-JT «-^^.'-j*„'>«^5Jl,>__,t: 
 
 J- aim -ff^TT- 
 
iFrnm 11|f iCtbraru nf 
 
 Spqupathpfi bg l^tm to 
 
 tl)f ffitbrarg of 
 
 Prittrrtnn Slltrnlngtral ^tminnr^ 
 
 .BY 
 
THE NEWER RELIGIOUS THINKING. 
 
The words that I have spoken tmto you are sph'it, 
 and are life. 
 
 I came that they 7nay have life, and may have it 
 abundantly. 
 
 The Lord Jesus. 
 
THE NEWER 
 
 iV 
 
 RELIGIOUS THINKING 
 
 \/ 
 
 / tU Ct A^lv 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID NELSON BEACH. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1893- 
 
Copyright, 1S93, 
 By David Nelson Beach. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRESTON SHELDON, M.D. 
 
 1854-1891. 
 
 'Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 
 At last he beat his music out" 
 
Old things are passed away. 
 All things are beco?ne fiew. 
 
 All things are of God. 
 
 Saint Paul. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 T^HE newer religious thinking here spoken 
 of is not mine, nor any other man's, nor 
 that of any institution, or school, or division 
 of Christendom. It is a world movement. 
 It is the lineal descendant of world move- 
 ments older than Abraham. I have not 
 attempted to define it except in the most 
 general way, nor to compass it, but only to 
 speak sympathetically and suggestively of it. 
 
 I have not spoken technically, but in plain 
 language. This is not a monograph. It 
 is not specialist work. It is a talk about 
 matters in everybody's thought. If I should 
 characterize it at all, I should call it an inter- 
 pretation, a trying to put new things and 
 feared things — "they feared as they entered 
 into the cloud " — in their simple and divine 
 lio-ht. 
 
8 Preface. 
 
 Such touching evidences of its oral help- 
 fuhiess have reached me that I commit it 
 to type. In so far as God's mind is in it, 
 may it reach men's minds. For there is sore 
 need of h'ght. And there is need that the 
 Heht have in it warmth and vision. If even 
 a httle of this is here, may it gladden eyes 
 and stir hearts. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
 April 29, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. This Thinking Characterized 13 
 
 II. Its Hunger after God 39 
 
 III. Its Passion for Men 71 
 
 IV. Its Thought of Nature, History, Life . loi 
 V. Its Idea of the Bible 131 
 
 VI. Christ its Centre 161 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. One Type of Nature Teaching . . . . 189 
 
 B. Omitted Part of Discourse VI 199 
 
 C. Some Plain Questioning 213 
 
 List of Principal Notes 229 
 
God is love. 
 
 In him is no darkness at all. 
 
 It doth not yet appear what we shall be. 
 
 We shall be like him. 
 
 Saint John. 
 
THIS THINKING CHARACTERIZED. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Men are under a divine impulse. — It is from without, and 
 yet from within. — This is what rehgion is. — Being thus life, 
 it is ever renewing itself. — There always has been a newer 
 religious thinking: In the Old Testament; In the New; 
 Throughout the Christian ages ; Now (examples). — This 
 implies no instability in the facts of religion, but only an 
 ever-enlarging apprehension of them. — The latter is ground 
 for unspeakable joy. — Interesting fields of study opened by 
 this fact. — What business have we to go heresy-hunting ? — 
 Certain indications of newer religious thinking at the present 
 time: (i) Among men of unfaith ; (2) Among " Une van- 
 gehcals;" (3) In the Church of Rome; (4) Among " Evan- 
 gelicals." — Certain characteristics of this thinking: (i) Its 
 scientific temper; (2) Its practical bent; (3) Its purpose to 
 include in its concept the entire religious impulse of the 
 world; (4) Its obedience unto the heavenly vision. — Some- 
 thing of eternity already shines in its face. 
 
THE 
 
 NEWER RELIGIOUS THINKING 
 
 I. 
 
 THIS THINKING CHARACTERIZED.^ 
 
 Wherefore^ O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto 
 the heavenly vision. — Acts xxvi. 19. 
 
 A DIVINE compulsion is here acknowl- 
 "^^ edged. It becomes the law of a great, 
 aspiring, epoch-affecting life. And the com- 
 pulsion, the law, are of the sort which alone 
 can be most potent over human life. They 
 spring from vision, from an illumination of 
 the inner nature. They are thus a part of 
 the man. They are from without him, and 
 yet from within him. They demand great 
 
 1 Preached at Prospect Street Church, Cambridge, Mas- 
 sachusetts, Sunday night, October 30, 1892. Somewhat 
 amended here, but the spoken fo?'m retained. So of the 
 later discourses. 
 
14 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 thoughts, feelings, revisions, renovations. 
 Slowly, perhaps reluctantly, they command 
 his assent. But being of him as well as 
 from beyond him, they move and transform 
 him. They are life. In the obeying of 
 • them there is life. The living spirit cannot 
 be disobedient to them. 
 
 This is what religion is. It is a some- 
 thing from outside, and yet from inside. It 
 is the life of a man, of men, of peoples, of 
 epochs ; a part of them, and yet not of them 
 so much as a reciprocity between them and 
 their correlative in the nature of things, in 
 the heart of the world, — in, for short, God. 
 Being thus life, it is always renewing itself. 
 It is ever young. There is always a newer 
 religious thinking. 
 
 There always has been such thinking in 
 the past. Noah is farther on than Enoch ; 
 Israel than Abraham ; the Moses of Deu- 
 teronomy than the Moses of Exodus ; Sam- 
 uel than Joshua; David than Samuel, wdth 
 that great discovery of his, " Thou desirest 
 not sacrifice," and with that new face on 
 nature, life, and reli<^ion, which ever in him 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 1 5 
 
 appears. Isaiah is farther on, too, than 
 EHjah ; and the late Isaiah than the earher. 
 The Christ of the Per^an ministry is an ad- 
 vance over the Christ of the Gahlean min- 
 istry.^ Saint Peter at Caesarea, ten years after 
 Pentecost, confesses that God has made clear 
 to him a truth until then unperceived, — a 
 truth around the question of the correctness 
 of which the apostolic history thenceforth 
 turns. The Saint Paul of First and Second 
 Timothy is farther on, not only by a decade, 
 but in his intellectual outlook, than the 
 
 1 Whether or not the Evangehsts indicate an advance in 
 the thinking of the Saviour during his public ministry, cor- 
 responding with his advance in method, is a question of 
 interpretation ; and since their testimony is indirect, the 
 interpretation will be colored by one's insight and concep- 
 tion of developing character. It will also be colored, per- 
 haps, by one's view of the person of Christ. My own view 
 of his person is very high. Nevertheless, as his method ad- 
 vanced, so, it seems to me, did his mental outlook. Neither 
 am I able to see why its earlier advance (Luke ii. 52) should 
 have been stayed when he reached the period of intense 
 activity which would most have furthered such advance. 
 And since there is no finer test of character than its behav- 
 ior under access of fresh light, particularly when one is 
 amidst life, I should be sorry to think of the Saviour as not 
 knowing the fellowship with us of such character-testing. 
 " It behoved him in all things to be made like unto his 
 brethren " (Heb. ii. 17). 
 
1 6 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 Saint Paul of First and Second Corinthians. 
 The Saint John of the Epistles sweeps a wider 
 horizon than the Saint John at the Beautiful 
 Gate of the Temple. On the open vision 
 of the Greek Fathers succeeds the dogmatic 
 rigidity of the Latin Fathers. Anselm treads 
 broader fields than Gregory the Great. 
 Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, exploit new fields, 
 and dissentiently. Jonathan Edwards leads a 
 new movement in the religious thought of 
 New England, as well as that revival of its re- 
 ligious life known as the " Great Awakening." 
 The history, in short, of the Old Testament 
 and of the New, that which gave signifi- 
 cance and permanence to the writings there 
 gathered, is progress, clearer and yet clearer 
 apprehensions of truth. The history, too, of 
 the Christian Church, as Professor Allen, of 
 our city, has so admirably outlined in his book, 
 " The Continuity of Christian Thought," is 
 a history of the unfolding of Christian ideas. 
 As I said, there always has been a newer 
 religious thinking. Those ages which seem 
 to have been motionless, and their thought 
 dormant, were moving. There was many a 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 17 
 
 mornine star of the Reformation in the 
 Middle-Age night. 
 
 And as there always has been a newer re- 
 ligious thinking, so there is to-day. A book 
 has been shown me, which belonged to the 
 late Rev. Asa Bullard. It is marked, " To 
 be preserved, as it is my only copy." It is 
 without titlepage. It is Horace Bushnell's 
 " Christian Nurture." It never got far 
 enouo^h in the hands of the Massachusetts 
 Sabbath School Society, of which Mr. Bullard 
 was the executive, — now our Congrega- 
 tional Sunday School and Publishing So- 
 ciety, — to have a titlepage or an imprint. 
 Why } Because certain m.en who saw its 
 advance sheets pronounced it heresy, and 
 raised such an alarm about it that it was 
 suppressed. That book, issued by other 
 publishers, is now a classic. Nobody is 
 afraid of it. Mr. Bullard rejoiced in it, as, 
 for aught I know, he did from the start.^ 
 
 1 Mr. Bullard died April 5, 1888, aged eighty-four years 
 and ten days. He had been a member of Prospect Street 
 Church since 1857. A window to his memory was put into 
 the church at Easter, 1892. Its subject is, " Christ Bless- 
 ing Little Children," after Hofmann. It is inscribed: "In 
 
 2 
 
1 8 The Newer Religious Thi^iking, 
 
 When Professor Park was transferred from 
 the chair of Homiletics to that of Theology 
 at Andover, he was considered by man}^ a 
 very dangerous man. Controversy regarding 
 his teachings waxed hot. Pamphlets, reviews, 
 newspapers, assailed him. Now he is re- 
 garded as a bulwark of orthodoxy. When 
 Prof. Nathaniel W. Taylor w^as teaching at 
 New Haven, sixty years ago, matters now 
 of commonest acceptance, Connecticut was 
 convulsed to its centre with religious alarm 
 against him, and the Seminary at East Wind- 
 sor, now Hartford Seminary, was established 
 to save the faith from his ravages. An elderly 
 Englishman has recently contributed to one 
 of our reviews, from personal recollection, 
 the story of three religious panics in Great 
 Britain, of a similar type, about matters 
 that have ceased to give men anxiety. But 
 let me summon you yourselves as vritnesses. 
 
