in the omnipotence of God. God 
 reigns and those who are with God are always on the 
 winning side in the struggle of this life. “All things 
 work together for good to them that love God.” 
 
 To have a strong and well-founded faith in God we 
 must know him. We must study his self-revelation in 
 
ON THE LORD’S SIDE 93 
 
 nature, in history and best of all in the Bible, and when 
 we have found out a little of his purposes, then we are 
 to make our purposes the same, for it is in vain that a 
 man fights against God. It is only the man who is on 
 the Lord’s side that succeeds in anything. It is only of 
 him who has faith that it may be said, ‘“‘Whatsoever he 
 doeth shall prosper.” Faith is harmony with God, 
 working with him, thinking with him, feeling with him. 
 
THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present 
 with me.—Romans 7:14-25; 8:1-14. 
 
 THE older we grow, the more complex does life ap- 
 pear to us. When we are young the problems of life 
 seem quite simple. We have few, but very definite, 
 opinions; we attack our work with singleness of pur- 
 pose. We make up our minds quickly because we 
 haven’t much of any minds to make up. To any ques- 
 tion there are but two sides, the right side and the 
 wrong side, as easily distinguished as black from white. 
 We are therefore intolerant. 
 
 As we grow older, we find that all questions are really 
 polygons, with many sides, and it is often hard to dis- 
 tinguish the right one among them. We find that many 
 sincere attempts to reform the world have only resulted 
 in deforming it. We have to revise our hasty, intuitive 
 judgments of people. We are surprised to find that 
 criminals have their good traits, and we are shocked 
 at finding serious defects in the characters of those we 
 have admired and almost worshiped. When I show 
 pictures to children the first question they ask is, “Is 
 he a good man, or is he a bad man?” Now there are 
 a few like Nero or Judas, Abraham or John, that I can 
 give a definite answer for, but I find it difficult to per- 
 suade the little chaps that humanity is not painted in 
 black and white but with infinite gradations of spade 
 
 and color. 
 94 
 
DUAL PERSONALITY 95 
 
 Even after a young man has learned by sad experi- 
 ence that people are really very complex, and that he 
 cannot always depend on them to do what he expects 
 them to do, he has a still more startling discovery to 
 make; that is, that he himself is more complex than 
 he had supposed and that he cannot always depend on 
 himself. That is what finally knocks the conceit out of 
 a man and makes it possible for him to amount to any- 
 thing. It is a salutary and necessary lesson though a 
 bitter one. Whether he has been posing as a respecta- 
 ble man or as a “tough” he finds that his acts are not 
 consistent with his profession, that it is just as hard 
 to live consistent to bad principles as to good ones. 
 He finds out, what was incredible to him before, that 
 he does things voluntarily that he does not want to do, 
 that this paradox is a reality. Just as he finds that his 
 physical constitution, which he thought invulnerable, 
 gives way at critical moments, so his moral nature 
 shows unexpected weaknesses that alarm him. He de- 
 tects himself in unworthy acts that he supposed him- 
 self incapable of; he does things at which his whole 
 moral nature revolts. 
 
 Now it is a critical period in a man’s life when he 
 makes the discovery that there are two natures strug- 
 gling within him. Many a young man when he finds 
 out that he can never be wholly good, gives up the 
 struggle and determines that he will be wholly bad, only 
 to find that the limitations of human nature do not per- 
 mit that either. He cannot rid himself entirely of 
 either of the two natures struggling within him. What 
 he can do is to decide which shall be master and which 
 the intruder, which one of his two natures he will love 
 
96 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 or hate, serve or despise. “Religion is the devotion 
 that half of every individual yields to his other half, 
 the worship of his more vigorous and heroic by his 
 more abject and inert aspects.” * 
 
 Experimental psychology has given a more definite 
 and literal meaning to the words of Paul. We now 
 know that it is possible to separate in an individual two 
 or more selves which may be quite distinct in character 
 and ability. One may be dull, the other witty; one may 
 be peaceable, the other quarrelsome; one kind, the 
 other mischievous. These may alternately control the 
 speech and actions of the individual, or they may si- 
 multaneously manage different parts of the same brain. 
 An instance of this is found in cases of periodical in- 
 sanity in which a man leaves his family and friends, 
 for months leading another life, knowing nothing of his 
 former self until his return—as we say—to his senses, 
 to himself. We see the same thing in the periodical 
 drunkard who acts and feels like another person when 
 on a spree. He has no shame for what he does under 
 those conditions, as he does not feel responsible for the 
 other man. Nothing so weakens the power of the 
 higher nature over the lower as do alcohol and mor- 
 phine. Formerly, when people saw these strange 
 changes by which a sober-minded and respectable man 
 became for a time a criminal and a lunatic, losing both 
 his moral and his mental sanity, they said he was ‘“‘pos- 
 sessed of a devil.” I, for one, do not object to that 
 phraseology. I think it better than the vague and sen- 
 timental phrases we have substituted for it. There is 
 just as much convenience and propriety in personify- 
 
 1 Ortega y Gasset. 
 
JEKYLL AND HYDE 97 
 
 ing the forces of evil as the forces of good. But it 
 is out of fashion now to speak of the devil in polite 
 society—perhaps because it is not good manners to 
 discuss a person who is present. 
 
 Ordinarily, of course, our good and evil tendencies do 
 not crystallize into distinct selves. They appear merely 
 as impulses acting on our thoughts and sometimes influ- 
 encing our acts, so that we “do that which we would 
 not,” although we do not go so far as to develop a 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex. 
 
 Within my earthly temple there’s a crowd, 
 There’s one of us that’s humble, one that’s proud; 
 There’s one who’s broken-hearted for his sins, 
 There’s one who unrepentant sits and grins; 
 There’s one who loves his neighbor as himself, 
 And one who cares for naught but fame and pelf. 
 From much perplexing care I would be free 
 
 If I could once determine which is Me. 
 
 The last line covers the important point, to determine 
 which of these several selves J will be. That is our 
 duty, to decide with which of these warring factions 
 we will ally ourselves, to choose this day whom we 
 will serve, God or Mammon. It is out of our power to 
 be pure angel or devil; we have merely to make up 
 our minds on which side we will fight. That is the way 
 Paul did. He saw the right, and boldly declared him- 
 self on that side. Thus he could fight internal evil just 
 as well as external evil in other people. ‘Now if I 
 do that which I would not, it is no longer J that do it 
 but sin that dwelleth in me. For J delight in the law 
 
98 ‘THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 of God, but I see another law in my members warring 
 against the law of my mind.” 
 
 Notice another thing, Paul identifies his sinful nature 
 with his body and his better nature with his mind. Is 
 that fair? Are not mind and body equally good or 
 bad? at least equally important? Some of Paul’s de- 
 nunciations of the flesh sound harsh to us nowadays; we 
 suspect him of asceticism. For just now we are in an 
 age devoted to the glorification of the physical. What- 
 ever is natural is right, they say, meaning by that what- 
 ever is dictated by that nature we share with the beasts. 
 It is an age like that of later Rome when the athlete was 
 more admired than the scholar. It is the popular phi- 
 losophy that health implies goodness, and that a sound 
 body will insure a sound mind. The gymnasium is 
 advocated as a substitute for both school and church, 
 and men teach that all that is needed to reform the 
 criminal in the slums is plenty of soap and water with 
 a park near by where he can go and look at the pretty 
 flowers whenever he is tempted to be naughty. 
 
 This point of view ignores the fact that it is the 
 criminal who makes the vicious slums, not the reverse. 
 Man is not the product of his environment; he creates 
 his environment. As Plato says, “The soul spins its 
 own web and weaves its own body.” All efforts to 
 secure pure food, pure water, and pure air are to be 
 encouraged, but we must remember that it is as true 
 today as it ever was that it is not what goeth into the 
 mouth that defileth a man, but those things that pro- 
 ceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, they 
 defile a man. Evil is not something that comes to us 
 from without, from unfavorable circumstances. It has 
 
ORIGINAL SIN 99 
 
 its source in our own hearts. Evil exists nowhere but 
 in the hearts of men. Circumstances may develop it, 
 but the germ must be there to be stimulated. A tempta- 
 tion is harmless to one who is not tempted. The for- 
 tress of Mansoul is never carried by storm; if it falls it 
 is always due to traitors who open the gates. A man’s 
 foes shall be those of his own household—yes, even of 
 his own body. This is expressed by Barnard’s group of 
 statuary, and by Hugo’s lines, “I feel two natures 
 struggling within me.” 
 
 This evil is born in us; it is an inheritance from our 
 ancestors. This doctrine of natural depravity, of con- 
 genital evil, is one that is very obnoxious to modern 
 taste, which shuts its eyes to everything unpleasant, 
 and believes only what it chooses to believe. But 
 that which people most dislike to hear is what they 
 need to hear the most. If I choose to discuss un- 
 pleasant topics it is because I am freer to do so than 
 your pastor would be. 
 
 The doctrine of natural depravity was held by the 
 church through centuries of trial and persecution. To 
 give it up now when the whole weight of science has 
 come to its support would be foolishness. According 
 to the sentimentalists we come into the world trailing 
 clouds of glory from heaven which is our home. Thank 
 God, heaven is our future home, not our past home; 
 man’s destination, not his origin. Rather say: we come 
 into the world prisoners to sin; dragging after us like 
 a ball and chain the sins of our ancestors from nobody 
 knows how far back. It is the body with its inherited, 
 brutish instincts and passions that draws us backward 
 and downward; it is our new endowment, the soul, that 
 
100 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 inspires us to rise. Plato likens a man to a charioteer 
 driving two horses, one black and fractious ever pulling 
 downward, the other white, and winged, striving heav- 
 enward; and it takes a skillful driver to keep such a 
 team pulling together. 
 
 It would not be becoming in an amateur preacher to 
 settle all the theological problems that have puzzled 
 the ages, but I will suggest that the question of the 
 origin of evil is not so dark as it once appeared. Evil 
 is largely the survival of the unfit. Man is progressing 
 gradually, and partially; there are no sudden changes. 
 As the boy outgrows his clothes but has to wear them 
 even when they get too tight, and inadequate, so we 
 have the remnants of the ethical garments of antiquity 
 about us yet. 
 
 For good and evil are relative terms, like white and 
 black, up and down. The virtues of the savage become 
 the vices of the civilized man. Evil is an anachronism. 
 Dirt is matter out of place, weeds are plants growing 
 where they are not wanted, sins are moral weeds and 
 dirt—mistimed and misplaced acts. The vermiform 
 appendix and wisdom teeth are physiological sins. 
 Formerly useful organs, they are now useless, and 
 therefore dangerous. Satan finds some mischief still 
 for all our idle organs to do. 
 
 Most of our modern vices are virtues that have out- 
 lived their usefulness. We inherit—and I use the word 
 in a wider than the physiological sense—we inherit our 
 domineering temper and haughtiness from the “knights 
 of old.” It was a virtue with them; it purified the race 
 and raised it to leadership. It is a vice with us; it is 
 the source of class hatred, feuds, and caste. 
 
VESTIGIAL VICES 101 
 
 We inherit the love of fighting from our Viking an- 
 cestors. It was a virtue in those days; it regenerated 
 dying nations. It is a vice now, making us quarrel- 
 some and offensive, and standing in the way of peace. 
 Anachronisms are dangerous. 
 
 The ancient inhabitants of the shores of the North 
 Sea were superstitious. They thought fire was a demon 
 and the wind a spirit. It was a virtue in them. It 
 led to a belief in an All-Father and a future heaven. 
 But superstition, having done its work, is now a hin- 
 drance to progress. It befogs the objects of daily life, 
 leads us astray into many foolish ways and veils for 
 us the face of God himself. 
 
 It is of course not evil alone that we inherit. From 
 those medieval knights we get our chivalry and our 
 sense of honor; from the Vikings our courage and love 
 of adventure; from the primeval man our endurance and 
 ability to do hard work. The good we inherit remains 
 and develops, the evil gradually dies out. Evil is tran- 
 sitory; good is permanent and immortal. 
 
 The battle between good and evil is a part of the 
 universal struggle between progress and conservatism, 
 between force and inertia. Not that conservatism is 
 always wrong; on the contrary it is generally right. 
 Not all changes are progress, only one, one out of the 
 many possible. Each new standard of morality shames 
 the old. But mankind does not march in rank like 
 soldiers, keeping step together. There are pioneers and 
 stragglers. Not all those who are living on earth at 
 the same time are moral contemporaries. ‘There are 
 veople we see every day still living in the Dark Ages, 
 with medieval virtues, ideals, and aspirations. Some 
 
102 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 people are pagan, and some prehistoric, with a natural 
 code of morality that would disgrace a troglodyte or a 
 mound builder. Some of our acquaintances are prob- 
 ably living already in the twenty-first century—if we 
 only knew which they were. 
 
 Not only this, but each individual has different stand- 
 ards, belonging to various dates, incongruous, incom- 
 patible, his members warring against one another, and 
 sometimes he leaves the twentieth century and slips 
 back to some ruder age or even to the level of the 
 brutes. There is always a kind of moral gravitation act- 
 ing to pull us downward and backward. “Onward and 
 upward” must be our motto. There can be no standing 
 still. In the words of Christina Rossetti: 
 
 “Does the road wind uphill all the way?” 
 “Yes, to the very end.” 
 
 “Will the day’s journey take the whole, long day?” 
 “From morn to night, my friend.” 
 
 We must “move upward, working out the beast, and let 
 the ape and tiger die.” We must climb on stepping 
 stones of our dead selves to higher things. 
 
 If then we find ourselves born in bondage, endowed 
 with the sins of our ancestors, what can we do? Can 
 a man fight successfully against heredity? Well, yes, 
 to some extent. But there is a better way. Change the 
 heredity. Adopt a new father and inherit goodness in- 
 stead of evil. That is the plan recommended in the 
 chapter that I am merely paraphrasing in modern lan- 
 guage. * 
 
 “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they 
 
 2 Romans 8:10, 14-17. 
 
ADOPTING GOD AS OUR FATHER 103 
 
 are the sons of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs 
 of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” 
 
 We cannot greatly alter the body we were born with, 
 but we can change our character. We cannot alter our 
 features but we can change our expression. 
 
 We can have help in our climb, in our fight. We 
 can get inspiration and strength. In the fight of spirit 
 with flesh we can have the support of the spirit of God. 
 The more we use this assistance the more assistance we 
 get. Unto him that hath shall be given. Strength, 
 either physical or moral, that we do not use is taken 
 from us. We have all, probably, consciously received 
 some aid from this source. We do not get more because 
 we do not use what we have. We do not realize what a 
 dangerous fight we are in until the moment when the 
 powers of darkness catch us unaware and overthrow 
 us. 
 
 Now “conversion” is merely this change of allegiance, 
 of heirship. It is not change of mind, but change of 
 self. It is not acquiring a new cargo, but shifting the 
 center of gravity. Sometimes it is coincident with a 
 change of opinion, but usually not. You simply ally 
 yourself with the better elements of your nature and 
 make them dominant. The change may be as sudden 
 as the change from insanity to sanity. Following this 
 change, before it can be anything more than a good 
 intention, must come a life of struggle and develop- 
 ment. You have put yourself on the right side, you 
 have yet to make it the winning side. 
 
 A little girl once went to Sunday school and they 
 taught her Paul’s words, “I keep under my body.” 
 When she returned her mother asked her for the 
 
104 THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 
 
 “Golden Text’ and she said, “I keep my soul on top.” 
 I have sometimes thought the little girl improved the 
 text. For the best way to eradicate evil is to crowd it 
 out. The best way to destroy sin is to cultivate virtues. 
 The wise gardener works to get his crop so flourishing 
 that it will overshadow the ground and so keep down 
 the weeds. I do not say that in our moral gardens a 
 little pruning and weed-pulling are not necessary, but 
 the main effort should be toward culture rather than 
 protection. If a man should devote his whole time to 
 getting rid of his vices, and nothing more, he would 
 finally succeed in producing only barren soil, devoid of 
 goodness as well as evil—good for nothing. But he 
 could not even succeed in getting rid of his vices in 
 that way, for nature abhors a vacuum. We must sub- 
 stitute. Interdiction has its place, but substitution is 
 better. When a new ideal is introduced the old ideal 
 withers away. The child gets enjoyment from active 
 play. He wonders who makes the grown people sit still 
 and talk. As he grows older it is the conversation that 
 attracts him and he has a distaste for his top and ball. 
 People who enjoy coarse pleasures cannot understand | 
 why there are others who do not take part in them. 
 They do not realize that to persons of refined taste they 
 are not pleasurable, but painful or disgusting. The 
 only effective way to stop the reading of pernicious 
 literature is to stimulate a love for good literature. A 
 healthy mind gradually outgrows such tastes anyway, 
 and looks with amusement on the trashy books he was 
 once so fond of, especially when he notes that the silliest 
 passages are those he marked and underscored. 
 
 The ascetic idea of repression does not develop the 
 
AFFIRMATIVE RELIGION 105 
 
 highest type of character. Notice the change in phrase- 
 ology from the Old Testament to the New Testament. 
 “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” ‘Thou 
 shalt not” is the way Moses expressed it. Christ’s 
 words are, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.... 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The gospel 
 method is active; the cultivation of virtue, not restric- 
 tion of vice. Do, instead of do not. The Gospel set 
 people to doing right instead of escaping wrong. The 
 lower nature loses its power as we cultivate the higher, 
 and finally we may say with Tennyson: 
 
 “T have climbed to the snows of age and I gaze at a field 
 in the Past, 
 
 Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a 
 low desire. 
 
 But I hear no yelp of the beast and the Man is quiet at 
 last 
 
 As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of 
 a height that is higher.” 
 
THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 Can ye not discern the signs of the times?—Matthew 16:3. 
 
 THE new map of Europe, with its patchwork of iso- 
 lated nationalities, will look more like the Europe of the 
 Middle Ages than like the Europe of the nineteenth 
 century with its vast imperial aggregates and its com- 
 mercial and cultural internationalism. ‘The medieval- 
 ism of the modern map reflects the medievalism of the 
 modern mind. In art, literature, religion, and social 
 forms we cannot fail to observe a decided reaction to- 
 ward more primitive modes of thought. It is said that 
 “revolutions never go backward.” It would be quite 
 as correct to say that wars always do. 
 
 However praiseworthy the main aim of the conflict, 
 and however complete its triumph, yet war is followed 
 by a lassitude and lapse in which other gains of civiliza- 
 tion may be temporarily lost. 
 
 The material losses of the Great War are not so seri- 
 ous as the moral and mental losses. ‘The victorious 
 nations seem to suffer as much as the defeated nations 
 from such maladies of the mind. Our own country, 
 though less and later involved in the war, has not 
 escaped the contagion. 
 
 It would be wrong to ascribe the psychological 
 changes manifest since the war to the war alone. Per- 
 haps rather we should say that the war was one of the 
 symptoms of the prevailing psychology of our times. 
 
 106 
 
HOMO EX MACHINA 107 
 
 What makes our age different from all the preceding 
 and invalidates the deductions from history is the pos- 
 session of inanimate power. Man is drawing upon the 
 accumulated capital of the millions of years prior to his 
 advent. In his use of coal and oil he is lighting his 
 houses and running his machines with the sunshine of 
 the Carboniferous Era. Science has given each of us, 
 every man, woman, and child in America, if the appor- 
 tionment were equal, a train of twenty slaves to wait 
 upon him night and day. 
 
 What this acquisition of inanimate energy might 
 mean for the advancement of civilization we can hardly 
 conceive, for of late it has been largely used for the 
 destruction of civilization. 
 
 We have now come to realize that what is done by an 
 engine depends as much on the character of the engi- 
 neer as on the power of the machine. Our horsepower 
 per capita has risen to an unprecedented height. But 
 has our mindpower per capita increased with it in prv- 
 portion? If not, this new-found force may prove dan- 
 gerous to us. The question on which the future de- 
 pends is whether men can muster up among them 
 enough mentality and morality to manage the stupen- 
 dous powers which applied science has recently placed 
 in their hands. Once upon a time, long before the 
 oldest of us was born, before any man was born for 
 that matter—I refer to the Jurassic Era—the ruling 
 race was composed of creatures much larger and more 
 powerful than we are. There were giants on the earth 
 in those days, gigantic saurians which when they stood 
 up on their hind legs would tower up four times as tall 
 as aman. But their cranial cavity was smaller than 
 
108 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 ours. The Jurassic saurians had grown too big for 
 their brains; so they perished. 
 
 Now the addition of machine power to the natural 
 strength of man is equivalent to adding more powerful 
 arms and legs, more skillful hands, and sharper senses. 
 It increases his physical capacity but does not directly 
 enlarge his mental ability. It endows him with a giant’s 
 strength but does not teach him how to use it. 
 
 Among the horrid fancies that haunted the head of 
 Samuel Butler of Erewhon was a nightmare of a coming 
 age when the machines that man has made for his serv- 
 ice should rise in Spartacan revolt and enslave man. 
 This skit of Butler’s on ‘The Mechanical Creation” is 
 prought to mind by recent events. 
 
 The last few years have made it manifest that in our 
 civilization the mechanical forces have got ahead of 
 the moral forces. Man is mounted on a bigger horse 
 than he can ride. Making war was an efficient process; 
 making peace is—not. The chemist did his bit with 
 amazing, even alarming, proficiency. The diplomat fell 
 down on his job. The physical sciences have evidently 
 been developed so far beyond the political sciences as to 
 constitute a menace to civilization. The modern man, 
 like the Arabian fisherman, has liberated from the 
 bottle genii that he does not know how to control. 
 
 The late War revealed to the horror of the world the 
 possibilities for destruction that science has placed in 
 the hands of mortal man. Unless he has undergone a 
 moral reformation, of which there is no apparent sign, 
 he is not likely to be deterred from using them by a 
 paper prohibition. The Prince of the Power of the Air 
 will be the ruling spirit in the next war—if there is a 
 
THE NEXT WAR 109 
 
 next war. It is now possible to send an airplane, with 
 or without a pilot, by day or night, over the enemy’s 
 country to sprinkle the ground with a liquid so deadly 
 that a whiff inhaled or a few drops touching the skin 
 will cause death. There is no need for fine sighting and 
 mathematical calculations such as the artilleryman re- 
 quires; no need to know where the enemy is. The air- 
 ships or self-propelled projectiles will simply move over 
 the land, as a farmer’s potato-bug sprinkler goes over 
 a field, and a certain strip of territory, say half a mile 
 wide and a hundred miles long, will be instantaneously 
 depopulated and will remain uninhabitable for days to 
 come. In the next war, if there is one, there will be no 
 frontiers, no intrenched line, no exempt cities, no dis- 
 tinction between combatant and noncombatant. Forti- 
 fications will be futile, for the wall that will withstand 
 a forty-two-centimeter projectile is easily penetrable to 
 a molecule of poison gas. The next war, if there is one, 
 may be decided without the action of cavalry, infantry, 
 or artillery. On sea the revolution will be quite as com- 
 plete. There will be no need to sink ships in the next 
 war, for the reason that it is not worth while shooting 
 a riderless cavalry horse. 
 
 1 Being merely a layman in military matters, I make the claims 
 for chemical warfare conservative. Experts may go further; 
 for instance, Major-General George O. Squiers of the United States 
 Army, in speaking at the Franklin Institute Centenary, said: “Just 
 as we now give a harmless anesthetic to an individual for a surgi- 
 cal operation, so we may be able in the future to put a whole 
 nation asleep for forty-eight hours, by a combination of new chemi- 
 cal discoveries with radio-controlled manless airplanes.’ For fur- 
 ther discussion of the question of the revolution in warfare see the 
 little book entitled “Callinicus,’ by Dr. J. B. S. Haldane of Cam: 
 bridge, who was in the British army. 
 
110 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 Can we say that man has reached a moral and mental 
 maturity so that he can be safely entrusted with such 
 dangerous weapons? We cannot take them from him 
 as we can take a revolver from a child. A paper pro- 
 hibition will not restrain an unscrupulous or desperate 
 enemy from using any effective weapon. But it is clear 
 that unless man can learn how to make proper use of 
 his new-found knowledge he is likely to destroy him- 
 self. Science has endowed man with the power of a 
 superman, but his mind remains human, all too human. 
 He is like a pauper come into a fortune, a laborer who 
 has been put into the position of boss of the shop, a 
 private promoted to command the regiment, a slave 
 made the master of slaves. Man has had no training 
 for such responsibilities as have now been thrust upon 
 him. This new command of time and space, this 
 mastery of unknown forces, this apparition of new 
 perils, this entrance into untried fields, all these are too 
 much for man of today. He secretly shrinks and 
 openly blusters. He alternately cowers and brags. 
 He lacks confidence in himself and therefore he sus- 
 pects others. He is afraid of the dark. He is afraid of 
 his shadow, for that is dark. He shudders with ancient 
 fears. The modern man is suffering from shell-shock. 
 He has all the various symptoms. ‘Those who stayed 
 at home are often worse than those that went over 
 there. The victorious nations show the same symp- 
 toms as the defeated. 
 
 The causeless suspicions, the sudden hatreds, the 
 erratic actions, the intolerance of opposing opinion, the 
 unwillingness to face facts, the return of primitive 
 modes of thought, the alternations of despair and dis- 
 
BACK TO BARBARISM 111 
 
 sipation, the substitution of emotionalism for ration- 
 ality, the revival of superstition—such are the stigmata 
 of hysteria and such are the characteristics of our time. 
 
 In mental diseases where the conscious will relaxes 
 and the more recent centers of thought decay, the 
 patient relapses into a sort of second childhood, using 
 baby-talk, drawing the crude pictures that he made 
 when first he took pencil in hand and reverting consci- 
 ously to the unconscious vices of infancy. 
 
 An uprush of infantilism from the unconscious mind 
 of the human race is dragging the modern world back 
 to the superstitions, obscurantism, formalism, gargoyl- 
 ism, and parochialism of the Dark Ages. 
 
 Our most advanced artists take as their teachers the 
 most backward savages surviving on the earth. For- 
 merly ambitious young painters went to Greece or 
 Rome to study. Now they journey to Tahiti or the 
 Congo. Ifa modernist art gallery should be preserved 
 for several thousand years the archeologist of that day 
 studying the style would unhesitatingly assign it to 
 a period prior to, and more primitive than, the Upper 
 Paleolithic when the Cro-Magnon man depicted the 
 mammoth and the reindeer on the walls of the caves 
 of Altamira, 25,000 years ago. 
 
 Modern literature, especially poetry, shows marked 
 reversion to infantile types, in the breaking up of the 
 logical sentence into disconnected fragments, in the 
 appearance of nouns without verbs and adjectives with- 
 out nouns, in the shortened paragraphs, in the ejacu- 
 latory style, in the overruling of sense by sound, in the 
 repetitions resembling echolalia and verbigeration. 
 
 In music the same reversion to the childhood of the 
 
112 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 race is apparent. The tom-tom sets the pace for 
 modern progress and the primitive piper calls the tune 
 to which we dance. 
 
 In religion we see a strong reactionary movement, af- 
 fecting in some degree all the various churches. There 
 is stricter insistence on creedal requirements, denomina- 
 tional lines are more rigidly drawn, and heresy trials 
 are becoming common. Medieval forms and cere- 
 monies are coming into the very churches that were 
 originally established as a protest against them. Sects 
 practicing primitive modes of worship, such as the 
 Holy Rollers, are gaining rapidly in numbers. Intol- 
 erance in all forms, racial, sectarian, linguistic, patri« 
 otic, becomes daily more dominant and bitter. In the 
 recent national election sectarian issues were more con- 
 spicuous than ever before. 
 
 The movement toward medievalism in art, religion, 
 industrial organization, and social forms is gaining 
 ground under the leadership of such brilliant writers 
 as Gilbert K. Chesterton. It seems as if man, with his 
 eyes half opened, resents the light. ‘‘Pull down the 
 curtain,” he shouts to the scientist, “or Pll pitch you 
 out of the window.” Then he rolls over and pulls the 
 cover over his head to get another nice long sleep such 
 as he had from A.D. 300 to A.D. 1200. 
 
 The world, like a child at Christmas, is willing to 
 receive the material gifts of science but refuses its 
 moral lessons. The world will accept from the hands 
 of science railroads and radios, soft raiment and for- 
 eign foods, airplanes and submarines, but turns a deaf 
 ear when science would talk of peace, efficiency, 
 economy, foresight, and the frank facing of facts. 
 
LOST LIBERTIES 113 
 
 It was commonly supposed that the fights for evolu- 
 tion and the higher criticism of the Bible which had 
 absorbed so large a part of the intellectual activity of 
 the nineteenth century had been virtually won by the 
 beginning of the twentieth, but we see now a strong 
 movement against both. The Fundamentalists are en- 
 deavoring to eliminate the teaching of evolution in the 
 schools and colleges. It is even proposed to go further 
 and to prohibit by law the teaching of anything that 
 offends the religious sentiment or undermines the faith 
 of any one. Under this law it would be impossible to 
 teach that the earth is round or that the Indians are 
 not descendants of the lost Jewish tribes or that there 
 is any such thing as disease in a school containing a 
 Dowieite, Mormon, or Christian Science child. Teach- 
 ing under such circumstances would be one of the 
 extra-hazardous professions. 
 
 We became accustomed to the censorship and the 
 mass suppression of unpopular opinions during the 
 war, and the disposition to use such legal and illegal 
 means for the repression of undesirable views has been 
 growing ever since. The most remarkable feature of 
 the situation is that there is almost universal acquies- 
 cence in the restriction of the rights of free speech and 
 propaganda for which our ancestors fought and suf- 
 fered martyrdom. 
 
 One of the curious though natural results of the War 
 is the millennialist movement which is now sweeping 
 over the country and has appeared in Europe. It is 
 not due to the influence of one powerful personality, 
 but has sprung up spontaneously in various churches 
 and localities, an instinctive outbreak of the folk-psy- 
 
114 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 chology, of a state of mind such as prevailed in the year 
 1000, when it was commonly believed that the end of 
 the world was at hand. 
 
 Along with the suspicion of science and scholarship 
 comes a distrust and dislike of modern civilization, 
 which is built on a scientific foundation. People are 
 looking with longing eyes back to a primitive paradisial 
 period, or forward to a rural Utopia, to an Edenic or 
 Arcadian life. Some would have us take to the woods; 
 some to the South Seas. ‘Back to Nature” is the 
 theme of poets, romancers, and even preachers. In 
 India Mahatma Gandhi heads a powerful movement 
 for the elimination of machine power and its products. 
 In Germany the multiform Wandervogel movement 
 shows a tendency to revert to prehistoric sun-worship 
 and to discard the customs and costumes of civilized 
 life. 
 
 This revival of the worship of the heathen earth- 
 goddess, Magna Mater, began in an inoffensive fashion 
 in the literature of the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury and has since infected all classes and countries. 
 It is now securely enthroned in the two strongholds 
 that were erected against it, church and school. The 
 neo-pagan poet Swinburne, who wrote 
 
 Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; 
 The world has grown gray from thy breath 
 
 was premature in his despair. He might better have 
 written 
 
 Thou hast conquered, O rosy Rousseau; 
 The world has grown gay from thy breath. 
 
HEATHEN OF THE HEATH 115 
 
 Those who say “God made the country but the devil 
 made the city” are reading history backward. The 
 word “pagan” means literally “countryman” (paga- 
 nus). “Civilization” is by self-definition a product of 
 the city dweller (civis). Our modern nature-lovers 
 are trying to rob the Creator of credit for the highest 
 products of creative activity. They would make a 
 scapegoat of God and drive him out of the town into 
 the desert. But God is not in the thunder or the whirl- 
 wind, but in the voice, the artificial creation of man. 
 It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. 
 
 The cult of naturalism is now dominant everywhere. 
 The call of the wild is drowning out the appeal of 
 civilization. “Back to barbarism!” is the slogan of 
 the hour. Sink into savagery. Praise the country and 
 denounce the city. Admire cliffs but make fun of sky- 
 scrapers. Extol forests and despise laboratories. 
 Exalt the physical and ignore the intellectual. Spend 
 half a million dollars on a new stadium and let the old 
 library go to ruin. Abolish compulsory Latin and 
 establish compulsory swimming. Patronize football 
 and neglect debating. Up with the soldier and down 
 with the savant. Promote pugilism and suppress paci- 
 fism. Jazz your music and cube your painting. Rough- 
 cast your walls, corrode your bricks, deckle your book- 
 edges, wormhole your furniture, weather-stain your 
 woodwork, coarsen your fabrics, and deform your pot- 
 tery. Condemn everything new and worship every- 
 thing old. Regenerate obsolescent languages, restore 
 antiquated spelling, adopt medieval costumes, revive 
 ancient rituals, inflame traditional animosities, resur- 
 rect forgotten realms, reérect overthrown barriers. Cul- 
 
116 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 tivate the primitive virtues of personal bravery and 
 clan loyalty. Reprove and repress the Christian vir- 
 tues of kindliness and universal sympathy. 
 
 Some of the signs of the times I have enumerated 
 are good things in themselves, some are trifles of no 
 consequence, but they all hang together and a floating 
 straw shows the current of a river as well as a log. 
 A change in taste is often the precursor of a shift of 
 the trend of human affairs. The dominant tendency 
 of the times is undoubtedly downward and backward, 
 and the advance of science and the uplift of religion 
 have not yet availed to check it. 
 
 It is a reactionary spirit, antagonistic to progress 
 and destructive to civilization. Science and Christian- 
 ity are at one in abhorring the natural man and calling 
 upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The 
 conquest of nature, not the imitation of nature, is the 
 whole duty of man.’ 
 
 Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the 
 body we were born with. St. Augustine and Huxley 
 are in agreement as to the eternal conflict between 
 man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on “Evolu- 
 tion and Ethics” Huxley said, ““The ethical progress of 
 society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, 
 still less on running away from it, but on combating 
 it,’ and again, ‘The history of civilization details the 
 steps by which man has succeeded in building up an 
 artificial world within the cosmos.” 
 
 Our sins are mostly survivals. Like the vermiform 
 appendix they are vestigial organs, needing excision. 
 
 2This question is discussed in the first chapter of my Creative 
 Chemistry; in fact it forms the theme of the entire book. 
 
THE WORSHIP OF THE BEAST 117 
 
 It is those who believe in perpetuating the pugnacious 
 propensities of the lower animals and man in his lower 
 stages who are responsible for these years of war and 
 the consequent anarchy. Modern literature is tainted 
 throughout by that most pestilential heresy, zodlatry. 
 From the child’s primer to the sociological treatise, 
 animals and insects are held up for our admiration and 
 imitation. 
 
 This pan-pagan spirit has so corrupted our religious 
 faith in recent years that a biologist is nowadays liable 
 to be accused of blasphemy if he ventures to point out 
 the imperfections in the human body or the waste and 
 useless suffering that prevail throughout the animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms. 
 
 A few centuries ago he would have been accused of 
 blasphemy if he had said a good word for nature. I 
 could quote—if anybody would read them—a con- 
 tinuous series of citations from the church fathers of 
 every one of the first eighteen centuries of the Christian 
 era proving that nature was altogether corrupt, vile, 
 degrading, and accursed; something to be avoided, 
 fought, subjugated, and eradicated as the only hope of 
 man’s salvation. The Bible indeed tells us that the 
 Creator when he first looked over his work pronounced 
 it “good,” but we know that he later discarded many of 
 those early models, such as the megalosaurus and the 
 pterodactyl, in favor of more modern designs; and man 
 has continued the work of his Maker by improving on 
 the cattle and fruit trees that he inherited. He has 
 even made some changes for the better in his own ap- 
 pearance if we may judge from the pithecanthropus, 
 
118 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 but nothing to boast of compared with what he might 
 do for himself by a strict course in eugenics. 
 
 The real heretic is the man who believes in the infal- 
 libility of nature and holds that it is the duty of man 
 to conform to prehuman and subhuman conditions and 
 conduct, instead of establishing new and higher aims 
 and activities. John Stuart Mill was for once in his 
 life orthodox in the strictest sense when he wrote:* 
 
 The doctrine that men ought to follow nature... is 
 equally irrational and immoral. Irrational, because all hu- 
 man action whatever consists in altering and all useful 
 action in improving the spontaneous course of nature: 
 immoral because . . . any one who endeavored in his ac- 
 tions to imitate the natural course of things would be uni- 
 versally seen and acknowledged to be the wickedest of men. 
 
 We should not allow our enjoyment of the beauties 
 of nature, or our appreciation of the marvelous adap- 
 tation of natural processes, or our dependence upon 
 nature for existence, to blind us to the defects of 
 nature, or to seduce us from our duty to thwart and 
 subdue nature in so far as she interferes with our as- 
 pirations toward a higher life and a better social order. 
 “Nature is the work of the devil,’ says Blake in his 
 blunt way, and while this may savor of the Manichzan 
 or Gnostic heresies, it is not far from the view of 
 Jesus * and of Paul ° that Satan is prince of this world, 
 and his régime must be overthrown before the kingdom 
 of God can be established on earth. 
 
 3 Three Essays on Religion. 
 
 ¢ John 12: 313 14:30. 
 
 5 Ephesians 2:2; 6:12, 
 
NATURE OUR STEPMOTHER 119 
 
 But whether we use the language of ancient theology 
 er of modern science we must admit the obvious fact 
 that the best interests of mankind are often in opposi- 
 tion with those of other creatures, and that the advent 
 of man, with his vision of the future and his ethical 
 ideals, brought a new factor into the world which con- 
 travenes the previously existing system. ‘Mother 
 Nature” is a fine phrase but misleading. We cannot 
 forget that she has other children besides us. Na- 
 ture must love the microbes, for she makes so many of 
 them. Her smallest offspring are her eldest and her 
 favorites, and to feed them she does not hesitate to 
 sacrifice her latest and noblest, man. As for the ethics 
 of nature, Matthew Arnold put it well in his ‘Sonnet 
 to an Independent Preacher’’: 
 
 Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
 And in that more lie all his hopes of good. 
 
 Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood; 
 
 Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore: 
 
 Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest; 
 
 Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave; 
 
 Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest. 
 Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends: 
 Nature and man can never be fast friends. 
 
 Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave! 
 
 Of all the various definitions of civilization I like 
 best that of Hellwald:° 
 
 “Civilization means the mastering of nature and the 
 taming of man.”’ The mastering of nature is the task 
 of science. The taming of man is the task of religion. 
 
 6 History of Civilization, 1874. 
 
120 THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 Man has no friends in the world except other men, 
 and sometimes they are his enemies. As the latest 
 comer on this planet man finds all the older inhabitants 
 leagued against him and has to fight for a footing, 
 sometimes for life. Léon Daudet in a curious and sug- 
 gestive article on ‘‘Moloch and Minerva” ’ defines 
 human life as “the totality of the energies that resist 
 nature.” War, in his point of view, is a periodic re- 
 venge of nature against man, a kind of moral cata- 
 clysm, which breaks out whenever man, through the 
 employment of the forces of nature, threatens to be- 
 come master of the universe. 
 
 Of course man is in a sense a part of nature if we 
 define nature as meaning everything in the universe. 
 But that use of the term is so limitless as to be mean- 
 ingless. So I am using the word in its ordinary sense 
 to distinguish man and his works from the rest of 
 creation. For unless we make this distinction we can- 
 not understand art, science, or religion. Man, by his 
 unique ability to remember and record the past, to fore- 
 see the future and to remodel the world, has set him- 
 self apart from and above other creatures, and the gulf 
 grows as civilization advances. Art is a mode of 
 escape from reality into a new world created by the 
 imagination of the painter, writer, or musician to suit 
 himself. Science affords the means of transforming 
 the material world into one more convenient for the 
 needs of mankind. Religion reveals to us a vision of 
 a better world and fits man for it by showing him how 
 he can transform his own nature. All three of these 
 
 7 “Moloch et Minerve: La guerre, la nature et Phomme,”’ Revue 
 universelle, Jan. 15, 1924. 
 
THE GOD OF THINGS AS THEY ARE 121 
 
 agencies of civilization are efforts to rise above nature, 
 and all three have therefore super-natural aims. 
 
 He who merely paints things as they are is no true 
 artist, but a realist. He who is satisfied with things 
 as they are is no true scientist, but a naturalist. He 
 who worships the ‘God of Things as They Are” is no 
 true Christian, but a heathen. The real pessimist 
 is he who thinks everything is as good as it can be. 
 
 Christianity is an exotic plant, a new species of re- 
 ligion, not natural to the soil and climate of this world 
 and so requiring constant care and cultivation, lest it 
 should be overrun and crowded out by native weeds. 
 The body of man, which he has inherited from the 
 quadruped, is not adapted to the upright attitude that 
 man has assumed, and this is the cause of many of our 
 diseases. The moral nature of man, which he has 
 inherited from the savage, is not adapted to the ethics 
 of Christianity, and this is the cause of many of our 
 sins. Uprightness of the body and righteousness of 
 the soul are acquired attitudes and therefore difficult to 
 maintain. 
 
