BR 479 .D73 1920 Do le. Charl es Fletcher, , 18A^ - 1927 . A reli gion for the new day A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY BY / CHARLES F. DOLE NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. MCMXX OPYRIGHT, 1920, BY B. W. HUBBSCH. Inc. PRINTED IN U. S. A. FOREWORD The author of this book will be very grateful If It proves helpful to ministers of religion, and specially to young ministers who wish to keep young. He has In mind, however, not so much professional ministers alone as that larger and more Important class of men and women of whom the word minister may fairly be used to describe an honest purpose to add some value to the life of the world. We are facing to-day a momentous crisis In his- tory; certain profound facts are at last becoming obvious. Most people profess a religion In which they do not truly believe. They have come to the point where they are dimly aware of the unreality of their faith, and of the Insincerity Involved In this attitude: It hurts their consciences and lowers their moral health. The world Is bound to come out of this state of mind either better or worse. On the other hand, religion in Its innermost es- sence emerges from the crucible of the fiercest crit- icism through which It ever passed freer than ever before of those Irrational and extraneous elements with which It has almost always been encumbered. A beautiful and Inspiring faith Is within the reach of all men who love truth and desire fullness of life. VI FOREWORD This religion, quite modern, yet with Its roots deep in the most precious Inheritance of man's past, meets, as never did any form of religion before, the most tremendous needs of ethical inspiration. It offers the most radical and revolutionary, yet also the most progressive, comprehensive, and persuasive standards of human conduct, ruling, with the dynamic energy of a universal principle, every detail of private or public life. It is as individualistic as it is social. The author, brought up in one of the most dog- matic sects, but happily while the note of sincerity still lingered in Its teachings, had the unspeakable benefit of close acquaintance with a group of people of whom it seems true to say that their real religion was in " being good and doing good." Their sec- tarian interest was never so deep as their humanita- rian purpose. It was impossible for him, therefore, ever to divide the domain of religion from the realm of daily conduct; nor could conscience to him ever mean anything else than a " social conscience." To the youth born in the middle of the last cen- tury and eager to know something of the nature of life and human destiny, the idea of evolution, along with the scientific impulse and habit of open-mlnded- ness and Intellectual honesty that made Darwin's writings so memorable, offered a clue Into every sub- ject of thought. The fight with slavery and Its actual destruction suggested the possibility that every mischievous Institution in the world might be abol- ished and led us to be content with nothing less than the democratic welfare of mankind. FOREWORD Vli Meanwhile, forty years in the ministry of a creed- less church with a remarkably kind, intelligent and hospitable congregation have convinced the author that, as a rule, all churches, Orthodox, Roman Cath- olic or Liberal, have alike come to a parting of the roads; that their general attitude toward the great and vital subjects of the time is practically the same; that, with noble personal exceptions, they do not believe their religion and therefore lack the power and the purpose to be leaders of the new world move- ment to which every clear sign of the times points. They are all survivals of an older faith — not heralds of a new. On this score, the lessons of the war have been very impressive. It is the design of this book to set forth a mode of religion, already dawning upon many minds, which the author believes must under various forms serve now and henceforth, not for Christendom alone but for all mankind, as the spiritual gospel and working force for a humane and democratic world. Wherever It Is applied It can without question trans- form life. Every step of success in the working of the new faith, every melancholy failure of the old surviving and bankrupt unfalth, constitutes a new call to press with all our might toward a spiritual reality so virile as to win all the peoples to believe In and practice it. It may seem that I should have said something about the coming Institutions and ceremonies of re- ligion. To speak frankly, I care little for this side viu FOREWORD of our subject. Every living human movement is sure to adopt forms and create institutions to meet its needs. I am sure also that whoever comes to love and understand veritable religion will easily be able to interpret all forms and expressions of genuine people and adapt to his own use as much of what they say and do as he may find helpful. He will do this with their symbols and ceremonies, without taking them too seriously. He can find matter for humane recognition and sympathy in a temple or synagogue or the barest country meeting-house, provided the worshipers give him the impression of a decent sin- cerity. I am unwilling, therefore, to assume an attitude of antagonism to existing churches or religions. Let us see all the good there is in them : let us not despise our own childhood. There are many admirable peo- ple who believe that they can develop a better re- ligion out of the old roots. Let them do this wher- ever they can, provided they are able to tell the truth and not compromise their convictions. They may succeed in many cases. It is difficult to foretell the various methods through which the growing life will show its power. Let no one, however, be too certain that it is worth while to pour new wine into old bottles! Let no one imagine that the spirit of religion must reflect itself through all time any more by means of pulpits and pews than by candles and crucifixes. Of certain facts I am sure. A multitude of people FOREWORD IX are scattered through the nation for whom the existing institutions of religion have no vital word. There must be an immense " revival of religion," of a kind quite different from that in which the churches deal, before they can touch the world outside. The church people have not enough religion to be able to communicate it to others. People are weary of being told to " come to church," as if hearing ser- mons or posturing in the forms of worship fed the springs of human life. Priests and preachers natur- ally enjoy their own services and sermons more than those whose part it is to answer with Amens. There are many men deserving of high respect who have little use for any conventional outward expression of religion. Of course a really rich and warm popu- lar religion would have life enough to meet the needs of the most various types of people. The world immensely needs religion — I mean re- ligion In the terms of faith, hope and humanity. There is no enterprise of human reform and better- ment that is not dying at the top for the need of religion. Political leaders, the leaders of the great social movements, the Internationalists, leaders of great labor unions as well as masters of Industry, lack the religion to light the way where they seek to guide others. They have not enough religion to understand democracy, much less to use its funda- mental principles. This Is the pathos of " Bolshe- vism." I am sure that this condition Is perilous: It does not presage a wholesome world for our children. X FOREWORD All kinds of people need religion, in the best sense of the word. I am sure also that most of us, whether we have religion or suffer from the need of it, must get to- gether. Religion is essentially social. Whoever has it enjoys it and wants to tell some one else about it. Religion does not permit selfishness and isola- tion; It urges us to expression, and most of all ways through social action. Wherever religion is alive and awake it hardly requires paid agents and min- isters. The great popular religious movements, like the spread of early Christianity In the teeth of oppression, have run like a stream; one man tells another; groups of people meet on their holiday evenings in each other's houses or In upper rooms. A certain amount of opposition has served to chal- lenge the chivalry and generosity that exist In every group of people. In our new time, with altered outward conditions, we still look for great popular movements, born to meet great social and personal necessities. I have no prejudice against organizations and In- stitutions, whether old ones re-created or new ones made to fit the new day. But all human Institutions, like our houses, require the closest attention and constant repairs, or they are not fit to live in. I have no prejudice against paid officials, but we know that In the moment when a man thinks about his salary instead of the work he Is set to do, the spirit of religion goes out of him. The very soul of religion Is devotion, unselfishness. FOREWORD XI disinterestedness. Why is it that the success of the work of the humble Salvation Army in relieving the distress of the war is out of all proportion to the number of its workers? Is it not because here were men and women who obviously had no regard for money or anything except a single-minded devotion to the welfare of men? In days of barbarism priest- craft and authority often captured men's fears; it is different now. The religion that does not flow out of devoted hearts must perish. Charles F. Dole. Jamaica Plain, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Feb. 25, 1919. CONTENTS SECTION I SIGNS OF THE TIMES: HOW THE FACTS POINT OHAPTEE PAGl I The Defeat of the Current Religion . . i II A Religion Behind all the Religions . . 14 III The Realm of the Spirit 25 IV Spiritual Evolution : A Working Formula 37 SECTION II THE COURSE OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION I The Natural Beginnings of Religion . . 53 II Changing Human Nature 65 III The Pharisee World 70 IV The Superman, or Man at His Best . . 86 V The Summum Bonum 99 VI Two Levels of Life: The Great Adven- ture ic>6 VII Evil: What to Make of It 121 SECTION III THE VICTORIOUS GOODNESS I How TO Handle Evil: The Irrepressible Conflict ^^^ II The New Force ^-^9 III The Heresies that Hurt Men . . . .160 CONTENTS SECTION IV THE NEW CIVILIZATION CHAPTER PAGE I Religion and Industrial Democracy . .175 II Education for the People 193 III The Tests of Good Education .... 205 IV The Winning of the World 212 V Democratic Government and the World Order 222 VI The Gospel of Percentages 244 SECTION V THE RELIGION WITHIN I Religion as an Experience 249 II Why We Say God 262 III The Eternal Life 276 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY SECTION I SIGNS OF THE TIMES : HOW THE FACTS POINT THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION Two vast Institutions cover the world with their me- morials: one is the war system; the other is the cur- rent religion. The most enduring of all buildings are fortifications and churches or temples. Between these two groups of monuments the glory, the pomp and the heroism of human history is divided and in- deed shared. For they have rarely lived long apart in any spot, and they have mostly worked together. Battle flags have come to be the favorite decoration of the church. Priests and chaplains have marched with armies and helped to hold the forts. The Great War has forced slowly upon the thought of the world a strangely disconcerting ques- tion. What is the use of religion which lives at peace with war, sanctions war, helps to win war, and z 2 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY prays In different languages to one and the same God to give opposite parties victory in the struggle to destroy each other? The poison of a deep skepti- cism lies behind this question. Where is the God of the current religion? Who is He? Can we name Him the " Father " of Men? What loving Power that cares for men could tolerate the horrors with which every land to-day has been stirred? The cur- rent religion not only did nothing to forbid this im- mense conflagration, but it blessed men on both sides who went to fight In the name of Christ, and it as- sured each fighting nation that however 111 other wars might be thought, this war was '' holy." What if the skeptical mind cries out upon this as the re- ductio ad ahsurdum of religion! Is it not at least possible that we are looking upon the failure and de- feat of the current religions of Christendom? Show us a religion. If you can, that has a decided and ef- fective gospel for a world at war. The force of the arraignment against the current or popular religion does not depend on the fact that this religion proved helpless to prevent or put an end to war. It had been a religion of easy com- promise with social evils. Indeed it had showed all the marks of the same Pharisaism which long ago had outraged the conscience and the straightforward honesty of Jesus. It said and did not. It was dog- matic where it had no right or need to be sure, and evasive, slippery and Inconstant where it should have been unhesitating, decided and earnest. Does any one suppose that Pharisaism was a disease of Juda- THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION 3 ism only, that Christianity could not also suffer from it? There is no end to the evidence confirming this diagnosis of the current religion. The leaders of the churches are telHng us, now that the world is aflame, that they had no idea that such a collapse of civilization was possible. The process of civili- zation had seemed to them to be going on very com- fortably. Did they not see how shallow the veneer of enlightenment was? Never had there been such preparation for a catastrophe. Several terribly sig- nificant wars had blazed up within a quarter of a century. Great Britain had taken part in one of them, enacting the most shameful deeds in South Africa. The United States, not fifty years away from the great Civil War, had set out on the road to empire by the way of a needless war against Spain, going on at once to soil her skirts with the cruel business of the subjugation of the Philippine Islands. Every government in the world presently felt the stir of the new and threatening force that our boasted naval power was taking on. The bar- barities of the two Balkan wars went beyond the power of words to describe. Meanwhile no great cause had ever been more feebly and half-heartedly supported than the cause of humanity versus the war system. In time of peace good people were not in- terested; when their own nation went to war, most of them found reason to excuse it, perhaps to call it " holy " ; this was no time to denounce war as wicked. But when would it ever be wicked, in an- 4 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY other nation, when you could never condemn it in your own nation? Thus the current rehgion stood in no way prepared in any land to put its veto upon war. Moreover, the governmental authorities gen- erally depended upon the churches and synagogues to give the aid and comfort to any belligerent course upon which their nation had once decided. Ancient Rome hardly expected more of its priests and ves- tals ! In what way was this complacent attitude of the leaders of our current religion different from that of the priests and the Pharisees of ancient Jerusalem? Men say that the horrors of the Great War might have been prevented if the nations had been suffi- ciently prepared with armaments against it. A vital, honest, and humane religion, if our so-called Christendom had possessed it, would have prepared us against the war and forbidden it. The fact is that we were preparing for it, but did not know that it was coming. For war is only an external thing, the symptom of a disease deeper down at the heart of society. Our arraignment of the current religion is that it had not studied its own special subject; name- ly, our common human nature; that it had developed no effective human sympathy; that while it made a pious outcry against " sin " in general, it did not recognize its own obvious faults and had no remedy for them. The world was proud and arrogant; was the church without pride? The world was full of divisive castes; had the church become demo- cratic? The world was quick to anger; had the THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION 5 church learned what forgiveness is ? The world was selfish; were the current rehgion and its teachers conspicuous for disinterestedness? The world was quarreling; was the church notable for the friendly good will of its members? What permanent differ- ence did it make in any one's behavior, or in his inner character, when he had "got religion"? What actual effect had this current religion with its diverse types of worship, of creeds, of services and cere- monies, and its conventional ethics, to make a man honest, friendly, true-hearted, reverent, earnest, lovable, a good comrade, a noble citizen, a lover of men? The most fatal judgment of the popular re- ligion is the answer which it has to make to this practical question. The war, with its revelations of what a savage civilized man can be at his worst, is only an accident compared with that selfishness within the churches out of which war springs. Another symptom of social disease lay in the colossal drink bills of all the so-called Christian nations. How could we call the United States a civilized nation when it spent over a billion dollars a year for alcohol? We have supported this parlous condition almost up to the present date. But this is a case, you say, where the current religion already rightly cries, " Victory! " Without quite disparag- ing the claim we note how superficial the conquest of evil is, when it rests only on force and legality. Sup- pose we have taken away from men the opportunity to desrade themselves with drink. How far, by this compulsory process, have we reached and won 6 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY over and lifted the essential manhood of our fel- lows? If we could only believe that the marvelous wave of prohibitory zeal which has swept over the world represented the sympathy and all-round hu- manity of those who vote so cheaply to impose their will upon the unwilling minority ! Is it the work of a vital and inward religion to club men into tem- perate habits? For surely no reformation of cus- tum or habit lasts long, unless it enters the fiber of a man's religion and carries his good will. The helpless attitude of the leaders of the current religion toward the immense social and economic problems of our age is not the least searching test of the quality of their religion. With notable ex- ceptions, which indeed hardly belong under the name of the popular religion, this attitude has been notori- ously unsympathetic, and especially in the wealthier and better educated communities. To the great cities and the universities came the cry of immense submerged populations — the cry for justice, for de- mocracy, for humanity. The answer given, unless indifference is any answer, has been most often in terms of fear, of suspicion, of race prejudice, of sel- fishness on guard against a less enlightened selfish- ness, of unfaith in God or man, in the zealous threat of public force in behalf of property rights. A new kind of heresy has been unearthed under the name of "socialism"; namely, the too ardent interest of occasional preachers in proclaiming a doctrine of in- dustrial democracy. The modern preacher might play with the creeds on the easy terms of saying the THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION 7 pious formula, " the Lord Jesus Christ," but let him take care not to preach too persuasively upon the startHng implications of the Golden Rule I The church of America Is said to be free. How far Is It using Its freedom to " do justice " and teach hu- manity? What large influence did It ever exert for any unpopular cause? Quite lately men have gone to prison for conscience' sake and in behalf of the freedom of religious teaching; did any free church boldly assert the rights on which, in former times, its own existence depended? Here again we find the essence of Pharisaism — fair professions and empty performance. The institutions of religion may appear to hold firm sway; their great buildings and endowments cost more money than ever; their aggregate income looks very impressive in the census; their large mem- bership includes plenty of honored names; for thor- oughly popular enterprises such as financing war charities there is notable alacrity; the walls stand, but the foundations none the less are being under- mined. Many a time as one frequents the services of the popular religion, whether in some big city temple or In a httle country chapel, the fatal ques- tion arises: Is not this a respectable survival of an earlier time? How often one is Impressed by the scanty attendance, the llstlessness, the lack of the sense of " a message " from the pulpit, the disparity between the numbers who go to church and those who are riding in motor cars or reading the Sunday newspapers in their arm-chairs at home I Now and S A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY then a Billy Sunday draws a host about him — a labored and melancholy spectacle — a tour de force to galvanize a sleeping people Into activity. The obvious practical question, urged by the pressure of economic necessity, returns upon the thoughtful ques- tioner: How useful Is this current religion to modern society? What can It do, and what does it, to mend the spiritual health of mankind? How great a loss, if any, should we suffer If we proclaimed a morato- rium of a generation or two for these time-honored institutions? I have In mind two Independent stud- ies of the church, one by a highly respected Doctor of Divinity, touching a group of different denomina- tions, including his own, in the town of his summer residence; the other by an experienced educator, re- viewing the history of his own old Puritan church for two centuries. In each case the result of the study was negative. The institution had failed to demonstrate a usefulness to warrant Its cost! I wish to speak In no tone of pessimism. T in- quire; I do not profess to make up a balance sheet, or to measure all the fine shades of value to which any kind of religion, however effete or unspirltual, may lay claim. By and large, I believe that the ar- raignment against the current religion holds; It Is not a vital and aggressive religion; it is not readily known by Its fruits; it does not succeed in giving its members any sense of peace, joy, security, added power. Many will frankly tell you that they have never consciously enjoyed an " experience of relig- ion/' in the sense that one speaks of an experience THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION 9 of parenthood or friendship. They have no strong and hearty bond with their fellow religionists such as men once had in the buoyant birth-period of their religion; they do not know what the Presence of God, as a grand consciousness of infinite rest and fellowship, means; they are not sure even that God is; they are rarely so sure of God or that this is God's world, as to dare to do right, when the right is not the custom of their social group, or when the right is somewhat costly and threatens to be un- profitable. They almost never find themselves es- tablished in a resolute purpose by the known support of their brothers in the church. All this is the mark of an historic or decadent religion; it has fallen out of connection with the sources of life. A vital church ought to stand in relation with the thought of its age. It begins to die if ever its pre- vailing thought is antiquated and conventional. The current religion is out of gear with the thought of our times. A great clue, necessary to understand the marvelous processes of history or to construct a working philosophy, is at hand to-day in the idea of evolution. Evolution is not merely in the outer world; it is essentially spiritual. Religion itself is the growth and product of the stirrings, inquiries, experiences, and aspirations of manv a2:es. But the popular religion still carries its medieval creeds and dogmas, offers the lip worship of an unmeaning re- cital of obsolete sentences — the Apostles' Creed and undevotional Hebrew psalms. It professes still to hold a theology by virtue of ancient authority, lO A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY as if there were no vast parable in the outer world, open at last to science, full of gleams of helpful sug- gestiveness as to the inner meanings of life. The current religion is still moored to the false science of the Ptolemaic astronomy and a preposterous render- ing of the first chapter of Genesis. Leaders of its churches who know better are fearful of breaking the unity of the church by thought-provoking discussion. Their own souls thus suffer atrophy. Meanwhile scores of rival sects already break the unity of the only real church that ever was or can be ; namely, the men of truth and good will, the helpers and lovers, the believers and doers, the real poets, sons and daughters of God. Yes I The current religion is far behind all the best and most active thinking of our age. And millions of people are trying hope- lessly to live and do business in one world and con- duct worship in another and unreal world; they are trying to stay out of the universe I Have not certain groups, however, the Unitarians and other liberals, succeeded in making their thought in religion tally with the thought of schools and col- leges? A few have tried to use their minds, but this is not enough in the realm of religion. Religion must carry the whole man along and not only the mind. The most correct thought about religion by itself would only be a new orthodoxy. Religion wants to be adapted to life. As we wish to show later, the implications of a genuine and vital religion are so immense and far-reaching that no man has any idea of them simply by his Intellectual under- THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION II Standing of a few definitions, never adequate to de- fine the reality. What If the Hberal, like others, merely repeats the great principles by rote? He is proud to have sloughed off the confusing doctrines of the popular creed. But who knows that the obscure dogma In the despised creed does not con- tain the hint of a living truth? The fact Is that people are members of liberal churches, as they are of other churches, largely by reason of social affinity and heredity. What liberal church ever started with a purpose to find truth or, grander yet, to lead a new enterprise to bring " the Kingdom of God " to the modern world? For the most part and excepting Individual efforts, liberal churches are very like other forms of the current religion. The same may be said of Judaism with its orthodox and liberal wing. Never have any of these groups actively set out to express and incarnate the soul of religion. The same survival of timidity, both intellectual and moral, the same distrust of putting their professions Into practice In this actual world, the fatal doubt whether their religion will work, the human Instinct to herd along with other men and escape unpopularity or responsibility, has appeared with like results on both sides of the vague line supposed to distinguish the vast orthodox hosts from the various liberal movements. Little ven- tured, little gained. Little outgo, little Income. The liberals have not taken their religion very seri- ously, and they have therefore shown small persua- sive power to gather the people. Moreover, we 12 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY have lived to see them, at one of the greatest Issues of rehgious history, generally taking up the same war cry as that of the current religion, preaching the old-world method of violence, thinking to cast out evil by doing evil, invoking the name of Jesus to pro- voke warriors to fight, deriding " peacemakers " and casting them out of their churches — a perfectly nat- ural course, easy to understand, for those who had learned only to respect the great words of religion, without understanding their costly implications! Meanwhile, the world has suddenly developed a new science, new sources of almost infinite power, a new system of industry, world-wide complications of business and commerce, new problems difl^cult enough to swamp the mind that tries to imagine their outcome; the world just begins to wake up to the need of a real and practical religion, of such a religion as has never yet been largely known and practiced, of a religion adequate to fit such a crisis as this, and it finds Itself with a current religion as helpless to meet its needs as if we were to try to use the old Mayflower for ocean travel. The world needed *' preparedness," but not In steel or gold. In food and drink. In new chemical secrets. In en- larged forces of destruction. It wanted and must have a religion humane enough to match Its great science, a religion rational enough to ally itself with Its science, but, far more Important, a religion vital enough to give a higher motive power than fear or warlike discipline or greed of gain or the hysteria THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION 13 of an Inflated patriotism could ever give, for the counsels and conduct of mankind. Have I arraigned the popular religion too se- verely or done it injustice ? I was brought up in it ; I know it from the roots upward; I am aware of the values that it once carried; I would say nothing to break it down, if I did not see what ought to super- sede it; I would not willingly hurt any one's feelings who loves it. We might bear with it in further patience, if it would only be humble and face the truth, and tell the truth. But its worst fault is that it fosters pride and egotism; it asks men to " humble themselves " and confess their sins, but it does not confess its own sins. It had its chance to lead men to new reaches of conduct, but it preferred to follow like a slave in chains at the heels of the warriors, the bankers, and the politicians. I leave the question, " Has the world any use for the current religion? " with a negative answer. It has failed and been de- feated. It is not good enough to repair. There is no land under the sun where an honest man would not suffer shame to undertake to profess it. " What ! " men would say. " The religion that was responsible for the Great War! " The world cries out in its need for something more sturdy and brave, more reverent, friendly and humane. II A RELIGION BEHIND ALL THE RELIGIONS To say that the current religion has failed Is not to say that religion has failed. It is not to say that Christianity has failed, if we might only know what the true Christianity is. It is an old saying that Christianity has never been tried; it has not been tried on any large scale; It has never been practiced in earnest by many people. Neither has Judaism at Its best ever failed. In most minds there is a haunt- ing sense that there Is something valid in religion, if we could only discover it. What Is this valid substance of religion? There Is no more important question in the field of knowledge than that upon which we now enter. No truthful mind can bear to delude itself with a pretense of religion or a show of argument to estab- lish it, if It Is not real. We have no merely academic question here. It is intensely practical; It bears on every Issue of right or duty; it involves the secret of happiness, the improvability of humanity and the destiny of mankind. If there be nothing mighty and moving In religion, mankind loses its most precious asset. Worth would fall out of life, and worth Is related to every social subject — to justice, democ- racy, civilization. What if man were only a some- 14 A RELIGION BEHIND ALL RELIGIONS 15 what more intellectual, hungry, lustful and imperious beast? What then can you possibly make of con- science, duty and ideals? A venturesome IntelH- gence may perhaps enjoy for the moment the sense of freedom from all restraint that comes In the hazy doubt, whether anything is real. But what if the mind had to accept blank negation as Its answer to the riddle of existence? We are by no means ready to venture any defini- tion of religion. We will not begin our Inquiry with definition or argument. We will simply look for and observe the facts that lead to religion. A bril- liant philosophical teacher, Prof. William James, has been a fore-runner in this method of investiga- tion. We do not need to go so far afield as he went. His pathological interests as a psychologist led him into certain strange historic by-paths of study. He enjoyed the morbid things which concern the few rather than the many. He took up the company of the " saints " who " dream dreams and see visions." He actually put aside as of little moment that " bet- ter way," open to every man, as practical as It was prophetic, with which the Apostle Paul at the height of his vision, showed what charity — that Is, love, or good will — actually does for the humblest lives. Prof. James called his aristocratic and anaemic saints the " twice born." The ordinary religion was to him only that of the " healthy-minded." But most of us, if we are going to have religion at all, desire the healthy-minded and democratic variety.' lit is interesting to observe that many ministers of the current religion seem to have been impressed and comforted with 1 6 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Every reader of Marcus Aurelius recalls the chap- ter In which he relates the practical life material which he had received from a long list of kinsfolk, teachers, and friends. It is virtually the catalogue of the goods in his spiritual treasure house. He is not thinking of rank, fortune, station, gold, jewels, and palaces. His friends had made their gifts and contributions to him in terms of candor, fairness, justice, steadfastness, courage, dignity, benevolence, and simple piety. They had assured him of an abid- ing worth and reality behind the fleeting show of things. They had bidden him be a man to the full height of his stature. Here are facts about religion which, after hundreds of years, appeal to us as valid and vital. Such facts as these are the substance of religion. The straight-forward mind of Tolstoy, the great Russian humanist, seized upon just such facts. He found them in the lives of poverty-stricken peasant neighbors. He found among these people gems of honesty, friendliness, generosity, helpfulness, and a simple trust that some good Power ordered the world. He had found those who were not afraid in the face of the wildest storm. The beautiful little story, "Where Love is There God is," which Tolstoy translated and circulated for his people, was a presentation of this religion of the simple and healthy-minded. Every one loves such a religion. Mr. James' conclusion; namely, that there is some residuum of reality under the name of religion! Had they never thought to look for it in certain beautiful and obvious facts under their own eyes? A RELIGION BEHIND ALL RELIGIONS 17 What relation had it to the elaborate ritual and ecclesiasticism of the great national churches? Here was the veritable and verifiable rehgion behind the pomp and the orthodox name. In his little book, " My Rehgion," Tolstoy tells us the story of his direct, first-hand study of the brief New Testament Gospels. He had no use for the miracles or the dogmas, but he discovered facts, principles, and a way of life. His Russian peasants were leading this life. This discovery made a new man of him. His words ring now with the sense of reality. Here was something about which he could henceforth say: " I know." Let me give a little paragraph of experiences out of a boy's life a generation ago. It was in a small New England village, where the big Orthodox meet- ing-house loomed up on the village green along with the court-house — symbols of the eminent respecta- bility of the town. The boy recalls the dull preach- ing in the old church, the tedious Sunday School les- sons, the endless repetitions of the Life of Jesus, and the dreary prayer meetings. Was this religion? The church gave him no sense of the good God, but rather the terrible punishing deity into whose hope- less prison-house the nations continually went down. Yet here and there in this bare Puritan meeting- house were a few faces that bore the look of trust and peace, possibly at times of some secret source of joy. There was also to be seen there the cheer- ful, sturdy countenance of a certain clean and friendly farmer, honest beyond any doubt. Such 1 8 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY " real folks " preached the silent sermons of religion to the boys and girls. The memory of a father, early devoted to the anti-slavery cause, whose relig- ion had made him fearless of death; the mother with her stern faith in the omnipotent Righteousness; the kindly true-hearted grandmother, who said noth- ing about her religion but dealt in its fruits; — here in the home was the boy's true church. Nothing could ever quite dispossess him of a reality that he had seen and felt. There came also, among other good gifts, an occa- sional visit to an extremely lovable heretic aunt. Here was freedom and an open mind, with sweet- ness and light such as his young soul longed for. Religion might actually make people happy I But how could this cheerful hostess to all kinds of here- sies be possibly saved? The question became the germ of a wonderful liberating thought. This good aunt's goodness must be of God, and goodness had no need to fear either in this life or beyond. So the boy's mind began to see where the reality of religion lay. Religion was that out of which grew all beau- tiful and friendly things; religion dwelt in the hearts of all good men and women. Now this was precisely the teaching of the simple- minded young Jewish rabbi who, when the man of the law asked him how to obtain *' eternal life " — that is, the best life there is — told him the story of the Good Samaritan. It is the story of an outsider, a heretic who had eternal life, that is, pure goodness, and made it shine in the dark corner where it was A RELIGION BEHIND ALL RELIGIONS 19 needed. Such action, says Jesus, is religion. The kind of man out of whom such action springs, as a picture springs from the vision of the artist, pos- sesses religion. But some one may ask, " Shall we despise the numerous outward forms of the popular religion? Shall we discard the conventional Christianity for a religion which we have to seek without forms, be- neath the surface, as men find gold, a bit here and a nugget there ? " We will despise nothing whereby men find the material of Hfe. Life is the test: what makes and nourishes it? Whether a man eats rice or wheat or fruit, whether his food is raw or cooked does not matter, provided he flourishes on it. There are those, perhaps, who can find nutriment in grass or the bark of trees. Wherever sound health is, we bow in its presence. There may be enough religion in the barest forms of the grimmest creed, or the most elaborate ritualism, to serve some men's need. A church is nothing but the effort of a group of men to contribute together in sustaining the life of relig- ion. We have no wish to deny the use of the right kind of church. Meanwhile, however, we are free to find the marks of religion more widely than the disciples of any exclusive religion imagine. Thus we find the good Roman Catholic priest, as Chaucer finely pictured him five hundred years ago, ministering to the needs of the poor, staying men's faith, comforting them In the face of death, blessing little children. Is this by virtue of his consecration at the hands of a bishop 20 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY or by his celebration of the mass? It may well be that his office and his emblems add a certain symbolic emphasis to his life and touch the imagination of his people, like the medicine that a patient sees the phy- sician measure out of his vials. But we know that his church is doomed if it fails to keep up its list of holy lives like his own. Neither can it live by its priests only. The great churches do not know how to produce the good lives. If they had known how to do this they would have saved the world long ago. Moreover, we are coming to see the growth of re- ligion in all manner of unconventional ways. In war time, at least, good Jews have made good enough ^' Christians." Who tries any longer to convert the Jews? Good " Christians" also appear outside of all churches, while certain small sects, like the Society of Friends, somehow produce the highest per- centage of sound wheat. No people have given so large a constituency of helpers for the abolition of slavery and again of war. Among unregistered " Christians " two names stand conspicuous, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln. What modern man would suggest that St. Peter was ex- pected to shut out these and other such men for want of being good church members? Not, surely, the preachers who dispatch their young soldiers by thou- sands straight from the battlefield to the " pearly gates " ! The number and variety of religions has been a frequent perplexity to simple people. This very A RELIGION BEHIND ALL RELIGIONS 21 fact now opens the door wide to a new understand- ing of religion. There is no orthodoxy of any par- ticular religion; there is no single way of life; there is no merely outward secret of distinguishing real religion. But man is " incurably religious " in the best sense of the word. Religion is universal; it is the normal and natural development of manhood; it is discovered, like the early strawberries upon the summer hillsides, by a certain taste and fragrance, texture, color, and excellence, which satisfy those who have found it. It is easy to agree upon the chief elements that real religion possesses. One of them is kindliness. I mean kindliness as a disposition, a fixed habit, a purpose. Whose religion is worth anything without this? Another is conscience. I do not mean the harsh and crude conscience, keen to condemn and punish. I mean the conscience that bids us speak the truth and do justice — scrupulous justice at all times and to every one. Another element of relig- ion is gentleness, as against the prevalent pride, self- will, and egotism of men. Another point is rever- ence. I am not speaking with reference to profane language, or fear of divine anger. I mean regard and admiration In the presence of, or at the thought of, every beautiful or worthy thing and person. I mean Goethe's three reverences — for the things above, for one's fellows, and for the wonder that dwells in the feeblest things — the reverence that one has for a child, that forbids cruelty. Again, there is almost sure to dwell In veritable religion a 22 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY sense of peace, rest, security, confidence, at least trust, unafraid of pain or death. " Shall not the Lord of Life do right? " Shall not the Power that brought us here care for its work? Not all who feel at rest and fearless might say as much as this. But the feeling is in their hearts. Religion is also honest with itself. What It proposes, It seeks to do. In short, religion takes up certain simple prim- itive qualities in us — those instincts that work to- ward " mutual aid " — and binds them together into a sort of cable of purpose and will. Whether or not the word religion goes back to a root that con- nects it with the idea of obligation, the meaning is there; it is a purposeful life-force, acting to unify every faculty in us. This beneficent life-force is doubtless one with what men call God. They used to say that the test of the true Catholic faith was this: It Is that which has always been in all parts of the earth, on which all have agreed. Does not this little summary of religion come nearer than any creed to meet the ancient test? There is no decent or useful or social or happy form of life in which the possessor of this religion may not share. He is a citizen of the world, and could make himself at home wherever people had not gone crazy with violence or passion. Children and simple folk live this religion. We may say that Nature approves it. I have been speaking of religion in the largest way. I am not here seeking to suggest Its mani- fold variations or the heights to which It sometimes attains. We shall have occasion later to trace the A RELIGION BEHIND ALL RELIGIONS 23 ways of growth that religion finds for Itself. I wish here to include widely and unite all who possess In general a fairly rooted and growing religion, at how- ever diverse stages of its manifestation. I have not been speaking of an abstract religion. I can conceive of no rehglon of mere qualities. I have in mind a religion of persons ; It comes through persons ; it creates persons. I mean by person that inner life, the mystery, the self, which thinks, delights in beauty, dwells with justice and order, purposes good, loves the good, Is possessed with good will. This is a person, not in the sense of limits and separateness from others, but of fellowship with them; It Is the sense In which the highest conception of God Is In- finite Person. When therefore we think of religion we recall persons, the admirable father or mother or neighbor or friend, the glorious procession of the honest and useful, the teachers and helpers of men. We recall the hours when we too were real persons like these. Does any one want to sum up religion in one man — in Jesus? Let Jesus help men all that he possibly may. But religion Is too great and varied, too truly personal, to be confined In the greatest of men. If now any one were to ask what my religion is, it IS the religion beneath and behind all religions. It does not antagonize any religion out of which true men have received aid and comfort. But It helps us to understand and interpret every religion. Am I a Christian? Not in the terms of the current relig- ion, not in view of what Christians do and permit 24 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY to be done. On the other hand, I come of the Chris- tian tradition. I can cheerfully use and enjoy the association of sincere people, called by whatever name. This religion so far has almost necessarily arisen to consciousness only in the few. It has character- ized great leaders like Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Chan- ning, of marked individual character. Some of the " mystics " have known it. It has more often reached plain and humble people, rational and sober- minded, shy of superstitions, independent, humane, and kindly. Most of them have been only learners and beginners, seekers for truth, often hardly aware that they had a religion. But religion cannot flourish among scattered souls. We need heat, light, cohesion, power, effectiveness, development, not to be had In this crowded bustling world except by conscious effort, cost, and purposeful co-operation. There needs to be a body and brotherhood pledged together to accomplish great things for humanity. The times call for such a brotherhood, not to com- pete with the current religion, but to overtop It, to outgrow it, to fulfill It. As the growing humanity of the world Is feeling Its way through all narrower national loyalties toward some subtle and free inter- national organization, so the larger religion must embody Itself In some world-wide form of free and generous fellowship. It cannot be content to be the religion of a few. It must be the religion of the many. To make it thus to prevail Is the task now before us. All free and forward-looking men and women are called to Its colors. Ill THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT We have had to use certain terms which imply a way of life, a whole realm of consciousness and conduct; this demands a special name. There is something in us which concerns things and grows out of mat- ter, but is above things and uses or directs them. We cannot see it, but this is no objection to it. We cannot see gravitation, or the electric force, or even matter at its last analysis, but we believe In these Invisible realities and behave toward them just as if we saw them. Provisionally at least, the most skep- tical of men must treat them as real. What now Is the most real and invisible of all the facts of life? We are obliged to call it spirit. We know no other word that expresses what we cannot see, and yet which does things and affects our vital motions and constitutes us, and Is In each one of us the / or the self. There Is profound mystery about all ultimate facts; we cannot define them; we can only say what they do to us or for us, how they Impress us, what connections they make with other things or facts. In this sense we know as much at least about spirit as we know of matter or force. It is more Intimate. If it is true that matter and spirit at the last an- as 26 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY alysis are one and the same, doubtless then the word spirit is the better word to cover both of them. For we associate force, hfe, consciousness, intelHgence with spirit more easily than with matter. Every one has occasion to think and talk about friendship, duty, good or evil character, justice, pa- triotism, liberty, good will, humanity. We mean nothing abstract by these words; we refer to specific human actions. There is no bare justice, but only men who do justice; there is no humanity, but hu- mane people; there is no will except in living beings. But what is that in living men and women which makes us love them? It may be seen in the face or in certain acts, but it is never visible in itself. We love what we do not see in our friends. We call this reality behind the veil, which lights up the face with a smile, which is felt in the tones of the voice, the spirit. We do not even know it except through a kind of perception in us which is also spirit. " No one knoweth a man save the spirit that is in man." Whoever has felt the action of good will upon him- self from any source, in any act or motion; whoever has felt the movement of his own good will, going out in words and deeds to his friends, for his coun- try, in behalf of the principles or spiritual laws which serve all men, has known the movement of spirit. You cannot call it by any material name and be un- derstood. Let no one, then, say that he does not believe in spirit. If any one says this, he probably means disembodied spirits, of which we do not need here THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT 27 to speak. Perhaps there are no such spirits; per- haps a spirit always takes form. My point is that we know the reahty of spirit in ourselves and in others. There is nothing human in us which we know so well. What would a man be without his intelligence — an invisible thing — his invisible con- science, his will, his love, his real inner self — all in- visible? You love your mother; you love spirit. You love justice; you love spirit. You love your nation; you love a very complex spiritual idea; It could not exist without people to embody it. How can you care for your nation unless you care about people? There Is a realm of phenomena, the things which we see and measure, with their deep mystery lurk- ing like an ocean beneath their surface. Is not this mystery behind things everywhere spirit? It surely appeals to our spirits, to our intelligence, to our im- agination, to our wonder. Let us continue, how- ever, if we like, for the sake of convenience, to speak of the realm of things. Let us also say, for the sake of convenience, that there Is another realm, even more real If possible, which can only be called spiritual. Human beings are citizens of this realm. We will not say what other citizens it may have. We may not be ready to call the name of God over it. But we do use for It every great and high name with which men have ever tried to describe their idea of " God." We say of the realm of spirit that Power, Beauty, Thought, Goodness, Love dwell in it; that is, dwell in the beings which constitute it. 2 8 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Whether we are sure of God or not, we are sure, if any fact is sure, of this realm of the spirit. This becomes clear if you attempt to imagine a man as living out of this realm. Try to think away from a man all thought, all justice, all friendliness, all good will. What would he have left to char- acterize his manhood? Or, again, forget the whole spiritual history of mankind; forget the heroism of the heroes, the visions of the prophets, the love and patience of good women, the works of poets and artists; burn their books and pictures, destroy their cathedrals, raze their schools to the ground, erase the stories of liberty or reform won in the face of brutal oppression. All this and more you must do to get away from the realm of the spirit. It is be- cause war goes down so far the road to Avernus, be- cause it forgets, ignores, and destroys the highest values of life, because it bids men affront and deny their good will and sacrifice the fruits of the spirit to hatred, that we abhor war. Consider now certain marvelous points in the nature of spirit. I know how difficult it is to use soberly the mysterious word infinite. But the word certainly has a meaning beyond all controversy. We have to use it in mathematics and philosophy. I wish to use it in a simple and practical sense. Ask, for example, how far a man may prudently go in his affection for his mother, his wife, his children? The man who is a man will answer that he never dreams of such a question. His love has nothing to do with limits and prudence. It goes to all lengths THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT 29 and beyond limits; that is, it contains the infinite. Indeed it has not " found itself " yet, if it would not go cheerfully to death for its object. It belongs also to man to pursue infinite aims. How much ought a just man to risk or sacrifice for his honor and integrity? No honest man ever thinks about integrity in this way. He has not come into his own yet if he can be bought, bribed, or frightened to do an injustice. How far must a man venture his fortune, his life, his reputation and popu- larity, even harder, the seeming welfare of his own family, and the good opinion of his friends, for his country or for the welfare of mankind? Ask any one out of thousands who, like William Lloyd Gar- rison, have staked everything that majorities hold precious, for a despised cause. The man sees the spark of the infinite in the cause of truth or freedom. That the majorities also have the same spark is dem- onstrated in the swift acclaim with which the next generation Is apt to erect monuments to the re- formers, the martyrs, the heroes. Every one likes to see what the infinite In a man can do. Every one would like to possess It, at least in his ancestry! This is to say that there is an element of the in- finite in any normal man and because he is man. If we use a, b, c, to express the worth of a man in measurable terms of labor and money, there Is that besides — call it x or y or w — which denotes the unknown and immeasurable. It Is the man's poten- tial value. You can never pay for the service of a wholly honest man; you can never be sure in the 30 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY case of the common man when a burst of this higher value will gleam out to surprise you. We recall the story of the faithful black men in Africa who bore their good friend Livingstone's remains through the wilderness to the sea. Does any one think that they could be paid, or that a value in gold could be set to such faithfulness? At the last analysis a man's self-respect depends upon his belief, or hope, that he has a gleam of this infinite life-force within him. Another point to be noted in the spiritual realm is a new kind of unity. There is a unity, as of atoms or things, which can be counted up to a hundred or a million. A man's