 Loving Memor}' of the Children's IMinister, Rev. Asa Bal- 
 lard : Born, 1804; Died, 1888 : From Prospect Street Church 
 and Sabbath School." Mr. Bullard did not agree in all 
 respects theologically either with Dr. Bushnell or with the 
 writer. The allusion here is only to his attitude toward Dr. 
 Bushnell's book on the Christian upbringing of children. 
 
This Thinking Characterized, 19 
 
 Probably all of you whose lives have cov- 
 ered as many as twenty-five or thirty years 
 have, consciously or unconsciously, some- 
 what changed your thought on religious 
 matters. If you have not, I condole with 
 you. Twenty-five or thirty years in such a 
 world as this ought somewhat to modify the 
 ablest thinking even on religious subjects. 
 
 Now what does this mean ? Does it im- 
 ply that the facts at the basis of religion are 
 not trustworthy? Does it insinuate that 
 everything in religion is relative, and a mere 
 matter of point of view ? Not at all. Such 
 inferences were as absurd as to have inferred, 
 when men were gradually accepting the 
 Copernican astronomy, or modern geology, 
 that sun and stars and earth were not trust- 
 worthy, and were only relative, and matters of 
 point of view. Sun, stars, earth, in common 
 with the facts at the basis of religion, change 
 not. But man's measure of them, grasp of 
 them, knowledge of them, and impressible- 
 ness by them, change with the growing mind 
 and heart of man. 
 
 So far is such a state of thino's as I have 
 
20 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 been describing from being ground for 
 alarm, that it is ground, the rather, for 
 devout and unspeakable joy. As Kepler 
 cried out, on discovering the clew to the 
 computation of the orbits of the heavenly 
 bodies, " I think God's thoughts after him ! " 
 so does Saint Paul speak of the mystery hid 
 through the ages, but now made known, and 
 affirm that the chiefest of the apostles only 
 sees as yet " in a mirror, darkly," but shall 
 see "face to face." Every man, by reason 
 of such a state of the case, becomes a discov- 
 erer of truths divine, and a medium through 
 whom others may receive the knowledge of 
 such truths ; and the way is thus left open 
 for an infinite progress in knowing, appre- 
 ciating, and using the facts of religion. Any 
 other state of the case would make future 
 history a blank, and eternity a horror. For 
 the world to go on, with progress in the ap- 
 prehension of religious truth at an end, — 
 seeing that religious truth is the deepest, the 
 sweetest, the most transforming, — and for 
 men, out of this world's toil, sweat, travail, 
 weariness, and defeat, to be hurried on into 
 
This T/mtking- Characterized. 2 1 
 
 an eternity in which our earth thoughts and 
 earth measures of God were a finality, would 
 be a fate of history and of humanity too fear- 
 ful to contemplate. But such is not the fate, 
 as these phenomena, from the earliest He- 
 brew history until this hour, abundantly and 
 gloriously prove. 
 
 It would be interesting to make even a 
 cursory study of the progress of religious 
 thoucrht in the Old Testament ; of the 
 same progress during the perhaps four 
 centuries between Malachi and Christ ; 
 and of the same in the New Testament. 
 This is a distinctively modern study, and 
 is yet in its infancy. Toward it the new 
 chairs of Biblical Theology, in various in- 
 stitutions, are contributing. With it, for 
 comprehensiveness and balance, the study 
 of other, and especially of contemporaneous 
 religions, needs to go, — " comparative re- 
 ligions," as that study is often called. The 
 same sort of study, similarly paralleled, for 
 the Christian ages, would also be of great 
 interest. 
 
 Fresher, because more recent, accessible. 
 
2 2 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 and in touch with current thinking, would 
 be a study of this progress during the 
 present century, and particularly in Great 
 Britain ; because the study of that portion of 
 it would include a relatively compact terri- 
 tory, history, and group of men. For this 
 last, as I referred to Professor Allen's " Con- 
 tinuity of Christian Thought," in reference to 
 the Christian ages, let me commend TuUoch's 
 " Movements of Religious Thought in Brit- 
 ain during the Nineteenth Century." In 
 these movements, the poets, of some of 
 whom we have been thinking together re- 
 cently, have had a far greater hand than 
 Professor TuUoch indicates, — he having in 
 that book treated only of distinctively reli- 
 gious writers. Tennyson's " In Memoriam," 
 for example, marks a great " divide " and 
 new upland in our century's outlook toward 
 immortality. That service to human think- 
 inof would have been, of itself, an immeas- 
 urable gift to the world, had the Laureate 
 written nothing else. 
 
 We cannot, however, go into these matters 
 now. But there is a practical question we 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 23 
 
 can go into. The question is this : What 
 business have we to mutiny against this law 
 of our being, the law of the Bible, the law of 
 religious history, the law which hinders the 
 future from being a blank and eternity a 
 horror, and go heresy-hunting ? They stoned 
 heretics in the Old Testament. They cut 
 off their heads and crucified them in the 
 New. They invented the horrors of the In- 
 quisition for them in the sixteenth century. 
 We build the sepulchres of those heretics. 
 We are always quoting them and praising 
 them. We know that they discovered truth 
 for us, and made the world better for us. 
 Why, then, do we start off to be the ruin of 
 heretics now ? Why do we hold the clothes 
 of them that stone them 1 Have we not a 
 measure of common-sense ? Do we care to 
 repeat the folly of trying to suppress the 
 Horace Bushnells, the Nathaniel W. Taylors, 
 the Professor Parks, of nowadays.? Surely 
 we shall be laughed at some day for doing 
 this. Perhaps we shall live long enough to 
 laugh at ourselves. Mr. Bullard, with his 
 sense of humor, must have edg^ed off into a 
 
24 The Newer Religious TJiinkijig, 
 
 smile and then into a laugh, when he saw 
 that poor thin little Bushnell book, without 
 any titlepage or imprint, and with its " To be 
 preserved, as it is my only copy." There 
 were soon copies enough. 
 
 Turning, however, from these reflections, 
 let us notice, first, certain indications, and 
 then certain characteristics, of the newer re- 
 ligious thinking at the present time. 
 
 I. Certain indications. 
 
 1. And, to begin with, even unbelief, in 
 its truer, more typical phases, is in a hopeful 
 state of newness and progress. It does not 
 scoff; it is sorry not to believe. Its quarrel 
 is with extreme partisans of faith, not with 
 those humble, teachable souls who live their 
 faith. Witness divisions xxxi., xxxii., and 
 XXXIII., of " In Memoriam " as an expression, 
 indeed from a somewhat different point of 
 view, of this new attitude. 
 
 2. Those Christians, moreover, commonly 
 termed " unevangelical " are likewise in a 
 certain refreshing newness and progress of 
 thought. Those of them often called " radi- 
 cals," while moving away from some of the 
 
This Thmking Characterized, 25 
 
 simpler facts of religion, are in many in- 
 stances taking the most commendable steps 
 toward the practical aspects of the religious 
 life ; while the so-called " moderates " are 
 adopting thoughts and methods which bring 
 them nearer to the so-called " evangelical " 
 religionists. They hunger for a warmer, 
 more pronounced religious experience; for 
 meetings for prayer ; for mission work ; for 
 such work even anion 2^ the heathen ; and 
 for some ground of unity which ma}'- bring 
 them into closer touch with the Church 
 universal. 
 
 This might be abundantly illustrated were 
 there time. The odium theologicum, if not 
 passed, is passing. And as a liberal spirit 
 among so-called " Evangelicals " is often the 
 cause of much reproach to its possessors, so 
 among the classes already referred to, those 
 who are moving in this newness and prog- 
 ress are often maligned for doing so. The 
 superintendent of the non-sectarian East 
 End Christian Union, of our city, tells of 
 meeting a Trinitarian who did not want to 
 contribute toward it because it was too lib- 
 
26 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 eral, and then a Unitarian who found fault 
 with it because it was too orthodox. And 
 with the thought underlying the superin- 
 tendents plain rejoinder, " I told both of 
 them that I had no use for such men," the 
 truer spirits of both wings will tend more 
 and more to agree. 
 
 3. Think, again, how in the Church of 
 Rome there are also the progressives ; how 
 the present Pope is in this respect an ad- 
 vance on the last ; how men like the revered 
 pastor of one of our Cambridge Catholic 
 churches, while no less Catholics, are push- 
 ing forward — often at the expense of that 
 obloquy from their associates which the 
 prophets and apostles of progress have gen- 
 erally to encounter — into a practical fellow- 
 ship with religious m.en outside their ancient 
 communion. 
 