 We could not expect that the present tendency to- 
 ward a blind admiration of nature, that is of the sub- 
 human and sub-civilized, would be without effect upon 
 the current standards of morality, and such indeed is 
 one of the most conspicuous changes manifest in our 
 
 times. 
 One of the changes that we must frankly face is 
 the rebellion against the code of morals on which our 
 civilization is based. Formerly those who broke with 
 the Church were careful to declare that they acted in 
 the interests of a purer religion and a higher morality. 
 
bey THE GREAT BACKSLIDING 
 
 Those who denied the divinity of Christ were loud 
 in their profession of admiration for the teachings of 
 Jesus. Now, however, we must recognize that a large 
 and increasing class of people in every country not 
 only violate the standards of Christian ethics, but ex- 
 plicitly repudiate them. Violence is advanced as a 
 necessity of the class struggle and even as a desirable 
 thing in itself. Murder is taught as a fine art; the 
 opium dream of De Quincey has become a reality. 
 The destruction of property, the smashing of machines, 
 the damaging of products, the ruination of business, 
 are urged as a sacred duty. Handbooks on the theory 
 and practice of sabotage are published. Work is neg- 
 lected, not merely from natural laziness, but from con- 
 scientious causes. The violation of contract, the break- 
 ing of promises, is regarded as the highest ethics. 
 Hatred is diligently cultivated. Licentiousness is 
 openly advocated. Altruism is denied as undesirable 
 or impossible. Sympathy is denounced as a symptom 
 of weakness and degeneracy. Charity is considered 
 as a double injury: it curses him that gives and him 
 that takes. Thrift and industry are classed as vices 
 instead of virtues. Cursing is commended; drunken- 
 ness is defended. Family quarrels are encouraged, 
 and wife-beating is advocated by popular writers of 
 the day.® 
 
 8For example—I mean, for instance—D. H. Lawrence in his 
 Fantasia of the Unconscious, advising husbands how to treat their 
 wives, says: “If you hate anything she does turn on her in a fury. 
 Harry her and make her life a hell, so long as the real hot rage 
 is in you... . Fight your wife out of her own self-conscious pre- 
 occupation with herself. Batter her out of it till she is stunned.” 
 And Nietzsche and Wedekind would say “Amen.” 
 
ANARCHY IN ETHICS 123 
 
 Such sentiments in one form or another crop up in 
 current literature so frequently and in such varied 
 forms that it is vain to try to suppress them by any 
 sort of censorship. If it were possible to crush out the 
 Bolsheviki in Russia, the syndicalists of France, the 
 anarchists of Italy, the Nietzscheans of Germany and 
 the I.W.W. of America, there would still persist this 
 spirit of denial of the established principles of ethics. 
 It is not merely antichristian; it is clearly antimoral, 
 for it is a challenge to all that has been regarded as 
 the code of morality throughout the recorded history of 
 the human race. The ccde of Hammurabi of Babylon, 
 the maxims of Ptah-Hotep of Egypt and the laws of 
 Moses of Sinai show that essentially the same funda- 
 mental principles of right and justice were held then as 
 now. In the seven thousand years since, few persons 
 have questioned them, though many have disregarded 
 them. The new thing is that now we hear them openly 
 and emphatically denied and denounced. We can only 
 hope that the advocates of the new immorality may be 
 as unsuccessful as the preachers of the old morality in 
 persuading the people to follow their injunctions. 
 
 Perhaps too we can get comfort from Carlyle’s 
 faith in the future: “Religion in unnoticed nooks Is 
 weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reap- 
 pear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons.” 
 
THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live—Exodus 22:18. 
 
 There must be none among you who burns his son or his daugh- 
 ter alive, or who practises divination or soothsaying, no augur, no 
 sorcerer, no one who weaves spells, no medium or magician, no 
 necromancer. Any one given to these practices 1s abominable to 
 the Eternal; indeed, it is on account of such practices that the 
 Eternal dispossesses these nations before you.—Deuteronomy 18:11- 
 12 (Moffatt trans.). 
 
 RELIGION has been followed all through the ages by 
 the dark shadow of superstition. Sometimes lengthen- 
 ing, sometimes lessening; sometimes almost obliterated 
 by the bright light of reason, sometimes obscuring the 
 face of religion as by a storm cloud, it still persists and 
 continues to cast upon our path the distorted and decep- 
 tive image of the faith we follow. 
 
 If certain of our most popular newspapers should by 
 some unfortunate mischance be preserved to posterity 
 the archeologist of two thousand years hence would 
 form about the same sort of idea of our civilization as 
 we have formed of the civilization of ancient Assyria 
 from the cuneiform tablets. He would conclude from 
 reading these papers that astrology was more in vogue 
 than astronomy, that our medicine was mostly magic, 
 that the credulity of the common people was boundless, 
 that the practice of necromancy, divination, and other 
 forms of witchcraft provided popular and profitable 
 professions. 
 
 The reversion to more primitive modes of thought 
 124 
 
MODERN CREDULITY 125 
 
 that is characteristic of the post-war period shows it- 
 self in the double trend toward naturalism and toward 
 supernaturalism. These tendencies are not opposed, 
 as they may appear, but lead in the same direction, and 
 both lead away from a rational religion and a sensible 
 science. Naturalism leads to the admiration and imita- 
 tion of the subhuman and subcivilized, and supernatur- 
 alism in its present form is also turned backward toward 
 the worst aspects of paganism, instead of forward to 
 a higher type of humanity and superior social order, as 
 true supernaturalism should be turned. 
 
 The modern believer is disposed to repudiate the 
 saints and prophets and to pin his faith on Sir Oliver 
 Lodge and Eusapia Palladino. Amulets and charms 
 are again in fashion. The ouija board rivals the type- 
 writer in the production of literature. Palmistry is a 
 popular pursuit. A mint of money has been made out 
 of those who were willing to believe that the disease, 
 sex, religion and race of a distant patient could be de- 
 termined by electronic oscillations of a drop of blood 
 or ink. Rain-making, one of the earliest of the magic 
 arts, is today a profitable profession. Speaking with 
 tongues, which Paul tried to eradicate from the church 
 of Corinth, is a growing practice in certain of our 
 sects. As David Starr Jordan says: “War lifted the 
 lid on society, and secret actions and beliefs held in 
 the dark now dance openly on every green.” 
 
 Rosicrucianism has had a renaissance. The old 
 Roman method of divination by the pendulum has been 
 revived and apparatus consisting of a ball on the end 
 of a thread is being sold for $2.00 to determine the sex 
 of a chicken from the egg. The thirteenth seat in the 
 
126 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 parlor car is hard to sell, and the thirteenth floor is 
 eliminated from some of our newest hotels. Witchcraft 
 has appeared again in the courts. In a recent French 
 trial personal testimony and experimental evidence were 
 brought forward in court to prove that the accused had 
 killed people by sticking pins into their wax figures. 
 Satan worship has become a cult and the Black Mass 
 is celebrated in Paris. That Lord Carnarvon was the 
 victim of Tutankhamen’s curse is commonly believed. 
 Bleeding images appear in Ireland * and weeping virgins 
 in France.? We see pictures of them in our papers. 
 Necromancy, or communion with the spirits of the dead, 
 is the fashionable faith of the hour. Sir Conan Doyle, 
 doctor and detective, has published photographs of 
 fairies. The Great War was most prolific in miracles. 
 Volumes have been written on the visions and legends 
 of this war. St. George and St. Jeanne d’Arc made up 
 their ancient quarrel and fought on the same side, as 
 numerous witnesses attest. In 1914 it was believed by 
 many of the French people and soldiery, and even by 
 some of their officers, that the sudden and mysterious 
 shift of von Kluck’s forces to the east, which allowed 
 Foch to strike at his exposed center and so saved Paris, 
 was due to the apparition of Saint Joan with an army 
 on the left of the invaders. The angels of Mons formed 
 the theme of many a sermon and learned article, and the 
 fact that the vision was traced back to a short story by 
 Arthur Machen in a London daily did not shake faith in 
 1 At Templemore, 1920. 
 
 2“Le Procés de la Vierge qui pleure,’ Mercure de France, Oct. 
 1920. 
 
MYTHS OF THE GREAT WAR 27 
 
 it. The 80,000 Russian soldiers who were transported 
 from Archangel to Scotland and down through Eng- 
 land to France early in the war, were said to have 
 been seen by many people en route. One lady who 
 reported seeing them in a railway station said she 
 knew they were Russians because “they wore their 
 cossacks.” It seems this legend originated in 
 the fact that the supply of Russian eggs was cut 
 off when Petrograd was blockaded, and so the ex- 
 porter telegraphed to the London house ‘80,000 Rus- 
 sians shipped via Archangel.”’ Drake’s drum was heard 
 again on the Devon shore as it had been prophesied that 
 it would be in England’s hour of peril. Lord Kitch- 
 ener’s mysterious disappearance gave rise to many wild 
 legends that still persist. It is evident that Kitchener of 
 Khartum has joined the immortal band of national 
 heroes whose return is expected by their faithful ad- 
 mirers: Barbarossa, Arthur, Roland, Drake, Charle- 
 magne, Dmitri, Marko Kralyevich, Quetzalcoatl—I 
 know there are some others, but I can’t think of them 
 just now. 
 
 There are various explanations advanced to explain 
 the remarkable recrudescence of superstition since the 
 war. Here is one by George S. Snoddy, Professor of 
 Psychology in the University of Utah. 
 
 The present trend toward mysticism, spiritism and the 
 occult is directly due to the instability of mind produced 
 by the world war. When the habits of thought slowly built 
 up by looking at the world from certain definite points of 
 view are quickly disintegrated through intense excitement 
 
128 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 or shifting of viewpoints, there is temporary instability and 
 a return to the cause-and-effect sequences of primitive man; 
 hence spiritism.* 
 
 But whether we can explain it or not the revival of 
 superstition is one of the most striking and alarming 
 symptoms of our times, especially since it seems to arise 
 from a world-wide folk-movement. In England it is 
 reported that “during the last ten or twelve years there 
 has been a remarkable recrudescence of the amulet, or 
 mascot.” * From Germany I recently received a 
 learned pamphlet foretelling the imminent end of the 
 world, with illustrations in color of the sun streaked 
 with blood and the moon darkened. A distinguished 
 chemist in Berlin writes me: 
 
 The Wandervogel Movement is one of the many mani- 
 festations of the spiritual inquietude of our time. Since 
 the war a wave of uncertainty is sweeping over the old 
 world. Theosophy, Spiritualism, Mazdaznan, Yogiism and 
 various other symptoms of mania have each a community 
 in all the large cities. We get an impression reminding us 
 of the time when the Old Greek Polytheism was slowly 
 disappearing and Christendom had not yet come in. Per- 
 haps something quite new is on the march. In two hun- 
 dred years from now the world will have a very different 
 look. 
 
 The railroad news stands sell astrologies but no as- 
 tronomies. ‘The daily horoscope is a popular feature 
 
 3 Quoted by Joseph Jastrow in “Spiritualism and Science,” in the 
 American Review of Reviews. 
 *See leader on “Modern Credulity,” in Nature, Aug. 4, 1921. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DEMONS 129 
 
 of many of our newspapers and if it is omitted from a 
 single issue floods of letters come to ask for the missing 
 number. Government officials, prominent politicians, 
 and financiers are said to guide their affairs by the 
 stars.° Perhaps that accounts for the way things are 
 run. 
 
 American missionaries sent over to China and Korea 
 to convert the heathen become themselves converted 
 to the prevailing demonology and bear testimony to 
 the efficacy of exorcism.® A writer in a leading British 
 review ascribes the wars and violence of the twentieth 
 century to the throng of vampire spirits of those who, 
 cut off from life suddenly and prematurely, seek to 
 satisfy their lust or vengeance through the living.’ It 
 is a gruesome picture he presents: 
 
 Think of the enormous pressure which this mass of living 
 “dead’ must exercise, is at this moment exercising, upon 
 us! Think how easy it is to account, on this ground alone, 
 for many of the crimes and errors of the human race! For 
 we have the whole past of the human race encumbering us 
 and pressing upon us; pressing upon us, not with any mere 
 inert weight of historic precedent, but with the active force 
 of numberless distinct, conscious, passionate personalities, 
 all dying of hunger and thirst, so to speak, and all strenu- 
 
 5 For an account of the alleged influence of Madame Marcia, the 
 astrologer, on the career of President Harding see Collier’s, May 
 16, 1925. 
 
 6 See “Demon Possession,” by Rev. John L. Nevius, and “Korean 
 Devils and Christian Missionaries,” by David K. Lambuth, Inde- 
 pendent, Aug. 1, 1907, where quotations from the letters of fifteen 
 missionaries are given. 
 
 7“Optimism or Pessimism?” by George Barlow, in Contemporary 
 Review. 
 
130 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 ously endeavouring to appease that hunger, to assuage that 
 thirst, by taking possession of and using the still warm- 
 blooded, still available, frames and nervous systems of the 
 living! 
 
 The war revived the pagan practice of rhabdomancy, 
 and the magic wand was used to find water on both 
 sides the line. In 1920 two books were published in 
 Paris ° in defense of its powers and in 1921 the French 
 Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to study it. 
 Germany has a weekly periodical devoted to the art.° 
 
 The forked twig of witch-hazel and more pretentious 
 divining rods are still much employed in the United 
 States to discover water, oil, gold, and lost articles. 
 
 Witchcraft is a disease of the imagination, but it is 
 not an imaginary disease. Quite the contrary, it is a 
 serious malady and very difficult to cure, especially 
 when it becomes epidemic. Church and state united to 
 stamp it out four hundred years ago, but their most 
 severe measures were unavailing. We must in justice 
 to our ancestors remember that although there never 
 was really any such thing as witchcraft there really 
 were witches, that is, malignant old women and evil- 
 minded men who believed that they had and were 
 believed by the community to have supernatural power 
 to persecute their neighbors. It therefore was not un- 
 natural that the Government should impose upon such 
 undesirable citizens the same penalty applied in those 
 
 8 By Mager and Landesque. See La Nature, June 4, 1921. 
 
 9 Die Wiinschelrute. For the history of the subject see “On the 
 So-Called Divining Rod,” by Prof. W. F. Barrett, in Proceedings 
 
 of the Society for Psychical Research, Vols. XIII and XV. The use 
 of the divining rod is condemned in Hosea 4:12. 
 
TELEPATHIC MURDER 131 
 
 days to such minor misdemeanors as catching a hare 
 or cutting down a tree on a private estate, namely, capi- 
 tal punishment. But, although not unnatural, this 
 policy of suppression was obviously unwise, because the 
 more witches were found guilty and executed the more 
 people believed in witchcraft. If the courts confirmed 
 it who could doubt it? A delusion cannot be extracted 
 from the brain by forceps from without like a bullet. 
 It has to be expelled from within by direct action of 
 the patient himself. It is a case of auto-intoxication 
 and the only remedy is auto-expurgation. 
 
 The general atmosphere is becoming so foggy with 
 superstition that we may expect a revival of witchcraft 
 mania and persecution to break out at any time even in 
 our own enlightened land. 
 
 William Jennings Bryan, dying at the close of his 
 fight against evolution at Dayton, Tenn., is thought 
 by many to have been “mentally assassinated by the 
 hypnotic animus of anti-Christ, expressed principally 
 through Roman Catholic pagans and anti-Christian 
 Jews.” *° The spread of a popular belief in the possi- 
 bility of exercising a malign influence at a distance by 
 occult power has been found favorable in all ages to an 
 outbreak of an epidemic of witchcraft. 
 
 I recently met a young university woman who was 
 doing extension work in a rural community where the 
 purest Anglo-Saxon breed prevails, and who had been 
 driven out with a shotgun on the ground that she taught 
 witchcraft. She had been telling fairy stories to the 
 children, and the local authorities argued that these 
 stories were either false, in which case she was a liar, or 
 
 10 The American Standard, Aug. 1 and July 1, 1925. 
 
132 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 they were true, in which case they were witchcraft. 
 
 The last prosecution under the witchcraft law in 
 England took place in 1904, when Sir Alfred Harms- 
 worth, editor of the Daily Mail, instituted proceedings 
 against Professor and Madame Keiro, palmists and 
 crystal gazers. The jury found them guilty both of 
 fortune telling and of obtaining money under false pre- 
 tenses, but the judge only took into consideration the 
 latter count and suspended sentence at that. Instead 
 of burning witches we advertise them. 
 
 It may be thought that our proficiency in science and 
 engineering will prevent any such recrudescence of su- 
 perstition; but history does not give us hope of im- 
 munity. Magic flourished in Mesopotamia at the time 
 the Babylonians were raising skyscrapers that alarmed 
 high heaven. The Romans consulted the entrails of 
 animals when they laid the aqueducts and sewers of 
 Rome. There are today more believers in magic, nec- 
 romancy, astrology, divination, and other forms of 
 witchcraft than there ever were. They may not form 
 so large a proportion of the population as they did in 
 ancient Assyria and Rome or medieval Europe, but 
 they are more numerous because the population is much 
 greater. 
 
 Science rules in the laboratory and the machine shop. 
 It does not yet hold sway over the mind of the people. 
 The extension of science teaching in the public schools 
 does not seem to have increased the liking and respect 
 for science as much as was anticipated before it was 
 introduced. ‘This is an age of science but not a scien- 
 tific age. David Starr Jordan of Stanford points out 
 that: 
 
A SAFER WORLD FOR FOOLS 133 
 
 The recent recrudescence of superstition, a striking ac- 
 companiment of an age of science, is in a sense dependent 
 on science. Science has made it possible. The traditions 
 of science are so diffused in the community at large that 
 fools find it safe to defy them. Those who take hallucina- 
 tions for realities; those whose memory impressions and 
 motor dreams a defective will fails to control; those who 
 mistake subjective sensations produced by disease or dis- 
 order for objective conditions—all these sooner or later 
 lose their place in the line. In falling out, they take with 
 them the whole line of their possible descendants. .. . If 
 all men sought healing from the blessed handkerchief of 
 the lunatic, or from contact with old bones or old clothes; 
 if all physicians used “revealed remedies” or the remedies 
 “Nature finds” for each disease: if all business were con- 
 ducted by faith: if all supposed “natural rights’ were rec- 
 ognized in legislation, the insecurity of these beliefs would 
 speedily appear. Not only civilization, but civilized man 
 himself, would vanish from the earth. The long and 
 dreary road of progress through fool-killing would for cen- 
 turies be traversed again. That is strong which endures. 
 Might does not make right, but that which is right will 
 justify itself as the basis of race stability.“ 
 
 In fact the machinery of science may be employed to 
 defeat the aims of science, as the spread of the power 
 of Christian nations has multiplied the number of 
 heathen. Opportunity does not insure progress. Chris- 
 tian missionaries like Livingstone rejoiced over the 
 opening up of Africa by commerce and communications 
 because they naturally and naively assumed that it 
 meant the advance of Christianity. On the contrary it 
 led to an unprecedented spread of Mohammedanism, 
 
 11 The Stability of Truth, p. 57. 
 
134 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 their most formidable foe. The printing press contrib- 
 utes to the propagation of superstition and obscuran- 
 tism as well as to the promulgation of religion and 
 science. In our books and magazines fiction outweighs 
 fact by many thousand tons. Radio has given Voliva 
 the chance to broadcast his gospel of a flat earth from 
 WCBD, Zion City, all around the world. Radio has 
 also afforded an opportunity for a new form of an 
 ancient mode of divination, the sortes Homerice or 
 sortes Biblice. Instead of opening by chance a volume 
 of the Iliad or the Bible and taking the first passage the 
 eye lights upon as a message from heaven, the up-to- 
 date occultist when in doubt or distress goes to the radio 
 receiver with the eyes shut and turns the dials till he or 
 she hears a fragment of speech or song that may be in- 
 terpreted as an answer to the problem or a guide to ac- 
 tion. 
 
 It is almost hopeless to combat a widespread wave of 
 superstition. Its causes are unknown and its course is 
 incalculable. It is cosmic in its scope, and no nation, 
 perhaps no individual, can altogether escape its infu- 
 ence while the pendulum of the world’s thought is on its 
 backward swing. The best any one can do is to give 
 his own brain a thorough housecleaning at least once a 
 year, peering into every dark corner, wiping out the 
 medieval dirt, and burning up every rag of superstition 
 that may serve to shelter and to spread the pandemic. 
 
 Housecleaning time, when every article of furniture 
 from cellar to garret is handled and dusted, occurs tra- 
 ditionally each spring. An annual purification of the 
 spiritual nature, when we overhaul and furbish up our 
 morals, is set by liturgical churches in Lent and by 
 
MIND-CLEARING TIME 135 
 
 other churches with similar regularity in the revival 
 season following the Week of Prayer. The systematic 
 cleansing of our bodies is placed on the calendar as a 
 regular order of business at diurnal or at least hebdom- 
 adal intervals. But there is no set period for intel- 
 lectual purification, and, naturally enough in the stress 
 of daily work, this is neglected. 
 
 Yet it is quite as important to keep our minds in good 
 condition as our houses, our consciences, or our bodies. 
 A false belief may make more trouble in the world than 
 a wrong intention. No priest or church has ever ex- 
 aggerated the importance of a right creed. The only 
 faults of the heresy hunters are in their narrow defini- 
 tion of orthodoxy and the strenuous methods they adopt 
 for securing it. A little lying is a dangerous thing, 
 especially if you get the habit. Cherish no illusions; 
 they are liable to change into delusions. Have no blind 
 spots in your eye except those you were born with. 
 
 Errors breed errors. They multiply like microbes, 
 especially through neglect. A single false belief may 
 infect all the sound facts you pile in on top of it. 
 
 It may not take so much time for the annual inven- 
 tory of your ideas as you may think, but in any case it 
 is worth doing. Take down each principle and funda- 
 mental theorem from the shelves, valuate it and see 
 that it is in sound condition, not worm-eaten or moth- 
 bitten or rusty or out of date. One can never know 
 when he is going to need one of his ideas, but when he 
 does, it must be in serviceable condition. Very few of 
 us have so wide a range of intellectual activity that all 
 our ideas are kept bright from frequent use. We have 
 to go around and polish them up occasionally. Don’t 
 
136 THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT 
 
 hesitate to send your antiquated mental machinery to 
 the scrap heap and to put in new. The mind is a 
 thought factory, not a museum of antiquities. 
 
 Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road 
 And the craziest road of all! 
 Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode, 
 As it did in the days of Saul, 
 And nothing has changed of the sorrows in store 
 For such as go down on the road to En-dor! 7” 
 
 12 Rudyard Kipling. 
 
THE USES OF ADVERSITY 
 
 Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son 
 whom he receiveth.—HEBREWS 12: 6. 
 
 WHEN modern science began to examine critically 
 the ladder by which man has climbed to his present 
 position it was found that every step was stained with 
 blood; that life was war, and suffering the common lot 
 of all; that animals preyed upon plants, and man upon 
 animals and bacteria upon man, a cycle of suffering; 
 that every species was an Ishmael; that birds and but- 
 terflies were not the careless, joyous things the poet 
 thought them, living only for beauty and pleasure, but 
 were engaged in a terrible struggle for existence; that 
 the song of birds was a war-cry and the adornment of 
 the butterfly was merely war-paint. It was found that 
 there was awful waste in nature, waste of time, waste 
 of work, waste of life. Of a million seeds sown by the 
 wind only one lived. A thousand eggs were cast upon 
 the waters to produce one fish. A hundred men labored 
 and sweat that one might rise. It was an awful revela- 
 tion, that of science fifty years ago. No wonder that it 
 drove men insane; made them pessimists, atheists. If 
 science had stopped here it would have been a gospel of 
 despair. 
 
 But it did not stop; another step changed it to a 
 gospel of hope. It was discovered that this suffering, 
 that looked to a casual glance like an impediment to 
 
 progress, was really its cause; that pain was the main- 
 137 
 
138 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 
 
 spring of the universe; that war was.the mother of all 
 things, as the Greek had said long ago; that the rod of 
 affliction was the modeling tool by which God created 
 all living things; that there could have been no happi- 
 ness now if there had been no suffering in the past; that 
 joy is the offspring of sorrow, out of war comes peace 
 and through death comes life. This changed the whole 
 view. It put optimism in the place of pessimism. Man 
 could see the uses of adversity. 
 
 There was a time when there was no suffering in the 
 world. But that was when there was no life; when the 
 earth was without form and void and darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep. With life came suffering, 
 which increased as life increased. Progress may be 
 defined as increase in the capacity for suffering. A 
 stone does not feel pain, possibly a plant does. Ancient 
 animals suffered less than their descendants. ‘The gi- 
 gantic saurians that used to creep across our western 
 plains were as big as a house, but their brains could 
 have been put into a teacup. Not much chance for 
 pain there. And finally man came, a creature built 
 upon a new and improved plan; but his chief endow- 
 ment was that he was able to suffer more. Several new 
 kinds of suffering were invented expressly for him. He 
 alone of all the animals suffers in anticipation of coming 
 perils, and grieves over the errors of the past. It is the 
 greater capacity for misery that has made men what 
 they are. These are they who have come up out of 
 great tribulation. 
 
 The earliest animals were built to avoid suffering. 
 They were as big as an animal could be and walk. The 
 sensitive parts were protected, as in our modern iron- 
 
DEATH AN AID TO LIFE 139 
 
 clads, by defensive armor as thick as could be carried; 
 hide and scales almost impenetrable. Now these ani- 
 mals are all extinct. They were beaten in the struggle 
 for existence, and by what? By little animals with the 
 nerves on the outside. The animals that were easiest 
 hurt conquered those that were most protected. Now 
 our museums are filled with the relics of these obsolete 
 forms, models of inventions that did not work well, as 
 on the walls is hanging the armor of the knights of the 
 Middle Ages, who were beaten by men without armor. 
 The best protected animal now in existence is the clam; 
 the least protected is the man. To try to escape suffer- 
 ing is not a good plan. It has been tried on a large 
 scale, and it does not work. Don’t be a clam. 
 
 There was a time when there was no death in the 
 world. This was long after the creation of living be- 
 ings; if by death we mean a definite and certain period 
 of life. The protozoa, the simplest organisms, are im- 
 mortal. They do not die a natural death, although 
 they can be killed. These tiny specks of protoplasm 
 grow and divide, but we cannot say that one part is 
 the parent of the other. It is the same individual, only 
 separated into two parts for convenience. It lives and 
 grows as long as the proper conditions prevail; not 
 merely for threescore years and ten, but for thousands 
 of years. In fact, the first created speck of protoplasm 
 is. living yet, divided into innumerable parts. Later 
 there came beings that died—spontaneously, at the end 
 of a given time. It was apparently a great disadvan- 
 tage that an animal should die when it had acquired the 
 strength and skill of maturity, and that a new individual 
 should have to pass through the period of helpless in- 
 
140 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 
 
 fancy. But the animals that died progressed and devel- 
 oped, while those that did not die remained stationary. 
 Death came into the world that we might have a fuller 
 and completer life. 
 
 Now we see more clearly what is meant by the many 
 mysterious sayings in the Bible, that benefits arise 
 from afflictions, that good comes out of evil, and life 
 comes from death. People used to believe these state- 
 ments; yes, they were doubtless true, but in some hazy 
 mystical sense, nobody knew how. Now we know that 
 they are not imaginative, but plain statements of fact; 
 they are not figurative, but literally true. 
 
 We now know something of the benefits of suffering 
 in the past, but why do we have to suffer? We see 
 that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
 pain till now, because it has brought forth ws—but why 
 does the labor continue? Here is man; intelligent man, 
 who knows some things and thinks he knows it all; 
 civilized man, except for occasional lapses into bar- 
 barism; man who stands erect, except when he crawls 
 into some meanness; man with the moral law written in 
 his heart, which he follows whenever he thinks it is 
 good policy; man, who knows God and prays to him 
 whenever he gets into trouble; man, proud man, looks 
 up to his Creator and says: “Here am I, the end and 
 aim of all the creation. I am worth all the pain and 
 suffering that I have cost other beings, but don’t carry 
 this any further. Let us have peace.” 
 
 This is no caricature. You will find substantially 
 this view of the position of man in dozens of theological 
 and scientific works. Of all created beings man is cer- 
 tainly endowed with the greatest capacity for conceit. 
 
DO UNTO OTHERS 141 
 
 Where knowledge ends, faith begins. The more we 
 know of God’s dealings in the past, the better is our 
 foundation for our faith in the future. No suffering has 
 been in vain; so ours, too, must have its use. We are 
 now reaping the reward of the sufferings of others. Our 
 happiness has its roots in a soil watered by the tears of 
 untold generations. Animals and men, innocent and 
 guilty, have suffered for us. They gave themselves as 
 living sacrifices for a people they were not to see, for a 
 _ cause they did not know. 
 
 What are we going to do about it? How can we 
 repay the sacrifices that others have made for us? 
 Christ has told us. By sacrificing ourselves for others, 
 for those around us and those who are to follow, for our 
 neighbors and our posterity. We are to do for others 
 what others have already done for us. We are to take 
 up the cross, Christ’s cross, the symbol of unmerited 
 suffering, the emblem of sacrifice for others, and fol- 
 low him. 
 
LOOKING BACKWARD AND LIVING FORWARD 
 
 (A Baccalaureate Sermon) 
 
 | This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, 
 and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press to- 
 ward the mark—Philippians 3: 13-14. 
 
 OBVIOUS as it is, it seems strange that we are so con- 
 structed that we have knowledge only of the things that 
 are of no use to us, the things of the past, and have no 
 knowledge of the things that we are to use, the things 
 of the future. We are told to look before we leap, but 
 this, like other Die advice, is literally impossible 
 to foto 
 
 Our life is ahead of us, and this is as true of the old 
 as of the young. Our actions, our thoughts, our inten- 
 tions, our desires are necessarily directed toward the 
 future. We have no control over the past, and so we 
 have little interest in it. We front one way. There 
 was a little girl who made that discovery for herself. 
 Her mother was trying to teach her the art of buttoning 
 her dress behind, which, I am told, is an art very diffi- 
 cult of acquirement. The little girl gave the reason for 
 it. “Why, mamma, how can I? I’m in front of my- 
 self.” 
 
 Now it seems a desirable arrangement on the whole, 
 that our eyes, our arms, and our feet should all work 
 in the same direction, that is, forward. It is only in 
 
 emergencies like that referred to that it is awkward. 
 142 
 
MR. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 143 
 
 But when we come to consider how we are placed in 
 time we find that it is different from space. Our action 
 is still directed forward but our look is directed back- 
 ward. It seems as if a mistake had been made in man’s 
 construction, as if his head had been set wrong upon 
 his shoulders, like the mismatched animal we used to 
 draw in collaboration by folding over the paper. He 
 can only walk forward and can only look backward. 
 He can never see where he is going, only where he has 
 been. He wants to see the road ahead of him and he 
 can only gaze on his own footprints, often a dishearten- 
 ing spectacle. I know of nothing so awkward except 
 a man rowing a boat who must look at his wake instead 
 of his port. 
 
 The ancients, struck by this anomaly in man’s con- 
 stitution, imagined beings not so hampered; the twin 
 giants, Prometheus who looked forward and Epime- 
 theus who looked backward; Janus who had two faces, 
 directed toward past and future. 
 
 But while mythology was dreaming of beings better 
 adapted to their temporal environment, science was 
 endeavoring to overcome the difficulty by devising 
 means by which man could get some glimpses of the 
 road in front of him. It may be said that the intellec- 
 tual history of mankind is a record of the efforts made 
 by man to screw his head around on his shoulders so 
 he could look before as well as after. The highest 
 achievement of the human mind is the development of 
 the power of prophecy. It is no wonder that we are 
 fond of saying, “I told you so.” It is the proudest 
 boast that one can make. 
 
 Knowledge of the future is the most useful knowl. 
 
144 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 edge we can have. Indeed, it is the only useful knowl- 
 edge we can have. Reading history is as unsatisfac- 
 tory as reading a guide book to Japan when we are go- 
 ing to Switzerland. There is no guide book to that un- 
 known land into which we are to travel. We would 
 prefer to read history of the United States from 1926 
 to 1976, rather than any other period since the world 
 began. Our own biographies would be more interest- 
 ing to us than the biography of the greatest man who 
 ever lived. But the history of the period 1926 to 1976 
 is not to be studied by us. It has to be made by us. 
 All the world’s a stage and we come on to this stage 
 with our parts unlearned, with no knowledge of our 
 cues, with only a faint conception of our own role or the 
 roles of the other actors, for we have never heard the 
 plot of the play and never have had a rehearsal. If 
 under those circumstances we can make a creditable 
 appearance and performance, what skillful actors we 
 must be! The drama of life requires a nimbleness of 
 wit like that of the early Italian plays, where parts were 
 assigned but the dialogue and action had to be extem- 
 porized. 
 
 You can buy today’s paper for two or three cents, 
 get yesterday’s paper for nothing. If you could buy to- 
 morrow’s paper for $100 you would jump at the chance. 
 It would be a better bargain than today’s paper at 
 two cents. Let us assume that you have a chance to 
 buy tomorrow’s daily. Not a whole and perfect copy 
 but a scrap, a part of a page, not a well printed copy, 
 but a smudged and almost illegible imprint, not abso- 
 lutely accurate either, but, like yesterday’s paper, con- 
 taining many false statements and mistakes. Even that 
 
NEWSPAPER PROPHETS 145 
 
 would be worth something, would it not? Well, that is 
 about what you can get now. For our newspapers are 
 now part of prophecy, and some of it true prophecy. 
 The paper today tells what the weather will be tomor- 
 row, and it hits it right about eighty per cent of the 
 time. It tells us when the sun will rise and the tide will 
 fall to the second. It tells you what meetings and din- 
 ners are going to be held, generally correctly. It tells 
 whether stocks are going up or down, though I do not 
 advise you to place any financial dependence on that. 
 It tells you which party is going to win in the next elec- 
 tion and is right half of the time. It even goes so far 
 as to foretell what sort of clothes the ladies are going 
 to wear next season, which has always seemed to me 
 the most wonderful manifestation of the power of 
 prophecy. 
 
 I do not mean to exaggerate the prophetic power of 
 editors. JI would merely call your attention to the 
 fact that it is a part of the journalistic work and the 
 most important and the most difficult part of it. A 
 paper or magazine that is always foretelling things that 
 do not come to pass is discredited, or ought to be more 
 often than it is. A periodical is of value to us in so far 
 as it is able from the fullness of its information and the 
 prescience of its editors to give some idea of what is 
 likely to happen. Some things are and always will be 
 beyond the power of the wisest men, even editors. It 
 is easier to predict big things than little. It is easier to 
 predict consequences than causes. No one predicted 
 long in advance that a Serbian fanatic would assas- 
 sinate an Austrian archduke, but many predicted the 
 war. 
 
146 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 Men who have done most in the world have been the 
 men who had that insight which is foresight, who could 
 read the signs of the times and reason from cause to 
 effect, men who could screw their heads around a little 
 more than the rest of us and catch a glimpse of what 
 is before us. Such a man can use his power for self- 
 advancement or for the benefit of all. He may bet 
 on the races, or speculate in real estate or go into poli- 
 tics, and win fortune or fame for himself. Or he may 
 become a public prophet, working for the public profit, 
 if you will permit me to put it so, telling people what 
 good results will come from the adoption of a certain 
 policy, or, warning them of the evil consequences of 
 present tendencies, more often the latter, for somehow 
 it is always easier to prophesy bad fortune than good. 
 
 The earliest records in Egypt and Chaldea, painted on 
 papyrus or stamped on clay, show that at the very be- 
 ginning of civilization men’s faces were hopefully turn- 
 ing toward the future, too hopefully in fact, for it has 
 taken many thousand years of steady thought and ob- 
 servation to clear away the rubbish they heaped up, 
 to find out we don’t know so much as they thought 
 they did, the soothsayers, and magicians and astrologers 
 of old. But we should do honor to these wise men of 
 Chaldea and Egypt for what they tried to do and what 
 they did. They were the first scientists, for the essence 
 of science is prophecy. Think what a bold act of faith 
 that was to be the first to assert that 2 times 2 will make 
 4—not have made 4 or make 4 but will everywhere 
 and always and for all. And then that unknown genius 
 who made that still higher flight into the unknown and 
 boldly announced his belief that 12 times 12 would 
 
ASTROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY 147 
 
 make 144. He made good, and mankind thereby 
 stepped upward to a higher plane, standing henceforth 
 upon the multiplication table. 
 
 Now among the clay tablets that record these won- 
 derful things about numbers and equally strange things 
 about angles and squares and circles, are found other 
 prophecies of varying value, telling how long next year 
 would be and when the next eclipse was coming; also 
 directions for finding out when the king was going to 
 die and who was going to beat in the war. This is 
 where these ancient seers went astray. They were 
 tempted to pretend to know more about the future than 
 they did, even as you and I are tempted now. The 
 king and the common man did not care so much about 
 the next eclipse as about how to make money and 
 whether she would marry him or not. So the wise men 
 of the East applied their astronomical knowledge to 
 the affairs of men and it did not work, but they pre- 
 tended it did because it was profitable. It was found 
 that men did not move in simple orbits like the stars. 
 So their science was split into two parts; astronomy, 
 the part that worked and that we have kept to this day, 
 and astrology, the part that did not work and nobody 
 believes in now except those who are still living in the 
 Chaldean age. But don’t blame the astrologers for 
 trying to foretell deaths and marriages as well as 
 eclipses and conjunctions; only blame them for holding 
 on to the idea after they knew it would not work. Let 
 me here give you a piece of practical advice. Look out 
 for two things—pick up an idea at the right time and 
 drop it at the right time. Just follow this simple rule 
 and you will get along all right. The seers and augurs 
 
148 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 made a mistake that is often made yet, when a man 
 thinks that he can explain all of biology by the laws 
 of chemistry and all of sociology by biology. They 
 made this common mistake of carrying a thing too far. 
 
 Science, then, had its origin in the effort to predict 
 the future; and that remains its present purpose, its 
 reason for existence. There is a strong contrast at this 
 point between the temperament of the scientist and that 
 of the historian or, let me say rather, the antiquarian; 
 for a historian may have the scientific temperament. 
 Both are inevitably confined to the study of what has 
 happened, but the scientist picks out from the multi- 
 tudinous records of the past only what seems to 
 him likely to be repeated in some similar form in 
 the future, while the antiquarian is interested es- 
 pecially in what can never happen again. The 
 antiquarian values things according to their rarity. 
 The scientist values things according to their common- 
 ness. The antiquarian values a book that is unique, an 
 event that is unique. The scientist has no use at all for 
 an event that is unique, if there can be such a thing. 
 He is searching for the common element in the rare ob- 
 jects he is studying; the common factor in all happen- 
 ings. Poincaré says that mathematics is the art of 
 giving the same name to different things. The more 
 universal a law, the more highly it is prized. Newton 
 is esteemed one of the greatest scientists because he dis- 
 covered the greatest commonplace, the law of gravita- 
 tion that drops an apple on a man’s head and pulls the 
 planets into their orbits. Iron is the commonest thing 
 in the world; that is why it is so valuable. Water is 
 worth more than wine. The diamond is the least valu- 
 
THE ANTIQUARIAN SPIRIT 149 
 
 able form of carbon. Wisdom is more to be sought 
 than rubies and fine gold, because when it is found 
 there is always enough of it to go around. Nobody can 
 monopolize it. 
 
 The antiquarian seeks the exception. The scientist 
 seeks the rule. The antiquarian wants a variety. The 
 scientist wants the common weal. The antiquarian 
 searches for a curiosity. The scientist has a curiosity 
 that makes him search. 
 
 This distinction between the historical and the scien- 
 tific point of view is important because it lies at the 
 basis of the mutual misunderstanding and mistrust, 
 sometimes rising to the point of antagonism, between 
 these two wings of a college faculty. The historian 
 seems to the scientist to value facts for their own sake, 
 while the scientist goes after the facts that seem likely 
 to have a bearing upon some universal principle that 
 may be applied in the future. A glaring example of the 
 extravagances of the antiquarian spirit is to be found 
 in the article on “Typography” in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, where twenty pages of its valuable space 
 are taken up by a discussion, based upon an enormous 
 amount of scholarly research, of the claims of Guten- 
 berg and Coster for priority in the use of movable 
 type. Of course no one can tell what fact may turn 
 out to be significant, but I confess I cannot conceive 
 that finding out when or where or by whom the first 
 page of type was set could have any possible bearing 
 on what history can teach us about the nature and 
 destiny of the human race. It is too late to apply for 
 a patent on printing. Printing is one of the most im- 
 portant factors in the history of the world, but do we 
 
150 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 really need to know anything more about its origin 
 than that “books printed from movable type were 
 published in Germany and the Netherlands about 1445- 
 14557? 
 
 The difference of attitude between the scientist and 
 the historian is admirably illustrated by Poincaré, the 
 French mathematician :* 
 
 Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. 
 But a collection of*facts is no more a science than a heap 
 of stones is a house. 
 
 And above all the scientist must foresee. Carlyle has 
 somewhere said something like this: “Nothing but facts 
 are of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here 
 is something that is admirable. Here is a reality for which 
 I would give all the theories in the world.” ? Carlyle was 
 a fellow countryman of Bacon; but Bacon would not have 
 said that. That is the language of the historian. The 
 physicist would say rather: “John Lackland passed by 
 here; that makes no difference to me, for he never will 
 pass this way again.” 
 