vote may be counted, as his head is counted in the census. You may hold that the manifold appearances around us go to make up a world, or even a universe of worlds. But this is not real unity. What we see, as the mark of spirit, is the unity that exists in a picture, in noble sculpture, in a poem or story, in a work of art. It says some- thing to you as a whole, carries a meaning of its own, is unique. This kind of unity constitutes a man. It makes him a person, apart and inimitable, like no other person. True, it is often an incom- plete unity, as of something in the process of making, as a play of which you only catch sight of a single scene. Even so, there is a hint or suggestion of the unity which ought to be there. It is only in this sense that we conceive of a real universe. Suppose that sun and earth and stars and giant forces and splendor of light said nothing and THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT 31 meant nothing to any Intelligence, would there be any real unity? Suppose, on the other hand, we could enter into the vision and Interpretation of the man who first looked out on the world and pro- nounced the words : " It is good " ; of or that later idealist who said that '' all things work together for good." This working together, this Idea of a purpose, an end, or use, or message, constitutes for us a universe. The Idea of a " first cause " Is not half so important. Being of the nature of spirit, we must have a spiritual universe to live in. In this sense, all that we see enters Into the spiritual unity as a vast parable or drama, composed and addressed as it were to spiritual intelligences. With this thought of unity, we may well find ourselves almost compelled to the faith in " God " (we care not for the name) as the unity, the reality, the Infinite Per- son, the Intelligence, the Poet and Builder, In whose Will or Life we share life. I wish here, however, only to make clear the fact of the nature of man as a unity. You will often try to sum up some friend's character; you say that it seemed like a poem; that it carried a message of integrity; that It was an Incarnation of unselfishness; that it struck a note of purity or fidelity. These ex- pressions are so many efforts to describe the effect on your mind of a spiritual unity. Most people must have witnessed some life which carried this impression. In such a case what can we say more than that all things have In fact worked together, as if by a guiding plan, like the vase under the hand 32 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY of the potter? Such a life is no mere senseless suc- cession of detached acts or moments, like beads on a string, but every happening, the seeming faults of material, the mishaps, the sufferings, pains and pen- alties — all have gone to fulfill a design, to give con- trast and color, and produce at last the satisfactori- ness of unity. Such a life bears a priceless or in- finite message. Perhaps the meaning which piety used to find in its notion of a " divine Providence " was simply this fact, that the person, once beginning to grow into his own proper spiritual unity, discovers in everything some use which the guiding life can adapt to its ends. But some one will say that, where one life suc- ceeds and takes on unity, other lives fail; millions seem to have no unity, but are, rather, a fleeting series of happenings and mishaps. Are they only the material for the making of persons? It is no light question. The main reason, indeed, why we long for a better religion is that we may convey the universal secret of life, which some men surely have found, to which many men are now really near, and which multitudes obviously lack; namely, how to grow to the stature of men, of persons, each one like a jewel? Here is the need of a better religion. We cannot bear to put up with the sorrowful waste of human life before which the current religion stands hopeless. We have a gospel for all kinds and conditions of men. We have faith in the com- mon man as being of the same clay of which the most perfect vases are molded. So far as this faith THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT 33 has ever been understandingly set to work it has not failed. This is to say that there is in the realm of the spirit, and not in things only, a marvelous principle of evolution ^nd development. You have not to wait for the superman. Nothing which has ever been prophesied of him makes him desirable, whether to rule over us or to supersede us. We have yet to see what can normally be done with man as he is. What man yet begins to use all the faculties in him? We know Httle enough of the uses of matter and force. Where are the educators who are trying to learn and to teach what the spirit In man can do, enjoy, develop, transmit, or become? Education waits for the spiritual impulse of the bet- ter rehgion. How far can education and the educa- tors rise above the level of the dominant current re- ligion? "Who shall teach the teachers?" It is not the current religion alone that has failed. The schools and the great universities, to which we had a right to look for real wisdom in the face of a work! calamity, have also failed. What grand saving word have the professed teachers of philosophy been able to give us? What instruction of humaner con- duct has come from their well-endowed chairs? What earnest rebuke did the historians bring against our taking up again the degrading usages of bar- barism? The world needed the deeper implications and fresh appHcation of the ancient wisdom. The world had opened before it a wonderful opportunity for a 34 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY humaner and more spiritual growth. The great teachers and leaders might have set it along its up- ward way by a century's worth of quickened pros- perity and happiness. But as usual, the schoolmen like the churchmen, had no active faith in their prin- ciples, no vision of the nature and capacity of a spiritual humanity, no clear consciousness that they lived in a spiritual universe and touched the reality of the spirit on every hand. The times demanded live faith In the common man; the facts warranted a new faith. Noble leaders could have touched the hearts of the millions of men to attune their lives to the call of '' humanity over all," Instead of devot- ing themselves to the senseless old gladiatorial game of destruction. The current education, like the cur- rent religion, had produced no such leadership. The work is before us. There is a certain wonderful element of inde- structibility and deathlessness in the realm of the spirit. The body goes through phases and at last dies. Not so with that which constitutes the real self, the person, the ever growing unity with Its everlasting stretch up and outward beyond the vis- ible a and h and c^ toward the infinite, the x and the n. Here Is the real man! Once established in Its motion of growth, progression becomes its law. It has its home above the range of death, a bodily change. You see the processes of death; you never see the death of the man's spirit. The more you know of its nature, the harder It is to think of it as dead. The Intelligence of a Plato dead? The con- THE REALM OF THE SPIRIT 35 science of a Channing dead? The friendly will of a Wilberforce dead? The Christ-life dead? The terms never fit. There is not only no demonstra- tion of death in such cases as these, but the impress of the facts of the spiritual life move us the oppo- site way; the best lives shine out above death. If all of us lived this kind of life no one would ever be afraid of death. We thus approach a really verifiable idea of God and immortality also. This holds true without the use of dogmatism. We surely did not make our- selves, body or spirit. We are indeed children of the dust. But what startling contents and possibil- ities there are in the dust! It contains in itself the element of the world stui^ which our earth shares with the sun and the stars. On the other side, over- topping the mystery of the earthy structure, we dis- cover ourselves to be children and sharers of the life of intelligence, of beauty, of goodness, of the spirit. We are constantly surprised at the facts of a higher life which we discover in ourselves. What if the old poetic verse is really true, that *' God cre- ated man to be immortal and made him to be an image of His own eternity"! Call man child of God or not; he is evidently the child of the spiritual universe. The visible world may go to wreck; grant that the kind of change through which it daily passes, presages this. But nothing in the nature of spirit forebodes such a conclusion. Call God one or many, or forbear to name him at all, yet we men at our best share whatever characterizes the realm 36 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY of the spirit, share every attribute that we can con- ceive in deity. In short, if infinite living spirit be the ultimate reality, we men are the kind of being that corresponds precisely to the idea of the children of such a reality, or universe, or God. Children, we say, not gods; on the way up, and at all stages of the processes of growth. The fact that exalts us thus also humbles the pride in us and forbids ill temper, contempt, blame, and impatience. We shall have occasion later to return to this point with closer insistence. IV SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION: A WORKING FORMULA Here is a brief formula touching human life, to meet the difficulties of skeptical minds. It Is in three dimensions, as follows : First, this is a barbar- ous, or, if you prefer, a half-civilized world. Sec- ondly, it is a world on the upward way; that is, it is an improving and improvable world. Thirdly, it is every one's business to engage in this upward mo- tion and to help 7nake it prevail. See if these propositions, one by one, do not hold true. In the first place, observe that our use of the terms barbarous and civilized express an idea of movement or evolution. I have already hinted that we have not yet begun to exploit the meaning of this familiar thought. We are used to it in its physical terms. But this Is practically the least fruitful side of it. What if it is thus only a vast picture parable, the stage and scenery of a wonder- ful drama, of which we substantially know nothing by the mere show and procession of things, unless we catch the Intellectual or spiritual sense, the out- come in thought, in ideas. In real life! What if a Hebrew writer, Paul, no scientist at all, of only rab- binical training, long before Darwin, by a sort of spiritual vision, in a single eloquent passage In his 37 38 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY letter to his friends in Rome, came nearer to the meaning of the evolutionary process than most of the learned university professors of science to-day? They know a thousand-fold more of the facts of the physical story of the planet than he knew, but how few of them have fathomed the meaning of his words: "The whole creation groaneth and travail- eth together in pain." Wherefore? "Waiting," he says, " for the manifestation of the sons of God"; that is, waiting for the appearance of such men as Jesus was, and as Paul himself had become, such men as we also know in every city of America. Suppose that we have here the clue to the never- ending spiral ascent of the spiritual life; suppose the riddle of existence, no longer an enigma, is a moving drama of the victorious goodness ! Then we can look on and see the pain and bear our share in it and be glad, if only the children of Intelligence, Truth and Beauty shall at last inherit the earth, if we too may have a hand in their coming. Please observe that we hold already something like this key to the idea of growth, touching our- selves and our children. The physical growth, im- portant as it is, is never enough. By itself it would be a stupendous disappointment. A child who had grown a body and had never grown a soul ! A body that could pull and kick and devour food, with as perfect and uninterrupted health as you please, yet without intellect, without sense of right and wrong, without symptoms of aspiration or devotion ! We are always on the watch for the growth of the spirit, SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 39 of the humanity. In war times parents face every conceivable possibility of destruction of the body, of torture, of long drawn out Invalidism. But when the worst physical event happens and all is over, the most questioning mind is at rest when It Is said: Our boy has won out; he has learned to be clean, to be faithful, to be fearless, to live and die like a man. This is the manifestation of a Son of God. That this comes true in war time is only the accl- . dent, somewhat more startling and consoling in the fact of its contrast with a desolating calamity. The significant thing is that the youth has caught the secret of the drama of the universe, so that even the onlooker catches the idea. The youth might have died on the opposite side, or he might have been a derided ^' conscientious objector " fading out In a vile jail for his religion, or he might be conceived of as returning safe from the war to live a long and honored life, henceforth a true-hearted servant of humanity. Our satisfaction Is that he has entered upon his heritage of spiritual growth as a man. This is his normal life. Let us agree, then, In the fact of spiritual evolu- tion, and let us not forget that this means nothing, unless It means that the life of man, and the world that he inhabits, and all things together in it, are significant. They are significant In that they are In some real sense purposeful. Let us not be afraid to use this word purpose, as distinguished from mere unpurposeful motion that goes nowhither. We are ourselves compact of the Idea of purpose! 40 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Nothing else is intelligent; we know purpose and de- mand it and find life finally intolerable without it, because we are spirit and not matter; because our home is properly in the realm of spiritual things; be- cause the spirit of the universe, whatever we call it, impresses upon us the necessity of purpose — that Is, significant, upward movement of life. Not until a man has caught the motion of purpose — useful, beneficent purpose — have we any solid confidence or comfort In him. Our respect for our children is a respect for the hope and promise of purpose. Our first proposition is, that we live in a somewhat barbarous world. This will now seem less oppro- brious and disheartening. Barbarous Is only a rela- tive word. We use It at first as we might use the word childish to describe Infants in a nursery. They have to be childish at first. Blame or oppro- brium comes Into the word only when children con- tinue to behave childishly after they ought to know better. So we use barbarous with two meanings In describing the world we live In. We do not use the word as the Greeks perhaps did, in contempt, to blame or deride the backward people around them. We use it almost cheerfully to describe the Inhab- itants of Africa who have never had a chance to see civilization, before they have seen It translated through commerce Into rum and rifles. How could they help being barbarians! But we use the word also sadly for white men who proudly think them- selves " civilized," while they carry on the works SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 4 1 of barbarians, lynching negroes, for example. Each side In the Great War has called Its enemies bar- barians. No German army, surely, has ever tried to civilize and Christianize war. But the Allies' boasted " rules of the game " have not civilized war. The Allies adopted the war system, they too de- scended to the same field of hatred, they took up the same cruel Inventions — the submarine, the poison gas, the bombing of towns in air raids, the effort to reduce vast populations by hunger, the re- lentless blockading of neutral States, the forcing of unwilling youth into virtual serfdom, the suppres- sion of truth, the exaggerated blackening of the character of enemy nations, the persecution of mar- tyrs and heroes. Each side used barbarism to fight barbarism. Meanwhile, the church blessed and ex- tolled " our " war, added violence to its heat and enmity, called for the exercise of murderous might to crowd the enemy Into the dust; the church prac- tically abdicated Its work as a peace-maker, aban- doned Its law of forgiveness, and became an adjunct of the war department. Thank God for the Innumerable hands that tended the wounded, but alas! they presently sent them back Into the heat of the flame, and thought they did God service. The church did not know or teach otherwise. Let us agree not to talk about " civilization " and not to say " Christendom " be- fore we have consented together to put the whole- sale barbarity of war out of the world! My point Is that we are yet a barbarous world. 42 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY We all trace our common descent from barbarian ancestors. Grant now that we are passing through a stage or phase of human development ; what happened was inevitable and necessary; it grew out of conditions that had run for centuries. We had inherited our churches and courts and other institutions from ages of violence and ignorance; they did not fit our needs; our religion was not our own but our forefathers' religion. It had not grown to match our boasted science, our hygiene, and our moving pictures. This is to say that the body and even the wits of our age had outgrown its moral character. Into what more dangerous plight can a youth, or a na- tion, or a race fall! Our fatality was that we did not possess practical intelligence enough to note the facts and treat them accordingly. The world had grown arrogant. It is not my wish to bring blame, but to state what the trouble is and to call now and henceforth for appropriate treatment. When I say that we live in a barbarous world, I wish to " take account of stock." I wish to mini- mize none of our virtues: we need them all. But we need specially to view our enemies: they are not overseas. Our pride of power, of big census sta- tistics and wealth, our natural conceit, our egotism, our economic jealousies, our suspicions of other na- tions, our exaggerated nationalism, our contempt and hatred, our self-will — these are our enemies. How can we ever drive them out of the world, as long as we harbor them in our own hearts and con- SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 43 done them? And how can we have a true civiliza- tion for our children while these enemies govern and distract the nations? Therefore I say: Let us be honest and lay our claim only to civilization as a prize yet to be won, doubtless at great cost. I say all this for a positive purpose. Our days of " humiliation and prayer " have no use unless, cutting down to the bone, we build our self-respect out of the clean blood of a friendly humanity. We cannot live decently and do our work with effect, unless we possess self-respect. Let us hearten our- selves for our work. Like the giant Antaeus, we touch the earth where we belong to renew our strength, not to continue to lie in the dust. I venture now to set forth the most optimistic proposition that man can believe. I maintain that this barbarous world, with all its chaos and injustice. Is on its way up toward the light. This is to claim that the world is growing better. I am aware how much sullen skepticism there is about this. I know what formidable facts may be cited against it. A time of war does not look propitious for creeds of hope. I appeal not only to facts, but also to certain significant guiding lines of human development which emerge from the facts, not less but more clearly than ever before, in spite of the war. Let us take a long imaginary leap backwards as far as the geologists can see. Life, intelligence, consciousness had not yet come into manifest form. Unintelligent darkness brooded over the earth. Let 44 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY us next look In on the earth at whatever time man first appeared. Here in the welter of brute life is a new kind of creature; something wonderful has happened. He can use language, think, study, con- trive, combine with others, know mother love. No Rousseau, however, wants to-day to return to keep house with this primitive man in his cave, to hunt for food with him, to fight lions and tigers and snakes, to worship his fetishes. Come down now, no one knows how many thou- sands of years, and establish another point of per- spective. We find cities and temples, laws and a certain order, ships on the sea, curious forms in bronze and iron, poems and art, great groups of men bound in society, filling empires. We find be- sides, something greater yet, since that earlier time of the cave man. An idea of righteousness has en- tered the world! Here and there are men of in- tegrity, magnanimous and purposeful men. Such men stand out at the beginnings of the authentic his- tory of every people. Abraham, Moses, Tsaiah are only names out of one little but wonderfully signifi- cant nation. Kindliness has blossomed out into the lives of not a few Ruths and Naomis, faithful unto death for love's sake. There are men who will die for one another. David sitting over against the beleaguered wall in Bethlehem had such men about him. There are fathers and brothers and husbands like this. Behold here a rise of the tide of life on the planet! It means more to come. Make a stand now at the lifetime of Jesus. No SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 45 matter whether he or some other man was first to proclaim a doctrine of brotherhood and humanity: no matter whether the Idea of forgiveness had al- ready come before him. His name stands for the dawn of a new spiritual era. Here Is a man, and no feeble man either, who carries the notion of good- ness to the heart of our modern world; here is that which we call In some meaningful sense the love of God. The man possessing It knows how to play his part with confidence against the blows of ill for- tune and become stronger; possessing It, any man now knows how to forgive, or better yet, not to have enemies. And this kind of man Is able to go to his death unafraid. Had you never before seen or known about spirit and the life of the spirit, seeing this kind of man you would have to own that you know now what spirit Is. If only one human life had touched you with the fact of this secret, you would have a new thrill of experience; like a man who has set out some new kind of tree and, at last tasting Its fruit, might say: I know now what a peach Is. Do you im- agine that the first cave man just erecting himself above the earth, had ever seen such a fruitage of the tree of life as this new type of man, whom we may well dare to call a son of God! There is a new ad- vancement of life as soon as this type appears. This advance Is no less, but even more remark- able. If you cite the cruel deeds and wicked people who have been the contemporaries of the new and coming man. This barbarism, this suffering, this 46 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY poverty, is not significant : animalism has always been in the world. The wonderful fact is that we see the new life of man, rising right out of the an- cient barbarism, overtopping it, victorious, and per- fectly safe and indestructible in the midst of it. This type has come to stay. You cannot kill it; de- stroy it in one place and you may be sure of presently seeing it flaming out somewhere else. It is rooted in nature; it is the work of the arch-poet of creation; you are going to see more and ever more of this kind of men and women. By and by an irresistible demand will set in for them. The demand heralds a growing supply. Come now to this age of the greatest war in all history — the blackest work of barbarous man. The test of the spiritual health of a people is the volume and the purity of the humanity among them. Who cannot see arising out of the bloody scenes of the war a marvelous demonstration of the religion beneath all the religions, that consists in kindliness, mutual aid, sympathy, the desire to do justice, the simple faith in the victorious goodness and the will to obey it ! The horrid war shows by contrast what one day will destroy war. It comes to many minds as a sort of revelation of humanity. It has ap- peared in especially beautiful forms in the United States, in England, in France. There is every likeli- hood that it has appeared also among the plain Ger- man people and the Russians. Leaving out of ac- count here the failure of untaught multitudes to see the inhumane nature of war, confining our attention SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 47 to the simple and whole-hearted efforts of an un- known number of people to show mercy, to meet immense needs, to join hands with others In a com- mon endeavor represented to them as both patriotic and democratic, to vindicate their ideals in the only way which most of them saw possible, to undertake In the name of duty disgusting kinds of service which they were bidden in no way to question, when did ever the world see a more wonderful display of the great human qualities which lie close to the heart of religion? When were ever so many hands stretched out to soldiers' camps to keep the boys' lives clean, sweet, and temperate? When was money so poured forth in gifts to maintain hospitals and well-fur- nished centres of recreation? These facts are all to the good, and very significant. They do not render war less barbarous, but they display " the soul of good In things evil." They hardly belong to the credit of ministers, teachers, philosophers, states- men, who owed the people both wiser and nobler leadership. But they demonstrate an unexpected wealth of natural religion In the common man. The Christ type Is here. So far now from saying: See what an occasional war may do to freshen up human life ! — we say the opposite. This badly needs to be said. If there had been more humanity — that Is, real rehglon — there would have been no war. If there had been more sympathy, not with " allies " alone, but with all people as our friends; If there had been not merely a frantic burst of devotion for war time, but 48 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY — what must yet come — a genuine devotion to the service of man for all time, if there had been moral courage to think straight and speak fearlessly, if there had been an equal zeal to do justice as well as the rather easy willingness to compel others to do justly, if the moral forces of the nation had been half as faithfully led by truth, fairness, and modesty as they were hustled and conscripted by the pride of the strong, this common fund of native goodness would have risen into heights of such wisdom and effectual good will as to have set the world forward by the value of a hundred years. We must not be so stupid as to make war glori- ous; we must call It what It always is, a calamity, like the famine or flood or pestilence, only more pre- ventable by the will of man. War only calls out goodness as a conflagration or any other misfortune does. It reveals heroes, because heroes are there waiting to be revealed. Physical courage Is always plentiful; most healthy creatures possess It. Do not claim yet that modern men hate to fight; the brutal part of us never hates battle. The brutal part of human society will long be easily tempted to fight. The courage of the new age Is to refuse to fight, to do something more humane and effective. The proof that man Is on the way up from barbarism will henceforth be measured by this more splendid courage, which stands forth to forbid war altogether. Some say that the world has been lately growing corrupt with wealth and luxury. I think they are SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 49 wrong. The world had never been clean, humane, unselfish. Only the few ever possessed wealth or luxury. Neither does wealth necessarily work to corrupt men more than poverty does. The war simply disclosed what careful watchers of the habits and manners of the nation had already seen; namely, that there had been quietly growing everywhere the beautiful and simple fruitage of the spirit. There had been humble but real homes and noble home teaching; in many a neighborhood or village virile characters in the persons of brave and infinitely faithful women, of youth more noble than the boasted knights of chivalry had been developed. Thousands of witnesses could be summoned to tes- tify to such illustrious facts. Go back with your measuring rod, study the story of each century and each province, and find, if you can, a time or place of which you may prove so great and clean a record of men and women who have lived the simple life as you will find here in America in this startling period of the Great War. Not a century ago, not in the early New England, not in the fourteenth century, not in the so-called ages of faith, not in the time of the apostles, or the prophets of Israel. They were too few, but where had there ever been so many? There is nothing so effective as the divine urgency that works to produce good men. Be assured that as soon as only a somewhat larger percentage of such people appear as we all have known, with a little clearer vision caught from worthier leaders, they 50 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY will know how to bring the secret of their religion, not merely to dissolve the halo of respectability in which antiquated churchmen have hitherto invested the barbarous war system, but also to abolish every kind of oppressive abuse which our awakened eyes are finding in the way of the march of men to the goal of their manhood.^ Let us agree then, though we live in a barbarous world, that it is a world on its way upward. It is a better world than it ever was; there is more human- ity in It and therefore more vision of God; there is more and not less promise In It ; that Is, more to make It worth while to live. Let no real man sit down and despair of the victorious goodness, or the im- measurable possibilities of human destiny. We are beginning only to use them, as they exist In " the common man." Our key thought Is a drama of spiritual evolution. Do not expect a progress and betterment through the mere manifestation and ac- cumulation of things; expect spiritual results 1 1 may seem to some to refer too often to the fact of war as the master evil. I do this because the war system, whether under the name of militarism or any other name, happens in our age to obtrude itself as the special obstacle in the way of spiritual civ- ilization. No one knows how subtly rooted and obstinate it is. I do not stress the colossal cost in life and treasure so much as the fact that it sums up in itself and symbolizes the worst vices of the untamed man grown strong — his arrogance and selfishness — more fatal now than ever for being dressed up in the garb of law and authority and taking the name of democracy. Through the use of war the pride and selfishness of the few still make the many their dependents, fasten themselves upon empires, capture majorities, and split the world with fear and enmity. Our fathers found African slavery across their path and they called it the " sum of villanies." We face the same villanies under the name of war. This is for us "the irrepressible conflict." SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 51 through the growth of persons, like sons of God, using and controlling things. Our third proposition follows as a matter of course; it is a personal appeal. We are here each to do his part to make the right prevail, to bring the ideal things to pass, to carry continually the message of larger good will. This is the meaning of every man's life. There is no real or satisfying life short of this. Nothing else gives it significance. Only this makes a man happy; only this unifies his facul- ties and raises his otherwise petty experiences into power, dignity, and beauty. This kind of life lifts a man from a pagan or provincial to be a citizen of the universe. SECTION II THE COURSE OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION I THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION We no longer think of religion as revealed once for all, ready-made and perfect. It comes by processes of growth, like everything else human. Even if it is above man, it has to fit the state of mind in which man lives. It has to begin as man begins, in vague feelings and wonder. It cannot be thoughtful till at least some men begin to think. It cannot inspire conduct till men have learned through suffering from oppression and cruelty to see their way toward happier conduct. How many people who speak the name of God mean the same God that James Martineau, or Theodore Parker or Channing meant? What modern men mean the same as Jesus meant, or Isaiah? Do not Christians still worship a war- God? The fact is that no one can have a religion that does not measurably fit the growth of the man. He cannot hold another man's religion. We have shown that the current religion does not fit the needs and the thoughts of our times. We 53 54 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY have also seen that a better religion Is already here. It Is springing forth like the new and sturdy growth about an old decaying stump. It appears In un- expected places, as If It grew from seeds that the birds have dropped. Sometimes Its seeds have fallen upon stony places. It has not yet come to Its strength and beauty, except In individual lives. We only begin to see what it will grow to, when once It emerges from the individualism of isolated lives, and becomes a fellowship and brotherhood of all loyal-hearted men and women, devoted as an Irre- sistible force to civilize the earth. We shall gain confidence in this nobler future by tracing the path- way of man's spiritual evolution. Life always comes In by varied stages or periods. There are chapters in the book of. life, like the changing scenes and acts in the course of a drama. Nature is always taking us by surprise. If the great moving energy is always the same — of which we can hardly be sure — yet the effect Is rhythmic and seasonal — summer and winter, '' first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn In the ear." There are endless hidden possibilities In the universe and therefore in man, Its child. What man uses half his powers? Before any man or before the race a new epoch may suddenly open. This is especially true of the life of the spirit, of the affections, of religion. There are at least four fairly distinct epochs or periods In man's spiritual development. In each successive period there Is something new that was THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 55 not present except as concealed In embryo, in the stage below. Of course, we all begin beyond our recollections in the shadow land of Infancy. The common in- heritance of the animal world is back of us. Is the human nature beastly and brutal? How can it be otherwise, seeing that innumerable traits of our earthy origin are twisted together In us ! We draw our breath from the time aeons ago, before the man had arrived. It has been said: " Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar." Make this universal: Rub any man the wrong way and you awaken the animal. This Is " the old man " of whom Paul wrote. He wrote bitterly, blaming himself for an Inevitable fact of life. It is the glory of the man who Is to be, not that the animal has died, but that the man '' knowing himself," as Socrates said, controls and uses the animal. Browning has the truth of it: " Nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul." But even in baby life, strangely feebler and more helpless than any other animal's infancy, there come, as every parent knows, foregleams and intimations, if not of immortality, of the wonderful possibilities of the coming man. What other young creature smiles and laughs as your baby does? What other creature puts forth such tendrils of intelligence, or a more determined will to stand and walk? Neither does any one blame the little child for his thunder-storms of anger or his sullen moods of ob- stinacy. Even the theologians had to fix the blame 56 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY for these childish outbreaks on our distant fore- father Adam! So much for the hazy beginnings of hfe. The origins of the world and all things in it are neces- sarily surrounded with the mists. Of what possible use would it be to remember infancy? When, now, does a child pass up out of this innocent period into the next stage of its spiritual growth? There comes a time when you blame the child, and, what is more important, the child accepts blame. Some- thing new has happened to him. To sin is to incur blame. What else is it? It is doubtless the dawn of self-consciousness. The disobedient or willful child has at first no sense of offense; but the same child presently feels somehow, like one groping in the dark, an alteration in the behavior — the looks and tones — of those around it. Disobedience changes the bearings of life and puts the child out- side good society. Disobedience — that is, unsocial conduct — checks the flow of the social life. Now, the spiritual life has its birth when this social consciousness, the inner feeling of self, as dis- tinguished from any other mode of feeling — of self as related to other selves — wakes up in us. This consciousness of self — the sense that / am — is one of the ultimate mysteries. Where can we possibly place it, except in the terms of the spirit? It is es- sential to life, and yet Invisible and immeasurable — not a thing at all, and yet the most undeniable of facts. The scientific investigator Is as much bafiled to account for it as any of us. Try to define it, and THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 57 you have only shifted your question from one set of words to other and probably harder words. Why not leave it, where it belongs — a form of spirit, a manifestation of the universe Hfe or God? It is through the unfolding compass of this myste- rious consciousness that the tiny groping child will some day weigh the stars and commune with God and command a new world. We say that the child passes through infancy into the moral or spiritual realm — a quite new stage of life. No one can say just how or when the change comes. Nature, on the edge of the widest differ- ences, draws no sharp lines. Nature blends her colors and proceeds by subtle gradations. Every new birth is heralded by premonitory symptoms; it never translates the new life into immediate fulfill- ment. Few can probably recall the day when they first knew themselves as full and responsible selves. Even so, was there no twilight zone on the uncon- scious side of that red-letter day? With most of us, too, the first gleams of the conscious will are apt to suffer strange lapses into the earlier darkness. Nevertheless, each new growth of the soul — each vital experience — carries it up above ground, as it were, into the moral realm. The conscious moral realm is as different a place from that where life began as daylight from darkness. You find nothing in the most intelligent animals that corresponds to this change that comes early in the career of the man. We measure the child as more or less normal according to the distinctness of the change through 58 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY which responsible self-conscious will is evolved in him. We may say that by five or six years of age the moral life ought fairly to have begun. This new period of growth does not seem at once to be a great boon to the child itself or any one else. It is a period of uncertain and tedious experimenta- tion. Few parents or teachers know how to give the child valid help. Is it perhaps necessary that he should try to find out for himself what he can do with his newly discovered " knowledge of good and evil"? How far can he assert himself over the lines of disobedience? How important, or even dangerous, can he make himself in his small sphere of influence? He has found his way into the wil- derness. What resources, what strange fruits, what tingling possibilities of adventure are here? We are not far astray in calling this the pagan period. Most of us begin it as little barbarians. I use these words in no odious sense. The only odi- ous pagans and barbarians are the belated and so- phisticated ones. The natural savage or barbarian has all kinds of good human qualities. Travelers who know him best represent him as companionable and often affectionate; as capable of splendid loyalty, brave and exceedingly patient, religious too in a dim way, with notions, perhaps, of the Great Spirit; as very susceptible to good leadership. These things may be said of boys and girls. Show them your best side and they answer to it; they can also play the part of the savage at short notice. Every fac- ulty to make trouble is in them — untamed appetites. THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 59 ugly passions, sullen resentments, greedy selfishness, queer superstitions. Do you always love to hear them " say their prayers "? How much like older people — or heathen — they are with their " vain repetitions " I At their worst, however, they are never so much to blame as those older people who lose their temper and become pagan, just when children need firm and friendly hands to steady them. In general, the child, like the pagan, lacks defi- nite purpose or aim. He sways and wavers in his moods; he is good and bad, kindly and cruel by turns; he is loving and lovable, with little con- stancy; he is capable of shocking outbursts of pas- sion, or deeds of shame; his morality is not yet his own so much as the tribal or group or family or gang morals, which may shore him up for the time. This is the way of nature. The child learns to walk or climb or swim by experiments and failures. No one else can do it for him. Neither can he ever become a man except at last by his own self-determination or purpose. This may come early or very late; it may be assisted by friendly wisdom, or, most sor- rowful of all, actual retrogression may set in like a blight in the wheat. How strangely the conduct of the pagan or the wild child resembles that of multi- tudes of grown people. They too have not out- grown their childhood. The world cries out upon " the unspeakable Turk." For the Turk with the appurtenances of civilization goes on doing the deeds of the barbarian. But the Turks are not the only 6o A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY wild people who commit brutalities in the modern man's dress! The Puritan mothers used to wonder how early a child might be " converted." How soon could his soul be saved? They did not know how real and practical the change for which they looked was. They looked upon it as supernatural and often made it seem repulsive. They did not see how joyously the human life takes on new powers and aptitudes. This is the spiritual nature. They called the law- less, care-free life natural; they did not recognize that the orderly, obedient, purposeful life is still more natural. The child loves to be free, but he loves even more to be useful. He is naturally an individual, but he is also social by nature. He loves to use his power for mischief rather than be idle ; but he can be even more interested in using his fuller powers for good. The fact is that there is a simple and happy relig- ion which fits the happy, active, growing, intelli- gent child. It may come as early as ten or twelve years of age. It may not be very marked at first. He would not be able to define it to himself. You might discover, however, in some moment of inti- mate confidences that he has a bit of a creed some- what like this : I mean to do right, to tell the truth, to live a clean life, to be kind and accommodating, and to make no trouble. I want to trust the good Power over me and to do his will. The Boy Scouts' Law is not uncongenial to boys, or girls either ! THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 6 1 There is a child's natural religion. If his parents and teachers and friends are on the side of the good, he wants to be with them. Boys and girls dislike a prig, but they like any one who is simple and true- hearted. The httle creed is the straight way of our average human destiny. Every one at his best likes it. The work of life is to keep to it. The fact is that we are naturally path-finders and road-makers. We have a journey to make. The sooner we find ourselves on the way, the better we like it. A pur- pose in life is the beginning of the way. Any in- telligent child can see this. To see it and do it is to enter upon the third period of the growth of a soul. A child in the grip of any honest purpose has taken a branch road leading toward the grand highway of Civilization. They used to think that a child, once the " subject of grace," was sure to remain so. But a child's will is inconstant. Few are born with a will to be right and do right. A habit of action strong enough to protect the boy's good intent is slow and costly to build: it means an accumulation of innumerable efforts of will. The great decision is yet to come. For man's life is not made merely to fit into a little orderly scheme of family or racial or even national loyalty. It is not a man's work " to be good, and thus to be happy," but, as Prof. George H. Palmer has said, to be " good for something " so large and spiritual as to require every original faculty, and never to cease to fill his mind and heart, and ever to 62 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY present new visions. There is something in the heart of a man that cannot be satisfied if you give him all that he wants of comfort, of prosperity, of happiness, of success. The eager youth, outgrowing childhood and feeling his way to a grown man's es- tate, must face the question of the ages, in our age clearer than ever: What does life mean? What is the truth of it? What will you do with it? In the " strife 'twixt truth and falsehood," in the everlast- ing struggle for love's sake, which side will you take? Call the work of life a battle, or call it ef- fort, enterprise, venture, sooner or later the chal- lenge comes : What will you do about it? The voice of the best self in the man presses him onward. Will he choose the everlasting Yeal To say this in earnest, to set his will upon it, to open his mind to its motions, to open his heart to its wide-sweeping sym- pathies, is to enter the estate of his manhood. To fall back, to be selfish, not to dare, is " the great re- fusal." Again, as before, I am not saying that you may fix any point when this happy maturing process dis- tinctly begins. Varying experiences mark it with dif- ferent Individuals. To some it may come like a " new birth " ; to others, like the high northern sun- rise, as a gradual and brightening dawn. The voices of nature call some to It. I knew a man who, being a hunter, saw it In the look on a little slain fawn's face, and he never went shooting again. Some find it in the story of Jesus. They vow to give their lives with him for the service of God. Wen- THE NATURAL BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 63 dell Phillips rose to it in the call to speak for the cause of the slave in Faneuil Hall. Henry George came to it in working out his " Progress and Pov- erty." Socialism has been the name of the door by which some have found it. A certain access of vi- sion is characteristic of it — a certain devotion, a purpose beyond any private or personal ends or am- bition. Any one of the great words by which men have sought to name the Universe Life — Beauty, Truth, Justice, Goodness, Love — suffices to sym- bolize the infinite nature of this new quest and pur- pose. There is no time in hfe too advanced for the vision or challenge to come. Refused once and again, it may haunt a man's soul and return to win his will. Not till middle age did Tolstoy catch the note of that new life which raised him forever above his times. The truth is, that we all are of the nature of spirit. The spirit comes and goes as the wind comes, as thought comes, as love comes : no one can predict its movements. But the time of all times, the time of the normal entrance of any life on its spiritual inheritance, is m youth. Youth itself is an epoch inviting change -- the period of determination. Youth brings special susceptibilities to generous thought, and even to cheerful sacrifice. To give one's life is a natural im- pulse in youth. Militarism has taken advantage of this. The grown man's religion only asks more; namely, that the youth shall give his life not to die but to live — to live, as one willing also to die, for 64 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY every good cause for which true men In all times have held their lives and fortunes In trust. Youth, too, is the special period of love. And religion Is love, deepening every personal love, and adding new meaning to love-making, to marriage, to the home, to the coming of children, to the risks and ventures of love, to death itself. One of the most serious counts against the current religion is that no branch of the church has known how to make proper use of the period of youth as the time to induct its boys and girls into their her- itage as children of God. What church has seri- ously tried to do this? What church has ever pos- sessed a membership mature enough in experiences of spiritual manhood and womanhood, to help its youth to find the reality of religion? They have had to unlearn false religions and grope to find the good religion. There has never been civilization enough in the world, or churches fit to make ready for a civilized religion. II CHANGING HUMAN NATURE It is not enough to' catch a vision of the larger life, or even to take an enlistment oath to follow it. The vision needs perpetual renewal and re-invlgor- ation. Every fresh turn of the kaleidoscope of expe- rience brings new meaning and momentum. Al- ways, as in childhood, it takes an accumulated series of determined acts of the will to set the habit of the life. Through repeated and often costly experiences and ventures one finds how fine and workable the life is. It involves falls and lapses too, as in every new trade or art, where the learner gets his lessons and has to make new adjustments. It calls for tre- mendous risks, where truth and right and love seem to put aside success, money, place, popularity, every selfish desire; where it is defeat to retreat or vacil- late; where wonderful access of life, as if from the depths of being, flows in, in case we go on. The most perilous time of life for most men is not in boyhood or early youth, or on the side of the appetites and passions. It comes after one has " got his education," and attained physical growth, and even after he has '* got his religion." The great danger at this point is that, when the real life should properly begin, the man may halt and stagnate; he is 65 66 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY " grown up " now! They put " Mr.," the title of Master, before his name, when he is nothing at best but an apprentice. How many people actually grow better, wiser, more lovable, more useful after they are twenty-five years old? Is this because the sys- tem under which we live, the industries, the com- merce, the business, the social and political relations are all awry as regards the real enterprise of men set here to civilize the earth? No wonder the Socialists tell us that the world is out of joint, if men and women, the most precious product of the universe, have nothing to look for- ward to after they come to their maturity! Do we grow only in childhood, and then, at our maximum of bodily development, are we doomed to stop growing, to think no new thoughts, to learn no new and richer joys or secrets of wisdom? Is childhood meant to be, as some say, the only happy part of life? What would you think of your wheat field, if only one seed in a hundred ever grew up to bear fruit? This is to make futility of the world. It is to find no purpose in evolution; it is to deny the most significant facts in human history. Wait till you see what re- ligion can do and does for the average man, not only for rare and gifted minds. Here lies the worst heresy of the popular religion; it is also the practical outcome of much current phil- osophy. The profoundest of questions touches the improvability of the common man. Is he worth while? say the skeptical men from their chairs in the university. Is he worth while? say the masters CHANGING HUMAN NATURE 67 of business, who use men as so many tools. Does the church say, Yes, as a church with a gospel should say it? The church, content with baptizing men or enrolling their names, doubts their capacity to live and grow to their stature as men. It expects the least possible of them. It has no faith in the " Third Person " of its Trinity, to bring forth " the fruits of the spirit " in average men. And so it happens that the churches are full of people who seem no better at sixty and seventy than they were at eighteen. Yet both the future of religion and the fate of democracy rest upon the faith In the improvability of common men. Yes ! and not alone in a few races which just now dominate the others. Common men, we say, in all races. We can have vassal races no longer. But, they still say, you cannot change human nature. What do they mean? Human nature is in constant process of change. Watch your willful boy. Some day he catches a spark, an Idea, and lo ! a changed man grows out of him, which no peda- gogue of " vocational training " could have known was waiting there to be evolved. Do you suppose that when such changes may come to any boy or girl before twenty-one years of age, similar gleams of the light of the spirit may not be looked for al- ways afterward? The law of their coming Is that you look for them. Even a pet dog grows In In- telligence as you expect it of him, and grows little without such encouragement. What can you not do with men, when every one looks for the best in 68 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY them, and hope stands before every man's eyes to the last! They tell us that each infant is made to pass through ancient phases of the life of the race. A child may have dim reminiscences of the wild world, its storms and its monsters, through which his fore- fathers once made their way. Each child thus fol- lows the line of the host that preceded him. At the other and ascending end of the spiral movement of life we find a complementary and marvelously prophetic process in motion. Here the new life ap- pears first in the individual — in the tips of the branches, in early fruits venturing themselves on sunny hill-sides in new varieties and types, bursting forth from the never-failing fountain of nature, in new faculties prompted to birth under pressure of unwonted conditions. Behind these pioneers and forerunners follow the host. After the early ber- ries all the fields will be full of them. So with the life of the spirit of man. Again and again individuals brought to birth — God only knows how — have shown the precious new life. The atmosphere of the old pagan world was chilly; the conditions of culture hardly existed. They were nevertheless prophetic of what shall be in due time. Already a warmer humanity is in the air. Wait! The few shall be many. The period of paganism is passing away. It has become intoler- able. Close to the terrible war we look on at an age of transition. The doubting, half-pagan church thought that only one Christ, one Son of God, could CHANGING HUMAN NATURE 69 appear. The rest of mankind, half-pagan still, should get into heaven, if they ever arrived, clinging to the hem of his garments. But the world shall yet see, as good " Father Taylor " once said, thousands of such, the thoughtful, the helpful, the lovable and the loving, the brave too, the forceful and fearless. The path of progress leads upward. The age of the good spirit Is before us. If not now, the fields will yet be ripe. Ill THE PHARISEE WORLD I HAVE roughly sketched three great normal stages of man's spiritual evolution out of primitive ignor- ance. In the first the child, or the early man, find- ing his way to self-consciousness, gets his initial les- sons of good and evil, tries his powers, and comes up against the social restraints within which even the life of the savage man is bounded. In the second stage the growing child normally catches for himself the sense of law and order, or justice, and more or less willingly assents to the simple social laws which constitute good membership in the family, or the village. This is the period of learning righteousness, although with narrow sympathies. It is unlikely, however, that there was ever a time when men, being all alike face to face with common perils, did not share some dim sense of neighborliness with stran- gers, men in distress. In the third stage, to which, alas ! so far few have fairly come, the normal or mature man is here. His righteousness widens into humanity; he has caught the vision of a divine pur- pose, so grand as to comprehend all good for all men; his will, no longer constrained, even by the bond of duty, becomes a happy will, one with the great Good Will, now conceived to rule the world. 