 4. Once more, in the religious bodies 
 nearer ourselves than any of these, reflect, 
 for example, on the coming of the Episco- 
 pal Church toward Phillips Brooks ; on the 
 tightening fellowship of the Presbyterian 
 Church, which revolts from schism in the 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 27 
 
 case of Union Seminary and of Professor 
 Briggs, whom such organs of conservatism 
 as the " New York Observer " have long 
 been scourging outrageously ; and on the 
 disposition of our own denomination to in- 
 clude rather than to expel men, churches, 
 and institutions of learning, on which a sec- 
 tion of the religious press has waged war for 
 years.^ 
 
 In the light of facts like these, it may be 
 unhesitatingly affirmed that there is a greater 
 unity amidst diversity, a greater respect for 
 differences of opinion, a greater bringing of 
 all questions to the test of life and of spirit, 
 and a larger, truer thinking about God, and 
 
 1 On the primary movement now going on in human nature 
 toward inclusiveness and .sohdarity, see Professor Tucker's 
 memorable Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard, June 30, 
 1892. These sentences in it bear on that portion of the sub- 
 ject here alluded to : — 
 
 " Questions are arising in our time, and passing into heat- 
 ed discussion, of the most fundamental and vital kind, which 
 in other times would have split the most compact body, 
 but thus far they have not divided a single communion. The 
 one ecclesiastical sin of our age is schism. Of that alone 
 we are intolerant" (pp. 18, 19). 
 
 The Oration is entitled, " The New Movement in Human- 
 ity from Liberty to Unity." Houghton, Mifflin, and Com- 
 pany, Boston. 1892. 
 
2S The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 life, and truth, to-day, among religious people 
 the likest to ourselves, than there has ever 
 been before ; and that we, in this respect, 
 are, as I have intimated, wittingly or un- 
 wittingly, in the current of a great world- 
 movement in similar directions, embracino^ 
 " Unevangelicals " as well as "Evangelicals," 
 Catholics as well as Protestants, and the 
 truer types of unbelievers as well as believers. 
 Thus is the prayer, " Thy kingdom come," 
 getting its answer, — slowly, with many a re- 
 verse, with sore travail still, but surely. He 
 whose right it is already reigns, and is mar- 
 shalling events, movements, men, opinions, 
 into compacter, truer lines of tendency, ex- 
 pectation, and promise; all of which shall 
 eventuate according to that " heavenly 
 vision " which, whether we will or not, we 
 cannot choose but obey, and the ending 
 whereof the wisest and the most far-siQ:hted 
 only sees as " in a mirror, darkly." 
 
 II. Next, and in conclusion, let us try to 
 fix in our minds certain characteristics of 
 the newer religious thinking of our time. 
 
 I. One of them is its scientific temper. 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 29 
 
 The thinking of which I speak is not 
 going on in this century of the vastest ex- 
 pansion of the boundaries of knowledge 
 that the world has ever known without 
 being affected at once by the knowledge, 
 and by those processes of induction and of 
 deduction by which the knowledge has come. 
 It grows tired of theories. It wants facts. 
 After these it is groping everywhere, — in 
 the world of nature, in the field of archaeol- 
 ogy, in that mighty research for a true 
 account of the origin of the human species, 
 often caricatured as a trying to prove one's 
 descent from apes, but a far deeper and 
 wider reaching investigation than the cari- 
 caturists dream ; in heredity, too, in animal 
 psychology, in sociology, in the history of 
 opinions, and in those seers, the prophets, 
 psalmists, and poets of all time. 
 
 It wants the truth, nothing but the truth, 
 and will have it at all hazards ; and is un- 
 alterably purposed to count nothing finally 
 settled, until it matches in with God's whole 
 book of nature as well as of grace, and of 
 the human heart as well as of metaphysics. 
 
30 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 And since there is no schism in the truth, 
 but truth agrees with itself, verifies itself, 
 and is a unit}^ we ought to be devoutly 
 thankful that such a purpose marks the 
 newer religious thinking. 
 
 2. Another characteristic of this thinking 
 is its practical bent. 
 
 " What can religion do for a man ? " it 
 seems forever to be asking. That which, 
 more than anything else, has sickened it of 
 over-confidence in certain systematic ways 
 of looking at truth is the miserable fruit 
 of such systems. It does not want a reli- 
 gion professing to follow the forgiving Jesus, 
 if that religion does not make men forgiv- 
 ing. It does not want a religion of love 
 which does not make men loving. It does 
 not want a religion which teaches that all 
 men are brothers, if it produces the class 
 distinctions, the outrageous disparities be- 
 tween wealth and poverty, and that luxuri- 
 ous selfishness so common, hardly less in 
 the Church than out of it, in our time. 
 
 Furthermore, when it accepts religion, 
 albeit never so devotedly, it is not content 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 31 
 
 with prayers, sacraments, sound doctrine, 
 and relio^ious routine. In these it believes. 
 But it wants something adequate to show 
 for them in deeds. It Is wlUing to invest 
 heavily in religion, but demands dividends 
 in bettered lives, ennobled communities, and 
 truer political, economic, intellectual, and so- 
 cial conditions. 
 
 3. Yet another characteristic of the newer 
 religious thinking is its purpose to include 
 in its concept the entire religious impulse of 
 the world. 
 
 When " they therefore that were scattered 
 abroad upon the tribulation that arose about 
 Stephen travelled " far, " speaking the word 
 to none save only to Jews," until an almost 
 accidental experiment taught them better, 
 they did what religion has characteristi- 
 cally done until our time. That God was 
 with and in the religious life of the Egyptians, 
 Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, etc., as well as 
 with and in the religious life of the Hebrews, 
 has been little recognized until recently. But 
 he was. No race, no people, no hlstor}^ has 
 a monopoly of religion. Religion is a great 
 
32 The Newer Religiotts Thinking. 
 
 fact. It is a part of the race of man. It is 
 the correlation of man and what is above 
 and beyond him. 
 
 The newer rehgious thinking recognizes 
 this comprehensiveness. It is trying to un- 
 derstand all religions. It hopes, through the 
 religions and religious impulses of all peo- 
 ples, to bring in the simpler, clearer, and 
 final religion. Hence the men of faith are 
 reaching out and striking hands with the 
 men who, until recently, would have been 
 called the men not of faith, to help them and 
 to receive help. To illustrate what I mean : 
 Almost no man ever helped me more in 
 spiritual things — I say, please note, " helped 
 me," not I him — than a friend of mine, now 
 passed on into the infinite light, who was to 
 such an extent an agnostic that, for a long 
 time, he could not so much as pray. But 
 his life was a faith, a prayer, a holiness, such 
 that he was a new manifestation of God to 
 my life, and to the lives of all who knew 
 him.-^ In such a sense as this, the men of 
 faith are striking hands with men hitherto 
 
 1 It is to his memory that this book is inscribed. 
 
This Thinking Characterized, 33 
 
 generally counted not of faith, for mutual 
 help. 
 
 Similarly the newer religious thinking 
 despairs not that the different divisions of 
 Christendom, heretofore seemingly hope- 
 lessly estranged, and all theistic religions, 
 and indeed all religions, have contributions 
 to make toward, and in some sense a place 
 to take in, the ampler and more adequate 
 religious life that is to be. This is the 
 same thing as to say, not only that the 
 newer religious thinking has a scientific 
 temper, but that it has at length come 
 to recognize religion in its every form as 
 a great, scientific, and mightily instructive 
 fact. Please observe that, in making this 
 statement, I have no time to define and 
 clarify it. Because I do not do so, it may 
 be that I shall be misunderstood. But when 
 " men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, 
 and nation " are represented as contributing 
 to the apocalyptic glory, it is impossible for 
 me to believe that the religions, and religi- 
 ous capacities, receptivities, and aptitudes of 
 " every tribe, and tongue, and people, and 
 
 3 
 
34 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 nation " are not also taken into the account, 
 and given their range and use. " God," we 
 read, "is no respecter of persons;" and I 
 beg leave to doubt if, any more, he is a 
 respecter of religions. 
 
 4. Finally, while the newer religious 
 thinking is scientific in temper, practical in 
 bent, and is enlarging its concept of religion, 
 let no man say, or even imagine, that this 
 thinking is other than inspired by, and 
 obedient unto, a " heavenly vision," which 
 ever hovers in its foreground, and beckons 
 it on. 
 
 The boundaries of its belief may be les- 
 sened, for it doubts much ; but the depths 
 and heights of that belief are infinite. Out 
 on a simple, real, honest confidence it ven- 
 tures, like Abraham scarce knowing whither 
 it goes, but sure that it must leave not only 
 Ur of the Chaldees, but Haran, and come 
 into a place which it is after to receive for 
 an inheritance. 
 
 God, for it, is no longer in a creed, how- 
 ever true the creed may be ; nor in any 
 book, however priceless; nor in any or- 
 
This Thinking Characterized. 35 
 
 ganization, however venerable and sacred ; 
 nor in any form or observance, however 
 helpful in itself; nor here, nor there, nor 
 accessible in thus and such a manner; but 
 God is with the man, — in him, about him, 
 beyond him, his Father, Helper, Friend, and 
 All-sufficiency. 
 
 And he himself is in God's universe, nor 
 ever can get out of it ; so that even mys- 
 terious heaven grows simple, being God's ; 
 and he does not crave so much to be in 
 heaven, even, as to be in such a mind as 
 God is in, and as to be helping some other 
 God's-child, his brother, though he were 
 fathoming hell to find him. 
 