 Antiquarianism is exclusive; science is democratic. 
 The one treasures; the other shares. We can see the 
 effect of the antiquarian spirit most conspicuously in 
 the sale of old books and objects of art. The first and 
 poorest edition brings more than the latest and best. 
 An only copy of a book that is not worth republishing 
 may sell for thousands of dollars. The trick of the 
 Cumezan sibyl, who burnt part of her books to raise 
 
 1 Science and Hypothesis, p. 127. 
 
 21 think Poincaré refers to the passage at the end of Chapter I, 
 
 Book II of Carlyle’s Past and Present, but he does not quote ac- 
 curately. 
 
THE FALLACY OF ANTIQUITY 15] 
 
 the price of the rest, has become a common business 
 practice. The purchaser of an etching receives with it 
 a scratched print, showing that the plate is destroyed, 
 so he can rejoice his poor selfish soul that only forty- 
 nine or ninety-nine other persons in the world can have 
 the same pleasure as he. 
 
 But monopoly and antiquity cannot really add to the 
 value of a picture or a book, although they may raise 
 its price. The only proper way to value books, pic- 
 tures, and everything else, is by reference to the future. 
 That is the scientific method, the business way. The 
 historical method is to consider what has been the in- 
 terest and influence of a book. But real practical 
 pragmatic present-day value may be quite different 
 from the historical value. Some works of art grow old; 
 some grow young. Some lose value, some increase in 
 value, not merely in antiquarian value through age 
 and rarity but real value based on present and pro- 
 spective usefulness. So we call them immortal works. 
 They flow like perennial springs. 
 
 This may be due to the genius of the author, or it 
 may be due to a misinterpretation of him—no matter 
 which it is. A book is of value for what we can get 
 out of it, which is often something much better and 
 finer than what the author put into it. Exactly what 
 the author meant we sometimes cannot find out and 
 usually we do not care. We are entitled to all we can 
 read into it. Don’t take a man’s word for what he has 
 accomplished. Don’t take any man’s word for it. Wait 
 and see. We credit Columbus with discovery of the 
 New World, and rightly. But in the eyes of his con- 
 temporaries, he was a failure, because he did not suc- 
 
152 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 ceed in what he tried to do, reach India by going west, 
 but accomplished something very much greater. 
 
 Real market prices are always prospective. If you 
 want to learn how little past value has to do with pres- 
 ent value, try to sell off some of your books, your fur- 
 niture, or your clothes, and see how little you get for 
 them. For what you sell with your old clothes is the 
 wear that can be got out of them; not the wear that you 
 have got out of them, for that account is settled and 
 closed. We are all of us dealing in futures. It is the 
 only legitimate business. A merchant when he takes an 
 inventory of his stock does not go to the bills and mark 
 everything, say ten per cent above what he paid. No, 
 he marks some a little above, some a great deal above 
 and some below their cost. He prices them at what 
 they will bring as nearly as he can guess. If he does 
 not guess right he goes into bankruptcy. The restau- 
 rant keeper must be able to tell in advance with con- 
 siderable closeness how many of his chance customers 
 tomorrow will choose apple pie and how many will 
 choose mince pie. He must know it better than the 
 pie-eaters themselves. The gents’ furnisher must guess 
 how many men will come into his shop next week and 
 what is the size of their necks to a quarter of an inch. 
 If he is very far wrong in his figuring on futures he will 
 lose money by stocking up with goods that he cannot 
 sell or running short of goods that he might have sold. 
 For the business man must be a prophet if he is to 
 succeed, so must we all of us if we succeed in anything. 
 And other things being equal our success will be com- 
 mensurate with our prophetic powers. For in order 
 to do right we must see right, and that involves seeing 
 
REAL VALUE IS FUTURE VALUE 153 
 
 the end from the beginning. Teleology is the aim of all 
 the ologies. 
 
 What is true of material things is no less true of the 
 intangible things that we inherit and transmit; lan- 
 guage, science, customs, political institutions, the forms 
 of religion, their real value is their future value. We 
 must be constantly revaluing them, marking them over 
 as a shopkeeper does his goods, sometimes higher and 
 sometimes lower. 
 
 But we neglect to keep our price current up to date. 
 We fail, through timidity and laziness, to reappraise the 
 goods we have inherited from our forefathers. Each 
 generation bequeaths to the succeeding things far more 
 costly than houses and lands—such things as words, 
 ideals, conventions, art, literature, laws, many of them 
 very precious in our sight, for we have purchased them 
 with toil and blood. But what they will be worth to 
 you of the coming generation, you must find out. Don’t 
 be too hasty about the decision. Don’t mark down the 
 goods simply because they are old, because, as I have 
 been trying to explain, age has nothing to do with fixing 
 values. But on the other hand don’t neglect to submit 
 your inherited property to the process of revaluation. 
 It is a terrible responsibility that is being placed upon 
 you as you enter into the heritage of our civilization, 
 the accumulated wisdom of the ages. I must confess 
 that we elders entrust it to you with a good deal of 
 hesitation and apprehension. We would not do it if we 
 could help it. We hand over the old blue china teacup 
 we have kept in the corner cabinet with fear and trem- 
 bling lest you drop and smash it. You are such careless 
 children. You do not seem to appreciate as much as 
 
154 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 you might some of the things we have worked hard for. 
 So we are going to hold on to things till we have to let 
 go and in the meantime give you plenty of warning and 
 impress upon you so far as we can our own sense of 
 values. But we realize after all that it is you who must 
 determine for yourself what of all we give you, you will 
 keep, and what you will replace with novelties. 
 
 But my object in talking to you today is not merely 
 to impress you with a sense of responsibility for the 
 task of the revaluation of civilization that you must 
 inevitably assume. My object is rather to give you the 
 rule for the valuation of all things; and this is, find 
 out if you can, what the things are for. Look to the 
 future, rather than toward the past, for the explana- 
 tions you want. 
 
 When you were children—if you were the normal and 
 intelligent children I presume you were—you ran 
 around asking ““Why?” about everything. It is a good 
 habit. I hope you have kept it up ever since and will 
 keep it up through life. But maybe like most of us 
 you have in large part given it up in the course of years. 
 You probably got tired of asking ‘“‘Why?” because of 
 the unsatisfactory nature of the replies. Sometimes 
 you did not get any and sometimes you got only half 
 the answer, which is about as bad. 
 
 For all the problems of life have two answers, like 
 quadratic equations, and it is of the highest importance 
 that you get both of them. ‘Why?’ is really a double 
 question in one word. It means both “How comes it?” 
 and “What for?” Of these two answers, one, you see, 
 is to be sought in the past and the other in the future. 
 One is the cause and the other the reason. Why do you 
 
THE ANCHORS OF MORALITY 155 
 
 eat? Because you are hungry. That is one answer; 
 that is the cause. Because you will gain strength for 
 the future. That is the other answer; that is the rea- 
 son. Why do you sleep? Because you are sleepy; yes, 
 but also because you want to get rested. Why do you 
 exercise? The cause is the momentary pleasure of it; 
 the reason is the future benefit. And so it is with all 
 the desires, affections, and passions of life. They have 
 their reasons as well as their causes, and to ignore 
 them is to become sensuous and materialistic. 
 
 Our code of morality has this double sanction of past 
 and future. It is anchored like a ship in the harbor, 
 fore and aft. If either anchor chain breaks the ship 
 swings and is in danger of floundering. Why do this, 
 or why not do that? There are always two answers. 
 You ask a child “Why don’t you play with the fire?” 
 and he may answer, “ ’Cause mamma told me not to.” 
 It would be a correct and, so far as he knows, a com- 
 plete answer. Yet it is only half the truth. ‘Because 
 he would get burnt” is the other answer. The causal 
 answer is the mother’s command, and this is all the - 
 child knows. The rational answer, which as always lies 
 hid in the future, the child may have to find out for 
 himself by painful experience. 
 
 Why not tell a lie? Here again split up the “Why?” 
 into its two objects. One answer is to be found in the 
 past, implied in the Ten Commandments. The other 
 answer, that of the future, you have doubtless divined 
 if you have had much to do with people who told lies. 
 
 But it is not always so simple. In regard to most of 
 our morals we are still but children. Somebody has 
 told us not to do something, but has not given us the 
 
156 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 reason. We know that it is best to obey, but not 
 exactly why. Probably we shall never know altogether. 
 We get rapped over the knuckles by church, state, and 
 society for doing this and that, and when we ask ‘““What 
 for?” they can’t tell us. But don’t get to thinking that 
 there is no reason because nobody knows the reason. 
 Reasons are hid in the future and the wisest of men 
 cannot see very clearly into the future. 
 
 There is a stage in the development of some young 
 men and women, perhaps of all, when they begin to see 
 the causes of things and do not yet catch sight of the 
 reasons for things. It is called the period of disillu- 
 sion. The child accepts things naively, as they are, 
 at their face value, without asking Wherefore? or What 
 for? But as he grows older he begins to wonder and 
 inquire about the origin of things. The reply “‘ "Cause 
 tis” no longer satisfies him. The age of inquiry is fol- 
 lowed by the age of skepticism. For the youthful in- 
 quirer gets as his first answer to his questions the cause, 
 not the reason. This is natural, for the cause is easiest 
 to grasp. We are nowadays learning the causes of 
 much of what we see and do, thanks to modern science, 
 but we yet know very little about their reasons. We 
 cannot hope ever to know much about the latter. How 
 mankind came into existence, the study of evolution 
 has done much to explain. Why mankind came into 
 existence, evolution does not yet explain at all and 
 never can explain altogether. 
 
 So when the young man or woman begins to inquire 
 seriously into the meaning of life he takes the first an- 
 swer he gets for all the answer there is. He is not 
 always to blame for this, for sometimes his teachers, 
 
THE FALLACY OF “NOTHING BUT” = 157 
 
 who are employed for the express purpose of answer- 
 ing his questions, do not give him any other answer, 
 or even intimate to him that there is any further an- 
 swer to be given. So he gets an idea that he knows it 
 all and acts accordingly. He discovers that the flag 
 is but a piece of cloth like any other and calls it so, 
 thereby shocking his soldier friend, who risked his life 
 for it. He traces back marriage to a primitive stage of 
 capture and slavery and declares that that is all it 
 amounts to now. He reads up on the early history of 
 religion and it brings him into a mess of superstitions 
 and tyranny, so he will have nothing to do with it. He 
 turns every coat inside out and discovering that it has a 
 seamy side insists upon wearing it that way. He makes 
 the discovery—and believes that he is the first ever to 
 have made it—that our manners and customs, our 
 political and religious ideas, our social and business 
 forms, are largely built up on conventions; thereupon 
 he denounces them all as “the conventional lies of civi- 
 lization” and would return to savagery, until he learns 
 that the savage has more conventions and conventions 
 of more absurd kinds than we. 
 
 The child who cut open his drum to find out what 
 it was made of, found out, but forever lost the possi- 
 bility of finding what it was made for. This is, as I 
 said, a dangerous stage to one passing through it. It 
 is ruinous to one who never finds his way out of it. 
 He becomes a materialist and a pessimist; unable to 
 contribute to the progress of humanity because he can- 
 not conceive of progress. To understand progress, still 
 more to take part in it, requires the ability to look for- 
 ward. The materialist is a statist. He is more con- 
 
158 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 servative than the conservatives, for he does not admit 
 the idea of change. If property was robbery in the 
 beginning, property is robbery now, he assumes. If 
 marriage was slavery, marriage is slavery. If govern- 
 ment was founded on force, government is founded on 
 force. If religion was superstition, religion is supersti- 
 tion. If a man was a beast, man is a beast. And so 
 on to the end of the chapter. 
 
 Such a man is blind to the future because he is look- 
 ing backward. Now in looking backward he can some- 
 times tell what things were, rarely what they are, and 
 almost never what they will be. He is blind to the 
 better part of our literature as he is blind to the es- 
 sence of our civilization, for the language of the higher 
 passions, of patriotism, love, and religion, is necessarily 
 conventional, symbolic. This is because the higher 
 passions and the deeper emotions cannot be fully ex- 
 pressed in any language yet existing. So the poets and 
 the prophets have to speak in a foreign tongue, using 
 our words, but not in the literal and ordinary sense, be- 
 cause our words are not suited to them. They have 
 to invent a language of their own, because they look 
 to the future, where lies their reason. They need a 
 language of the future and even Esperanto will not do. 
 The better part of theology is eschatology. All true 
 religion is prophetic, all true art is prophetic, all true 
 science is prophetic, all true politics is prophetic. They 
 all have their eyes fixed on something seen afar, invisi- 
 ble to common gaze and not to be described in common 
 language, which can only describe things seen and 
 known, that is, things past. All true love is prophetic. 
 Why does a young man fall in love with a particular 
 
THE SNARE OF WORDS 159 
 
 girl? Is it the shape of a nose, the curve of a lock of 
 hair? It means more, a lifelong companionship, the 
 founding of home, the raising of family. 
 
 It is therefore absurd to ask people to say exactly 
 what they mean; they cannot when they mean very 
 much. It is only our trivialities and commonplaces that 
 can find language perfectly adequate to their expres- 
 sion. We can tell the whole truth only when there is 
 not much to tell. We cannot afford to take words at 
 their face value any more than we can take men, 
 theories, and institutions at their face value. Some- 
 times they mean more, sometimes less. Do not think 
 that you can get their real value by their history. You 
 cannot always tell what a word means by tracing it to 
 its origin. You are getting further away from its mean- 
 ing the further back you go. ‘The cause is not the 
 reason. The answer to a problem is found at the end. 
 The moral to a fable is found at the end. The point to 
 a joke is found at the end. So whether life is a prob- 
 lem, a fable, or a joke, its meaning is to be sought in 
 its end. 
 
 This distinction between the cause and the purpose 
 of things, between how-comes-it and what-for, is origi- 
 nal but not new. After I had thought it out for my- 
 self, with more hard thinking than you would suppose, 
 seeing how glibly I talk about it, I happened to turn to 
 Plutarch’s ‘‘Pericles” and found that he had stated the 
 point clearly in the following passage: 
 
 Now there was nothing in my opinion, to prevent both 
 of them, the naturalist and the seer, from being in the right 
 of the matter; the one correctly divined the cause, the 
 
160 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 other the object or purpose. It was the proper province of 
 the one to observe why anything happens, and how it comes 
 to be what it is: of the other to declare for what purpose 
 anything happens and what it means. 
 
 But I am glad I did not read Plutarch till after I 
 had worked out the idea for myself because I would 
 not have appreciated its tremendous importance in the 
 interpretation of nature, ethics, and religion. We have 
 nowadays many more naturalists than seers. Seers 
 were never more needed. Darwinism has not, in my 
 opinion, banished teleology from biology but has merely 
 buried it deeper. Bergson in his Creative Evolution is 
 one of the seers who are trying to dig it up again. | 
 
 Allied to the mistaking the cause for the reason is 
 mistaking the material for the object. What is a 
 statue? It may quite justifiably be called a block of 
 marble. It can be weighed as such by the physicist and 
 analyzed as such by the chemist. Its remarkable form 
 can be completely accounted for by the chisel strokes 
 of the sculptor, these by the blows of the hammer, 
 these by the power of the muscles, this by the poten- 
 tial energy of the food eaten, this can be traced back 
 to the rddiant energy of the sun; this establishing a 
 complete causal chain, mostly well understood. It 
 might be argued by a materialist that there was no 
 room for anything else, that everything was accounted 
 for. So it is, except the most important thing of all, 
 what the statue is for, what the sculptor meant by it. 
 These physical and chemical investigations have not 
 helped us in the least to understand the meaning of the 
 statue. They have perhaps actually hindered us from 
 
THE PREVISION OF PROVIDENCE 161 
 
 the perception of its significance by absorbing our time 
 and attention and leading us all the time in the wrong 
 direction; into the past, not into the future, where the 
 meanings of things are to be found. The question 
 ‘What for?” should not be put to the past. “For” is 
 part of “forward.” 
 
 For man lives forward. He alone has the power of 
 prevision. He plans for years; builds for centuries in 
 advance; sacrifices himself for the benefit of genera- 
 tions to come. He alone has visions of a distant future, 
 of a Utopia upon earth, or of a city not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 
 Now man is not peculiar in working for the future, 
 but he is peculiar in knowing that he is. The bee stor- 
 ing up honey in the comb for the days when there shall 
 be no more flowers, the bird making a nest for eggs 
 yet to be laid, they are obviously working for the fu- 
 ture, but it is not due to their own forethought. In the 
 case of the instinct of insects and birds there is ap- 
 parently also prevision, but it is not their own prevision. 
 It seems that the world as a whole has this characteris- 
 tic of prevision which is characteristic of the highest 
 human intelligence. That is, in the world order man 
 recognizes something working that is akin to his own 
 mind but manifestly greater and more knowing and 
 farther seeing, and to this he gives the name of God. 
 Providence means literally “seeing ahead.” 
 
 This gift of prevision, of foresight, which man in 
 some degree possesses, has in all ages been recognized 
 as the most divine of his faculties, for it is most like 
 the teleological constitution of the cosmos. Because 
 men have this gift they can set up for themselves goals 
 
162 LOOKING BACKWARD—LIVING FORWARD 
 
 in advance of their times, higher ideals to be attained; 
 and then strive for them consciously and consecutively. 
 That is to say, the motive power of human actions may 
 be set in the future instead of the past. We see a 
 horse go faster as it is going homeward, and we say 
 that is an intelligent horse; so it is. He is not being 
 driven but led, and led by an unseen motive, oats 
 ahead, not whip behind. That is a sign of intelligence, 
 the sign of intelligence, in fact. You can judge of the 
 intelligence of a man in the same way, by whether his 
 motives are ahead or behind. It is more noble to be 
 moved by a pull than by a push. 
 
 The true object of education is the cultivation of this 
 faculty of prevision. If you young people have been 
 properly educated you have had your heads turned. A 
 college is a “school of the prophets,” quite as much as 
 that mentioned in the Bible. You young men shall see 
 visions and you young women shall prophesy. And 
 they will not be vain imaginings because you will know 
 how to make them come true. You have learned from 
 your study of science to have faith in the validity of 
 nature, in the constancy of law. You have been taught 
 in your historical studies what can be accomplished by 
 human exertion and how it should be undertaken. His- 
 tory is like a chauffeur’s mirror, set so as to show the 
 road behind, but with the view of telling you what is 
 coming. You should now be able to see the outcome 
 from the beginning. You are expected to be able to 
 tell a current from an eddy in the tide of the affairs of 
 men. You should know how to tell a fad from a re- 
 form. As a gardener knows the difference between 
 weeds and flowers when the first cotyledons appear 
 
ANGELS UNAWARES 163 
 
 above the soil, so you should know the difference be- 
 tween profitable and detrimental social movements as 
 they spring up. You should be able to distinguish be- 
 tween a rising statesman and a false alarm. 
 
 This evaluation of new ideas and persons is much 
 more difficult than the revaluation of old things of 
 which I spoke a while ago, and it is also much more im- 
 portant. Princes are always in disguise, in the real 
 world as in fairy books. We entertain angels only un- 
 awares. Great causes appear among us incognito. The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation but as a 
 thief in the night. 
 
INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 Abstain from all appearance of evil—I Thessalonians 5:22. 
 
 THERE is a vice, widely prevalent, very deleterious 
 in its effects, yet rarely condemned by moralists; so 
 rarely in fact that it has had no proper name given to 
 it. Perhaps the nearest we have to a suitable designa- 
 tion is that of “inverted hypocrisy,” first applied to 
 Dean Swift by his friends when they discovered how 
 much piety and benevolence he concealed under the 
 cloak of skepticism and malice. 
 
 Ordinary hypocrisy consists in pretending to be 
 better than you really are. Inverted hypocrisy con- 
 sists in pretending to be worse than you really are. 
 The inverted form is more injurious both to the indi- 
 vidual practicing it and to his associates than is the 
 ordinary. If one assumes a virtue when he has it not, 
 he raises the moral standard of the community and the 
 ideal of human nature to the extent to which his pro- 
 fession is credited by the people who know him. When 
 one falsely confesses a wicked deed or a mean motive 
 he is lowering the moral tone of society in so far as 
 he is believed. The sin of the deception is the same 
 in both cases, but since the evil in our own nature de- 
 lights to recognize its counterpart in others, we are 
 more apt to assume the truth of the ignoble profession 
 than we are the claim to virtue. The reflex action upon 
 
 the individual posing as saint or sinner is also very im- 
 164 
 
ASSUMING VICES 165 
 
 portant because one inevitably and unconsciously tends 
 to become what he habitually pretends to be and is gen- 
 erally regarded as being. 
 
 The amount of lying that a man will do to prove 
 that he has been a rogue is appalling. It is a vice com- 
 mon to the prayer meeting and to the saloon. The con- 
 vert who proclaims that he has “broken all the ten 
 commandments time and again, year after year,” may, 
 after all, be only breaking that against lying. In 
 Shaw’s play of “Major Barbara,” the repentant sinner 
 brought in much revenue to the Salvation Army by 
 telling how he used to beat and kick his poor old 
 mother, until the appearance on the scene of the indig- 
 nant lady in a belligerent state of mind compelled him 
 to retreat and retract, and freed him at one stroke from 
 the burden of his fictitious sins. The practice of con- 
 fession offers an insidious temptation to overindulgence 
 even beyond the limits of truth. Like Topsy, it is hard 
 to stop when we get started. It requires great moral 
 restraint at times to avoid becoming an inverted hypo- 
 crite. 
 
 That one’s motives for adopting this perverted form 
 of moral prevarication are often creditable does not, of 
 course, excuse it or neutralize its evil consequences. 
 Whether it is modesty, cynicism, an abnormal sense of 
 one’s own unworthiness, a desire not to be peculiar, or 
 the fear of being taken for a prig, the practice of wear- 
 ing one’s clothes seamy side out and putting the worst 
 foot forward has deplorable effects. A man who “never 
 does a proper thing without giving an improper motive 
 for it” is apt to be an undesirable citizen. We measure 
 up by the height of our companions, and what lowers 
 
166 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 
 them in our sight lowers us in reality. In a pine forest 
 all trees grow tall. 
 
 We should do unto ourselves what we would have 
 others do unto us, that is, credit us with the highest mo- 
 tive for our actions. Why we do things is often quite as 
 inexplicable as it is why others do them, but if it is nec- 
 essary to adopt an interpretation let us give our good 
 angel the benefit of the doubt. When we are caught 
 giving ten cents to a street beggar we begin to apolo- 
 gize for the act, which, however unwise it may be, is 
 certainly creditable in itself. We say, “I couldn’t help 
 it; I am so constituted that I must give money to the 
 poor,” thus throwing upon Fate or heredity the re- 
 sponsibility for our virtues as we commonly do for our 
 vices. Or we say, “I did it from a purely selfish mo- 
 tive; I should have felt uncomfortable all day if I 
 had not,” which is a fictitious assumption of inverted 
 hypocrisy, because it is indirectly boasting the posses- 
 sion of an ingrained benevolence of character and an 
 active conscience. 
 
 The employer who voluntarily cuts down the hours 
 of work takes pains to state publicly the fact or the 
 fiction that his hands will do more in eight hours than 
 ten. If he provides lunch rooms and resting places for 
 the girls he is careful to explain that it saves time and 
 increases their efficiency. If he puts up model tene- 
 ments he always professes to do it as a profitable in- 
 vestment. This disguised philanthropy is so common 
 that it has been given a special name, “three per cent 
 charity.” 
 
 Inverted hypocrisy is more common among men than 
 among women. Women generally disguise their vices 
 
LIES OF ALUMNI 167 
 
 rather than expose and exaggerate them. A boy will 
 boast of the number of cigarettes he smokes, so many 
 that his doctor has warned him that he will die in a 
 year unless he stops, but no girl will admit taking cold 
 from thin silk hose and pumps. Still women may often 
 be observed to affect cowardice in order to stimulate 
 masculine gallantry. And I have heard ladies who have 
 given away some piece of valuable clothing tell their 
 friends that they never did like to wear it; it was not 
 becoming. 
 
 In the minor forms of inverted hypocrisy which be- 
 long to the realm of etiquette rather than ethics, there 
 is apparently a tendency to improvement. An affecta- 
 tion of inability to sing or speak in public, once almost 
 a requirement of politeness, is now discountenanced. 
 It is not regarded as consistent with true sportsmanship 
 to underrate too greatly one’s own skill at golf or chess. 
 
 This gives ground for some hope that the more ob- 
 jectionable manifestations of the vice may likewise be 
 eliminated by public opinion. The time may come when 
 alumni returning to their alma mater will find other 
 methods of ingratiating themselves with the undergrad- 
 uates than by telling tales of their college pranks and 
 misdeeds which, if true, would be ground for depriving 
 them of their degrees; and when men, in order to prove 
 themselves no better than other people, will not invent 
 a “past” or steal sins from printed books like Kipling’s 
 Tomlinson. 
 
 Many a man has been discovered by accident or 
 death to have been leading a double life; professedly 
 idle and frivolous, really industrious and serious; or 
 posing as a hard-hearted miser, really self-sacrificing 
 
168 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 
 and charitable. In such a case it is a question whether 
 his secret goodness has been sufficient to overcome the 
 evil influence of his bad example. Beware of sheep in 
 wolves’ clothing. 
 
 If a man refuses a drink of whisky it is rarely ad- 
 mitted to be from a preference for sobriety. He thinks 
 it necessary to profess a dislike for the taste or he in- 
 vents a fictitious physician to prohibit his indulgence. 
 He prefers to “own” to a weak stomach than to a strong 
 conscience. 
 
 A decent man in level company will sometimes match 
 the stories of amours with fictions of his own in order 
 to escape the imputation of piety. “Abstain from all 
 appearance of virtue” is the motto of many men. 
 
 A soldier comes back from the war with medals. But 
 he will not submit to any imputation of courageous- 
 ness. According to his own story he went over the top 
 from sheer cowardice, from fear of being laughed at. 
 He enlisted in the first place, not from patriotism, but 
 because he happened to be out of a job at the time 
 and wanted a bit of adventure. 
 
 Such modesty would not matter if people, especially 
 young people, were not deceived by it and come to be- 
 lieve that no one acts from moral motives. To deny 
 good motives is to extend the scope of bad motives. 
 To minimize virtue is to exaggerate evil. 
 
 The man who pretends to know more than he does 
 is a very disagreeable person to associate with, but he is 
 not nearly so exasperating as the man who pretends to 
 know less than he does. You may be able to learn 
 something from the pretentious individual, but one who 
 affects ignorance has you at a disadvantage, and is 
 
CULTIVATED IGNORANCE 169 
 
 liable to lead you into making a fool of yourself through 
 thinking he is one. 
 
 This inverted hypocrisy of the intellect is one of the 
 cultivated vices of the age. In some of its forms it is 
 affected by women even more than men. There still 
 exist women who think that men are fond of simple- 
 tons and apt to choose them for wives. A young man 
 showing a feminine friend about the city in the eve- 
 ning stops for a moment before the open door of the 
 power house of the trolley line and points out the big 
 dynamos. She exclaims: “Electricity is all so mys- 
 terious. I’ve tried and tried, but I never could under- 
 stand how those things worked.” Her escort knows 
 she is mistaken, and suspects she is lying, because a 
 dynamo is much less complicated than a steam engine, 
 over which she would have exhibited no astonishment 
 or perplexity. If he is in a tolerant and good-natured 
 mood he expresses a polite regret at her mental in- 
 capacity and passes on. If he feels a bit malicious at 
 being expected to swallow so silly a remark, he offers to 
 explain its workings, and she, realizing that he has 
 caught her, either refuses to listen, thereby confirming 
 his suspicion, or, after listening, thanks him gravely, 
 for thus telling her that which she knew before or did 
 not wish to know at all. If she had told the truth in 
 the first place that she had never studied the subject, 
 or was not interested in it, or did not think it worth 
 while, or was too lazy, she would have kept a larger 
 part of his respect. 
 
 Formerly travelers in foreign lands professed to know 
 all about the history, art, and literature of the places 
 they visited, and they complimented the reader by as- 
 
170 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 
 cribing to him equal omniscience. Nowadays they write 
 books to display their ignorance and to boast of their 
 inattention. In the old-style book we would read: 
 “Everybody knows the story of the reconciliation be- 
 tween Emperor Fred. Barbarossa and Pope Alexander 
 III effected here on 23d July, 1177, through the medi- 
 ation of Doge Seb. Ziani, commemorated by these three 
 red slabs.” In the modern volume of travel sketches 
 we should find: “The guide pointed out some red stones 
 in the porch and said something happened in there 
 sometime, but I did not pay any attention to what he 
 said, and it is too much trouble to look it up.” Ifa man 
 has not enough energy even to copy from Baedeker, 
 he ought never to travel, still less to write about it. No 
 doubt the second writer knew as much about Pope and 
 Emperor as the first, but he preferred to affect a shal- 
 low pretense of ignorance, idleness, and indifference. 
 So the volumes with mock-modest titles continually 
 swarm out from the presses: “The Roundabout Ram- 
 bles of an Absent-Minded Man,” “The Log of a Lazy 
 Voyager” and “Sight-Seeing by a Blind Tourist.” Now 
 if any man has information to give let him give it and 
 with as little condescension as possible; but we have 
 ignorance enough of our own without buying it at the 
 rate of three dollars a volume. 
 
 All branches of art are impeded in their progress by 
 this hypocrisy of incapacity. The people are too docile. 
 If they are told that they ought to admire certain 
 paintings or poems or music, they dutifully do so. If 
 they are told that certain others possess recondite vir- 
 tues only to be appreciated by a few gifted and well 
 trained minds, they accept that also and meekly admit 
 
SMOKE SCREENS 171 
 
 their incapacity. A few years later, after the connois- 
 seurs have tired of their pretense of esotericism, the 
 work of art is taken from the sacred shrine and given 
 freely to the people, who straightway discover that it is 
 not hopelessly above their heads after all. It takes its 
 place among the other idols of the market place and 
 attracts a proper number of sincere worshipers. 
 
 Who complains of the obscurity of Browning nowa- 
 days? Anybody can read him without regarding it asa 
 literary feat. This is not due to the labors of the 
 Browning Society in supplying lexicons, keys, elucida- 
 tions, and diagrams, nor does it prove that the school- 
 boys and schoolgirls of today are smarter than their 
 parents. It only means that the ban is off. Meredith’s 
 novels become comprehensible just as soon as one by 
 one the copyright drops off and they come out in cheap 
 edition. Ibsen’s plays, once the monopoly of the elect 
 (self-elected), now are found too simple to brag about. 
 A quotation from the Rubaiyat no longer serves as a 
 password of the Society of the Illuminati. It is too 
 common to use even as the title of a short story in a 
 Sunday supplement. The superstition of incompre- 
 hensibility still shadows Henry James, but it will not 
 last much longer. Before long we shall discover that 
 the few who profess to be able to understand all he has 
 written and the many who profess not to be able to 
 understand anything he has written are equally false in 
 their pretensions. 
 
 On summer afternoons the band in the park plays 
 Wagner between Verdi and Sousa. The crowd frankly 
 enjoys it and applauds. Nobody stops his ears to shut 
 out the horrid cacophony that shocked our parents. 
 
172 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 
 Nobody puts on a mystified and baffled expression. 
 What we call the elevation of popular taste consists 
 principally in inducing the people to reveal their taste 
 instead of masking it under the affectation of incapac- 
 ity. 
 
 Inverted hypocrisy, whether of mind or morals, un- 
 deniably exerts a bad influence on the whole. On the 
 other hand there is much to be said of its converse, the 
 normal kind of hypocrisy, even though it is classed 
 among the vices instead of the virtues. 
 
 How far a man can keep himself in physical health 
 by assuming that he is well is a disputed question. 
 Christian Scientists have gone to extremes—but we all 
 say that “there is something in it.” At least we ac- 
 knowledge that a man seriously impairs his health by 
 thinking himself diseased. 
 
 We know that in the moral sphere this method will 
 go further than in the physiological. ‘‘Assume a virtue 
 if you have it not” is sometimes good advice. To pro- 
 fess moral health is unquestionably more wholesome 
 than to assume moral disease. A man who sets up a 
 false reputation for himself may by that means acquire 
 a real character. The pretense may become an actual- 
 ity, the fiction become a fact. 
 
 “What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me,” 
 says Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 An ingenious French writer, Jules de Gaultier, has 
 built up a philosophy of ethics based upon the assump- 
 tion that hypocrisy is not a vice but a virtue, in fact 
 the chief of virtues since it is only by means of it that 
 moral advance has been made. According to this 
 theory, which he called ‘Bovarysme’—from Flau- 
 
MAKING MYTHS COME TRUE 173 
 
 bert’s Madame Bovary—man sets himself up as a 
 model of what he would like to be and does in that way 
 come nearer to his ideal than he was or than he other- 
 wise would be. A nation believing itself, however er- 
 roneously, the most courageous or enterprising people 
 in the world may in course of time actually become 
 such. 
 
 It is, says Gaultier, by means of the power of af- 
 firmation, of assuming an ideal and so converting it 
 into reality, that man has made all his ethical progress. 
 The “Moral Myth” of Gaultier corresponds to the “‘So- 
 cial Myth” of Sorel, who has made it the mechanism of 
 social progress. 
 
 But can that be called a myth which is but the first 
 step to reality? When an architect wants to build a 
 house he draws a picture of it, green trees, pretty flow- 
 ers, children playing politely. That is a myth, a piece 
 of hypocrisy. No such house exists on the lot—but 
 were it not for the picture the house would never be 
 built. 
 
 James’s “Will to Believe” applies not to “impossi- 
 bilities” but to unrealities, which may be made actuali- 
 ties if we desire them strongly enough and have faith 
 in their possibility. It is only by reaching out his oars 
 in advance of the boat that the rower can make prog- 
 ress. Vaihinger in his Philosophy of “As If” (Als Ob) 
 makes this the basis of a complete and elaborate theory 
 of social progress. 
 
 We must admit that it is wrong to be a hypocrite for 
 the purpose of deceiving other people. But is it wrong 
 to be a hypocrite for the purpose of deceiving oneself? 
 Is it altogether a disadvantage to see yourself, not as 
 
174 INVERTED HYPOCRISY 
 
 you are, but as you would like to have others see you? 
 When you are learning to swim or skate, your instructor 
 keeps telling you that “you can do it,” that “you are 
 doing splendidly.” He is lying, if you like, but if he 
 can make you believe his lie it will cease to be a lie and 
 become a truth. 
 
 We must beware of carrying over in to the realm of 
 psychology the laws of inanimate nature. Wishing and 
 hoping and believing that the weather will be better to- 
 morrow will make no difference with it, but wishing 
 and hoping and believing that you will be better—or 
 worse—tomorrow may make a difference. 
 
 At any rate if you are going to do any pretending, be 
 sure you pretend on the right side. It was not alto- 
 gether a gain when Christians ceased to call themselves 
 “saints.” Some of them really became what they all 
 professed to be. 
 
TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 These are the things that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the 
 truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in 
 your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against 
 his neighbour; and love no false oath; for all these are things that 
 I hate, saith the Lord—Zachariah 8: 16-17. 
 
 THESE phrases sound like platitudes to us. It seems 
 so obvious and necessary that God should be a lover 
 of truth and a hater of lies, and that he should wish us 
 to be like him in this respect. But when we study 
 comparative religions we find that our God is not as 
 other gods; that truthfulness is not regarded by most 
 nations as an attribute of deity. The gods of our an- 
 cestors, Woden and Thor and Loki, were not truth- 
 tellers. The gods of the Greeks and Romans, Jupiter, 
 Juno, and Minerva, were exceedingly skillful in lying 
 through constant practice. Indeed, there was selected 
 a special god of lying, and any man, who wanted divine 
 assistance and guidance in some important lie he was 
 about to tell, could to this end offer his prayers to Mer- 
 cury. Among the multifarious gods of the Hindu there 
 is not one god of truth, but all of them set examples of 
 deceit and of trickery which the most devout of their 
 worshipers would find difficult to imitate. Greek his- 
 torians tell, as one of the most remarkable facts about 
 that new and conquering race which had come out of 
 the mountains and overspread the plains of Mesopo- 
 tamia, the Persians, that they taught their boys three 
 
 things: to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth. 
 175 
 
176 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 The world, outside of Christendom, has made no ap- 
 parent moral progress in this regard for the last two 
 thousand years; and among three-fourths of the inhabi- 
 tants of the earth today a lie is not regarded as a sin, 
 or, at least, is considered a very venial one. In India 
 a man who does not lie when it is to his advantage to 
 do so, is looked upon as a fool. ‘“Truthfulness is the 
 youngest of the virtues.” * 
 
 But among Christian nations there certainly has 
 been improvement in the matter of truthfulness, and it 
 is safe to say that our own race and civilization have 
 come nearer the ideal than any other the world has 
 ever known. There is here definite, measurable prog- 
 ress, which we can discern more plainly than in most 
 branches of applied ethics. For example, this is a 
 commercial age; and, in commerce, lying used to be 
 thought indispensable. In fact, even now, In most 
 countries, small bargaining is not carried on at all with- 
 out a process of “beating down,” involving many lies 
 on both sides. But in this country, at the present time, 
 by far the larger proportion of business transactions is 
 conducted without misrepresentation. It is beginning 
 to be realized that “honesty zs the best policy.” Look 
 over the pages of advertising which make up the bulk 
 of our magazines and you will find they consist, for the 
 most part, of attractive and cleverly depicted descrip- 
 tions of the articles for sale. Except for such rhetorical 
 flourishes as that the goods in question are ‘‘the best 
 in the world,” “the cheapest on the market,” and ‘“‘in- 
 dispensable to every household,” which, however far 
 from the truth, are not intended to be accepted literally, 
 
 1 Nietzsche. 
 
TRUTHFUL ADVERTISING 177 
 
 ' and must not be considered too seriously, you will find 
 they contain very few false statements. One can buy 
 from magazine advertisements or mail-order catalogues 
 with the same confidence as though he had the article 
 in hand. Patent medicines and health foods are about 
 the only commodities that keep to the old form of ex- 
 aggeration and concealment. This remarkable advance 
 in the ethics of advertising is worthy of our attention 
 because there has been perceptible improvement in the 
 matter within the memory of any one of us. We have 
 reason for great encouragement that such a considera- 
 ble degree of truthfulness and frankness has been at- 
 tained in a field like commerce once supposed to be 
 necessarily dependent for its success on lying and de- 
 
 ception. 
 _ We have reason to hope that in time the news and 
 editorial columns of a newspaper will be as truthful as 
 its advertisements, and that finally household and so- 
 cial lying may be eliminated. Even politics is not hope- 
 less. I may be too optimistic on this point, but I am 
 quite positive, in my own mind, that there is less falsi- 
 fying and misrepresentation of opponents, arguments, 
 and position in political speeches nowadays than there 
 used to be. I believe that any one who will compare 
 the campaign literature of the time of Washington and 
 Jefferson with that of the last presidential campaign, 
 will come to the same conclusion, however little that 
 may say for the truthfulness of either. But this is 
 merely an attempt to see light through the thickest of 
 the clouds of falsehood that envelop us. 
 
 It is, at any rate, a great triumph to have a prevalent 
 opinion that truthfulness is a virtue, and to have lying 
 
178 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 under an ostensible condemnation. The most degraded 
 among us feel this, and the belief in Lis own truthful- 
 ness is the last shred of self-respect that a man gives 
 up. Approach some man who you think has resigned 
 all pretention to morality, and try it. Tell him that he 
 is a habitual drunkard, and he will grin; accuse him 
 of the grossest licentiousness, and he will blush—with 
 pride; but call him a liar, and you will have to dodge. 
 
 What we need, then, is not a higher ideal, nor a 
 sharper realization of the wickedness of lying, but a 
 more sensitive conscience to detect our deviations from 
 the truth. Most of our lying is done unconsciously, 
 which, of course, does not make our case one bit better, 
 but accounts for our obliviousness. 
 
 I will not discuss the question as to whether a lie is 
 ever justifiable. It is generally admitted by authori- 
 ties on ethics that there are occasions when a lie is per- 
 missible. Probably none of us would hesitate to mis- 
 lead a crazed man with a gun chasing a child to shoot 
 it, when asked as to the street down which it had gone. 
 Such cases are so rare as to be of no practical impor- 
 tance in comparison with the number of unnecessary 
 lies we tell. Neither shall I attempt to decide whether 
 we can get along in this world and tell the truth all the 
 time. I believe there have been entire days in my life 
 in which I have not told a lie, and I presume all of you 
 can say as much or more. I do not suppose that any 
 of us would venture to declare that he had spent a week 
 without committing this sin, unless perchance he were 
 living in solitude. We often hear amusing stories 
 of several persons agreeing to tell the truth for 
 some stated period, and of the disastrous consequences 
 
THE ART OF TRUTH-TELLING 179 
 
 that follow. Very likely the stories are not true, but 
 conventional lies are so interwoven with our civilization 
 that such an ideal as absolute truth, frankly expressed, 
 seems hopelessly unattainable. No one of us can re- 
 form the world. Nobody can reform anybody else, 
 anyway. The only thing we can do, practically, is for 
 each one of us to resolve to be a little more truthful 
 than our neighbor, even if we suffer for it, and to de- 
 vote more thought to the problem of how to tell the 
 truth. Like every other virtue, truth-telling does not 
 result from merely willing to do it. Nobody can be 
 good, or what is more important, do good, by simple ef- 
 fort of the will; no more than he can become an ath- 
 lete or an engineer by wishing to be one. There is a 
 constant tendency in the church to exaggerate the im- 
 portance of good intentions, and to ignore results. 
 