70 THE PHARISEE WORLD ^1 Upon each of these stages or periods of natural growth, grading into each other upwards, are super- imposed various phases, often more or less morbid, but some of them natural and necessary for the time. There is hardly any even and all-round growth in the human body or the mind, much less In society. Among the great phases of religious development, the Pharisee type or sect stands out conspicuously. I am aware that the name Pharisee has earned im- mense opprobrium. But I wish to pay my respects to the Pharisees. The time has come to study their movement, as one studies, for Instance, the history of the Republican Party in American politics, to whom indeed, in their rise and their subsequent per- version, in their faults and their virtues, they bear a singular likeness. If the Pharisee faults have at last become odious, if the sect has done Its work and deserves to pass away In favor of a more humane order, we shall not help to bring this better growth by abuse and denunciation. It is Idle to try to reach and help people who cannot recognize them- selves In our description of them. I am speaking of Pharisees as still here in the nineteenth century. They are no longer a Jewish sect, but a numerous and powerful body. They have moved over from Judaism and captured the great current forms of Christianity. They dom- inate and largely characterize Christendom. Ask what is the religion of the governmental people in the great fighting nations? It Is practically Phari- saism. We live In a " Pharisee world." Among 72 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the races of mankind our own Anglo-Saxon or Teu- tonic stock has been specially prone to Pharisaism. It goes with their characteristic energy. It is ex- cessive in proportion to the forcefulness and adven- turousness of a well-fed and prosperous people. I speak as a son of New England Pharisees, that little Puritan group of emigrants to whose virtue and constancy, to whose conscience and saintship, in the case of its exceptional individuals, many a historian has traced the most effective moral strain in the up- building of our American Commonwealth. I have had opportunity from childhood to know the Puritan virtues and no less to see the subtle vices which have brought ridicule and even detestation upon both Pharisees and Puritans; for they are essentially one type of humanity. The sect followed a natural human tendency. There may always be those who pass up for a period through the Pharisee gateway. Who were the Pharisees? How do they come to be? They are the " law and order" men. As soon as human society begins, there is a differentia- tion of type and function. We see it in children on the playground; we see it in rude forms in a mining town. The average inhabitant is careless, ignorant, indifferent, " pagan "; he takes life as it comes; he is susceptible to either good or bad leadership; he will take part in a lynching, and he will rally to a prayer meeting, or a revival of religion; whatever he does, he is apt not to continue long in a single direction. He is readily distracted. Such is the childish state of mind, out of which multitudes never seem to rise. THE PHARISEE WORLD 73 Have these people souls? it Is contemptuously asked. As the High Priest of Jerusalem says: " This people that know not the law" — that is, our order, our purpose — " shall perish." But out of the average and ordinary there arise clearer intelligences and consciences sensitive enough to discern the beginnings of law. It is the recog- nition and the use of law more than anything else that at first distinguish man from the dumb crea- tures. We modern people, accustomed to find law on every side of us, hardly realize how startling it must have been to earlier men to come upon the idea of law as regnant! Certain Hebrew Psalms give us a thrill of sympathy with those who for the first time, like men who had never before seen blue sky, voice their wonder and awe at this new thought. '^ How love I thy law: it Is my meditation all the day." Have the words law^ order, unity, purpose, progress grown so stale with us that we cannot see how tremendous they are? It is the birth of relig- ion when any one sees the law written everywhere in nature. To see this is the beginning of righteous- ness. To obey law, to do right, seems henceforth enough, simple, beautiful, necessary, effective. How can men live outside of this law? The man has the clutch, or is held In the clutch, of an ultimate mys- tery — one of the eternal facts of his spiritual nature. His new reverence Is one with the awe and wonder with which we view the stars. Let any man be glad who has had the vision of righteousness! Let him beware if his enthusiasm for It has cooled! 74 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Now the original and genuine Pharisee loved his law I When Jesus was born, the great burst of spiritual vision which had shown Itself, perhaps first in Moses' time. In men who had watched the heavens from the deserts of Egypt, and later on the hills of Judea, in great prophets, in Micah and Isaiah, in Athens also in poets and thinkers, which had swept over distant India and China and produced Buddhism and Con- fucianism, had crystallized into a vigorous Hebrew sect. They were the " covenanters " of their time; they were the best people, the respectables, the intel- lectuals, not necessarily the wealthiest, but always and everywhere Influential beyond their numbers. Where would you have chosen to be asked to dinner rather than to the chief Pharisee's house? Where would you have met more Intelligent company or better mannered children? Where were women more respected? If you had visited in Jerusalem or Capernaum or Alexandria or Babylon, you would have liked to attend the Pharisee's simple and free synagogue service. Its form must have been some- thing like a Quaker meeting. Its special call was the worship of the law. Whatever else was done, some- one must read from the " book of the law "; if he chose, he might make comments upon it. This syna- gogue worship which had sprung up wherever Jews went in the Roman Empire did not conflict at all with the ornate ritualism, for which people had to come as pilgrims to the temple In Jerusalem. You might only see the Inside of the temple once in a life- THE PHARISEE WORLD 75 time, but you must go to the synagogue every Sab- bath, Here was the perpetual teaching of the law; here children learning to read and write their let- ters, perhaps on the ground or floor, had the better part of their schooling, sometimes from the mouth of famous rabbis. With few books they had the heritage of a splendid spiritual literature. The Apostle Paul was the product of such a Phar- isee household. How many young men in a modern church offer better human material than his? He had patriotic and religious ideals for which he was ready to die; he was faithful and loyal, incorrupt- ible, brave. What manly or soldierly quality did he lack, as you find him traveling down to Damascus to arrest a group of dangerous innovators, and schis- matics, disturbers of the peace of his people? Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Jesus' timid ad- mirer, and the rich young man whom he loved were men of the Pharisee type. Was not Jesus himself brought up in the synagogue at Nazareth, and most likely In a virtuous Pharisee home? Old men and women can to-day recall Puritan homes, like the homes of Jesus' time In their seriousness, their rev- erential manner, their scrupulous conscience, their integrity of character, and their cleanness of life. How many Christians give as much for benevolence as the regular tithing system of the Pharisees re- quired? As for keeping the Sabbath, this is pecu- liarly a Pharisee, not a Christian, institution. What fault shall we bring against these obedient, excellent Pharisees, ancient or modern? Why have 76 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY they come to be spoken against? Why do good Pharisees feel affronted and indignant to be called by that name? Why was Jesus more severe in his castigation of these highly respectable people than of any others? Did he judge them unfairly? Would he be equally severe towards modern Phari- sees? The faults which Jesus found in the Pharisees, the best church-members of their time, are exactly the faults which we see in the current or popular religion of Christendom. They are the faults of a spiritual movement once vital and necessary, which has ceased to thrive. The plant is running out. A people who once saw light and truth at first hand, no longer see for themselves; they merely repeat what others have seen. Good leadership has run out, or else become inadequate to new issues. The leaders look backward, not toward the sunlight; their attitude is timid, their temper distrustful. As Jesus said, they not only fail to go into the kingdom of heaven themselves, but they stand in the way of those who would enter in ! We measure the quality of a people or a genera- tion by the quality of its leadership. A people can hardly get on faster than their leaders, or without their help. But a people now and then catch up with their leaders, who do not dare or wish to trust them or to go forward; the people have to find new and better leaders, who do not immediately appear. Then the word comes true : Woe to thee, O land, whose king is a child ! Jesus found such a people as THE PHARISEE WORLD 77 this. We see something of the same condition to- day. An old order has to fall back; a new order arises. Let us be quite fair to the Pharisees. Excellent human material remains among them; the roots are alive. In many cases their faults are " the faults of their virtues." The admirable static virtues, obed- ience, purity, industry, alms-giving, loyalty, are still there. But the needs of the world are always out- growing Its " static " virtues. It cries out for dyna- mic goodness, for energy, vision, enthusiasm, whole- hearted courage, growing sympathy, the sense of In- finite values in life. A popular or respectable church gathers into its membership many people who do not belong there, or who have merely happened to be born Into it. It presently appears, as Jesus found in the syna- gogues, that those inside are much the same as those outside. They do not hunger and thirst after right- eousness more than other men. In short, that hap- pens to a whole body, once active and useful, which happens to the athlete who ceases to exercise. Thus forever the law of the world Is to thrive and climb and grow, or else to fall back and begin to die. The master fault of the Pharisee Is his pride: he Is proud of his pride ; he thinks pride a virtue ! Per- haps It Is the fault of a virtue. It Is the vice of the Intelligence. It has been said that " the Intellect Is always arrogant." Pride is to the mind what tuber- culosis is to the organs of breathing. It Is harder than the typhoid poison to destroy; it spoils and 78 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY degrades the brightest intellects. But the worst of it is that it isolates and separates a man from his kind, and cuts off the flow of the sympathies. When pride rules the will it becomes impossible to forgive. What wholesome relation to other men is possible when you place yourself above them? Where, if ever, in the great social epochs of his- tory, in the face of new moral issues, has the judg- ment of the educated class, the chief priests and the Pharisees of the time, been on the right side? I know of no case. The story of the anti-slavery movement in the United States is a signal instance of this. It was Jesus' tragedy that the respectable Pharisees were his worst enemies. Their treatment of him was typical of the attitude of their class to the more progressive lovers of men at all times. They knew the law; they could recite the magnifi- cent compendium about " love to God and love to man," but they did not perceive that a new dispensa- tion was at hand, that men could never again be con- tent with a religious leadership which recited the words without doing the deeds. Jesus' straight-for- wardness undermined the delusion of their supposed superiority and hurt their pride, and presently they and the Sadducees worked the usual and fatal com- bination of Church and State to destroy him. Pharisaism grows out of a sort of sensitive self- consciousness. You wonder at times with the Hindu philosophers whether self-consciousness is not a curse? What beautiful things, like flowers and but- THE PHARISEE WORLD 79 terflies and the smiles of a child, nature produces without any self-consciousness ! Are not man's own best works and noblest actions free from it? Could not Nature produce man without giving him this strange double-faced gift? Doubtless not. It is one with the conscience that knows good and evil. Its sensitiveness Is that by which man recognizes values and therefore sees ideals. It Is the price man pays before he may attain his freedom, and enter into the purpose of God. He must be an apprentice to Nature, climbing through a region of half-lights, between ignorance and knowledge. The word Pharisee marks this period of apprenticeship in the course of a life. Like all good gifts, self-consciousness brings pleas- ure and pain, privilege and perils. While on the way to create a person, it magnifies the Ego. It swells his conceit of his Intellect, his knowledge, his skill, his virtue. He sets himself, his family, his caste, his nation at the center of the world. If he dare not say, " I am the Master of my fate," he easily believes it. But when things go wrong, he is apt to cry, " Behold: there is no sorrow like my sorrow! " Self-consciousness, like pride, cuts off sympathy or the circulation of the social life. The self-centered soul does not like to acknowledge the fact of its dependence. Where egotism grows, where conceit, pride, arrogance, are, there sympathy fails. Let any one watch his egotistic moods and see what hap- pens. The imagination, the judgment, the con- 8o A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY science, and the will are dulled. The man begins to be weak where he thought himself strong. These are the times of our spiritual danger. They belong to the Pharisee period. They ought to give us pain and shame. We might well pray: From apprentice- ship with the Pharisees, good Lord, deliver us ! What hurt Jesus' feelings more than anything else, as he rubbed against the Pharisee class, was their treatment of others. They despised others; they were spiritual aristocrats. They had room In their world for people to whom to give alms, but they did not like common people, the proletariat of their time. The story of the two men who went up into the temple to pray is typical. Here is what spiritual contempt does. Contempt for any fellow man Is Inhuman; it blights the soul which admits It. Who deems himself so far superior to any other man as to refuse to speak to him? The Pharisees knew all about fasting and saying prayers; they could have said any day, " Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners," If these words had been in their prayer book. But they did not know what humility Is, much less humiliation : they never thought to ask what particular sins they were con- fessing; for this would have meant healthy shame and the will to be better. It never occurred to the pious Pharisee that his thought, " Thank God that I am not as other men — like this wretched Publi- can," was the symptom of spiritual ancemia. In what harsh words to little children, In what cruel abuse of power and privilege. In what fearful perse- THE PHARISEE WORLD 8 1 cutlon of humble people, in what wars against here- tics and infidels, in what preposterous quarrels among the good and respectable themselves, this un- sympathetic Pharisee pride and contempt have re- sulted. Pharisaism takes its victims unawares. A keen- minded minister in one of the oldest city churches in New England described his church people as " wanting sympathy " — the very quality which they probably supposed they possessed above others ! In his subtle inability to see himself as others see him, the Pharisee finds a mission of meddlesomeness. If he is an Anglo-Saxon, he can scarcely keep his hand off other people's affairs. He desires to overthrow their idols and level their altars and make them " altogether as himself." Grant that the material of a virtue is here at work. It may be genuine zeal to make converts to a better faith, to clean up a wicked world, and garner a fresh harvest of right- eousness. How much real sympathy underlies this missionary zeal? How much respect? Suppose contempt, bigotry, especially the will to compel and control others, and punish their wickedness, enter into this delicate missionary enterprise ! Paul on his march to Damascus illustrates my meaning. The Pharisee never sees that the reservoirs of life are shut off as soon as we try to force our morals, our Christianity, our democracy upon the unwilling or unready. Perhaps there is the germ of a Pharisee In every- one. A crowd will go with you to compel men to 82 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY behave. Men of impure life will help to punish other men for their sins. A nation that upholds war will denounce its neighbor's atrocities. Is it not Pharisaism which sends missions to the heathen with- out respecting them, and at the same time assumes at home to judge, condemn, jail, and kill our own heathen without any sympathy? Contrast with this the story of Jesus to whom was brought the woman taken in adultery! The tale of " The Prodigal Son," better called '' The Two Brothers," illuminates the Pharisee char- acter. The point of the parable lies in the conduct of the elder son. He is a Pharisee; he has always obeyed; every one has praised him. Who would not choose to live on the same street or do business with him? Does not Jesus indeed let off the worthless prodigal rather too easily? What? No punish- ment? No probation? How do you know that he has repented? To be received as if he had merely returned from a journey! Where do the long years of righteous life come in alongside of this free and easy forgiveness? So the Pharisee in us asks. The Pharisee, Jewish or Christian, does not know what forgiveness is. And yet the word forgive is the un- ceasing refrain of the New Testament. Jesus' grav- est count against the Pharisees is that they have no gospel of " the forgiveness of sins." The young Pharisee in the story has admirable traits. But Jesus discovers in him the same essential selfishness which drove the younger brother into the fields to feed swine ! What is there brotherly In him, as he THE PHARISEE WORLD 83 stands outside his father's house refusing to enter, complaining, spoihng his father's joy, unforgiving, preferring that his brother should have stayed and died feeding swine I This is what Pharisaism does with its haughty self-righteousness. There is no punishment so dreadful as to be cut off from the flow of the social life; it is to be cut off from the life of God. I doubt not there are gleams of autobiography in the Thirteenth Chapter of I. Corinthians. Paul was the man willing to '' give his goods to feed the poor " ; he was the man who would have given " his body to be burned." The fanatic can always do It. His unrelenting virtue, his enthusiasm for his law and his race, his partisan zeal for national order and unity made him perhaps the most dangerous man in Jerusalem. The wicked men, the loose livers and vicious, have not been implacably merci- less, have not maintained Inquisitions, or justified inhumane modes of punishment, or pushed wars to '' the bitter end." But the unforgiving and obstin- ate virtuous have stood behind the most cruel acts of history. Who to-day block social reforms? Who are most stubborn against them? The Phari- sees. Who are so afraid of new doctrines, new science, new political ideas? The Pharisees. Paul might have become an ascetic; he might have thrown himself away In a zealot rebellion; he might have settled down into the narrow habits of a respec- table rabbi in Tarsus, and we should have never 84 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY heard of him. What happened to Paul to make him a new man? If you cannot change human nature you can set the graft of a new idea in it. You can keep whatever was good in the wild olive tree, and have a new species of fruit. There came to Paul the inflow of love or good will. It is this which he describes in a letter to the Corinthians in the most eloquent passage that he ever wrote. No Pharisee had this. He describes it again when he says, " The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace," and every- thing else which completes a full human life at its best. He is all that he was — a and h and c, plus x and n. The sources and supply of the new life ex- ceed measurement. No one who has caught the vision of this larger life and begins to long for it, can ever again be a Pharisee ! A word, finally, as regards the Pharisee exclusive- ness. It was the price which he had to pay for the kind of service he rendered. The beginnings of goodness in law and order almost required a sort of exclusiveness. Imagine a little group of puritan people in the face of the idolatry of Babylon or Jerusalem ! What could they do to secure the per- petuation of their faith? How could they let their children mix freely with " all sorts and conditions of men " in the street, the market place, the vile amusements? What could the early Christians do in Rome unless they made themselves for the time a peculiar people? The settlement of New England took place because puritan families could not live and thrive and keep their strict cult in the tolerant THE PHARISEE WORLD 85 cities of Holland. In a world emerging from pagan- ism, must not the lovers of righteousness stand close together for mutual support? Presently, however, the social laws of the world undermine every policy of particularism or special protection of infant enterprises, however necessary it may at first appear. Do you wish to enjoy emi- nence of any sort? The law is then, that you must level up towards it all around you and share it, and make it accessible ; else the rains and tides will wash it away. This is to say that the world does not now need Its old Pharisee barriers and restraints, or the at- tempted Pharisee patent right of spiritual privilege. The peoples of the world are moving together ; they want for all the advantages of the few — the best spiritual education for all. We cannot run away from people and colonize by ourselves. If, then, we have privilege we must labor the harder to share It. Meantime new facilities of intercourse bring all races with their customs and religions to our doors. It is a sort of universal '^ community of goods." We can keep our religion only by putting it to use. The peril of losing it does not come to-day from trusting-and using it, but rather from the failure to believe In it. It will move us to establish societies and brotherhoods of like-minded people In every land; we propose to fit men to be citizens of the world. IV The superman, or man at his best We have heard a good deal, especially by the way of Germany, of a new possibility in evolution — the Superman. This superman will be as much above ordinary mortals as they overtop lower orders of creatures. The fact is, every one is dissatisfied with such men as we mostly have now. What mean- nesses, what stupidities, what cowardice, what cru- elty, what lack of decision, manly power, and will! What a frightful mess the ablest, picked men make of all human affairs, of business, industry, govern- ment! How the fairly reputed among them disap- point us and go wrong! How often priests and ministers give religion the most grievous interpreta- tion and manage to make it odious ! How wild whole nations will go in the fever of war time ! All the early beasts, tooth and claw, are behind the well-dressed people in a drawing-room, a Congress, or church. The Superman is due to arrive ! We need him. Is there any sign, however, of his com- ing? Is he likely, if he comes, to be the kind of superior man that we want? We confess to some fear of him. He will have plenty of power, of intelligence, of will. Is he going to be as good as men even now are, at their best? Will he be socially 86 THE SUPERMAN 87 minded and lovable? Suppose he turns out to be hard, proud, and selfish? Why should we look so hopelessly so far afield to expect a superman? Who knows that we cannot do better with this common human nature which lies In us and all about us? Mean as nearly all men can be at their lowest, what does any one want better than man can be at his best? I want to show by demonstration of facts that we have In this human nature the making of better supermen than any biol- ogist has dreamed of. In fact, this kind of supe- rior man comes In the natural line of evolution. There Is, first, the natural or physical man; then normally, as you would expect In consonance with the facts of the spiritual realm, the essentially spirit- ual man ; that is, the man of the good spirit. This is the order of men for whom the whole weary crea- tion is looking. In true evolutionary succession, as '' the manifestation of the sons of God." Man does not greatly want any further development in stature, in muscle, or even In brain power. He does not half use what brains he has. But he wants immense development in the life of the spirit. I mean the spirit, not of a superman, but of a plain man. There Is a classic piece of noble literature that men never tire of citing. More than two thousand years old, it shines no less brilliantly through its antiquity: ''What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God? " Readers and even students mostly 88 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY skim over it and hardly begin to understand it. They are apt to be more interested in searching out the evidences for or against baptism by immersion, or the supposed prophecies about " the Scarlet Woman," or in forcing Jesus' royal genealogy in Luke into agreement with the list of names in Mat- thew ! And so the greater matters of justice, mercy, and truth are passed by. We need not be sure that the lonely, unknown prophet of Israel could fully understand how great a saying he uttered. The time had not come to fill the world with its publish- ment. I wish to show how these words point the way of spiritual evolution. Here is the answer to the question: What does the Lord of Life want to make of a man — that is, what satisfies God? If any one is still shy of using the word God, put the same idea in any other way. What do we want more than anything else of one another and of our children? What do we want when we see our own needs? Or, again, what kind of a superman would best fit into the companionship of intelligent beings anywhere in the universe? Our prescription, or law, for making a man is simple enough for a child. It has only three points — first, to do justice; secondly, to love mercy; thirdly, to walk humbly with God. Let us translate this last, to he modest. Here is a genuine Trinity: justice, friendliness, modesty are one! Each is in the other and each holds its own place. See now, a step at a time, what this threefold idea, once entering any man's soul, does to him. Perhaps THE SUPERMAN 89 you think it too easy. Consider justice ! It seems immediately to lie on the surface of our minds. Jus- tice ! men say; we desire it more than anything. Children think so; struggling workmen will starve for it; the proud masters of men will spend their " last dollar " rather than suffer injustice. Great nations will sacrifice their boys' lives by the millions to compel justice upon the world. But this is not what the great word says. In fact, it runs the oppo- site way. These people all want to get justice, to force others to do justice, in fact to compel their own will, whether just or not, upon others who struggle also for their partisan, or national, idea of justice. The word is to do justice; this plain emphasis is commonly overlooked. It is the same idea that you find In the beatitude: " Blessed [that Is, happy] are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness." No one pretends that the people who hunger and thirst to get righteousness out of other men are happy; they are anxious, nervous, fearful, lest they fail to get justice. But Jesus and others had ob- served that those who give their attention to do justice are happy. It is not said they will be happy In some other life, or " in heaven." They carry heaven In their hearts now. Let any man set his mind to do justice, and he never lies awake nights because others fail to do justice to him. The startling paradox is, that here Is the way to success In every kind of enterprise. Does the pupil want good marks at school? He will not get them by asking for them; this is not his affair: he will get 90 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY them by setting his mind on his lessons, in which case it Is not Important to have marks at all. Does the lad want an Increase of wages? Does he com- plain that he Is not treated fairly? Let him put his will into his work and make himself useful. There are not enough workmen of this sort In any Indus- try; no employer can afford to refuse to do such workmen justice. Does the wife desire praise, appreciation, and love? What domestic tragedies arise when a woman seeks to get or claim her dues! The atti- tude of the beggar or claimant for love shuts the heart. Let her do her best as wife and mother, and never mind how much or little she is loved. Love will now surround her. All nations have gone to war for their rights. No nation has ever tried the one experiment, to do justice to others. A few years ago the United States merely declined to take money from China which did not belong to her. The act astonished the world and made millions of Chinese our friends. If the United States had always taken pains to do justice In Europe, to South American Republics, to the peoples In the Orient, to her Indian tribes, to her own poor and her Immigrants, she would never have had to fear any belligerent nation. So Impregnable an armament is the will to do justice ! The way to get justice is to do justice, whether the other party does It or not. We do not affirm this for some other world or for future ages, but in this imperfect world now. Every one approves of THE SUPERMAN 9 1 those who do justice, admires them, likes to do busi- ness with them, to live with them as neighbors. Let me not be misunderstood; I advise no one to be ignorant of his rights, to throw his rights away, to make believe that it is pleasant to bear with in- justice. I am not saying that it never becomes a social or national duty to seek justice. The fact is that no one ever can suffer alone. To suffer a wrong and never frankly to say that you suffer may do a wrong to others. The offending party may not be aware of what he is doing. He may need to understand your point of view. A government, however Intent on doing justice, must respect other people enough to believe that they too wish to do justice, and therefore desire to know wherein their conduct seems unfair. The broad rule, however, holds good. The way to get justice is, first, to do It. Here Is the empha- sis, not where men and nations have hitherto placed it. If you want to get justice more than to do it, you do not know what justice Is, least of all, what it Is to '' hunger and thirst " for It. Do you love to give good measure? If not, some day you will be caught giving false weight. Moreover, our atti- tude, when we seek our rights, will make all the dif- ference In our success. Do we threaten and com- plain, as if we expected the other to refuse us? We can make It Impossible for the other to meet us half way; whereas, each man at his best, brings the other man to his best. How soon wars would cease if one nation was great enough to do justly to all others I 92 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Our second point in describing the life of a man *' at his best " is that he loves mercy. Plenty of people are kind when they feel like it. We gen- erally love to do kind things — when we think of it. The priest and the Levite on the Jericho road would have given alms to a beggar. If there had been a Red Cross Society, all the Pharisees in Jerusalem would have put down a subscription. What was the difference between these men and the unknown Samaritan? The Samaritan loved to be kind; he set his heart on helping people; where the need was, he saw a brother. The greater the need, the more he loved to meet it. There are those who like cattle, horses, dogs, birds. This man loves people. He was ready to love the particular person who needed him most. We have read about the St. Bernard dogs at an Alpine convent; their business is to watch out for lost travelers. Why should there not be men as good as these dogs? The St. Bernard dog is a kind of professional philanthropist. Rescue work in the snow is his only business. The beauty of Jesus' friend, however, is that he is no professional at all. Jesus only says " a Samaritan," as one might say an American, a Chinese, or a German. He is not on his way to visit a hospital in Jericho. He might be a farmer or a small trader, unafraid of the robbers, forehanded, well supplied with credit at the inn. What he did was an incident. So much the better! It suggests a thousand ordinary ways in which a man makes THE SUPERMAN 93 light shine, as a lamp does, as a matter of course. Observe how thorough he is in his work at the inn, as becomes a man of sound habits. He does not leave the innkeeper in charge of a penniless boarder. He pays in advance on the man's lodging and gives him credit if he needs to stay longer. And then he disappears altogether. You wonder if he ever told his wife of the incident? As Marcus Aurelius says: " As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not wait to be thanked, but goes on to do another good act, as the vine produces grapes in its season." Such is a normal, friendly man who " loves mercy." Who asks for supermen, when the common man of a mongrel race does the things for which the world needs supermen? We conceive of the super- man as able to fit his place wherever he is set, but any common man, at his best, who loves mercy, fits his place anywhere in any country or world. Who shall say that the story was not of a man whom Jesus had seen? There are Christians, captivated by the methods of fighting men, who suggest that the man in the story might have been better employed in organizing a vigilance committee to " clean up " the bandits. This is where organized government, with Roman legions behind it, had failed. In fact, the cruel gov- ernmental violence had most likely created the ban- dits. We say. Put men who love justice into the 94 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY government: put them In charge of every unfortu- nate class. Ugly criminals, wild Indians, savage Moros have thus been tamed Into men. The third point In the way of making a man at his best Is modesty. We give the least possible value to the pious conventional postures whereby men " humble themselves before God." Humble words may be tangled up with the worst forms of spiritual pride, with pride of birth and station and race. Give us simple unadorned modesty, the nor- mal outlook on life of all simple-hearted people. This Is what Is meant by that ancient Hebrew re- frain, " Blessed are the meek." Since the word meek has been spoiled, let us say the modest. They are the gentle or kindly; they put on no airs; they never take themselves too seriously; they are apt to have a saving sense of humor, rather needful in the human equipment. It is marvelous how in " The Beatitudes " the usual values of the world are reversed. Men have thought: Blessed are the proud — the warriors, the kings and lords, the millionaires. Are they the happy ones? They often live in fear; they are anxious about their money and position. They do not know how to get on with other people ; they ex- pect to make their way by buying or commandeering other men's services — an Inhuman way to get service. The wise long ago observed that the proud, with all sorts of things to enjoy, were for- ever coming to grief; that pride goes to a fall. And THE SUPERMAN 95 the wise remarked, as we may remark if we watch. Happy and thrice happy are the modest! Here Is the sense in our story of Antaeus. Up in the air, his strength went out of him. But when he fell back to the earth, he was strong. The fall had done him no harm; his own earth did him good. Modesty is no mere accident; it is no pale nega- tion. It takes the intelligence, not of a Teutonic superman, but of a man of common sense. It is based in the truth of things, as for example, that we men at the best are only men, limited in power, in wit, in wisdom, in experience — men too in the face of an infinite world to be learned and won; to which we have to adjust ourselves or else to be wretched — most of us small men also in comparison with the great minds and geniuses of our race. Moreover, everything is lent or given us by the unseen creative, guiding Power. Let a man be strong beyond the average; let a woman be beautiful; suppose a rare genius in art or music or poetry. How did this ex- cellence come? We speak accurately in saying that such persons are " gifted." No one created his rare power or faculty. Some one insists: "I worked hard to attain it; I spent years in training." But where did the will and the vision come from that other men lacked? What is the will Itself, but the mightiest of "the gifts of the gods"? It is the common lot of man, and his glory also, that he never attains to his own full stature and power, the ideal and design in the thought of the Master of Life. 96 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY The great sons of God have learned to be meek, as the little and truthful ones may well be. The words of the prayer, " Thy will be done," are the supreme mark of a man's intelligence. How dreadful that they should become a parrot perform- ance! It takes will and a vision of truth to say them. They ask no favor; they express intelligent, forceful, modest purpose. What proud man ever does, or can, say: " God's will be done " ! But he says instead: " My will be done." This is the will to power, to wealth, to victory, to overcome rivals, to have and to hold. In the end, this is the will to disaster for himself, for his children, for his nation. But " God's will be done," means — I will whatever is best, I desire nothing else so much, I trust all to the Eternal. This was the greatness of Abraham Lincoln. Various and contrary-minded people, despising his common mind, tried to persuade him that their will ought to be his will. His intelligence was less elab- orately furnished than theirs. But he saw what sophisticated men coulcj not understand, that the clue to all tangled human affairs is to seek, as if one were only a child, to find the mind or good will of God, and follow it as a man would follow a trail through the woods. We now see the meaning of Jesus' notable answer to the question : Who will be greatest in the king- dom of heaven? The answer goes down to bed rock and reverses all ordinary childish opinion. He who is the greatest servant of all will be greatest. THE SUPERMAN 97 He will be great by not trying to be great. The farmer will be great, not by making more money than other farmers, but by his excellent product, by the improvement of his farm, by his manly in- tegrity. The physician will be great, not by his in- come, but by his ministrations to his patients, by the value of his medical discoveries, by his public- spirited services. The office-holder will be great, not by his skill in getting votes, but by his respect for all kinds and conditions of men, by his generous and obliging uprightness. You can never know who is the greatest of all. There is always room higher up in the scale. There are always new ways to serve men. You will look in the wrong place to discover the great. It may be that the humblest woman proves to be the one who saves the city. Have we not now made out our proposition? It seems impregnable. Our superman is simply the common man, at his best, not imitating some other man, or forcing himself to be what he is not; his own best self is enough. He is here to do and give justice; this will make justice prevail. This gives a man integrity and independence. He is here to do kindness, and this gives him respect, simplicity, affec- tion. He cannot help being modest, and modesty goes with power, increases power, sharpens the mind, and gives poise, ease and dignity. Whoever is modest goes a long way to be lovable. But no matter for that. To be modest is to seek to give love, not to get it. All this calls for will which is life ; not self-will, but good will. To say " Thy will 98 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY be done " is to say: Let the Good Will be done. It is to desire the best, to look for the best, to do the best. Try finally, any one of the strands of our three- fold cable of life, and you will find it inextricably in- volved with the others. Try to do justice, search out the meaning of justice, find out how great a thing it is to do at all times to all men, and you become no less scrupulous, but more merciful every day in your judgments and your demands. You cease now ever to wish to punish any one. The effort to do justice repeatedly teaches modesty also. So does the en- deavor to show mercy, and especially so as to leave permanent good. The only real helpfulness is that which sets men in the way to be, if possible, better than you are. You must give them respect; you must give them sympathy; you must share your vision and purpose; you must do your business with good will. Try this and be modest accordingly. THE SUMMUM BONUM In our satisfactions there are obviously all kinds of degrees and qualities. What are the things that, if you seek righteousness first, " shall be added unto you"? The old inquiry: What is the summiun bonum, the highest good, the chief end of man, has its difficulties in the wonderful variety of human desires. The healthy zest of the hungry man to eat and drink, overrunning its mark, becomes a mat- ter of shame. Does a man read his Bible, or go to church, or hear a learned lecture, with such a hun- gry appetite as this? Ought he not to fast on occa- sion, so as to rebuke this eager animal desire? Probably not. He will curb his appetite sufficiently, provided only he will forbid it to stand in the way of the enterprise of his life. Does any appetite render him less effective as workman or father or friend? Does it take off the fine edge of his skill, his intelligence, his social sympathy? Here lies the secret of a man's self-mastery. The animal In him is not to be crucified like an evil demon. Let It be put to the service of the guiding mind, of the sympa- thies, of a great and worthy purpose. His zest or keenness of sense on his physical side Is a gift of 99 lOO A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY God, the normal attendant of a well and active body. To fast and go without Is Indolence, com- pared with Intelligent and well controlled temper- ance. We must presently, however, draw a line, real if Invisible, between the good things which the body wants, and a class of satisfactions which are wholly spiritual. There Is no comparison between them. No man needs to ask: What do I love best, my din- ner or my child, my vacation in the woods or my re- ligion? The word love does not apply in the one case as it does in the other. The physical desire presently Is satisfied, and then palls; or wears out altogether, and the man Is unhurt. The other kind grows upward with a sort of Infinite reach. If the desires and satisfactions of friendship and love, his ideals and aspirations, could pall or die, the man would cease to be human; some fatal disease would have befallen him. Note here again, the working of the principle that we have followed before. Life consists in expres- sion and grows by expression. The great spiritual values and satisfactions continually demand to be ex- pressed — in words, in deeds. In subtle and unseen forms of outflow. Love Is not normal that Is not told. Aspiration Is feeble as long as it stays in dreamland. Let it out Into effort. You do in- justice to your religion if you hold It in silence; It wants to be communicated. Here is the kernel of truth In. the rule, always to smile upon people! The greatest of gifts Is the fulfillment of life — THE SUMMUM BONUM loi that the cup of life, or better, the channels of life shall be full, and grow deeper. Let the bodily life go forth in every healthful mode of expression; let the intelligence utter itself in fitting language, in skill, art, music, in useful acts; let the great human emotions also go forth warm and fresh in every mode of brotherly affection, in the ways of humane respect and brotherly service; let admiration, rever- ence, and the sense of an infinite companionship, go abroad in their own characteristic forms of expres- sion — this is the fulfillment of life. There seems to be no limit to it. What can any superman have or do more? No man surely has yet exhausted the possibilities of life as they stretch out into every field of the spiritual universe. I have spoken of the motion of life after the figure of a flow or current. To live best is to flow most freely. In a sense the life of the man is like the life of a tree. Look at the tree in the spring: it is surcharged with the generous flow of its sap; every drop of it is running up and outward on its single business — to fulfill itself, to express, not the life of some other tree, but its own, the peach or the maple, or whatever kind of tree it may be. So with the life of each child of the spiritual universe. No one has to imitate the enterprise of another, not even of a Christ; he has only to bring his own true self to fulfillment, and forever to grow and express more of it. What is this best self unless, as in the Christ story, it is another expression of the heart and mmd of God? It is fullness of life. I02 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY The life of the tree, like all normal life, goes out and upward; its business is with expression. But how shall it have income enough to grow? Answer this by the parable of the breath. Hold your breath if you can! Let your breath out and the air rushes in. Timid, suspicious, distrustful people do not know this. Use the muscle, and it grows big- ger; use the sense and it grows keen; use your art, paint pictures; give devotion and sympathy; in short, invest your capital, and you never need worry as to where income will come from. Innumerable un- seen rootlets under the soil are at work feeding the plant that grows; millions of tiny cells passing life on into new potencies, are being unconsciously multi- plied, as they pour every drop possible onwards to help the tree burst into blossom and go on to ripen its fruit. " Seek and ye shall find " means a per- petual promise. Utter your questions, search the heart of nature, turn your desires into streams of social activity, and you shall never be disappointed. What subtle element is it in the life of a plant, above all its other modes of expression, that keeps it what it is and never lets it be anything else? You never know the tree till you have tasted its fruit. The fruit is its seed, mysteriously bearing it on with its peculiar aroma, like an immortal principle to make life like its own prevail on the earth. There is that also in man which characterizes him at his best; constitutes him human; flowing in him fulfills his life and possesses him with power, drawn from the in- finite sources. It is his good will. When the man THE SUMMUM BONUM 103 expresses good will the best self Is there present. The good will uses every faculty In us; It calls the best from every muscle and nerve; It uses the man's whole Intelligence; there Is no normal channel of expression of thought or emotion through which a good win does not seek to shine forth In utterance. If one name were ever enough to describe a real man, it would be the Good Will Incarnate. If one word might describe our highest possible thought of the universe life, It would be the Infinite Good Will. Why do we say Good Will, and not rather love? Because good will Is more than love and Includes love; because love has been abused by cheap sentl- mentallsm; because love Is a special word to express intimacy; whereas, good will Is the universal, ever- present and urging life, the condition of the fulfill- ment of life at Its best. More than anything else It makes man human. The genuine man always ex- presses a good will. His good will Is ready to move in every direction as light flows; It never changes into 111 will or selfish indifference. You can turn on your will like the electric power, by a motion, at a call of need, at the pressure of an emergency. Whereas, love, a feeling or sentiment,' cannot be comman- deered. Can you love " to order " ? Can you love people whom you have not seen? Can you love people merely because they dwell within the boun- daries of the United States? Can you love people In Africa? Can you love when men approach you with threats? Even the doctor and nurse must have a chance for acquaintance before their affection I04 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY flows. But you can use your will to call up your pity or your humane regard or to meet a peril. Your will can bring to your face a friendly aspect to overcome the threatening looks of another. The kindly Samaritan did not need love to begin his serv- ice; all he needed was to release his friendly will; affection would come in due time with better ac- quaintance. There is danger of hypocrisy if we talk too glibly about love, or strain after it. Moreover, will, fairly understood, is the center of life, the kernel of the self. What other force is so real and so spiritual? Nothing else but a good will commands the whole being into its service. The only use of the will is to express good; that is, friendly, social, useful life. Can you imagine an infinite evil will? Thus the grand law, however we turn, writes itself: Be your best self; be a good will; express the good will always to all beings; never cease to let the good will flow in some appropriate form of beneficence. This is life at its full. Call it the universe life, or life eternal, and you will not call it by too high a name. Never doubt that you, being the child of the universe, share this mode of life. Trust that such life is in other men also, who would not be human if they did not possess it. Ex- pect it in them, call it forth by your own hearty ut- terance; be patient if need be, with the child, with the ignorant, with the wrong doer; for there sleeps in each the spirit that makes men. Finally, this is as verifiable as the law of gravita- tion. Do you doubt gravitation? Throw a ball THE SUMMUM BONUM 105 into the air or jump from the steps. Gravitation possesses you. Look for it everywhere and you will see it at work. No man could " become a Chris- tian " — whatever this means — if this were not so. Who has never caught the gleam of its light in a little child's face or its tones in his voice? Recall the most royal moments, hours, days, in your life, and discover what made them? These were never the times of pushing self-indulgence, of vulgar com- petition to seem greater than others, of eager effort to get what you had not earned, or of angry strug- gle : they were the times, however brief, when your good will uttered itself. Friendship is one of its names; devotion is a name of it; love is its name. Have you never had friends? Have you never en- joyed an unselfish love for your mother or any one else? Have you never given an hour to stand by some one in distress? To tell your sympathy to some one in trouble? To pay a call on a sick neigh- bor? All was well with you then. You were mak- ing an experiment in good will. This was rehgion at work. Why do not men continually verify their rehgion? Why do they not hnk moment to mo- ment, as men draw dots into lines and lines into cir- cles and forms, and so, instead of disconnected, pur- poseless fragments of Hfe, build their whole hves into unity, like so many beautiful works of art? There are such lives; we have seen the manifesta- tion of " the sons of God " again and again. The good will, the true self within us, waits ready to order all our lives likewise. VI TWO LEVELS OF LIFE: THE GREAT ADVENTURE I WISH in no way to blunt the fact of the moral dif- ferences in men. There are profound and startling differences — of just and unjust, kind and cruel, gentle and arbitrary, clean and devilish. But these differences do not lie as people commonly place them. It pleases us somehow to draw sharp lines with heavy shading between one man and his neigh- bors : one is good, the other is bad; one is moral, the other immoral. We like to draw such sharp lines between whole groups of men; between parties — our party and the opposite or worse party; be- tween nations — our own and rival or enemy na- tions; between races — our own gifted and forward- looking race over against the darker and backward races. We exaggerate the virtues on our side of the line and the vices on the other side. You may call this the vertical method of distinction. No quarrel or war could be carried on without the use of this method. Moreover, you can always make this kind of dif- ference look plausible, and always in your own favor. But the other man can do the same thing from his point of view. You naturally leave out the seamy side of your family, your party, your na- io6 TWO LEVELS OF LIFE 1 07 tion, your sect, your own personal character, and you assume all the bright colors that you like to paint with. The other does the same in favor of the Eng- lish, or Japanese, or Teutonic side. Attend a Fore- fathers' Day Celebration. You would think that your ancestors were of one mold, that all had the same heroism, devotion, piety, faithfulness. You would think that the inheritors of their names pos- sess their virtues to-day! Was there ever a Golden Age in the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay? The real and deep differences among men are drawn the other way; they are horizontal. They are through each man's soul; they go like the strata in the hills through sects, religions, parties, nations and races. If a stratum is worthless in Asia and Africa, the same stratum is worthless in New York or Chicago. If the stratum carries gold or dia- monds here in the United States, then look for the same virtues, more or less, in India or Siberia. This is to say that there seem to be different selves, almost like persons, in us. We often remark this in others; we wonder which self will meet us in the morning? A delightful person may come to breakfast; he will smile on us; he will help us, at least for awhile; he will say Yes to our requests. But the chance is that a different person will appear, querulous, forbidding, disobliging; he will say No to us; he is capable of meannesses which we would not think credible. This is the alter ego, the other self in the same man. Here in each man is the field Io8 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY of moral distinctions; here Is the fatal difference be- tween bad and good, sinner and saint, honest and dishonest, noble and base. Inhabiting the same Individual, they make the most tremendous contrast in blacks and whites. What a mystery! What is the real man? Who knows? A fight seems to go on In a soul. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is all about this fight. The animal In the man, or per- haps a whole menagerie of creatures holds the bal- ance of power. They talk of the " soul of a nation." Is there ever such a thing? Is it desirable? The nation, like the millions of souls who make It, is diverse; It is swept as they are with passions, with prejudices, with lingering superstitions, with the mob instincts of the herd, as cruel and Inhuman to-day as were ever the rage and vengeance of a Nero. On the other hand, these innumerable souls will answer to the call of a melody, of an orator, of a prophet, to the motions of sympathy or enthusiasm; a noble pas- sion Is in them, feeling a common social pulse, to lay down their lives for humanity! The difference here Is between the same people at their worst and at their best. Devils could not be worse than the soul of the people at their worst. Angels could hardly be better than the same people, when they show us their best. Their faces are transfigured. If they were always so, you could call them " the sons and daughters of God " ! Surely the nation, Itself a myriad of discordant lives, has no soul or unity! The fact is, there are in us, or possible for us, two TWO LEVELS OF LIFE 109 levels of life. The greatest differences of bad and good In the universe exist between these two levels. The higher level Is the realm of the spirit. The lower level comprises everything below. Above, the man acts and behaves as a man; here his humanity distinguishes him. He Is In the best company; any and every other man who stands on this level ap- proves and recognizes him as a comrade. Below, on the other hand, he Is less than himself; he wan- ders; he keeps dubious company; even when held back from evil by the habits and the memories of his better self, he is subject to dangerous moods and subtle selfish temptations. Like a locomotive off its track, the fact of his native excellence, and the heavier momentum that he had while he ran on the track, now give him greater possible destructlve- ness. Who have always contrived to steer their fellows to shipwreck, and balk the movements of progress so fatally, as the men who have dropped from the path of manly integrity and taken up service with the geocentric creatures on the level below? Search the list of the " Lost Leaders." It Is as If there were a certain point of develop- ment about which men rise and fall, and rise and fall back again. They are like the amphibian born in the slime, on Its way to become a bird and command the air. The creature struggles and grows and uses his wings, but men bob up and down, with no will to master the elements and make the winds serve them. They take pleasure In occasional moments of eleva- tion and vision, as they accept and enjoy a holiday no A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY among the mountains; it does not occur to them that the happiest holiday is a sample and parable of what all days ought to be. We often say of a man: He has never " found himself." He may be a university man; he may wear a theologian's doctorate, or be a preacher of religion. In certain moods, in the presence of cer- tain persons, he is gracious, friendly and even de- vout. In other moods, no iceberg is more chilling and isolated. He is capable of injustices and false- hood. Do not call him a hypocrite. His better self is there as truly as in men of more positive and transparent character. He does touch the higher level. But he has never determined to live on that level, and be the real man whom nature destined him to be. He is still the slave of his pet indulgences. Most likely, as Newman said of himself, pride rules his will. What fatal waste of splendid human en- dowments ! A woman in this intermediate region is even more pathetic in proportion to the fineness of her nature. Unhappy lives, loving natures scorched and seared, affections unrequited, make up the story-teller's ma- terial. The gravest fault is not to grow. The an- cient word applies here: "The soul that sinneth (that is, fails to grow) shall die." This is no arbi- trary punishment, as of an angry God. It is the working of the beneficent conditions of life. The more delicate the flower, the more sure the law is, either to build life up, or to sap its beauty. The TWO LEVELS OF LIFE III woman, therefore, needs religion and suffers for the want of It, If possible more than the man. Her proper life and her glory Is In and with the beautiful, gracious things of the spirit; her life Is In all ways to minister to the service of love. Only so can her soul find peace, be In tune, find God, and Impart the secret of restfulness. Every youth Is apt to come to a time of change, confusion, and revolt from the old; of occasional flashes also of Insight and longing for the unknown, the real and the Infinite. The youth Is put to it to find himself; to determine where he belongs, to which realm he will devote his life. As In the strange New Testament story of the temptation, he Is taken Into a high mountain and made to see all the kingdoms of the earth and to dare to put them aside; Is taken up, too. Into the realm of beauty and goodness, and made to hear a voice saying: "All things are yours; be sharer henceforth In the life, the power, the purpose, the vision of God." May not the world of mankind be near to a similar crisis? May we not be living at present in a sort of intermediate age, betwixt our worst and our best as a race, dimly feeling a new urgency acting on all lives to find themselves upon the new level of our common spiritual manhood? The childhood of the race lies behind us: our manhood lies before us. The whole world of man is thus in transition to a level where only the few ever found themselves yet. Therefore the present chaos and seeming moral confusion. Therefore the growing sense of 112 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY necessary and coming change. To '' find himself " for the youth is to begin his real life. For the world to find itself will be its first real civilization. To find one's self as a man is a new experience, but it has plenty of suggestive analogues. To learn any art or trade is a process of finding one's self. You begin without eflfectiveness or freedom. You begin with a careless waste of opportunities, like a child dancing on the beach without trying to plunge in and swim. Out of a time of bondage or appren- ticeship the master emerges. Gleams of success and happy attainment and alternating moods of depres- sion attend his progress and herald his attainment. At length and perhaps with a burst of surprise, you "find yourself." You no longer count the hours; the work now becomes gladsome, facile, effective, at times enthusiastic. I do not say utterly happy, without humiliating hours and feeble performance. Do the great masters of music or science never grow weary of their infinite task? The difference from what was before is, that now, when you drop from your freedom and mastery, or spoil the work of the day, you know it, and know also how to get your engine back on its track; you know how to turn your lapses into new mastery; you love your art and you can never renounce it. Stupid theologies, taught In divinity schools, have thrown around the new life displeasing names and a confusing cloud of absurd and forbidding mystery. The fact of finding oneself as a master of life, the TWO LEVELS OF LIFE 113 discovery of a new level whereon man belongs — that which Is something like falling in love — the one grand event of a life — has been made to seem alien and unreal. Those who are supposed to have passed through it have not half understood it. It has not been made to appear a matter of practical use, a happy secret of life, but to many, something forbidding. Even the " liberal " churches have made little or nothing of it. Would that when they told us of " the new life," or the " new birth " they had known how to set forth an Idea as beautiful as Dante had seen In his vision ! Would that they had told us how this new birth into the realm of the spirit is as natural as the physical beginning of life ! They told us in- stead that we were born in sin, thus throwing disre- spect on the love of our parents. The process was said to be awfully sudden, whereas In fact It may be no more sudden than the birth of the spring time. Perhaps you will swim the first time you go into the water; most of us are slow in learning the motions. The great appeal has been made to a man's emo- tions and fears; whereas, the normal appeal is to the Intelligence, the choice, the will, the whole self. When we put aside the supernatural, we put aside no ultimate fact. A mystery resides in all life. In all processes and phenomena and most of all In the deep heart of humanity, besides that which we " ex- plain " there is a fringe or overplus which no one ex- plains or defines. This mystery of life is not ir- rational; law and order proceed out of the mystery. 114 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY In this sense, the experience which we are stating is as if some Hfe force — the creative will — springing out of the recesses of being, were with us and com- panioning us to the new level of manhood. Differ- ent persons describe it in different terms; most men do not even try to describe it. " I know," said the man born blind, " that, whereas I was blind, now I see." " Last year," says the young swimmer, " I was afraid of the water; now I love it." Another says, " I cannot remember when I first learned to swim." " I learned," says another, " with the help of my father." No " conversion " or spiritual change, however, is good for much which is not a permanent change. It is the change from the selfish life to the social life, from self-will to good will. Most conversions, for example, in revivals, are disappointing because there is no real change in the will. What a bona fide change does for a man is shown in the classic story of Paul. The " old man " and the new man are here set off by contrast. The Saul whom men knew in Tarsus and at the official council in Jerusalem was essentially hard, strict, and implacable, and bent on procuring punishment for a pestilent sect. He was clothed in the hardly-earned self-righteousness of his caste. The new Paul " found himself " and, more important yet, was found by others, gentle, kindly, socially-minded, and bent on saving people from any need of punishment. One of his new marks is that he is capable of confessing his faults or mistakes ! He is not asking to be rewarded and TWO LEVELS OF LIFE 1 15 praised or even loved. He has become a lover of men. The grand new motion of the good will has caught his life. That which came to Paul is a new spirit; call it the spirit of religion or the spirit of humanity; they are one. The working of this spirit is the same with every one who finds himself. The fruits or results are the same. Before, the man was noth- ing more than his own master; he is now every one's friend; that is, a master of life. Not as hav- ing attained perfectness, but as committed and de- voted to the attainment; as going heart and mind and will and all with its beautiful motion. There are unfathomable heights and depths in this art of life! We may detest war and yet learn from it. It is a tremendous venture; so is life. It demands en- listment; so does the good life. It demands the whole man and not part of him; so does the new life. It asks a certain abandon; the soldier enlists to give and not to get. Life on the new level is like- wise a wholesale and gladsome abandon. " It is more happy to give than to receive." The soldier's life is for its period the one thing. Paul said the same of his life: " This one thing I do." What do you want to say better than that? Like Gen. Arm- strong, founder of the great Hampton School, you thus choose the biggest Hfe-purpose there Is. The soldier must be ready to die. So must any true man. Life has in it perpetual ventures and risks. ti6 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Who wishes to run away from them? To run away is to die — as a man. The soldier is known by his courage. The man of good will adds to the sol- dier's courage the eternal and costlier thing — the courage of the free soul, unafraid of what man says or does. A strange paradox offers itself in the life of the soldier. I do not mean the conscript. For con- scription is despotism. I mean the volunteer. He is doing that which he wills to do. To be willing to die is a will to live ! The philosopher means this when he propounds as the secret of life the idea: " To die to live." The word whatsoever runs like a refrain through the New Testament. It stands for the infinite and absolute reality underlying human life. I enlist not merely to do this finite thing, a and its next, b, and so on, but I enlist with a wholesale trust to do x, the unknown and y, the next unknown, and so on, beyond my sight. This could not be in an irrational universe. My trust is based in the essential reason, unity and beneficence which I find in the spiritual order of life, to which I belong. The soldier offering up life and happiness gets, as a rule, what he gives away; namely, larger flow of life and zest. They call it " sacrifice." It Is sacri- fice for the unwilling and unknowing. It is gain and access of life to the man who offers all for any cause above himself. This is the mystic consecration, which we gladly recognize as shrouding the memory of the young patriot of any nation, who knowing TWO LEVELS OF LIFE 117 nothing higher and doing his best, dies for his coun- try. Wasteful as it seems in his case, it is an act of good will. The time must come when the leaders and fathers of men, who like the kings and priests of old, have sent their boys through the fire, will learn how to use life for a larger humanity than has ever been discovered on the battlefield. Then they shall see that no conduct, public or private, can ever be righteous or worth dying for, which does not carry with the chivalrous emotions and the weight of the moral judgment, the friendliness of the par- ticipants and respect for all men. Have we made the difference clear between the man who lives above and the man who lives below the level of his manhood? It is the difference be- tween your best self and your lower self. To quote an old teacher's word, " There are only two kinds of men In this world — those who seek to do the will of God, and those who do not." Translate this as you please. It overrules all other distinctions — mental ability, natural endowments, skill and edu- cation. It makes a brotherhood of all souls who follow the good will of God. Jesus bade the rich young man to sell all that he had and come with him. Was this too much? Any young soldier has to do it. No matter whether Jesus' ultimatum needs to be taken literally or not. The idea is the same. The infinitely venture- some word whatsoever lies at the heart of the sen- tence. Whatever the good will asks, you must do. What better thing can you do? Il8 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY It is as if the Master of Life were saying to each of us : Do this one thing : take my light, share it, re- flect it at every angle, pour my life through your being, incorporate the universal good will like beauty into the works of your hands, and make it prevail. So shall you live, so others shall live about you, through you, beyond your sight; so generations after you, never knowing your name, shall have richer life. To do this is the " great adventure." In short, to seek to do and dare throughout life all that the soldier can do or dare for his country for the time of the war; to do with friendly face and useful tools for all mankind, what the soldier can never do with hostile mind and murderous weapons — noth- ing less than this is the scope of our enterprise. Is it not possible? I suggested that when once the world of mankind " finds itself," as a whole, as a movement and a des- tiny — no one word covers our thought — this will be civilization. The world does not need to remain in its present chaos and discord. Already deep hu- manitarian and social forces are urging men into na- tions, leagues and federations. Already men wait for nobler leadership ; they cry for the voice of the prophet; they would thrill to the call of the trumpet sounding the march; they would rally to undertake a democracy for all nations, to be won no longer by killing, but by such simple good will as every woman and child can contribute. Once set a fashion this way, once proclaim its crusade in homes and shops, TWO LEVELS OF LIFE II9 in schoolhouses and temples, and who shall say how soon It may be the rule of the world! " I will overturn and overturn and overturn," says the old text, " till he whose right it Is shall reign." Let man try, if he must, every other mode of life. Nevertheless, the good way remains; at last man shall stand in it. The word shall be spoken, "This is the way; walk ye in it." The best is inevitable when the time for it comes. Is this Inevitable best too costly for us? I am aware how costly man still makes it seem. The voices of those who preach the current religion are not prophetic. The stubborn Pharisaism of the prosperous classes with their pride of power still stands in the way. The futile and crazy cost lav- ished in carrying on war is not the cost which pur- chases humanity or brotherhood. Civilization comes at a more lavish cost of good will. Who dares to say that those are yet in sight to furnish the cost? Sometime the supply must rise to meet the demand. As Nietzsche says, " When the dis- tress is greatest, the help may be nearest to hand." The fact Is that man normally loves to do good and be good. He is fundamentally social, and en- joys social service. Goodness is one with useful- ness. To live socially, usefully, cordially, is to en- ter Into the circulation of life. Man hitherto has thought goodness a form of self-culture. This has not appealed to him. Henceforth he must know that every useful thing he does or says or thinks Is I20 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY his gift for all men. His growing trust in men, his sympathies, his expectation to find good in them, go to increase the circulation of the common life of the world. He has been taken into the vast telephone system of the universe. Messages, warnings, cries for help, words of good cheer come over his line. Man is made to love this common life. VII EVIL: WHAT TO MAKE OF IT The monster stumbling-block in the way of faith In the good Is the standing presence of evil. It looms up before men to-day more terrible than ever. Men are more sensitive and more sympathetic. In this modern telephone world we dally hear of every ap- palling mischance, till we lose our sense of perspec- tive and think of life as a medley of suffering and malignity. Many people have become shy of pro- fessing a belief in God. An evil God is unimagin- able, an indifferent God Is worse than useless. But how can a loving and good God tolerate evil? Or, If the God Idea is somehow irrepressible, how far has He power or responsibility? It has become almost orthodox to hold a belief In a limited God, who has to struggle as we do; who may fail as we fail; whom it Is our business to help I Mr. H. G. Wells has made this Idea popular. The marvelous conception of a universe of spiritual in- tegrity beyond the touch of hurt — of reality of which the mountains are only a shadow — of a one- ness and a sureness above the heavens, on which the souls of the greatest thinkers, like the hearts of lit- tle children, have rested, without which mankind would seem orphaned Indeed, seems now to dissolve. 122 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY But neither heart nor soul nor mind is satisfied. How can we, once having conceived the All-wise and All-good, ever admire or worship, or even respect, a partial, limited, finite, blundering deity, not yet grown up, unsure of himself? Our souls cry out for the living God, for the Infinite and perfect in wis- dom and goodness. We find In ourselves and In other men also a semblance of the same indestructi- ble quality of the Infinite ! We Instinctively wor- ship only the perfection of goodness. This Is the tremendous dilemma and the problem of evil. Let us leave behind for the present these vast in- quiries. Let us not push too far afield to find ground for our faith. How could man ever have faith, unless It is Impregnably founded within us; If our spiritual nature, evidencing Itself In human life, is not itself reality? Let us not throw away our faith before we make frank Inquiry what It Is which we call evil. Does it belong In the realm of reality? Is it real, in the sense in which we men are real? Is evil a principle? Certainly not. There Is no ultimate principle of evil, as there is a principle of truth. Is evil a person? Our fathers, following the lead of Persian mythology, said. Yes. They imagined an evil potentate and a great hierarchy of devils. God was responsible for the good in the world. The devils did the rest. But who was responsible for the devils? Who kept the fires of hell? We have pushed away this Imagery as pre- posterous. Not only is there no evidence for belief In Satan, but the belief is bad " pragmatically " ; that evil: what to make of it 123 is, it is unwholesome. It adds a needless imaginary burden to other evils. It leads men to expect and therefore to suffer evils which otherwise would not exist. There is no particle of proof that evil is a person, or a unity. There can be no self-existence in a negation. Evils are in things, in men, in our- selves. But no evil like the mythical serpent in the garden ever spoke to us I There is, then, no malice, no ugly or cruel intent in evil. The storm wrecks your ship, but no touch of malice is in its " angry waves." Seen from a cliff they are beautiful. The mosquito, the croco- dile, the tiger are evil only by a metaphor. They have no hatred, no wicked purpose; they never plot injury against you. In their swamp or jungle they are neither good nor evil, so far as you are con- cerned. The pain of the toothache, so far from carrying malice, has an actual use which may serve to save our tooth. Malice is not in evil, but in per- sons. The only persons of whom we know anything, who bear malice, are men. But malice in men is like a disease or deformity. It does not belong to them as men. So far as it is evil, it is remediable. We shall return later to the subject of evil in men. If evil exists in things, it is not evil in itself, but only as related to us, who get into its way. The mote or beam in one's eye is innocent anywhere else. The morass is not evil or inconvenient till man needs a road through it. Is it evil that the Culebra Hill keeps on sliding into our Panama Canal? What do you expect if you burrow into the side of a moun- 124 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY tain? Such accidents endanger dividends and cause disappointment and suffering. Do you always ex- pect dividends without any untoward conditions? With each new invention or enterprise, the electric light or the aeroplane, we stir up a fresh group of " evils," of which we had been unaware. They are only evil as related to our enterprise. To the learner in flying, the hardness of the earth Is an evil ! What now If you enter complaint against pain, suffering, broken limbs, broken hearts. In short, against our sensitive nerves? Is consciousness then the evil one, who makes pain for us? Or do you go with certain Hindu philosophers and altogether de- precate consciousness? This means not to wish to live; the mystery of life runs thus into pessimism; but all healthy people prefer to keep their conscious- ness. Suppose we could vote out of the world all that side of life which we class as evil. There shall be no pain, no tears, no disease, no failure, no disap- pointment, no fatigue, no hunger or thirst, no occa- sion of fear, no shadow of death; of course, also no crime, injustice, hatred, cruelty, insult, blows; no punishments, no fighting nor oppression; no risks of hurt, physical or spiritual, shall be possible; no tre- mendous ventures shall be asked of any one. Every- thing shall be made smooth, prosperous, easy, ample. Do you like the prospect? Be sure what this means. Does It mean anything significant or satisfying? What would you do with yourself? You would never have any pressing evil: what to make of it 125 necessities or urgent desires. You would never need to build a house or protect yourself against cold or storm or heat. Would you love your children? They would cost you no more than the young of a codfish; you would never need to do anything for them; they would not suffer from neglect and ex- posure, nor would you ever be anxious for their wel- fare. Would you enjoy the company of your friends? But you never could do anything for them. They would all have plenty of potatoes or bananas; they could not possibly come to want. You could never read soul-stirring stories or poems, or expe- rience the thrill of a drama. That which stirs the soul and makes the thrills, flows out of a reservoir of experience, from suffering, dread, awe, reverence, victory. Sympathy Is the key to the scenes of the story or drama. Sympathy is to suffer with; there Is no sympathy and no use for it in the merely sensual v/orld which we seek to imagine. Who would not rather vote for this strange world of struggle, sin and death, where nevertheless courage, integrity, faith, hope, sympathy, and good will are unconquer- able by evil ! But perhaps you would rebuild your world with a moderate and comfortable degree of "evil"? You would have just enough to make no serious trouble or cause for anxiety. Is it evil, then, if you need a modicum, like so much salt, to mix with your good? Is it only evil when any one gets too much? Is evil possibly an excess of a good? Pray how much would you recommend before you cry 126 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY " enough "? Some pain, but not too much; a little touch of suffering; children's diseases, perhaps, but no smallpox or plague; rain and wind, but no torna- does or lightning strokes; slight but never heavy frosts or blights ; just enough care to keep the farmer busy; a little, but never colossal selfishness; pardon- able pride, but no arrogance; mild quarrels, but no deadly wars; no bitterness, no tragedies; no extrem- ities of struggle for food or life; an easy death, if death must still stand at the end of the way! And if ever terrible mishap threatened to befall the man or the race, as has ever and anon befallen the world, the Master of Life should interfere with the kindly wand of his power ! Would you also tame the visible world down to match your program? Lower the mountains, re- move dangerous cliffs, annihilate tigers and wolves, vote swamps and deserts out of your country, ask for fertile lands everywhere? Do you expect still to keep in your safe earth strenuous, daring, invincible men, a courage unafraid of peril, the love that poets sing, watchful devotion, infinite enthusiasm, all-em- bracing good will? Your Utopia of moderate and well-tamed " evil " calls for nothing that gives human life its distinc- tion. No great history is possible, no Christ, no Socrates, no Garibaldi, is wanted. Your well-kept, safely Insured children could never hear the story of a hero. Could you ever be civilized in your world of limited " evil " ? How could you know the spirit- ual values? Your tame life would not even be EVIL: WHAT TO MAKE OF IT 127 earned; it would not be your own! Ask something harder, if you wish to be men, the sons of God. Perhaps we shall find that this is just the kind of world to make men I There is a form of complaint, however, about the world which deserves careful respect. It is on the score of the overwhelming injustice that falls to the lot of the innocent, of both men and animals. They suffer who have deserved no ill, much less punish- ment. They suffer from others' cruelty or greed; they do the hardest work for the smallest pay. They suffer in horrible wars, compelled to die for the quarrels of their oppressors. And high heaven sees this astonishing process of injustice go on through the ages I It seems as if injustice were em- bedded in the core of things. If those only suffered who deserve to suffer I A curious misapprehension survives here from the legend of the Garden of Eden! The great and na'ive idea was that evil is the fruit of disobedience. Once no pain was, or poisonous weed, or death. But Evil rushed into the world like a flood the mo- ment Adam took the fatal fruit. Every one knows now that pain and death were here before man was. Pain and '' evil " like bad weather come to all of us; the good Job may suffer much or little; the tyrant likewise. There is suffering from a kind con- science that comes only to the virtuous, like the pain of a discord to the musician. There are kinds of suffering that fit certain offenses and warn men against them. Thus, sensual indulgence brings the 128 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY decay of body and mind. Even here in the nature of things, suffering cannot come to the evil-doer without involving others. We are social beings in- extricably locked up with each other's weal or woe. Do you wish to be unhnked from the bonds of society for the sake of your tiny conception of personal justice? What is justice? What does any man deserve? No one knows, least of all the man himself, who gen- erally claims more than belongs to him. Moreover, no one can spell the meaning of justice, till he finds out what life means. What is life for? It is not measured for men by what we get of food or pay, least of all by the pleasures that come to us. It is measured by what we do, what we express, what we become as men. What if suffering serves in the making of a man's life? What if the greatest boon in the world is to share, as simple men daily share, in expressing the infinite good-will? Now this mode of experience never could be without suffering man's common lot. What if progress comes, as men are enabled more and more willingly to share in what- ever concerns the welfare of all? Those who know most assure us that this is so. The people who, though innocent, suffer and toil above the average, actually attain the power both to enjoy life and to increase the common welfare. Is not the universe then doing its best for us? There is that which is higher than justice and surpasses our little measure of justice. You say " the world — or God — is not fair." How do you know, unless you have honestly evil: what to make of it ■ 129 tried a way, which thousands of men tell you has not only given them a new sympathy with all who suffer, but has also rendered them invulnerable to the sting of injustice ? Certain obvious remarks about evil now occur to us. In the first place, of most things that men class as evil, we never know till afterwards whether they are evil or good. The good may turn out to be evil, the gain to be loss, and the evil often Avorks for good. What if a man loses his fortune? His having it may have been the worst thing that ever happened to him. Perhaps he had never earned it. Its loss may be the beginning of real and true life. Epictetus says that the blows of his boxing teacher were good for him. The men who thought them evil never learned to box. Dr. Howe, the great lover of the blind, used to say, " An obstacle is something to be overcome." He put the obstacles into the day's work, till all work became like play. A man reviewing his life, and having the key to its meaning, may find that nothing has been evil to him. He has learned lessons from suffering, from rebuke and criticism, from injustices done him, from illness and physical limitations, from being defeated and humiliated, from innumerable petty sufferings and disappointments, so borne as to broaden his views and make him a grown and mature man. Such a man can say to the last, " The best is yet to be ! " Our good religion enables us thus to take over all kinds of experiences and to translate them I30 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY out of the field of chaos or evil into the orderly con- structive realm of the good. Paul knew the secret, '' in all things to be content." Browning knows this secret when he cries, " Then welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough." Where does not evil offer itself, like the malarial swamps, to be converted into good? Again, there is in life a deep law of contrast, of darkness and light, pain and pleasure, hunger and satisfaction, evil and good. We call the reverse side evil. Is it evil? Is the darkness evil? Evil, if one is lost in the woods; very good to the tired workman. How could we learn anything, or know the real good from the false, without the perpetual contrast? '^ No night there ! " This would be good only to those who arrive out of the night. How could you know justice, truth, love, unless you have known the opposites, and found out what is perma- nent? Could the child ever learn to know and love the good self, without having been tired, pained, humiliated, by the ugly doings of his selfish self? Thus contrast, with its reverse or seamy side, proves to be a form of language or punctuation, in which nature speaks to us. It comes as the waves come ; it carries you up and it drops you down. You would like to remain and ride on the top of the wave — never to sink to the trough of the sea. You want the heights, not the depths, motion and no ar- rest. Omnipotence could not do this for you. Om- nipotence cannot accomplish irrationality I Another principle in life is the law of cost or EVIL: WHAT TO MAKE OF IT 131 effort. It seemed once evil that man has to " earn his bread with the sweat of his brow "; work was a curse, brought on man by sin. Who thinks so now? Whittle the cost down as much as you can; invent all possibly machinery to reduce labor; get a four-hour day for the world, if you can; still the beneficent law stands. You could know and prize and enjoy no value low or high without it. Dream if you will of getting power and life for nothing. Would it be good for us? Is it then too much cost and effort that you reprobate? The question of good and evil is relative. Who knows what is too much to pay for an education, for a truth, for a faith, for your love? He who pays most often loves most. The evil is to pay for worthless things. Even this may not be evil, before you have found out their worthlessness. You cannot know the gold without knowing brass also. Dr. Felix Adler in his suggestive book, " An Ethi- cal Philosophy of Life," calls " frustration " a good part of life. As soon as we make any gain we are presently restrained and held back. Is frustration, however, the right word to use? Frustration hurts and kills; it carries the suspicion of an enemy or frustrator. The word is another negative form for our friendly law of effort and cost. Call it also inertia or friction. These two have their obvious use. They point to the price at which good things come to beings who grow under finite conditions and march a step at a time. Quarrel, if you must, with the fact of our finite- 132 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY ness ; quarrel with the fact of evolution ; with the fact that we are small before we are large; quarrel with life and the costly fact of consciousness. Mean- while, whoever learns to say, " Thy will be done," the good-will he done, has life more abundantly, In the only way possible. Life to him is good — fric- tion, limitations, frustration, effort, ventures, cost, pain, and all; to him death, too, which only is known as touching the body. Is also good. The simple ex- periment of treating the universe as essentially good, and not evil, as " God's world," and not a devil's world, does this for any one who will try it. Another good word, not always pleasing at first but good In the end, is urgency. It is constructive and purposeful, forever pressing us to live and grow. The inertia, the friction, the frustration, the pain, now becomes an Incitement and challenge to us, to our Intelligence, our imagination, our highest de- sires, our friendship, devotion, and sympathy. This Is a fact of daily experience. Whenever our mettle Is tried, our stature is strengthened. The urging life-force boils up against the restraining earthy mass and sweeps it aside. The man's self asserts his will over physical weakness and masters desire; it stiffens Itself against storm and cold, and builds protection for Its little ones; it wearies of the pest-breeding slums of its towns, and rouses itself to clean them up. It is stirring now in millions of minds to ban war from the earth. Humanity grows apace with every effort to which uncomfortable strictures, pain- ful hurts, sorry disasters, crushing disappointments evil: what to make of it 133 succeeding each other, urge men to strive and climb and overcome. The word of the Master of Life comes clear the oftener you heed it: March! For- ward! To obey is "life more abundant." The only really evil world would be that in which living things could be allowed to grow rank and vile, and not to " die game." Why not frankly say now what must have been suggested already, that " evil," by whatever name it is called, is an ultimate necessity in a phenomenal world? It is a necessary condition of the everlast- ing process by which we live and grow. A growing world must contain the smaller and the greater, the worse and the better, the shadows as well as the substance; no monotonous, uniform equality as of standardized machines. There must be inevitable suffering in a process where animals live and infants grow to maturity. Verify this In the actual processes of child devel- opment. Can you have mature life without child- life first, with its inevitable feebleness, pains and restraints? Would you desire to enter upon man- hood without knowing the joys of the child and the mother's love? Who Is sorry to have borne child- ish disappointments, to have fallen down as other children fall, to have been humiliated and ashamed over and over, to have learned to love truth by the futility of falsehood, to have been frustrated and to have grown more forceful? Choose again the best fortune for your children. 134 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY How much would you spare them of the cost of growing up? Should the child fall and not suffer, cut himself and be made to believe that there was no wound, overeat and Indulge his appetites and never have aches and pains? Should he have no eager desires, no real temptations? Would you have him Inherit a fortune? Would you make him exempt from the great common lot of the children about him? Many people suppose that the all-powerful God can do anything. But Omnipotence cannot make a man without a child to begin with. Omnipotence cannot dispense In favor of a single child, whether the Christ-child or the Superman, with the Inevitable, democratic, beneficent law of cost by which all grow- ing creatures must come to their stature. Omnip- otence cannot command a valley without any hill ! This Is Irrationality. Let us then, as Emerson says, " worship " the In- exorable and beautiful necessity. Let us admit that life at Its best is worth a price beyond measure in effort or pain. Our religion will be all the better for combining a noble stoicism with It. Meanwhile the things that we call evil fade and disappear like fogs on the sea-shore, when the west wind brings the sun- shine rippling the waves. What cost is too great to give for a share In the things unseen, eternal, spirit- ual, most real, most beautiful, in which men, born as little children, grow up to be heirs I SECTION III THE VICTORIOUS GOODNESS I HOW TO HANDLE EVIL: THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT We have nowhere denied that there is evil; we do not say that a pain or a sorrow does not exist, that a disease is not as real as the bhght upon a wheat field. But we have pointed out that evil is only one of the various names by which we call one side or aspect of a great, necessary and, on the whole, bene- ficent condition of our lives, as finite growing beings in a world of things. Neither is this necessity that brings pain or evil material; it belongs to life and growth, and finiteness. Back of the " evil " we have nowhere been able to find any evil principle. Not even moral evil con- tains any actual mahgnity. The wrong-doer does not love evil or hate the good. The infantile rage and impish face of your child carry no proof of demoniac possession. Are we gaining any advantage, however, by this view? Of course we are, if it is true. But sup- 135 136 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY pose this view prevails, will the world not lose its sense of the awfulness of sin? Can you safely leave average man with no fear of hell fire? What will hold the grip of our consciences? Our best physicians answer this question. They do not need to add any punishment to what their pa- tients suffer already. Their business is to cure the sick. They use confinement, special diet, and need- ful warning to the careless; they may use the salu- tary knife. They thus direct and apply intelligent and positive purpose. But they do not make disease attractive or popular. Nevertheless, the atmos- phere of the hospital is not fear but courage and hope. The end is health. We propose the same practical purpose, the same wholesome means, the same hopeful atmosphere. On the practical side this is the doctrine of " the forgiveness of sins." Blame and guilt, the sense of sin, the wounded conscience, have one use only, that the man, having done wrong, may be ashamed and sorry enough to resolve not to do the wrong again. He is like the chauffeur who has blundered into an accident. We wish him to see his fault and be so grieved that he may never incur another accident. He is unfit to drive a car if he remains careless. We are not con- cerned that he shall suffer punishment, but that from now on he shall be a careful driver. This he never can be without a better will, without courage and hope, without friendly confidence too on the part of those who employ him. The larger part of the wrong doing of the world HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 1 37 is not aggressive. It is the work of dull and imma- ture minds. Like children at school, they need the steady play upon their wills of courage and hope. Our view of the nature of moral evil therefore frankly involves a distinctly radical change in our treatment of one another when we do wrong. Perhaps the worst mischief in the old view of " sin " was that it drew a false division among men. There were sheep and goats, saints and sinners, the bad and the good. God " was angry with the wicked every day." But he loved the righteous, that is, us and our sect or religion. More than half of the Hebrew Psalms contain mischievous and in- humane sentences about the separateness of the good and the evil. You make prigs and hypocrites by using such material for " devotional " purposes. Children and thoughtless people become infected with the ugly temper of such Scripture. If God has enemies, you find enemies too. You develop ill-will, contempt, hatred. If God punishes relentlessly, you deal in the same kind of treatment. Punishment in this view is retribution or vengeance to give the evil- doer his deserts. A terrible stream of mischief has marked this superstition, that sin is a malign princi- ple at endless war with good! Our view of moral evil grows out of a new light on human life. We are here, first, to grow and work out good, and, incidentally to this, to overcome evil or cure it. We worship no despotic or igno- rant God, feeble enough to have enemies. " He hateth nothing that he hath made." Surely if " to 138 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY know all Is to forgive all," then the fountain life of the world can harbor no grudge. This view sets us all on one plane. As Jesus says, "Why callest thou me good? None Is good but one; that Is, God." No man Is Impeccable, no one outside of the human fold. Do you wish or de- serve to " sit on thrones," judging the others? Who deserves such pre-eminence? The best men owe everything to the Indwelling and up-building life. Who made the sound body, the clear intelli- gence, the discerning conscience, the love of beauty, the love of truth, the love of goodness? There Is no self-made man! This social oneness in weal and woe, for good and evil. In pleasure and pain, constitutes a bond which makes us Inevitable sharers In human experiences. All human society is Involved in every strike, in every war. Do you and I imagine that, if we had been brought up In slums, we should have supposed the laws and the courts to have been created for our benefit? Would It have been possible for us If we had been born In Germany to show penitence In the face of our proud " enemies " over the sins of our nation? What a coil of social circumstances breeds wrong and crime ! The worst moral evil Is largely the survival from primitive men who never knew how to be rid of it. The practical question is, what to do to-day? If you blame any one, who are more to blame than those with power, virtue, and means, and yet without sympathy? Talk not, however, of blame, but Inspire us with courage and hope. The HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 1 39 worst man on earth can become a new creature the moment he catches the new social light upon life, and takes a willing hold In the fraternal effort to overcome evil. Men become wicked for wartt of courage, hope, and will. Stir these men with a good will and they escape the region of evil. What absurd mystery people have made of Jesus' teaching: " Resist not evil"! It Is perfectly clear a few sentences later In the parable of the sun, for- ever shedding light on the evil and the good. Be ye each like the sun, Jesus says: be lights to shine; mirror back In every direction all the light that falls on you. Return not evil for evil, but good to over- whelm evil. "Overcome evil?" Yes. This Is your business, but overcome It with good. This makes the business of life positive, constructive, beautiful. This Is to put the emphasis where it be- longs, not on the evil, the Incident, but on good, the reality I Men had always taken the opposite way; namely, resist evil, fight it! This meant to stay In Its com- pany, to fight it on its own ground, and with Its own weapons of violence and destruction. We are re- minded of Xerxes whipping the Hellespont! All sorts of interesting analogies and parables now help us. See what we do with the problems of physical nature. We actually transfer to our aid, and make over as allies, forces and materials that we once thought hostile. Who thinks of fighting the wind? We borrow its power to drive our sails. We hold the floods back to supply our needs In I40 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY drought. We drain the malarial marsh and turn it into a garden. We find new uses in refuse and weeds. Instead of being impatient at opposition, we good-naturedly bring well planned and superior forces to reduce it. We do not fight the rocks; we bore through them, and build highways of their fragments. The very language of early man's struggles with nature becomes our metaphor and poetry. The word fight loses its sting where no malignity is. We urge now the same radical change of method throughout the whole moral realm. This is the heart of our religion; it is the demand of our intelli- gence; it is the hope of humanity, which never be- fore had much hope, except beyond the clouds. Our law is: " Overcome evil with good." Keep this in mind. This principle works wonderfully in taming the excess selfishness in us. Do not treat it as an enemy. We cannot fight this excess or lop it off like an excrescence. Translate it and overpass it with surplus of life — with wholesome energy, with a generous aim. Selfishness is a hindrance, a limitation, an extra weight of flesh. It grows upon the idle and lazy. Fill up your life, then, with use- ful effort and work the weight off. You fear social changes lest you and your house- hold may come to want or lose your luxuries. You cannot kill this fear or starve it out. Turn the other way: join hands with others who have real reasons to fear; plant wider fields; plan for grander harvests; learn freer and better methods to exchange HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 14I and share your products. Lo ! as it was In the story of " the multiplication of the loaves," where every one has brought out his resources there is more than enough for all. You fear for the nation, for its liberties and its wealth; other peoples will come and rob you. The old way was to build forts, to erect tariff walls, to fence in the little nation's prosperity, to keep ships ready to fight: the nations stood thus in perpetual fear. Turn about now: take the opposite course; overcome your ugly suspicions. Raze your forts; let the battleships rust. Welcome the labor and product of others; let each contribute his share; pub- lish your secrets; trust the others as you wish to be trusted. Is any mighty nation your enemy? No! Your own fear, your suspicion, your enmity, is the enemy. Tell all peoples your new democratic plan for the freedom and safety of the world. Believe in it yourselves; make the enemy nations equal shareholders in it; draw the teeth of your fears. Our worst enemies are within our doors. Envy and jealousy are enemies. They narrow our happi- ness. The other man is more prosperous; he is stronger and better educated; he has more friends. The other woman is more beautiful and has more money to spend, or uses meretricious arts and gets on, you think, too well. Thus children, too dull and weak to open the gates, cry and kick against them. Thus nations slip Into contemptible quarrels and wars. You cannot fight jealousy! Turn the other way; put your better nature to work. You have 142 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY your own life to live. Make it worth while. You are here to make light shine, to help the good to prevail, to enhance the common prosperity, to carry the good will from thought and word into deed. Be glad then for every other man's gifts and powers. The other student is brighter; the other girl has greater charm; the other physician is more skilful; the other merchant is richer. What of it? Your school, your town, your nation — the world, has so much more intellect, grace, skill, means. Would you restrict others to your little capacity? Take care rather to make your own product larger and more excellent. Stop praying, " Thy Kingdom come " unless you mean this. What shall we do with our quick anger, our sul- len resentment, our '' honest indignation " against evil-doing? Keep what is honest. We should not be human if we did not suffer at seeing wrong, at hearing discords and falsehood. But again, as be- fore, our enemy is within. Our annoyance, our ir- ritation, our " righteous anger," as we style it, are enemies. We are never annoyed, irritated, indig- nant, because we are full of good will, but rather because we have not good will enough. Our feel- ings are hurt at others' ingratitude, not because we are generous, but because we are narrow and little. We seek to punish, before we know how to pity. The one specific and certain prescription for us is not to give any one else cause for " righteous indignation against us." Is our neighbor useless? You and I then must be so much more useful. Is he doing HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 143 harm? We must be sure, then, to do good. Our hot indignation is the mark of our likeness to him who has irritated us. My irritability and angry heart are not for nothing. Like raw material they have the making of good in them. What if I transform them like wild energy into so much heat and light! I can do this with my inteUigence. Good will always does it; sympathy shows me the way. Every case of wrong doing is an opportunity. I am set to help the wrong doer. I am like a messenger to light the way; my good will is my torch. My arrogance, my vexation, my one-sided sympathy, my harsh judg- ment pass off; my life purpose to do my part for the common good emerges. We need to know that we are each worth while, that no man can ever be thrown quite out of the family of mankind. There is some useful function for him, if only to stand patient at the loneliest out- post. The humblest man's good will is precious, like light, as long as he lives. Give the worst man, then, courage and hope; at least "save his face." All sorts of common experiences bring these things home to us. Who does not know what it is to relapse Into childish moods? Who cannot say more or less mournfully, '* I have been there," when we note moral disease in our neighbors, their petu- lance, their greediness, their pride, their hardness, severity, and unsympathy, passing so easily into cruelty and oppression, their tenacity of their own 144 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY rights, becoming so often clear Injustice ! There might well be hospitals for people with moral dis- eases In every township. Some friend should say to us on occasion: "Take a day off at ' the retreat.' You need It." Not one class alone called " crim- inal " needs this; most people need on occasion to be given a rest for a time from society. Pious souls once began the day In the posture of prayer; they went apart from time to time to seek the good spirit. Does not our modern religion call for something as wholesome as this? How can we best renew our spirits with the master thoughts of human life? Who does not need often to come back for companionship with the beautiful purpose which consecrates life? Can we overcome evil with good In all cases? Take the case of the Pharisee. This Is the hardest problem we have. Pharisaism is a chronic disease of the soul. Can you touch it with denunciation? We wonder whether Jesus ever converted one Phar- isee Into being his disciple. We wonder whether he tried. He took easier cases : he sought the lowly, the poor, the degraded, the obvious sinners. He never showed sympathy with the Pharisees, or ad- miration for their virtues. In his eyes and for his Immediate purpose they stood In the way of his mis- sion. They and he became foes. They hardened their hearts against him. How could he reach any man without showing sympathy, understanding, good will? HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 145 The time has come to leave no man out of the scope of our message. We must bring the Phari- sees to our side. We must learn to overcome their evil with good. We must build on the real good in them and so with their aid construct greater good. We must let them into our secret. We must bring our good will, not ill will, to their aid. Yes, to the worst man, as the best physician brings his skill to the most chronic cases. It follows that the one fault out of which all others grow is not to have a good will. I am help- less without this, as a man who has no power on in his shop or his car. Why am I not now as badly off as any wrong-doer? Have I ill will or