 And for him fear is done; for has not 
 perfect love cast it out? And hope is ever 
 fresh ; for can he ever wholly find out God, 
 or sound God's love's-depth ? And as for 
 motive, of the want or badness whereof so 
 many complain, that is no longer his solici- 
 tude ; for has not the same marched on 
 him, seized him, and possessed itself of him 
 forever, even the movement of none other 
 than the living God motive henceforth in 
 
36 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 him ? True, he expects nothing other than 
 to descend again and again into the depths, 
 — cast down many a time, defeated, spent ; 
 but went there not One before him thither ? 
 Shall he not follow so kingly a Forerunner? 
 And has not all this a purpose ? 
 
 But, truth to tell, he is reluctant so much 
 as to think of himself. Self, in fact, is get- 
 ting out of him. Truth, reality, God, are 
 getting in. Herein, too, he is " not diso- 
 bedient unto the heavenly vision," and there- 
 fore wots not that that vision is even now 
 transfiguring him, and that something of 
 eternity already shines in his face. 
 
ITS HUNGER AFTER GOD. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Hunger after God the propulsion of newer religious think- 
 ing. — Jacob and Moses illustrate this. — Why it is neces- 
 sarily so. — The receivers and revel ators of larger religious 
 truth have become such by reason of their hunger for it (exam- 
 ples). — Sketch of the upgrowth of the newer religious think- 
 ing of our time. — The newer literature contained it, in 
 principle, but religious thinkers were specially its channel. 
 — Coleridge and Bushnell ; their wide influence. — The 
 Tractarians. — Necessarily, over against the two tendencies 
 represented by the foregoing, came Arnold, ■ Robertson, 
 Maurice, Kingsley, etc. — Their application of religion to 
 life. — The Germanic contribution ; contrast between it and 
 the Anglo-Saxon. — The thinking of this decade an advance 
 on that outlined above, by reason of ampler data through 
 long inductive work. — America, until recently, provincial 
 in this matter. — The sketch suggests how hunger after God 
 has impelled the movement. — Personal testimony. — This 
 hunger necessitates image-breaking in theology. — Mr. 
 Beecher's remarks in connection with his " Background of 
 Mystery," — Some idols needing overthrow : (i) The machine 
 thought of God ; there is a Biblical pantheism ; (2) Exag- 
 geration of the idea of God as ruler ; God not mainly that ; 
 (3) Undue insistence on the philosophy of the Trinity ; how 
 far that doctrine may rightly go ; (4) God in Christ as 
 mainly governmental or forensic; the facts can never be 
 included under this category ; Christ a vital, living, present 
 Saviour. — Other idols suggested. — The Good Tidings 
 unspeakably hurt by such misrepresentations of God. — The 
 Church, the clergy, the laity, in fact all true souls, have 
 herein a heavy responsibility laid on them. 
 
II. 
 
 ITS HUNGER AFTER GOD.i 
 
 And J^acob asked him, and said, Tell 7?ie, I pray thee, 
 thy na77ie. — Genesis xxxii. 29. 
 
 And Afoses said unto God, Behold, luhen I come unto 
 the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The 
 God of your fathei's hath sent me icnto you ; and they 
 shall say to me. What is his name ? what shall I 
 say unto them ? — Exodus iii. 13. 
 
 And he said. Show me, I pray thee, thy glory, — Exodus 
 xxxiii. 18. 
 
 T 
 
 HE newer religious thinking of the 
 present proves its kinship to the newer 
 religious thinking of all time in finding its 
 propulsion in a profound hunger after God. 
 
 Jacob, who wished to know the name of 
 his mysterious visitor, and Moses, who put 
 the same question, and desired to behold 
 God's glory, epitomize the natural history 
 of all truly unfolding religious thought. 
 Here is the man ; somewhere, in him, be- 
 
 1 Prospect Street, Sunday night, November 6, 1892. 
 
40 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 yond him, is infinite reality, — in one word, 
 God. Religion is that verity, partly concep- 
 tual, partly factual, which correlates the two. 
 And because life is life, because the living 
 man thinks, feels, and grows, his thought of 
 this verity, his conception of religion, grows. 
 But the object of his conception, namely, 
 religion, being a correlation, being a some- 
 thinsf from within him as well as from be- 
 yond him, he is not passive in his growing 
 religious thought. He is active ; he thinks ; 
 he feels. He strives to clarify his thinking 
 and feeling; he hungers after knowledge 
 of the infinite ; he yearns toward God. 
 " Tell me, I pray thee, thy name," he cries ; 
 " Show me, I pray thee, thy glory." And 
 the hunger, the cry, the attitude of interest 
 and inquiry before that bush, burning but 
 not consumed, which the universe is, and the 
 struggle, as of one wrestling in the night, 
 with the mysterious problems of life and of 
 destiny, predispose a man to receive impres- 
 sions, light, and new religious life. "He 
 that seeketh, findeth." 
 
 It is not, therefore, by accident or partial- 
 
Its Hunger after God. 41 
 
 ity that the wrestling Jacobs, and the inquir- 
 inof and seeking: men like Moses, receive, 
 each in his fashion, new thoughts, ideals, 
 and principles in the range of religion. 
 Indeed, it might be summarily said, without 
 fear of successful contradiction, that the 
 receivers and revelators of larger truth, par- 
 ticularly in the realm of religion, — whether 
 they have been such receivers and revelators 
 publicly or privately, in a widely recognized 
 manner or not, or within the bounds of one 
 form of religion or of another, — have become 
 the channels for receiving and revealing such 
 larger truth, through their own hunger for 
 it, their own impressibleness by it, and their 
 own receptivity and responsiveness to it. 
 
 Thus all the newer religious thinking, 
 worthy the name, whether in the past or in 
 the present, has had its spring in hunger 
 after God. Jacob and Moses, Samuel and 
 David, Elijah and Isaiah, Saint Paul and 
 Saint John, Origen and Augustine, Gregory 
 the Great and Anselm, Luther and Knox, 
 John Bunyan and Jonathan Edwards, John 
 Wesley and John Henry Newman, Maurice 
 
42 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 and Bushnell, Phillips Brooks and Father 
 Hall, — these, in common with the lowliest 
 waiters on truth divine, have received and 
 given out the divine impulse, as hungering 
 for it, seeking it, filled with it, transformed by 
 it, and as thereby the mediums through which 
 it has passed into the possession of mankind. 
 What a lesson is there not for us here, to be 
 open, receptive, hungering toward God, and, 
 as freely receiving, so to be freely giving ! 
 For of this trul}^ sacramental privilege, as of 
 that other spoken of by Lowell, it remains 
 true that — 
 
 "The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 In whatso we share with another's need ; 
 Not what we give, but what we share, — 
 For the gift without the giver is bare." 
 
 But, to be more specific : — 
 
 I. Let us, in the first place, bring rapidly 
 before our minds a little of the way in which 
 this century's newer religious thinking has 
 come down to us; and let us be asking our- 
 selves meanwhile whether, looked at as re- 
 gards the men identified with it, this thinking 
 is not akin, as I observed at the outset, to the 
 
Its Hunger after God. 43 
 
 newer religious thinking of all time, in find- 
 ing its propulsion in a profound hunger after 
 God. 
 
 This thinking, with its corresponding 
 hunger, then, let us not forget, was already 
 abroad, in less definite manifestation, in 
 the newer literature which ushered in this 
 century, — in Burns, for example, and Cole- 
 ridge, and Wordsworth, yes, even in Shelley. 
 It was caught up and developed in our epoch- 
 marking poets, in Tennyson, in Lowell, in 
 Browning. 
 
 But in men approaching with an especially 
 religious wistfulness the burning bush of the 
 universe, the Peniel of human existence, it 
 most strongly appeared. Coleridge, now 
 thought of as religious thinker rather than 
 as poet, made a way for it in England ; 
 Bushnell, in America.^ It is difficult for us 
 of the immediate present to understand how 
 
 1 No study of the history of this subject, in America, 
 should omit the relation to it of Dr. Channing, Theodore 
 Parker, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nor, on both sides of 
 the Atlantic, should the impulse toward earnestness, reality, 
 and moral enthusiasm which was afforded by Thomas Car- 
 lyle be overlooked. 
 
44 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 vast was the influence which Coleridge ex- 
 erted on the religious thinkers of the genera- 
 tion now ao-ino^ and asfed on both sides the 
 Atlantic. One of that generation, a leader 
 of that branch of the Christian Church of 
 which he was a clergyman, and now long 
 passed on into eternal light, told me, in the 
 first year of my ministry, that Coleridge was 
 as real a personality to him as if he had been 
 his companion and intimate friend. He had 
 entered as living power into that man's life. 
 Bushnell had a like influence. He was read 
 abroad with hardly less interest than in 
 America. He was particularly powerful 
 in the pulpit. His prayers were as if 
 he stood in the presence-chamber, not only 
 of infinite majesty, but of infinite truth and 
 clearness of vision and power of illumina- 
 tion. In advanced age, in the chapel of 
 Yale College, preaching as I never heard 
 other mortal preach, he first gave me — in 
 crude beginnings — some grasp on things 
 eternal. Both men were John the Baptists, 
 forerunners of our new temper in religion. 
 They were dwelling ever on the spirit and 
 
Its Himger after God, 45 
 
 meaning of nature, of events, of mind, and 
 of life. They were tracing the analogies of 
 things natural and things spiritual. The 
 title of one of Bushnell's books, " Nature and 
 the Supernatural," typifies both men. 
 
 But between the men of Coleridge's tem- 
 per and the literal religionists of England, 
 there sprang antagonisms ; and amidst the 
 uncertainties and contentions consequent 
 thereupon, and due also to other causes 
 which were likewise at work, there started a 
 type of newer thinking which concentrated 
 attention on institutional Christianity, on the 
 Church, on its traditions, usages, and au- 
 thority. This was the Tractarian movement. 
 Some men in it, like Newman, went to 
 Rome ; some, like Pusey, into the high- 
 church side of Protestantism. Mightily 
 stimulating to thought, study, and the per- 
 sonal religious life, were these men. They, 
 too, were helpful builders of the spiritual 
 temple. 
 