 It is, doubtless, worse to make a false statement 
 knowing it to be false; but practically there is no dif- 
 ference, except to the individual. So far as the world 
 is concerned, an untruth is as disastrous as a deliberate 
 lie. It makes a difference to yourself, to the relations 
 between yourself and your God, whether you are sin- 
 cerely mistaken or intentionally deceitful, but to con- 
 sider that point as the most important is to be purely 
 selfish. 
 
 I ask a man when train Number Two leaves, and he 
 says “At four o’clock.” When I miss my train I hunt 
 him up and ask him what he meant. He replies calmly: 
 “Oh, I was just mistaken, that’s all. I didn’t tell a 
 lie. The recording angel did not put down a sin against 
 me that time.”’ Then I know that he is not only care- 
 less but selfish. The true Christian thinks more about 
 
180 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 other people than himself, and more about conse- 
 quences than intentions. That is why the true Chris- 
 tian is truthful. 
 
 I must repeatedly call your attention to the text, 
 which is positive, not negative. It is not ‘Thou shalt 
 not lie,” but it is “Speak the truth,” which is an en- 
 tirely different thing. We find it much easier to obey 
 a prohibition than a command, and so we try to turn 
 God’s laws into that form. We find it easier not to hate 
 than to love; easier to rest on the seventh day than to 
 work on the six days; easier not to lie than to tell the 
 truth. But the negative of a vice is not much of a 
 virtue. 
 
 To tell the truth, it is first of all necessary to have a 
 truth to tell. Truth-telling is conveying a fact from 
 one mind to another. Of course, like everything else 
 in this world, it cannot be perfectly done except in the 
 simplest cases. We can never know the absolute truth 
 if it is at all complex. Language is so inadequate that 
 we can never perfectly convey to another even what we 
 thoroughly comprehend ourselves. But these theoreti- 
 cal limits need not concern us, since we do not usually 
 come near them. ‘The more we learn of truth of all 
 kinds, the more easily we can speak it. All education 
 is merely training in truth-telling. That is what our 
 schools are for. That is the sole purpose of a uni- 
 versity. If asgraduate after four years of hard work 
 can distinguish more clearly between truth and error, 
 the work has been worth while. If he cannot, his uni- 
 versity course is a failure, no matter how many de- 
 grees he has. 
 
 Every scrap of truth is so valuable that we cannot 
 
A SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST 181 
 
 be too diligent in collecting and preserving it. Hun- 
 dreds of thousands of dollars are spent in sending as- 
 tronomers to distant points to watch an eclipse that 
 they may be able to tell the truth a little more nearly 
 about the sun. A cloudy day may make the expedition 
 a failure. Numerous expeditions have been sent to the 
 Arctic and Antarctic regions to find out the truth about 
 the Poles. Many men have sacrificed their lives to find 
 out which species of mosquito carries fever germs. The 
 information on this point in entomology has already 
 saved thousands of lives and will continue to save lives 
 through the years to come. What men are willing to 
 give their lives to discover we ought to be willing to 
 devote a little time to learning. “Wisdom is the princi- 
 pal thing; therefore get wisdom.” Habitual ignorance 
 is a vice. Intentional and premeditated ignorance is a 
 crime. It is the unpardonable sin, because it is a sin 
 against the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. 
 
 We cannot know everything, any more than we can 
 do everything. If a botanist spends his whole life 
 studying one plant, he will be able to come nearer tell- 
 ing the truth about it than you or I, but even on this 
 one subject he cannot comply with that glib request 
 we make of our witnesses, to “tell the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth.” No man can do 
 that. We have no reason to be ashamed that we are 
 ignorant, but we should be ashamed that we are ig- 
 norant of so many things that we could know if it 
 were not that our natural laziness and inborn love of 
 lies prevent us from knowing. 
 
 It is, of course, not desirable that we should all know 
 the same things. Nor is it necessary to decide abso- 
 
182 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 lutely the vexed question as to what knowledge is of 
 the most worth. Obviously that depends upon circum- 
 stances. If a man is going to another city, it is more 
 important for him to know the time tables and the con- 
 junction of the trains than to know about Mars and the 
 conjunction of the planets. It is desirable to know 
 Greek to be able to read the words of Paul and Plato 
 in the original, but if a man were going to live in China 
 it would be worth more to know Chinese. But all truth 
 comes from One who is the only source of truth, and it 
 is all equally sacred. 
 
 We should avoid all contempt of those who are pur- 
 suing truth in a different form or by different methods 
 from our own, and concern ourselves solely with ac- 
 quiring what truth we can in our own way. 
 
 Our first and principal duty in this world is to seek 
 truth. Never be content with a fiction when you can 
 get a fact. Do not accept anything on poor authority 
 when you can get better. Be as scrupulous as a judge 
 about hearsay evidence. You should use secondhand 
 information as reluctantly as secondhand clothes. Be 
 constantly and perpetually critical of everything you 
 hear and read. ‘Prove all things; hold fast that which 
 is good.” Remember that the “Father of Lies” is al- 
 ways devising stratagems to deceive you; that he is ly- 
 ing in wait in the most innocent-looking ambuscades; 
 that he may make an ally of your best friend 
 and most trusted authority, and deceive the very elect. 
 Never let your desire for information get ahead of 
 your powers of discrimination. Don’t swallow faster 
 than you can digest. It is safer to be skeptical than 
 credulous, to miss truth than to believe a lie, In the 
 
AS EASY AS LYING 183 
 
 words of one of our humorist-philosophers, “It is bet- 
 ter not to know so much than to know so many things 
 that are not so,” words which might well be carved 
 over the door of every university and public library in 
 the land. To believe a falsehood is to deny God. It 
 makes you a slave of Satan instead of a servant of the 
 Lord. The devil is a liar and the father of lies. 
 
 Our most insidious temptations come from our ten- 
 dency to believe what we want to believe, to see what 
 we want to see, and to shut our eyes to everything un- 
 pleasant and disturbing to our preconceptions and de- 
 sires. It is exceedingly difficult to accept an unwel- 
 come fact at its par value, or to reject a confirmation 
 of our pet theory because it lacks foundation. It 
 requires the keenest of eyesight to follow truth 
 through the maze oferror. To realize just how much a 
 fact proves; to perceive exactly where are the limits of 
 our knowledge; to know what we do not know—these 
 are what tax our ability to the utmost and cause us 
 most frequently to fail. If two people in an argument 
 would both tell the truth, would admit the full force of 
 an opposing argument, and care nothing about winning 
 a point, they would find themselves not so far apart as 
 they supposed. But, as Huxley says, “An argument al- 
 ways tends to slip from the question of what is right to 
 who is right.” 
 
 There are two sides to truth-telling. As it takes two 
 to make a quarrel, so it takes two to tell the truth: one 
 to speak, and one to listen. It is a social act. Robin- 
 son Crusoe could not tell the truth—nor a lie—until 
 he had a companion on the island. Now it is difficult 
 
184 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 to tell the truth, but it is still more difficult to listen to 
 it. It would be easier for me to tell you what I think 
 of you than to listen while you told me what you think 
 of me. 
 
 One of the principal reasons why there is so little 
 truth told in the world is that most of us do not want 
 the truth told. The more nearly a man comes to telling 
 the truth, the more he is disliked and avoided. Any- 
 body who told the naked truth on all occasions would 
 have to take to the hills. People would not endure it. 
 I am not advocating any violent reform in this matter. 
 It would be a useless waste of breath. I would only go 
 as far as you are all willing to go with me in a plea for 
 a little more toleration of truth-telling. Do not be one 
 of those persons of whom we say that they have to be 
 lied to. Remember that your neighbor is, like yourself, 
 under the injunction to speak the truth, and if you by 
 your attitude are preventing him from speaking the 
 truth you are responsible for his sin of omission or — 
 commission. Don’t compel him to sacrifice either your 
 friendship or his candor. If we would, each one of us, 
 resolve to hear the truth with patience and without of- 
 fense the greatest obstacle to truth-telling would be 
 removed. : 
 
 If a lie is told or the truth is withheld, it is more 
 often the hearer’s fault. For it is easier to tell the 
 truth, in so far as one knows it, than to invent a plausi- 
 ble falsehood, and men would not take the more diffi- 
 cult course unless they were forced to it. We need an- 
 other petition in our prayer “Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion.” We should add, “Let us not lead others into 
 temptation.” To be practical and specific, when you 
 
SUFFER TRUTH GLADLY 185 
 
 go shopping do not try to inveigle the clerk into saying 
 that the article is worth two dollars, but that he will 
 cut it down to ninety-nine cents for you on account of 
 your good looks. It might not be true, and you would 
 become particeps criminis to the lie. Ask the political 
 speaker why he exaggerates the merits of his cause and 
 candidate and he will tell you it is because his auditors 
 demand such talk. Should he give a fair and unbiased 
 statement of the case as he saw it he would do more 
 harm than good to his cause and party, “damning them 
 with faint praise.” Thus the audience is more to blame 
 than the speaker. 
 
 It is unfair to lay the blame for ‘“‘yellow” journalism 
 on the editor alone. The five hundred thousand sub- 
 scribers are more to blame. When you buy a paper 
 take pains to select the most truthful one you can find, 
 the most sober, sane, unbiased, and reliable. Whenever 
 you do this you are working for the Lord and not the 
 Devil. 
 
 A minister said to me not long since that it was im- 
 possible for him to preach the truth to his congregation 
 on many theological questions. He could not tell them 
 that the world moved in theology as in everything else, 
 because they who had not studied such questions held a 
 different opinion from him who had spent many years 
 in such study. That does not imply that he told lies to 
 his people, or that he hypocritically concealed his real 
 Opinions in order to hold his position. He simply felt 
 obliged to leave them in ignorance of much that had 
 been discovered in recent years about the Bible and the 
 nature of its revelation because they would not bear 
 the truth. They preferred to walk in darkness rather 
 
186 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 than in the light. Permit your minister to tell the 
 truth. | 
 
 You can also give encouragement to truth-tell- 
 ing by being less sensitive in social matters. You need 
 not take offense when an acquaintance does not receive 
 your call for reasons known only to herself, without re- 
 quiring her to have you told that she is out, or to con- 
 ceal herself behind the curtains and pretend the electric 
 bell did not work. It is not enough to tell the truth 
 yourself; you should give others a fair chance to tell 
 the truth also. 
 
 Each profession has its own peculiar temptations, its 
 own code of ethics. The preacher, who, above all others, 
 should be privileged to speak the truth, is hampered by 
 antique creeds and the fear of offending his people and 
 so losing his power of doing them good. The teacher is 
 tempted to conceal the weak points in his theory and 
 not to present the facts in their crude, natural form, 
 but to fix them up so as to seem simpler than they are 
 and easier to grasp. The lawyer is tempted to exag- 
 gerate his case and use unfair arguments to win his 
 cause. The doctor is often known to conceal the truth, 
 sometimes because he fears the effect on the patient, 
 but more often because friends and relatives will not 
 endure the truth and will get a more encouraging physi- 
 cian. Orators soon learn that it is their most exag- 
 gerated and untrue statements that win applause, and 
 that when they keep to plain, unadorned facts the audi- 
 ence goes to sleep. Children are trained to lie by some 
 parents, who either punish or scold severely for small 
 offenses, manifesting such holy horror over petty sins 
 that their children fear to confess them. Our conven- 
 
VEILING THE TRUTH 187 
 
 tionalities require constant repression of the child’s nat- 
 ural frankness, and this easily leads to concealment 
 and deception. 
 
 Women seem to be more deficient in the matter of 
 truth-telling than men, perhaps because their deviations 
 from the truth are more lightly regarded than in the 
 case of men. We have a different standard for the two 
 sexes in almost all forms of morals as in this. For ex- 
 ample, it is commonly regarded as worse for a woman 
 to swear or get drunk than for a man. On the other 
 hand, society looks with much more leniency on a 
 woman who tells lies than on a man of like failing. It 
 is the duty of each one of us to work in his own way 
 for the establishment of truth upon earth. All truth, 
 however trivial it may appear, is only a reflection of 
 God who is the truth, just as every pool and every bril- 
 liant pebble reflects the image of the sun. As we grow 
 in wisdom we approach nearer to God the Omniscient. 
 Every fact that we acquire, every error we shun, makes 
 us more like him who is our example. That is the 
 whole duty of man, to know God, and we are learning 
 to know God as we know more and more of his doings 
 in the world, of his eternal and unchangeable laws 
 which we call the laws of nature. Not man alone, but 
 every animal, plant, and stone is made in the image of 
 God, and we know of him by studying them. But the 
 brightness of pure truth, of the very face of God, is 
 too dazzling for our weak eyes. We ask that it be 
 veiled for us. And so man weaves a tissue of false- 
 hood, of mystery, of poetry, to hide the brightness of 
 the Truth, making this world still darker by the shadow 
 of his lies. There is nothing mystic about things di- 
 
188 TELLING THE TRUTH 
 
 vine; there is merely our own ignorance. It is he who, 
 even now as when on earth, opens the eyes of the blind, 
 even those who have blinded themselves and who walk 
 in darkness because their deeds are evil. He has prom- 
 ised us that his spirit, the Spirit of Truth, shall come 
 and guide us into all truth. 
 
THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with 
 all thy getting get understanding.—Proverbs 4:7. 
 
 I PRESUME Christians pay less attention to this than 
 to any other injunction in the Bible. As a class they 
 seem to be no more eager than other people to get wis- 
 dom, and you know there is nothing more unpopular 
 than learning. In general people acquire as little 
 knowledge as they can, and while a man will cross the 
 street to avoid a creditor you often find one going 
 around a block to dodge a fact that is coming toward 
 him. Yet it is undoubtedly true that wisdom is the 
 principal thing we need to make the world go better. 
 Most people most of the time are doing as well as they 
 know. There are more blunders than crimes, and the 
 one is just as bad as the other in its consequences. It 
 is ignorance, not malice, that makes the most trouble 
 in government, in society, in the church. We pray 
 often for the removal of our sins, but not so frequently 
 for the removal of our ignorance. We seem to think 
 that if the heart is right all our actions will be right, 
 forgetting that it is the brain that directs the hands 
 and tongue. Now, that we should have good inten- 
 tions is a very important thing to us, but not so im- 
 portant to other people. A person’s good intentions are 
 nothing to us, it is his actions alone that affect us. 
 
 What matters is not what he meant to do but what he 
 189 
 
190 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 did. The world is not concerned with motives, but with 
 motions. 
 
 So it is no excuse at all for a bad act to say you 
 meant it right. It clears you of blame but it doesn’t re- 
 move the consequences of your blunder. Your acts 
 are intended to affect others and you are responsible 
 for the results. It is pure selfishness to view your work 
 from the standpoint of your own justifications. You 
 ought to care more about others than yourself and con- 
 sider the consequences of your actions rather than the 
 motives. 
 
 Since so much stress is laid on the importance of 
 good intentions, Christians sometimes get the idea that 
 it is of no importance how their intentions are carried 
 out. That is why some of them do so little good in the 
 world. They are converted, but it doesn’t do anybody 
 else any good. They are headed in the right direction, 
 but they don’t go. They have been born again, but 
 they remain babies. They have a new heart, but it 
 does not beat. 
 
 So it happens that in the practice of Christianity 
 there is a great deal more of zeal than knowledge. Now 
 knowledge without zeal is like a ship without an en- 
 gine; it is useless. Zeal without knowledge is like a 
 ship without a rudder; it is dangerous. As to which is 
 the worse, God knows. Both bring calamity. Which 
 was it that led to the downfall of the Jewish nation? 
 This is what the Lord said through the mouth of the 
 prophet: “‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowl- 
 edge. Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also 
 reject thee.” * 
 
 1 Hosea 4:6. 
 
ZEAL WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE 19] 
 
 The Jew never lacked zeal. Paul persecuted the 
 Christians with the greatest zeal. The Pharisees and 
 those that cried “Crucify him” were remarkable for 
 their earnestness and devotion to religion. Torque- 
 mada and Philip II of Spain were sincere and well- 
 meaning. The Bolshevists of Russia and the Moham- 
 medans of Asia, who have within the last few years 
 killed more people for their belief than ever perished 
 under the Roman emperors, are zealous men. No, 
 there is no lack of zeal and energy in the world, and 
 good intentions are not rare, ‘‘but where shall wisdom 
 be found? and where is the place of understanding? 
 . . . It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver 
 be weighed out for the price thereof. ... For the 
 price of wisdom is above rubies.” 
 
 How then can we get wisdom? From the All Wise 
 alone. ‘For the Lord giveth wisdom,” and we are told, 
 “Tf any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, ... 
 and it shall be given him.” That, however, does not 
 mean that we have nothing to do but pray for it. We 
 pray for our daily bread, but we have to work for it 
 just the same. It means that from God only can we 
 get wisdom. 
 
 God is the personification of wisdom as well as the 
 embodiment of love. That is the literal meaning of the 
 term Logos used by John and translated “Word.” It 
 includes all the ‘“‘ologies.’’ All truth comes from God. 
 That is difficult to realize because we come upon truth 
 in strange places and in strange guises in this world, 
 and we often fail to recognize it because it sometimes 
 appears in such unexpected quarters, and in such dis- 
 reputable forms. But just as all daylight comes from 
 
192 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 the sun, whether it is distorted and colored by coming 
 through glass, or dimly reflected from the surface of a 
 muddy pool, so everything that is true has a divine 
 origin. It is important to keep this in mind because 
 there is a tendency to think that only religious truth 
 comes from God. Men have always been trying to 
 limit God, and the latest scheme is to try to confine 
 him between the lids of the Bible. Everything in the 
 Bible came from God, they say; but everything out- 
 side, however true it may be, has another source. What 
 other source is not stated; certainly not the “Father of 
 Lies.” 
 
 There is in the Bible a revelation of God, but only a 
 partial one; it is supplementary to what we can find out 
 about him from studying the world, which, it is taken 
 for granted, we are all studying. All nature is a revela- 
 tion of God just as much as is the Bible, and a knowl- 
 edge of it is necessary to a complete comprehension of 
 God. Moral laws are not the whole of God’s code. All 
 physical laws are included as well. Any one who dis- 
 covers a fact, however insignificant, receives it as a 
 gift from the Father of Truth. Science is simply an 
 imperfect attempt to study God as he has revealed him- 
 self in nature. The textbook I use in organic chemis- 
 try has for its motto the inspiring words of one of the 
 greatest masters of science: ‘“Thinking again the 
 thoughts of God.” 
 
 If we believe that God is the source of all wisdom, 
 we must reach the conclusion that no two truths can 
 contradict each other. That would seem axiomatic, but 
 a great many people do not believe it. They stow away, 
 in separate compartments of their brains, contradic- 
 
THE WIDER SCRIPTURES 193 
 
 tory statements without any attempt to reconcile them 
 or to decide which are right. They think that a thing 
 may be false at one time and true at another; that a 
 thing may be true in science but false in religion—and 
 vice versa. The idea is blasphemous. If we believe in 
 the unity of God we must believe in the unity of truth. 
 
 Our duty is to search for truth wherever it is to be 
 found, work for it, gather it up, a grain at a time, as 
 men gather grains of gold from the sands of our moun- 
 tain streams. We are to search the Scriptures, but also 
 to search every other possible source for light upon the 
 great problems of life. I do not wish to be understood 
 as underestimating the value of studying the Bible, but 
 I wish to emphasize the necessity of studying other 
 things, too. The Bible is not all there is of religion. 
 Enoch, Abraham, and Moses did not have the Scrip- 
 tures, and they were good men. The early Christians, 
 who were probably as good as we later ones, had only 
 the Old Testament and such echoes of the Master’s 
 teachings as still lingered in the minds of the disciples. 
 Not for two hundred years, during which Christianity 
 made its great triumphs, was the Bible put into its pres- 
 ent shape. 
 
 It is customary at the present day to base 
 moral lessons from the pulpit upon Bible texts alone. 
 In this, however, we are not following the example of 
 the Bible preachers. They took their texts from books 
 or from nature, from both God’s revelations—his Word 
 and his Works. From the question put to Job? out of 
 the cyclone you will see he is charged with neglect of 
 getting that realization of God’s majesty, power, and 
 
 2 Job 38. 
 
194 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 love that can only be acquired by the study of natural 
 history. God reproaches Job for not having studied the 
 seasons, the weather, the birds, the leviathan, and the 
 behemoth. Had he done so, he would not have talked 
 so foolishly. If he had known more about natural his- 
 tory he would not have made such blunders in theology. 
 If he had known more about meteorology and zodlogy 
 he would have known more about God. 
 
 Solomon recommends the same source of wisdom: 
 “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and 
 be wise.” “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make 
 they their houses in the rocks.” 
 
 What texts did Christ preach from? Sometimes he 
 entered into a synagogue, and after the reading of the 
 Scripture took a text from that. But he did not take a 
 text from the sacred writings as often as he did from 
 nature; and he did not preach as often in churches as 
 he did in the woods and among the hills. He took 
 walks through the fields with his disciples on the Sab- 
 bath—which shocked the devout people of that day 
 much as it would at the present time—and talked about 
 the wheat, the weeds, the flowers, the birds, and the 
 stones. What would you think if, when you assembled 
 to hear your pastor, he should lead you out from the 
 church, away from pulpit and pews, from organ and 
 Bibles and hymn books, out up the road to the hills, 
 and as you walked he should talk to you of the things 
 you saw, and in a casual sort of way, and draw moral 
 lessons from the flowers, the brush, the bird’s nest, and 
 the fossils in the rocks? That is the kind of preacher 
 Jesus was. Doubtless such a minister would strike 
 you as very queer, if not crazy. Just so did Jesus seem 
 
THE CONTAGION OF SIN 195 
 
 to the church of his time. Very likely a vigorous pro- 
 test would be made against such an eccentric person— 
 just as the Jews protested. What Jesus disliked espe- 
 cially was conventionality and formalism; but curiously 
 enough that seems to be what the Christian church is 
 particularly attached to and regards as indispensable. 
 It mistakes form for substance, the clothes for the man, 
 The church was founded in the spirit of Christ as a 
 revolt against formalism and conventionality, but I 
 fear there are many belonging to the so-called ‘‘evan- 
 gelical” branches of the church in these days who are 
 as much attached to their simple ceremonies as are the 
 members of other divisions to their more elaborate 
 forms of worship. 
 
 One reason why it is so important to know all of 
 God’s laws is that the same rule holds good here as in 
 our own courts. Ignorance of the law excuses no one. 
 If a man steps from off the top of a building, ignorance 
 of the law of gravitation does not save him from capital 
 punishment. Ignorance of the laws of physiology and 
 hygiene does not exempt one from disease. It is only 
 by acquainting ourselves as far as possible with the 
 laws according to which God rules the world that we 
 are able to take advantage of them and escape punish- 
 ment for their violation. 
 
 It is the same with God’s moral laws as with his 
 physical or physiological laws. “The soul that sinneth, 
 it shall die,” is the law, and the only way to escape the 
 penalty is by finding out what are sins and avoiding 
 them. Vice and smallpox are both contagious, and even 
 if you do not know this to be true you will not be able 
 to escape injury if you suffer yourself to become in- 
 
196 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 fected. If you fall into a moral abyss the plea that 
 you did not mean to fall, or that you did not know the 
 danger, will not save you from a damaged soul any 
 more than the same excuse will save you from broken 
 bones when you fall into a chasm. Good intention is 
 not enough; good intention plus wisdom is all that will 
 avail. Either alone is practically useless. For real 
 service two things are necessary, a willingness to serve 
 and a knowledge of how to do it. If you wish to save 
 a drowning man you must not only be brave and self- 
 sacrificing, but know how to swim or to throw a rope. 
 That is why Peter says, “Add to your virtue knowl- 
 edge,” and again he enjoins the disciples to “grow in 
 grace and knowledge,” because if one gets ahead of the 
 other there is trouble. Paul reprovingly says in 
 Romans: “For I bear them record that they have a zeal 
 of God, but not according to knowledge.” 
 
 Most of our modern preachers do not lay an equal 
 emphasis on these two agents of human progress, yet 
 such advice would seem to be as much needed now as in 
 the days of Solomon or Paul. It is still common to 
 see zeal run away with discretion: 
 
 There’s nothing that’s equal, ’mong torture’s inventions 
 To a good-natured fool with the best of intentions. 
 
 There is a fable of an elephant who came across a 
 nest of ostrich eggs lying in the sand of the desert—as 
 Job describes in the passage referred to. The ele- 
 phant’s heart was touched with pity at the sight, and 
 she said to herself: “How sad to see these offspring 
 neglected by the unnatural mother. Or perhaps she 
 
THE DEVOUT ASTRONOMER 197 
 
 has gone in search of food and has met with an acci- 
 dent. But I, too,ama mother. I will hatch these or- 
 phaned eggs.” With that she sat upon the nest. We 
 must have something more than a desire to do good, we 
 must know how to do it. 
 
 Many a brilliant and devout man has failed in the 
 ministry because he knew but half his business. He 
 knew his Bible, but not his congregation. He had 
 studied theology but not psychology. He had his mes- 
 sage, but could not deliver it because he did not know 
 how to address it. A workman must know his ma- 
 terial as well as his tools. 
 
 All knowledge is useful to the Christian worker. The 
 distinction made between sacred and secular is purely 
 an arbitrary one for practical convenience. The Chris- 
 tian teacher can afford to neglect neither field. It is 
 only in the study of nature that he can get any ade- 
 quate conception of the greatness of God, his omnip- 
 otence and providence. “The undevout astronomer 
 is mad,” but all branches of science, properly studied, 
 lead to reverence. No scientist ever makes the mis- 
 take so common among unscientific people of doubting 
 the universality and immutability of God’s laws. Only 
 those who study natural history realize how God pro- 
 tects and provides for the meanest of living creatures, 
 beings so small that we can hardly see them with our 
 most powerful miscroscopes, but not too small to re- 
 ceive the same care and attention from their creator 
 that we do. They seek their food from God even as do 
 the lions. Every living creature has its pleasures and 
 its duties, its place in the universal system. It takes 
 the conceit out of a man to study biology. There is no 
 
198 THE DUTY OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 reason to think that in God’s biological system a man 
 is better cared for than a microbe. 
 
 Of quite as much importance as the study of science 
 is the study of history. Thus alone can we learn how 
 God deals with men in masses. We find that a nation, 
 like an individual, prospers in so far as it keeps God’s 
 laws; that ‘“‘righteousness exalteth a nation,” that all 
 the great empires that have prevailed on the earth have 
 risen by their virtues, and fallen through their vices, 
 that politics and ethics cannot be separated with safety. 
 
 There is a saying that “history is philosophy teach- 
 ing by example,” and it is certainly one of the best ways 
 to learn these lessons. Most of the Bible is pure his- 
 
 tory; selected passages in the life of a single race, 
 
 chosen with a view to their moral teachings. But the 
 Jewish is not unique in being suited for this purpose; 
 we should study the history of other nations in the 
 same way. 
 
 We should know also how God deals with the indi- 
 vidual, not confining our attention to those whose 
 biographies are given in the Bible, but studying any 
 life of which we have the necessary information, his- 
 torical characters as well as our friends and neighbors. 
 We need to know how men think and feel, what they do 
 and why. Such knowledge will make us more charita- 
 ble and sensible. We shall then know what it means 
 to “put yourself in another’s place” and learn the true 
 meaning of the Golden Rule. 
 
 We need to use greater wisdom in the study of the 
 Bible. There is no subject in the world so poorly 
 taught. We require an examination and a certificate 
 before we allow a person to teach our children arithme- 
 
 et 
 
GROW IN GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE _ 199 
 
 tic and spelling, but we give anybody that is willing 
 to take a class in Sunday school the far more difficult 
 and important task of teaching religious truth. The 
 Bible is not an easy book to understand. It requires 
 long continued and intense study before we can get at 
 the real meaning of those who wrote so long ago and 
 under such different circumstances, and in foreign 
 tongues. It is quite easy to find somebody to “teach a 
 class in Sunday school” if you are not too particular as 
 to what is taught or how it is taught; but it is hard to 
 find any one sufficiently well qualified so as to be sure 
 that truth and not error is being taught. 
 
 We are, most of us, willing to talk but not willing 
 enough to think and learn. Yet the latter is the more 
 necessary. It is a poor teacher who does not spend 
 more time in the preparation of a lesson than in teach- 
 ing it. In the church the common custom is for the 
 minister to spend six days in studying and one day in 
 teaching. This period for preparation is none too long. 
 I have known preachers to whom I would have been 
 willing to extend this time to three or four weeks or 
 even longer. 
 
 Let each one of us apply his heart unto wisdom, and 
 in this way hasten the time to come, when “the earth 
 shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” 
 
THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS 
 
 Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto 
 life, and few there be that find it—Matthew 7: 14. 
 
 You may, if your arithmetic is erratic, add up a 
 column of figures a dozen times and get different sums. 
 Only one is correct. It is necessarily the same about 
 the more complicated problems of life, only we cannot 
 see it so clearly. Elementary mathematics is the only 
 science man has mastered so he can put real confidence 
 in the results of his ratiocination. 
 
 Science, which aims at certainty, approaches it by 
 the method of trial and error, thousands of trials, thou- 
 sands of errors, before an approximation to the truth 
 is attained. Truth is one; falsehoods are infinite. 
 
 Nine-tenths of the ideas that come into our heads are 
 wrong. The object of education is to select the one 
 that is right. 
 
 Nine-tenths of the impulses that beset us are wrong. 
 The task of civilization is to suppress the nine. 
 
 No matter how complex the problem, there is never 
 more than one right answer, one right way out, one 
 strait and narrow path, hard to find and hard to follow, 
 one road leading out of the maze of many false turns; 
 all the others are blind alleys or paths that return upon 
 themselves. 
 
 It is an axiom of plane geometry that there can be 
 only one straight line connecting two points. From the 
 
 point where we are to the point where we wish to go, 
 200 
 
 “os 
 
ROADS OF DESTINY 201 
 
 there is only one short straight road; all the other pos- 
 sible paths are more or less divergent and devious. 
 
 The rules of conduct are as invariable and absolute 
 as the rules of geometry. The only difference is that 
 we cannot see so clearly in ethics as in mathematics. 
 The falling of a fog makes our road obscure, but does 
 not alter its length or direction. 
 
 There is only one best move in a game of chess, 
 whether we know what it is or not. There is only one 
 wisest action in any emergency, whether we know what 
 it is or not. 
 
 There are no indifferent actions, no equivalent 
 choices. It may seem a matter of indifference which 
 street you turn down in your morning stroll, but that 
 is because you do not know what fate awaits you 
 around the corner. If you turn down First Street you 
 may be run over by an automobile. If you turn down 
 Second Street you may meet a man who will make your 
 fortune. If you turn down Third Street you may 
 catch a fatal microbe. If you turn down Fourth Street 
 you may see the girl you want to marry. 
 
 If you knew, you could choose. But all the streets 
 look equally inviting, and not knowing which is the 
 best, you leave it to “chance.”’ You toss up a penny, 
 but it is not a matter of chance which face of the 
 penny falls uppermost, for that is determined by the in- 
 evitable interaction of the forces of gravitation and 
 rotary momentum. 
 
 Even if you could know what lay before you on each 
 of the optional avenues, you would not necessarily be 
 able to select the best. It may be that Second or 
 Fourth Street would lead you to more unhappiness 
 
202 THE GEOMETRY OF ETHICS 
 
 than First or Third. Not knowing which is the most 
 fortunate road, you would be grateful if on that morn- 
 ing you should find all the others blocked by signs of 
 “Street closed. Detour.” You would be glad to be 
 forced into good fortune if you could not find your own 
 way. Nobody wants freedom of choice except in those 
 cases where choice would lead him toward his goal, 
 whatever that may be. 
 
 Nobody has the right to do wrong. Nobody but a 
 congenital idiot would claim such a right and nobody 
 but an incorrigible criminal would want to exercise it. 
 Every sane man wants to do what is for his best inter- 
 ests and every good man wants to do what is for the 
 best interests of others as well. 
 
 There can be no two opinions about this. The only 
 thing we disagree about is what is for the best interests 
 of ourselves and society. This is due solely to our ig- 
 norance, for if we all knew always what was best to do, 
 we should of course all want to do it. But, because we 
 don’t and can’t always know, we have to allow con- 
 siderable latitude as to thought and action, the more 
 latitude in those fields where there is the more uncer- 
 tainty. There is obviously but one course that ought 
 to be pursued or would be pursued if we could know 
 in advance the outcome of all our options. 
 
RELIGION AND RELATIVITY? 
 
 Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with 
 the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.— 
 II Peter 3:8. 
 
 I READ recently in the papers that one of the bishops 
 had warned the schools of his denomination to beware 
 of Einstein as well as Darwin. 
 
 I was glad to see that. I did not know that the 
 bishops had heard of Einstein, although I knew that 
 they were beginning to take Darwin seriously, sixty- 
 five years after the appearance of The Origin of 
 Species. Ignorant opposition is a better sign than ig- 
 norant indifference. I was afraid that our ecclesiastical 
 authorities would not get around to Einstein till 1970, 
 when scientists would be busy about something else. 
 
 Another encouraging thing about it is that the good 
 
 1 Preachers will probably say of this that it is not a sermon and 
 that a congregation would not listen to such a discussion of physical 
 and metaphysical questions. ‘The first criticism I would not ven- 
 ture to dispute, since they know better than I what constitutes a 
 sermon. But on the second point I know they are wrong, for it 
 has been tried out in various church forums and the people have 
 not only heard it through patiently but lingered as long after to 
 ask questions. I don’t say that this would be profitable preaching 
 fifty-two times a year, but I do think that many preachers fail to 
 realize the interest taken in such topics. I may add that all the 
 “sermons” in this volume have been put to this test. They have 
 been gradually hammered into shape on the heads of congrega- 
 tions of divers denominations, and all I have done in preparing 
 them for the press is to add quotations where needed to substan- 
 tiate points and to append references to sources and further reading. 
 
 203 
 
204 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 bishop perceives that such a revolutionary conception 
 in the domain of psysics as the theory of relativity 
 could not leave altogether unaffected our philosophy of 
 the universe, and hence our ethics and our religion. In 
 this he is wiser than some of our leading scientists who 
 say that relativity is a purely mathematical conception 
 with which the common man has no concern, for it is of 
 no practical importance and so cannot affect his views 
 or conduct. Well, so was the Copernican theory. It 
 really does not make any difference to us whether we 
 regard the sun as a Satellite of the earth or not, yet it 
 did make quite a commotion in the theological world at 
 the time, and the change of man’s point of view of the 
 universe has profoundly influenced the current of hu- 
 man affairs ever since. 
 
 Pope Paul V was quite right in thinking that it con- 
 cerned the Church. The Inquisitors were quite within 
 their rights, although they may have been wrong, in 
 expressing their opinion that to believe “that the sun 
 is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is 
 foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because 
 expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.” But Cardinal 
 Bellarmin was quite wrong in commanding Galileo “in 
 the name of his Holiness, the pope, and the whole Con- 
 gregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether 
 the opinion that the sun is the center of the world and 
 immovable, and that the earth moves, or henceforth to 
 hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever ver- 
 bally or in writing.” 
 
 The lesson that modern churchmen should learn from 
 the Galileo case is not that they should ignore scientific 
 speculation, not that they should be afraid to express 
 
THAT GALILEO AFFAIR 205 
 
 their opinion as to its bearing on theology and ethics, 
 but rather that they should seriously study such ques- 
 tions and not assume too hastily that the acceptance 
 of the new notion would be fatal to the faith. For if in 
 spite of their protest the theory finds acceptance and 
 the faith still survives, they are left in the embarrassing 
 position of the doctor who daily meets on the street the 
 man whom he told ten years ago that he had only six 
 months to live, and who invariably greets him with the 
 cordial inquiry: “How is your health, doctor?” Re- 
 ligion has survived so many “death blows” in the course 
 of the last ten thousand years that we may assume that 
 it will not come to a violent end in our time. It is in 
 more danger of succumbing to sleeping sickness. 
 
 As we can now look back upon the battlefield of 1616 
 from the height which science has since won, and can 
 see both sides of it, we are struck with the futile folly 
 of the whole affair. A modern astronomer would agree 
 with the Pope that the sun is not immovable; in fact, 
 he measures its motion, relative to the fixed stars, which 
 he now knows are not “fixed” either. The modern 
 mathematician, regarding all motion as relative, will 
 admit that the choice between the two hypotheses is es- 
 sentially a matter of convenience. By assuming that 
 the sun is stationary and that the earth revolves around 
 it, and rotates on its own axis, astronomical calcula- 
 tions become simplified; and other phenomena, such as 
 the flattening of the poles and the shifting of the Fou- 
 caultian pendulum, fit into the same theory, whereas on 
 the theory of a fixed earth we should have to assume 
 extra and inconvenient hypotheses to explain them. 
 But the astronomer, like the rest of us, uses the Ptole- 
 
206 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 maic theory in preference to the Copernican on all ordi- 
 nary occasions. In his most serious treatises he will 
 say, “The sun rises” at such a time, just as he says, 
 “The moon rises,” and if you point out the contradic- 
 tion, he does not seem a bit ashamed of his lapse to the 
 old and exploded theory. He uses the heliocentric 
 theory in explaining the structure of the solar system 
 because it is more convenient. He uses the geocentric 
 the rest of the time for the same reason.” 
 
 The adoption of the relativist point of view does not 
 relieve the odium that rests upon the Inquisitors who 
 forced Galileo to recant. On the contrary, it makes it 
 worse for them and better for Galileo. For if it is mere 
 matter of convenience whether we assume the earth or 
 the sun to be the stationary body, they had no right to 
 punish those who chose the alternative hypothesis, or to 
 prohibit their advocating it. On the other hand, while 
 we should all respect Galileo more if he had stuck to 
 his right of free thought and free speech and suffered 
 
 2“The two propositions, ‘The earth turns’ and ‘it is more con- 
 venient to suppose the earth turns round,’ have the same meaning; 
 there is nothing more in the one than in the other.” (Poincaré: 
 Science and Hypothesis, p. 85.) 
 
 Freundlich, Director of the Einstein Tower at Potsdam, says that 
 rotations, like linear motions, are to be regarded as relative, so, 
 “whether we assume that the earth is at rest and the bodies circle 
 round the earth, or that the bodies are at rest and the earth is 
 rotating on its axis, is fundamentally unessential in describing the 
 whole event.” Therefore it is “just as admissible to interpret the 
 observed facts” in one way as the other. (See Freundlich, The 
 Theory of Relativity, pp. 18, 90; The Foundations of Einstein’s 
 Theory of Gravitation, pp. 91-94.) 
 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, who was by no means such a fool as 
 Rostand makes him out to be, said, ““When I pirouette it is the same 
 as if I stood still and the world turned round.” 
 
ORIGINATING SPECIES 207 
 
 martyrdom for it, we can see more excuse for him if he 
 actually took the scientific view of the question and 
 regarded the heliocentric theory as an ingenious and 
 useful speculation, which indeed was the way he pre- 
 sented it in the very “Dialogo” that got him into trou- 
 ble. A scientist really does not care much whether you 
 call his theory an “established fact” or a “working hy- 
 pothesis,” so long as you let him use it in his business. 
 The biologists are so busy nowadays originating new 
 species of plants and animals that it is hard to get them 
 to take as much interest as they ought to in what hap- 
 pens to The Origin of Species. 
 
 The scientific man, especially the scientific investi- 
 gator, holds his theories with a light hand, but keeps a 
 firm grip on his facts. This is just the opposite of the 
 Jay attitude toward science. If the layman is interested 
 in knowing the speed of light it is only because he 
 thinks that he learns from it that all space is filled with 
 a rigid elastic solid, at which he cannot but wonder. 
 The scientist is interested in the ether only because it 
 helps him in his calculation of the speed of light. 
 
 A lecturer on wireless telephony will use in the 
 course of the hour two or three more or less contradic- 
 tory conceptions of electricity, the older one-fluid 
 theory, the later two-fluid theory, and the modern elec- 
 tron theory. If afterward you ask him which is right 
 and which is wrong, you will not get a very satisfactory 
 answer. He does not know and obviously does not 
 care. You insist upon his telling you which theory he 
 personally believes in. He really had not thought of 
 “believing” in any of them. If he uses white chalk on 
 the blackboard in preference to red it is not because he 
 
208 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 denies the existence of red chalk and its occasional use- 
 fulness. The botanist alludes to a certain flower as a 
 “poppy” and again as “Eschscholtzia.” He means the 
 same thing but is using different languages; in the first 
 case English, in the second case I don’t know what. 
 
 At present physicists are in the amusing situation of 
 having to use two irreconcilable, or at least irreconciled, 
 theories of light. The ether-wave theory is needed to 
 explain interference. The corpuscular theory is needed 
 to explain the spectrum. So as Sir William Bragg puts 
 it: * “On Mondays; Wednesdays, and Fridays we use 
 the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur- 
 days we think in streams of flying energy, quanta, or 
 corpuscles.” 
 