enmity? Then I am on the level of all other sick souls. No man in ill will is fit for human society! You think the other party in the quarrel is to blame. What if you, with your harsh judgment and cruel will to make him suffer, may be the worse of the two? What are any of us but older or younger pupils in the vast school of life? No one ever did the other any good unless the light of a kindly humanity shone in his eyes. Or do you not, perhaps, wish to help the other? But you wish to be rid of him. Then indeed are you his enemy, as much as he is yours. Do you not both need to go to the hospital? What is your virtue, if you are unable to see any good in another and only wish him to die? What inhuman religion has so poisoned your soul? I hope that we have met the objection to our view 146 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY of moral evil — that it is too gentle ; that we do not make sin serious enough; that we show complacency toward wrong-doers. This is the objection of the " good " or " pious," as against the " wicked " and godless. The pious in Jesus' day raised the same objection. He was easy with publicans and sinners; he shook hands with the vulgar and called ordinary fishermen into his society. But look I in the course of a few years there grew out of these timid, ordi- nary men a zeal for the pure life, a loyalty to prin- ciple, an ardent affection, an indomitable will that made martyrs. What can you do better than this with your precious punishments ! What do you ask more from any human soul than the fruits of the spirit — love, joy, patience, and all the rest of the triumphant list? No courses of discipline, no pur- gatorial restraint, no terror of hell can do what simple good will does to change men into friends and comrades. Indeed, if we ever must use re- straints and discipline, we shall only succeed in case our methods are surcharged with obvious good will. Once in a while the force that kills evil has been set in motion on a considerable scale. Francis of Assisi thus found the secret that the great church had forgotten. Where he went men forsook selfish ways and came together as friends. Humble groups from time to time carried a similar message through Europe; good priests told it and lived by it, but they never were able to cover the field of practical life or to make much impression on large popula- HOW TO HANDLE EVIL 147 tions. The old barbarism dies hard. Not enough light and love had yet come. The old heresy that might and fear could alone keep the world in re- straint weighed on men's souls and played into the hands of priestcraft and tyranny. The Quakers re- newed the old message with astonishing results. Again men and women, once timid, took on a new will which nothing on earth could break down. They crowded the prisons with their heroic testi- mony against war and everything that turns men into enemies. But the old barbarism settled down still like a pall on the nations; men looked to the great churches and got no enlightenment. The her- esy of violence and punishment lay at the heart of what with grim humor they called a " gospel." It was the gospel of a hating and punishing God. Even Wesley carried two Gods in his Trinity, one who loved men, and another who sent them to hell. Is not the world ready to see that good will alone rules, that good will alone is almighty, that hate, contempt, enmity and the ill-will to punish slay hu- man life like a plague? Can we not see that what- ever treatment leaves men or nations in hatred leaves them worse and more dangerous? The fact is, the moment a human being releases his good will, the everlasting currents of the uni- verse are with him. This is no vague theory. Try it and see for yourself. It works miracles to trans- form evil to good. Not alone In early times but again and again in every age common men and women like Peter and James and Mary Magdalene 148 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY have blossomed out into indomitable heroism. Men also of sensual habits, like Tolstoy, have been lifted to a new level. No one knows what hearty satisfaction life offers, till he learns to draw on the everlasting sources. To love is to live. Give the body fulness of health and you make it immune from disease. Fill a man's heart with good will and no evil can touch him. II THE NEW FORCE I HAVE spoken of good will as if it were a new force just brought to light. There is a wonderful analogy here with the development of the electric energy. Of course electricity had always been playing about us in the world. Ages ago men had seen its curious action upon amber and other materials. They had observed it in certain fishes and eels. They had stood in awe of it in storms of thunder and light- ning. But it long went without a name and only within the memory of living men has it been fairly harnessed as a vast beneficent power to work for us and henceforth to conserve human labor. Even now we cannot pretend to know the mysterious helper; we only know it by what it does and its chameleon forms. But along with other forces playing together in human life, how mightily has it contributed to bring in a new era for mankind! New possibilities, new hopes, undreamed wealth, new economic conditions, a new freedom from the old restraints of poverty, mark the electrical age. So, only vastly more important, is the new spir- itual power. It has always shone in gleams; it has illuminated individual lives. Long ago it was known under the feeble name of meekness. Famous 149 I50 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY conquerors won a greater fame by their magna- nimity and astonished their captives by making friends of them. Magnanimity is good will. Surely prophets taught it, but half accidentally. Simple men and women practiced it without knowing how wonderful it is. Jesus, a humble Galilean, has the supreme honor of bringing it fairly to light. Even yet the world waits painfully to see it come into general use. All sorts of forces, however, play together to mark its necessity; a new spirit must pre- vail in the world, adequate to match man's mastery of his newly acquired science and his tremendous physical inventions. No half-civilized peoples, such as those of our modern nations, can carry on the world any longer. Few students of religion, often curiously skepti- cal about the worth of their religion, have any idea yet of the revolution that will come in human de- velopment, when mankind understands what good will can do to change men's hearts and raise the tone and volume of the life-forces within us. New issues are coming to the front, new points of view, new motives, new ventures, a new freedom, new hopes for the millions, a new wealth of joy and hu- manity, such as never could have been before. Half the evil of the world has arisen from the poverty and the hopelessness of masses and races of men still close to the level of the animals around their huts or slums. When once, in addition to science, and in co-operation with its infinite resources of power and invention, linking together not continents THE NEW FORCE 151 only but hamlet to hamlet, and household to house- hold over the earth, the unused spiritual power which makes men free and whole and friendly and happy shall really " pour itself out on all flesh," we shall behold a world worth hoping for, working for, living in, richer and better than poets ever saw in their visions. Who that looks back over the physi- cal and scientific progress from darkness to light in the last wonderful century, can doubt what man may do, provided he now re-aligns the science of manhood with his studies of matter and force ! We have barely begun to know a principle or law of nature when we have stated it. Behind always follow a troop of hitherto unseen implications and inferences. I wish in this chapter merely to sug- gest some of these new implications that lie just be- neath the surface of our spiritual science and bear on our practical life. In brief, I wish with the help of a new emphasis to show what the good will can do and how it acts. Its science is as practical as any other kind of knowledge. It works miracles also as science does, in the sense in which a miracle is a matter of wonder to the mind. A watch or an electric lantern is a wonder to a savage. An aero- plane is still a miracle. The greatest wonder in the universe is the turning of evil into good. The new worth and beauty created from the by-products of the crude petroleum is a parable of this. The good will likewise constructs beauty out of what we call evil. This is almost more wonderful than to create out of nothing, for it takes alien, ugly and odious 152 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY material, counted worse than nothing, and trans- forms it Into spiritual worth and value. We have seen that one of the Illuminating names under which evil passes Is limitation. Whatever hampers, throttles, starves life, is evil, as long as It lasts. Now the good will work to remove limi- tations. The good will is kindly power, acting with purpose; its purpose is construction, freedom of movement and growth, largeness of life. Wherever good will Is at work this is the purpose. Every good man carries something of this purpose; it Is the measure of his civilization. We cannot con- ceive that any less purpose than this exists and acts at the heart of the universe. Good will is the most constructive and beneficent name of God. There is hardly a more personal name, for we cannot con- ceive of Impersonal purpose. Now, good will, removing limitations of all kinds, gives free circulation to the upbuilding life, as does the removal of abnormal pressure on a blood vessel. We mean by freedom our moral and social freedom. This freedom is actual, practicable, and verifiable. You want the freedom of the whole man, heart and soul and mind and will also, sharing in the nature of God. He does what he loves to do and loves to do what Is best, and has satisfaction In It. To move and grow and use all your powers, as if Infinite en- ergy were behind you, is substantial freedom. However you explain It, practically it is all that any one wants. The movement of good will in a man carries this sense of freedom. This Is a matter of THE NEW FORCE 1 53 fact and experience quite beyond the need of argu- ment. Life at its best is free, purposeful, effective motion. It can be balked but never defeated. Its nature is to turn obstacles to its own ends. What is the relation of the good will to the bodily health and the cure of disease? The history of religion has always had a curious connection with bodily states. The early Christianity came to many minds as a supernatural way to cure the sick. Every fresh renewal of religious life has brought with It stories of marvelous cure. In our own time we have seen Christian Science arise as a new health cult no less than a form of religion. Do not suppose that there is nothing whatever but delusion behind this fascinating side of religion? Let us use our intelli- gence not only to reject the irrational, but also to welcome whatever Is hopefully true. Imagine the frequent case of the man, sick In body and mind, despondent, anxious, self-centred, brooding over his symptoms and growing worse. Bring him good news, a hope, a little courage, faith In himself and faith in God; show him in any way how to look out on the world at his best and to let a good will run In his nerves, — do you not see how this must have an effect upon the action of the body? Hopes, visions, truths, the renewal of will, do stir the circulation of the life of a man, and, as John Fiske has said, quicken " the rhythm of nutrition." The body only needs a wholesome tonic to raise the suffering system and put It in tune. The body is a vital engine, bearing with It a child of the In- 154 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY finite spirit. There Is no tonic so energetic as the buoyant and friendly good will. When the sick man says, like the soldier in battle, " I will die if I must, but I have a work to do, and, please God, I will do my best for it," he is adding the tonic health of his spirit to set the body free of disease. A myriad witnesses vouch that this Is so. You never know when some spiritual tonic may not reach and renew the ebbing tide of life. The same principle applies, even in the case of the aged, or with hopeless illness. Evidently no kind of medicine can always hold death at bay. But there Is no age limit to the growth of the affections, of the faith, of the will, engaged to do a man's part as long as life lasts. There Is no limit to the satis- faction of a mind at peace within and fearless of evil. The body fails, but the man, sustained by the inner and undying life of the spirit, keeps his face to the front. The flow of good will is still a liber- ating force. Every step upward in the normal growth of a child is the working of the good will, casting off shackles and hindrances to achieve freedom. Noth- ing can be called education that does not relieve the mind of its childish limitations. The child starts in bondage to prejudices, to traditions, to a narrow patriotism, to hurtful habits, to an egotistic will. He is apt to see freedom where It cannot be. He desires to do as he pleases, as If the entanglement of a load of petty and frivolous personal indulgen- ces were freedom ! He sees In school and work, in THE NEW FORCE 155 rules and laws, In social duties and obligations, a world of restraints. Restraints these will be, If he fails to see what they mean, and undertakes them as a slave or a hireling. But give him the liberating sense of their manifold uses and his own part as a sharer in them, let him accept them, as they come, with a good social will, and presently he becomes a master of life. Duties and obligations, to obey regulations, to keep promises, to pay one's debts, to render his full tale of work, become so many means to fulfill the co-operative enterprises of a friendly household, of a kindly nelghborhod, of a just city or State, of a comradeship of all peoples. Every selfish Indulgence cripples, but the motion of a good will enfranchises. As the life of the body depends upon the free circulation, with which disease interferes, so the life of human society depends upon free circulation, through utterance, expression, sympathy, good will, between Its Individual members. It is not the worst mischief in a moral ailment that it spoils or checks the growth of the man himself; the man's ailment reacts upon society around him, and breaks Its free circulation. Good society, that Is, civilization, wants individuals sound through and through. There cannot be anywhere a single atom, cut of? in its free flow from the rest, or Infecting the others with Its own selfish malady, without a continual loss and privation that may be felt on the other side of the earth. There are those who ceaselessly con- tribute, hardly conscious of the fact themselves, to 156 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the happy, normal circulation of " give and take," of easy healthful Intercourse and companionship, which bind the parts of the social body into amity and power. This is the gift of the " man of the world " in the best sense of the term. He is one to whom it is truly said, *' All things are yours." He acquires the character of the citizen of the universe, who finds himself everywhere at home. It is open to any one to acquire this social gift; it only depends upon the volume and quality of the humanity or good will that has free flow through him and out- ward to all men. What material contribution that man can make for his fellows is so great or needful as this quickening of the circulating life of the spirit? Where plenty of good will flows you do not have to stand off and fight social diseases with violence. The active good will dissolves evil as the strong wind sweeps over the continent and disperses the storms. Take the list of the master evils of hu- man society — pride, hate, anger, covetousness, envy, fear, jealousy. The very names call up Im- ages of gloomy walls, custom houses, forts, locked doors, secret stairs. Isolation, loneliness, anxious, worried faces, frightened populations, blazing In- surrection and mob violence. Such things happen whenever the stream of normal intercourse, arising out of cheerful and trusting good will, is cut off be- tween the members of society, between nations, be- tween classes, between the brain workers and the hand workers, between teachers and their youth, be- tween neighbors In the tiniest village. Every or- THE NEW FORCE 1 57 ganlzatlon or form of society that proves to hamper this full and free circulation of friendly life must disappear. Men who ought to know better, even university men, are so foolish as to try to make excuses for themselves In behalf of their pride or anger or im- patience or distrust or jealousy. Our Indignation is just, they say. The others do not deserve to be trusted. The multitude are too ignorant to be re- spected. The only language which certain people understand Is brute force. '* The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Our laborers are always unrea- sonable. The democracy is not fit to rule. Such things as these may be heard every day In clubs and Pullman cars and parlors. They are never said with friendly faces; they are not said out of open minds. Doubtless they can be matched, perhaps with rougher phrases, but hardly with more bitter tones, by angry men at lunch counters or In meetings at street corners. Men talk of checking and restraining social mala- dies by force of laws and closer public regulations, as they talk of keeping the peace of the world by an armed League, '' policing the seas " with war- shl'ps. As If you could fight an evil spirit with gun- powder! As if you could overcome pride by vio- lence; as If you could compel social health by cre- ating new fear ! The social maladies are all one malady, and that malady Is negative rather than real and positive. It arises out of the want of sound social life — 158 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the stoppage of the circulation of the normal life of good will. Stupid society has made a fashion of doubt, of suspicion, of distrust. Change the bad fashion for a better. Make a habit of a kindly manner, of courage, of cheerfulness, of apprecia- tion of the good to be found in the world. Was ever anything gained by discovering and retailing evil? Watch the effect. Wherever good will is at work, the demons of the darkness disappear. The good will liberates our souls and lets us out into the open. Live in good will, and you have entered a mighty alliance, with the universe on your side. Friends rise up everywhere to greet you. Locked doors are thrown open. What if you have fewer dollars to your credit on the assessor's books, pro- vided you can look any man in the world in the face, as one who holds and seeks nothing with covetous eyes! I urge nothing that is not upheld by the facts. Skillful administrators who have tried what good will does with wild tribes on the prairies or with savage Moros, explorers who have threaded their way through the desert, a new school of pioneers in industrial democracy, a gallant group of success- ful experimenters with human nature in city police courts and with prisons, a host of modern teachers and parents, are ready to give their overwhelming testimony to the power of good will, as the social life force to cure and dissolve the evil in men. Everything else fails, because everything else acts like a drug to create ailment, not to cure it. The THE NEW FORCE 159 good will brings free circulation of spiritual life, and every one can do something to make this free life- flow prevail. Helping to free and heal society, he frees and saves himself. I trust that I have made my point clear, that the good will is no more our ov/n creation than is the electric energy. We learn to turn it on and use it. It is one of the " powers not ourselves," as righteous- ness is, as beauty is. The gift of God — we use it as we use life itself. No pride or egotism, but a restful and inspiring satisfaction grows out of this fact. It is indeed a sort of witness of the presence of God. Ill THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN The only dreadful heresies are such as undermine our humanity and our spiritual life. They are not mere differences of opinion: they touch human con- duct, and they are apt to be extremely popular and even " fashionable." Every fresh generation of mankind inherits, and is obliged to carry upon its back, a considerable load of the ideas and prejudices of its forefathers. No one knows how much of himself, so far from being his own self, is the transmission of a long line of more or less barbarous ancestors. The worst errors thus come to us from a time when man was hardly conscious of possessing a spiritual nature. We put aside the so-called theological heresies. Did the holding of any of them, about '' the Trin- ity," for instance, tend to make a man worse — cruel or untruthful or dishonorable? Let me name certain errors which do have the effect of lowering our humanity and making men worse. We might call them the unsocial heresies, because they alienate men from each other and create enmity. One set of these heresies concerns men's thought of what life Is. Thus, men think that success in life consists In getting all that we can. They mean get- i6o THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN l6l ting things f money and what money will buy. They say that " every man has his price," and that " a man will give all that he hath for his hfe." They mean that men are essentially selfish. When they say these things they are thinking of the animal or physical man, who is not really a man. What they say is not true of a real and whole man. It is hardly true of a dog. We are poor indeed if we do not know men who are beyond being bought at any price. President Wilson has been affirming that our nation went to war for its ideals ! If this is ten per cent, true, it confutes the heresy that life consists in the things that you can get, and that men are altogether selfish. Another group of heresies touches men's ideas about force. It is the fashion to say that what wins, and always must win in the end, is superior physical or mechanical force. War is nothing more or less than the appeal to this force. The tinge of international law' in it in no wise changes its character. It is said that all government, from that of the home to a League of Nations, rests at last on superior force. Every election in a democ- racy is thus an appeal to the strength of greater numbers, or the greater wealth that controls num- bers. It is claimed that civilization would go to wreck unless the civilized nations held force enough to overpower one another ! The error here starts from a false idea about man and the nature of his humanness. On our physical side, compared with the animals, we are pitifully 1 62 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY feeble. But our intelligence, a purely spiritual fac- ulty, sets us at the head of creation. As soon as the man steps forth a full man, the spiritual powers in him, mind, idealism, faith, loyalty, sympathy, con- stitute his distinction from the animal. All the powers of the universe culminate in the man of good will, heart, soul, mind, strength, vision, love, acting together. This is not the force that men talk about when they say that government and civilization rest upon force. The force that constitutes a civil- ized man is spirit, or will, akin to the force that rules the universe. Let a man once assimilate this fact and he will never again think that the ordeal of battle, long since rejected in every decent relation between men, is nevertheless needed to support the cause of civilization! In fact the glorious history of civilization is the process by which every imperial- istic scheme that rests upon mere might goes to de- struction, and " the weak things of the world " prove to be those chosen to " confound the things which are mighty." The worst of the heresies about force are those which men practice under the head of government, and even of popular government, in their treatment of one another, and especially of the weaker mem- bers of society and of backward peoples. The great war was a revelation of the subtle and poisonous working of the old idea that " might makes right." When the war-lords say this, the " free nations " hate it. But what do the same free nations say? They say, *' Necessity knows no law." Do the Ger- THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 163 mans use cruel or immoral means ? The Allies pres- ently use the same means. They thus justify their enemies, who held that their cause was right — yes, necessary " for the good of the world " ! Distin- guished Germans have said this. In the eyes of the Germans the Allied Nations, starving them to death, looked much the same as Bolshevists presently looked to the Allies. The Allies professed to carry on war for human- ity, and to save civilization, as if they possessed it themselves! They proceeded to assume arbitrary power; they stamped out free discussion; they en- forced their will, exactly as a tyrant does, upon those who did not believe in the righteousness of their superior force; their greater numbers, their physical necessity made new crimes; they secured authority for universal conscription and snatched free men, much as in the days of the press-gang, away from their work and their homes and compelled them to go over seas to kill men like themselves, knowing as little as they did what the war was about; they exercised tortures to break the wills of those whose respect for humanity forbade them to put men to death; they filled their jails with political prisoners, men or women. Was not this to say what Germany had said, that might is right, that necessity knows no law, that the Government is absolute over the individual — the same old heresy, pleasing to mon- archs in the time of our forefathers, whose repudia- tion of it drove them here into exile? Great good may come out of all this mischief. 1 64 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY What if it serves to awaken the world to see and put away our current system of punishments and to re- form our criminal law I What is punishment, in the usual sense of the word, but another form of the heresy about the righteousness of power and might and necessity? The father, the teacher, the judge, the court martial, or the State, having power, has therefore the right to punish disobedient subjects, a child, a citizen, or a stranger. Does this right come down from heaven? Who has the right to vest it in a king? Does a majority of voters possess it? What is this action of punishment? It is designed to inflict suffering and disgrace; it may be, to isolate the victim from the society of mankind; in most States, it goes so far on occasion as to take the life of the victim. Is this to do anything humanly use- ful? Is it to insure the making of better members of society? On the contrary, it is generally ad- mitted to result in often irremediable injury to the individual and therefore to the body of society. It is supposed that this right to inflict punish- ment upon a brother man is the right of the superior over an assumed inferior. The parent is older or wiser. The teacher or the judge derives his right from the State; but the State is only a name for all of us, the citizens, acting so far as we may in the interest of all. What then if punishment proves no longer to be in the common interest? Who are we, fellow citizens, to assume in our corporate capacity a superior station as the more civilized and righteous, THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 165 and to condemn the disobedient as wicked Inferiors? The story of Jesus and the woman taken In adultery holds the human nature of such cases In a nutshell. Who am I, the parent, that I should take upon me to hurt, to strike, to humiliate, to excommunicate my child In order to satisfy my grown-up sense of his offense and his deserts? The one thing to do. If I love the child and hold his spiritual nature precious. Is to help bring him back Into the family fellowship. Has he disgraced himself? This is for him to dis- cover; It Is for me to help him find It out. Does he need treatment designed to re-enforce a better will? This Is for us together to work out, as If he were sick, requiring special diet or medicine or temporary restraint. As we parents consider the nature of the child. Its weaknesses. Its Hmltatlons, Its eager appetites and desires, and then also Its priceless capacities, Its dormant spiritual possibilities, the manhood or womanhood that Is yet to bud forth, why does not such a vision of the reality and sacred- ness of life possess our souls as to make It Impossible for us to deal out punishment to him? ^ The way of escape from our barbarous heresies 1 Of course we recognize that a very young child, before the intelligence and the conscience have awakened, dwells in the ani- mal world and not yet in the human. Even so, we know no better method in our treatment than the application of the Golden Rule. How should we wish to be treated, guided and restrained, putting ourselves in the young child's place? The wise and tender mother actually follows this rule. She never forgets that the little child is on his way up to heirship in the same spiritual life with her- self and with the heroes and masters. Her opportunity is to de- liver him as soon as may be into that self-determination which be- longs of right to men and nations. i66 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY about men and nations Is the same as In the case of our children. It Is to see ourselves somewhat as others see us; it Is to think of others as we like to have them think of us; it Is to respect men as human like ourselves; It Is to treat them always as men; It is to expect their best and so to help them to realize their best. Here is the saving truth to alter our entire system of criminal jurisprudence, to put away all thought of " enforcing " justice or peace, or of giving men " their deserts," and to fill our souls with a wholesome pity for the wayward, abnormal and feeble-minded people whom we have either neglected or thrust into prison. As for punishing whole nations, God send the dull world prophets of truth to show us that the laying of penalties on a sister nation, the seeking to disgrace and humble it, the blackening its character and " ringing it around " with distrust and enmity, only Inflames the same worse side In ourselves that we deem so hateful in others I We are all pretty much the same, Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Buddhists, blacks or whites, when we put our humanity away from us. Let us pay our respects next to certain familiar heresies which linger In the murky realm of casuistry and have great staying power. The most common of these Is that we may " do evil that good may come." I state this rather too baldly. Satan does not generally come so openly as he appears In the story of Jesus' temptations. What chance would the enemy have to get into the citadel if he came in THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 167 war paint? The tiny modicum of evil is well sugar- coated for us. The idea is, that provided we do a very small evil we shall draw a great prize of good. Thus, as the story went, Jesus should have all the kingdoms of the earth for one httle act of untruth. What good he then could do! Why should he set up the barrier of his conscience against such a quick way of saving all mankind? Did he not in fact make a mistake in his choice? With Satan's way open for him, he could have had the armies of the world to make and enforce peace ! What harm was there in making your best bow just once to Satan? The tempter appealed to our spiritual chivalry; let your soul go to damnation, he said, to win the war for democracy. Be false that truth may prevail; do injustice that justice may triumph; kill that the world may learn how to forgive ! Try now another quite plausible form of our maxim, thus: " The end justifies the means." We call this the Doctrine of Expediency. When we used to be told that the Jesuits taught this, wie hated it. But is it not exactly what all ChristendQm has been doing? To accomplish a certaii) ^i?d-|Tr,th|e saving of our precious civilization — v^e took a hor- rible means. Why then were not the Jesuits irightt? The end justified the means; therefore men'TVene forced to fight, and pacifists whp- protested against the means must be rigorously'piunished..; Submarine warfare and the bombing • of j cities wfere wrong, but when the enemy thought his endi juJstified the means, we too took up the Slime; »ct^ I arid tb« .$.ame exCU9e«. 1 68 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY How plausible It all was! Yes, without a certain guiding principle, it was inevitable. This introduces us to another of the errors that hurt men; namely: Between two evils choose the lesser. Certainly, we all say, if we are dealing with things. If it is a question of losing one's limbs or losing one's life, one submits to an operation. Even so the choice is apt to be made in the dark! What do we know as to which of various evils is the least? In the realm of the spirit, however, in all matters touching our humanity, no such rule exists. Face the issue squarely ! What is evil in the moral, social, spiritual conduct? It is whatever hurts our human- ity, whatever lowers the standard of truth, justice, or mercy in ourselves or In others, whatever lessens the good will. The rule here is to do no evil. To do evil in the realm of our humanity Is to give and take poison. There is nothing commensurate be- tween losing money or losing a limb or suffering pain, and losing spiritual life, in becoming a worse man, in assisting others to become worse rather than better. You tell me, that between the little false- hood and the loss of my salary and the suffering of my family, I should choose the former. I answer that I do the worse wrong even to my family if I fail to play the part of a man. What do I know about the consequences of losing my salary, or whether the loss will really be evil? I do know that the falsehood will do spiritual harm for every one with whom I am set to make this a better world. Shall I think so ill of my wife and children as to THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 1 69 suppose that they will thank me for doing a wrong? But how is It when you have to choose between a bad candidate of your own party — the good party — and a respectable candidate of the bad party? Who can tell me which will be the worse choice? I shall do evil in either case. If I encourage an unfit candidate to " bank on " the regular vote of his reputable party, I shall do evil. I shall do the same kind of evil, if I encourage an unscrupulous party to expect to purchase votes by putting up re- spectable candidates. Why must I choose at all In this case, and not rather protest, so far as I can, against political methods which debase our politics and defeat the interests of the people? Are we not set here, as if by the Captain of our souls, to stand true to our convictions in every issue? Does not this mean never knowingly to go with the multitude to do any evil, least of all to gamble with evil choices, as If we could ever foretell their issue I Why is the little rivet placed in the structure of the bridge except to hold firm? What shall we say now to those who are always telling us that our principles are excellent but that *' the time is not ripe for them "? They admit that the world needs the Golden Rule more than any- thing else; but they go on to remark that the world doubtless is not ready for it. They hate war, they Insist, as much as any one, but is not war still some- times necessary? Wait, they say, till we have made the world safe for the Idealists to live In! Wait, 170 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY before you use your principles, till all have adopted them. Perhaps this Is the most demoralizing and popular of all the heresies that the world listens to. You will find it dozing away in all the comfortable chairs of the palaces, the counting houses, the gov- ernment offices, the pews, and the pulpits. What does It mean? It means that men do not practically take this to be a spiritual universe; that they do not realize themselves as spiritual, human, social beings; that they have no profound convictions; that they do not believe In reality. It works out to mean falsity, dishonor, cowardice, the betrayal on week- days of the very Ideals which men enthrone on Sun- days. What can they do more damaging than to say in effect that the Golden Rule will not work? Why teach It In the Sunday School then? If men and women cannot make it work, who were brought up to recite and profess It, who can make It work? Have they honestly tried to make it work? In what new field of human Interest or sympathy have they ever practiced with It and found it to fail? Has it ever failed in the family? In their friendships? Where has It ever failed In business, in treating workmen, In solving social questions? Has not each slight approach toward it, even In dealing with nations, brought in a harvest of thankfulness? Men say, We will be honest when the others are honest; we will tell the truth when all tell the truth; we will stop war when the wicked nations stop. How mean! How disgraceful! Do you wish the others to be honest, to tell the truth, to put an end THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 171 to fighting? Why then do not you, the superior people, the more highly civilized, the more " Chris- tian," yourselves do those things which you wish to see prevail? How else will they prevail? How do you know that you are superior to others? How can you know, unless you use your strength, your intelligence, your conscience, your will? Why not try out your principles and see how splendid they are? " Let us be practical," men reply, as if there were two worlds, one practical and the other Ideal, and two kinds of men accordingly ! Are these practical men happy with their practical world? Have they shown any superior wisdom with their old saws about the ''safe" and "expedient"? Why, this material world thrusts them all aside, and is ready almost to worship a man, who from the high pulpit of a great office has been preaching a few Ideals — what ought to be — about a possible civilized world- order. Would to God that this man's admirable mind had not already been filled so long with the old-world heresies as to take away his capacity to do what he preached I Alas, he too had taken the magic " dope," that " the time was not ripe " to " do justice, to show mercy, to walk humbly before God " I "What would you have done?" men reply. " Was not war Inevitable for us, when once the Ger- mans had sunk our ships? " But the great war did not begin with the Germans. It had many begin- nings. It began for us when the United States fought a needless war with Spain. It was Karma 172 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY when we took upon ourselves the role of an Imperial- ist State in the Philippine Islands; it was accumu- lated destiny with every new battleship that we built. These things were preparations for war, not for the peace of the world. They each and all set up vibra- tions in the minds of every German militarist and lowered the moral tone of every one who had ac- cepted their supposed necessity. How else could they work but In the way of distrust, fear, suspicion, inhumanity? Not thus are made the approaches of peace. Peace is costly; It means sympathy, gener- osity, modesty; it knows how to forgive; above all things it means good will toward all men, with the emphasis of reality on both the will and the ^ood. The peace which the world needs approaches with each fresh soul who forsakes the ways of selfishness, whether personal or national, and chooses the way of the civilized man. We need now to clear from our minds a whole cluster of heathen falsehoods as, for example, that goodness is feeble and evil Is strong; that Ideals are dreams, and gold, corn, and barrels of flour are real- ities; that human nature Is a poor, feeble thing at best and you never can change It. People seem to themselves very wise In repeating these old saws as If they were original. Did we not admit that all the heresies that hurt men are fashionable? You can cite plausible facts to support them! Pray cite all the facts that you wish. Please then exercise the slenderest Intelligence upon the direct question: What Is the truth? THE HERESIES THAT HURT MEN 173 Is goodness feeble? It is the toughest substance in the universe, guaranteed by the Almighty. Men have thought they were trampling upon it, breaking down its will, torturing and crucifying it. But they never could kill it; if they seemed to defeat it in one place, presently it shone out somewhere else. Goodness is integrity, it is order, wholeness, health. Why should it not be strong? Men thought that they must uphold civilization and defend it from the barbarians. How ? By sacrificing the principles of civilized men and taking the methods of the savage! They based their civilization, like all the Kaisers, upon having the heavier battalions. Cannot men see that every beautiful virtue which makes life dear and builds up order in the earth, has been achieved in the teeth of a prevailing animaHsm, stupidity, hate and savagery, simply because order, law, fidelity, truth, good will are invincible? You cannot defend these eternal things with machine guns. You can only give your souls to obey them. What are these ideals which men still daily set over in supposed opposition to their precious, huge and heavy practicalities? There is no opposition. The ideal is everywhere simply the plan, or thought- side of the things you wish to make. The better the thing — a house, a picture, a temple, a city, a friendship, a commonwealth, a civilized world — the better, nobler, more complex must the plan or ideal be. What good thing do you seek to do, purpose- lessly, without any plan? What greater joy has the constructive mind of man than to create good 174 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY plans for good things and then to go forth and make the plan real? This is to share in the work of the supreme Intelligence. What possible work of man is so practical as to have both an eye to see, and a hand to make real, that vision or ideal or plan which we call the " Kingdom of God "? We mean a humane and civilized world, good to live in throughout every corner and island of it. I see nothing weak about this, or in the men and women who will bring it to pass. We do not wish to change human nature. We are well enough suited with it at its best. We like the children with all their faults. We like grown- up people, despite their faults. We are not satisfied with the children or their elders. We are distressed whenever the brute grows while the man does not grow. But we maintain that men and women and children have in them that which is divine and eter- nal. When this better nature gleams out, as it does at times gleam from the darkest corners, we are glad and happy. By virtue of this we can believe in the men yet to come. Let the good spirit play like the sunshine upon men, let men from childhood up- ward have the conditions and the opportunity to grow freely as men, and no one will complain any longer that we must change human nature. It will be good enough when the human nature in all of us grows, matures, ripens, as it has already many a time grown and borne fruit. SECTION IV THE NEW CIVILIZATION I RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY In arraigning the current religion for its compara- tive impotence, we showed that it does not half be- lieve its own doctrines. It is supposed to teach the idea of a living God, a real and spiritual universe, to which we belong. It teaches in words the idea of a brotherhood of mankind. But it does not believe that it is safe to behave as citizens of this spiritual universe or to trust men to answer to our friendly treatment. Now in religion to half believe is not to believe; it is to mix atheism with religion. It is to defer the operation of your religion beyond this present life, while you carry on life here as if this world were no part of the universe. We wish to show at every step that the proof of veritable religion lies in its use and application. There is no little spot in the region of human con- duct where our religion does not throw a new light, add a new and greater power, and introduce fresh motives and hopes. The good will is at once a force and a solvent for all human problems. Let us 175 176 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY boldly try what It will do In the vexed field of Indus- trial Democracy. I use this term In Its largest sense. Is there anything In the science of political economy which It does not cover ? No wonder the economists have often been dry and dull with their Investigations of the economic man — as If there ever were such a being I It is as preposterous to make an abstract or non-human subject of political economy as It Is to leave the vital human realities out of the science of government. We mean by Industrial Democracy whatever con- cerns the welfare of man as a whole man, not merely as buying, selling, trading, working, serving, or handling money; we mean the man who Is contented or suffers Injustice, who aspires to larger means and opportunity, who Is thwarted, stunted, and enfeebled, who Is bound up In all sorts of relations with the family, with friends, with clubs, labor unions, and associations, with the State, the nation, and the aims of political parties, with the methods of taxation, with the Interests of toiling, despoiled, starving, op- pressed Industrial comrades in every part of the world, with helpless. Ignorant, and Idle peoples also and backward races. Thus, whatever is human be- comes precious to the religious-minded and demo- cratic student of political economy, whether he has a great library at his command or Is only the humble reader of a labor paper. His wish Is more than to know facts; he also desires to sift the facts with one major end; namely, to see how better to lift the level of life for all men; not the physical life alone, RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 177 through better wages and outward conditions, but the spiritual life also, in which man is a candidate for new reaches of free, artistic, aesthetic, affectional expression. We want to learn how every one can be set upon the path of happy social experience; we want every one to have the normal rewards of his greatest usefulness; we want human conservation. The scope of human interests is amazingly wide and complex; it is unlikely that we can tell in advance how any theory or scheme will work in its ultimate effect. We must cheerfully try social and political experiments; we must be hospitable to new proposals as well as conservative in keeping whatever values we have already obtained. Do we want socialism, for example? No one yet can possibly tell us what socialism will be and what it will do ? Let us not be afraid to take such steps toward it as are obviously just. To do justice must surely be safe. Mean- while, no ideal system, whether of government or of industry, can succeed without men and women who are themselves sufficiently civilized and social- ized to fit it and to make it work. Every step we take together toward our ideal system of human co-operation must evidently react upon the men and women who share in it, making them either more or less worthy to enjoy a full and richer life. Who would desire socialism if our experiments in It Indi- cate a general weakening of the energy, the Inde- pendence, the originality, the nerve, the joy of the people? These qualities are the spiritual tests of full- ness of life. Could we be content with any scheme 178 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY that divided the largest volumes of material ever known among the biggest populations, if this well- fed multitude lacked integrity, faith, hopefulness, sympathy; if they had no virile religion? I make bold to say that there is nothing except the new force of good will with which we can address ourselves to the tangle of labyrinthine problems that lie now before the march of mankind. Hopelessly dark without this, with this they become almost easy. Several simple propositions seem to prove it. First, we have a right to believe that average men, and not merely an exceptional few, are susceptible to ideal doctrines. In other words, they are readier for them than the people of superior education imagine. Take, for example, that principle which lies at the foundation of all industrial justice : " We desire only that which is fair, or what belongs to us." This is the heart of that most remarkable and spiritual of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neigh- bor — which far surpasses the rule not to steal. It says: Do not wish to steal. I believe the average mind responds to this. If we only had Imagination enough to see its implications we should hardly need any other rule of conduct in industry or business. Industrial Democracy rests upon the general good will in the hearts of men to wish for nothing that be- longs to another. The trouble now is that we see only the surface of this rule. We think of the items mentioned in the text, the neighbor's house, his furniture, his animals. RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 179 his money, the things in sight. We think of the things that he has already got and which are inven- toried under his name. It does not occur to us to ask about the things which ought to belong to a man, which he has not yet received. Probably most slave- holders " did not think," as children say, that they were stealing the slaves' lives. They saw the slave as one who possessed nothing, and flattered them- selves for their kindness if they gave him his living! How about any class of industrial workers, such for instance as unskilled railroad workers, who, as has been commonly admitted, have been paid insufli- ciently? In other words, wages have been with- held from those who ought to have had them. Why? The directors and superintendents of the roads would have been shocked if any one had charged them with theft. But whether with or without fraudulent intent their conduct has resulted in theft. They have systematically taken from the total earnings of their roads what belonged to, and ought to have been distributed among, hundreds of thousands of men. They have perhaps said to themselves what slaveholders said: We pay the standard rates for this class of men. To-day the question presses more closely : Do you wish and mean to keep back for your dividends what by right is due to these workers? The same question begins to push back to all stockholders' meetings. Do you wish dividends, part of which belong to your em- ployees? No honest and well-disposed men or women can meet this question save with one answer : l8o A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Tell us what will be fair and right! We wish to take no dividends at other men's expense. This is no one-sided issue. The workingman, no less than the employing class, needs to have his ideal- istic imagination awakened. Most likely you will reach his intelligence sooner than that of the wealth- ier men. He does not wish more than is his. Every one would say this. But suppose that being discontended with his wages or the length of his working day, he seeks to " get even " with his em- ployer by some process of slacking or sabotage? How does any one who takes his case into his own hands either by force or trickery, know that he will get only what he tries for, and not an advantage over the other; that is, more than belongs to him? Why should I stoop from my manhood and become dishonest because I think another man is worse than I am? If I do this, it is because I have lost my integrity, my good will, my good humor. I am not at my best, and am ready therefore to commit injus- tice. The vexed question of privilege comes in here. The world has so long been used to the fact of priv- ilege that its beneficiaries and its victims also have accepted it as a normal institution, without asking what honest basis it ever had. I mean by privilege all such special favors, advantages, and exemptions allowed or taken by certain people or classes at the cost, the loss, or the disadvantage of the rest of the people. A teacher has a favorite pupil to whom she gives more attention than she is able to give to RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY l8l the others; a nation favors families who possess the richest and largest lands, and seats in Parliament; a Governor or President is permitted to nominate his friends or relatives for lucrative offices; a class of manufacturers is given power to adjust taxes for their own benefit; a group of shrewd men is granted a monopoly of timber land, of copper mines, of water-power; a millionaire is allowed to endow a family who can live upon the public perhaps for a hundred years. Who would not like, thinking only of the selfish side of it, to enjoy such special ad- vantage in the struggle of life! We are all now being disillusionized, or rather our idealistic imagina- tion is being quickened, about the meaning of priv- ilege. As no right-thinking child likes to be a teacher's favorite, as no manly boy wishes to win the game by the favor of the umpire, so men are opening their eyes and refusing economic or political favors and privileges which carry the taint of Injury to their fellows. Who am I to covet what may be felt somewhere in the great social body as so much impoverishment! The Industrial Democracy, In denying special privileges, open to some but not open to all, is thus enlarging the opportunities for all man- kind, and not least of all for those who In accepting the old-time privileges of class and heredity are now seen to have suffered exposure to special and ugly perils to their character and their honor. Another excellent foundation stone underneath In- dustrial Democracy is the zvill to pay our way in the world. This Is the more positive aspect of our will 1 82 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY to have nothing that rightly belongs to others. We want more than merely to keep within our rights. The idealistic imagination in us is certainly caught with the constructive idea of doing our part in the world's cost, toil, struggle, sacrifice, and even suffer- ing. Do we want to be exempt from that which belongs to the work of mankind? We need to see that it is given to every man and market to hasten *' the good day coming." Look at it in this way. You and I cost a good deal of money in the course of an education and before we ever earn a dollar. We cost money every day as long as we live. The money is merely the method of keeping accounts. If our parents pay it, or the city, the ultimate terms of the cost are in human labor and rarely our own. The question is: Do we ever make good for our cost? Is it worth while that we should have lived, so far as those are concerned who have hoed the corn, reaped the wheat, woven the cloth, cooked the food, and pro- vided our happy surroundings? Evidently, the more I use and the more I enjoy, the more am I bound in honor to make an equivalent in some kind of human service. To pay my bills honorably is the least part of it. What can I say of the means through which my income reaches me? Is it hon- estly earned? That is, does the way in which my parents or I got my money do any good? No man has any right to die happy, unless he may hope that it has been well worth while to the great toiling world to have boarded and clothed him. RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 183 Does some one resent such close economic scrutiny into the social value of men's lives? Call it not only sound economics, but also