 In such a state of affairs, because men in 
 religion could neither be mainly idealists, as 
 Coleridge was, nor mainly Churchmen as the 
 
46 The Neiuer Religious TJiinking. 
 
 Tractarians were, but must be in life, and 
 hold a living faith that could shape England's 
 politics and help England's poor, that could 
 recover a foothold of trust again for men 
 far gone toward unbelief, and could satisfy 
 minds as penetrating as Tennyson's and 
 Browning's, — there began to come forward 
 men hard to classify, so new, fresh, strong, 
 were their utterances and their thoughts : 
 Thomas Arnold, Frederick W. Robertson, 
 Frederick Denison ]\Iaurice, Charles Kings- 
 ley, and many others of a like temper on 
 both sides of the Atlantic, though few in- 
 deed comparable to these. 
 
 It was the magnificent service of such men 
 that they recovered for religion its hold on 
 life : Arnold, for example, on the men of 
 Rugby and of the universities ; Robertson 
 on such a populous and frivolous watering- 
 place as Brighton ; Maurice on the students 
 of Lincoln's Inn, and on the London work- 
 ingmen ; and Kingsley on town and country 
 living, on scientific pursuits, and on the burn- 
 ing questions of a practical nature which 
 were agitating England. It was their mag- 
 
Its Hunger after God. 47 
 
 nificent service, likewise, to show that doubt 
 may be the doorway of faith ; that reason 
 has its place in reh'gion, indeed that reHgion 
 is the highest reason ; that, moreover, beyond 
 formal reason there is a reason intuitional, 
 of insight, of vision, and of the living 
 " Word " of God in men's souls ; and above 
 all, that Christianity is a present, living, and 
 constructive force in society and in the life 
 of individuals, in distinction from being a 
 tradition, an observance, or a pious piece of 
 partialism. 
 
 Other lands, other faiths, and indeed, as I 
 suggested in the last discourse, unfaiths, had 
 their parts to contribute to the newer reli- 
 gious thinking. On them I cannot dwell 
 otherwise than to testify how greatly the 
 Teutonic mind, in point of research, of sys- 
 tematizing, and of insight, has stimulated 
 scholarship, has accumulated intellectual 
 materia], and has moved philosophically 
 toward the spirit and unity of all religions. 
 To this mind, to the land and race of 
 Luther, the newer religious thinking owes 
 measureless obligations. Nevertheless, for 
 
48 The Newer Religiotis Thinkhig, 
 
 religion in application, for it in its relations 
 to the nation, to society, to home, and to 
 the heart, — for, in short, religion in its more 
 concrete aspects, — Germany has not. in my 
 judgment, done for the world that peculiar 
 livins: service which has characterized in 
 particular the constructive minds of Great 
 Britain, and, to a less degree, of their kin 
 this side the sea. 
 
 We of this decade belong in a distinctly 
 different stage of the newer religious think- 
 ing from that to which Robertson, Maurice, 
 and their group belonged. We have a vast 
 accumulation of facts now well ascertained, 
 which was not within the reach of those 
 men, and which was, as it were, only divined 
 by them from afar. We have in general a far 
 richer archaeology than they ; in particular, 
 a more adequate grasp of remote history, 
 and of the processes at work in prehistoric 
 times ; a wider acquaintance with religions 
 and with race tendencies ; great gains in 
 critical knowledofe of how the Bible came 
 to be, and of Hebrew history ; and, compre- 
 hensively, an exacter science alike in regard 
 
Its Htmger after God. 49 
 
 to the forces at work in nature, in society, 
 and in human life. All these, with their 
 inevitable modification and enrichment of a 
 thinking much cruder then than now, have 
 brought the men of the present to positions 
 and tendencies in thought which were not 
 to have been expected then. 
 
 Indeed, when some sense of all this comes 
 in on the mind like a flood, how can one 
 repress a cry to God that we may not be 
 dull and unwitting, but may understand 
 our time, sympathize with it, appreciate its 
 mighty meaning, get at least a little way 
 into that meaning ourselves, and make it 
 potent in ourselves and in all about us ? 
 But on the spirit of those men, on their 
 splendid courage, on their insight into spir- 
 itual things, and on their unshaken resolve, 
 come what might, that religion should lay 
 hold on life, — on these elements in them 
 we have not advanced, nor shall we in many 
 a day. 
 
 It ouofht further to be remarked that we 
 in America, having been engaged in build- 
 ing up this great country of ours, in fighting 
 
 4 
 
50 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 our war through, in grappling with the ques- 
 tions thence issuing, and withal, by our tar- 
 iffs, our trusts, our speculations, and our 
 shrewdnesses, in getting money faster than 
 any other nation, and in spending it faster, 
 have until recently stood aside somewhat 
 provincially from the great, hard, thorough 
 religious thinking beyond the seas ; so that 
 such gatherings as the general Congrega- 
 tional Council in London in 1891, where 
 relieious leaders of the same communion in 
 America meet those of England and the 
 Continent, bring forcibly to mind the fact 
 that, theologically, many of us need to set 
 our watches considerably ahead in order to 
 tell Greenwich time. 
 
 Getting and spending money, if done in 
 righteousness, and developing a great coun- 
 try such as ours, are good. One may, in- 
 deed, be permitted the inquiry whether they 
 are the highest good, — whether a people 
 may not be too rich, and whether a country 
 may not, like a spindling child, develop 
 faster than is for its permanent advantage. 
 Certain at any rate it is that our brethren 
 
Its Hunger after God. 5 1 
 
 beyond the sea have surpassed us in the 
 getting and practical expenditure of the 
 riches of Godward and manward thinking, 
 and in developing a country consisting, not 
 of granite and of prairie loam, but of reason- 
 ableness, righteousness, and truth. To them 
 we may well turn with teachable minds, — 
 not necessarily to agree with them in all 
 respects, but to emulate their noble studies 
 and lofty thoughts. 
 
 In this rapid survey of the way along 
 which the newer relio-ious thinkinor of this 
 century has travelled until it has reached 
 us, I hope has appeared, at least impliedly, 
 what I now affirm, that the persons, known 
 or unknown, who have been most hospitable 
 to it, and have most furthered it, have been 
 moved, like Jacob or Moses, with great and 
 earnest hungerings after God. His true, 
 real, meaning-full name, his glory and him- 
 self, have been the objects of their quest. 
 Not longer the Holy Grail, but very God, 
 has allured them on. 
 
 No one who knew Arnold of Rugby, with 
 whom religion was the heart of everything; 
 
52 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 or Maurice, whose very face, manner, and 
 bearing became a holy benediction, often 
 remarked upon as he walked the streets ; 
 or Kingsley, for whom the whole world was, 
 like his own Chester, God's wonderful cathe- 
 dral, — no one, I say, who knew these men 
 could well avoid likening them to typical 
 men in Bible times. And as for Robertson, 
 England has not seen, nor shall see, one 
 hungering more for God. Such a tem- 
 per, too, was in the Tractarian movement. 
 Newman, as much as Robertson, sought 
 God. A friend of mine who visited him 
 toward the close of his life, could not give 
 an account of the interview without con- 
 veying the most vivid impression of his 
 saintliness. Such a temper, differently man- 
 ifesting itself, animiated Wordsworth, Ten- 
 nyson, Browning. The Germans, in their 
 prodigious labors for a better religious think- 
 ing, have, in their truer representatives, been 
 devout too. So have our own people. So 
 has many a man outside religious lines, and 
 many a man seemingly outside of all faith. 
 It is right, on such a point as this, that 
 
Its Hunger after God. 53 
 
 I should bear my personal testimony. If 
 you have ever seen in me any unselfishness, 
 any love of men, any grasp of affairs, any 
 public spirit, any courage of conviction, any 
 anything that is true, then let me say to 
 you that the mightiest incentive thereto 
 which I have ever known has been that 
 vision of God, more simply and as I believe 
 more truly conceived of, which in an ever- 
 increasino- des^ree commands me. It was 
 so in the long ago of which I just now 
 spoke, when God, through Horace Bushnell, 
 awakened my soul. It was so seven years 
 since, when, led as I believe of God, I 
 unfolded to you my simpler conviction re- 
 specting our Lord's w^ork.^ It is so, if I 
 know my own heart, as I speak to you in 
 these discourses. And if I, who am so de- 
 ficient, find God, more simply thought of, so 
 much more to my life, and such a propul- 
 sion to truer thinking, how much more may 
 we suppose this to be true of the veritable 
 
 ^ The two sermons, with some notes and additional mat- 
 ter, form the little book, '* Plain Words on Our Lord's 
 Work." Cupples, Upham, and Company, Boston. 1886. 
 
54 The Newer Religious Thijiking. 
 
 leaders of religious thought, the holy proph- 
 ets and seers of our time. 
 
 II. If now I have succeeded in making 
 evident, by way of narrative and from indi- 
 vidual illustrations, the fact to which I have 
 also felt constrained to bear my personal 
 testimony, namely, that hunger after God 
 actuates the newer religious thinking, let me 
 point out, in the second place, and as com- 
 pleting this discourse, some ways in which 
 this hunger works practically. 
 
 Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the sermon preached 
 in Plymouth Church the Sunday morning 
 after Mr. Beecher's death, made this state- 
 ment : " When your pastor preached that 
 famous sermon on the ' Background of Mys- 
 tery,' which created so much excitement and 
 produced so much criticism, I went to him 
 with the proofs of it. It was to be published 
 in ' The Christian Union,' and I said to him : 
 ' Mr. Beecher, this sermon you must revise.' 
 I think it was the only time I ever had 
 a controversy with Mr. Beecher and came 
 out best, but he yielded that time. . . . And 
 then I remember his turning to me, his great 
 
Its Hunger after God. 55 
 
 form growing greater, and the great brow 
 growing higher, and his great eyes flashing 
 fire, as he said something like this : ' There 
 are times, in preaching, when I have a con- 
 ception of the greatness and the goodness 
 and the mercy and the love of my God, and 
 then see by the side of it the hideous idols 
 that are put up in Christian temples and 
 represented in Christian literature, that are 
 maligning my God ; and I hate them, as the 
 old Hebrew prophets hated the idols of old 
 time, with an unutterable hatred ; and ' — 
 then, with one of those sudden transitions, 
 he dropped back and said — ' something 's 
 got to give way.' " 
 
 In this connection one remembers the zeal 
 of the old image-breakers, say in Antwerp 
 Cathedral in the time of William the Silent, 
 or on many an occasion in the life of Israel. 
 The image, or the idol, seemed such a trav- 
 esty of God that the moral indignation almost 
 passed bounds. But not all the idols are of 
 wood, or of stone. Some of them are of the 
 mind, — ideas, conceptions, doctrines. We 
 worship sometimes the Bible more than 
 
56 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 the Holy Spirit, speaking within us as it 
 spake to holy men of old. We worship 
 sometimes our ideas of Christ's work more 
 than we worship Christ. We worship some- 
 times human names and human authority 
 more than we worship the living God. 
 
 Now the newer religious thinking, under- 
 standing by the light of history when it was 
 that more or less of these images were set 
 up (even as Christ did when he said, "Moses 
 for your hardness of heart suffered you to " 
 do a certain thing, " but from the beginning 
 it hath not been so "), hungers to such a de- 
 gree after God, and to have God no longer 
 obscured and misrepresented by these images, 
 that, like the old image or idol breakers, 
 those to whom the clearer vision has come 
 cannot but do what in them lies to break the 
 idols down. Their course looks, to those 
 not understanding it, like sacrilege. It 
 seems inexplicable. But in reality it is 
 hunger after God manifesting itself in this 
 form. 
 
 May all such not feel " hate," except in 
 Mr. Beecher's beneficent sense. May they 
 
Its Hunger after God, 57 
 
 have, the rather, a loving and pitying spirit, 
 althouQ-h firm and thorousfh in their work. 
 And when it costs them much, as many a 
 time it will, may they have the spirit of the 
 Lord Jesus, who broke down idol after idol 
 of Jewish prejudice, but wept over Jeru- 
 salem, and prayed, " Father, forgive them," 
 for those who avenged the broken idols by 
 crucifying him. 
 
 What, let us ask, then, are some of the 
 idols which the newer religious thinking, in 
 this its hunger after God, would fain throw 
 down ? 
 
 I. One of them I may characterize as a 
 machine or mechanical conception of God, — 
 God as making the universe out of hand, like 
 a machine ; God as dwelling apart from the 
 universe, as the makers of a gigantic ocean 
 steamship, having built it, turn it off to ply 
 back and forth without them on the stormy 
 deep ; and God as about to break up the 
 universe, very much as if it were only so 
 much junk. 
 
 Now, that there are expressions in the 
 Bible regarding his forming the universe. 
 
58 The Newer Religious ThinJdng. 
 
 doing what he wishes with it, and destroying- 
 it, admits of no question. But from these it 
 cannot follow that such is an adequate repre- 
 sentation of his relation to the universe. 
 There are other and different expressions, 
 which represent him as in his works, as de- 
 lighting in them, as clothing himself with 
 them. But the former type of representa- 
 tions, and the natural tendency of ages pre- 
 ceding this to look at matters mechanically, 
 have brought it about that the ordinary 
 conception of the relation of God to the 
 universe is of the inadequate type which I 
 have described. 
 
 This is a heavy reflection on God. It 
 runs counter to our deepest instincts. It is 
 contrary to reason that so vast, intricate, and 
 mysterious a world, so athrill with thought 
 and life, should be mechanical, a thing thrown 
 off, a mere machine. It is contrary, also, to 
 the teachings of science, which more and 
 more are deepening the mystery of the uni- 
 verse. It is opposed, moreover, to the ruling 
 expressions in the Bible. Not so do the 
 minds which appear in the opening chap- 
 
Its Hunger after God. 59 
 
 ters of Genesis conceive of the world. His 
 Spirit, as they suppose, broods it. He finds it 
 very good. Men cannot get to the best of it, 
 because they will not live truly enough, but 
 God's angels can. Within it he himself 
 walks in the cool of the day. So reverent 
 of this earth are those far-off men ! Not so, 
 either, does Saint Paul conceive of the world. 
 " The invisible things of him since the crea- 
 tion of the world are clearly seen, being per- 
 ceived through the things that are made, 
 even his everlasting power and divinity," 
 exclaims the Apostle ; and he represents the 
 universe as sympathetically in a groaning 
 and travail with the world-long birth of 
 mental and spiritual life. 
 
 " But," says some one, " a thought of the 
 universe contrary in this respect to the tra- 
 ditional one would issue in pantheism." 
 Ah, my friend, you are at the usual tactics ; 
 employing deduction from imperfect con- 
 ceptions, instead of induction from the fullest 
 possible data, and sounding an unwarrantable 
 alarm. Let us not be frightened at a name. 
 Pantheism, by itself, is inadequate enough; 
 
6o The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 but there is a divine, yes a Biblical pantheism, 
 — all things in God, by him, through him ; 
 all things standing together in him ; he in his 
 world, not apart from it ; his world uttering 
 him, expressing him, bodying him forth. 
 
 No epoch since Hebrew and Greek poets 
 sang, except that period \vhich has suc- 
 ceeded, though the least spiritual, in fasten- 
 ing upon us a large part of our religious 
 ideas, namely, the Middle Ages, could have 
 had the Bible in hand, and propounded in 
 this respect a view of the universe utterly 
 repugnant to the spirit of the Bible. This 
 mechanical thought of God in his relation 
 to the world must go; the more spiritual 
 thought of him as immanent, as pervading 
 the world, and as of it, though more than it, 
 must come. The world is sacred. Exist- 
 ence is divine. There is nothing in which 
 God is not. Ah ! the beauty, the glory, the 
 meaning, the comfort herefrom ! How ma- 
 chine-like, wdth the lathe-marks still showing, 
 is the counter graven image ! 
 
 2. Another idol, or misrepresentation of 
 God, is the conception of him as mainly 
 ruler. 
 
Its Hunger after God, 6i 
 
 He rules, no doubt; but even in that 
 there is nothing arbitrary, wilful, or absolute 
 in temper. He rules by virtue of righteous- 
 ness and of love. He is God because he is 
 good. Moreover, the idea of him as ruler, 
 when most correct, is only one of many 
 aspects of him. And yet almost our whole 
 theology is keyed to this idea, — his sover- 
 eignty, his laws, his jealousy for them, his 
 punishments for those violating them, his 
 wrath, his being unable to do this and that 
 because he could not do it and be just, 
 and very much more to the same effect. 
 
 Perhaps you know a great and noble man, 
 a parent perchance, a magistrate, a college 
 president like Mark Hopkins. He rules? 
 Certainly. But is not his ruling the smallest 
 aspect of him ? Are you thinking, any great 
 part of the time, that such a one is a ruler, 
 — he being so much else, and so wonderfully 
 so much else ? So our Saviour has not 
 much to say of God as ruler. He says some- 
 thing of that ; but mainly he speaks of him 
 as Father ; as exercising a providential care 
 over even the hairs of our heads ; as yearn- 
 
62 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 ing for the prodigal's return ; as, like a true 
 shepherd, having more joy of the lost sheep 
 found than of the ninety and nine that went 
 not astray. God, to the Saviour's thought, 
 is one near us, with whom we may commune 
 and become one, far more than a ruler. 
 
 This primary proposition, then, of medi- 
 aeval theology, which has colored nearl}^ 
 every article of our creeds, must, I will not 
 say go, for there is some truth in it, but 
 must drop to its subordinate and normal 
 place, and yield to other as the predomi- 
 nant aspects of God. 
 
 3. Still another idol, or misrepresentation 
 of him, is one which I hesitate to mention, 
 because my meaning may readily be mis- 
 understood. But I cannot conscientiously 
 avoid doing so. I refer to our philosophy 
 of the Trinity, in so far as it is put in the 
 place of God, — and it is put there a great 
 deal, as I cannot help believing. 
 
 As a philosophy, although bunglingly ex- 
 pressing itself, it is in my judgment true. 
 I believe, that is to say, in the reality and 
 eternity of those distinctions in God's being 
 
Its Hunger after God. 6 
 
 J 
 
 which the terms Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit answer to. I am, in short, philosoph- 
 ically a Trinitarian ; and by this philosophy 
 I most readily explain to myself those Bib- 
 lical expressions, —so that, to this degree, 
 I may add that I am Biblically a Trinitarian. 
 Hegel's philosophy, unless I mistake, would, 
 if it went so far, turn out to be Trini- 
 tarian. Much of the strongest thinking since 
 Nicaea, early in the fourth century, has been 
 Trinitarian. All this should weigh with a 
 thoughtful person. 
 