 Such inconsistencies, or antinomies, due to irrecon- 
 cilable, or at least irreconciled, facts or theories, occur 
 in science as they do in philosophy, theology and daily 
 life. The apparent contradiction may persist for 
 years, centuries, perhaps forever. Some of the best 
 known and most persistent of such antinomies are 
 those between mind versus matter, free-will versus de- 
 terminism, atomicity versus continuity, the one versus 
 the many, the omnipotence of God versus the existence 
 of evil, absolute altruism versus essential selfishness, 
 and nationalism versus internationalism. Metaphysi- 
 cians have been disputing over some of them for 2500 
 years without either side being able to deliver a knock- 
 out blow to the opposite party, but scientists do not 
 bother much about discordant theories, having found 
 that they do not seriously interfere with investigation. 
 On the contrary they often stimulate research in the 
 
 3 Discovery, Sept., 1921. 
 
HARMLESS INCONSISTENCIES 209 
 
 effort to eliminate the discrepancy. None of us can be 
 completely consistent either in philosophy or conduct 
 of life. 
 
 Professor E. W. Stewart of the University of Iowa 
 in discussing ‘“The Value of Inconsistency” in the 
 Scientific Monthly of February, 1925, with Emerson’s 
 observation, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
 of little minds,” as a text, points out many cases in the 
 history of science where inconsistency has led to im- 
 portant discoveries while consistency has often retarded 
 progress. He concludes: 
 
 It is distressing to witness the somewhat insistent belief 
 of young people that religious faith and scientific knowledge 
 must be in agreement. . . . That there is no contradiction 
 found in science to the most fundamental concepts of the 
 theologian is far more important than the disagreements in 
 minor details. While every one should wish for no conflict 
 between science and theology, consistency is not an imme- 
 diate goal and inconsistency must be anticipated as a nor- 
 mal accompaniment of progress in such widely separated 
 fields. He who spends his time attempting to reconcile the 
 teachings of science and of theology surely cannot have a 
 very important function in contributing to the progress of 
 either. Scientific theories are to be lived and not merely 
 believed. He who is engaged in the encouragement of the 
 application of theory in either field is aiding in the prog- 
 ress of the world. By his devotion to a cause and his will- 
 ingness to be inconsistent without worry, he can make a 
 definite contribution. . . . Emerson was right; past opin- 
 ions should not cause excessive mental inertia. But the 
 above conclusions take us much farther. Inconsistency in 
 opinions held at one moment may be necessary for prog- 
 ress and the individual should accept this view and cease 
 
210 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 to regard complete consistency as always either desirable or 
 valuable. 
 
 It is eminently desirable that people should have 
 faith in science, but in order to have that they must 
 have the same sort of faith in it that the scientist has. 
 Otherwise they will regard it as a lot of ingenious fan- 
 cies which are proved false by each succeeding genera- 
 tion. Science is molting just now and looks queer. The 
 public ought to understand clearly that the process 
 means growth and not disease. 
 
 Revolutions in science never go backwards and they 
 differ from political revolutions in that nothing worth 
 saving is lost in transition. The new theory must al- 
 ways include all that the old one does and more. In 
 their struggle for existence, formulas fight like snakes; 
 the one that can swallow the other beats. 
 
 I have gone back to Galileo for two reasons; first, 
 because it is a good example of how not to treat a new 
 scientific idea; and, second, because the Einstein theory 
 is a continuation of the same development of thought, 
 is meeting with the same sort of blind resistance and 
 is liable to lead to popular misconceptions, as did the 
 Copernican and Darwinian theories. It is already ap- 
 parent that the occultists are planning to use the fourth 
 dimension as an attic to put spooks in. 
 
 Professor Eddington of Cambridge, the leading Brit- 
 ish authority on relativity, discussed all three of these 
 points in his Romanes Lecture at Oxford in 1922 * from 
 which I quote the concluding paragraphs: 
 
 4“The Theory of Relativity and Its Influence on Scientific 
 Thought,” printed in the Scientific Monthly. 
 
FREEING FETTERED THOUGHT 211 
 
 The present revolution of scientific thought follows in 
 aatural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epochs 
 in the history of science. LEinstein’s special theory of rela- 
 tivity, which explains the indeterminateness of the frame 
 of space and time, crowns the work of Copernicus who first 
 led us to give up our insistence on a geocentric outlook on 
 nature; Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which re- 
 veals the curvature or non-Euclidean geometry of space 
 and time, carries forward the rudimentary thought of those 
 earlier astronomers who first contemplated the possibility 
 that their existence lay on something which was not flat. 
 These earlier revolutions are still a source of perplexity in 
 childhood, which we soon outgrow; and a time will come 
 when Einstein’s amazing revelations have likewise sunk into 
 the commonplaces of educated thought. 
 
 To free our thought from the fetters of space and time 
 is an aspiration of the poet and the mystic, viewed some- 
 what coldly by the scientist who has too good reason to 
 fear the confusion of loose ideas likely to ensue. If others 
 have had a suspicion of the end to be desired, it has been 
 left to Einstein to show the way to rid ourselves of these 
 “terrestrial adhesions to thought.” And in removing our 
 fetters he leaves us, not (as might have been feared) vague 
 generalities for the ecstatic contemplation of the mystic, 
 but a precise scheme of world-structure to engage the 
 mathematical physicist. 
 
 My purpose here is merely to show that there is rel- 
 ativity between the theory of relativity and religion. 
 I shall not attempt to explain what the theory is,’ still 
 less what it means to religious thought. This is a task 
 
 5] have attempted to put into popular language some of the rela- 
 tively simple aspects of relativity in Easy Lessons in Einstein, and 
 I have gone further in my Chats on Science, by putting the theory 
 into words of one syllable. 
 
212 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 that will take a hundred years of hard thinking at the 
 least. If the theologians do not want to bother about 
 it until the question “has been settled by science” that 
 is their privilege, only they must not complain if some- 
 time in the twenty-first century they wake up to the 
 fact that it has not been settled to their satisfacion, 
 and that it is too firmly settled in the popular mind to 
 be upset. Meantime they will be getting more and more 
 out of touch with the trend of thought and will be miss- 
 ing a lot of fun. 
 
 It should be observed that there are three different 
 theories of relativity and innumerable versions and 
 ramifications of them. There is, first, the metaphysi- 
 cal theory of relativity, the idea that all our measure- 
 ments of space, time, and motion are merely relative, 
 which dates back to Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. 
 There is, second, the special theory of relativity enun- 
 ciated by Einstein in 1905 to explain the conflict of ex- 
 periments on ether drift. And third, the generalized 
 theory of 1915, in which Einstein extended the concep- 
 tion of relativity to include gravitation, which he 
 ascribed to the structure of time and space, rather than 
 the hypothetical attractive force invoked by Newton. 
 The Einstein theories differ from the ancient theory in 
 being definite mathematical systems capable of being 
 verified or refuted at some points by certain very deli- 
 cate astronomical and physical measurements. So far 
 the experimental evidence of the last ten years is on the 
 whole in favor of Einstein,® although it is regarded as 
 
 6 There is at present only one piece of experimental evidence 
 against Einstein, the report in 1925 by Prof. D. C. Miller that his 
 repetition of the Michelson-Morley experiment on Mt. Wilson 
 showed a partial drift of the ether. 
 
ORTHODOX RELATIVITY 213 
 
 inconclusive by many scientists. It is yet too early to 
 say whether Einstein’s mathematical schemes will be 
 incorporated intact into our science or in what ways 
 they will be restricted, expanded, or modified. But it 
 is already evident that the theory of relativity, to- 
 gether with Planck’s quantum theory and Bohr’s atomic 
 theory, which are contemporary and closely connected 
 with it, have definitely and permanently altered our 
 ideas of the universe. Whatever may be their future 
 fate, they have already proved their value in correlating 
 unconnected facts and in guiding research into new 
 fields. 
 
 That they will have an effect upon religious thought 
 is also apparent, not only from the alarm of the bishop 
 to whom I referred in the beginning, but even more 
 significantly by the efforts now made to assimilate the 
 new ideas to the old doctrines. 
 
 That relativity is not necessarily incompatible with 
 the old theology is shown by the fact that the honor of 
 being a forerunner of Einstein is claimed for both St. 
 Thomas Aquinas ‘ and Jonathan Edwards.* 
 
 Let us consider one instance of the possible bearing 
 of the new ideas upon religious thought. One of the 
 popular delusions that religion has always had to fight, 
 as has science also, is our common crude conception of 
 matter as something essentially solid, unalterably 
 heavy, impenetrable, continuous, unmoving, inert, inde- 
 structible. Democritus and Lucretius struck a blow at 
 this idea when they advanced the notion that all ma- 
 terial bodies were composed of invisible atoms inces- 
 
 7™In the London Nation, Dec. 27, 1919. 
 8In Science, Oct. 29, 1920. 
 
214 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 santly in motion, but it took some two thousand years 
 for their view to gain general acceptance, if indeed it 
 has yet penetrated the common mind. A hundred years 
 ago Dalton took it up and it became the basis of mod- 
 ern physics and chemistry, but the atoms were still 
 looked upon as little round hard things, incapable of 
 decomposition. 
 
 But according to present conceptions an atom con- 
 sists of an inconceivably minute nucleus, charged with 
 positive eletricity, around which revolve from one (in 
 hydrogen) to ninety-two (in uranium) satellites of 
 negative electricity at speeds ranging from 1,300 to 
 124,000 miles per second. That is, the actual amount 
 of matter, if you can still regard it as material, in an ap- 
 parently solid body occupies only about a million-mil- 
 lionth part of its bulk, and if we could put a big man 
 into a press and squeeze all the vacant space out of him 
 he would shrink to a pinhead size.° 
 
 We may go further and say that this amount of mat- 
 ter, little as it is, does not remain constant either in 
 mass or in substance. For according to Einstein it in- 
 creases in mass the faster it travels up to the speed of 
 light, and faster it cannot go. This leaves only one of 
 Newton’s three laws of motion intact, the action-equals- 
 reaction one.*° Matter itself is now regarded as a form 
 of energy, or as transformable into energy. 
 
 It is supposed that all the other chemical elements 
 are built up out of hydrogen atoms as a wall is built of 
 bricks. The first step of this process would be to build 
 a helium atom out of four atoms of hydrogen. But this 
 
 9 Atoms and Rays, by Sir Oliver Lodge, p. 14. 
 10 Lodge, p. 195. 
 
THE ANNIHILATION OF MATTER cdi ty 
 
 involves the annihilation of matter and the creation of 
 energy. If, for instance, it were possible to transform 
 10,077 pounds of hydrogen into helium, only 10,000 
 pounds of helium would be produced. The remaining 
 seventy-seven pounds—no, that is wrong, for it would 
 not remain—I should say rather, the other seventy- 
 seven pounds, would vanish from the material world and 
 in its place an enormous amount of energy would be 
 produced, passing off presumably as radiant light and 
 heat. This transformation has not yet been accom- 
 plished in the laboratory but several young scientists 
 are experimenting along this line and they may some- 
 time succeed. It would be very handy to be able to 
 make helium for our dirigibles at will and get enough 
 power to run them thrown in free. It is believed that 
 the light that we get from the sun and stars comes 
 largely from such decomposition of matter into energy. 
 Four million tons of the sun’s mass is estimated to be 
 evaporating off every second in the form of light. 
 
 This is such a decided change of view from the con- 
 ceptions held in the last century, and still holding in the 
 minds of most men, that it has been referred to as “‘the 
 dematerialization of matter.” ** 
 
 Charles Nordmann, astronomer to the Paris Observa- 
 tory, concludes: 
 
 11 Rougier, Philosophy and the New Physics, p. 62. Dr. J. H. 
 Jeans in his new theory of the source of light in the sun and stars 
 suggests that the negative electrons and the positive nucleus of 
 the atoms may fall together and by so neutralizing their charges 
 annihilate one another and pass away “in a blaze of glory.” He 
 says: “Nothing in the suggestion appears to conflict with modern 
 atomic physics.” (Nature, Dec. 6, 1924; Jan. 24, 1925.) 
 
 12 Einstein and the Universe, p. 115. 
 
216 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 From all this it follows, by calculation and by the simple 
 and elegant reasoning of Einstein, of which I here convey 
 only the faintest adumbration, that mass and energy are 
 the same thing, or are at least the two different sides of 
 one and the same coin. There is, then, no longer a mate- 
 rial mass. ‘There is nothing but energy in the external 
 universe. A strange—in a sense, an almost spiritual—turn 
 for modern physics to take. 
 
 Physicists whose profession is the study of matter do 
 not take matter so materialistically as do other people. 
 Poincaré says: 
 
 Masses are coefficients it is convenient to introduce into 
 calculations. We could reconstruct all mechanics by at- 
 tributing different values to all the masses. This new 
 mechanics would not be in contradiction either with expe- 
 rience or with the general principles of dynamics. Only 
 the equations of this new mechanics would be less simple.** 
 
 But do not fall into the error of supposing that “sci- 
 ence has proved that matter does not exist.” To ex- 
 plain a thing is not to explode it. If the concept of 
 matter is, as all our concepts must be, a fabrication of 
 the mind, this does not imply that we can get along 
 without it. Although the physicist reduces matter to a 
 small italic m, stone is still heavy, and steel is still 
 sharp. And a stone will bruise and a steel will pierce 
 just as much as if we had not found out its formula. 
 We do not change nature when we change our minds. 
 
 Yet it does make a difference, after all, how we look 
 upon the external world. The more we know about 
 
 13 Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, p. 76. 
 
HOW MIND SHAPES REALITY 217 
 
 matter, the better we can manage it. And when we 
 realize that the laws of nature are made in our own 
 minds they cannot hold our minds in bondage. The 
 crass materialism of former centuries should be impos- 
 sible in the future. 
 
 As it is important to understand just what the 
 relativist means when he speaks of the part the mind 
 takes in the formulation of the laws of nature and in 
 the selection of fundamental concepts, I will quote from 
 one of the best authorities on the question, Professor 
 Eddington of Cambridge: ** 
 
 Mind filters out matter from the meaningless jumble of 
 qualities, as the prism filters out the colors of the rainbow 
 from the chaotic pulsations of white light. Mind exalts 
 the permanent and ignores the transitory; and it appears 
 from the mathematical study of relations that the only 
 way in which mind can achieve her object is by picking 
 out one particular quality as the permanent substance of 
 the perceptual world, partitioning a perceptual time and 
 space for it to be permanent in, and, as a necessary conse- 
 quence of this Hobson’s choice, the laws of gravitation and 
 mechanics and geometry have to be obeyed. Is it too much 
 to say that mind’s search for permanence has created the 
 world of physics? . . . The conclusion is that the whole 
 of those laws of nature which have been woven into a 
 unified scheme—mechanics, gravitation, electro-dynamics 
 and optics—have their origin, not in any special mecha- 
 nism of nature, but in the workings of the mind. 
 
 14TIn his Space, Time and Gravitation, probably the best book to 
 give the general reader some idea of the new theories and their 
 significance. A later book, Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of the 
 Atom, is also commendable for this purpose, 
 
218 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 The theologians do not seem to know a friend when 
 they see him. They have always insisted that the 
 material universe is finite in space and time, but they 
 view with suspicion the relativists, who not only believe 
 it but undertake to prove it and to measure its dimen- 
 sions.*° 
 
 According to the theory of relativity, the space-and- 
 time framework in which all things happen may be re- 
 garded as rolled into a sort of four-dimensional sphere, 
 so that the universe is limited although unbounded; it 
 has no end and yet is not immeasurably great. We 
 know that it is so with the surface of our earth. One 
 might travel forever in any direction without reaching 
 the end of the earth, yet he could never get more than 
 twelve thousand miles from home, for if he went farther 
 he would be nearing his starting point. So too a ray of 
 light starting out from anywhere in any direction would 
 on account of the curvature of space return in the 
 course of time to its origin, and this time is estimated 
 at a thousand million years. From this corollary of 
 the relativity theory, Professor Eddington deduces 
 some curious consequences: 
 
 A ray of light from the sun would thus take about 1,000 
 million years to go round the world; and after the journey 
 the rays would converge again at the starting point, and 
 then diverge for the next circuit. The convergent would 
 have all the characteristics of a real sun so far as light and 
 heat are concerned, only there would be no substantial body 
 
 15 “The finite character of the universe appears capable of ex- 
 perimental demonstration.’ Gumbel, Science Abstracts, 25, No. 
 257- 
 
SUN GHOSTS 219 
 
 present. Thus corresponding to the sun we might see a 
 series of ghosts occupying the positions where the sun was 
 I,000, 2,000, 3,000, etc., million years ago, if (as seems 
 probable) the sun has been luminous for so long. 
 
 It is rather a pleasing speculation that records of the pre- 
 vious states of the sidereal universe may be automatically 
 reforming themselves on the original sites. Perhaps one or 
 more of the many spiral nebulz are really phantoms of 
 our own stellar system. Or it may be that only a propor- 
 tion of the stars are substantial bodies; the remainder are 
 optical ghosts revisiting their old haunts.1® 
 
 This means that if the world is round—I mean the 
 whole universe, not our own minor planet—a ray of 
 light would roll round and round in it like a ball inside 
 a roulette wheel, or rather, since that simile will be in- 
 comprehensible to you, like the marble of pigs-in- 
 clover. Although the light from the sun disperses in 
 every direction all the rays come together again at this 
 antipodal focus, only to scatter and meet at their 
 original rendezvous. Except of course such of them 
 as get lost on the way by running up against planets 
 or being absorbed by drifting dust or pulled out of the 
 straight track by gravitation, as Einstein discovered. 
 Stars may have their doubles at opposite points. 
 
 It is an interesting idea, anyhow, and probably some 
 preacher, some real preacher, will pick it up and make 
 a sermon out of it. For the sun is not the only thing 
 that is dogged by the images of its past selves. We 
 shine too, although only by reflected light. It must be, 
 
 16 Space, Time and Gravitation, p. 161. 
 
220, RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 then, that our radiations are traveling about some- 
 where in the world and will be reproducing our looks 
 and acts on the cinema screen of the farthest horizon 
 of space and time a thousand million years after we 
 are dead. If we are going to have that sort of immor- 
 tality imposed upon us, we would prefer to pick our 
 poses. The moral of it is—although probably the 
 preacher would draw a different one—that if we are 
 going to do anything we are ashamed of we should go 
 inside the house and pull down the blinds or wait till it 
 is dark. But this Jesson is needless, for such precau- 
 tions are customary. Even then one can’t feel quite 
 safe in sinning. There are the X-rays, you know—and 
 nobody knows what other invisible pencils may be 
 registering all our actions or even thoughts—or, what’s 
 worse, the desires that we don’t dare think. They, too, 
 must leave their mark somewhere. 
 
 The implications of the relativity theory in regard 
 to time are quite as startling as those in regard to space. 
 Time and space are indeed so inseparably connected 
 that we cannot even conceive of them independently. 
 Einstein “assumes that there is a fundamental relation 
 between time and space, such that, to put it simply, no 
 one can tell what time it is until he knows where he is, 
 and he cannot tell where he is until he knows when he 
 is.”’ nay 
 
 The theory suggests the possibility, though it does not 
 imply the actuality, of a reversal of time, or the over- 
 lapping of past and future, “‘so that, in principle, it is 
 possible to experience events now that will in part be an 
 
 17] borrow this concise expression from Prof. A. G. Webster, 
 The Review, Jan. 31, 1920. 
 
THE PASSING OF MATERIALISM 221 
 
 effect of my future resolves and actions.” ** One of the 
 deepest thinkers of our day, Prof. Alfred North White- 
 head of Harvard University, in the following passage 
 from his book on The Concept of Nature shows how 
 widely the trend of twentieth-century thought differs 
 from the mechanistic and materialistic conceptions pre- 
 vailing in the last century: 
 
 The materialistic theory has all the completeness of the 
 thought of the middle ages, which had a complete answer 
 to everything, be it in heaven or hell or in nature. There 
 is a trimness about it, with its instantaneous present, its 
 vanished past, its non-existent future, and its inert matter. 
 This trimness is very medieval and ill accords with brute 
 facts. 
 
 The theory which I am urging admits a greater ultimate 
 mystery and a deeper ignorance. The past and future meet 
 and mingle in an ill-defined present. The passage of na- 
 ture, which is only another name for the creative force of 
 existence, has no narrow ledge of definite instantaneous 
 present within which to operate. Its operative presence 
 which is now urging nature forward must be sought for 
 throughout the whole, in the remote past as well as the 
 narrowest breadth of any present duration. Perhaps also 
 in the unrealized future. Perhaps also in the future which 
 might be as well as the actual future which will be. 
 
 The possibility of a new conception of the relations 
 of past and future was discussed at the Aristotelian So- 
 
 18 From Space, Time, Matter, by Hermann Weyl. I have dis- 
 cussed this point in the chapter “T'angling Up the Time-Line” of 
 Chats on Science. Esclangon goes so far as to propose an experi- 
 ment to prove the inversion of time as a reality. Comptes Rendus 
 173:1340 (1921). 
 
1s 4 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 ciety by Dean Inge of St. Paul’s, one of the few clergy- 
 men of our time who are interested in metaphysical 
 questions. I quote from the London 77mes report: 
 
 We happen to be moving away from 1900 and towards 
 1930, just as the earth happens to revolve in one direction 
 and not in the other. But can 1900 and 1930 not both be 
 equally real, each holding its fixed position in an unchange- 
 able series? 
 
 Were that so, the direction of the stream of time would 
 have a meaning only for us, and might have the opposite 
 meaning for other consciousnesses, and no meaning for an 
 absolute consciousness. The interest of the speculation ex- 
 tends from time to cause and effect. A common concep- 
 tion of causation involves the idea of a transaction between 
 two things of which the one is active, the other passive. 
 But this interpretation of cause is being replaced in science 
 by the idea that “cause” and “effect” indicate nothing 
 more than different positions in the time sequence. When 
 we speak of the past determining the future, we may also 
 speak of the future justifying, explaining, or even deter- 
 mining the past. Past and future, cause and effect, may 
 indeed be mere aspects of a timeless reality. 
 
 This reminds us that St. Thomas Aquinas taught that 
 God sees past, present, and future at once as an eternal 
 present. It also reminds us of the verse: 
 
 Time flies. 
 But no, 
 Time stays, 
 We go.’® 
 
 19 A free translation from Ronsard. 
 
IS NATURE RATIONAL? 223 
 
 Let me give you one other hint of the strange specu- 
 lative possibilities suggested by the new physics, al- 
 though it is a blow to man’s conceit in assuming that 
 the universe is made after the manner of his own mind, 
 that he can ever reason it out. I quote the concluding 
 passage of Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of the Atom: 
 
 The theory of relativity has shown that most of tradi- 
 tional dynamics, which was supposed to contain scientific 
 laws, really consisted of conventions as to measurement, 
 and was strictly analogous to the “‘great law” that there are 
 always three feet to a yard. In particular, this applies to 
 the conservation of energy. This makes it plausible to 
 suppose that every apparent law of nature which strikes us 
 as reasonable is not really a law of nature, but a concealed 
 convention, plastered on to nature by our love of what we, 
 in our arrogance, choose to consider rational. Eddington 
 hints that a real law of nature is likely to stand out by the 
 fact that it appears to us irrational, since in that case it is 
 less likely that we have invented it to satisfy our intel- 
 lectual taste. And from this point of view he inclines to 
 the belief that the quantum-principle is the first real law 
 of nature that has been discovered in physics. 
 
 This raises a somewhat important question: Is the world 
 “rational,” i.e., such as to conform to our intellectual hab- 
 its? Or is it “irrational,” ie., not such as we should have 
 made it if we had been in the position of the Creator? 
 
 Since little thought has as yet been given to the in- 
 fluence of the doctrine of relativity upon social and 
 ethical questions, I will conclude with a quotation from 
 Viscount Haldane, who has given special attention to 
 that point in his work on The Reign of Relativity: 
 
224 RELIGION AND RELATIVITY 
 
 Assuming the principle of relativity to mean all that has 
 been said, what guidance does it offer for the conduct of 
 our individual lives? I do not think that the question is 
 ‘a difficult one to answer. The real lesson which the prin- 
 ciple of the relativity of knowledge teaches us is always 
 to remember that there are different orders in which both 
 our knowledge and the reality it seeks have differing 
 forms. These orders we must be careful to distinguish and 
 not to confuse. We must keep ourselves aware that truth 
 in terms of one order may not necessarily be a sufficient 
 guide in the search for truth in another one. We have, in 
 other words, to be critical of our categories. As an aid to 
 our practice, the principle points us in a direction where 
 we may possess our souls with tranquillity and courage. 
 We stand warned against ‘‘other-worldliness” in a multitude 
 of concealed forms. We are protected, too, if the doctrine 
 be well-founded, against certain specters which obtrude 
 themselves in the pilgrim’s path. Materialism, scepticism, 
 and obscurantism alike vanish. The real is there, but it is 
 akin in its nature to our own minds, and it is not terrify- 
 ing. Death loses much of its sting and the grave, of its 
 victory. For we have not only the freedom that is of the 
 essence of mind, but we are encouraged to abstract and 
 withdraw ourselves from the apparent overwhelmingness of 
 pain and even of death itself. Such things cease to be of 
 the old importance when they lose the appearance of final 
 reality. 
 
 There may come to us, too, contentment of spirit, and a 
 peace which passes our everyday understanding. We grow 
 in tolerance, for we see that it is in expression rather than 
 in intention that our fellow-men are narrow. We realize 
 that we are all of us more, even in moments of deep depres- 
 sion, than we appear to ourselves to be, and that humanity 
 extends beyond the limits that are assigned even by itself 
 to itself. 
 
THE CREED OF RELATIVITY 225 
 
 It is a creed that if it be true helps those who can make 
 it their own to dispel obscurities, and to lighten for them- 
 selves and for others the burden and the apparent mystery 
 of human life. It is a creed that stimulates the practice of 
 unselfishness in social and religious life, interpreted as fully 
 harmonizing with the dictates of philosophical thought. “If 
 any man shall do His will, he shall know of the doctrine!” 
 
THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up chil- 
 dren unto Abraham. 
 
 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore 
 every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and 
 cast into the fire. 
 
 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that 
 cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy 
 to bear: he shali baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: 
 
 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, 
 and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the 
 chaff with unquenchable fire-—Matthew 3: 9-12. 
 
 IN visiting one of the states where efforts were being 
 made to pass a law prohibiting the teaching of evolu- 
 tion I was told of a lobbyist who approached a mem- 
 ber of the legislature with the remark that he had been 
 informed on the best authority that there was an evolu- 
 tionist in the state university. 
 
 “Great heavens!” replied the hortified legislator, 
 “You don’t mean to say that he practices it, do you?” 
 
 In this the legislator showed that practical common 
 sense which is fortunately so often characteristic of our 
 politicians. He was of course wrong in assuming so 
 hastily that the practice of the principles of evolution 
 would necessarily be wrong. But he got straight at the 
 root of the matter when he saw at first glance that the 
 important question was their application to the con- 
 duct of life. 
 
 Not all our theologians have shown the same per- 
 
 spicacity. They have been so absorbed in the specula- 
 226 
 
EVOLUTION IN ACTION 227 
 
 tive and historical aspects of the question that they 
 have ignored its vital relation to present-day problems 
 within their own field. They have dipped into geology 
 and embryology, where at the best their efforts could 
 not contribute much to the clarification of the question, 
 and have neglected to study the ethics of it, where their 
 expert aid was much needed. They have been much 
 concerned with the question whether the account of 
 creation given in the first chapters of Genesis was in 
 irreconcilable conflict with the account given in the 
 latest textbook on geology or whether the two could 
 be made to harmonize, with a bit of budging on both 
 sides. 
 
 But whether they agree or not, and whether we be- 
 lieve them both or neither, they both deal with a past 
 event, and a past event is of no value to us unless we 
 can bring it to bear upon the problems of the present. 
 Science and religion are alike in this, that they are, or 
 should be, forward-looking and practical. They both 
 make use of the records of the past for the interpreta- 
 tion of the present and for guidance in the future. The 
 creeds of the church and the textbooks of science are 
 of value, not because of the historic facts they contain, 
 but because of what they tell us of the fundamental 
 principles of the universe and human life that are per- 
 manent and perpetually applicable.* 
 
 The question whether man first appeared on this 
 planet 6,000 or 600,000 years ago does not matter ex- 
 cept in so far as we may learn from it how to extend his 
 period of survival. What we want to know is how long 
 man can exist: how long he has existed is in itself an 
 
 1 This important point I have discussed on pp. 66 and 148. 
 
228 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 idle question. The question of how man was made be- 
 comes of importance only when we come to consider 
 what we can make of him. Then any minutest bit of 
 evidence that we can gather concerning his history and 
 ancestry becomes worth studying in the hope that it 
 may aid us to some general laws as to the nature and 
 development of living beings. Since we cannot tell in 
 advance what will come handy in our reconstruction of 
 the record of the world we gather up all the things that 
 seem to have significance and preserve them in our 
 museums and libraries, fragments of unknown fossils, 
 broken bricks of cuneiform inscriptions, scraps of un- 
 decipherable writing, scattered and disconnected facts. 
 But none of them is really of value until it can be fitted 
 into the general scheme of things. 
 
 There are many such unrelated things in our 
 museums; there are many in the Bible. Consider, for 
 instance, the account of the creation of woman, which 
 has somehow received less attention and aroused less 
 discussion than the creation of man, though no man 
 would say that it was an event of less importance. It 
 appears to be a unique event. There is no record in 
 Scripture or science of its having occurred before or 
 since. The Bibie does not imply that any other woman 
 was ever made that way. The rector’s wife in the town 
 where I lived used to teach her class that all men to 
 this day have one less rib than women because Adam 
 was deprived of one, but I understand that this is not 
 confirmed by anatomists, though I have to take their 
 statements on faith, not having made any dissections 
 myself. The incident is unrepeatable and hence un- 
 
A WILD SURMISE 229 
 
 confirmable by experiment. Modern plastic surgery 
 has taken out ribs and made them into leg bones but 
 never so far into a complete woman. 
 
 What, then, can be done with the story of the crea- 
 tion of Eve? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A scientist 
 may believe it a part of an infallible revelation or he 
 may regard it as highly improbable that Eve was made 
 in a way so different from other women, but he can 
 neither prove nor disprove it. Whether he personally 
 believes it or not can make no possible difference to his 
 science, nor, so far as I can see, to his religion. Not 
 Eve, but her living daughter, is his problem and ours. 
 
 Let me generalize this view of our relation toward the 
 records of the past. Suppose I start a new religious 
 sect having for its fundamental tenet that the earth was 
 created instantaneously out of nothing by fiat of the 
 Almighty on January 1, 1925. IfI should take such a 
 stand I might have difficulty in gaining converts but I 
 could defy anybody to disprove my creed. Nobody 
 could say that it was impossible, for it would be just 
 as easy for Omnipotence to create a world in a second 
 as in six days, or six hundred million years; create it 
 complete, with people grown up, clothed, and housed, 
 with all the evidences of a remote past already made, 
 with fossils stored in the rocks, books stored in the 
 libraries and memories stored in the minds. Sir Wil- 
 liam Osler tells us that he can remember when the 
 professor of Natural Theology at Oxford argued that 
 the fossils found in sedimentary rocks were no evidence 
 of antiquity but were put there by Satan for the pur- 
 pose of testing faith in the Bible; they were petrified 
 
230 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 temptations to infidelity, so to speak. Other objections 
 could be quite as easily disposed of. The Great War 
 of course never occurred, but the histories and recol- 
 lections of it were prepared by God for the purpose of 
 warning the human race against such folly and cruelty 
 in the future. The more I think about it, the more 
 enamored I am of the polemic possibilities of this doc- 
 trine of recent creation. If anybody would hire Car- 
 negie Hall for a joint debate on the question I believe 
 that I could defend the thesis against any arguments 
 that could be brought against it. Nobody has success- 
 fully confuted Archbishop Whately’s Historic Doubts 
 Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 The point is that we can never be certain of any 
 event in the past in the same sense that we can be 
 certain of an event that we can today observe and re- 
 peat at will. History must necessarily remain on an 
 inferior plane of validity as compared with science, and 
 the historical sciences such as geology and archeology 
 can never attain the same certitude as the experimental 
 sciences such as physics and chemistry. For example, 
 we can never know for sure how life originated. It is 
 surmised that in the early ages certain colloidal par- 
 ticles composed of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, 
 nitrogen, and oxygen, perhaps in contact with a catalyst 
 such as iron oxide, and under the influence of the ultra- 
 violet rays of sunshine, might have acquired the power 
 of feeding and fission, and so become the progenitors 
 of all future living beings. Certain biologists even be- 
 lieve it possible under some such conditions to produce 
 life now from inorganic matter and are experimenting to 
 
LIVING TRUTH AND DEAD PAST 231 
 
 this end.” Suppose some day they should succeed and 
 find out a way of making an ameba out of the ele- 
 ments: it would not prove that life had originated on 
 the earth in that fashion. It might have come about in 
 some very different way. There is always a certain un- 
 certainty about any record of the past, whether it be 
 historical or geological, though the evidence for it may 
 be irresistibly convincing to one who considers it. 
 Fortunately, no vital truth is altogether dependent 
 for its validity upon the records of the past, although it 
 may have been derived from their study. If the Fun- 
 damentalists were to burn up all the books on evolu- 
 tion, as the papers report they are being burned in cer- 
 tain communities of our country, 1f they should prohibit 
 the teaching of evolution all over the world, that would 
 not suffice. They would have to go further and chisel 
 out all the fossils throughout the earth, for if they re- 
 main in the rocks somebody is sure to find them in time 
 and draw the same inferences from them as to their age 
 and origin. Suppose even this could be accomplished 
 and all the paleontological evidences of evolution elimi- 
 nated from the earth: evolution would still remain as 
 active an agent as ever in the molding of living beings. 
 Shutting our eyes does not affect the external world. 
 It only makes us stumble about in it. Suppose that the 
 Soviet should sweep over the earth and destroy all the 
 sacred books of every faith. God would still reign and, 
 2“Experimental abiogenesis is the goal of biology.”—Jacques 
 Loeb. “With the astonishing means that modern science possesses 
 already, with its continually increasing powers, I do not doubt that 
 
 it will some day be sufficiently equipped to produce life artificially.” 
 —Paul Becquerel. 
 
232 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 I believe, mankind would again find Him in various 
 ways. God is not affected by what we think of him— 
 fortunately. He is not annihilated when we forget him. 
 
 Whether evolution be theory or hypothesis is hardly 
 worth discussing. What we need to know is how evolu- 
 tion acts. Whether evolution is fact or fable as applied 
 to the past, it is a force in the present. We can ignore 
 the past, or misconstrue it, without much harm, but we 
 have to deal with evolution as a ruling power in modern 
 life and a formative factor of the future. 
 
 Never was it so important that we should understand 
 evolution, for never was it so active as at present, when 
 new forms of plants and animals are being made to or- 
 der and when man has, for good or ill, learned how to 
 control the multiplication of the race. I quote from 
 one of the leading geneticists of the country, Dr. 
 C. B. Davenport, Director of the Station for Experi- 
 mental Evolution,* at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island: 
 
 There are now thousands of forms of animals and plants 
 that reproduce their kind which did not exist a century ago. 
 Within the last ten years there have been produced scores 
 of forms of the banana fly never before seen by the eye of 
 man. Indeed, the very day on which the ancestors of some 
 new types first appeared is known, and many of these types 
 have persisted to the present day. 
 
 We know indeed not a few forms which have appeared 
 recently and which fulfill the essential conditions of species 
 as the naturalist finds them in nature. These forms differ 
 by two or more constant traits from other species. They 
 are quite as infertile with other species as some wild species 
 
 3 Note that the name is not “Theoretical” or ‘Historical’ Evolu- 
 tion. 
 
INVENTING NEW SPECIES 233 
 
 are with each other. The principal difference between them 
 and wild species is that their beginnings have been seen and 
 are known to be recent while that of wild species has not 
 been seen and so their origin is of unknown date. But it 
 is known that thousands of wild species that we have on 
 earth today did not exist in earlier geological ages, just as 
 there are thousands of species that lived in past geological 
 ages that are not living today. 
 
 Nowadays we hear some of the opponents of Darwin 
 asserting that no new species have arisen since the 
 world began. ‘This is amusing, for it shows that they 
 have not even read the title of the book they are at- 
 tacking. So let me give it in its full old-fashioned form 
 as it appeared in 1857: “‘On the Origin of Species by 
 Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of 
 Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” 
 
 The point of Darwin’s argument was that there oc- 
 curred in nature a selective process similar to the arti- 
 ficial selection practiced by man. Nobody questioned 
 the fact that it was possible by proper selection and 
 breeding to develop new forms of dogs and pigeons, 
 fruits and flowers, that were so distinct that if they 
 had been found growing wild they would have been 
 classed as different species. The only question—and 
 this is questioned still by many good evolutionists—is 
 whether the struggle for life in nature works the same 
 way. 
 
 The importance of evolution as a policy appears 
 when we think that the future of the human race and 
 of any particular branch of it depends primarily upon 
 the quality and character of its posterity. The theory 
 of evolution has been a great stimulus to experimental 
 
234 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 researches in heredity and many of its laws have been 
 discovered and verified. It is now known that physical 
 structure, mental abilities, and moral disposition are in- 
 herited according to mathematical ratios that can be 
 calculated in advance, where the data are ascertainable. 
 A child’s talents are limited like his fingers. 
 
 Neither collective wisdom nor individual piety can 
 prevent a nation from lapsing into incapacity and cor- 
 ruption if the breeding of coming generations comes 
 from the inferior rather than the superior stocks of the 
 community. It makes little difference in the long run 
 how the people cast their ballots. The fate of the 
 country is actually determined by how they combine 
 their chromosomes. The finest form of government is 
 futile unless it is managed by men of capacity. The 
 purest form of religion is bound to degenerate if the 
 quality of the population deteriorates. 
 
 By the application of such laws of eugenics as are 
 already known, and without infringing upon conven- 
 tional morality, it would be possible practically to 
 eliminate feeble-mindedness and hereditary viciousness 
 and to raise up a race that would be superior physically, 
 mentally and morally to any that the world has hith- 
 erto known. 
 
 Very little can be done in this direction by legisla- 
 tion. Very much could be done by moral suasion, by 
 holding up higher moral ideals, by instilling respect for 
 the race, responsibility for posterity, and unsefishness 
 in sacrificing present pleasures for the benefit of future 
 generations; in short, by preaching. 
 
 Here is a most influential function that the church 
 has languidly relinquished. While ministers are com- 
 
THE EUGENICS OF ABRAHAM 235 
 
 plaining that the field of ecclesiastical activities has nar- 
 rowed through the taking over by the state of educa- 
 tion, charity, and the like,* they are neglecting a more 
 important field to which they have historic claim and 
 where they can exert a greater influence over the fu- 
 ture than in any other possible way. In primitive re- 
 ligions the priest had a great deal to say about what 
 marriages should be made. His modern successor 
 mostly confines himself to the perfunctory perform- 
 ance of the marriage ceremony. 
 
 If a new religious sect should arise, composed of 
 members of good hereditary stock and endowed with a 
 sufficient variety of desirable qualities, if such a com- 
 munity should strictly segregate itself, geographically 
 or socially, and maintain for a number of generations a 
 high standard of marital relationship and child welfare, 
 there would be developed a “peculiar people” that 
 would stand as high above the average of the world as 
 the highest races do now above the lowest. They could, 
 if they desired, rule the rest of the world through force 
 of sheer superiority of mind and moral purpose. 
 
 Something of this sort was attempted, according to 
 Prof. Ralph E. Danforth, with the children of Israel 
 but failed through their disobedience to the law of 
 Jehovah. I quote from his article on “Religion as a 
 
 Factor in Human Evolution”: ° 
 
 Paleontology shows us that single individuals, or single 
 pairs, have been the starters of new species, rather than 
 great masses of individuals. The plan which was laid down 
 for Abraham, and conceived by him, would have produced 
 
 4See p. 32 on this point. 
 5In Scientific Monthly, Feb., 1925. 
 
236 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 a new species of superior human beings if it had been con- 
 sistently and unfailingly carried out. Even as it is, with 
 all their breaches of the original sacred plan, the Jews are 
 a remarkable people, decidedly distinctive in many ways, 
 if not altogether in the ways originally planned. They 
 came very near to producing a new and distinct human 
 species, and although they fell short, they have pointed the 
 way in which it can be done... . 
 
 The plan proposed for Abraham and his descendants in- 
 volved pure line breeding, with careful selection of mates, 
 and a code of ethics highly moral, sanitary and religious. 
 The intense faith in the guiding supervision of God, the 
 Creator of all things, was a support without which the plan 
 never would have been carried out to such an extent and 
 during so long a period of time. 
 
 The genetic principle of selection and rejection which 
 some holy fathers have seen through a glass darkly in the 
 form of a doctrine of divine election, and which we, using 
 the symbolism of John the Baptist and of Jesus, may well 
 call the principle of the ax and the fan, was foreshadowed 
 in the plan of Abraham. 
 