warm, vital, spiritual truth. What if we are about to find that the con- sciousness of social usefulness is a precious experience of religion? What if the current of religious or spiritual life will not any longer run freely into idle, lazy, selfish, useless lives, which fail to pay their way! It is extraordinary that bright men have been so slow in catching these ideas. How can any man think that he is working for himself? Every one is a constructor of the temple of humanity; every one is a potential contributor to the work of sustaining and strengthening the body of society. Men can hardly make national boundaries or tariff walls high enough to stop the flow of this common social life. No nation can live unto itself any more than an indi- vidual can. Do you imagine that the quarrels be- tween employers and workmen, which cut down the quality and the supply of shoes or clothing, is the private affair of a few thousand people? No, it affects men and women in Idaho and becomes an- other reason for the poverty in the streets of London. It is a sore spot upon the body of society. I do not lay down these propositions as cold mat- ters of duty, but as good news, a new motive, a fresh hope. We are made to like to play together and also to act together. The moment man becomes a co-operative being he can never be at his best or l84 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY happy till he is aware of playing his part in the orchestra of life. You may almost lay down the rule that the deepest wish in a man's heart is that he shall count for something worth while among his fellows. There is a certain sense of immortality in the thought that one has added worth to the structure of human life. The builders of the medie- val cathedrals must have had something of this hopeful fellowship. Their work was a parable for men of all time. We want a social state in which the whole man Is in his work. Industrial democracy is nothing less than good society. Whenever you are at work, you, at your best, useful, skillful, honest, effective, free, happy, ought to find other men and women work- ing in hope and sympathy and establishing excellent comradeship. We have no hard and fast limita- tion of the terms of social service, as if only hewers of wood and drawers of water were useful, or again as if all could ever be equally serviceable. W^e leave nothing out before which you can fairly mark the plus sign. We leave out no well-learned lesson in a school, no smile of a child, no brave gesture of a sick man in the hospital, no " God bless you " from the mouth of an old man or woman who can now do nothing more than to add sweetness and light to per- fect the atmosphere of the home. We count for Its full worth every picture and song and verse and story that makes for beauty and joy. We can afford to give everyone his place In the Industrial Democracy. W^e grudge the cost of his living to no one who is RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 185 willing to do his part and be modest about it, to appreciate also the full worth of his fellows. We associate democracy with liberty. In the highest sense you can never take away a man's lib- erty. They put Socrates in prison, but, as he told them, they could not catch his soul. It rests between you and God at each moment to be so free, so will- ing, so satisfied, heart and soul, with what you have to do or bear, that you are beyond the confines of time and place and circumstances. But this higher meaning of liberty is bound up with, and largely exer- cised through, external conditions. Thus a free state, as distinguished from a tyranny, opens oppor- tunities for all its people to develop and express their opinions and to shape its conduct. This fine theory of democracy has never yet been attained anywhere. We have been disappointed in our American democ- racy. We have come to see that no political democ- racy can be free or happy, while industrial democ- racy does not yet exist. You must throw off all shackles from men and women. This is the modern message; it is a spiritual message. You will not find a solid philosophy, much less a general persua- sive motive for It, except on spiritual grounds. Those who are going to Insist most strenuously upon it will be everywhere the men and women of good will; that Is, religious-minded people. The selfish people, hi^h or low, stand to block Its way. What kind of democratic conditions must we now establish In industry? Suppose we Imagine one of 1 86 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the old-fashioned ship yards on the coast of New England a century ago. It was a co-operative en- terprise In which half the men of the town might have a share in the vessel. Did any man com- plain of the pay or the length of the day's work? He could go back to the land and be his own master. The men who built the ship might have a chance to sail with the captain who had launched her. They knew one another; the Captain had to be on his good behavior If he wished to keep his men — often his own neighbors. All the crew might have a bonus in the profits of the voyage. Contrast these free possibilities, In which the ven- ture of a ship or a voyage spelled opportunity, with the narrow limitations of a vast modern shop or factory or mine. What can men do who find them- selves under a tyrannous foreman and at the same time at an almost infinite remove from the well- guarded superintendent's oflice? Where are the owners of the business? In a dozen States. Who makes the rules? Who fixes the pay? Who can relieve uncomfortable or unhygienic conditions? Who cares for you? Where can you go If you give up your place? What If you have a family of little children who leave no surplus in your purse at the end of the week? If you go away what reason have you to expect to find better conditions? Put yourself In the place of any one of the million work- ing people, such as come to America without know- ing the English language, and ask what you would do and what you would want. How much would RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 1 87 the right to vote for the President touch your actual life? Perhaps you would think bitterly of the peo- ple who owned the mill or the mine. You would not dream that they might be kindly and justly-inten- tioned. You would say that they cared for nothing except to make money out of you. How preposter- ous it would seem to be told that you and they are actual partners in a grand social enterprise, that its only justification Is in the social service in which the owner's savings and capital are combined with the earning of your daily bread ! Do you not see that here is an actually harsh system of bondage under the flag of a free country? In war time the President told us that every worker counts the same as if each man were a soldier in arms. It came as a new idea; of course it was absolutely true. But how should it be true in war time and not always? The needs of war pass and the soldiers are disbanded. But the workers are needed forever, not by one nation alone but by all humanity, which lives by the common labor. The idealistic imagination of millions of workmen act- ually caught, and responded to, the President's ap- peal. Even the owners and great superintendents saw that it must be true. Was it true for the work- men and not true for the well-fed owners? Did it command the great group to work with a new cheer- fulness, and permit the smaller and more powerful group to become " profiteers "? The whole nation cried out against this shame. But why should reck- less gathering in of profits in war time be shameful, 1 88 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY and reckless selfishness in the treatment of men and women still be respectable at any other time ? What is there in the nature of war to require a higher re- spect for human labor than we should always have for it? The President, however, did not merely preach a sermon to the workers of the nation on the dignity of labor and the worth of the individual man; steps were at once taken to translate the lesson into action. Were the men in shops and mines co-workers with soldiers in the field and rich directors in their oflices? Then they must have at least such wages as became their honored and respected callings. Should we give every beautiful kind of care to the soldier, and take no thought for his brother without whose serv- ice he could not move? What a wonderful lesson we have been learning of the solidarity of mankind I But this solidarity of mankind is the key to Industrial Democracy. Can we ever go back, having caught the idea, and do or permit the things that once fet- tered the lives of men and imprisoned their spirits? Can we ever forget that which alone gave war any feeble excuse — the idea of the humanity for which men were asked to lay down their lives? The vast industries which everywhere lift their big walls and chimneys represent a new order — the kingdom of mechanical power, of steel and electric- ity. They have grown so fast that we have only now begun to change them over into human terms. We thought that they were here to make money for us. We did not see that they would be Frank- RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 1 89 ensteins unless we attached them to the spiritual ends for which we all exist. We must make them into the grandest means ever yet devised for the welfare of mankind. We must re-dedicate them to the service of humanity. The indispensable conditions without which it is going to be henceforth intolerable to permit the in- dustries of the world to go on, already become quite clear. What now would be our wish, if our place in the labor world chanced to be as workers among other thousands? We should want, first, respect, good manners and good temper, not only from the heads and managers of the work, but from the pub- lic also; that is, from all who share the product of the work. The complete structure of democracy rests upon this honorable respect, which sees the man in every form of working costume, whether he de- livers letters, or defends the roadbed of a railroad from washouts, or heaves coal. We have felt just enough of this spirit in the war time to understand how, once shown, it can never be allowed to lapse. Next, we should want for ourselves and for the sake of our children such wages and conditions as tend to develop manly character and self-respect and to ensure clean and decent living. We have begun to perceive that such conditions run with and not against the economies of sound business. We can- not afford to pinch and starve our cows and horses. Is any modern man so dull as to think we can afford to set human lives in squalid terms? The only ra- 190 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY tional end and aim of organized business is to fit men happily and effectively to their work. We might have a socialist State and for want of the spiritual conditions fail to get and give this demo- cratic respect. We might stop a good way short of Socialism and, with right human relations, have complete respect for each other. Next, we want for every one the utmost possible freedom of environment. No shop or mine or mill must seem to confine men like a prison. We need to know that for any good reason we are free to move out and change from a factory to the land, or from farm work to a trade. I can be content to stay all the better when I am not conscripted and forced to remain like a serf. We want also complete democracy of manage- ment. This is not to say that we must have " social- ist " management, or majority rule, either in the State or the shop. It means something more prec- ious and profound. We have had terrible visions in almost every nation of the cruel and overbearing tyranny of which a multitude is capable, and what despots a majority may tolerate or raise to power. I call that only a democratic management which is characterized throughout by good will, in which every interest in the common work, or its product, is consulted and enjoys the liberty of expression, of criticism, complaint, and constructive suggestion. I can imagine a ship's captain, picked out by the own- ers, giving men, freely shipping with him, a thor- oughly democratic management; and I can imagine a RELIGION AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 19 1 President of a nation, chosen by the secret ballot, tak- ing advantage of the party system to usurp and exer- cise undemocratic power. How can a democratic people ever suffer a President to have the imperial control of an army and navy? The greatest of all things that we want for the happiness or success of our labor is hope. Do you wonder that most men have reaped little satisfaction from life? What satisfactions worthy of men can suppressed populations ever enjoy? Nations have run down and faded out. Why? Because the hope of achievement has faded. What could you expect of the children forced by the need of bread into the cotton mills of Lancashire? Only the few could even glimpse, over the stunted bodies and minds of their fellow workers, the coming dawn and hear a valid call to make themselves ready to welcome it. Everything composing man's life is electric to spiritual conditions. High wages, adequate food, clean work-rooms, and comfortable housing are by themselves like the connecting wires, vain unless the power runs over and through them. They could not even exist till an age had come when loyalty, friend- liness, justice, had set up proper batteries to fit them to act upon thousands of hearts. They could not satisfy human beings unless a new atmosphere of confidence, mutuality, good will, and the hope of the new day were warming their souls. The Industrial Democracy is greater and better than any definition of it. It is rehgious. It fits into a conception of God's world — no selfish devil's world. It belongs 192 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY to the realm of Integrity, harmony, music, and happi- ness. It is such an organization of the work of the world, so free and yet so intelligent, as tends to bring each man to his best and to fit loyal and friendly men to the most abundant service of all, combining welfare and happiness. It cannot possi- bly come about through the most ingenious machin- ery; it will always be creating and renewing its tools and sending useless worn out gearing to the scrap heap. It Is vital and growing; and the best of it is that you can never quite attain to Its inexhaustible possibilities. See under our eyes how a few nations, half awake to the call of the needy humanity, can feed and clothe a starving, desolated world, racked with strife. What might we not do, altogether awake; trusting where we now distrust; comrades all, where we still fear enemies; free at last of barriers and divisive jealousies; educated where we are now illiterate ; sharing immense common hopes, the forces of the spirit of men set to match the unexhausted re- sources of material power? II EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE A NEW kind of education is wanted to match the re- quirements of a democratic regime, to prepare a peo- ple for truly civilized life, and finally to lift the level of all humanity. There must be a new flexibility of methods suitable to a vital and growing organism. There must be no arbitrary line at which any one's education is assumed to come to an end. Arrange- ment must be made for the continual teaching of a people, none of whom can ever grow too old to learn. In the old days, and very lately too, on the conti- nent of Europe, they provided for the education of a small class to command, while the body of the peo- ple were prepared to work and fight and obey. The traditions and methods of this intolerable dualistic training still hold a dead hand over our minds. Some of its culture was doubtless excellent. We have to educate no longer an aristocratic class to command, but ^e have the larger enterprise of training a multitude of men and women, out of whom a better and more numerous leadership than ever was before shall be evolved. As individuals cannot have a surplusage of intelligence or virtue, so the 193 194 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY commonwealth cannot possess a surplus of trained and high-minded candidates for every kind of office and leadership. The more fit men, the better. The fundamental requirement of a democratic ed- ucation is that it shall fit every one to be useful in the largest sense. Every one must produce some actual social value; we can exempt no one from this test. What good can you do for society? How can any one possess a rich and all-round culture without welcoming this law of the common life? Who is content to be useless? Let no one suppose, because this seems obvious, that we have more than begun to persuade every one in America to believe it. Do we not know men, like hereditary Hessian dukes, who assume that they have a right to live on the wealth of their grandfathers, on the unearned increment of a corner lot, or on the profits of a lucky speculation, and that they can " found a family " to go on living after them without any useful work? Have not working men often the same bee in their bonnets, and while they now belong to a labor union, would they not like the chance also to found a family, as such men do now and then out of partnerships to which they have risen in the steel business? Let us then write into our bottommost creed our belief that the nor- mal end and aim of every man as long as he lives Is predominantly social, to be useful and ever more useful. Why should we wish to live, If our presence here only cumbers the ground? What would a Thoreau say to this? Must he EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE 195 give up his Individualism and go into a factory? But Thoreau was wonderfully honest and scrupu- lous. Do we recollect on how little he lived? Neither did he spend what others had earned for him. Besides, In the wide scope of social influence, we include the adventurers and experimenters, the men of the " free lance " who, impelled by an in- spiration no less normal than that of the poet or artist, take to the woods, or roam and tramp, and on occasion make a psalm or tell their story or pub- lish their records, as Thoreau did, and show to tame minds unknown wonders of creation. But these, too, are unworthy of their free life unless they bow to the social law: they must be honest and pay their fare like the rest; least of all must they pollute the sources of life for their own gratification. See now how far the Ideal of a democracy alters the emphasis of education. Men have been trained to compete and get the advantage, to win out by loud advertising, to think It a good trade In which the other party loses, to create monopolies, to shut their markets against the business of other nations. Men have been told to skimp their work and to get more than they give. The new education teaches the able and bright men to find their profit In excellent pro- duct and abundant fulfillment of their promises. In sharing their advantages with the others. In con- tributing to the total wealth, in breaking down bar- riers that constrain international trade, and taking every nation Into partnership with them. Here Is the way of truth, frlendhness, philosophy, religion, 196 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY of the utmost product also and therefore the greatest net dividend of material gain. Moreover, men who could never succeed in a vulgar strife to trip others up will now find their opportunity for benefi- cent success. The democratic ideal throws nothing of educa- tive value out of its curriculum — no art, no lan- guage, " dead " or alive, no portion of history, no detail of science, no high reach of abstract mathe- matics. At the same time it asks rigorously: What is the use of it? and is prepared to give an answer. No knowledge is alien to the searching mind of man. No curiosity to know must be thwarted. The best State University supported by the people must provide no narrower opportunity for its youth than the most richly endowed of the old colleges intended to train professional men. The people desire their sons and daughters to enjoy every facility that the nobility once had. This means no such slovenly conversation and writing as we tolerate now : it means correct grammar, truth- ful choice of words, an ample vocabulary, distinct speech, well-trained and agreeable voices, an inner sincerity matched with persuasive expression. What was once only feebly attained by the " edu- cated class " is now made the standard of prepara- tion for life for average youth. Why not? Do you want your children to be content with less than the best? Remember, too, that this is for all races and classes. If it is good for white children, the doors must be open equally for black or brown. In- EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE 1 97 deed the poorest State cannot afford to do less; it will grow rich only as it grows generous. Good manners were once, and still are, a suppos- edly special mark of the " gentry," or of a " lib- eral " education. Even so the rule always was noblesse oblige. We, the democracy, universalize this. We desire as courteous treatment as was ever given to princes, at shops, hotels, on the street, from hackmen, baggage men, country men. Courtesy, as shown at a king's court, is nothing but the treatment due to every man and woman who has worth; that is, w!ho is useful. We like it and we owe it. Our education must include it, and begin early with it as the real aristocrats used to do. You cannot put it on as a cloak; it belongs at the heart before it comes out in the face and the voice. Can you bear to hear your own child abusive or insolent to others, espe- cially to those less well off than himself? Human life is a continual process of adjustment — to environment, to work or profession, to one's fel- lows and their devious ways and behavior, to the State and the laws, to the necessities of travel and the customs of foreign peoples, to the variations of sickness and health, of good fortune or loss. Edu- cation is the science of adjustments. It makes one a " man of the world," at home everywhere and under all circumstances, always able to adapt him- self to changed conditions, to bear sorrow, to be un- afraid of death. Every new experience may be edu- ucative to such a person as this. The democratic ^I98 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY ideal of fundamental usefulness tends specially to educate people in this ready adjustability. We pro- claim that every boy or girl — and we are saying to- day every wounded or crippled soldier — must be able to do something well, if possible well enough to bring its reward. We are doubtless going to pro- vide ample vocational training, but better yet, a broad aptitude to do not one thing alone, but many things — whatever calls for skill, patience, energy, courage, resourcefulness, invention, enterprise, will. This in itself will constitute a new kind of liberal education, and a new and broader freedom to the rank and file of men. It will not be enough to say that a man is well read in the law, a teacher of lan- guage or a good salesman. What else can he do? How could he earn his living if he were not wanted in law or in teaching? There is no end to the sug- gestions that occur, as soon as we consider how broad must be the training to fit the adjustments of life. Can the people afford such training as we have in mind? People who can raise billions of dollars for war, with nothing tangible to show for the ex- penditure, can surely raise whatever is needed to in- crease not only the common wealth but the most precious kind of wealth — wealth in man-power. What else is real wealth? Will it ever be worth while to educate every one as well as hitherto only the few have been educated? We must consider the diverse possibilities and men- tal powers of different children. Our intent is to EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE 199 offer opportunity for every one. We shall not force education upon reluctant minds or use our schools as places of imprisonment. Neither, on the other hand, shall we tolerate those " blind alleys " in in- dustry that shut the doors of hope against the de- velopment of skill and intelligence. The doors of the schools ought to swing to let children out, and also to invite them to return at any time. You can never tell when youth supposed to be dull may wake up to a fresh intellectual life. You can never sur- mise what undreamed powers a new love or hope or ambition or genuine experience of religion may add to yourself or any one else. What teacher or neigh- bor of Ohver Cromwell saw in him the master poli- tical mind of his age till his soul was caught with the contagion of the Puritan religion ! The center of human life is in the will. In its free or highest power it is the greatest gift of the gods. So far this power is very rare. The most brilliant minds, the most kindly disposed and hu- mane people have, as a rule, little will to match their promise. Can will be educated; that is, brought into play and developed? We have hardly yet tried to find out. Every other quality in man can be educated. Why not the central life power? No one can estimate what it would mean to the av- erage man, and therefore to the nation, to double his will power! When we set out to educate the will, what is it that we mean? We mean nothing less than a good 200 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY will, humane, social, friendly, effective for the com- mon service. What an intolerable miseducatlon It would be to add power to selfish wills ! We do this when we say In act or word: " Every man for him- self." We tend to do It by our system of marks and honors. We do It for young voters with our cheap partisanship. The will grows normally in the atmosphere of enthusiasm, hope, courage. Idealism. We have put will into war; we need to put a better will Into the service of man. To say we can before each worthy enterprise, to say It In the face of perils and pessimism, to say it in view of the enormous task of making the world fit to live in, comes next to thinking and willing it. JVe can, is waste, unless It leads on to we will. I will by itself is weak or per- verse ; re-enforce It then ; to say %ve will with a million voices for a great and generous cause, for all na- tions, is to become irresistible. In one sense / will Is hopelessly weak. This Is so if I will for myself. In a higher sense there Is no act of the will so grand and original as when we say, ^' I will," bidden by conscience, led by a noble vision, warmed by a true love. Is there any people who need this kind of will power so much as Americans do? We have plenty of physical courage, as well- fed men are apt to have. From boyhood up, how- ever, we have little of the courage of free men — the will to stand up and say what we think when no one else says It, to vote with a minority or to vote alone, to protest against an Injustice or cruelty In the face of our fellows, our party, our labor union. EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE 201 We are mortally afraid of what people will say about us, of being laughed at, of being unpopular, of losing trade and favor. Our legislators and Con- gressmen are rarely corrupt, but most of them do the service of the " grafters." Astonishingly few of them are strong enough to say an independent " I will " for the welfare of the people. The av- erage American Board of Directors may have no in- tention to wrong a rival company or underpay their employees, but which of them will venture to offer a reform of any customary dishonorable procedure? It was just such lack of courage in the Jewish San- hedrin that made them infamous! Has democracy possibly lost something that the kings and aristocrats possessed? Were these per- haps more bluntly truthful, being sure that no one could laugh them out of court? We teach that a man is the peer of any king. Why should he be afraid to say his honest thought? Why should the citizens of a democracy always wait to vote on the popular side, careless whether it is good or bad? Why not train our boys and girls to be as fearless as princes ever were? It is well now and then to say: '* We are the sons and daughters of God." We have talked bravely about the free peoples of the world, deeming ourselves so free as to be able to confer freedom upon the others. We do not yet understand what freedom is. We call a people free if it has no king or House of Lords. This is the shell of freedom. We propose a toast to the health of all of the peoples. May they possess souls as 202 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY free as their bodies are free! We mean freedom from fear. We mean freedom from vain, foolish desires and ambitions, as the disciplined seaman is free from the fear of the storm. This is the work of good education. The free man has plenty of re- sources; he does not need to be dismayed at the prospect of losing his money. He can lead a happy life with little money. He Is not afraid of a change of government or the coming of a different indus- trial scheme. He can fall on his feet and be useful somehow and somewhere. Misunderstanding and persecution cannot control the movement of his free soul. But he cannot bear to see the democracy playing the part of the tyrant and checking the free speech and bolder thought through whose vigor its sons and daughters get their needful practice In the ways of liberty ! Do the American people imagine that they are getting the education of free men in the public schools? What If teachers have no idea of true liberty? What If teachers set the authority of a book or of their own words above the free action of the child's mind, his own study of the facts, and the use of his judgment? What if teachers are made to stand In awe of the officialdom of a system, to the deprivation of their own freedom? What If con- scientious teachers are dismissed because in a time of war-hysteria they kept a fair and open mind? You can never have free schools where your teachers are publicly discouraged from the exercise of free souls ! EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE 203 Shall a democracy undergo the discipline of mili- tary training? How faintly the moss-backed minds which proclaim the necessity of war to teach hero- ism understand the spiritual nature of heroism and the glorious episodes of human history! The brav- est of men have always been the lovers of men. Did they have to practice the art of killing men in order to achieve heroism? You may boast that the idealism shown by American youth in the war was beyond anything in military annals; yet this superb courage, resting on a spiritual faith, was the pro- duct of a people who had never tolerated military discipline and had grown up in the teachings of peace. It is absurd however to say that a government labelled a '' Republic " may not be militaristic. Suppose It holds colonies maintained by force, as the United States has held the Philippine Islands. It is little that a nation has democratic political in- stitutions. If it has Imperialist annexations, If It has an undemocratic industrial system, if its education is not directed to foster democratic sentiment or faith. Suppose every child is used to seeing march- ing troops; suppose the boys in every high school or college are trained to handle rifles and shoot with precision. Suppose every great port has its frequent display of monster battleships. Suppose the histories in use are weighted with the items of war and battles. What an immense educative effect these things have upon the mind at its most suscepti- ble period! Nothing can prevent this effect from 204 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY being Inhuman and undemocratic. For what pur- pose is this vast and costly preparation made? To be ready to kill men like ourselves. To defend our- selves against " wicked people," our possible ene- mies, who are presumably educating their boys and girls to fear us. Why do not ministers of religion protest against an education which costs more than ail the rest of the national expenses, which conflicts with and denies all that churches and synagogues stand for ! The ministers have been drugged with this miseducation from childhood. Harmonize it, if you can, with vital democracy, with humanity, with the essential teachings of religion! This is to try to force two and two to be five in the spiritual realm ! Ill THE TESTS OF GOOD EDUCATION There are certain tests of education that enter into no examinations for the granting of degrees. The first of these is an open mind, candor, integrity; it is at once the object, the method and the test of a *' hberal education." What has there been in the college work of the most famous universities to for- bid the graduate from turning out a violent parti- san, a bitter jingo, or a special pleader for injus- tice? Through the time of the late war university professors bearing the most honored degrees have been liable to excommunication from the goodly so- ciety of scholars unless their opinions were in ac- cord with the prevailing political demand. Thus, when the utmost wisdom was needed to steer the ship of state, all expert minority expression of his- torians and philosophers was suppressed! Do not say that this was owing to the fact of the war. The mischief lay deeper. The habit and the demand for the open mind did not prevail in the universities, as it did not prevail in the churches and among the people. Where was any great college president standing to protest against the suppression of truth? Where did students catch the democratic note of truth " at any price "? 205 206 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY The democracy deserves to be better served. " The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," only yet conventionally demanded in the courts, professed to be good for scholars, is not too good for the people. In their name we discard se- cret diplomacy; in their name we ask all governmen- tal proceedings to be brought into the light. No little group of officials shall be able to misrepresent the conduct of a sister State or our fair intentions toward them. The villainy of the war system could never be begun or carried on, except for the mis- understanding and falsehood of governmental peo- ple who have never taken a degree in candor, open- mindedness, or humanity. The habit of fairness in discussion and the love of the truth better merit the title of a liberal education than the possession of academic honors. Beware of the man who does not wish to know or to tell the truth, or refuses ever to confess himself in the w'rong! Let us set forth another test of sound education. What college degree certifies that its holder can keep his temper? We hold that no man Is educated who has not control of his temper. We ask as much as this of a trained horse or dog. Why do we not expect it of educated men and women? Does any one reflect how largely the catastrophes in hu- man history and the tragedies in domestic life arise from a spark struck from a choleric or ugly temper, starting fire in the ordinary tinder of hasty wrath which all sorts and conditions of men, " ladies and gentlemen" too, carry about with them? Why THE TESTS OF GOOD EDUCATION 207 should not kindly temper, well composed of thought- fulness, consideration, and sympathy, be the greatest measure and end of a thorough and liberal educa- tion, as well as the practical man's most precious asset for business, for politics, for the molding of public opinion? There will be no more strikes or occasion for strikes when we give degrees for the possession of good temper I I do not mean parch- ment degrees; I mean a general understanding and valuation of this hitherto rare power, and such a new insistent demand for it as shall create the supply. Our third test of a liberal education is the pos- session of a generous public spirit. We boast of our free education. Does it carry no obligations for public service at the hands of our millions of school graduates? Where do five citizens in a hun- dred show any public spirit? Skeptics about de- mocracy tell us that at this point it always breaks down. People do not care what happens to their State or city. They are Indifferent to waste and fraud and unhygienic conditions, and well satisfied to be served by clever rogues. Is this complaint go- ing to prove true after the terrible war? Will any democractic nation again allow the most momen- tous of all decisions, the declaration of war, to be foisted upon them without so much of a plebiscite as they take in a town that lays out a new highway? Shall we educate our youth to make money and not to have any interest in those common affairs through which the health and wealth, the happiness and the 208 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY safety of a state are secured? Our universities surely have not yet distinguished themselves by their success in developing the public spirit of their grad- uates. I say these things in no pessimist humor. The same infinite fund of humanity on which the nation drew for a year of war — the sense of responsibil- ity, the desire to do each man his part and be of use, the social and co-operative will, is ever with us ready to be tapped. Shall we use it to destroy, and not learn to use it for pure good and the gen- eral welfare? Shall we let ourselves be conscripted to go to war, and be too unintelligent to set the beautiful new fashion of turning on the accumulated public spirit of millions of enlightened fellow cit- izens for the achievement of the public ends? There may well be streams of various opinion to create minor party divisions among us, but why should not a democratic people move together, and not In opposition to one another, to perform its vast public tasks? A fourth point in good education concerns the valuations and desires of men. How shall we rear children to know what the biggest and most real values are; what It Is worth while to desire and what is comparatively negligible? The law of the happy life is to do, to give, to save, to leave a better society. Where do we lay the just emphasis on this? Suppose we really believed It In the churches! Evidently we are going to lose the best of life If we manage not to put that first of all which alone is first. THE TESTS OF GOOD EDUCATION 209 I have tried in this chapter and the one before it to answer the gravest of questions. Men cynic- ally ask what motives are adequate to keep man- kind up to the mark of the good life. Once you could preach the fear of hell and drive men in the path of religion. But this motive, which never made a man good, hardly works at all with the modern man. It has been said that " the love of Christ " works to change human lives from bad to good. Grant gladly that the idea of a grand com- rade or leader, conceived as walking with us and directing our way comes to some men with a de- cisive appeal and changes their lives to a fresh level of vision and conduct; grant that this is one of the forms in which the supreme fact of the creative life of God appears to men; yet this hitherto has proved an exceptional experience. It strikes most modern minds as remote and mystical. How many of its preachers show the slightest power to carry it into the hearts of this vast, busy, toiling world! I believe that we need and possess the mightiest working motives for the good life that men ever conceived. Taken together they present a universal appeal. They are found in the facts of life and in the happiest life experiences of all sorts of men of divers religions. They include freely whatever power there is in the memory of the great historic leaders and saints, of Moses, of Jesus, of Buddha, of Confucius. They go wider and they take up innumerable more humble memories, such as the common man carries, of loving parents, brothers and 2IO A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY friends. They fit in with profound human desires. They have behind them, as we are coming to see, an inevitable necessity. The fact is that when once you deal with men as men, nothing but these spir- itual motives — memories, ideals, faiths, friendships — all working toward the growth and use of a hu- mane will, can do the world's business. You can try every lower motive but you will be forever forced back till you take the single way where life runs freely. Man, once risen to see himself as a man, cannot prosper — either the individual or the family or the nation — unless he functions as a man and not as a brute. This is why practices such as slavery, tyranny and war are doomed. The methods fitting a better education must al- ways wait on the vision of what we aim to secure. You cannot write them rigidly in a book. Many will recall the Httle story: " How He Carried the Message to Garcia." The idea of it was that as soon as the messenger put his will upon his task, he instinctively used every way that would help him arrive. So with our educational processes. You have an ideal of a proper man or woman. All sorts of excellences are united in this ideal. But the es- sence of it is a free, willing, purposeful mind, seeing great ends and seeking to do them. Parent or teacher or school can only assist. The life bubbles up from within. Take away restraints, wake up hidden interests, give plenty of the material of nur- ture. Give the open door into literature, give field for daily practice, stir the imagination, bind theory THE TESTS OF GOOD EDUCATION 211 and practice together. Best of all, without which all the rest will be barren, be yourself, at whatever price, the kind of man or woman whom you wish to see prevail in the world. You say the great '' Beat- titudes." Believe them then. They mark the type of mankind that " shall inherit the earth." Note that word. It is this earth, for which the rule of the gentle, the righteous, the peacemakers and all the others of like friendly aims is destined. Your hope of any life or heaven beyond is based on showing whether there can be produced here that which is worthy to be preserved. IV THE WINNING OF THE WORLD Is veritable progress possible? Can man control and direct it? This is the hope of the ages; but many minds are anxious and doubtful about it to- day. The time of greatest need has often proved the fittest time of deliverance. The answer turns largely, if not wholly, upon our faith in the spiritual nature of the world to which the nature of man re- acts. " If God be for us, who can be against us? '* If the stars in their courses are in tune with the laws of justice, we have everything to hope. The movement of the world as related to human progress has hitherto been like a drift. But this is not to say that the drift has had no general and posi- tive direction. On the contrary, it seems to be as markedly directed in its slow and cumbrous motion as is the vast drift of the solar system, or the growth and development of a child. As if to prove that man is in some true sense a son of the Mind of the Universe, and especially of the Eternal Goodness, the drift of human progress has surely been toward a prevailing sense of humanity. The great war makes this not less, but more, certain. The war has set millions to thinking what to do together after the war, and not alone for two or three belligerent na- 212 THE WINNING OF THE WORLD 213 tions, but in behalf of the people of the remote islands and of darkest Africa. What can we do together to establish democratic civilization? Grant that the law of the brute world worked first through constant experiment and venture, un- der pressure of the environment upon every creature and race. But the birth of consciousness alters this earlier law. The urging life is now within, not only answering back to its surroundings, but also becom- ing sensitive and gathering to itself ancestral habits and instincts and so creating a headway and momen- tum of intelligence. Consciousness gives the creat- ure a share in the process of molding its life. The wonder of wonders is that man asks and cannot help asking what he is here for, and what Hfe is. "What is the chief end of man?" No other creature asks this. The wonder is not less but more when man goes on to find an answer and to crown himself a " son of God." It is not the arro- gant who do this: it is the meek or modest. It is not answered in haughty self-sufficiency, but in su- preme independence. No royal career ever imag- ined was so grand as the aim of the common man who wills to live so as to share the thoughts of per- fect justice, to discover truth, and to help bring in the reign of a universal democratic commonwealth ! In one way or another many men now steer their way by this aim. Imagine what a thousand men and women in every capital of the world, determined upon this intent, might do to accomplish it ! Its few obvious guiding words, like so many stars in a con- 214 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY stellation, are Democracy, Civilization, Co-opera- tion, Good Will, Humanity. Well understood, each and all of them bring the same message. Individ- uals have dared to try to apply them to smaller quests, to shaping the future of single nations, to the systematic planning of worthy cities for every one's children, to the conduct of vast possessions by the guidance of the expert " social engineer," to the re- construction of religion into a church which shall ex- clude no truthful mind and shall make all human be- ings welcome. All these visions and endeavors point the same way. We soon find that we must take over the organization of the world into our programme. All lesser plans belong really to this larger one. All nations wait for the coming of the universal commonwealth. Kings fall from their thrones and give up their palaces to make ready for the peoples. Men of diverse tongues are seeking to get at each other in a speech which all races may know. Congresses of scientists, physicians, hygien- ists, working men, suffragists, Chambers of Com- merce, Federations of Churches, cross the oceans out of this common interest. The development of a profound idea cannot be too closely defined, or reduced to too rigid details. It is enough if we distinguish pretty clearly the great highlands for which we steer. Any man of ordinary vision ought now to see them. Who that possesses decent humanity can hesitate to contribute his meas- ure of devotion to reach them? First, we must seek to establish a far better politi- THE WIISTNING OF THE WORLD 215 cal democracy than the United States or any other country has ever had. The present unthinking temper of multitudes of Americans does not promise for a long period ahead to make democratic liber- ties safe. Most men seem to Imagine a mysterious virtue In the act of voting: they worship a majority, however dishonestly secured or conscripted. They fall to see how overbearing and cruel a majority may be; they do not understand that the will of however large a multitude can no more make an action or choice right than an Emperor's armies or the angry outcry of a mob. In many cases, however, our present machinery is not right. It gives the least possible freedom to develop independence and to bring able and disinterested leadership to the front. It does not begin fairly to represent different groups and Interests among the people. Its prevailing bi- partisanship is deadening. Proportional represen- tation is coming to be seen as the most Important piece of progressive and democratic machinery to secure a just representative government. Already its presence or absence in a state or city is a test of the democratic thoughtfulness of the electorate. Why should the socialists in the United States be without a vote in the national Senate? Why should so great an Interest as the schools and uni- versities have no representative In Congress and the state Legislatures? You must give the good spirit a chance to breathe and utter itself, or it cannot thrive. Next, Is It not evident that we must immediately 2l6 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY enlist a great crusade not merely to prevent war, but to abolish it altogether? War is the denial of valid democracy at every point. The free nation, going armed, at once sets up autocracy. Its President, with however great powers innocent enough as an elected civilian administrator, once made comman- der-in-chief of an army and navy, becomes an im- perial personage. Every one knows how abnormal power of any sort over men, worst of all over fight- ing forces, tends toward arrogance in the man who possesses it. Even the carrying of deadly weapons is a disorderly element, altering the face, the tone, the nature. Few can resist it. No army can be democratic. For the function of an army is to kill men; whereas the foundation of democracy is hu- man respect. It is impossible to have such respect in men's hearts and at the same time to go out on expeditions to shoot other men and blow up their cities. Of course, the simple and natural way to get rid of war is to disarm altogether. A society of free nations made up of democratic people obviously has no need of armaments to fight one another. It would seem as if the weary, sorrowful, bruised world might have had enough of the lesson of the Great War to see the egregious futility of militarism and to abolish it. It Is more than possible that every other people might be willing to heed an hon- est call from the United States, as the boasted cham- pion of the democratic cause, to disarm at once. If Americans could say, *' We are willing," why should THE WINNING OF THE WORLD 217 not the rest be willing too? If we are not willing, who will be? Why should we not be more than willing? Is it possible that the fears, the suspi- cions, the jealousies, the hate, the subtle arrogance of men in power, the feebleness and timidity of churches, and the national pride, which have always permitted and created wars, are flowing in a fuller tide than ever before? We have suffered a fetich worship of nationalism and patriotism sweeping like a disease over the earth. The real democracy in a people, on the contrary, is in inverse ratio to nation- alist pride and fervor. For the lover of men, how- ever loyally he seeks the welfare of his own State, cares least of all things where his neighbor was born or what race he belongs to. Neither does he dream of confining his neighborly interest within the chang- ing boundary lines of a map. If now we discover that the world, and even the most favored nation in it, like the ruined cities of old, still insists upon putting its trust in horses and chariots, in submarines and airplanes, if pride still " rules our will," all the more clearly rises the call of our duty to establish a new party, a new enterprise, and to use every possible effort to break down the war system. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, long the hon- ored President of Harvard College, once raised the question whether any religion had yet set itself to put an end to war? This question has hitherto had to be shamefully answered, " No : except a few small sects." This fact sets the new task for a living church In the realm of practical '* Christian En- 2l8 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY deavor." What veto are American churches now going to urge to our renewed military and naval ex- penditures, to the proposed universal military train- ing, to the menace of conscription, to the suppression of minority thought, to the cruelty of treatment and the severity of the punishments, made possible under a militaristic regime, of men whose single crime was that they had taken in earnest the famous beatitude : " Blessed are the peace-makers! " These questions are of practical moment to men who believe in re- ligion. Again, we want a League of Nations. What kind of league? Shall it be organized and com- pelled by force, as many assure us? Shall every member of it maintain its army? Shall warships continue to make the seas perilous? In short, shall we build Into our international temple the old-world ill-tempered mortar of mutual fear and distrust? What strong word has democracy or religion to op- pose to this truly pagan proposition, fortified by great names of "statesmen" and teachers? Can we command so little wisdom, determination, and knowledge of human nature and history as to begin our enterprise with threats of economic and military force and the programme of a continued war estab- lishment, " camouflaged " under the name of interna- tional police? Be assured. If we are not yet ready to form a friendly league of equals. If we must wait upon it with loaded guns, if we cannot be trusted or trust others to give and to expect fair treatment, if we will not do ourselves what we wish smaller na- THE WINNING OF THE WORLD 219 tlons to do, our failure will not be the fault of the plain peoples and the workers of the world, but rather of the sophisticated and Pharisee class, the Tories and the conservatives, always more careful for considerations of wealth than for human wel- fare, and blind as usual to democratic and spiritual issues. Here is the opportunity for a living church. What does it live for except to convert the wills of men to follow its shining ideals ? Again, there is no civilization which keeps up bar- riers between its various peoples. You can measure the degree of civilization by this test. To break down the barriers between the peoples is at the same time good political economy and real religion. We want a world on which no custom-house shall rear its forbidding walls. We want no more forts to bar us from one another. The ugly forts now match the tariff barriers. We collect duties in order to pay the expenses of war. We should never need the tariff revenues if we would scuttle the battle- ships. These institutions stands to perpetuate di- visive jealousies and greed. Both of them rest upon ignorance of industrial laws and of human nature. If trade is mutual, as it must be to live, why then do we wish to confine It? If we are in any real sense, of " one blood " with Europeans and Asiatics, as we profess to be, then it Is inhumane to be afraid to share our good gifts and products with them. We have been ready to feed them In a time of world catastrophe. But freedom of trade with them Is 2 20 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY, the natural way of sharing our gifts ; It is kinder than charity. One more immense world problem will suffice here to illustrate the new task of steering the course of human progress. Hundreds of millions of people in various parts of the earth, largely in Africa, have never been counted as civilized. Even where, as in South America, they have had the forms of modern government, they have been too lUiterate to know the difference between a republic and a despotism. A half dozen imperialistic governments have cast the eyes of cupidity upon those backward regions, and eager commercial adventurers have competed to exploit the lands and peoples. The Great War would not have broken out except for this provoking cause, for competing " spheres of influence," for col- onies where white men would not emigrate. What will the League of Nations do to protect backward peoples from the avarice and cruelty of the powerful and unscrupulous, to further the ad- vancement of all such people toward a place of re- spect in the family of nations and, again, to forbid imperialistic greed from ever starting a conflagra- tion in the world? Here is the practical applica- tion of a veritable religion. The Monroe Doctrine is only one branch of this larger issue. As a merely American doctrine it has become a source of danger. The States south of us have no use for it. In the establishment of a genuine and friendly League of Nations we shall never have use for it. It becomes therefore of singular and momentous consequence to THE WINNING OF THE WORLD 221 us what kind of a League of Nations we propose to form. Shall we form it In fear and jealousy? Shall we make it a new peril to the world? Or shall we leave the seeds of war altogether out of it? Shall we use instead the best and most democratic leadership in every nation, the men of the people, the kindly, the just, as its chosen administrators and advisers? Shall we use the democratic method of persuasion, or fall back upon the mischievous old means of compulsion? The proposed League it- self is hardly more important than the growth of a nobler public opinion, without which no organization can fulfill its expectations. We have In the next chapter to consider certain immense changes that democratic ideas are making In the nature of every government. Our League of Nations will be seen to take on a different form In view of this alteration of the aim, the method, and the function of gov- ernment. V DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT AND THE WORLD ORDER We need, In the light of the new vision of a hu- mane type of man, a new set of words and phrases in our ethics and our religion, and specially a new understanding of the popular words concerning gov- ernment. The inevitable working of the evolution- ary movement changes the nature of all govern- ments. This upward movement, beginning In the case of men as with all other animals In the region of force, conflict and struggle to live, at first ruth- less of antagonists, becoming gradually softened by mother love and the love of children Into a sense of mutual aid and co-operation, grows now to a point where unexpectedly the higher spiritual principle takes precedence over the brutal Impulses. Brute force gives way to the superior rule of humanity, good will, love. It Is like one of the surprises worked In things; for Instance, in the change of water to steam, when the mere increase of heat brings to pass a seemingly new substance, invisible, but acting with all the more effectiveness. This Is the nature of evolution as It works in the realm of the spirit. The old-fashioned view was that all government 222 DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 223 rests ultimately upon the use of compelling force; this still hypnotizes the minds of many men who ought to know better. The word govern itself seems to carry by derivation the idea that one or a few steer, rule or command, and others obey. The divine government is thus the management of a pun- ishing lawgiver who enforces his will upon the world. His subjects must obey willy-nilly or suffer his anger. The family is a little government on the same pat- tern — the parents or perhaps the male parent, be- ing the master with his ultimate right to break the will of a rebellious child. Even when we have se- cured the forms of a republic, we have usually had a ruling oligarchy, or partisan machine representing by no means all the people, but rather a thoroughly bourgeois group holding the forces of the State to work their will. It is the same barbaric notion of the ultimate right of men to compel each other by force that survives in the prevalent worship of demo- cratic majorities. Thus it is commonly assumed, as in the late war, that a mere majority — very apt to be a noisy minority — by its weight of num- bers, may impose its will upon the rest of the people, may, for instance, drag a nation into war and com- mand unwilling millions to hold another people as their enemies. They may adopt a system of con- scription and force men to fight against their con- science or else suffer the penalties of criminals or traitors. What else is this than the inhuman heresy that "might makes right"? Not Kaisers nor the bourgeois alone hold this, but all men who think 224 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY that the counting of votes entitles them to force a religion, a change of government, or an industrial system upon a nation, and in fact upon the world, before the peoples actually understand what is being done with them I Against every use of force to compel men's wills the democratic ideal rises clear. Democracy is fun- damentally based on respect, not for the mere ani- mal man, but the moral or spiritual man, the thinker, the lover, the friend. This is no cheap assertion of the equality of mankind. Indeed only on the hu- man or spiritual level is there equality. It is the kind of equality with which a parent loves and re- spects his children. Beneath their differences lies the priceless common nature which all share. The line of demarkatlon falls at this point be- tween the old world and the new, between barbar- ism and civilization, between every kind of tyranny and the Incoming spirit of democracy. On one side is the rule of force and the will to compel, and on the other side — not so much the rule as the co-op- eration of good wills acting together. The depen- dence henceforth Is upon reason, persuasion, enlight- enment, a friendly attitude, such faith in other men's humanity as we wish others to show to us, and a prevailing good will toward all. No wonder that this kind of change seems at first like a mira- cle, and that men laugh at it. But no one can deny that it Is the only possible evolutionary movement that befits our nature as men. Democracy is the way of the normal human life. Moreover, when DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 225 you have once Introduced Its leaven Into human so- ciety, you have made the rule of force intolerable. You have installed an insatiable hunger and thirst after more and more complete democracy. Force, threats, compulsion, conscription, war are now doomed. Every home and school and club and labor union and State is feeling the pressure of this coming de- mocracy. Everywhere government changes its meaning. It Is becoming an arrangement of mutual aid; we are asked to do together whatever makes for the benefit of all. The family is not now an aristocracy but a little commonwealth. The school is a training ground for a co-operative city or nation. The will of the leader, the parent, the teacher, the Governor or President or guiding committee, is sim- ply to help all to act for the welfare of all. So far as the use of force, for example, of the mother for the sake of the child, or the State over the feeble- minded, still inheres in every human institution, It Is now subordinated to the main purpose — not the mere consent of the governed, obliged to obey, but the active and willing co-operation of the whole body, each unit taking Its share in the common enterprise. Even the ideal of a Divine Government of the world changes now in the direction of a spiritual common- wealth of fellow citizens, In training to be friends and helpers wherever social beings live. The Al- mighty, we modestly conceive, wishes no conscripts or mercenaries ! He lays down no laws except such as are in his own nature, as they are in man. That 226 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY is, he does always and as a matter of course, what we like to do at our best. He shows forth his good will, hke his beauty. He compels no man to obey, except so far as the law of righteousness, being the way of life, is itself felt within us as a general and inevitable urgency to obey an ideal. Does not this view, however, border closely upon anarchy? Not at all. Where does respect for men breed discord and conflict? Where does good will stir men to rob and kill? Try it and see. It has even been made to work in prisons; it certainly works everywhere to put prisons out of commission and to make punishment a misnomer. The relation between the government with its claim of sovereignity and the individual citizen and his claim to freedom never becomes clear till we take the point of view of essential or spiritual de- mocracy. Even in the time of Ahab or Nero there was no question for a preacher of righteousness as to where the lines of obedience ran. The obedience due from a free soul, a Son of God, to truth or duty, carried precedence over every outward decree of the State. Sophocles' '* Antigone " puts this splen- didly. What does the State itself exist for, except for the development and fulfillment of a fearless man- hood? One of the counts against war is that, in the chaos of arms, men and governments lose their sense of the meaning and value of manhood. They make a man a mere means, like a stick of dynamite, for securing the ends of the governing body. War de- DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 227 pends upon a pagan and imperialist conception of the State, whose sovereignty is by virtue of superior might. The Republic which proceeds on this claim is presently guilty of the same crimes and barbarities against the personality and freedom of its citizens which it blames in the autocratic ruler. The process is almost mysteriously subtle in debasing the public conscience. Multitudes become infected with the old notion that the State — their State — can do no wrong. Men come to believe that what the State decrees is therefore right. Dearly indeed must a State pay the cost of laying aside, not so much its written constitution, as the deeper principles which build all stable human institutions upon respect for the sacred nature of manhood. I wish especially to show the bearing of this teach- ing upon our thought of national and international government. The master anarchists of the world have not been the extreme individualists — generally a mild and kindly group — or a few desperate nihil-- ists goaded to revolution under the whip of tyranny, or even a still fewer half-crazy bomb-throwers, but the great nations of Christendom. Keeping up the war system as a respectable institution, blessed by prayers and provided with chaplains, they have set the horrid example of destroying their enemies; they have invented the use of bombs and subma- rines and fighting aeroplanes. The war system is the everlasting foe of democracy — the denier of the rights of man and the constant menace to his 2 28 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY liberties. The arming of men with murderous weapons makes a transformation in their nature and starts up every root of arrogance or cruelty In them. Dress a thousand men in uniform, give them rifles, make them march as one man, and they are not the same men as they were before. They have a des- perate and bloody purpose; they are thinking of ene- mies; they are ready to believe lies of their neigh- bor nations; they are fed on falsity and exaggera- tions ; they have become other than their best selves. The noblest men suffer from the brutalizing poison. It is not normal to hate; it is inhuman to kill; it is demoralizing to punish other men. All the great nations up to this date have been the anarchist forces of the world. They have incorporated the divisive war system Into their constitution, defended Its use, and done the least possible to put an end to it. No wonder that straight-thinking men have questioned whether the governmental people do not cost more than they are worth. And they — the real anarch- ists — have had the face to shoot their own citizens for the man-made crime of opposing war ! What governments have not been built on the pagan foun- dation of force and compulsion? It Is no wonder that our own government fell into the bad company of the nations from whom It had recruited its population. It began by a war of re- bellion to establish its own Independence. It put down Its minority of loyalists with an iron hand and made their names odious. I speak In no blame. Few in that time knew any better way. We taught DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 229 generations of children to glory in the wars of pa- triotism. We waged an unrighteous war to acquire territory from our weaker neighbor, Mexico. Hav- ing taken over the doctrine that a nation must rely on might to get its will, having educated our young men at West Point to lead soldiers to battle, send- ing partisans to Congress, on one side to denounce the wickedness of slavery, and on the other side to threaten disunion, we fell irresistibly into the bloody struggle of the Civil War. ^ So little had we yet learned of co-operative democracy, and human re- spect ! So far was the setting up of an external or a political machinery, called a Republic, from the understanding of thorough and humane democracy! The old-world governments had always meddled with the affairs of their neighbors. America took over the habit. President Cleveland actually threat- ened the world with a war against England over a boundary dispute in a South American wilderness ! He tuned the fighting blood of the world to a quick- ened rate; henceforth we made louder call for fight- ing ships and every great and small power took notice. The Spanish War followed as if it had been an act in a drama. We know now how needless it was. The great Republic, joining the list of im- perial nations, with its new and distant dependen- cies, held by garrisons, now stirred the world with the fever of fighting and force. What nation must 1 We did incidentally kill slavery, but we did not, and could not, establish the doctrine that a majority has the right to compel a State to remain in the Union against its decided will; and later President Roosevelt encouraged and took advantage of the right of secession in the case of Panama. 230 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY not have more battleships now that America had set the new pace? See meanwhile what the United States had done with its resources from the begin- ning of the national government to the year 1908. Out of more than seventeen and a half billion dol- lars, it had spent for wars and the preparations for wars, and for vast war pensions twelve and a half of its billions, as against less than five billion dollars for everything else ! Neither do we here include the payment of interest upon debts whose only ex- cuse was war necessity. And now we all cry out at the horrors of a war of which every continent has shared the sufferings. Grant the inevitability with which we were dragged Into the bloody maelstrom. The war was inevitable because we had prepared for it as all the nations had done, as a company of drinkers prepare themselves for an orgy, unable to put away the thirst in their veins. We had prepared for it in our thinking and our ideas about national honor and the need of might to keep right on the throne. In all our talk of the rights of the people we had never thought to provide for the popular decision of the most momen- tous act in the life of a nation. On the contrary we had loaded our chief executive with the autocratic functions and forces of the greatest of Kaisers In the face of war. By a word, by a blunder, he could set off the cannon and kill Mexican boys In Vera Cruz. Despite the sworn duty of legislators to serve the people, the tradition had grown that Congress must serve and support a President In the act of war. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 231 The most splendid opportunity ever given to a man or to a nation was given in 19 14 to America to keep an open mind, to remain the constant friend of all the peoples, to use its immense leverage imme- diately upon the statesmen of the warring peoples, to keep the fire from spreading, to make this the last war, to use its treasures to save life rather than to kill. This could not be. The mind, the attitude, the spirit, the humanity, were lacking. We had not prepared for world peace. We were a nation of willing munition-makers. We allowed ourselves to grow rich while others went bankrupt. Shall it ever be so again? They used to say that no nation could endure " half slave and half free." It was true. We have put slavery away; a new and similar lesson comes to-day. A nation cannot stand, erected half on force and half on a democratic foundation. We have tried this experiment too long. The new issue Is even more profound than was that over the exist- ence of slavery. The free and democratic nation Is a grander construction than men have imagined. Read, for example, the Constitution of the United States. The thought embedded there is to " estab- lish justice. Insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty." The emphasis here Is protection from danger and relief from the fears that attended the chaotic old world — fear for the citizen's property. Including his slaves; fear lest men, our own fellow citizens, might rise In re- 232 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY bellion and destroy their own government; fear of other states north and south; fear of the Indians on the frontier; but especially fear at the hands of for- eigners, counting as foreign the very nations from which our people had come here, lest they attack us and subject us to alien rule. Thus " the more perfect union " was to provide strength for defence. What a wild world it seemed to our fathers! It was only a little margin back to the days when the chief business of every little city was likewise to maintain walls and protect itself from bandits or pirates. We laid our national foundations mostly in barbarism and expended our substance in reliev- ing our fears. Our fears grew with our growth. We have lived to see billions of wealth and millions of precious lives lavished on this slave's work of protection. We laid a single corner-stone In our constitution toward our democratic Ideal In writing, " to pro- mote the general welfare." What did we do In a hundred years for the general welfare? The na- tional government has carried the mails for us rather inefficiently, and with a growingly pernicious ten- dency to menace our liberties of Intercourse and ex- pression. What else does It do to compare with what your city or town, despite all Its waste, Is do- ing daily for the general welfare, in its highways and schools and water supply, and a growing list of new and often most admirable services. Remove war and the fears of war and little remains for which DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 233 the service of the national government is strictly necessary. Is it strange that all governmental peo- ple are apt to shrink from giving up the militaristic officialism on which their own importance rests? Few of them see what a wide new field they might cultivate in promoting the general welfare. See now the trend of progress which, already con- spicuous in the growth of the city, is soon bound to overtake all kinds of government. No city to-day exists as it once did for the purpose of defence. A city keeps no armies. Old-world cities have made parks in place of their old battlements. The city has become a wonderful co-operative enterprise. There are no longer those who command while the others obey. All are partners. Even the police is coming to be a service for the public convenience; for example, to cultivate helpful relations with the boys and to befriend strangers. It is no armed guard to suppress the flames of disorder. Not by the presence of overwhelming force, but by the re- moval of various needless social causes of irritation, by the absence of menace and threats, and specially by the kindly attitude of all kinds and conditions of men toward one another, by the general disposition to do justice and to share in the increasing common wealth, we ensure domestic tranquillity and obtain freedom from the fear of enemies. Who are our enemies if we, the citizens, bear no enmity toward any one ? Now, this change in the basis and character of the city from the forced pressure of fear to the winsome- 234 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY ness of mutual advantage is the first fruit and the prophecy of the incoming change in the aims and objects of every union of states. We are bound now to do fine work together which no state could do so well alone. Learning to put aside divisive jealousies between the several states, we need no longer to compel unwilling or reluctant states to re- main in the Union. That union is the most indi- visible where all are free to enjoy the common wel- fare. Surely we could never again wage civil war to compel a state to stay in the Union. On these terms what state desires to withdraw? As we have thus in our grand domain no need of protection from a sister state, nor of an armed guard, nor of a fortress, nor of a custom-house to distress the traveler, nor of a ship to police our shores, so are we coming by the same magnificent trend of progress to feel toward all the sister na- tions. We have no enmity toward any of them now and we have no fear, except so far as some of them continue to go armed. A Great Britain, a France, a Germany, a Japan, without a fortification, an army or a battleship constitutes no menace. Only the barbarism of armaments and the suspicions and fears that build up armaments constitute our common enemies. Already not a nation in the world fears or hates the United States, except as we present to them the terror of armies and navies. If the United States at the beginning had trusted in its democracy enough never to build a fort or keep a navy or set up War and Navy Departments, if DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 235 it had assumed that it would have no enemies and had never prepared against enemies, who shall say that the country would not have been freer and safer from actual danger and from the bondage of fear than it has ever been? Who would have attacked her if she had behaved justly toward all peoples, and cultivated friendship and civilization with them? Whereas, playing the role of a fighting nation, sus- pected to be willing to go to war over a quarrel in trade, or a boundary line, or to protect venturesome travelers in backward parts of the world, she has actually now become one of the possible greatest hindrances to the peace of the world. Her impe- rialism built on force is at variance with her democ- racy. Her out-grown Monroe Doctrine has become a source of increasing friction, misunderstanding, and jealousy. Question now the professed nationalism of our age and find how much good democracy it contains I What is nationalism, and what is patriotism? We respect every spark of genuine human sentiment through which the spiritual nature in man shines. There is a patriotism which is wholesome and uni- tary. The city, the state, the nation, each is a de- partment of the grand common life of man. I be- long to my city or my state as to a larger family relationship. I inherit the traditions, the memo- ries, the history, the ideals of this fellowship. I share in its duties, its responsibilities, its debts and obligations, its honor and its dishonor, its achieve- 236 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY ments and Its failures. I am bound to do what I can for Its advancement. I owe due regard to its feeblest and neediest members. If there is beauti- ful scenery, if there has been heroic color in the his- tory, if there have been generous and public-spirited people, I have a happy satisfaction in such facts. This holds true of every little town. It is good for a child to have had a birthplace for which he is glad. It is likewise good to have a rational sen- timent of loyalty toward each larger civic unit, to the state and the nation, of which we are members and to which we owe obligations in co-operation with other men and women. We should like to have people feel such honorable sentiments In every city or nation In the world. The more of such senti- ment, of notable memories and civic duties, the richer the world is. This rational patriotism Is based In human respect, In admiration for worthy human accomplishments, in reverence for common human Ideals. There is no Item of divlslveness in It. As with excellent athletes or good scholars, so there may be millions of sensible patriots; the more there are, the better off we all are. The more flourishing, happy, civilized nations there are, the better for all of us. Good internationalism Is the fruit of such enlightened and large-hearted patriot- ism; It learns Its business and cultivates Its proper spirit In the smaller field on Its way to take part In the achievements of world order. I have said a " rational " patriotism as distin- guished from a hectic, hysterical and barbarous kind. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 237 I protest against confounding patriotism with the animal instinct to stand with your own crowd in a fight. The difference here is much the same as holds good between fanaticism and real religion. The fanatic thinks his religion the only one; having no understanding of other men's thought, he would like to compel them to join his sect. Desolating reli- gious wars arose out of this perverted sectarianism; it was a disease of the human spirit. The same type of narrowness, the same contempt of others, the same swelling of national pride, worst of all, the sectarian will to compel others, even to " enforce peace '* upon them, characterizes a large part of the patriotism of the world. It is divisive, irrational, hateful; it is easily provoked; it thinks evil and ex- pects it; it makes a hero of every one dressed in khaki. Every new war gives it fresh growth and feeds it with new fears. This fanatical patriotism is the enemy of mankind. Not *' German militar- ism " alone needs to be put out of the world; our American militarism may be a worse curse to us; with its heathen cry of the " big stick " and its " force, force, force,'* it seeks to compel our young lads to think the homicidal thoughts of a soldier. So much for two opposite kinds of nationalism: one of them selfish, fanatical and autocratic; the other the virile child of the spirit, humane and democratic. With this distinction in mind we can see what a bona fide League of Nations would be. We imme- diately discover two almost diametrically opposite 238 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY proposals for a World League. The United States is perhaps the loudest of all in its urgency for a League of Force. The truth is that the United States Is the home of a most subtle and solidly ar- rayed group of Bourbon conservatives, distrustful of all wisdom but their own, most timid of impend- ing changes toward a more humane order of gov- ernment and industry. They have not yet the se- cret of a rehgion that will renew men's faith and courage. Thus, most distinguished men in church and state do not expect to put war away from the world. They will not advise the nations to " scrap " their forts and battleships ! They are looking on with complacency at the building of a big navy; they are boastful of the success of conscrip- tion; they go beyond our English cousins in their willingness to saddle our public school education with a Prussian system of military training. Beside the armed forces which each nation is still to carry on the back of its people — purely for domestic need, we suppose — they serve notice of their willingness to entrust the new League with a large enough force to compel the nations in it to behave themselves. What is this but militarism and the expectation of war? What is the animus behind it but the old fear, distrust, jealousy, narrowness, ready to blaze up Into hatred — the same inhuman material for war with which the world has been cursed for thou- sands of years! The force is more nicely gloved, but it Is the same instrument of tyranny over the souls of men. Fortunately, this project is not likely DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 239 to be carried out. Wholesale disarmament would probably be easier to accomplish. Suppose our fathers had recommended a standing army to " en- force peace" between the newly united colonies! Would they ever have come together under this menace of a threat? Is it not evident that the great democratic trend of the world toward humanity and civilization runs in the opposite way? It comes in inescapably as if from the sources of being and power. It cannot go back. Let us be bold enough to face all that it requires. Our fathers acted thus boldly when they founded a nation of many states. They put away tariffs and trade jealousies; they allowed no fortified boundaries; they trusted every state, great or small, to defer to the judgment of the supreme national court, with no armed sheriff to press the claim. True, they built partly on the sands, but they show us all the better where to lay the foundation of a true League of Nations. For fundamentally our Union was made possible and has endured, out of good will and out of a general public opinion grow- ing on the whole in favor of justice and humanity. What we would not do under compulsion, we can do as soon as we trust one another and when we are free by peaceable means to correct any serious In- justice. We founded our national Union mainly because we wanted protection and defence; in a less degree, only, for the sake of the general welfare. We had little imagination to foresee the notable co-operative 240 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY undertakings which are now coming to light. For what end do we desire or need a League of Na- tions? The chief idea is that which was only inci- dental to the founders of the American nation — namely, the provision of a permanent court to which all differences between the nations of the world may be hopefully brought. We have the beginning of this court already at The Hague. We do not even need a League to be enabled to use it. Do we need anything more to use it than a treaty agreement between the various nations, such as President Wil- son's administration has already made with a con- siderable number of the most important Powers? The one requisite is the will and the pubHc opinion of nations to use the court. Is the United States ready to contribute this needful will to use the court rather than force, for example, in a case between herself and a South or Central American State? If she has not the will to do so little a thing, would she accept a compulsory court decision against her- self? But we still need protection. We want the free- dom of the seas. What we really mean is not free- dom from the raids of pirates, but from sea wars waged by just such nations as we are, and with the same hideous ships. Scuttle every warship, as we have substantially done on the Great Lakes, and we should all, great and small, enjoy perfect freedom of the seas. Do we need a League to make the seas free and safe for the world? No, England and the United States could effect this by the simple DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 24 1 act of disarmament. Who would not join them? No republic wants a navy in a world of republics. The safest of nations for forty years have been Hol- land and the small Scandinavian States, each with a large commerce and tiny sea-power. Take the fearsome warships from the seas, open plenty of ports to unrestricted commerce, and you will have removed the major causes of friction and, at the same time, instead of making the ocean an easy means of attack, you will have made it a powerful preventive and defence against war. We desire every new bond expressing interna- tional good will and directed for the common wel- fare. We have seen within a generation a most hopeful growth of conferences, congresses and un- ions among the nations — for closer postal rela- tions, for collecting and disseminating information about the products of the agriculture of all coun- tries ^, for science and education. All these fre- quent meetings constitute a long list of natural forms of alliance. These conferences only need to acquire a firmer rootage and extension and proper correlation to put an end to war. Should not the League of Nations grow on such lines? Should it not be flexible and simple in its organization and most free and open in its membership? What need has it of a governing power, for a few to command the rest? Its success depends upon the absence of 1 The International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, founded at the suggestion of an American, David Lubin. 242 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY force, upon the greatest possible use of publicity and discussion, upon an enlightened understanding and a humane public opinion. The somewhat cumbrous and inelastic organiza- tion of the United States came mostly out of the old-world ideals of a government meant for defence. The bigness of a nation is of only the slightest con- sequence in a civilized world. Indeed the most use- ful States have often been small. There Is nothing sacred in boundary lines. We do not love our coun- try more by reason of the addition of Alaska. We should love it no less if it proved convenient for Porto Rico to be joined in a federation with the Spanish-speaking republic of Cuba. So far as our original Union made no provision for the with- drawal of a state, this was in deference to no ra- tional principle: our fathers doubtless wished to be able to mass their forces in the event of war. But nothing can be so undemocratic as to force indi- viduals or a State to remain in any Union, political or ecclesiastical, if the people deliberately and after due process of discussion wish to go out. So with our League of Nations. If it can offer good reasons for the peoples to join It, if it has continental rail- ways to construct, or grand tunnels to connect us more closely, which no nation could finance alone, If It shall mean a common coinage and currency, with mails and telephone lines to make the world more neighborly, if it promises to forbid famine and plague and to remove the causes that create poverty and disease, let us have such a league. But let us DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 243 beware how we are led by imperialistic zeal to cre- ate a league of tyranny and force, whether labeled an Empire or a Republic. The fact is, we have just come to the point in human history where we may see how to steer the way of mankind toward the happier shores of a real civilization. In a barbarous, purposeless world there is nothing to do but drift. But this is not a purposeless world. A deep and significant move- ment ever guides us on and upwards. There has always been an eternal thought urging us. We are coming to share the stirring thought, to enter into the costly and beautiful civilizing purpose, to become share-holders and co-workers with God, and so to hope immeasurably to hasten the movement. We are here to add our willing minds to the Good Will of the Universe. This ideal once seen makes us all brothers. Herein Is the supreme reason why we cannot abide war; we protest against it on every occasion. Wherever It breaks out with its blinding suspicion and hatred it vitiates the life of democracy. The steersman's eyes are confused. VI THE GOSPEL OF PERCENTAGES Say what we will of the commanding supremacy of the ideal things, there comes at times, to many minds at least, the reflex of a cold wave of doubt. Few are exempt from this ebb and flow of the tides of life, spiritual as well as physical. I wish to bring to our aid against these falling tides of emotional confidence certain considerations which dispose the mind anew to its normal optimistic direction. I say optimistic advisedly, because our religion is frankly a religion of ineradicable hope. A man is not his whole or best self without hope in his eyes. No man can do his best work without enthusiasm. Let us not be ashamed to be optimists, provided we are serious-minded in our devotion to truth. The doctrine of percentages is not a dry study of figures. It is a simple deduction from all kinds of practical experiences. Let me illustrate what I wish to set forth. I sit and write on a dreary win- ter day. Fog and dampness are about me. I can- not see beyond a narrow horizon. How much of the area of the country is under the clouds? Prob- ably only a small percentage : possibly the sun shines forty miles inland. The climate of my city has on the average but a small percentage of really bad 244 THE GOSPEL OF PERCENTAGES 245 weather. Now this is a parable. You can apply it in almost any black time and reach the same gen- eral conclusions. We suffer moods of darkness over the wickedness about us. Is it possible that whole nations or races may give way to an epidemic of in- human unscrupulousness ? "In my haste,'* says an old writer, " I said all men are liars." But wait. What are the facts, for example, that account for the Great War? The conditions were not in any way so desperate as most people suppose. Only a small percentage of the guiltiest nation were hope- lessly unscrupulous and irrational. If five years ago we could have subtracted fewer than a hundred noisy, egotistic, wrong-headed, half-crazy but de- termined persons, statesmen, potentates, essayists, philosophers, the Kaiser type, the Clemenceau type, the horrid tragedy would not have been provoked. It is the few, as a rule, who set mischief in motion. It is the same on a small scale in the scope of common experience as in the great crises of history. What makes the toughest boys' school bad? It may be one man; the master happens to be self- willed and unsympathetic. Perhaps a very few boys give the school its reputation. Remove five or ten of them and you would cure the misrule. So with the mob which lynches a helpless negro. Send away a half dozen men or cool their temper, and no mob would gather! It is marvelous how the course of history might have been altered by the withdrawal of a tiny per- centage of inordinately unscrupulous men. What if 246 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Hannibal or Alexander or Julius Caesar or Tam- erlane or Napolean or Bismarck had never been born! It looks as if a little minority has been re- sponsible for a large part of all the evil that has been committed on the earth! Note now another fact that works to the discom- fiture of the bad. Not only are the desperately mis- chievous personages extremely few, but they almost never come together. They cannot propagate their kind; their very presence tends by a reaction of horror to waken into life resilient moral antitoxins to limit their evil. In general, we may say that what we see at its worst, and when we are unhap- piest and most pessimistic, reduced to its propor- tions, is found never to be so bad as it seems. It is not so prevalent, so long continued, or so mortally hurtful. This is in the nature of things, because there is nothing infinite in evil; it runs its course and fails; every particular form of it is self-destruc- tive; it has nothing but a derived life. Turn now to the other end of the scale and see what is going on, or liable at any moment to hap- pen, where the little percentage of the good powers is shown. Grant that this percentage at any time or place at present seems small. But how immeas- urably active and irresistible it is ! It has been said that there are many '' fairly honest men, but ex- tremely few men who are scrupulously honest." Yet one such man lifts the standards of conduct around him for all coming time ! Here in the realm of spiritual forces the infinite life is at work. There THE GOSPEL OF PERCENTAGES 247 is contrast with the bad or you would not know the good, but there is no comparison of power. The work of construction Is positive; a glint of It Is sig- nificant and prophetic of the coming of more of the same, or of better. The old story of Sodom is a pertinent parable. If Abraham could find as many as ten upright men In the city, the ten could save It: not by favor of the Almighty, but by virtue of the common human na- ture which only needed a few true and brave men to rally against the orgy of corruption into which the town had fallen. SECTION V THE RELIGION WITHIN I RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE I HAVE Wished to demonstrate all through this book that religion in its supreme thoughts and ideas is democratic and universal. I wish now to show that its most exalted moods and most precious experi- ences are open, like the sight of the stars, to every one. The greatest spiritual teachers, the prophets, Jesus and Paul, Wesley and Channing, have always said this. In ages of barbarism the religion of Jesus, as distinguished from the religion of the church, was especially that of men who broke through the conventions of the priests and the Phar- isees into " the holy of holies." The day of the coming democracy, when each man shall count not as a mere vote but as a man, makes its call for a broader church than ever yet was — not the church of any one name or founder, though he might be the greatest and best, not the church of any race or nation, but the open church of humanity — another name for divinity, reality, unity and all ideal and beautiful things. This is the church of 249 250 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the spirit and of all souls, to which every man of good will now belongs. Visible walls or buildings do not make It. The peoples of every race and language already begin to find themselves and to find one another in it as fast as they know justice, truth, integrity, and kindness. What now. In this broadest sense of the word, is religion or a religious experience? Let us answer this first in the simplest and, at the same time, the most splendid and universal way. Put yourself back in your childhood and see what marvelous process was going on in you. You were being played upon by all sorts of agencies; continual action and reaction were building you up Into manhood. Both outside and within invisible forces were at work upon your body and even more subtly upon yourself — the invisible spiritual being, always un- deniably there, but most difficult of all things to describe. You looked up to the stars and the sky and caught the conception of space, and of space beyond spaces Immeasurable, of aeons of time, and of time extending backward and forward forever. You touched and heard and saw and wondered at the realm of beauty In the gardens and the trees; you touched life like your life and began to learn Its various languages of sign and tone and changing face, as well as speech. You entered Into a heritage of words, thoughts. Ideals, duties, responsibilities, binding your little life with many millions on the earth, with myriads before your time, their deeds, their varied cities, their poems and psalms, their RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 25 1 hopes; binding you also with myriads to come who might be better or worse, happier or poorer, for the conduct of your life and that of your comrades. You, the self, the growing man from childhood up, were at each moment what this play of forces, physical, human, moral, social, spiritual, made you as you reacted upon it all. What did you ever do, except to answer to It by whatever was within you? How did that kernel of selfhood within yourself come to be? What did you ever create, or invent, or initiate, except at the instance of the building cre- ative life forces? Now Imagine the highest and most complete type of man; Imagine what you would like best to attain to, in the most exalted flight of your idealizing In- telligence. Do not even look back for any suffi- cient example In the past; be content with nothing less than the maximum Ideal, well-made In body, ex- cellently equipped in mind, clear-sighted, skillful, wise, just, true-hearted, lovable. It will not be so very different from actual men and women whom some of us have known. Where, pray, do such men come from? They do not make themselves. They are the creation of the universe life wherever any " mere man " really answers back at his very best to the impress of the shaping fingers of the one creative life. I call this whole series of impressions both from without and within, through the net effect of which, the man comes up into the most complete realiza- tion of himself as a thinking, dutiful, friendly, just, 252 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY generous, useful and helpful man — both a free in- dividual and a social being — the experience of re- ligion. Scougal, a Scotch writer, long ago defined religion as " the life of God in the soul of men." He meant, I think, something like what we mean here. Call the creating universe life by the familiar name of God. This linked series of upward-moving influences, all going to make an all-round man, hold- ing at his heart everything needful to constitute a divine being, would be the conversation, as it were, between God and the man. Every impress of the beauty and Integrity of the universe on the growing Integrity of the man would be an experience of re- ligion. Could you Imagine any teaching more ef- fectively worthy of a divine mind whereby to endow his child with light and satisfaction? Anyway, whatever you like to call It, here are the facts — a continuous series of Impressions — all in their united effect bringing to pass the most perfectly beautiful specimen of the fruitage of the universe ! You can- not possibly think 111 of the world that does such work as this. Now this Is the normal development of the school of life. It Is precisely what ought to be measurably effected in all men. We call no man a failure who responds at all to this type or norm. We call no life a success which fails to respond to It. I am speaking, however, with respect to evolution. I am looking forward, therefore, rather than look- ing back. I care nothing for those who say that human nature has never changed and cannot be RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 253 changed. I am not moved by those who say that mankind has fought battles for ten thousand years and will always fight. To say such things is neither to be a good evolutionist, nor to note the facts of human nature. Human nature normally passes through phases and changes; it wants to put forth not only exuberant stock and leafage, but to bring its choice fruit to ripeness. You may thus know more of its nature, of what it is capable of doing, of what its next coming phase of development will be like, through the biographies of the best typical men and women of the past hundred years than you could know from the annals of twenty thousand years of barbarism, or from all the biological labora- tories of the world. As with the physical side of the vast evolutionary movement, so with its spiritual side. There are times and seasons. We are not saying that when the first poet of the " coming people " foresaw that the day would dawn when the spirit of God " would be poured out on all flesh," the day had then dawned. We are not saying that you could have brought in a genuine rule of the people by an edict of Julius Caesar. We simply say that the signs mul- tiply to-day toward these and other great spiritual events, as the signs of land multiplied before Colum- bus' little ships as they approached the undiscovered islands. This means that ventures in the faith of the coming freedom are safer and surer before our feet than they ever were before. Grant that what we long for — the reality and the unity of religion, 254 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the gladness of religion for the average man, the fellowship of men in a common task, the harmony of all races as heirs of the ages — was never possible before, that civilization could not be before the times were ripe. I urge that the age of the spirit is here, that good will can do what we need; better yet, that it is already doing its work wherever the spiritual atmosphere has become clear enough to permit the waves of the eternal light to shine through and act upon the roots of goodness waiting in every man. Already every impulse counts for its full value; gleams of beauty, works of worthy art, the appeal of music, memories of good men, the safeguarding thought or presence of generous womanhood, every story of sturdy honesty or faith- fulness, moments of wide-awake action at the sacri- fice of self-indulgence, conversations with high- minded friends, the very sight of pure and lovable people — what are these but the contact and expe- rience of religion? Through all of them comes the impelling presence of the one divine life. Is the hearing a sermon or a psalm religious, and is not every movement of life also religious, which stirs resolution, sharpens conscience, adds courage, opens the doors of hope, or sends us forth on errands of friendship? Whatever enters into the molding and the fulfillment of the ideal or spiritual life in any man is an experience of religion. As surely as God is at all, this is God in us. Who can live or move or have his being without this inspiring, upbuilding life? RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 255 But some one says: "We thought that religion had to do with worship and prayers and with what is coming after death." Is it not a strange fact that Jesus, whom hundreds of millions of people worship as God, has so little to say about the worship of God? We do not know that he thought it neces- sary to go up to the temple at all, but he has very clear teachings about the conditions which foster worship. A man who brings a quarrel with his brother to the altar, Jesus says, cannot worship God till he has settled his quarrel. This is to say that a man must compose his own mind and become friendly before he can worship. In fact, this change of mind is itself the best kind of worship. To be friendly is to be worshipful; it is to be in and with God. Jesus also teaches that no one can wor- ship who brings his pride into his church, thanking God that he is holier than his neighbor. What would Jesus, the lover of men, say to churches crowded with " Christians " praying for victory over enemy Christians ! Would he not call a mora- torium over all such worship while Christians kept up their war? We have no idea of an emperor God on his throne desiring praise and obeisance. No good human fa- ther wishes an oriental obsequiousness in his children. He desires their sympathy, their fellowship and their intelligent understanding, their appreciation of his thoughts and plans, their cheerful co-operation in the work closest to his heart. That they should say: How can we help you? is " worship." So with 256 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the worship of God. " God Is spirit and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." That is, as the great cable carries the Infinite power of good will, so the little wires, whether single or gathered on occasion in great coils, shall carry their full capacity of the moving power. To think pure thoughts is worship, to love is worship, to serve for love's sake is worship. Does the church quicken great thoughts ? Then it helps worship. Whatever brings to a man the sense of the presence of the good life of the world helps toward worship. What do you do at your best? This Is worship; that is, you are then with God. You let the selfish will go, you own up to your faults, you open your heart to pity and sympathy, you veto meanness and anger. Surely you are with God and God Is in and with you, when you thus share his life and his work. " Whosoever loveth is born of God." Where love is, there God is. When will men learn these simple things which make us all great! When will churches and temples be so wholly consecrated to these ideas that harsh and selfish men and women shall be ashamed to bring their Impure and un- brotherly selves within the doors, and shall go away possessed by the new spirit! What shall we say about prayer? Can there be prayer In a reasonable religion? In the best and only real sense, yes. The thought of evolution and Its multiform bearings, of the processes of the guid- ing and creative universe life as natural and orderly, RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 257 though none the less Infinitely marvelous, the idea of the universal law as dynamic and vital rather than static or fixed — this Copernlcan change of base, entering all human and spiritual relations, al- ters the meaning of every traditional word or defini- tion. In many cases we need new words to express ourselves; it takes too much time to fit the old words to our purpose. Prayer is such a word. We are not thinking of it to-day as the primitive peoples, like little children, thought of it, as a kind of magic to change or bend, the will of a changeable God to do their bidding, to destroy their enemies, to work miracles and save them the trouble of honest toil. A grander, nobler idea of deity forbids this. Who are we in the face of this vast, complex universe to dictate our wishes or venture to alter its normal processes? How do we know what is wise and good for our own welfare, or for the welfare of mankind? The old notion of the magic power in petitions, of being heard for our " much speaking " passes away in a larger conception. It is like the young child's thought of his father as an easy mark for his eager importunity, which grows up at length into a respect and a reasonableness that at last never thinks of asking favors. Is not this later growth of the grown child's mind toward the parent already gaining a closeness, an Intimacy, a dearness, a trust, a sense of communion, that never were be- fore? In this sense prayer is the closest relation between man at his best and the spirit of the uni- 258 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY verse. This Is a fact in the nature of religion. It is a mood of inward rest and harmony, of confi- dence and hope free of fears, of good will awaiting the monitions of a higher will, in which the whole movement of life is summed up in the great words : '* Thy Kingdom — or Commonwealth — come : thy will — that is, the Great Good Will — be done." This is the substance of what prayer is at its best. It is doubtless In this sense in which Dr. Charles W. Eliot has said that it is the " highest effort of the human intelligence." The man in the fullest exer- cise of his integrity as a man, ready for life or death, reflects and answers back to the Integrity of the uni- verse. The world is now no material aggregate of phenomena, but rather a spiritual unity. The phe- nomenal world and its history are a vast series of parables and lessons of the ideal facts, laws, and life of the spiritual reality. I am describing actual experiences and no mere imagination. I wish to cover especially those cases which rise to what man has been accustomed to recog- nize as conscious communion with God. In these mo- ments of a heightened life, the whole man is awake : nothing in him Is dormant. In the truth-loving man even the critical Intelligence also Is awake and on its guard against both illusion and conceit. Is there anything irrational in the fact that a man may be at his best as a spiritual being without the slightest damage of body or mind? If the word mystical had not been used for grotesque and weird expe- riences, I should like to call the state of which we RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 259 are speaking " ethical mysticism." Call it if you will " ethical religion," so as to make clear where its emphasis lies. There is an essential unity of body and mind. The self is there in the attitude of a good or friendly self, its will bent on the service of mankind — that reasonable and actual service in which each man desires for every man the best that he has himself. Out of this good will and ac- companying it grow peace, contentment, courage, trust in the right, and cheerful optimism. The man is at his best for every kind of useful exercise of all his faculties. Who would not desire this? Assuming the spirit of the universe to be the most real of facts, such an experience as this is what you might well expect. What higher gift could it be- stow? Dreams and visions could not be so satisfy- ing. It is not as if you were lifting yourself and creating the ideas — truth, right, duty, infinite fel- lowship — but rather as if all these splendid thoughts were impressed upon you; as if you were lifted by a power more than yourself; as if the mes- sages of faith, hope and love, were being whispered to you through every article of beauty and every gleam of loving eyes around you. It Is as If the uni- verse were behaving toward you as a real spiritual universe ought to behave. Man at his best Is another and superior kind of force, as compared with himself on the low level of his selfishness. He can see things that he did not see before, and command subtle powers of tact, sagacity and common sense that the selfish 26o A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY man did not possess. It Is as if, instead of laying down his own tiny plans before the Eternal Mind and begging to be helped to carry them out, he were listening, as a man awaits, modestly and diligently, the commands of his leader, to be shown what is best to do. It is as if he brought his hopes and anx- ieties and dearest longings for his children, his friends, his countrymen, and in the quiet mood of one who wishes nothing so much as the highest wel- fare of spiritual beings, finds the insight to help them. It is as if the w^hole world were linked and hinged together for the ultimate accomplishment of the men of good will, and in this watchtower of the spirit he sees how to touch new springs of ac- tion and avail himself of the munitions of goodness, wherever stored. Do not dream but that something new or wonderful may and does evolve from this kind of communion wherein the soul of man beats in unison with all good souls and draws resources needful from the springs of life. Put this, if you will, into practical form. Pious forefathers began the day with prayer. Grant that you can never do as they did. How do you begin your day better than they did? Suppose you rush, as most men do, into the business of the day with casual mind, self-centered, purposeless, unquiet or irritable. Do you not see that you are a different man and destined inevitably to a different day, to feebler and less worthy accomplishment, to acts closer to the danger lines of injustice, than if you took a moment at the start of the day to set the RELIGION AS AN EXPERIENCE 26 1 tune of your life with the music of all goodness and beauty? Will not your whole household be a differ- ent family group, wiser, calmer, more effective, if you and they hear a psalm or hymn of trust, or a few noble words of friendly thought, than if they each tear apart from the rest bent upon their own pleasure or gain? Will not a nation of households, accustomed to frequent hours of social refreshment in planning improved modes of human action and re- newing the grand purposes of life, be a happier, wiser and more democratic people than any equal multitude of anxious, feverish, greedy men and women who never meet each other except for amuse- ment or in their exclusive clubs and unions? What indeed does the world need so much as that whole- some and uplifting spirit, which is at once the wor- ship of God and an act in the service of man! II WHY WE SAY GOD I HAVE been chary In using the word God. Instead of beginning with the old-fashioned assumption of God, I have found It necessary to begin at the other end and to find what the near and verifiable facts are which lie back of the assumption. This Is the method of all good science : It Is the method of the lovers of truth. Moreover, it is good for our mod- esty now and then. In thinking upon the most tre- mendous questions that man asks, to drop every easy assumption and to Insist that we think out what our words mean. We have all heard the name of God spoken in an inert, wholly empty and conven- tional manner. No wonder if many honest minds are shy of it. I have found it almost impossible, however, not to use the word God. Words at best are only con- venient as tools or symbols to express Ideas. No word can be big or exact enough to satisfy us. The word electricity Is a good illustration of this. It stands for a marvelous invisible reality of power, but the bare word does not in the least tell anyone what this power Is. So with the word God. We must have some symbol to stand for the Power, or Life, or whatever unknown mystery It is, which is 262 WHY WE SAY GOD 263 behind all things. We cannot always be saying the Unknowable or Nature. Any and every word is only provisional and conceals the beginning of an assumption. Is not the assumption of the idea of God a sort of necessity of thought? The fact is that we know more than we think. Certain great words and ideas are alive in us and fill the literature of the world. Power, Will, Beauty, Mind, Purpose, Integrity, Goodness, the Universe, Life — each and all of them are assump- tions of knowable reality; they spring out of a world of experience in which we have shared. Every one of them flames up Into view from Its invisible source toward heights of infinity. Try to keep them inside bounds and limits. If you want to see why we have to add the word Infinite to them. You can make a child understand the difference between limited and infinite power. If you think, be bold in your thinking, as those who expect to find some- thing worth while. In an earlier chapter we set forth well-known facts of experience which impress us with the idea of a spiritual universe. To say Righteousness with Huxley, or Truth, Beauty and Goodness with Haeckel, Is to enter the gate of this realm of the spirit. True men always confess that here is the deepest reality we know. God Is our word to cover It. To say with the children " Mother Nature," to describe how just she is, how nothing can cheat her or escape her sight or despise her laws. Is another picture method of saying what the bottommost real- 264 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY ity Is. To say ** The Father In Heaven " is a para- ble of the " Eternal Goodness." In short, we do the same thing In the realm of the spirit, with the facts of the spirit, that we do with the world of matter and visible things. We take a word to cover the mysterious substance of which our bodies are made, and the stars likewise. Who knows what it is? It is more elusive, the more you seek to put your scientific finger upon it. It may be force or will. It may indeed, for aught we know, be a form of spirit. But for practical purposes and the uses of thinking, it is a reality, and seems in its innumerable shapes and colors to be but one in essence. Whatever It is, you cannot get rid of it, or make believe that It has no existence, or break its ruling laws. Is It mere ir- rational assumption that we talk thus of matter? We think not. It is no more irrational when we say: "We believe in God." We cannot con- veniently and successfully think In either case with- out this assumption. The great question Is not whether reality, or God, exists, but rather, what kind of reality, or God, is it? Is it — or He — good? Does it make any difference to us whether "He" exists or not? In any real sense, does He care for the tiny creatures of the dust? Is approach or communion with Him possible? These are the questions of religion. Many men to-day are in trouble about them, and others are indifferent to them, as if they had made WHY WE SAY GOD " 265 up their minds to the negative side without think- ing at all ! We talk about mind and goodness and justice and purpose In the world. What depths there are be- neath these words ! Can any one conceive of ab- stract justice or goodness, or blind and Impersonal purpose? Every one of these words helps to de- scribe life; they are unreal as a corpse unless we ascribe life to them. They are all personal words. I mean personal not in the small sense of limited be- ing, but in the large sense of that which lives and thinks and feels and cares and loves; which Is one, however infinite it is in its forms. How can good- ness or a purpose exist except In a person? We men, besides the little finite person, through which we are seen and heard, carry along something of the idea or image of a greater person, the best self, the real and Infinite person in ourselves. In which we share life with other men and with the vaster life or person, the soul of reality, at the heart of things, from whom our lives spring. In one sense of the word person we mean that in which we differ from every other person. In a deeper sense we mean that in which we are one with every person. The utter dependence of our lives upon the un- known creative source Is one of the most startling of all facts. If one thing Is certain It Is that we do not account for ourselves, and least of all, for those things In us that make us men — our minds, our hearts, our highest purpose. The noblest men never made themselves and cannot account for themselves. 