 But one must distinguish between his 
 theory or philosophy of certain facts, how- 
 ever venerable it may be, and the facts 
 themselves. The facts are there. They 
 cannot well be set aside. But our philos- 
 ophy of the facts may be imperfect, or even 
 mistaken. God, as Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit, is in the Bible, and is to a large 
 degree in human experience. That is fact. 
 But our fourtli-century and Hegelian philos- 
 ophy of it is quite another thing. It may 
 be correct, — I think it correct ; but when I 
 suppose that philosophy to compass God, 
 
64 The Newer Religions Thinking, 
 
 and when I make representations accord- 
 ingly, I attempt to measure him by the yard- 
 stick of Athanasius, or of Hegel, or of my 
 own mind; and therein I am guilty, very 
 possibly, of setting up an idol ; and all idols 
 must come down. 
 
 To the simple Biblical indications, and to 
 those same indications in human experience, 
 we cannot but adhere. But to a philosophy 
 of them, which may or may not be correct, 
 which certainly is extra-Biblical, and which 
 has this ominous fact attending it, namely, 
 that there have always been devout souls 
 which could not accept it, — we may adhere 
 personally, as I for one do ; but we have no 
 right authoritatively to impose it on others. 
 We are, in other words, for liberty's sake, 
 and for the truth's sake, to stop representing 
 that God is necessarily expressed by our phi- 
 losophy of the Trinity ; but are, so far as we 
 touch upon the subject, to represent that 
 God is God, spoken of in the Bible as 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to a 
 large degree so apprehended in human ex- 
 perience. This is Biblical, factual, and 
 
Its Hunger after God. 65 
 
 enough. What exceeds this verges toward 
 image-making. It ought, moreover, — what 
 is a burning shame, — no longer to separate 
 Christian brethren. 
 
 4. One more idol, or misrepresentation 
 of God, lies in our too frequent insistence 
 that God in Christ is mainly governmental 
 or forensic in his purpose. 
 
 Christ, according to this view, is almost 
 entirely compassed by the idea that he be- 
 came man, lived, suffered, and died, to get 
 a law adjustment between sin, which God 
 wished to forgive, and justice which pre- 
 vented God from forgiving it. 
 
 This idol was set up in the eleventh 
 century ; for until that time the Church 
 made Christ, the rather, to have been a 
 negotiator with Satan for man's escape 
 from hell. Since the eleventh century it 
 has met with a variety of fortunes. 
 
 It is, indeed, a sort of corollary from the 
 exaggerated emphasis laid in earlier ages 
 on the idea of God as ruler. It gets some 
 support from certain passages in the New 
 Testament; just as the earlier idea of Christ 
 
 5 
 
66 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 as negotiating with Satan gets some support 
 from certain other passages. But these 
 passages are far from coextensive with the 
 subject. There is a much wider range of 
 Bible teaching. And the facts can never be 
 included under this category. This its in- 
 sufficiency was what compelled that investi- 
 gation which led to my abandoning it, as 
 intimated a few moments ago. 
 
 Christ is a vital, living, present Saviour; 
 not a law expedient. The latter interpreta- 
 tion of him presupposes in God an attitude 
 toward sin in his children for which, if you 
 or I had the same toward sin in our children, 
 v/e should loathe ourselves, or ought to. As 
 you know, I depend wholly on Christ for 
 salvation, that is, as the medium of spiritual 
 life; but I should deny the truth as God 
 gives me to see it if I explained his work 
 forensically, and should, I am persuaded, be 
 misrepresenting God likewise. 
 
 Against, thus, a machine or mechanical 
 conception of God ; against a conception 
 of him which exaggerates his rulership out 
 of all proportion to larger aspects of him ; 
 
Its Hunger after God. 67 
 
 against a conception which limits the thought 
 of him to a philosophy, approximating the 
 truth, as I personally believe, but which may 
 or may not be correct, which is extra-Biblical, 
 and which is incapable of being received by 
 not a few devout minds ; and against a con- 
 ception of him which mainly interprets the 
 glorious and life-affecting manifestation of 
 himself in Christ by terms better suited to 
 the law courts of the tyrannous Middle Ages, 
 such as the " Merchant of Venice " brings 
 before our minds, than to this age or to the 
 facts, — against such conceptions of God, as 
 misrepresentations of him, and as idols of 
 the mind, the newer religious thinking utters 
 its protest. 
 
 I might instance others. In particular, I 
 should like to speak of our ordinary thought 
 as not giving God time enough, nor scope 
 enough, to come down to now, or to go on 
 from now, or to include his whole great uni- 
 verse and his whole great family. But to do 
 this to-night is impracticable. Besides, as 
 examples, the idols already mentioned will 
 suffice. 
 
68 The Newer Religions Thinking. 
 
 Let me say, in closing, that the " gospel of 
 the glory of the blessed God " has been un- 
 speakably hurt by such misrepresentations. 
 Because it has been so misrepresented, mul- 
 titudes have wandered off into unbelief. 
 Other multitudes have groped blindly after 
 God, with sick hearts. The enemies of 
 Christianity have made the most of such 
 caricatures, and have summarily bowed it 
 out of court. These caricatures, and others 
 like them, are the stock in trade of rank and 
 noisy infidelity. 
 
 Brethren, the Church, the clergy, the laity, 
 in fact all true souls, have herein a heavy 
 responsibility laid on them. They are to 
 think rightly of God, and speak rightly, and 
 witness by true lives rightly for him. God 
 help us all to do this! May open eyes, 
 teachable minds, and receptive hearts be 
 ours for that wideness and richness of truth, 
 now discernible, for which prophets, apos- 
 tles, and Christians from age to age waited, 
 but received it not, " God having provided 
 some better thing for us, that they without 
 us should not be made perfect " ! 
 
ITS PASSION FOR MEN. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 The passion for men of Moses and Saint Paul. — This 
 characteristic of fresh thinkers : Throughout the Bible ; 
 In Christian ages; In the modern time (examples). — The 
 connection between such thinking and this passion not 
 accidental but necessary. — Consequent war of the newer 
 religious thinking on certain traditional religious ideas in- 
 consistent, as commonly understood, with an adequate view 
 of man, namely : (i) Election and reprobation ; the self- 
 sacrifice of the true, Biblical election ; (2) Man's sinful state ; 
 only most figuratively a " child of wrath ; " (3) Worthless- 
 ness of works when expressive of character; failure to 
 apprehend the struggle of Christ and the apostles with 
 the Jewish spirit underlies this perversion of Scripture ; 
 (4) Man's access to God ; this vital, rather than analogous 
 to access to the Queen of England ; (5) Man's destiny ; mag- 
 nitude of this question ; wanted upon it, more light, ampler 
 data, and its re-study. — Consequent war, also, of the newer 
 religious thinking on certain ideas and practices prevalent in 
 society, namely : (i) Merely ease-producing remedies for 
 the evils of society ; (2) Superficial remedies ; (3) Laissez 
 /aire; (4) Inordinate wealth and luxury; (5) Asceticism; 
 (6) Unscientific living ; (7) The individualistic tendency. — 
 " I will not cease from mental fight." 
 
III. 
 
 ITS PASSION FOR MEN.i 
 
 Yei now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — / and if not, 
 
 blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast 
 
 ivritten. — Exodus xxxii. 32. 
 For I could ivish that I myself were anathema from 
 
 Christ for my breth7'en''s sake, my kifismen according 
 
 to the flesh. — Romans ix. 3. 
 
 TN these words two great typical representa- 
 tives of newer religious thinking in their 
 time utter the passion of their souls. It is 
 for men. 
 
 Moses, stirred by larger religious thought, 
 essays to free his people. " Sirs, ye are 
 brethren," he pleads. Prevented from ac- 
 complishing his object, long delayed, but at 
 length entering upon and now amidst his 
 great work, he finds that his people cannot 
 rise to his spiritual ideals, but revert to idol 
 worship and to gross sensuousness. In such 
 
 ^ Prospect Street, Sunday night, November 20, 1892. 
 
72 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 a case they are repugnant to high moral law, 
 and to God as conceived of under the alto- 
 gether inadequate category of moral law. In 
 such a plight, when destruction seems await- 
 ing them, and when he himself is tempted to 
 let them perish, and to become in his own 
 person the founder of a truer nation, the 
 God within him offsets the God of his pre- 
 conception and pleads for his people with 
 this sublime climax, " If [thou forgive them] 
 not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book 
 which thou hast written." 
 
 Similarly, Saint Paul, the great new re- 
 ligious thinker of early Christianity, would 
 desire to be " accursed," or " separated,'' or 
 " anathema," for his brethren's sake. 
 
 This is one marked characteristic of fresh- 
 ening religious thought. It freed Israel from 
 Egypt. It rescued her anew and anew from 
 her enemies. It led the Hebrew prophets, 
 many of them heretics in their day, to be the 
 most democratic of men, pleading for the poor, 
 the oppressed, the outcast, against wealth, 
 tyranny, and obloquy, — so that they became 
 the forerunners of the liberators of succeed- 
 
Its Passion for Men, 73 
 
 ing ages, and by their utterances (together 
 with those of the Hebrew lawgivers, who 
 were actuated by the same spirit) laid as 
 foundations those just principles of human 
 conduct which many centuries later became 
 the basis of the common law, and which 
 have thus come to obtain for the modern 
 world. 
 
 Similarly, freshening religious thought 
 broke into the petrified tyranny and cruelty 
 of the Roman Empire, and deferred the over- 
 throw of that empire by Christianizing it; 
 made a way for the tentative rise of free in- 
 stitutions prior to the Reformation; rendered 
 possible, coincidently with the Reformation, 
 far ampler freedom alike for Protestants and 
 Catholics ; and is to-day the great humaniz- 
 ing factor in a humanizing tendency which 
 has become so universal that it characterizes 
 many even of those who deny the very 
 grounds for the existence of religion. 
 