 The plan of Abraham is as simple as nature itself, whose 
 deepest laws it involves; and it is as sure as physics and 
 chemistry through which God works, for any who will con- 
 sistently follow it through the generations, a thing which 
 the descendants of the old Abraham have done but faultily, 
 very faultily. It is equally the plan of Jesus, the plan of 
 nature, and the plan of the Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness. 
 
 It shocks our sensibilities to read in regard to the 
 peoples of Palestine: ““When your God puts them into 
 your hands and you rout them, then you must extermi- 
 nate them, making no compact with them and showing 
 
A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 237 
 
 them no mercy.” ® But we must not be too hasty in 
 
 condemning this policy. If the Canaanites were as bad 
 as they were painted, it would have been better for the 
 Jewish race and for the world at large if the Israelites 
 had obeyed the injunction of Jehovah instead of inter- 
 marrying with them as they did. But we cannot judge 
 of that, for we have the history from only one side. 
 Doubtless the “Book of the Wars of Jehovah,” ’ as 
 written by the enemy, would read differently from that 
 quoted in the Scriptures. 
 
 The method of selection as practiced in nature and 
 primitive peoples, the relentless struggle for existence 
 resulting in the survival of the fittest, involves appalling 
 waste and terrible suffering. For lack of knowledge it 
 was indiscriminating and sometimes failed of its object 
 in spite of its cruelty.® 
 
 We can nowadays secure the same results by milder 
 methods. We can, for instance, segregate, instead of 
 slaughtering, individuals possessing defects of body or 
 mind undesirable to perpetuate. Such negative and re- 
 strictive measures, however, would be of little avail un- 
 less accompanied by such positive eugenic measures as 
 would encourage earlier marriage and larger families 
 for the best of our young men and women. But this 
 requires a religious zeal and spirit of self-sacrifice, a 
 
 6 Deuteronomy 7:2. 
 
 7 Numbers 21:14. 
 
 8 For instance, if we assume that the Midianites were so hope- 
 lessly vile that their tribe were better wiped out, then Moses made 
 the slaughter unavailing by not ordering the killing of the female 
 children along with the male. As we now know, hereditary traits, 
 good and bad, pass equally down the female line and the 32,000 
 Midianite maidens so saved were sufficient to contaminate the en- 
 tire Hebrew race. Numbers 31:17, 18, 35. 
 
238 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 sort of revival that no prophet has yet arisen to preach 
 though the salvation of society depends upon it. 
 
 But whether we live according to our lights or not, 
 the law is not abrogated. Natural forces continue to 
 act, even though we ignore tbem. The word “now” in 
 my text means now, not A.D. 26. It was an eternal 
 truth that John was enunciating. The ax and the fan 
 are perpetually at work, and if we do not pay heed to 
 them, so much the worse for us. 
 
 Natural selection is slow, cruel, and cumbrous. We 
 can produce new forms of plants and animals better 
 and quicker than nature can, as a visit to any exhibit 
 of horticulture or animal husbandry will show. That 
 is what our intelligence was given us for, that we may 
 improve upon the crude methods of nature. 
 
 But while we strive to improve upon them we must 
 not forget that we owe to them the development of 
 social virtues as well as personal prowess. A species 
 may survive and succeed in the struggle for existence 
 through the development of cooperation, of maternal 
 or paternal care for offspring, of self-sacrifice for. the 
 community, of ability to live with another race. It is 
 this that has produced the law of the pack, the spirit 
 of the herd, the communism of the hive and ant hill, the 
 commensalism of marine animals and insects, the home 
 life of the nest.° 
 
 The close relation between evolution and religion is 
 well brought out by Prof. William Patten, who teaches 
 evolution in Dartmouth College: 
 
 8 This side of evolution, too often overlooked, is emphasized in 
 Drummond’s Ascent of Man, Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, and Pat- 
 ten’s Grand Strategy of Evolution. 
 
EVOLUTION HELPS RELIGION 239 
 
 The compelling pragmatic law, which Darwin so clearly 
 saw in operation in plant and animal life, and which he 
 called ‘Natural Selection,” is the same law that is so clearly 
 expressed in biblical teachings, as, for example: 
 
 “And even now the ax is laid unto the roots of the trees: 
 therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is 
 hewn down and cast into the fire. ... But the root of 
 the righteous shall not be moved.” 
 
 Thus science and religion offer the same incentives to 
 action and have the same purposes to accomplish; and 
 science expresses in her more comprehensive formulas pre- 
 cisely what all the great religions of the past and present 
 have tried to express in their teachings, but without that 
 sure and intimate knowledge of Nature-action which science 
 gives us, and which is so essential to the truthfulness and 
 sanity of any kind of religion... . 
 
 And so, it seems to me that the study of evolution, as a 
 whole, more than anything else, will help to minimize the 
 antagonism between religiously minded and scientifically 
 minded people, and will help them to work more peacefully 
 and happily together. For young and old, for high-brow 
 and low-brow, the study of evolution makes life more sig- 
 nificant and more beautiful. It justifies their faith and 
 fortifies their ideals. It makes God a more immanent 
 reality. It helps all of us to understand the purpose of 
 life, and how to accomplish it. 
 
 That is why I teach evolution. 
 
 To those who say that a man cannot be an evolution- 
 ist and a Christian, we may reply after the manner of 
 the man who was asked if he believed in infant bap- 
 tism. “Believe in it!” he answered. “Why, of course! 
 I’ve seen it.” So we have all seen Christian evolution- 
 ists, thousands of them, and their existence cannot be 
 
240 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 denied even by those who think they are inconsistent 
 and should abandon their religious or scientific beliefs. 
 
 Timid souls who have become alarmed at the idea 
 that religion and science are inevitable antagonists 
 should be assured by the “Joint Statement upon the 
 Relations of Religion and Science” which was drawn 
 up in 1923 by Prof. R. A. Millikan, of the California 
 Institute of Technology and Nobel prizeman, and reads 
 as follows: 
 
 We, the undersigned, deeply regret that in recent con- 
 troversies there has been a tendency to present science and 
 religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of 
 thought, for in fact they meet distinct human needs, and 
 in the rounding out of human life they supplement rather 
 than displace or oppose each other. 
 
 The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice 
 or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the 
 laws, and the processes of nature. The even more impor- 
 tant task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the 
 consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. 
 Each of these two activities represents a deep and vital 
 function of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the 
 life, the progress, and the happiness of the human race. 
 
 It is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by 
 science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals 
 of religion, when it represents Him as revealing Himself 
 through countless ages in the development of the earth 
 as an abode for man and in the age-long inbreathing of 
 life into its constitutent matter, culminating in man with 
 his spiritual nature and all his Godlike powers. 
 
 This statement was signed by a number of the fore- 
 most scientists, religious leaders, and men of affairs of 
 
A CONFLICT OF DOGMATISTS 241 
 
 the United States, whose names appear on pages 244- 
 461—a representative group of prominent men. 
 
 No one can question either the ability or the sincer- 
 ity of such men as these, and since their adhesion to 
 the declaration is purely voluntary it is evident that 
 they find no essential incompatibility between a per- 
 sonal religious faith and a scientific view of the uni- 
 verse. The list of signers could be extended indefi- 
 nitely; in fact, the statement probably represents in 
 general the position of most of the educated and mod- 
 erate-minded men of our time and country. 
 
 It is a curious feature of the present situation that 
 the laity are more alarmed over the advances of science 
 than the clergy. That is, those who know the most 
 about theology and who have most at stake in the 
 church are most willing to welcome historical criticism 
 and scientific research. ‘The real conflict is not be- 
 tween science and religion as such, but rather between 
 dogmatic and intolerant religionists and scientists on 
 the one side and liberal and tolerant religionists and 
 scientists on the other side. It is more a difference of 
 temperament than of opinion. The effort to fetter 
 freedom of investigation or to force thought into fixed 
 formulas is equally fatal in science and religion. 
 
 Overmuch fear of heresy indicates lack of faith. 
 Scientific men have such absolute confidence in the 
 validity of the scientific method that they permit their 
 most fundamental principles to be challenged even in 
 their own societies. Chemists listen without a shudder 
 to destructive attacks upon the immutability of the 
 elements and the indivisibility of the atom. The Royal 
 Society of London even applauds a speaker who sets an 
 
242 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 upstart foreigner like Einstein above Newton, one of its 
 earliest and most venerated members. 
 
 The papers have reported a half-dozen cases of pro- 
 fessors who have been dismissed from educational in- 
 stitutions under ecclesiastical control for teaching evo- 
 lution, but there has been no retaliation from those 
 whom some call the ‘‘enemies of religion.”’ I have never 
 heard of the National Academy of Sciences expelling a 
 member because he was suspected of being a Presby- 
 terian or of the American Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science blackballing a man because he had 
 been baptized. Girard College is the only institution 
 that excludes clergymen by charter and I understand 
 that the doorkeeper there is not very vigilant in search- 
 ing every visitor to see if he has a dogma concealed 
 about his person. If we begin to rewrite our textbooks 
 in science to suit a single sect, or section of a sect, we 
 may soon have Methodist and Baptist zodlogies, Prot- 
 estant and Catholic chemistries, Jewish and Christian 
 theories of gravitation, as we now have northern and 
 southern histories, and proletarian and capitalistic 
 economics. 
 
 What I have said here is not for the purpose of ad- 
 vocating or explaining evolution, or to show its relation 
 to religious thought. There are plenty of books on such 
 subjects. But I want to urge Christian thinkers to de- 
 vote more attention to this, as well as to other scientific 
 theories, in order to determine their theological bear- 
 ing and ethical application. Some clergymen denounce 
 evolution at sight as a dangerous novelty, which is 
 foolish. Others accept it docilely and indifferently, as 
 they do Newton’s laws of gravitation or the nebular 
 
APPLICATIONS OF EVOLUTION 243 
 
 hypothesis—‘‘doubtless it is true since the scientists say 
 so, but it is none of my business’”—which is almost 
 equally foolish. For, as I have tried to show, it is very 
 much their business, although they are not qualified to 
 take an active part in its experimental verification and 
 development. The doctrine of evolution is capable of 
 very pernicious perversions both in theory and in prac- 
 tice, as the world has seen. It has been adduced as 
 justification of the claim that “Might is right.” The 
 “survival of the fittest” has been interpreted as the 
 “survival of the fightest.” 
 
 But we may draw from it lessons more consonant 
 with Christian ideals and ethics, as Tennyson did in 
 the days when Darwinism was young and viewed with 
 much aversion: 
 
 The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, 
 And the man said, “Am I your debtor?” 
 
 And the Lord—‘“Not yet: but make it as clean as you can, 
 And then I will let you a better.” 
 
 If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than 
 their own, 
 I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice 
 be mute? 
 No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne, 
 Hold the scepter, Human Soul, and rule thy province of 
 the brute. 
 
244 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 SIGNERS OF THE JOINT STATEMENT UPON THE RELATIONS OF 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
 
 Religious Leaders 
 
 Dr. John D. Davis, Presbyterian, Professor Old Testament 
 Literature, Princeton Theological Seminary. 
 
 Bishop William Lawrence, Episcopalian, Boston. 
 
 Bishop William Thomas Manning, Episcopalian, New York. 
 
 Dr. Henry van Dyke, Presbyterian, preacher and poet, 
 Princeton, N. J. 
 
 Dr. James I. Vance, Presbyterian, First Presbyterian 
 Church, Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 President Clarence A. Barbour, Baptist, Rochester Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 President Ernest D. Burton, Baptist, University of Chi- 
 cago. 
 
 President Henry Churchill King, Congregationalist, Ober- 
 lin Coliege. 
 
 Dr. Robert E. Brown, Congregationalist, Second Congre- 
 gational Church, Waterbury, Conn. 
 
 Bishop Francis John McConnell, Methodist, Pittsburgh, 
 Pat 
 
 Dr. Peter Ainslie, Disciple, Christian Temple, Baltimore, 
 Md. 
 
 President William Louis Poteat, Baptist, Wake Forest Col- 
 lege, N. ‘Car, 
 
 Bishop Joseph H. Johnson, Episcopalian, Los Angeles, 
 Calif. 
 
 President James Gore King McClure, Presbyterian, Mc- 
 Cormick Theological Seminary, Chicago. 
 
 Dr. Merle N. Smith, Methodist, First Methodist Church, 
 Pasadena, California. 
 
 Dr. Herbert L. Willett, Disciple, Theologian, Associate 
 Editor Christian Century, Chicago. 
 
 Scientists 
 
 Charles D. Walcott, geologist, President of the National 
 Academy of Sciences, President of the American Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science, and Head of the 
 Smithsonian Institution of Washington. 
 
WHAT SCIENTISTS SAY 245 
 
 Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist, President of the 
 American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
 
 Edwin Grant Conklin, zoologist, Head of the Department 
 of Zoology, Princeton University. 
 
 James Rowland Angell, psychologist, President of Yale 
 University. 
 
 John Merle Coulter, Head of the Department of Botany, 
 University of Chicago. 
 
 Michael I. Pupin, physicist and engineer, Professor of 
 Electro-mechanics, Columbia University. 
 
 William James Mayo, surgeon, Mayo Foundation for 
 Medical Education and Research, Rochester, Minn. 
 
 George David Birkhoff, Head of the Department of 
 Mathematics, Harvard University. 
 
 Arthur A. Noyes, chemist, Director of the Gates Chemical 
 Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 
 Calif. 
 
 William Wallace Campbell, astronomer, Director of Lick 
 Observatory and President of the University of California. 
 
 John J. Carty, engineer, Vice-President in Charge of 
 Research, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 
 New York. 
 
 Robert A. Millikan, physicist, Director of Norman Bridge 
 Laboratory of Physics, Pasadena, Calif. 
 
 William Henry Welch, pathologist, Director of the School 
 of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 
 Baltimore. 
 
 John C. Merriam, paleontologist, President of the Carnegie 
 Institution, Washington, D.C. 
 
 Gano Dunn, engineer, Chairman of the National Research 
 Council, Washington, D.C. 
 
 Men of Affairs 
 
 William Allen White, editor, Emporia Gazette, Emporia, 
 Kans, 
 
 Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, Washington. 
 
 James John Davis, Secretary of Labor, Washington, D.C. 
 
 David F. Houston, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, New 
 York. 
 
 Frank O. Lowden, ex-Governor of Illinois, Oregon, IIl. 
 
 John Sharp Williams, ex-United States Senator, Yazoo 
 City, Miss, 
 
246 THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 Rear Admiral William S. Sims, Commander United States 
 Naval Forces in European waters during the World War, 
 Newport, R.I. 
 
 Harry Bates Thayer, President, American Telephone and 
 Telegraph Co., New York. 
 
 Julius Kruttschnitt, Chairman of the Executive Commit- 
 tee, Southern Pacific Railway, New York. 
 
 Frank Vanderlip, ex-President National City Bank of 
 New York, Scarborough, N.Y. 
 
 Henry S. Pritchett, President Carnegie Foundation for 
 Advancement of Teaching, New York. | 
 
 Victor F. Lawson, publisher, Chicago Daily News, Chi- 
 
 cago. | 
 
 John G. Shedd, ex-President Marshall Field & Co., Chi- 
 cago. 
 
 Elihu Root, ex-Secretary of State, New York. 
 
A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT, OR MORAL 
 
 THERE are a great many things about the ministry 
 that puzzle a layman. One is the very small amount 
 of the Bible which is utilized for homiletic purposes. 
 It might be supposed that in listening to sermons at the 
 rate of a hundred a year a man would in the course of a 
 lifetime hear the most of the available portion of the 
 Bible treated didactically; but this is not the case. In 
 reading the Bible one is always striking verses which 
 seem to him, in his unprofessional ignorance, well 
 adapted for texts but which he cannot recall having 
 heard sermons upon, and he wishes his minister would 
 put a slot-box in the vestry into which the congregation 
 could drop the texts they want to hear discussed. 
 
 For example, a great deal of attention is now being 
 paid to questions of political economy in the pulpit, so 
 much that if all we knew of the Bible was what we 
 get from some of our modern preachers we would sup- 
 pose it to be purely a treatise on that subject; yet there 
 is one excellent text for sermons of this class which 
 seems to be neglected. I allude to the last clause of 
 the fourteenth verse of the third chapter of the Gospel 
 of Luke, “Be content with your wages.” 
 
 We all know the occasion for the admonition. The 
 Roman soldiers did a great deal for civilization. They 
 were the cement which held together the most stable 
 and extensive of the ancient empires. They maintained 
 
 order among a hundred nations and enforced peace for 
 247 
 
248 A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL 
 
 the first time on rival sects and castes. They gave a 
 new meaning to the conception of law. They estab- 
 lished some degree of justice where the caprice of 
 despots had been the only power. But “single men 
 in barracks don’t grow to plaster saints.” They had 
 their faults and John kodaked them as accurately as 
 he did the Pharisees, the publicans and the multitude. 
 They did, as he said, sometimes take advantage of their 
 position of public police to accuse men falsely, they 
 were often brutal and rough in their treatment of the 
 subject populace and they were given to striking for 
 higher wages. 
 
 What strikers they were, when you think of it! They 
 struck for less work and more holidays; they struck for 
 more spoils of war and less weight to carry. They 
 struck because the weather was too hot and they struck 
 because the water was too cold. They struck when- 
 ever a popular leader was removed, and if no other 
 excuse presented itself they struck for recognition of 
 the legion. And when new legions were formed with 
 recruits from the recently annexed portions of the 
 empire they struck against the admissions of “barbar- 
 ians,” a word that meant the same as “‘scabs” does now. 
 In every great emergency, in any crisis when it was 
 particularly necessary that all classes should work to- 
 gether for the common good, the legions could be de- 
 pended upon to strike for higher wages. The election 
 of an emperor was their great chance, and finally it 
 came to be recognized that the man who promised most 
 to the soldiers would be emperor. Politicians catered 
 to the legion vote. That is why Rome fell. There 
 are fifty-six other reasons why Rome fell, for which 
 
 i 
 
UNPOPULAR GOSPEL 249 
 
 see commencement orations, but they are for use with 
 other subjects. 
 
 Some possible reasons occur to me why ministers do 
 not preach from the text “Be content with your wages.” 
 One is that it may not be applicable to the present time. 
 If so, it is a good reason. Preachers no longer use the 
 biblical denunciations against the worship of graven 
 images and ceremonial pollutions because these are not 
 modern vices. It may be that there are now no people 
 discontented with their wages, that all employers pay 
 as much as they can afford, that every employee realizes 
 that he is getting as much as he deserves and that the 
 world has become so far Christianized that we can 
 delight to see others prosper more than ourselves. It 
 may be that there is now no class which strives to 
 advance its private interests regardless of the incon- 
 venience and injury to the public that may come from 
 the means they employ. If, then, there are none who 
 attempt to get better wages by violence or false accusa- 
 tion, the clergy are right in treating the text as obsolete. 
 
 There is another possible explanation why this text 
 is not used—and I must confess that this is not original 
 but was suggested to me by a minister. I really never 
 should have thought of it myself. It is that preaching 
 from such texts would “alienate the masses.” This is 
 certainly a great objection. In fact it is insuperable. 
 It has always been the great obstacle to the spread of 
 Christianity that preaching the gospel has a tendency 
 to “alienate the masses.” It is perhaps not too much to 
 say that if it had not been for this all the world would 
 have been Christian long ago. It must be extremely 
 difficult for a pastor of a mixed congregation to preach 
 
250 A SERMON WITHOUT TEXT OR MORAL 
 
 “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” 
 and not “alienate” somebody. I do not see how he can 
 do it. And the masses, above all. There are only a 
 few preachers who have millionaires in their congrega- 
 tions, so rich men are fair game. You can learn all 
 about their vices in the newspapers and there are lots 
 of good texts in the Bible to use against rich men, more 
 than any preacher can use up in a lifetime; but if he 
 alienated the masses the church would be empty and his 
 sphere of usefulness curtailed. I see that. 
 
 Perhaps John thought that their wages were high 
 enough. But their regular pay was only about ten cents 
 a day and often they did not get that because of graft 
 by the men higher up. It would be unwise to establish 
 this as the maximum wage on scriptural authority. 
 
 Another reason why this text is not used may be that 
 it is not considered inspired. But the most critical of 
 my commentators does not question it and the most 
 modern of my translators does not alter the sense of 
 the passage. It was spoken by the greatest prophet 
 ever born of woman, but that would not prevent its 
 being rejected by the highest critics. The “higher 
 critics” are those who throw out any passage which 
 they do not understand; the “highest critics” are those 
 who deny the inspiration of anything they do not like. 
 It is an easier method than that of the higher criticism, 
 does not require so much scholarship, and it is more 
 successful. It is really the only way to get a Bible 
 which is perfectly satisfactory to oneself and the con- 
 gregation. Inspiration is of course not confined to the 
 past. We are all of us infallible, more or less, and 
 “they didn’t know everything down in Judee.” Some 
 
 a ee ee ee 
 
IS DISCONTENT A DUTY? 251 
 
 ministers go so far as to preach the virtue of “divine 
 discontent.” Discontent does seem a queer attribute 
 for the Deity, but probably it is all right. Only if con- 
 tentment is no longer one of the Christian virtues, let 
 us know it at once and we will stop our feeble and pain- 
 ful efforts to cultivate it. 
 
EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 Unless, in using the gift of “tongues” you utter intelligible words, 
 how can what you say be understood? You will be speaking to the 
 winds! There is, for instance, a certain number of different lan- 
 guages in the world, and not one of them fails to convey meaning. 
 If, however, 1 do not happen to know the language, I shall be a 
 foreigner to those who speak it, and they will be foreigners to 
 me,... Therefore let him who, when speaking, uses the gift of 
 “tongues” pray for ability to interpret them—1 Corinthians 14: 9-11, 
 13 (Twentieth Century Version). 
 
 Not long ago I had to change trains at a junction 
 and found that I had run out of reading matter for 
 the long journey before me. There were only five min- 
 utes between trains and I had no time to choose accord- 
 ing to my taste. So I decided to take as my guide the 
 voice of the people, and making a dash at the news- 
 stand I asked the dealer: “‘Where is your shelf of best 
 sellers?” He pointed to a row of new books and there 
 I saw among the detective stories and jazz novels three 
 books of another sort: Papini’s Life of Christ, Van 
 Loon’s Story of the Bible, and Goodspeed’s modern 
 English version of the New Testament. 
 
 Now what was there in common between the brilliant 
 and uncritical picture of Christ by an Italian ex-atheist, 
 the colloquial and modernistic narration of biblical 
 stories by an American journalist, and the scholarly 
 and literal translation of a theological professor that 
 should place these three rather expensive volumes 
 
 among the best sellers of the day? Simply that all 
 202 
 
UNDERSTANDED OF THE PEOPLE = 253 
 
 three were in their several ways fresh and unconven- 
 tional presentations of the Bible. Their popularity 
 showed that the people of today will read the Scriptures 
 if they are translated into the language of today. The 
 Bible is perpetually among the best sellers but only 
 when it is put into a new and modern form does it at- 
 tract the attention of the general reader. 
 
 There are two classes of people who will be benefited 
 by a modern English translation of the Bible: those 
 who are familiar with the present version and those who 
 are not. As we cease to hear the ticking of a clock 
 after listening a while, so those who have heard, read, 
 or memorized portions of the Scriptures every day since 
 babyhood, and always in the same words, have lost the 
 power of perceiving their deep and vivid meaning. On 
 the other hand, to those who have not been so trained 
 the biblical language seems strange, quaint, and af- 
 fected, and it is difficult to persuade them that anything 
 which sounds so foreign and antiquated can be of prac- 
 tical value to them. 
 
 To older Christians any change in the phrases which 
 have been their comfort in sorrow and the expression 
 of their deepest emotion gives a shock like the singing 
 of a hymn to an unaccustomed tune, but a new genera- 
 tion is continually coming on, and it is a question 
 whether we shall train them in an acquired taste for 
 the ancient phraseology and so fix a gulf between their 
 religious and their daily life or give them the Gospel in 
 their own language. We do not nowadays need so 
 much a greater attachment and reverence for estab- 
 lished words and forms as we do a fresh presentation 
 of the message of God to the modern world. There is 
 
254 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 not such a change in the English of the last three hun- 
 dred years as to make any considerable portion of our 
 Bible absolutely unintelligible to the ordinary reader. 
 There are not many passages in the Authorized Ver- 
 sion which seriously distort the sense, and with the 
 abundance of dictionaries, no one need be misled by 
 these. But tone and style are just as important factors 
 in a translation as verbal accuracy, and in this respect 
 the Revised Version is no improvement over the old. 
 The chief fault with the Authorized Version was not 
 that it was inaccurate, but that it was antiquated, and 
 the Revised Version is much the same. 
 
 Difficult as the art of translating is, its aim is very 
 simple. It is, to produce on the readers of another 
 language the same impression as was produced on the 
 readers of the original. The Bible as a message to our 
 own times is of greater importance than it is as an 
 English classic. Paul did not write in the Greek of 
 Homer, and we should not translate him in the English 
 of Shakespeare. Paul’s Greek was to his contem- 
 poraries about what good newspaper English is to us. 
 It is brisk, everyday language; not overburdened by 
 grammatical scrupulosity; not in the least quaint, 
 archaic, or affected. Doubtless some of Paul’s vigor- 
 ous and unconventional phrases borrowed from the 
 shops, the barracks, and the prize ring shocked the 
 literary sensibilities of the précieuses of Corinth. 
 
 What is wanted in any translation of an ancient 
 work, as also in a historical novel, is not the effect of 
 antiquity, but of contemporaneity. The object of read- 
 ing such a work is to be transported back to the age 
 which it depicts, and any affectation of the archaic de- 
 
ANTIQUE FINISH 255 
 
 stroys the illusion, because no age appears antiquated 
 or peculiar to itself. To publish nowadays a new or a 
 revised version in the language of King James is mor- 
 ally and esthetically allied to the practice of filling the 
 grain of oak furniture with lampblack to give an “an- 
 tique finish.”’ It is like translating a German novel into 
 broken English to give it a foreign flavor. 
 
 A large part of a Dictionary of the Bible is taken 
 up with explaining the meaning of the English words 
 used in our common version—that is, in translating 
 the translation. This is a very valuable feature of the 
 dictionary—the pity of it is that something essentially 
 so unnecessary should be so much needed. A new 
 translation has the further advantage of getting rid of 
 theological phraseology. Every word in the Authorized 
 Version is weighted down with a pile of scholastic 
 tomes. We are forced to read the gospel message 
 through spectacles dim with the mists of eighteen cen- 
 turies of commentation and controversy. This is like 
 the practice that used to prevail in the schools of study- 
 ing Greek from Latin textbooks. 
 
 But we need not discuss the question whether seven- 
 teenth-century English represents ancient Greek bet- 
 ter than does twentieth-century English. The use of 
 the second person singular and of obsolete words and 
 idioms may give an agreeable literary flavor to the 
 educated taste, but that does not decide the matter. 
 What we want to know is whether the average man, 
 woman, and child will get by using them a fresher and 
 more vivid realization of the meaning of the message 
 of the Bible to them. We are not obliged to decide from 
 theoretical grounds alone, for the experiment is easily 
 
256 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 tried. There are several translations of the New Testa- 
 ment in modern English on the market; I have seen 
 them tested under widely different circumstances, and 
 they were always received with a hearty welcome and 
 no opposition. Students at the university, prisoners in 
 the penitentiary, and the ordinary church congrega- 
 tions are alike more interested and impressed than when 
 the ordinary version is used. It is a strange sight to 
 look down from the pulpit and see the congregation 
 really listening to the customary reading of the lesson. 
 But most marked of all are the results of its use with 
 the young people’s societies. To have boys and girls 
 beg the leader to read longer to them in the New Testa- 
 ment, to have them borrow it from each other, and sit 
 up nights to read it through like the latest novel, is suffi- 
 ciently unusual to merit attention. 
 
 The more new translations the better. The im- 
 portant thing is to keep any one of them from becoming 
 “authorized.” In the multiplicity of sects there is a 
 chance for the true Christianity to develop. In the 
 multiplicity of versions there is a chance for freedom 
 from the bondage to the letter. When each scholar in 
 the Bible class has a different version there will not be 
 so many hours wasted in quibbling over the technical 
 meaning of some English words. They will be obliged 
 to study the thought. Many persons who do not read 
 the original tongues find it advantageous to read the 
 Bible in French or German, not because these versions 
 are better than ours, though they are because less anti- 
 quated, but because they get a better insight into the 
 meaning through the unaccustomed words. 
 
 Paul’s letters in particular show a gain in vividness 
 
A DRIVE FOR THE FUND 257 
 
 and modernity, as the following passage from the 
 Twentieth Century New Testament will show: 
 
 I wish you would tolerate a little folly in me!—as indeed 
 you really do. I am jealous over you with a jealousy like 
 the jealousy of God. I gave you in marriage to one hus- 
 band, that I might bring into the Christ’s presence a pure 
 bride. Yet J fear that it may turn out that, just as the 
 Serpent by his craftiness deceived Eve, so your minds may 
 have lost the loyalty and purity due from you to the Christ. 
 For if some newcomer is proclaiming a Jesus other than the 
 one whom we proclaimed, or if you are receiving a Spirit 
 different from the one which you did receive, or a Good 
 News different from that which you welcomed, then you are 
 marvelously tolerant! I do not reckon myself in any way 
 inferior to the most eminent apostles! Though I am not a 
 trained orator, yet I am not deficient in knowledge; indeed, 
 we made this perfectly plain to you in everything. 
 
 With reference, indeed, to the Fund for your fellow- 
 Christians, it is really superfluous for me to say anything 
 to you. I know, of course, of your willingness to help, 
 and am always boasting of it, when speaking about you to 
 the Macedonians. I tell them that you in Greece have 
 been ready for a year past. It was really your zeal that 
 stimulated most of them. My reason for sending our 
 Brothers is to prevent what we said about you proving in 
 this particular matter an empty boast, and to enable you 
 to be as well prepared as I have been saying you are. 
 Otherwise, if any Macedonians were to come with me and 
 find you unprepared, we-—to say nothing of you—should 
 feel ashamed of our present confidence. 
 
 A living faith must be expressed in living language. 
 The chief foe of vital religion is antiquarianism. An 
 
258 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 old and neglected city becomes buried under the accu- 
 mulated débris of the passing years. In the course of 
 time it becomes hidden from view and forgotten, al- 
 though there may still linger about the site some dim 
 tradition of its historic greatness. But when the skilled 
 archeologist excavates the mound, carefully removing 
 the encumbering dirt layer by layer, and religiously re- 
 storing the buildings and preserving the utensils of 
 daily life, there stands revealed to us the original city, 
 not as a ruin and a relic, but as the abode of life; and 
 for the first time we get a feeling of kinship and under- 
 standing for the ancient people who once trod its 
 streets and worshiped in its temples, who met the same 
 temptations and struggled with the same sins as we. 
 
 So it is with an old book which through neglect or 
 misplaced reverence has become encumbered and ob- 
 scured by the accumulation of obsolete expressions. It, 
 too, has to be dug out and restored before it can seem 
 real and lifelike to us again, before we can see it as it 
 was in the beginning. For many books this does not 
 matter. Let them get dusty and moldy as they will. 
 Once in a long while we will take down the venerable 
 volume from the shelf and spend a few minutes turn- 
 ing over its yellow pages. We find a certain pleasure in 
 puzzling out the meaning from its antiquated spelling 
 and strange phraseology. We are amused at recogniz- 
 ing familiar thoughts disguised in these ‘‘olde cloathes,” 
 but we may be sure that this was not the impression 
 that the author intended to convey. The vellum volume 
 contains perhaps the pamphlets of some pugnacious 
 politician or the sermons of a protesting divine, a mod- 
 ernist of the modernists of his time, and he would rather 
 
THE GOSPEL OF KING JAMES 259 
 
 never be read at all than be regarded as a quaint relic 
 of antiquity. It really is not treating him fairly to 
 read him in this spirit, and he has the right to resent 
 it. 
 
 The books that most need translation are those sev- 
 eral centuries old in what is nominally our own lan- 
 guage but which is really quite different. The words 
 seem the same and the modern reader assumes that they 
 mean to him what they meant to contemporaries, 
 whereas many of them have suffered a subtle alteration 
 in essence or in atmosphere through the lapse of time. 
 If a man does not know a word of Greek he does not 
 venture to interpret the meaning of a passage in the 
 Greek classics. But when he reads the authorized ver- 
 sion of the Bible he may be unconsciously misled as to 
 the meaning of the language, and he may stake his 
 soul’s salvation or may condemn a brother as a heretic, 
 on the basis of a single text of which he no more under- 
 stands the meaning than he does of the original Greek 
 or Hebrew. 
 
 Only experts in Elizabethan English can understand 
 Shakespeare, and they do not agree about it. The 
 Variorum edition devotes pages to the interpretation by 
 different commentators of a single word, and often in 
 the end they give it up as incomprehensible. Such 
 critical speculations form an interesting intellectual 
 exercise, but it really does not matter after all what 
 Shakespeare meant by any obscure word or passage. 
 Nobody holds Shakespeare to be divinely inspired in 
 the theological sense, and nobody takes the plays as an 
 infallible rule of faith and practice, so the reader is 
 none the worse if he has misconstrued a phrase or two. 
 
260 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 For instance, Shakespearean scholars tell us that the 
 common quotation, “Conscience does make cowards of 
 us all,” does not mean what it is commonly quoted to 
 mean. But who cares? It’s a handy quotation any- 
 how, whatever the author may have meant by it. So 
 too Biblical scholars tell us that the oft cited saying of 
 Job: 
 
 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall 
 stand at the latter day upon the earth. 
 
 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet 
 in my flesh shall I see God, 
 
 should rather be read in this way: 
 
 “Still, I know One to champion me at last, to stand up 
 for me upon earth, 
 
 This body may break up, but even then my life shall have 
 a sight of God,” ? 
 
 or this: 
 
 “But as for me I know that my Vindicator liveth, 
 And at last He will stand up upon the earth: 
 And after my skin, even this body, is destroyed, 
 Then without my flesh shall I see God.” ? 
 
 This remains an inspiring and inspired passage, how- 
 ever it may be worded, but obviously it is not right to 
 use it as a “proof-text’”’ for three such serious dogmas 
 as the redemptive function of Christ, the resurrection 
 
 1 Moffatt’s translation. 
 2 Aked’s The Divine Drama of Job. 
 
LIVING CLASSICS 261 
 
 of the body, and second advent. The only cure for the 
 literalism and verbalism which strangles the life out 
 of religion is the multiplicity of versions. ‘For the 
 letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 
 
 The classicists are beginning to realize the value of 
 real translations that carry the spirit as well as the sense 
 of the original. Many such have recently appeared that 
 enable those of us who neglected the ancient languages 
 in our youth to see for the first time something of what 
 our classical friends are so enthusiastic about. The 
 Loeb Library has opened up a new world to me, the 
 world of Greek and Roman life. I have read most of 
 the volumes halfway through, for I read them with 
 eyes to the right. In this series as a rule the colloquial 
 passages are rendered into colloquial English with little 
 affectation of the archaic. I have all my life been a 
 devoted reader, however delinquent a follower, of 
 Marcus Aurelius as revealed in his Meditations. But I 
 got better acquainted with the man himself when I read 
 his letters to his teacher, Fronto, and found that he was 
 not afraid to use slang and puns on occasion. For 
 instance, 
 
 In future be chary of telling so many fibs, especially in 
 the Senate, about me. This speech of yours is awfully ° 
 well written. Oh, if I could only kiss your head for every 
 heading of it! You have absolutely put every one else in 
 the background. 
 
 This reads like one of Roosevelt’s letters to Lodge, and 
 it should. 
 
 8 Horribiliter. 
 
262 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 The worst enemies of the Bible are those who regard 
 it as “mere literature.” They hold the King James 
 version sacred because they have ceased to hold the 
 original sacred. I clip a typical comment from a cur- 
 rent editorial: 
 
 It is as ridiculous to translate the King James version 
 into colloquial English as it would be to play the same 
 trick with Hamlet or with Milton’s Areopagitica. The 
 authorized Bible as it now stands is a piece of unexcelled 
 literary workmanship. Leaving out of consideration alto- 
 gether its religious import it has the charm of a magnificent 
 style, which should not be tampered with. 
 
 “Leaving out of consideration altogether its religious 
 import”—exactly, that is just what such people do. 
 The editor is so ignorant of what he was writing about 
 that he does not know that the King James version was 
 written in colloquial English and that the New Testa- 
 ment was written in colloquial Greek. He thinks it was 
 written in blank verse like Hamlet or in stately Latin- 
 ized prose like the Areopagitica, which in itself shows 
 how misleading the King James version has become. 
 
 As a matter of fact our Authorized Version dates 
 rather from 1535 than 1611, for “‘it is not too much to 
 say that William Tyndale wrote nine-tenths of the King 
 James New Testament.” * And what Tyndale intended 
 to we can best learn from his own words in reply to one 
 of his opponents: “If God spare my lyfe, ere many 
 years I wyl cause a boye that dryveth the plough shall 
 
 know more of the scripture than thou dost.”’ He says 
 
 4 Goodspeed’s The Making of the English New Testament, p. 51. 
 
THE PLOWBOY’S BIBLE 263 
 
 that he “perceaved by experyence how that it was im- 
 possible to stablysh the laye people in any truth, 
 excepte the scripture were playnly layde before their 
 eyes in their mother tongue’”—“‘which thinge onlye,” 
 he adds, “moved me to translate the New Testament.” ° 
 
 Tyndale was a learned man, M.A. of Oxford and P.G. 
 of Cambridge, and he could have written in the style of 
 Euphues if he had wanted to, but he deliberately re- 
 jected all pedantry and affectation in order that he 
 might lay the Scriptures before the eyes of the lay 
 people in their mother tongue. Luther had the same 
 aim, and when he was translating the Bible into German 
 he went down into the market place so that he might 
 catch the racy vernacular of the day. The result was 
 that these versions became the literary masterpieces 
 and models of the English and German languages. 
 
 Of course Tyndale’s translation met with heated op- 
 position, as does every effort to bring the Bible to the 
 people. But even today I doubt if any of the opponents 
 of contemporary versions can handle the vocabulary of 
 abuse with such splendid vigor as did Cochleus in 
 attacking Tyndale: 
 
 The New Testament translated into the vulgar tongue is 
 in truth the food of death, the fuel of sin, the veil of malice, 
 the pretext of false liberty, the protection of disobedience, 
 the corruption of discipline, the depravity of morals, the 
 termination of concord, the death of honesty, the well- 
 spring of vices, the disease of virtues, the instigation of 
 rebellion, the milk of pride, the nourishment of contempt, 
 
 5 Goodspeed, p. 4. If we really want the antiquated flavor we 
 must preserve the original spelling. 
 
264 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 the death of peace, the destruction of charity, the enemy 
 of unity, the murderer of truth.® 
 
 And the funny thing about it is that the version that 
 Cochleus was fighting for, the Vulgate, was itself a 
 translation into the vulgar tongue, Latin, and when 
 Jerome produced it in the fourth century “it was ve- 
 hemently attacked as an unwarrantable innovation, 
 even by a man like Augustine.” Intolerance and con- 
 servatism are the same in all ages. It is a reaction that 
 can always be relied upon, whatever else changes. Not 
 many years ago, when an attempt was made to trans- 
 late the New Testament into modern Greek, a riot was 
 precipitated in Athens, in which people were killed. 
 
 In India, during the Sena dynasty of the eleventh 
 century, the Buddhists, who were the heretics of that 
 age, introduced the vernacular into religion, but the 
 Brahmans opposed it with this ringing declaration: 
 
 Who hears the eighteen Puranas or the Ramayana in 
 Bengali will be thrown into the hell called Rourava. 
 
 I do not know what are the heating facilities of the hell 
 called Rourava, but I presume it is not hot enough to 
 satisfy our present-day Brahmans who adhere to the 
 King James version on the ground that “the language 
 Paul and Moses spoke is good enough for me.” 
 
 The need for new versions is apparent when we learn 
 that the Greek text that Tyndale translated was that 
 compiled by Erasmus in 1516 from five fragmentary 
 manuscripts of the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. 
 
 6 Goodspeed, p. 8. 
 
THE TWO-HORNED UNICORN 265 
 
 Now scholars have at their disposal 150 manuscripts 
 dating from the third to the ninth centuries. As Pro- 
 fessor Goodspeed says: “We now possess a Greek 
 Testament under every word of which there goes down 
 a foundation of manuscript evidence fifteen hundred 
 years deep into the past.” More than that, we know 
 for the first time the language of the New Testament, 
 for the recent discovery in Egypt of a mass of Greek 
 letters on papyrus proves that it was written in the ver- 
 nacular of the time, which was very different from the 
 literary style.‘ 
 
 The British scholars who spent ten years, 1870-80, in 
 revising the New Testament adopted as their first 
 principle “to introduce as few alterations as possible 
 into the text of the Authorized Version consistently with 
 faithfulness.” The American revisers who published 
 their version in 1901 were less conservative but still 
 regarded it as “no part of our task to modernize the 
 diction of the Bible.” Yet they cleared up many ob- 
 scure and misleading passages that had perplexed the 
 devout and alienated the skeptical. Two mythical 
 monsters were removed from the zodlogy of the Old 
 Testament. The dragons that howled in waste places 
 are converted into jackals, and the unicorns into wild 
 oxen. The two-horned unicorn * involved a verbal con- 
 tradiction that strained the faith of the literalist who 
 held to the infallibility of the Authorized Version. Pas- 
 sages like Jeremiah 4 :19 and Lamentations 1 :20 were, 
 
 7 For a popular account of the discovery of the letters of the time 
 of Christ, showing that the Epistles and Gospels were written in 
 the vulgar tongue, see Saturday Evening Post, May 30, 1925. 
 