266 A RELIGIOxN FOR THE NEW DAY except in dependence upon some higher power. They go back into the unknown reality of spirit for all that they are. At their best, they have watched, studied, asked questions, listened for monitions and warnings, caught ideas handed over to them, wit- nessed visions, taken on the motion and momentum of a purpose not their own, till they have discovered it and possessed themselves with a love and good will upon which they have rested as eternal and in- finite. If this ray of life or person in the highest forms in which we know it cannot account for it- self, if it did not make itself in the greatest intellect that man has ever showed, but goes back to its source in something infinitely more creative in power, surely no agency in all the mighty stream of evolu- tionary life can account for itself. The anhnal- ciilae cannot account for themselves, nor the atoms; lifeless matter cannot account for life: evolution, a name to cover a mystery, is itself to be accounted for. Nothing which is can be accounted for or ex- pressed by that which is less than itself. Person in man cannot be, without surplusage of person out of which man is born or evolved. We say cannot, not without modesty. What are our feeble minds in the presence of the great mystery? Yet think we must, and if we think at all, we must trust our minds. Our minds are some- how so made, and they follow such lines or laws of action, that we have to pronounce judgments of credible and incredible, of more or less satisfying, upon all kinds of propositions for the guidance of WHY WE SAY GOD 267 life. My mind finds it incredible to think of force or matter as constructive and eternally at work apart from mind, purpose, will, spirit — the eternal master of matter and force. I find it incredible that evolu- tion should begin of itself. I find the proposition preposterous that mere evolution without directing mind, or purpose, or good will at the heart of it, should either start of itself or be found grinding out endless worlds with infinite populations of beings like us, and grinding them over again like so much wood pulp, without any intelligent result. I find it incredible that dependent life like ours could be born or made without independent and self-existent life, infinite to work its will. When they said that the earth rested on a tor- toise or a succession of tortoises, it had still to be asked where the first tortoise got his support. But my mind rests on the thought — everything rational urges me to it — of a Being, a Spirit, a Life, a Will, which is and always was, in and behind all things, not dependent, but sharing its life, self-existent for- ever. Nothing else satisfies me, nothing but a fun- damental Unity accounts for a man or a universe. When I say accounts for, I do not mean that there is no fringe of wonder and ultimate mystery, which no man has fathomed. Least of all do I mean that our minds can ever cease to search and ask questions and sound the depths. Our minds not only demand rationality, but they demand quite as much order, intelligibility, signifi- cance. They will not put up with nonsense as the 268 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY result of their work. Our minds are so far to be respected for this. Our minds are the creations of the Universal Life, presumably therefore " after the image " of whatever greater mind brought them to birth. Grant the mighty conception of God with all that this name carries, you would expect just what you have — a kind of mind in man that *' cries out for God, for the living God," and can never be at ease without Him. Our minds, in short, in their boldest demands, fit the Universe to which they be- long. They rest as they ought to rest, only so far as they find order, purpose, good will, unity, spirit, person, whom they may call Father. Try anything else or less, and the mind never can be satisfied long. There are those, of whom Mr. H. G. Wells is a popular preacher, and to whose views Bergson and others have given a certain support, who tell us of a God in process of growth, a somewhat blind cre- ative power, feeling his way, liable to mistake, dis- appointment and defeat, needing our help. May I suggest that this thought is a tentative and provi- sional effort of minds to whom the bare name of God has never yet conveyed any meaning, to whom the God of the churches has never spoken, who are feeling perhaps for the first time the great human need of a spiritual reality shining out from behind a world of mere successions of things? Mr. Wells evidently feels this need increasingly. It is a sign of reality as of something about to come to light, when the watcher among the stars observes the WHY WE SAY GOD 269 drawing gravitation of the unseen planet. So it is a sign of awareness to reality that men's minds are coming to feel the drawing gravitation toward the unseen but living God. Their thought of God as making us sharers in the practical processes of civil- ization, and as suffering with us, being thus a more complete reality than an impassive God could be, is doubtless an echo of the older thought — at least as old as the splendid conception of the Suffering Leader in the Book of Isaiah, too rarely proclaimed even yet. The idea is that the richness and fullness of spiritual life in God or man are " made perfect In suffering " ; that is, In sympathy. No abstract or lonely God can suffice. The purpose of creation as the work of good will is necessarily a process of sharing. To call men children of God is to affirm that we share all that we have, that the enterprise of life is the mighty effort of co-operation. Few men can long rest at ease with a partial, fee- ble, ffnite, blundering, " sweating," possibly sinning, deity. Better so, perhaps, than to see no God at all. But we find sooner or later an urgency in our minds that pushes out higher, wider, deeper. We cannot worship a finite being. The real God must see be- yond and above our frailties, our disappointments, our blundering, our frequent seeming defeat and be all the more patient with us. We want no child- God. He must be trustworthy, beyond our doubts and suspicions, as no half-civilized creature can be. He must personify Integrity; in short, he must be al- together worshipful. But this pro tempore deity of 270 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY the biologists has no beauty in him that he should be desired. He is not even up to the mark of the best men whom we know ! Born in time, he cannot be himself an original creator. Clough's lines, I believe, express a deeper instinct and a more normal faith: "It stablishes my soul to know that though I perish, truth is so; That howsoe'er I stray and range, whate'er I do Thou dost not change; I steadier step when I recall that though I slip, Thou dost not fall." Are there minds which have no instinctive long- ing to find unity and to attain themselves to unity? There are some who, as if turning back the normal process of intellectual development, offer us a sort of pantheon of plural powers or deities ! Mr. William James was fond of this suggestion, but never satis- fied with it. Dr. Felix Adler suggests it. But Mr. James in his most eloquent passages seems to say that unity is better than pluralism and may yet be discovered. And Dr. Adler's spiritual pluralism is in itself a sort of unity of thought, ideal, and ruling purpose. How shall many social wills combine, un- less under the urgency of a higher unifying will? Can there be a " principle " of goodness or harmony that does not subsist in, and suggest, the thought of a living person, the One God in whom all spiritual beings must find their unity? The realm of the spirit is one. It is likely that much of the shyness of mind which WHY WE SAY GOD 271 men show at accepting the thought of God is the survival of the ancient dualism that shadowed the world with its fear of evil power, Ahriman or Satan, competing against the good Ormuzd. How could the Living God possess power and yet tolerate evil? We have ventured in previous chapters to follow evil into its hiding places, and we have found no- where a malign power or principle of evil in the uni- verse. We have found instead a tremendous law of contrast and cost and effort, of struggle and finiteness, without which we cannot conceive that man could attain the unspeakable boon of spiritual life. Not infinite power could abrogate this law. What possible holding place has any dual or plural thought of the world, by the side of the Unity, the Perfectness, the Self-Existence, of the One Person? The word universe is a constant witness to the ex- pectation and demand of the mind to discover unity at the heart of things. The mind itself is thus seen to be the child of the one unifying mind, without which no universe could be. The manifoldness of things does not tell us of unity. This unity is it- self the child of intelligence or good will. The human mind may well strain and ache before the vast problems of existence, of space and time, of eternity and self-existence. To name God, to believe in God, does not end or answer these rack- ing questions. That we still ask them is a mark not so much of our littleness as of the infinite nature within us. Grant then that, with all our faith in 272 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY God, we look out on unsearchable depths of being. Is there any way of honest thought that serves our minds better than the way we are following, or does not leave the same abysses of inquiry and specula- tion? It is easy to doubt or ask questions. But thinking itself is vain except to discuss foundations, laws, principles, order, unity and so to construct the working values of life. Who will give us any other positive or constructive idea so real, promising, us- able, rational, beautiful, the fit basis for such practi- cal life, ethics, institutions and religion; so harmoni- ous with the broadest teachings of nature, of human history, of personal experience, as is the thought of God, set forth and pursued from old time by the most comprehensive of thinkers, sung by great poets, lifting also the minds of multitudes of modest and true-hearted men and women, and establishing in them courage and hope ! Find us anything else half so persuasive ! No one has done it. Why not, then, believe in God, as our souls urge us to do? This, I think, is the voice of the highest reason. Moreover, we find profound hints and suggestions about God — the Universe Life — in ourselves, as we should expect, if in some true sense we are its children. Thus we find in ourselves a curious fact of doubleness. There is first the outside, or grow- ing self, swaying in its growth between pleasure and pain, between good and evil, success and failure — the little self, seen in varying aspects and processes. Underneath this appears a certain kernel of reality, a sort of impersonal self, with which we have to be- WHY WE SAY GOD 273 come slowly acquainted; in the presence of which, like an alter ego^ we possess for the time stability, confidence, harmony; without which, at least in these glimpses of a higher being within us, we could not be fully men; that is, our best selves. In our best friends, in the most complete and noble lives, we catch gleams behind the veil, of the same fact of a sort of second alter ego wiser and better than that which shows itself on the surface. The gleam of this better self marks the ground of our friendship and reverence for them. That in ourselves which is constant, true, honest, which demands confidence, sympathy and permanence, finds in the other endur- ing reality that it needs. Too often the outer, smaller self is not alive and awake and " all there " in its work; it flickers like a candle. The other is always the same: one with conscience, one with reason, one with good will. Though it reveals it- self by gleams and moments — in the highest experi- ences of life — it also transcends all that we expe- rience and assures us of infinite reserves of reality beyond ourselves or the greatest of human friends. This fact of the doubleness in ourselves — the little changing or phenomenal self, and the real and stable self, the spiritual kernel, is suggestive of what thoughtful men mean in speaking of God sometimes, as at one and the same time " immanent " in life and again as " transcendent." On one side Is a uni- verse groaning and travailing In pain, the world of happenings and phenomena. But God Is immanent in it. It could not be at all without him. He is -274 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY immanent or present in everything that moves. But on this side, the side of finite and growing things, the side of manifestation, picture and parable, he is not altogether present, any more than he was in the story of Moses' vision on Mt. Sinai. Things, finiteness, childishness, cannot contain him. The highest men of Moses' time could see law, but they could not understand God as Love, greater than law. The price to be paid for that which grows is that it begins with only a particle of power, or beauty or sense or will or reality. As it grows with the light, enough is given us daily to urge us to hun- ger and thirst after more. Every parent or teacher knows how this is. You cannot give your child your full thought, but only so much broken thought as his mind may need. This inevitable finiteness is another aspect of what we call " evil " : it is what Browning calls " the blessed evil." The world, as it is now, lives through the breath of the immanent God, but it hardly sees anything real and complete : it sees only through the haze of its finiteness. God is in the wind, but this is only a bit of his power. God is in the fire and the earthquake, but his beauty is not visible yet; life from God is in the serpent with its beautiful mo- tion and the splendid colors of its skin, and in the clear white teeth of the wolf, but his goodness can- not be there. God is in the fierceness of the battle as the driving energy, but man's awful rage is the viinus sign of reality. They are not men yet, who do such things to each other; good will born of WHY WE SAY GOD 275 God makes the man; the want of good will is the mark of the beast. The evil in every case is that God in his power, beauty, wisdom, justice, mercy, sympathy, is not all there in the animal life, in the child, in the savage, in the half-civilized nations. You cannot have God for nothing, or till you become able with open mind and heart to receive and long for him in the amplitude of his truth and goodness. This thought steers clear away from the idea that God is evolving and growing. His world has to grow, as you and I grow. It is we who must grow till we find how utterly hollow life is without God. The transcendent God, the constant, the real, the perfect, is above and beyond finite growth. The best and real self, the kernel of reality in me, which flashes itself upon me at times, does not grow. It seems rather as if it were always there in its integrity from young childhood upward, prompting wonder- ful questions, watching while I slept, patient when I went astray, ever ready to clasp me to a closer harmony between my little finite growing self and the reality of the Universe. We have observed already that prayer — if prayer is the right word to use — is within us. Just so far as you or I commit ourselves to the living God within, so far power and peace possess us, and make us impregnable and indestructible. But this is no mere formula to recite. It means education for life; it means continual practice and a whole new range of beautiful habits. Ill THE ETERNAL LIFE " GOD CREATED MAN TO BE IMMORTAL AND MADE HIM TO BE AN IMAGE OF HIS OWN ETERNITY."" Can there be a good religion without any idea of immortality? I think not, and I wish to show why. But we must make the approach to this answer in al- most a new manner and attitude. We must not try to argue a case and expect the kind of demonstration that compels the mind. You can tell amply enough why you love your friend, but your excellent reasons may not make another person feel as you do. We have no signs or wonders to adduce. They would themselves need proof. Without being so dogmatic as to deny the possibility of historic or objective evi- dence, such as many claim to find in resurrection stories and other forms of intercourse with the de- parted, I frankly confess that these things do not appeal to me as establishing the marvelous fact of eternal life. If we men can share such a majestic form of existence. It must be because we are already in the way of enjoying It. Must it not Itself be the core of reality within us, and grow out of experiences in our earth? It is a fact now, In some sense and some measure, if it ever can be a fact. Voices and 276 THE ETERNAL LIFE 277 apparitions and mediumshlps can no more establish It than the lack of them could take it away. In short, I am more Interested In the facts and the reality which we find now than In the future which may grow out of these facts. I doubt whether a night was ever spent In alleged converse with the spirits of the dead that compares with many a day, when in the light of this present earth a man at his best sees the world at its best, and echoes the ancient word, "Behold, it is good!" The stoutest believers in the resurrection of the dead are in no haste, we observe, to exchange this earth for heaven ! I do not see that they possess any more precious certainty about a future life than I have, or enjoy a happier hope with regard to It. Let us frankly call It hope, and not assurance. In which case It would not be hope. On the other hand, as I approach the mystic cur- tain, from beyond which I never saw a man re- turn, the considerations that move my mind to a deepening and restful hope become extremely Im- pressive. Let me try briefly to express this hope. I think of death as bringing us no harm; It is nec- essary; it is In the great plan of life; I would not choose, if I could, to be exempt from it; It seems to hold a place for good and not for evil. Let It dis- solve my body; though I now possess my body, I do not think of it as myself. The body Is a thing, or a composite of many things, which I can weigh and measure. No one can weigh and measure me; I am not a thing, but a person. I must say spirit, for 278 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY want of any other term to describe the inward real- ity which can know itself, with which I have become somewhat acquainted through all the years of my life, which still at its best strikes me anew with its wonder. I find no particle of evidence that death can touch me. I do not belong to the dissoluble realm of death. As a learned scientific friend once remarked, it is quite conceivable that life might go on in the atmosphere of the sun, and if life at all, then happy and significant life. I cannot indeed comprehend by what kind of bridge I may be made to pass from this form of life to another. How should I understand? I do not in the least under- stand the processes and stages of life and thought through which I have thus far come. The fact of my own birth into this world is as great a " miracle " to me as the birth of a Christ was ever thought to be. Meanwhile, ever since clearness of consciousness awoke in me, I have seemed like one set here to fight under the flag of an infinite and unseen, yet impres- sively felt and realized spirit or master of life, with whom I bear kinship. The net result and interpre- tation of all my experiences bring me pretty solidly to this conviction. I find nothing else so solid; I return to this after letting my mind roam as it may in every direction. No words or definitions are enough, but what can I say more accurately to ex- press my thought than that I find myself a sort of heir-apparent, the creation or child of the ruling life-force of the world? Is not the name — Father THE ETERNAL LIFE 279 Almighty — as good as any name can be? In the light of this thought playing on all the facts, death is only a servant or a means of the Master of Life — a negative thing at the most. Here and now I belong to the realm of life and spirit. Neither can I see anything so intelligent to do as to hold firm to the last my faith in Life, the reality. When I die, I am bound, as the great Roman Emperor said, to " die standing," that is, with my face still toward the eternal and beautiful things, life and light. Why should I act and think for seventy years as if life, and more life, not death, were before me, and change over and turn my back upon life ! The ac- tion of light on my mind, the facts brought to light afford no ray of reason why I should change the di- rection of my life. This I say In general; it is not the most that I can say, but the least, or that which I can always say In the face of the blackest demons of doubt and denial. They fall back before this view of the subject. I go on to state not arguments, with which men dispute, but the immense considerations which move me, and especially when I am at my best, with my heart and soul and mind working In accord. These same considerations also tend to call me to my best, when on occasion I have fallen away. In the first place, this idea of life as lord over death, life the reality and death its shadow, life con- tinuous and death an Incident, Is harmonious with everything else most significant In the universe. It fits the nature of the universe, Itself ultimately a 2 8o A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY meaningful harmony and unity. Even our bodies dissolving never dissolve into nothingness, but rather go on again into the material world out of which the building life evolved them; they still have their uses. Shall the spiritual selves which this material only served alone perish! This does not fit, or match with, the worth and unity of the universe. Fitness or harmony is a test of the truth and whole- ness of things, as emptiness or ugliness is a mark of untruth or partialness. A universe calls for the idea of significance. Shall it grind on forever for noth- ing? This is to do less than its creatures, which would be to fail. Shall it produce its most notable fruitage only to destroy It? This is not worthy of the marvelous cost and glory of its processes. This is to do worse despite to its heroes and saints than their enemies could ever do. For while their ene- mies thought enough of them to abuse them, and put them to death, the great mother life, on this shocking supposition, does not care enough for them, or see sufficient use In them, to give them tenantcy in her vast spaces. I say the mind cannot abide this disharmony! T say nothing about the supposed desire of men, born in them, for continuance of life. This may mean little or nothing; It varies In different persons, being often quite slight. It may be nothing more than the life-instinct to keep on, which the dumb creatures share with us. But a deeper fact lies be- hind It; namely, the congrulty of the Idea of eternal life with the nature, and especially the spiritual real- THE ETERNAL LIFE 281 ity In us. This best in us hungers for use and serv- ice; herein Is its life. This desire Is not only In the few; It Is In the hearts of the many. We can endure hurts, disappointments, sorrows, and bear ourselves still as men and be happy, provided we have worth in the world. This deep craving to count for some- thing worth while, to do for the universe, as all other lower orders of creatures do something, not merely to live upon its bounty, but to enrich Its life, is of the spiritual nature. I hold It to be of pro- phetic significance. But what If nature herself, set- ting the mark of annihilation upon us, pronounces us useless? What If nature, so Infinitely full of re- sources In this finite earth, can find nothing worth while for us to be or do and only stupidly dismisses us ! This reduces nature to the level of vulgar friv- olity. Not for our own sake, but for the sake of the universe, to which we belong, we should be ashamed of it. Some one may say, Is it not enough, both worthy and useful, for brave and true men to go on living in their children, or in the composite life of hu- manity? Does not George Eliot's " Choir Invis- ible " with its call to let self go and serve the un- known future of mankind thrill one's soul? But If, as this implies, our great memories and Ideals are reality, must It not be that the universe which created them rings true? What then If this shadowy earth immortality runs out after a few more millenniums Into the weary and hopeless old age of the planet, and the stark wraith of death stands ready to swal- 282 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY low all life at the end. Would not this be ultimate defeat? The glorious life-power that has brought us here to share its nature, has created us to be hon- est, to be real and sober-minded, and to expect truth, not mockery, as the outcome of Its costly proc- esses. We strike here upon one of the most marvelous thoughts in man's mind, itself the creation or child of the universe. We carry a notion of the infinite and eternal. It is one of the uppermost products of the growth of our manhood. We cannot abide finite limits, at least in our thought. We straight- way overpass the finite and cry out for that which is beyond. We seem therein to belong to the na- ture of the infinite; that is, of spirit, mind, thought, goodness. Bring us then to the brink of the death of the material world and let us there face an im- passable gulf — the hopeless passing into nothing- ness of every object of worth, the old earth dead, death ruling a vacancy; and we stand back with only a more severe shock of abhorrence than we felt at the supposition of the annihilation of the individual life. The wonder of the processes of life over against their futility! The power and intelligence so infinite, and the product so empty! Every- where below the lesser goes on and up to serve the greater, and the greater learns to serve the humble, but here at last all goes for nothing! Everywhere below stands forth the thought of use and service, inspiring human lives, but the unseen Power out of which the inspiring thought was born at last spurns THE ETERNAL LIFE 283 its offspring! Even so, the matter and the force persist, while that which gave worth and dignity to their movements goes down to death! We simply cannot believe anything so ill of the universe; we cannot conceive that such intelKgence as made us to think should prove so foolish. Thus every time we stand at the fork of the roads and look down the path that forebodes ultimate death, our minds are thrown back by an instinct of overwhelming revulsion, as if the life in our souls called it forth, and we seem to be commanded by the " Power not ourselves " to take the open way again upward toward the infinite hope and life. We can- not take any other way and live and think worthily. We must respect the world we live in. We must think its guiding life from which we spring grander, better, more utterly trustworthy than we ourselves are. In short, we must think that, in some deep sense, God cares and will always care for us. We come to care too much for God not to think this of Him. Herein, again, the parts match and fit, as truth requires. The inner nature meets and rests in the nature of God! A second impressive consideration which urges my mind toward the hope of the immortal life is the fact of the stupendous and endless possibilities here and now with which life, and specially the life of the mature man, is crowded. The utmost attainments of the most advanced men never come up with these infinite openings into the future in every branch of thoughtful life — the possibilities of invention and 284 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY discovery, of science In its ever-widening depart- ments, of the uses of the earth and everything In It, Its flowers and fruits, Its beauties of scenery In every climate. Its wonders of the desert and the ocean. But most of all we are becoming aware of Inner possibilities even In the average man, such as he has hardly touched, the possibilities In the realm of the spirit, of friendships, mutual aid, co-operation, the construction of the commonwealth of the nations. Such Is the nature of the world and Its life, as in this stormiest of earth weather we survey the pros- pect that gleams through the clouds. We are still a world of children, only beginning to come into our heritage. Now, all that we know about the world and life gives us trust and hope, as in Emerson's thought, to- ward what we do not yet know. For the universe is of a piece. It does not yield flowers and beauty only so far as our short sight can follow, but it startles us with the delicacy and perfectness of the tiniest objects that we had never noticed before. Suns and stars ever appear beyond the familiar con- stellations. It is a world of constructive surprises. The trend of all is in one way toward not merely the meeting of natural expectations, but on toward the unexpected and transcendent. Nature is always the miracle-worker. She changes the evil to good; she shows us her secret of turning our seeming evil to the credit of the real and permanent. She has shown us what can be done with disease, with fire and flood, with seeming defeat. She has THE ETERNAL LIFE 285 opened all sorts of vistas from the scene of our blunders and crimes, and used evil for her sublime purpose of a better manhood. Shall we now think that all this stops at the gate of death? Have the grand prophecies fallen true beyond the visions of Amos or Isaiah, and shall all prophecies perish at the touch of final death? Did the possibihties of the universe for the growth of the perfect life cul- minate in one man, once for all, only to come to naught, and pass away, when Jesus hung upon the cross? Again, as before, there appears a portal of prophecy, bigger than man ever saw, bidding us say with Paul: "We know not what we shall be." And we know, " if God be for us nothing can be against us." I have made nothing of the element of justice — of due rewards and punishments for those who are either supposed not to have had a fair chance in this world, or else to have had more than their share. Thus in the Old Testament much has been made of the need of a future Hfe to straighten out the crooked balances of this world. The lofty must be brought down and the lowly must be exalted. This does not greatly appeal to me. Who can claim that he de- serves anything of the universe? So far as we de- serve at all I suspect that we get what we deserve as we go along and more besides. But I do not mean pay or rewards such as please the children — medals, prizes, praises and marks; or what older children desire — money and station. This world 286 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY is not a series of great competitive Olympic games; a few big contestants and many spectators: it is not a mercantile establishment offering bargains; neither is it a penal colony where most are doomed to suffer. It is a world of opportunity and for all. Does the Lord of life do the best possible for all? This is the great question touching the jus- tice of the universe. It is a bold faith no doubt to say Yes, but I see nothing more rational to say in view of the dense limits of this finite earth within which omnipotence itself must work in bringing creatures, born of the dust, to the wonderful heights of companionship with God. I am content with this as my hope. The practical question with every man is: Am I doing my part to co-operate with that higher spiritual life acting within me to rear a man? Never a step in this way upward that does not bring its own char- acteristic reward! Not a fortune and a round of pleasure, but maturity and integrity are the fitting reward of the growing child. Spiritual maturity for the largest possible number is reward enough for all the labors and sorrows of man. But spiritual ma- turity belongs to the realm of the eternal. How can it suffer death? Another fact that impresses me overwhelmingly is the nature of that strange but most vital quality that we call hope. It is a life factor in some form from our cradles upward. Not to possess it is not fully to live, and therefore not to be strong or well or good for much. Of course it is always subtly chang- THE ETERNAL LIFE 287 ing its object as we grow more intelligent. With the child it lights upon bright things and is selfish accordingly. But what wonderful effects it pro- duces, what deeds of daring and courage and endur- ing life it can put forth, when it rises to the sight of the spiritual values of love, comradeship, passion for justice and truth, the undying ideals of a noble hu- manity which alone satisfy its quite infinite depths. Thus the hope of the discoverer plus the hope of the lover of men gave Livingstone a sort of charmed life in his lonely wanderings in the heart of Africa. Nothing can daunt this kind of man. This purely spiritual faculty of hope shows itself over and over in all human experience, blazing up into illustrious deeds, into poetry and art, to be one of man's great- est assets. Hope, however, like all the spiritual faculties, cannot bear barriers or limits. It cries out for the infinite, for the open sky, for the sight of the stars, and for stars beyond stars. Give it that which it seeks and it looks for more and better. Give it the joys of youth and it seeks the ampler business and achievements of manhood. Give It earth and It seeks for heaven too. It will not be baffled. Close one path and it sees light to find another and better. Is this only man's conceit? No, hope runs freest when it is clearest of conceit or selfishness. It would not take immortal life as a gift for itself, but its hope Is for love's sake; it is as wide as humanity. Poverty, whether of material things, or of low spirits, is the absence of hope. The pitiful popula- 288 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY tions of the earth are the hopeless ones. Set a new hope In their hearts and they will answer to the command of life and grow strong and rich. Give the sick man a new prospect, offer him hope of a worthier life, and you will have done for him more than medicine can. But the hopes of men, says the cynic, are so fool- ish and thoughtless ! Such indeed are the hopes of the childish. What else would you expect? Better so than no hope at all. Hope at its highest, how- ever, marches with thought and reason to construct and to find integrity. Not the idle and foolish but the wise and whole-hearted are the men and women of hope. It is because hope cannot be satisfied with the material, the low and unreal, that it sets us on the track of the spiritual, the infinite and eternal. It was because John Stuart Mill could not stop thinking, that his nicely finished earthly paradise dis- appointed him. What of it? Though you feed and clothe and house every one abundantly, what good is it, unless you can see the infinite something beyond — a spiritual manhood and womanhood worthy enough for the multitude of your comfort- able inhabitants? Some minds indeed are content for a while with the vague and indefinite. The masterful lad filled with his visions of the life here and now does not care to hear you discourse on the problem of Eternal Life. The eager socialist worker is possessed for the present with his dreams of happy economic ad- THE ETERNAL LIFE 289 justments. The infinite hope to live and count for something useful is met for a time with the indefinite joy of the " great renunciation." Let me die, if only I may " join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence." Nevertheless, straight thinking at last brings the in- evitable question: Is this grand "choir immortal" truly immortal or not? We think of those who come after us, our children to be, in the age when the earth, grown slightly older, faces its last glacial cold or fatal explosion. What hope will the choir invisible offer against the last days? We gladly toil for their sakes who follow us that they may have ampler Hfe than we enjoy, and the hope of grander reality. But how shall it come except in the realm of infinite spiritual reality? Thus, our thought for- ever binds up our growing hope with the prophecy of Infinite and spiritual life. I cannot think that the creating nature has made hope to be a factor and a test of Hfe power, and made it grow and rise always toward a higher and abiding life and linked it Into the very substance of our spiritual health, only at last to prove a delusion, good only for childish be- ings, and worthless for men. I can be cheated with vain hopes, while on my way to discover perchance the Indestructible reality, but I cannot think so meanly of the creative life as to believe It will cheat us out of the ultimate hope. For this ultimate 290 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY hope Is Itself of the substance of life. It arises out of the ground of the " grand renunciation" to die to live I We know one solid fact. There have been human lives worthy to go on and to live : a single Christ- life is a stupendous act of Creative Will. But not one Christ story alone illuminates history. Such stories of the great and the humble are everywhere known, and never so many as now. No corrupt and materialist earth blocks their splendid growth. Visit any library and view the shelves of the biog- raphies of the men and women who have made human life most beautiful. It Is always the story — whether of statesmen or good physicians or fearless prophets or honest men of affairs or good teachers, and gracious women, of the outburst of spiritual life. The terms and words of the realm of the spirit describe them and mark the quality of their accom- plishments. As a rule they are men of faith, hope and love — the three great conditions of the life of men at their best. If all lives were like these lives, who could deny that God created man to be immortal? Could you think that men are no more than flies in the records of time, that they die as flies die, and that out of the most beautiful and meaningful fruitage of the universe nothing persists? At any rate, some of our brethren have been infi- nitely worthy. They companioned with God and co-operated with him. Why should they not still THE ETERNAL LIFE ^9^ serve the spirit in whom they live? Through them, we say, as Matthew Arnold said of his father, we beheve " in the noble and great who are gone," " Souls tempered with fire, Fervent, heroic and good. Helpers and friends of mankind." We believe in them as Sons of God, that is, of the Eternal Reality. Neither are these great souls alone. The commonest man has it in him to know and appreciate the same quality of life. Yes, to respond to its call. Its kernel is in him. Every village has the story of his kind. Deathless hope blossoms out of such facts. The master-thought of evolution is very sugges- tive at this point. We have observed that the way of evolution is by stages and periods. Somethmg occurs on the way up that had not been apparent before. No finite thought could have predicted what would come forth from the Infinite Mind, when conscious life first throbbed, or when man first stood erect and walked, or when love gave its first smde out of a woman's eyes, or when men first learned to forgive. These are divers forms of the rising life. Who can help, after looking backward and tracing the path ever up toward spiritual fulfillment, to ask. What next? Have we men seen all? What may be beyond this strange screen through which we all pass ? It must be worthy of the Power that brought us so far. Must it not be interpreted then in terms of life ? Nothing else seems worthy of the universe. 292 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY Do they not then travel the wrong way In their thought who bear stress upon the material and in- fantile beginnings of man? The path of evolution is ever on toward more profound satisfactions. Look back all you please, but you know nothing till you come where the past and the present and the future are bound into unison. This thought, for its very bigness, makes us satis- fied that we cannot know what the next stage will be like. How could we know, who never knew before- hand what any great human experience would be like, or what it would do to us ! The Master Poet mind of the world, the Dramatist of Creation, al- ways goes beyond our small imaginings. For this reason, if for no other, we may well be shy of such tidings and descriptions of another life as grow out of strange psychological experiments in darkened parlors. Are they quite worthy of that which may soon be enacted at the hand of him to whom " all things are possible"? For the whole universe seems to be linked together as if with a great prom- ise to bring to pass in due time whatever is most desirable for the children of God. Now the one and only thing of which we can assuredly say that it is desirable, is spiritual life and ever more of it. Meanwhile, it is for us to learn to the last breath how better to speak the universal language which we conceive would make us at home as citizens wherever real life is. This universal language is in the terms of faith, hope and love. Who has these must live, we believe, as God lives. THE ETERNAL LIFE 293 What, now, Is the result In human life, If a man fairly tries and practices, however provisionally, the hope of Immortality? The mind Itself, finding no reason to the contrary, recommends this conduct. Try the beautiful thought as a mere " perhaps." Try It as you would try a new mode of motion or a new experience. Dr. Washington Gladden once published a little essay, " The Practice of Immortality." He meant this of which I am speaking. Live as an Immortal being would live, and go on living so till you have to stop. This proves to be an exquislt-e mode of life to every one who tries It. You who hold the vast hope are more and greater men than you ever were before. You have greater volume of life within you; you treat all other men likewise as heirs of Immortality; you respect them more ; you behave better to them. You who have this hope can wrong no man, hate no one, despise no one. Thus enlarged In richness of life, you can do nothing unworthy; you are taken up Into habits of thought beyond fear. You are ready for all good endeavor. You seem to share the pres- ence of God. Is not this way of life, then, which fits and matches and relates Itself to a whole, and draws from new sources of power and opens vistas of ever more loving, social and useful action. In all probability true? It certainly works for the Increase and heightening of life. It either means something real or It means nothing. Does not the reason Itself put its seal upon It? Try the opposite way. I live for 294 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY a while as if death ended all. The skies of my life darken. I am less a man than I was before. I cannot possibly think so well of other men. I ap- proach the permanent attitude of the pessimist and cynic. I find this course neither livable nor think- able. I proceed again to cherish this great normal hope and I find myself in the way of life ! But what if I knew that death ended all? What if facts and the reason could set up a final verdict of " No thoroughfare " against the gate of death. I do not see how this could be done. But suppose it. Should we say now, " Let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we die"? Certainly not. No one who has once learned to live the good life, no one who has tasted its characteristic quality, no one who has seen the vision of spiritual integrity can forsake his manhood and debase himself to sensuality. He will still have to live as if life and God and truth, duty and love were real. Even if a future life were not to be, we men have known the facts of the eternal life. We have found them to be real. They hold us in their firm and kindly bonds. This is a mar- velous fact of experience. It is the old idea: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. How can any one account for it except as we are compelled to reverse the verdict of death, and accept Life and Love as Lord of All! Thus immortality seems to be an inseparable part of the fabric of the universe. I say, then, if I could know there were no Guiding Life or Higher Power than man, and no life beyond or above this physical life, I should THE ETERNAL LIFE 295 still see nothing so good as to go on trying to live the life of my ideals. I should not curse the uni- verse as evil. But this is not to say that I could ever again live at my best, as I now know this best. My thought and estimate of the universe, my valua- tion of life, my respect for myself and my own worth, my regard for others and my conception of their value would be unalterably changed. I should live in a different universe, less worth while, with men less worthy, with a rather morbid temperament drag- ging upon me. I should have no happy buoyancy, no enthusiasm, no gladsome abandon to a grand purpose. It would be the difference between one foreseeing shipwreck at the end of his voyage and one who expected to land and meet his friends. Foreseeing the fatal end, much would seem to me futile to attempt which in the other case I should heartily undertake as a natural part of the journey and the fulfillment of its purpose. My feelings to- ward my fellow voyagers would be a thinner kind of comradeship. Let me venture to sum up what I have wished to say. I cannot look upon either our belief In God or the hope of Immortality as simple Ideas, seen at a glance by what men call " intuition." They are complex, and proceed as a conclusion or resultant of the experiences of life. This Is why many minds fail to accept them Immediately. They are hardly possible as the outcome of an evil or selfish career. How should they be? They are more likely to 296 A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY come from a life of definite ethical or spiritual move- ment. Why should they not? Why should I think well of a world to which I had turned the worse side of me, and blurred my vision of its realities? Meanwhile, I cannot live a life neutral between faith and doubt, touching subjects so immense in their reaction upon character and life. If God is; if in some sense, dim or clear, life and not death is the answer to the riddle of the world, it is wonder- ful news. Every one who loves his fellow must wish that this may be true. Every one must on occasion in the grand crises of life press a little way beyond bare agnosticism toward the region where light shines. Let me begin, then, with as much as a tiny " perhaps " to this immense possibility. Why not? If I say as much as this in sincerity, it acts at once to change my character, my interpretation of events, my temper, my purpose, my destiny, all distinctly in the direction of fuller, stronger, happier life. It does this without militating, so far as I can see, against my normal openness of mind. Indeed, it binds me to a supreme regard for truth and integ- rity. Now I propose to go on in this course to the uttermost. Has God no further use for me when I part from this body? Is there no room in the universe at last? Be it so. I would not live upon the charity of the universe. But what I know of the universe compels me to think well of it. I have found astounding good in it. If God wills, " I shall arrive." It looks like a splendid adventure. We now seem to be only at the beginning of the spiritual THE ETERNAL LIFE 297 life of mankind. After us must come multitudes of more thoughtful, better and more useful men, who will surpass a generation reared in squalor, poverty and strife. They shall possess a stouter faith, a warmer hope matching a wider humanity, with insti- tutions rich and adequate to serve them. Holding the secret of wisdom, they shall rule and use the world without abusing it. The fear of death shall be taken from their eyes. THE END