 8 Of Deuteronomy 33:17. 
 
266 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 as the American revisers say, “both unpleasant and in- 
 correct.” 
 
 With the question of biblical phraseology is involved 
 that of the language of prayer. To speak the English of 
 the seventeenth century as fluently and as carelessly as 
 one’s mother tongue requires constant training from 
 childhood. Every one who has had experience with the 
 devotional services of young people knows that one 
 reason why it is so hard to induce them to offer public 
 prayer is that they-must speak in what is practically a 
 foreign tongue. They have never used the second 
 person singular, and they often blunder in trying to 
 convert a modern verb into the ancient form, exciting 
 the risibilities of the frivolous and experiencing 
 a feeling of embarrassment quite out of propor- 
 tion to the insignificance of the mistake. They 
 are only safe when using the familiar language of the 
 Bible, so the ordinary public prayer consists largely 
 of a more or less skillful collocation of Scriptural 
 phrases representing very imperfectly the real feelings 
 and aspirations of the speaker. The only advantage 
 which extemporary prayer has over written is thus 
 sacrificed, and what should be the simplest and most 
 spontaneous expression of heartfelt emotions becomes a 
 troublesome literary exercise. It would be interesting 
 to know how many people in private prayer adopt these 
 forms and how many use their natural language. My 
 own opinion is that many Christians in their most 
 earnest private devotions drop all obsolete idioms and 
 grammatical constructions. If that is so, there would 
 seem to be no good reason for assuming them in public, 
 for there is no ground for thinking that the Lord takes 
 
THOU OR YOU 267 
 
 special delight in an address couched in antiquated 
 phraseology. 
 
 Many evangelistic and Salvation Army songs mix 
 “thee” and “you” in the same sentence in a way which 
 is very amusing from a literary standpoint but, con- 
 sidered further, is encouraging, as it shows the struggles 
 of common sense breaking through conventionality, and 
 proves that living religion cannot be forever bound in 
 dead ecclesiastical forms. Let us have confidence in 
 our own religious feelings and in the possibility of ex- 
 pressing them in our own language. Let us believe in 
 ourselves and in the twentieth century. Suppose you 
 associated the word “ghost” only with a degrading 
 superstition. How would the phrase ‘Holy Ghost” 
 strike you? If your only idea of a king was something 
 akin to slavery, or polygamy, or feudalism, something 
 to be hated and overthrown, how would the monarchical 
 phraseology of the church impress you? What would 
 you think of a man who used “thou,” and “thee” and 
 “ve,” and could give no reason for doing so except that 
 it was done in 1611? In reading the Bible, would you 
 not be frequently like the Ethiopian eunuch, “reading 
 without understanding’’? 
 
 The custom of reading passages of Scripture in 
 schools is a good one for literary and religious reasons, 
 but for both reasons it is a serious mistake to prescribe 
 the use of the King James version alone when there are 
 more truthful versions to be had. Various versions 
 should be used in turn, or together, so the students may 
 turn their attention to the meaning and not fall into 
 the superstition of believing that there is something 
 magical in the repetition of certain archaic words and 
 
268 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 phrases. How would a professor of chemistry or biol- 
 ogy like it if he were required to use a seventeenth 
 century textbook? 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes warns us of the danger of 
 “polarized” words, that is, language that has become so 
 familiar and fixed that it has lost its meaning and vivid- 
 ness: 
 
 Time only can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or 
 word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing sig- 
 nified. Man is an idolater, or symbol-worshiper, by na- 
 ture, which of course is no fault of his; but sooner or later 
 all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to 
 powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as 
 metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm, but the 
 only way to get at truth. 
 
 Skepticism is afraid to trust in depolarized words and 
 so cries out against a new translation. I think, myself, if 
 every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its 
 old symbol and put into a new, clean, unmagnetic word, 
 we should have some chance at reading it as philosophers, 
 or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it—When society has once 
 fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it has never 
 done yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new 
 forms of language.® 
 
 The primary purpose of the Protestant Reformation 
 was to put the Bible into the language of the common 
 people, but modern Protestants have so far forgotten 
 the fundamental principle of their faith that they are 
 content to hear from the pupit an antiquated and inac- 
 curate version of the Holy Scriptures. The pastor pur- 
 
 9 The Professor at the Breakfast Table. 
 
THE TEST OF THE CHRISTIAN 269 
 
 ports to be reading the veritable revelation of God yet 
 knows in reading certain passages that the words do 
 not mean what they seem to mean, and the congregation 
 does not know what they mean at all. 
 
 All who value the truth above tradition, all who be- 
 lieve that the Bible is something more than mere litera- 
 ture, all who believe that the Bible has a message for 
 the world today which should be delivered directly and 
 correctly—in other words, all sincere Christians—will 
 prefer a modern version. All who worship words and 
 care not for their meaning, all whose religion consists 
 in verbal vesture, all who fear that the Bible will lose 
 its sanctity if presented in plain English, all who fear 
 that if the Bible is made readable it will be read and so 
 make religion a vital factor in modern life, all who hold 
 that the King James version is inerrant and gives the 
 literal language of the prophets and saints, all such will 
 naturally oppose the introduction of any new transla- 
 tion. 
 
 Religion of all things can least afford to be tainted 
 with antiquity. The greatest danger today is that our 
 young people, more impatient with the past than any 
 previous generation, shall look upon religion as some- 
 thing out of date with which they have no concern. If 
 religion is too closely identified with Palestine it will be 
 regarded as foreign to young Americans, except those 
 whose home land is the Promised Land. The God of 
 the churches is associated in the minds of modern 
 youth with mummies and cuneiform inscriptions, 
 rather than with the printing press and radio. ‘There 
 is some excuse for the good old Methodist lady who 
 started in to learn Hebrew. When asked why, she re- 
 
270 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 plied that she must die before many years, and she 
 wanted to be able to talk to God in his own language 
 when she got to heaven. 
 
 We must not allow religion to be buried under a heap 
 of archeological rubbish like the cities of Mesopotamia 
 and Egypt. The Lord is no antiquary. He is a God of 
 the twentieth century, more at home, we believe, in our 
 modern world than in any previous age, though we 
 hope that the twenty-first will be still better fitted for 
 His habitation. 
 
 It were blasphemous to suppose that the truths of 
 religion would lose by translation into modern English. 
 Many a man, however, has been condemned as heretic 
 for expressing an old truth ina new form. I once heard 
 a devout woman criticize her pastor as irreverent, and 
 when I asked her how, she said: ‘‘He talks about Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob as though they were real per- 
 sons.” 
 
 What the world needs is the reincarnation of the 
 Eternal Word in the living words of today. 
 
 REFERENCES TO MopeRN ENGLISH VERSIONS 
 
 If, as I hope, these remarks may have inclined some to 
 see for themselves if religion will survive translation into 
 our vernacular, it may be of interest to append the titles of 
 such modern versions as I am familiar with. I have pur- 
 posely quoted from various versions in preparing this volume 
 in order that the reader may sample several. No one who 
 did not know Italian would think of making a serious study 
 of Dante without consulting all the different translations 
 available, and it is quite as important to learn exactly what 
 the biblical writers said about Inferno and Paradise. 
 
MODERN ENGLISH VERSIONS 271 
 
 The New Testament: An American Translation. By Edgar 
 J. Goodspeed, Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek 
 in the University of Chicago, Chicago. The University 
 of Chicago Press. 
 
 This is the latest and probably the best for American 
 readers. 
 
 The Making of the English New Testament. By Egdar J. 
 Goodspeed, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 
 
 This is not a translation but a book about translations, 
 giving the reasons for a modern version. 
 
 The Twentieth Ceniury New Testament. New York: Flem- 
 ing H. Revell Co. 
 
 It was this book that converted me to modern versions. 
 I have used it ever since it first appeared, twenty-five 
 years ago, and I know how well it works on young and 
 old, learned and unlearned. It is translated by a group 
 of twenty British scholars of various denominations. 
 
 The Modern Bible. By the Rev. Frank Schell Ballentine. 
 New York: The Lovell Co. 
 
 The first attempt at a modern version translation of the 
 Bible, was the publication under this title of little volumes 
 of the gospels in 1899 by an Episcopalian clergyman. 
 
 The Modern Speech New Testament. By R. F. Weymouth, 
 Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 
 
 The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures: The 
 New Testament. Edited by the Rev. Cuthbert Lattey, 
 Professor of Sacred Scriptures at St. Beuno’s College, 
 North Wales, and the Rev. Joseph Keating, Editor of 
 The Month. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. 
 
 A new translation by a group of Jesuit scholars with the 
 approval of the Cardinal Archbishop. The English is only 
 partially modernized. 
 
 The Old Testament (Vol. 1: Genesis to Esther; Vol. II: Job 
 to Malachi) and The New Testament. By the Rev. James 
 Moffatt, Professor of Church History, United Free 
 Sait College, Glasgow. New York: George H. Doran 
 
 O. 
 
 Here we have for the first time a complete and scholarly 
 translation of the whole Bible into modern English. No 
 one who believes that the Bible has a message for our 
 times and wants to know, so far as can be found out, what 
 
272 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 its authors meant should fail to consult it, even though he 
 may prefer the familiar language of the old version. 
 
 The Psalms in Modern Speech. By John Edgar McFadyen, 
 Professor of the Old Testament, United Free Church Col- 
 lege, Glasgow. Boston: The Pilgrim Press. 
 
 The poetical form is maintained by rhythmical language 
 and printing as verse. 
 
 The Beginnings of History According to the Jews. By 
 Professor Charles P. Fagnani, of Union Theological 
 Seminary. New York: Albert & Charles Boni. 
 
 An original and literal translation of the first eleven 
 chapters of Genesis. 
 
 Professor J. M. P. Smith with several collaborators is 
 preparing a modern English translation of the Old Testa- 
 ment that will soon be published by the University of 
 Chicago Press. 
 
WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 (A Missionary Talk to Young People) 
 
 Five times I have been given one less than forty lashes by the 
 Jews. I have been beaten three times by the Romans, I have been 
 stoned once, I have been shipwrecked three times, a night and a 
 day, I have been adrift at sea; with my frequent journeys, in 
 danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own 
 people, danger from the heathen, danger in the city, danger in the 
 desert, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, through toil and 
 hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and 
 thirst, often without food, and exposed to cold—II Corinthians 
 11:24-27 (Goodspeed’s version). 
 
 PEOPLE often wonder what is the secret of the per- 
 sistent opposition to foreign missions; why it is that so 
 many otherwise good and intelligent persons object to 
 sharing with our brothers in darkness the light that has 
 been given to us, especially in consideration of the fact 
 that religion, like knowledge, is something that is not 
 diminished by dividing it but is multiplied. It is twice 
 blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 
 
 The fact is, the root of the opposition to foreign mis- 
 sions is chiefly natural selfishness. We have a good 
 thing and we want to hold on to it. All men are by 
 nature monopolists. A poor man suddenly become 
 wealthy is likely to be as miserly as a born millionaire. 
 If a man has a fine painting, or a woman has a beauti- 
 ful dress, it is valued more highly if nobody else has 
 one like it. 
 
 It appears that some people think that Christ was 
 273 
 
274 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 
 born to our race; that he came first to the Nordics and 
 afterwards to nobody. Actually of course we owe our 
 Christianity to foreign missions in the days when we 
 were the foreigners. 
 
 Our religious genealogy is this: Christ came as a 
 foreign missionary to the Jews, the Jews came to the 
 Romans, the Romans came to the English. The first 
 of these missionary enterprises we read about in the 
 Gospels; the second we read about in the Acts of the 
 Apostles. The third we do not read about at all as a 
 rule because it is not in the Bible. But that is a poor 
 reason. The history of the Church after the end of 
 Acts is also interesting and instructive. Let me tell you 
 a story or two from this unread history. 
 
 About the year 586 there lived in Rome a young 
 monk named Gregory. He had been born to high rank 
 and great wealth, but had laid both aside to serve the 
 church. It happened one day that Gregory visited the 
 slave market of the city. I say “happened,” but I do 
 not think it was altogether by chance, for when he 
 became pope he paid great attention to the evils of the 
 slave trade, and I presume that it was more from some 
 humanitarian motive than from mere idle curiosity that 
 he attended the slave sale. 
 
 There he saw every kind of man that the broad em- 
 pire of Rome could furnish; representatives of all the 
 conquered races, from the Nile to the North Sea, mostly 
 black, woolly-headed Africans and brown-skinned Asi- 
 atics with straight black hair. But among them there 
 happened to be that day three captives of quite unusual 
 racial type, with blue eyes, long flaxen hair hanging 
 down their backs, and pink and white complexion, a 
 
THE PRIESTLY PUNSTER 275 
 
 type of physiognomy that has, very curiously, been 
 regarded even among brunette peoples as belonging to 
 angels. Gregory was so attracted by the strange beauty 
 of these youths that he inquired whether they were of 
 Christian or of pagan people. 
 
 “Pagan,” replied the Jewish slave dealer. 
 
 “Alas, that beings of such bright faces should be 
 slaves of the Prince of Darkness! What is their race?” 
 
 ““Angles,”’ was the answer. 
 
 “They look like angels and should have a heavenly 
 inheritance,” said Gregory. “From what country do 
 they come?” 
 
 “Deira.” 
 
 “Deira. Right, for they shall be rescued de ira 
 (from the wrath of God) and receive the mercy of 
 Christ. How call you the king of that country?” 
 
 “Ella.” 
 
 “Then must Alleluia be sung in A®lla’s land,” said the 
 priestly punster. 
 
 From that day Gregory became a missionary crank. 
 In fact he was so fanatical that he started out himself 
 a few days later with a few monks to convert Britain; 
 but he was so much needed in Rome at the time that 
 the people clamored for his recall, and the Pope sent 
 horsemen after him. They caught up with him at the 
 end of the third day’s journey and found him resting 
 under a tree, reading a book and making puns. It was 
 his only vice. 
 
 For some twenty years thereafter he was kept busy 
 at church work, but he never forgot his intention of con- 
 verting the savages of that remote archipelago. In 
 596, after he became Pope, he sent word to Gaul that 
 
276 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 
 part of the papal revenue should be spent in buying 
 Anglo-Saxon slaves of seventeen or eighteen to be 
 sent to Rome for education, that they might later 
 be made missionaries to their native land. But with- 
 out waiting for that he announced his intention of send- 
 ing a band of monks to evangelize the English. 
 
 We have no record, so far as I know, of what advice 
 his friends gave him when he proposed his unprece- 
 dented plan to them, but since human nature is much 
 the same in all ages we can easily guess what objections 
 were brought forward to dissuade him. 
 
 In the first place, that it was hard times. We should 
 be justified in assuming this on general principles, for 
 it has always been hard times, ever since Adam was 
 evicted from the Garden of Eden, and the times are 
 felt to be especially hard whenever a contribution for 
 missions is called for. But we do not have to guess 
 about it, for we have sufficient knowledge of the state of 
 affairs to feel safe in saying that it was just about as 
 hard times then and there as it has been anywhere 
 and any time in the history of the world. A commercial 
 crisis, a political crisis, and a religious crisis were in 
 conjunction at that time in the city of Rome. Half the 
 people were paupers, supported by public funds. The 
 old families had been living on the interest of their debts 
 for many years, and now many of them were being kept 
 alive by the alms of the church. Gregory himself gave 
 food to three thousand poor girls and their parents 
 every day. The Campagna around Rome, once so fruit- 
 ful, was now a desert. Crops had failed, malaria had 
 depopulated the land, and the farms had become cattle 
 ranges. The Lombards from the north of Italy were 
 
HARD TIMES IN OLD ROME 277 
 
 threatening to overwhelm Rome at any time and could 
 only be kept off by a combination of force and diplo- 
 macy, arms and bribes. Plagues and floods were caus- 
 ing horrible devastation. All the money that could be 
 raised was needed right here in Rome. 
 
 Gregory himself thus paints the situation in one of 
 his sermons: 
 
 Everywhere we see tribulation, everywhere we hear lam- 
 entation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down, 
 the fields laid waste, the land made desolate. Villages are 
 empty, few inhabitants remain in the cities, and even these 
 poor remnants of humanity are daily being reduced. 
 
 Another argument was that there was work enough 
 to do at home. And indeed there was. A great many 
 of the Italians even among the churchmen needed con- 
 verting as much as any heathen. There was a schism in 
 the church, an old heresy and several new ones. John, 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, was setting himself to 
 be Pope. It was doubtless pointed out to Gregory that 
 he was already undertaking more than a dozen men 
 could do. He was teaching agriculture to the settlers 
 that he had put on the abandoned farms. He was trying 
 to reconcile the Arian heresy. He was acting as arbitra- 
 tor in the quarrels of the Lombards. He was reforming 
 the church music—introducing the Gregorian chants, 
 you know—and nothing takes more time, needs more 
 tact, and makes more trouble than managing a church 
 choir. He was having a hard fight within the church 
 to prevent the taking of bribes for ecclesiastical pre- 
 ferment. He was trying to abolish the slave trade, an 
 
278 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 
 established institution of society for ten thousand years 
 or more, and not yet eliminated from the world. And 
 here he was proposing to undertake missions in the 
 foreign field. No wonder folks thought him foolish. 
 It is a well known fact that those who go in for foreign 
 missions never do anything for the home church. I 
 should say, rather, it is well known but not for that 
 reason to be taken for fact. Whether it is a fact or not 
 you can find out for yourself by observation in your 
 own church. 
 
 But probably the most powerful argument that 
 was brought against the new enterprise was that 
 the British were savages and incapable of Christianity. 
 Doubtless their own religion, crude as it might seem, 
 was better suited to their barbarous natures and primi- 
 tive stage of culture than the more refined and spiritual 
 Christianity. These tribes had never shown any sus- 
 ceptibility to civilization, and never had made a con- 
 tribution to the arts, literature, or science of the world. 
 Probably they were congenitally incapable of it. 
 They were destined to perish from the earth any- 
 way before the advance of civilization and it would be 
 mercy to leave them in peace. 
 
 It is almost impossible to realize the feeling of the 
 Greeks and Romans for outside barbarians. We cannot 
 nowadays in the light of history regard any people as 
 so hopeless as our ancestors seemed to the Romans. 
 Those far-off, foggy Tin Islands were in truth inhabited 
 by races about on a par with the American Indians, 
 lower than most of the races to which we now send mis- 
 sionaries. Some of them were painted blue with woad. 
 Their rcligion consisted in part of burning people alive 
 
NORDIC PAGANS 279 
 
 in wicker cages, and in part of shocking rites under the 
 mistletoe of which we preserve the mere symbol. Even 
 the Anglo-Saxons, worshipers of Tiw, Woden, Thor, 
 and Friia, whom we commemorate in the name of four 
 days in the week Tiwsday, Wodensday, Thorsday, and 
 Friiasday had no higher idea of heaven than a place 
 where fighting could go on all day, and at night the 
 heroes, dead and alive, could all get drunk together. 
 Evidently Christianity could not do anything for such 
 folks. It would be wasted on them. 
 
 But, as I said, Gregory was a missionary crank and 
 none of these perfectly good arguments made any im- 
 pression on him. He sent off a party of monks under 
 Augustine to evangelize the British Isles. They got as 
 far as France when they heard such awful reports of the 
 savages that they were sent out to convert that they 
 turned back in despair. You can hear rather unfavor- 
 able things said even yet about the British from that 
 side of the Channel but in this case they were not 
 exaggerated. Augustine went back to Rome to beg 
 off, but Gregory persisted, and his forty monks, as 
 Gibbon said, conquered England more completely than 
 Ceesar’s six legions. 
 
 One by one and in various ways the seven kingdoms 
 of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy became Christianized, 
 and it was A.D. 601 before Gregory’s primary objective, 
 Deira, or Northumbria, was reached. King Aélla had 
 been dead for thirteen years and in his place reigned 
 Edwin, his son, Edwin of Edwin’s burgh, now called 
 Edinburgh. I have from childhood had a peculiar fond- 
 ness for King Edwin, perhaps because of his name, and 
 it has always seemed to me that he took the wisest con- 
 
280 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 
 ceivable course under the circumstances. When Pau- 
 linus, the missionary, appeared at his court he neither 
 resented the intrusion nor accepted the new religion un- 
 critically. He did not murder the missionaries nor 
 demand miracles of them. He summoned a witenage- 
 mot, or council, and consulted the wisest of his kingdom 
 as to whether they should accept Christianity or cling 
 to the faith of their fathers. After some discussion 
 Coifi, the high priest of the established religion, arose 
 and declared that. the old gods were no good at all. 
 He had been a faithful and devout follower of them all 
 his life and it had not been of any benefit. The 
 old religion was mostly fraud, as none knew better than 
 he, its priest, and the new religion must be better since 
 it could not well be worse. 
 
 Then an old warrior rose, and said with savage elo- 
 quence that the life of man seemed to him like a bird 
 that flew out of the darkness into the king’s banquet 
 hall and, after circling around in bewilderment at the 
 light and noise of revelry, flew out of the opposite win- 
 dow into the night again. “Now,” he said, “if these 
 strangers can tell us anything of the unknown whence 
 we come or whither we go, or how to act for the little 
 while that we are in the light, by all means let them 
 come and teach us.” So the missionaries came and 
 taught, and that is how we became Christians. 
 
 Now the situation is reversed. The despised savages 
 of the Tin Islands and their Nordic neighbors have 
 become the dominant race of the world and the leaders 
 of civilization. The Anglo-Saxon people occupy or 
 control more than a quarter of the habitable area of the 
 earth. We are increasing in numbers, wealth, and 
 
SENILE CIVILIZATIONS 281 
 
 power. We cannot say how long this unprecedented 
 prosperity will last, but we cannot assume that it will 
 last forever. Rotation in leadership seems to be the 
 rule of human history. Nations appear to have their 
 periods of youth, maturity, and old age, like individuals. 
 
 There is the moral of all human tales, 
 
 Tis but the same rehearsal of the past; 
 First freedom, and then glory—when that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last, 
 
 And history with all her volumes vast 
 Hath but one page. 
 
 We do not know the reason why peoples or persons 
 decline and die. Perhaps there is no reason why. Per- 
 haps they might live and flourish forever—but they 
 never do. Professor Flinders Petrie* of London Uni- 
 versity counts eight successive cycles of civilization, all 
 approximately the same length and, applying the same 
 measure to the present, looks for its collapse in about 
 three hundred years. Oswald Spengler of Germany ° 
 using a different system of calculation, arrives at the 
 same date, 2200, for the definite decline of civilization 
 in Europe, which will finally be flooded by foreign and 
 fresher races. A nation is never really overthrown by 
 outsiders. It falls like a forest tree from dry rot in the 
 trunk. Even when a nation has not yet reached its 
 height certain signs of senility may be detected in it, 
 just as a man in the full prime of life and vigor may 
 sometimes perceive the first symptoms of the diseases 
 which he knows from his family history are most likely 
 
 1 Revolutions of Civilization. 
 2 Der Untergang des Abendlandes. 
 
282 WHEN WE WERE HEATHEN 
 
 to cause his death. Professor Petrie enumerates as in- 
 dications of approaching national decline the accumu- 
 lation of wealth, the slackening of effort, the growth 
 of democracy, the demand of the majority for the 
 division of wealth, the overthrow of oligarchy, decrease 
 in production, and lapse into barbarism. Others have 
 suggested such symptoms as the following: increase in 
 suicides as showing failing courage or lack of love for 
 life; increase in the proportion of insane and feeble- 
 minded and in the prevalence of neurasthenia; decrease 
 in the birth rate, especially of the better stocks; in- 
 crease in homicide and crimes of violence; decline in in- 
 dividual initiative and increasing dependence upon gov- 
 ernment; extravagance in luxury; excessive devotion 
 to athletic spectacles; failure of family life; decline of 
 religion as a vital factor in individual life (though there 
 may be an increase in ecclesiastical power and pomp); 
 recrudescence of superstition; lack of coordination and 
 disregard for law. 
 
 These are some of the common, characteristic devel- 
 opments that have been observed in periods of national 
 decline, but which of them are significant symptoms, 
 and whether they are real causes or accidental accom- 
 paniments of senescence, has not yet been ascertained. 
 The diagnosis of disease in a nation is more difficult 
 than in an individual. Racial therapeutics is an un- 
 known science. Personally, I have as little confidence 
 in the predictions of the date of the death of our civi- 
 lization by Petrie and Spengler as I have in the prophe- 
 cies of the date of the end of the world deduced from 
 Daniel and Revelations. No man knows when or how 
 his end will come, and no nation knows either. But 
 
THE COMING RACE 283 
 
 both may expect that it will come somehow and some- 
 time, and both should make preparations accordingly. 
 
 Now in every shift of supremacy from one race to 
 another there is always a great loss in the higher 
 achievements of civilization. Sometimes there is a 
 complete relapse into barbarism for centuries and great 
 cities become deserted ruins. The Sumerian, Hittite, 
 and Minoan civilizations had been completely forgotten 
 until recently unearthed by the archeologist. After 
 Rome ceased to be productive there were more than a 
 thousand years when almost nothing of importance was 
 contributed to science, art, or literature, and much that 
 had been known was forgotten and had to be redis- 
 covered. If it had not been for the missionary efforts 
 of such men as Paul, Gregory, Augustine and Pauline, 
 Christianity would have been lost in the wreck of Rome, 
 as was Latin learning and literature. 
 
 We cannot know, any more than did the Romans, 
 what people will be our successors in the age to come. 
 They may be yellow, brown, or black. They may be 
 some inconspicuous branch of the white race, or more 
 likely some hybrid that has not yet arisen. We can 
 only do the best we can by sharing with other peoples 
 the best we know, by teaching them what we have 
 found out about the laws of nature and about the laws 
 of God. Our religion was the best thing we inherited 
 from ancient Rome. It is the best thing we have to 
 give to others. We can be certain to Christianize our 
 successors if we Christianize the world. We have 
 simply to follow the Golden Rule. Do unto others as 
 others have done unto us. “Freely ye have received, 
 freely give.” 
 
LEST WE FORGET 
 (A Fourth of July Sermon) 
 
 The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a 
 goodly heritage—Psalm 16:6. 
 
 WE celebrate Independence Day for the same reason 
 that we tie a knot in our handkerchief or slip a rubber 
 band on our finger. It is to remind us to remember 
 not to forget something. And the thing that we are 
 so likely to forget that we have to set aside a special 
 day to remember it in, is the biggest thing that belongs 
 to us—our country. Every Fourth of July address is, 
 or should be, a sermon, the eighth chapter of Deuteron- 
 omy with its haunting refrain “lest we forget,’ which 
 Kipling put into verse in the “Recessional.”’ 
 
 On July 4th every year of the first hundred of our 
 national existence the eagle used to scream. Then fol- 
 lowed the era when the shadow of the muck-rake fell 
 over the land and the eagle sobbed and whined for his 
 sins, which were not few. But the last few years 
 have shown us that if this country is not nearer heaven 
 than Europe it is at any rate farther from hell, so the 
 eagle has plucked up courage and is screaming again. 
 
 This is not the time to rehearse the crimes of George 
 III. Americans have less desire than ever before to 
 rail at their British cousins. But we can celebrate the 
 Fourth of July without being accused of narrow pa- 
 
 284 
 
THE BRITISH FOURTH OF JULY 285 
 
 triotism, for Independence Day is more than a national 
 holiday. 
 
 The document to which John Hancock and others 
 appended their signatures on that hot July day in 1776 
 was not merely the Declaration of the Independence of 
 the United States. It was also the charter of political 
 freedom and the right of self-government to the com- 
 monwealths of Australia and New Zealand, to the Do- 
 minion of Canada, to the colony of Newfoundland, and 
 to the Union of South Africa. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence gave us our start 
 in life, a New England farm and a southern plantation. 
 The rest we have got for ourselves. Not a quarter of 
 the United States as it exists today was ever under the 
 British flag. Our histories have been written too ex- 
 clusively on the Atlantic Coast. History, like the 
 Constitution, should follow the flag. 
 
 We are inclined to think that the hand of God in 
 history is shown only in that of the Jewish nation, that 
 no other people has been so signally prospered as a 
 reward for following the laws of God or so patently 
 punished for disobedience to them. Really, however, 
 if we stop to consider it we find that the history of 
 Israel is the history of every nation. If it were other- 
 wise it would have no value for us as an object lesson. 
 The Jews were not a sacred people, they were not a 
 divinely inspired nation, but they had divinely in- 
 spired historians. ‘Through Moses and the prophets 
 there was a succession of men endowed with marvelous 
 power to discern cause and effect, to show what were 
 the sins which had brought ruin upon the people and 
 what were the moral conditions of national prosperity. 
 
286 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 It is this historical insight which gives the biblical 
 records their unique value, and that is why we can 
 refer to them for help in the interpretation of our own 
 history. 
 
 That the Jews inherited the Promised Land was not 
 chance; it was not due to irrational favoritism of God 
 acting like a partial father who in his will disinherits 
 one son and gives all his property to another. It was 
 because the Jews deserved this fair and fruitful land 
 that they got it. It was because they were morally 
 stronger than the vile and idolatrous Canaanites that 
 they were able to conquer them in war and enter into 
 the possession of cities which they did not build and 
 orchards which they had not planted. This is proved 
 by the fact that when the Israelites lost their moral 
 superiority over surrounding nations they were over- 
 come by them and carried into captivity. War is a 
 rough arbiter, rude and cruel, but its decisions are 
 rarely unjust. It is a test from time to time to prove 
 which people are fitted to survive and to possess the 
 world. | 
 
 The government of God is like that of a wise land- 
 lord who owns many farms of different value. When 
 he sees a neglected farm he removes the tenant and 
 puts in his place one who has been getting larger crops 
 and keeping his farm in good condition. So a country is 
 given to that people which can make the best use of it, 
 and only so long as it is doing better than other nations 
 can it hold possession. There is not enough land in the 
 world for any of it to remain idle or in incompetent 
 hands. A nation is allowed to govern itself only so 
 long as it can govern itself well. When it ceases to do 
 
OUR TITLE DEEDS 287 
 
 that the government is put into the more competent 
 hands of some other nation. 
 
 We are not the original owners of this beautiful 
 country. Nobody knows how many former tenants 
 there have been. We know that there was the Indian— 
 various tribes of different degrees of savagery, whose 
 only idea of usefulness was to kill the deer and the 
 buffalo and fight each other. There was the Spaniard, 
 who searched the country over for gold but cared 
 nothing for the more valuable coal and iron. He was 
 not a suitable tenant. There was the Frenchman hunt- 
 ing for furs or seeking to establish in the wild West a 
 feudal vassalage for Louis XIV. Still the land was 
 vacant. 
 
 Finally came our own race and took possession not 
 by accident, not by fate, not by favoritism, but because 
 we more than other nations were fitted to cultivate it. 
 Because in our hands it could be made more useful to 
 humanity than in the hands of the Indian, the Spaniard, 
 or the Frenchman. Because we can draw the waters of 
 the mountain brook around our fields and make the 
 desert fruitful. Because we can dig out the coal and 
 iron and from them make the thousands of articles 
 needed by the people in other lands. Because we can 
 offer to the men who came to us from other nations 
 freedom, justice, work, and wages. 
 
 It is for these reasons that the Lord our God has 
 given us this land; this land of fountains and depths 
 that spring out of the valleys and hills; a land wherein 
 we shall eat bread without scarceness; a land whose 
 stones are iron, and out of whose hills we may dig coal 
 and copper. 
 
288 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 But let us beware ‘‘lest we forget” on what condi- 
 tions we hold this fair land. It was not given to us, 
 it was leased. It was not deeded in fee simple to us, our 
 heirs and assigns forever; we have merely the usufruct 
 of it. It is not leased to us in perpetuity, not even for 
 ninety-nine years, not for any definite period of time, 
 however short. Our tenure is dependent on our com- 
 plying with the conditions. These conditions are simply 
 obedience to the laws of God. Every deed to man or 
 nation contains this. clause expressed or understood, 
 and without it every conveyance is null and void. The 
 Ten Commandments were given to us as to the Jews 
 with this inducement, ‘“‘that thy days may be prolonged 
 and it may go well with thee in the land the Lord thy 
 God giveth thee.” And we have warning by precept 
 and example that action for dispossession follows im- 
 mediately on our failure to keep the conditions; ‘‘as the 
 nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face 
 so shall ye perish because ye would not be obedient unto 
 the voice of the Lord your God.” 
 
 Since our lives and our country, our prosperity and 
 happiness, depend on our obedience to God’s com- 
 mands, it is important to study with the greatest care 
 this clause in our contract. How then can we know 
 God’s will? Where can we find God’s laws? Nowhere 
 in a condensed and easily accessible form. Everywhere 
 if we look for them. The laws of God are not codified 
 and we cannot purchase a single volume of “Revised 
 Statutes” containing all of them. They are written in 
 our minds and bodies; they are embodied in the 
 materials with which we work and in the food we eat; 
 they are expressed in the words of great and good men; 
 
GOD’S POLITICS 289 
 
 they are contained in all history properly written. 
 Some of them are in the Bible, a very small part of 
 them, but including the most important. Even those 
 laws of God revealed in the Bible are not so clear as 
 we should like them to be. They are written in Hebrew 
 and Greek. I do not refer to the language merely. 
 We can translate that, but the ideas, the symbols, and 
 the mode of thought are ancient and foreign. We have 
 to employ ministers to study them and explain them 
 to us week after week. Other laws of God, especially 
 those which govern his material world, are being 
 studied, arranged, and codified by scientists who de- 
 vote their lives to this work. God’s laws dealing with 
 the political and social relations of men are studied by 
 legislators and jurists and are embodied, more or less 
 imperfectly, in our statute books. Legislators do not 
 invent good laws; they formulate them in accordance 
 with the facts, just as scientists do. If they do formu- 
 late a false law and pass it, it is null and void by de- 
 cision of the Supreme Judge of the Universe, and all 
 the powers of the government, state or national, cannot 
 enforce it. The more they try to enforce a wrong law, 
 the more mischief it makes. 
 
 Through the labors of theologians, scientists, and 
 jurists, and all others who try to find and tell the truth, 
 we have found out many of God’s laws and can see 
 to some extent why it is that rewards follow their ful- 
 fillment and punishment their violation. We see that 
 this is not by the arbitrary act of a capricious despot 
 but is the direct action of cause and effect, and we rec- 
 ognize its justice whenever we understand it. God has 
 linked together, in this world, righteousness and pros- 
 
290 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 perity, wrongdoing and misfortune, and what God has 
 joined together no man may put asunder. When a man 
 has health it is a sign that he is obeying God’s laws of 
 hygiene. When a nation is growing in population and 
 wealth we may assume that it is obeying God’s laws of 
 political economy. It is the only certain test. 
 
 When a chemist discovers a new compound and 
 wishes to know if it is of value as a medicine he takes 
 it himself—in small doses. So when some new political 
 remedy is proposed as a cure for some or all of our 
 social ills, we should not turn a deaf ear to its enthu- 
 siastic and often overzealous advocates; neither should 
 we adopt it blindly as a cure-all. We should simply 
 try it—in small doses—and carefully watch the effect. 
 
 It might be objected—in fact the devil brought for- 
 ward this suggestion several thousand years ago—that 
 sometimes the wicked prosper and it is the righteous 
 who suffer. This is obviously true. We all of us think 
 that this is the case whenever we suffer. As the rain 
 falleth alike on the just and the unjust, so the cyclone 
 deals out death to the good and the bad. We have seen 
 the wicked flourish and the innocent afflicted. But we 
 all realize that the prosperity of evil is temporary and 
 rare, that a lie cannot long endure, and that the truth 
 is mighty and shall prevail. Wickedness does not pay; 
 that is the great lesson of life. Happy are those who 
 learn it from precept instead of experience. 
 
 We talk about the desirability of getting God on our 
 side in any conflict or cause. We sometimes try to 
 get God to espouse our cause by bribes or petitions. | 
 We try to get some good man who might be supposed 
 to have a “pull” with the Almighty to exert his influ- 
 
OUR SACRED HISTORY 291 
 
 ence in our behalf. Now there is only one way of get- 
 ting God on our side, and that is to get on God’s side. 
 We can always be sure of being on the winning side if 
 we find out which side is right and join that. The 
 only way to get God’s favor is to do his will. He rec- 
 ognizes no professed adherents—only followers. His 
 rewards are not misplaced. 
 
 If we as a nation have enjoyed to an exceptional 
 degree the favor of God, it cannot be that it was alto- 
 gether undeserved. It is our virtues, not our vices, 
 which have brought us this remarkable prosperity and 
 we therefore have a right to take pride in it. In fact, 
 it is the only thing we have the right to take pride in; 
 anything else is vanity and conceit. A nation becomes 
 formidable through its virtues and dangerous through 
 its vices. 
 
 Our history properly written would show the hand 
 of Providence guiding and controlling a nation as 
 clearly as the biblical histories. It should be written, 
 as they were, from the standpoint of God rather than 
 that of man. It should be written as a general on the 
 hilltop writes the history of a battle, not as it was seen 
 by a private in the ranks. So written, our history 
 would be found not less remarkable and instructive 
 than the history of the Jews in the Bible. It would tell 
 of the flight of our ancestors, Catholic and Protestant, 
 from persecution and oppression as the followers of 
 Moses fled from Egypt. It would tell of the wandering 
 of our race in deserts far wider than Sinai, of battles 
 with barbarous inhabitants of the land and their over- 
 throw. It would narrate the curious chain of events, 
 of court intrigues and corrupt statesmanship, by which 
 
292 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 the western part of this country fell into the hands of 
 the only man in Europe who would have sold it, and 
 at a time when he had to have money. We have built 
 greater cities than Jerusalem and grander temples than 
 Solomon’s. We have blown down stronger walls than 
 those of Jericho, and have crossed dry-shod wider rivers 
 than Jordan. 
 
 One way of valuing anything is by knowing its price. 
 We begin to appreciate the value of this heritage of 
 ours when we study history and learn what it has cost. 
 When we think of the thousands who have given their 
 lives to free our country and to preserve it intact, when 
 we think of the millions who have labored, each at his 
 own task, great or small, to make our country what it 
 is, then we know what our heritage is worth. We are 
 the heirs of all the ages. Our civilization, our language, 
 our science, our ideas of right and justice, our religion, 
 we have inherited and we must see to it that we guard 
 well what has been entrusted to us. Our country and 
 our civilization are not ours alone; they must be passed 
 on to our posterity undiminished and unimpaired. We 
 are simply the trustees of this estate and must not 
 squander it for our personal pleasure. We must pre- 
 serve it by righteousness and wisdom. I put them 
 together because they are really the same thing. We 
 hear actions called righteous which are not wise, and 
 deeds called wise which are not right, but it is a mis- 
 take, an impossibility. It is wise only to do right. 
 
 We must not live in selfish enjoyment of our herit- 
 age, thinking it will last our time, saying as the reck- 
 less king, “After us the deluge.’ We must leave no 
 small evil to grow, no sores in the body politic to fester 
 
FOES OF THE HOUSEHOLD 293 
 
 into dangerous wounds. We know what our forefathers 
 the founders of the Republic thought about slavery. 
 It was bad, they realized, but it was a little thing, a 
 tumor which it would hurt to cut out. The nation was 
 weak and any decisive action would have alienated 
 some of the states. Perhaps slavery would die out; 
 anyway, it would not grow. But it did grow, and it 
 required one of the bloodiest wars of modern history to 
 cut this tumor from the breast of the nation. Let us 
 beware lest we make the same mistake, leaving some 
 other social injustice to grow and inflame until riot or 
 war is the only remedy. 
 
 Nations are always conquered from the inside. So 
 long as we are morally strong we shall be strong in 
 every other way. Our only dangerous foes are within 
 the country, not without. Those who perpetrate in- 
 justice, those who appeal to violence, those who stir 
 up class hatred are the men whom we as a nation have 
 to dread and against whom we have to protect ourselves. 
 Liberty and independence, law and order, are not pre- 
 served by written constitutions and statutes; not by 
 police and armies; not by wealth and success, but by 
 the morality of the people. The government and insti- 
 tutions of a country cannot rise much higher than the 
 general ethical level. We cannot expect a government 
 to be honest while the people are dishonest. The man- 
 agement of public finances will not be honest so long 
 as the people dodge taxes. Legislators will not take 
 care of public money as though it were their own so 
 long as the people do not treat public property as they 
 would their own. Soldiers will loot and destroy if the 
 people lynch. Railroads will charge unfair rates so 
 
294 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 long as passengers will use tickets over again if the 
 conductor fails to collect them. It is personal wicked- 
 ness which makes our laws and institutions work so 
 badly, and we are quite safe in thinking that no other 
 sociological contrivances, however cunningly devised, 
 will work much better until the foundation of all so- 
 ciety, which is the average morality, is raised. 
 Whether, then, we as a people shall prosper or go 
 bankrupt depends simply on whether each one of us is 
 worth his wages. Are you giving to society an amount 
 of service equivalent to what you spend on yourself? 
 Are you working your way, or are you sponging on the 
 rest? Each man, as he receives his three dollars, his 
 five dollars, or ten dollars for his day’s work, ought 
 to consider what he has done that day for other people 
 which entitles him to that amount of money. If a 
 carpenter, has he made something that day worth so 
 much more than the lumber? If a lawyer, has he to 
 that extent helped to obtain justice and insure fair deal- 
 ing? Ifa merchant, has he been of so much service to 
 society in the distribution of goods? If not, then of 
 course he has cheated his neighbors, and cannot call 
 himself an honest man, no matter how willingly the 
 money was paid to him. This is elementary morality. 
 The ideal Christian standard is higher yet. This re- 
 quires not only that you give as much service to society 
 as is expected of you for the wages you receive, but 
 also that you do all that you possibly can. The com- 
 mon plan is to work as few hours as possible and to get 
 as much for itas you can. Trusts and trade unions are 
 organized with that aim, and strikes and lockouts are 
 for that purpose. This, of course, is precisely the op- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF GOOD WORKS 295 
 
 posite of the Christian plan, which is to do as much for 
 others as you can and take as little as possible for 
 yourself. 
 
 Our duty as tenants of this domain is primarily to 
 develop it. It was let to us unfinished and unfurnished, 
 only partially fit for human habitation. The days of 
 creation are not ended. In various places the igneous 
 formations are still being made, the rough forge work 
 which was finished in most of the world hundreds of 
 thousands of years ago. Everywhere we see some- 
 thing left for us to do. To complete the work of crea- 
 tion is our religious duty as much as anything else. 
 
 In that ancient religion which is nearest akin to the 
 Jewish, and from which we Christians have borrowed 
 much, this idea is clearly expressed. To dig an irriga- 
 tion ditch is better than saying many prayers; to kill 
 a wolf is as good as to sing a hymn. So spake Zara- 
 thustra. And thus saith the Lord of Hosts by the 
 mouth of his prophet Jeremiah: “Build ye houses and 
 dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of 
 them.”” The evolutionist who creates a new crop is a 
 true disciple of the Creator. 
 
 It may be said that this gospel of work does not need 
 preaching at the present time and in this country. It 
 may not need to be taught, but it does need to be 
 preached. But what we do need to have called to our 
 attention is the religious aspect of such service; thank- 
 fulness for our opportunities for such work, a realiza- 
 tion of our duty to do it, and a sense of our responsi- 
 bility for doing it well, lest we forget. 
 
 We Americans do not believe that people should 
 be pressed into the same mold, machined to the same 
 
296 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 pattern. It was to escape such a process that many 
 of us or our ancestors came to America. 
 
 America was populated by the persecuted. Puritans 
 from England, Huguenots from France, Germans from 
 the Rhine, Catholics from Ireland, Czecho-Slovaks 
 from Austria-Hungary, Armenians from Turkey, Jews 
 from Russia. These are but a few of those who fled 
 to America for freedom from the religious, economic, 
 racial, or military oppression at home. All these were 
 protestants and nonconformists in the original sense of 
 these words, whether they were Catholics or Congre- 
 gationalists. ‘They were a chosen people—chosen to 
 be kicked out from their native lands. Whether our 
 fathers came over in the Mayflower along with a ship- 
 load of furniture and pewter ware or whether they 
 came over later in the more comfortable accommoda- 
 tions of a steamer steerage, it was mostly because they 
 were considered undesirable citizens that they were 
 forced or permitted to depart. 
 
 America is a chosen land—selected out of all parts 
 of the world as their future home by those who desired 
 or were obliged to leave their native homes. This is an 
 honor that we should appreciate and endeavor to serve. 
 The United States is a synthetic nation. Other coun- 
 tries “just growed,” like Topsy. Ours is the conscious 
 and considered creation of its people. European and 
 Asiatic countries are almost entirely populated by those 
 who were born there and did not have energy enough to 
 get away. Our population is largely composed of those 
 who were not born here and had energy enough to 
 come. What is called patriotism is sometimes not love 
 of country but mere laziness. Our patriotism is less 
 
WE ARE THE STATE 297 
 
 alloyed with this element than any other, for a large 
 proportion of Americans love America because they 
 have lived elsewhere. They came here because they 
 thought they would find it best; they stay here because 
 they have found it best. Americanism is an elective 
 course. 
 
 Our form of government is no hand-me-down from a 
 former generation, no misfit borrowed from another 
 land. It is made to measure and remade to fit. Our 
 social system is more of a skin than a coat. It grows 
 with us. Every man his own tailor is the law of democ- 
 racy. The king of France said, “I am the State.” It 
 was a lie and they cut off his head for it. The Ameri- 
 can citizen says “I am the State,” and it is the literal 
 truth. All men are monarchs. This develops a sense 
 of responsibility. In other lands the people can com- 
 plain, “Why don’t they do it?” In America we can 
 only wonder, ‘“‘Why don’t we do it?” 
 
 Consequently the first lesson to be taught to an im- 
 migrant is that patriotism in the American sense is a 
 different thing from Old World patriotism. American- 
 ism does not mean loyalty to a king; it does not mean 
 attachment to a particular spot of ground; it does not 
 mean conformity to a fixed code of customs; it does not 
 mean the perpetuation of traditional institutions; it 
 does not mean the aversion to novel and foreign ideas; 
 it does not mean hostility toward those who differ from 
 us. 
 
 Americanism is one of the fine arts, the finest of all 
 the fine arts, the art of getting along peaceably with 
 all sorts and conditions of men. We Americans have 
 had more experience with the practice of this art than 
 
298 LEST WE FORGET 
 
 other nations, and it is not undue boasting to say that 
 we have acquired a certain proficiency in it. A steel 
 mill may contain twenty different nationalities, and 
 they do not quarrel any more than so many Irishmen 
 or Poles in their native land. A city block is a map of 
 Europe in miniature. ‘The immigrants try to keep up 
 their traditional antipathies, but there are few Old 
 World feuds that, if let alone, can resist the solvent 
 atmosphere of America. Their children when they go 
 to school call each other names and stretch their little 
 necks trying to look down on one another. And when 
 they grow up they go into partnership or intermarry. 
 So, scrapping and bargaining, quarreling and flirting, 
 studying together and working together, they learn to 
 know each other and become good Americans together. 
 
 No nation was ever before put to such a strain as 
 ours in the Great War, for none ever contained so many 
 representatives of the belligerent nationalities; yet none 
 proved more stable and strong. Our national motto 
 was not true when it was adopted, but it is now. At 
 last the American people, regardless of racial diversity, 
 can say with sincerity: United we stand. 
 
THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 (Not a Sermon but a Fable) 
 
 Now in the days before Adam, when Satan was alone 
 on the earth, Allah made a helpmeet for him out of the 
 smokeless flame. And Awwa was the name of Satan’s 
 wife and she bore him nine sons, not born after the 
 manner of men, but hatched like serpents of leathern 
 eggs in the sands of the desert where the sun stands 
 overhead at noon. And it came to pass when men be- 
 gan to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters 
 were born to them, that the sons of Satan saw the 
 daughters of men that they were fair and they took 
 them wives of all which they chose. And their children 
 were called jinns and they increased and multiplied ex- 
 ceedingly, and spread abroad over all the earth and to 
 the islands of the sea and into the land which is beyond 
 the great waters. And every land wherein they went, 
 there they abide to this day. But men know not the 
 sons of Satan save by their works; for they are fash- 
 ioned after the likeness of man, and appear as angels 
 of light. 
 
 In the days when the earth was young the sons of 
 Satan had little to do, for all mankind dwelt together 
 in one place, tilling the soil or tending the flocks. And 
 their sins were like themselves, few and simple. But 
 after their tongues were confounded, and they were 
 
 scattered abroad according to their nations, they 
 299 
 
300 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 sought out many inventions. Then had the genera- 
 tions of jinns to change their ways and adopt the new 
 inventions and divide their labors among themselves, 
 each according to his ability. 
 
 FIRST SON 
 
 The Arabian authors, to whose surprisingly wide 
 knowledge I am indebted for most of the above, have 
 even recorded for us the names of the nine sons of 
 Satan and their respective functions. The oldest of 
 them, or if not the oldest, one of the first to get busy, 
 was Haffan, whom the Greeks call Dionysos, and the 
 Latins Bacchus, and the Prohibitionists the Demon 
 Rum. Noah planted a vineyard soon after all the world 
 had gone wet, and quite innocently took to grape juice 
 as a beverage. But Haffan, with the aid of some mil- 
 lions of microscopic jinns, known nowadays as sac- 
 charomyces cerevisiz, introduced into it a subtle poison 
 which brought disgrace upon Noah as it has upon so 
 many of his descendants. 
 
 But Haffan’s power for evil was limited in ancient 
 times, because, try as he would, he never could bring 
 the alcoholic content of wine, beer, and cider above 
 five or ten per cent. Here the fermentation stopped, 
 for the little devils in the drink died of the poison they 
 had brewed. The drink was then strong enough to 
 make men foolish and slothful and loose-lipped, but 
 these effects soon wore off and rarely carried his victim 
 on to those mad deeds which alone could satisfy Haf- 
 fan’s diabolical ambitions. Not until the twelfth cen- 
 tury after Christ were means discovered by which he 
 
THE BOTTLE IMP 301 
 
 could turn out a product capable of matching in wick- 
 edness anything his brothers could do. It is, as we 
 might expect, an Arabian chemist, Abdulcasim, who is 
 discredited with the invention of distillation by which 
 brandy, whisky, and liquors of any desired strength 
 can be manufactured. He put his product on the 
 market under the trade name of the Elixir of Life, or 
 eau de vie. But it turned out to be something quite the 
 opposite. Such tricks as these gave to chemistry the 
 name of the Black Art and brought the science under a 
 cloud of suspicion from which it has but recently and 
 not yet altogether emerged. It was long the popular 
 belief that chemists were inspired of the devil or were 
 the sons of Satan in disguise, and indeed the certifica- 
 tion of such suspicion may be found in the records of 
 many courts where chemists were found guilty, either 
 by the testimony of experts or by their own confession 
 under torture, of having sold themselves to the Evil 
 One in exchange for their skill. 
 
 SECOND SON 
 
 Chemistry has also been the chief aid of another of 
 the sons of Satan, Lakis, the Fire Fiend. He seems to 
 have inherited his mother’s ardent disposition, but his 
 power also was at first limited and 
 
 He grieved he bin 
 Too small to sin 
 To the hight of his desire. 
 
 The most he could do in antiquity was to burn a hut 
 by upsetting an oil lamp or wipe out a village with a 
 
302 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 forest fire. So he spent most of his time haunting the 
 bitumen lakes of Baku, where the priests of Zara- 
 thustra kept the Eternal Flame alight. His brethren, 
 Awan and Zulbaysun, who lived in the city and did a 
 thriving business in court and counting-house, used to 
 come and sit on the crest of the Caucasus, with their 
 legs dangling over the precipice, and make fun of him 
 for wading around knee-deep in the asphalt. Then La- 
 kis, mightily vexed, stuck his pitchfork down deep 
 through the crust of the lake and cast the pitch far up 
 the mountain-side so that it bespattered their fine rai- 
 ment, while out of the hole there rose a dreadful black 
 smoke and stench as though it came from the depth of 
 Tophet. Then as Awan and Zulbaysun flew away down 
 the Euphrates valley toward Bagdad, he shouted after 
 them and said: ‘Smell that, O my brothers, and know 
 that the time shall come when men shall leave your 
 cities and seek the waste places of the earth where this, 
 my treasure, is found. And when one shall strike the 
 rock there shall gush forth a fountain of oil without 
 measure, and then will your merchant princes, O Zul- 
 baysun, be as beggars before him, and your kings, O 
 Awan, become as his hirelings. For in those days shall 
 chariots of fire run about the streets and with the tenth 
 part of an ephah of fined oil shall they outrun the 
 swiftest horse of Arabia and kijl many people. And 
 men shall go under the sea in the belly of a leviathan 
 wrought of iron for the greater peril of those who go 
 down to the sea in ships, and make themselves rocs on 
 whose wings they may fly like the jinns over mountain 
 and sea.” And after many days it came to pass even as 
 he had said. 
 
THE DEEDS OF LUCIFER 303 
 
 But Lakis in the meantime, while waiting for the 
 fulfillment of his prophecy, was not idle, but kept his 
 agents experimenting in many lands. In the kingdom 
 of Sin, which is in Far Cathay, dwelt a man who, in- 
 spired of Lakis, burned willows and made charcoal and 
 went into the desert and scraped up saltpeter and into 
 the mountains and dug brimstone. All these he got and 
 brayed them together in a mortar and gave of the mix- 
 ture to his countrymen for a weapon of offense. But 
 the Sinae were a peaceful and a foolish folk and they 
 only made firecrackers out of the powder for merri- 
 ment at weddings and funerals. 
 
 But Lakis had better luck when he got the ear of a 
 monk in the West, Roger Bacon by name, a notorious 
 wizard. For then men began to make guns bigger and 
 bigger every year until they got up to forty-two centi- 
 meters. And Lakis showed them how to dip qutun, as 
 the Arabs call it, or as we say “cotton,” into Strong 
 Water and to dissolve it in the al kohol, invented by 
 Haffan, and with this to load the guns. Then would 
 flames and thunder burst forth like afreets from a bot- 
 tle, and ten miles away a hundred soldiers would fall 
 down dead by this magic. 
 
 And much other mischief did Lakis do. The inven- 
 tion of matches was ascribed to him, as their original 
 name of “lucifers” showed. This put into the hands of 
 every evil-minded man or silly child the power to set 
 fire to a home or perhaps to burn a city. The number 
 of Fire Worshipers increased in the latter days until 
 one saw in the streets almost every man and many of 
 the boys carrying in their mouths a lighted weed giving 
 forth the incense most pleasing to the nostrils of Lakis. 
 
304 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 So in the course of time Lakis, whom the Northmen 
 called ‘‘Loki” and the Latins ‘‘Lux,” came to be es- 
 teemed the greatest instead of the least of all the sons 
 of Satan. No magic was more powerful than his, and 
 when one would prove his devilish origin, like Mephis- 
 topheles in the ratskeller, he would draw forth fire by 
 scratching the table, a miracle which nowadays any- 
 body can perform, so well has Lakis taught his lesson 
 to the world. 
 
 THIRD SON 
 
 Now I would not have you suppose from the incident 
 mentioned above that the sons of Satan were always 
 quarreling. On the contrary, they were kept so busy 
 that their idle hands found little mischief to do, except, 
 of course, in their professional capacity. Save for an 
 occasional squabble over which should be greatest in 
 the kingdom of Iblis they got on together better than 
 most human brethren and threw a good deal of busi- 
 ness in each other’s way. For instance, Lakis would 
 never have prospered as maker of munitions if it had 
 not been for his brother Awan, who was Councilor of 
 Kings. He had his minions in every ministry and prac- 
 tically controlled the diplomatic service of the world. 
 In that way he was able to stir up wars and rumors of 
 wars at any time and keep national jealousy and race 
 hatreds always aflame. In the old days men only went 
 to war once a year or so, and not all of them then, and 
 they took care to get back in time for harvest, or, at 
 any rate, before the cold weather set in. But in the 
 course of centuries Awan got things in such a fix that 
 
DEMOCRACY AND THE DEVIL 305 
 
 wars lasted all the year round, and even in time of so- 
 called peace a large part of the young men were serving 
 in the army and others spent all of their days in the 
 shops of Lakis making arms and ammunition. And 
 acting on the advice of Awan the kings invested money 
 in each other’s gun shops, so it often happened that 
 when they went to war they found themselves con- 
 fronted with weapons made by their own people and 
 were attacked by warships from their own yards. For 
 the sons of Satan are no respecters of persons and quite 
 devoid of race prejudice. 
 
 Finally it occurred to some people that if they could 
 get rid of kings they would get rid of the evil council 
 of Awan. But that did not help matters much. Though 
 they put four and twenty barons to rule over the king 
 and four hundred and twenty commons to rule over the 
 barons, and forty-two million voters to rule over the 
 commons, Awan’s influence grew none the less. He al- 
 ways seemed to be able to get hold of the man higher 
 up, however low down he might be. 
 
 FOURTH SON 
 
 In thus perverting the opinions of the people Awan’s 
 chief aid was his younger brother, Masbut the Tattler. 
 Like the rest of the family, Masbut began business in a 
 small way, using as his agents chiefly women and bar- 
 bers. This was voluntary and unpaid labor, amateur- 
 ish at best, although it is astonishing how active and 
 diligent some of them were in the spreading of news, 
 especially of a discreditable nature, and how much 
 harm could be accomplished in a community by such 
 
306 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 amateur efforts. “He that increaseth knowledge in- 
 creaseth sorrow,” especially when it isn’t so. 
 
 It was not until the invention of printing that Mas- 
 but really got his start and scandalmongery was put 
 upon a professional basis. Like Lakis, he tried to 
 Jaunch his discovery in China, but a country without 
 an alphabet is no place for the printing business. But 
 when Gutenberg once got it going in Germany it be- 
 came one of the most efficient means of extending the 
 kingdom of the Father of Lies. Books were too slow, 
 the presses took to turning out quarterlies, then month- 
 lies, weeklies, dailies, and hourlies, and those that came 
 out oftenest served the purpose of Masbut best. 
 
 The mails were too slow for him, so he borrowed the 
 lightning of Lakis and spread the news by copper wires 
 and ether waves. When a lie travels at the rate of 
 186,000 miles a second it is hard for the truth to catch 
 up with it. It is strange to think that once this im- 
 portant business of news-spreading was left to the cas- 
 ual calls of housewives or chance meetings on the 
 Agora, the Rialto, or the corner grocery, when we now 
 see its ramifications covering the world as with a net. 
 Every day forests are cut down and ground up to be 
 stamped with black words. Schools are established to 
 educate young men in the art of gathering news and 
 dishing it up to suit the popular taste. This gives 
 Masbut his chance, for with every truth he mingles 
 some falsehood so cunningly that even those who are 
 trained to handle the news cannot disentangle it. In 
 fact, we may be sure that no considerable piece of 
 wickedness is put through without the aid of Masbut, 
 the Printer’s Devil. 
 
THE DEMON ON THE HEARTH 307 
 
 FIFTH SON 
 
 It is he who transmits the misleading messages of 
 Awan the Diplomatist and publishes them in books 
 named from the colors of the rainbow. He is also the 
 right-hand man of Zulbaysun, who makes mischief in 
 bazaars and turns the river of gold to his own purposes. 
 *Twas Zulbaysun who blew the South Sea bubble and 
 many a bigger since. He robs widows and orphans of 
 their inheritance and brings the honest merchant to 
 ruin. In the old days he confined himself to such 
 picayune business as clipping coins and tampering with 
 weights and measures. But our complex interdigita- 
 tion of credit gives him an opportunity for operations 
 on a large scale and in secrecy. So active is he that 
 there are many people who consider him responsible 
 for all the deviltry in the world. Capitalism, they call 
 him, with strong accent on the second syllable, and 
 they believe that if he were banished the earth would be 
 a utopia, forgetting that there are eight other devils as 
 wicked as he. 
 
 SIXTH SON 
 
 Dasim, the sixth of the sons of Satan, is a domestic 
 devil. The hearthstone was his primary place of busi- 
 ness, and the substitution of the steam radiator has by 
 no means decreased his opportunities. He instigates 
 the sharp retort; he directs the poisoned arrow at the 
 weakest joints in the armor of self-esteem as they have 
 been disclosed in the intimacy of family life. He 
 lights the flame of illicit love and fires the train of 
 
308 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 jealousy that leads to crime. In his sphere of influ- 
 ence the progress of invention has made less change 
 than it has with his brothers, for he works on the primi- 
 tive emotions, the desires and appetites that remain the 
 same through all the ages in spite of changes in custom. 
 The laws of sociological geometry are eternal and the 
 triangle has three sides in every land. A writ in Reno 
 may take the place of a bag in the Bosporus, but the 
 principle remains the same. Dasim has always given 
 special attention tothe dinner table, the center of do- 
 mestic disunion. It is he who cools the coffee and over- 
 does the steak, in order to make them subjects of break- 
 fast controversy. A person into whom he has entered 
 is euphemistically said to have dyspepsia, sick head- 
 ache, liver complaint, or something of the kind, but 
 everybody in the house knows what is the matter. He 
 hath a devil. Dasim’s bad cooking is, some folks say, 
 responsible for as much mischief as his brother Haffan 
 has accomplished with his wine. Nothing is too petty 
 for him. He will possess at times the best-tempered 
 youngster, and he displays a most diabolical ingenuity 
 in spoiling a well planned dinner party by instigating 
 a malapropos remark or introducing a controversial 
 topic. He is the inventor of a code of table etiquette 
 that has caused a heap of unhappiness, for a violation 
 of it, such as the picking up of the wrong fork or send- 
 ing the wine around the table against the sun brings 
 down upon the offender a greater social penalty than a 
 conventional breach of the moral law. He also intro- 
 duced the tipping system and after-dinner speeches. 
 Dasim does not confine his activities to the dining-room. 
 He also holds sway in the kitchen and is the fomenter 
 
THE MELOMANIAC 309 
 
 of all the trouble with maids, cooks, and help generally, 
 to say nothing about the trouble they have with their 
 employers. On the whole, Dasim is not the least among 
 his brethren, even though they do make a lot of fun of 
 him because he does not introduce modern improve- 
 ments, but sticks to the same old tricks that he used in 
 the days of Eve and Lilith, and Jacob and Esau. 
 
 SEVENTH SON 
 
 One of his closest associates, next to Haffan, is Mar- 
 rah, who as the master of music and dancing runs one 
 of the broadest and most enticing highways leading to 
 the halls of Iblis. Hardly had Jubal got out his patents 
 on the first string and wind instruments before Marrah 
 began to pervert them to his own purposes. As soon as 
 Dionysos had stuck together the hollow reeds of his 
 syrinx and Apollo had stretched the strings across the 
 tortoise shell Marrah took possession of them. In 
 Africa he uses the tom-tom, in America the phonograph 
 or jazz band, to excite uncontrollable passions. He in- 
 spired the Lydian strains which soften the moral fiber. 
 He taught the Sirens and the Lorelei. Young and other- 
 wise charming virgins are deceived by him into think- 
 ing that they have musical genius, and then they spend 
 years and all the money they can borrow in trying to 
 reach high C and hammering ivory with their finger 
 tips, causing thereby much misery to all within earshot, 
 who nevertheless are inspired to encourage the practice 
 by complimentary lies. He devised the nautch, the fox- 
 trot, the corroboree, the bunny hug, the fandango, the 
 bacchanale, the waltz, and the can-can, and may be re- 
 
310 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 lied upon to bring out half a dozen new variations of 
 the old motif within the next few years, for his ingenu- 
 ity is inexhaustible. The whole horde of hops, dips, 
 glides, skips, scrambles, hugs, squirms, prances, kicks, 
 cuddles, writhes, and wiggles come from his fertile 
 brain. He is the St. Vitus of the infernal hagiology. 
 The saxophone and radio are his latest aids. 
 
 - EIGHTH SON 
 
 It must not be supposed that in this division of labor 
 the church is neglected. On the contrary there is a spe- 
 cial ecclesiastical department, and this is under the ef- 
 ficient management of Dulhan, eighth of the sons of 
 Iblis. The children of Dulhan attend church regularly, 
 rarely missing a service of any denomination. Sitting 
 invisibly by the side of the would-be worshipers they 
 whisper inaudibly to distract attention from the devo- 
 votions proper to the place and hour. They set the eye 
 to roving over the congregation, and whatsoever it falls 
 upon suggests some critical or malicious comment. 
 Perhaps it is a question of the taste of a lady in the 
 matter of headgear; perhaps it is a suspicion of the 
 business morals of a pillar of the church; anything may 
 serve the purpose of frustrating the aim of the service. 
 The Beni Dulhan even enter the pulpit and whisper 
 doubts to the preacher of the usefulness of his work, 
 the truth of his message, and the sincerity of his hear- 
 ers. Buta better field even than the pews or the pulpit 
 they find in the choir loft. Here, in complicity with 
 his brother Marrah, the musical fiend, Dulhan can 
 cause any amount of mischief, and it is not without 
 
BEELZEBUB 311 
 
 reason that certain of the stricter sects have banished 
 choirs and musical instruments altogether. 
 
 Unlike the rest of his brethren, it cannot be said 
 that the advance of civilization has enlarged the scope 
 of Dulhan’s operations, though some would say that 
 this was because he had been quite too successful in his 
 efforts at undermining the church. At any rate Dulhan 
 no longer has the power he used to have when the secu- 
 lar arm was at his disposal, when the auto-da-fé was a 
 public holiday, the rack and thumbscrews in operation, 
 and kings trembled at the threat of bell, book, and 
 candle. Nowadays, except for an occasional pogrom 
 in Poland or a riot in India, Dulhan’s power of perse- 
 cution does not extend beyond a farcical and ineffec- 
 tive trial for heresy. But as superintendent of the 
 paving department of the highways leading to the in- 
 fernal regions he is kept as busy as ever. 
 
 NINTH SON 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell upon the deeds of Wassin, 
 or, aS some authorities call him, Tir, ninth of Satan’s 
 sons, because they are conspicuous and dreaded by all. 
 He it is who is responsible for all public calamities, for 
 battle and tempest, for plague, pestilence, and famine, 
 and all like ills from which the Litany beseeches deliv- 
 erance. The destruction of Pompeii and Messina, of 
 Lisbon and Tokyo, are among his achievements. In 
 the line of hydraulics he has doubtless never surpassed 
 his first exploit in the days of Noah, though on account 
 of the sparse population of the globe at that time the 
 destruction was not so great as might have been ex- 
 
312 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 pected from the effort. Of all the infernal family there 
 is none with a greater host of helpers than Wassin. 
 Their name is legion. The sands of the sea are scanty 
 in comparison. What is more, they have the magic 
 power of becoming invisible and multiplying by the mil- 
 lion within a few minutes, so that a city is devastated 
 in a day by a pestilence. With an innumerable host 
 of bacteria, bacilli, microbes, parasites, he invades the 
 bodily citadel, and then man falls a victim to the Black 
 Death, the White Plague, the Yellow Fever, or the Scar- 
 let Fever, to the pestilence that walketh in darkness or 
 the destruction that wasteth at noonday. 
 
 Formerly it was supposed that death was carried on 
 the wings of the wind, so Wassin was called ‘Prince of 
 the Power of the Air” or “Malaria.” We now know 
 that he mostly makes use of insects as his agents of 
 transmission, and this identifies him with Beelzebub, 
 the God of Flies, and makes him responsible for at 
 least seven of the ten plagues of Egypt. Zarathustra, 
 one of the wisest of the prophets who have appeared 
 upon the earth in the course of centuries to warn man- 
 kind of the wiles of the sons of Satan, taught his fol- 
 lowers that to kill an insect was the best way of saying 
 a prayer, and that to dig a drainage ditch was more 
 acceptable to Ahura-Mazda than to burn a fat bullock 
 on the altar. So, too, Goethe tells us that Faust 
 achieved deliverance from the bonds of Mephistopheles, 
 not by fasting and penance, but by turning his atten- 
 tion to sanitary engineering. 
 
 Thus the unending warfare goes on between the Sons 
 of Eve and the Sons of Awwa. On strange battlefields 
 and with novel arms, but the fight is ever the same; 
 
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE 313 
 
 new wiles are met with new defenses, mines are coun- 
 termined, and wits match wits. ’Tis hard to tell at any 
 time which way the conflict turns, for the Heavenly and 
 Diabolic Hosts, as they descending and ascending meet 
 upon this our world, adopt confusing disguises, fight 
 under false flags, and often wrest from their opponents 
 their most effective weapons. Our wildered eyes fail to 
 distinguish the Angels of Light from the Angels of 
 Darkness, and we strike out blindly at friend and foe. 
 In this Holy War for the possesson of Mansoul there 
 are no neutrals or noncombatants and never is a truce 
 declared. Yet the land is fair to look upon and we 
 often forget that it is a battlefield until of a sudden we 
 are struck down and grievously wounded by a missile 
 from some unseen source. We need sharper eyesight 
 and a more understanding brain if we are to resist all 
 the wiles of the devil. For this we must eat of the fruit 
 of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but that 
 stands in the midst of the Garden of Eden and an angel 
 with a flaming sword guards the gate of it. 
 
 Still, our case is not altogether hopeless. We evi- 
 dently do get a bite of this Forbidden Fruit once in a 
 while, and I will explain to you how it happens, for not 
 many people know the secret. It seems that Eve, like 
 some—not all—of her daughters, was an economical 
 soul, and when she had eaten the apple clear down to 
 the core she thought it a pity to throw it away, as Adam 
 did his. So she saved the seed and carried it out of 
 the garden with her, past the terrible sentinel, by put- 
 ting it in a pocket which she had cleverly concealed, 
 after the manner of women, in the folds of her fig-leaf 
 apron. 
 
314 THE NINE SONS OF SATAN 
 
 Now what became of the apple seeds nobody knows. 
 Very likely they got scattered along the trail as the 
 evicted pair wandered about in search of a new home, 
 for we may assume that the pocket had a hole in it, 
 since Eve had not had much practice at needlework, 
 and an eyeless locust thorn with a vine tendril hitched 
 to it does not make a very handy needle and thread, as 
 you would know if you had tried it. It does not appear 
 that Eve made any systematic attempt to plant them, 
 or, if she did, Adam must have rooted out the seed- 
 lings as weeds or Cain pulled them up from mischief. 
 Anyhow, after the babies came Eve was too busy and 
 too happy to think much about the lost paradise. This, 
 I say, is all speculation, and your guess is as good as 
 mine, if not better. All we know is that somehow the 
 Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge got scattered all over 
 the world and is found today in the most unexpected 
 places. Every little while somebody gets hold of one 
 of the apples and it makes him wise. Sometimes he is 
 wise enough to save the seed and try to cultivate it. 
 The universities are all supposed to run nurseries for 
 raising the fruit and grafting it on to common stock, 
 but it’s hard work and some years the yield is mighty 
 slim. ‘The trouble is that in the course of centuries the 
 Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has got crossed with 
 all kinds of other trees. There is not a pure strain of 
 it anywhere in the world. When they attempt to grow 
 it pure by cuttings or self-fertilization it dies out. 
 Then again it pops up as a mutant on all sorts of 
 shrubs. It appears, transforms, and disappears in a 
 more perplexing way than that Cnothera which the 
 Mendelists are always talking about., 
 
YE SHALL BE AS GODS 315 
 
 But in spite of all this some real progress is being 
 made in the cultivation of the fruit, especially in recent 
 years, and in time we may hope that there will be 
 enough of it to go around. For it is the only antidote 
 to the poison disseminated by the Sons of Satan. One 
 who could live on it alone would be absolutely immune 
 to all their witchcraft. For instance, enough has been 
 grown to paralyze whole hosts of Wassin’s pestilential 
 myrmidons. 
 
 Whenever men eat of the Fruit of the Tree they be- 
 come as Gods knowing good and evil. Unto them is 
 given knowledge of the words which make powerless 
 the mightiest of the offspring of the Evil One. Then 
 may they command the jinns and afreets and they will 
 obey; they will become the servants of man, the slaves 
 of the lamp, and obedient to the ring which bears the 
 seal of Solomon the Wise. Though a jinn may cover the 
 earth like a tempest cloud, yet at the word of one who 
 knows he will change into a mist and shrink together 
 and condense until he can enter a brass bottle. Then 
 the bottle can be stopped with a leaden seal whereon is 
 engraved the Great Name of God and cast into the sea 
 to remain for all the ages of ages.’ 
 
 1 The germ of this fantasia may be found in a footnote to “The 
 Thousand Nights and a Night” (V. III, p. 229) by Sir Richard 
 Burton, who doubtless knew more of devilry than any man since 
 Faust. I am also indebted for a suggestion to Papini, who pro- 
 fessed to have it on the lowest authority as he tells in “Que le 
 Diable me dit” in the Mercure de France. Papini after the war 
 repented of his past and wrote an ecstatic Life of Christ that be- 
 came one of our best sellers. “The Nine Sons of Satan” was pub- 
 
 lished in The Unpopular Review of January, 1915, and I am in- 
 debted to Mr. Henry Holt for the privilege of reprinting it. 
 

 
INDEX 
 
 Aaron, 50 
 
 Abiogenesis, 231 
 
 Abraham, 58, 90, 236 
 
 Adam, 5 
 
 Adversity, 137 
 
 Ajax, 74 
 
 Aked, 260 
 
 Alcohol, 300 
 
 American Revolution, 37 
 Amos, 61 
 
 Angels, 9, 58 
 
 Angels of Mons, 126 
 Anglo-Saxons, 279 
 Anthropomorphism, 52, 72, 77 
 Antinomies, 208 
 Antiquarianism, 150 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 39, 213, 222 
 Architects, 54 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 119 
 
 Artists, 53, III 
 
 Astrology, 132, 147 
 
 Augustine, 30, 116, 264 
 Authorized Version, 255, 262 
 
 Bacon, 87, 150 
 
 Baptism, 26, 45 
 
 Barnard, 99 
 
 Bergerac, Cyrano de, 206 
 Bergson, 160 
 
 Bible, 46, 590 
 
 Black and White, 78 
 Blake, 85, 118 
 
 Bohr’s atomic theory, 213 
 “Bovarysme,” 172 
 
 Bragg, Sir William, 208 
 Brooks, Phillips, 37 
 Browning, 28, 171 
 
 Bryan, William Jennings, 131 
 Burton, Sir Richard, 313 
 
 Carlyle, 43, 123 
 
 Chemistry, 36, 290 
 
 Chemistry of the Greatest Mir- 
 acle in the Bible, 3 
 
 Chesterton, Gilbert K., 112 
 
 Church as a Promoter, 30 
 
 Columbus, 91, 151 
 
 Communion, 26 
 
 Conservatives, 158 
 
 Copernicus, 211 
 
 Dalton, 214 
 
 Danforth, Ralph E., 235 
 Dark Ages, III 
 Darwinism, 160, 203, 233 
 Daudet, Léon, 120 
 Davenport, C. B., 232 
 David, 62 
 
 Democritus, 213 
 Demonology, 129, 2990 
 De Quincey, 122 
 
 Devils, 71, 209 
 
 Divining rods, 130 
 Doyle, Sir Conan, 126 
 Drake, 127 
 
 Duty of Intelligence, 189 
 
 Each in His Own Tongue, 252 
 Eddington, 210, 217, 218 
 Education, 162 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 39, 213 
 Edwin, King, 279 
 
 Einstein, 203, 214 
 
 Elisha, 62 
 
 Erasmas, 264 
 
 Ethics, 202 
 
 Ethics of Evolution, 226 
 Eugenics, 234 
 
 Eve, 229, 300, 314 
 
 Evil, 100 
 
 Evolution, 160, 207, 226, 233 
 
 317 
 
318 INDEX 
 
 Faith, 82, 87 
 Faraday, 87 
 Fourth of July, 284 
 Franklin, 79 
 Funeral customs, 15 
 
 Galileo, 204, 210 
 Gandhi, 114 
 
 Garden of Eden, 17 
 Gaultier, Jules de, 172 
 Geometry of Ethics, 200 
 Goethe, 73 
 
 God, Pictures of, 48 
 God’s laws, 288 
 
 Good Samaritan, 34 
 Goodspeed, 252, 262, 265 
 Gravitation, 84 
 
 Great Backsliding, 106 
 Gregory, 274 
 
 Haldane, J. B. S., 109 
 Haldane, Viscount, 223 
 Hammurabi, 123 
 Harding, President, 129 
 Heaven, 19 
 
 Hellwald, 119 
 
 Henry, Patrick, 38 
 Heraclitus, 14 
 
 Higher Critics, 67 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 268 
 Homer, 52 
 
 Hugo, 99 
 
 Huxley, 36, 116 
 Hypocrisy, 164 
 
 Independent, The, 37 
 Inge, Dean, 222 
 Intelligence, 190 
 Internal Conflict, the, 94 
 Inverted Hypocrisy, 164 
 
 JaeKe Wieden e 
 Jacob, 16, 66, 70 
 Jastrow, Joseph, 128 
 Jeanne d’Arc, I 
 Jeans, J. H., 215 
 Jefferson, 60, 91 
 Jehovah, 71 
 Jephthah, 71 
 
 Job, 194, 260 
 
 John the Baptist, 236, 248 
 Jordan, David Starr, 125, 132 
 Joshua, 8 
 
 Kepler, 75 
 
 King James Version, 173, 255, 
 262, 267 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 136, 167, 284 
 
 Kitchener, 127 
 
 Koran, 59 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 27 
 
 Lambuth, David K., 129 
 
 Lawrence, D. H., 122 
 
 Laws of nature, 5, 74, 88 
 
 Lest We Forget, 284 
 
 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 125, 214 
 
 Looking Backward and Living 
 Forward, 142 
 
 Lowell, 17, 36 
 
 Lucretius, 52, 213 
 
 Lying, 165, 175 
 
 Machen, Arthur, 126 
 
 Magic, 132 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 261 
 Materialism, 157, 221 
 Mathews, A. P., 12 
 
 Matter, 213, 217 
 
 Metchnikoff, 116 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 118 
 Millikan, R. A., 240 
 Minister, 20 
 
 Miracles, 3 
 
 Missionary Talk, 273 
 Modern English versions, 270 
 Moffatt, 260 
 
 Mohammed, 54 
 
 Moses, 50, 54, 66, 90, 105, 123 
 Music, 31, 44, 53, 300 
 
 Nature, 68, 74, 88, 118 
 
 Nef, 73 
 
 Nevins, John L., 129 
 
 New Testament, 71, 256, 262 
 Newton, 83, 214, 242 
 Nietzsche, 122 
 
 Nine Sons of Satan, 299 
 
INDEX 
 
 Nordmann, Charles, 215 
 
 Old Testament, 51, 63, 71, 105, 
 
 193 
 Origin of Species, 233 
 
 Pagan, II5 
 
 Painting the Picture of God, 48 
 
 Palestine, 27, 29 
 
 Pau, 71 
 
 Papini, 252, 313 
 
 Pastor and preacher, 42 
 
 Patriotism, 22 
 
 Patten, William, 238 
 
 Paul, 98, 103, I16, 125, 196, 254, 
 256 
 
 Peter, 106 
 
 Petrie, Flinders, 281 
 
 Petroleum, 302 
 
 Pharisees, 248 
 
 Pictures of God, 65 
 
 Pilgrim, 91 
 
 Plato, 52, 54, 98, 100, 212 
 
 Planck’s quantum theory, 213 
 
 Plotinus, 212 
 
 Plutarch, 160 
 
 Poincaré, 148, 150, 205, 216 
 
 Pope, 35 
 
 Preachers, 44 
 
 Priestley, 7 
 
 Priests and Prophets, 41 
 
 Printing, 32 
 
 Progress in ethics, 33 
 
 Promoter, Church as, 30 
 
 Prophets, 41, 158 
 
 Puritans, 27, 45, 54, 206 
 
 Relativity, 203, 223 
 Religion and Relativity, 203 
 Resurrection, 14 
 
 Revival of Witchcraft, 124 
 Ritual, 26 
 
 Rossetti, 102 
 
 Russell, Bertrand, 223 
 
 Sabbath, 22 
 Sargent, 56 
 Satan, 118, 299 
 Science, 36, 197 
 
 319 
 
 Scientific method, 69 
 
 Sermon without Text or Moral, 
 247 
 
 Sermons, 25, 194 
 
 Shakespeare, 259 
 
 Shaw, 165 
 
 Sinai, 201 
 
 Snoddy, George S., 127 
 
 Spengler, Oswald, 281, 282 
 
 partie rapes of Daily Life, 
 I 
 
 Squiers, George O., 109 
 
 Stewart, E. W., 209 
 
 Struggle for Existence, 137 
 
 Superstition, 124, 134 
 
 Symbolism, 75 
 
 Teaching, 44 
 
 Telling the Truth, 175 
 
 Ten Commandments, 50, 155, 
 288 
 
 Tennyson, 64, 105, 243 
 
 Theology, 21, 39, 65 
 
 Tobit, 58 
 
 Truth, 175, 180 
 
 Tyndale, William, 262 
 
 Uses of Adversity, 137 
 
 Vaihinger, 173 
 Van Loon, 252 
 Van Tyne, 37 
 Voliva, 134 
 
 Walker, Williston, 46 
 Washington, 91 
 
 Wells, 58 
 
 Weyl, Hermann, 221 
 
 Whately, Archbishop, 230 
 When We Were Heathen, 273 
 Whitehead, Alfred North, 221 
 Whitworth, Clarence W., 63 
 Wisdom, 191 
 
 Witchcraft, 130, 132 
 
 Xenophanes, 72 
 
 Zeus, 71 
 Zoroaster, 54, 205 
 
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