 In the past century and a half, for exam- 
 ple, the fresher religious thinking under 
 Edwards prepared the way for the indepen- 
 dence of the American Colonies; and the 
 
74 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 fresher religious thinking of " Unevangeli- 
 cals," so-called, like Channing and Parker, 
 and of " Evangelicals," so-called, as seen in 
 a fresher Andover theology. New Haven 
 theology, and New School Presbyterian 
 theology, prepared the way for the over- 
 throw of American slavery, in one of the 
 most gigantic moral struggles of history. 
 So in the mother country, Arnold, Robert- 
 son, Maurice, and Kingsley, with many 
 others, some of them passed on, and some 
 of them still living, have been in the fore- 
 front of those modifications of the English 
 Commonwealth which have so mightily 
 uplifted and benefited its congested popu- 
 lations. 
 
 And to-day the men who are least satis- 
 fied with things as they are ; who are plung- 
 ing deepest into social questions ; whose 
 life-hold on political economy and on politics 
 is most tenacious, are the men who see a 
 new heavens and a new earth of religious 
 thought and feeling, — some of them within 
 so-called " evangelical " lines ; some of them 
 liberals or radicals religiously ; and some of 
 
Its Passion for Men, 75 
 
 them agnostics or unbelievers, but with a 
 freshened and changed religious feeling, 
 whatever their classification. In fact, the 
 men are all about us, who conjoin with 
 fresher and better thoughts of God fresher 
 and better thoughts for men, — Catholic and 
 Protestant, " Evangelical " and " Unevangel- 
 ical," religious and (as they would call them- 
 selves) non-religious, but in the range that 
 belongs of right to religion, new men, in the 
 new time- " Ring out," they cry, in the 
 lines of Tennyson, — 
 
 " Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
 Ring in redress to all mankind. 
 
 " Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
 The civic slander and the spite \ 
 Ring in the love of truth and right, 
 Ring in the common love of good." 
 
 The High Church is working for the poor, 
 and so is the Low Church ; formal Non- 
 conformist, and informal Salvation Army 
 man. There are the Saint Andrew's Brother- 
 hood man, and the Christian at Work ; 
 Toynbee Hall, and Rivington Street Col- 
 lege Settlement, and Prospect Union, and 
 
76 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 the Andover House. Fresher religious 
 thinking, whatever its type, is plunging in, 
 bound to rescue men ; while unfreshened 
 religious thought, gathering its skirts about 
 it, too often only offers a prayer, and 
 passes the contribution box. The voice 
 of the latter has too frequently put into 
 polite phrase Cain's question, " Am I 
 my brother's keeper?" The voice of the 
 former, with Moses and Saint Paul, cries 
 to God that it may be blotted out, or ac- 
 cursed, if it cannot do something for its 
 erring, sinning brothers. 
 
 I. The first point to which I desire to call 
 attention in this matter is that it is not by 
 accident that a mighty passion for men has 
 attended the newer religious thinking in 
 times past and now, but that there is a 
 necessary connection of cause and effect 
 between them. 
 
 Religion is the correlation of man and the 
 Infinite. As, then, men enlarge their thought 
 of the Infinite, the enlargement necessarily 
 goes into the domain of man, as well as of 
 God. God being more freshly, strongly. 
 
Its Passion for Men. jy 
 
 deeply conceived of, man is by consequence 
 more freshly, strongly, deeply conceived of. 
 The correlation carries them both. If so 
 great, noble, and more and more largely con- 
 ceived of a being as God is in a relation to 
 men of which religion is the expression, how 
 great, noble, and more and more largely to be 
 conceived of is man also. The one involves 
 the other. Or, to express it more simply: 
 God, we will say, is Father, and men are his 
 children. With the Father goes the child. 
 The child gains in nobility from the Father. 
 New, fresh, strong thoughts of God, then, 
 carry with them new, fresh, strong thoughts 
 of men. 
 
 Hence, necessarily, did he who had seen 
 the bush burning but not consumed, and the 
 Sinai glory of God, and he also who had been 
 caught up into the third heaven, yearn alike 
 for the children of so glorious and good a 
 God, and wish to be blotted out, or accursed, 
 if their brethren might not also share the 
 blessing. Or, as Saint John the Revelator 
 put it, reversing the statement, " He that 
 loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
 
78 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 how can he love God whom he hath not 
 seen ? " And hence necessarily also did 
 those newer religious thinkers, the Hebrew 
 lawgivers and prophets, become the fore- 
 runners of the liberators and of the enlaro-ed 
 laws of mankind. 
 
 Hence, too, necessarily did the newer 
 Christianity defer the doom of the Roman 
 Empire, and, yet more and more freshly 
 conceived of, prepare the beginnings of lib- 
 erty before the Reformation, and give the 
 same in larger degree to Protestants and 
 Catholics after the Reformation, and free our 
 Colonies, and unshackle our slaves, and make 
 the larger liberty of the England of to-day, 
 and spread itself as a reforming and human- 
 izing influence, pervasive as the atmosphere, 
 in this last decade of the nineteenth century. 
 The one involves the other. The enlarging 
 and deepening thought of the correlation 
 embraces the conception of man as well as 
 the conception of God. And so is verified 
 that profound saying of Saint Paul, " Where 
 the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 
 
 II. But, in the second place, the fresher 
 
Its Passion for Men. 79 
 
 thought of man, consequent on the fresher 
 thought of God in the newer religious think- 
 ing, puts that thinking at war not only with 
 certain current ideas of God, as we saw in the 
 last discourse, but also with certain current 
 ideas of man. 
 
 I. The current theology regarding man 
 runs, for example, among men a line of elec- 
 tion and reprobation. 
 
 True, this is very little spoken of now; 
 but it is unretracted, and lingers as an influ- 
 encing element in men's thinking. Accord- 
 ine to this view, the elect are chosen of God 
 for blessing, and the non-elect for cursing. 
 In apparent favor of this view are some Bible 
 expressions, like that about the vessels made 
 by a potter, some to honor and some to dis- 
 honor. But from an ampler thought of God 
 it follows that man, his child, is not to be 
 treated in that way. You could not treat 
 your child in that way without running 
 counter to human law^ and much more, to 
 the law of God. 
 
 That passion for men which characterizes 
 the newer religious thinking presses, there- 
 
So The Newer Religiotis Thinking. 
 
 fore, a more adequate study of this doctrine 
 of election and reprobation. From this it 
 appears that the doctrine, as presented in the 
 Bible, occurs there mainly in consolatory 
 passages, as in the eighth of the Romans, 
 where it is urged for comfort and reassurance 
 that God has chosen the reader, and is on 
 his side. From this study it also appears 
 that the chief elect one in the Old Testament 
 is Abraham, chosen that in him all nations 
 might be blessed; and that the chief elect 
 one in the New Testament is the Lord Jesus, 
 who is chosen that men may be saved, and 
 all men drawn to him. 
 
 The elect, in short, as another has phrased 
 it, " are elect for the non-elect." Not partial- 
 ism, but benevolence, self-sacrifice, as in the 
 case of Abraham and the Saviour, and yearn- 
 ing for the o:ood of all, are in this truth. 
 
 2. Again, the newer religious thinking 
 cannot regard man so ill as did the older 
 thought. 
 
 It thinks as ill of sin as ever. Evil, it is 
 sure, is evil and nothing else. But it con- 
 ceives of sin more justly. It considers that 
 
lis Passion for Men. 8i 
 
 sin has come from outside influences in part ; 
 that blindness is in greater or less degree its 
 cause ; and that that part of it — and it is 
 a large part — which is wilful and designing, 
 ofrows out of a mistaken or insufficient idea 
 of God and of right, even as a wilfully sin- 
 ning child is such, generally, through not 
 having had its heart touched by love into 
 nobler and better things. 
 
 Love, the newer religious thinking knows, 
 can penetrate the hardest heart, afford it 
 vision, stir its aspirations, and mould it, it 
 trusts, into nobler life. Love, in other words, 
 changes the point of view. What law can- 
 not do, a new spirit called into exercise can. 
 Saint Paul has the philosophy of it : " The 
 law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made 
 me free from the law of sin and of death." 
 Accordingly, man being such, and so redeem- 
 able, the newer religious thinking realizes, 
 with Scripture, how much that is noble and 
 lovable resides in every human soul. As the 
 Saviour could find it, so this thinking finds 
 it. Fallen indeed is man from the heights 
 he might have attained, of truth, right, and 
 
 6 
 
82 The Newer Religious Tki7tking. 
 
 love; but he is still God's child, and only in 
 a most figurative and exceptional sense a 
 "child of wrath." 
 
 In brief, the newer religious thinking 
 believes that man, fallen in such a sense, is 
 still nigh to God, dear to him, and in some 
 genuine sense still not fallen, but true, and 
 with something of God in him. This some- 
 thing it sets itself to seek, to love, to develop, 
 and to thank God for. 
 
 3. The newer religious thinking deplores 
 also the exaggeration of truth in the old 
 doctrine of the worthlessness of works. 
 
 " Not of works, lest any man should boast," 
 says Saint Paul ; and his caveat ought to 
 explain his meaning. It is a Jewish mean- 
 ing. The Jew was seeking works as he was 
 seeking gold, to be proud of, and to felici- 
 tate himself and indulge himself withal. The 
 more gold, the more pride and ease. The 
 more works, the more pride and ease like- 
 wise. Of that kind of goodness, then, the 
 more the worse, since it was assumed for 
 effect, a mere matter of boasting, a thing 
 of the outside and not of the heart. It was 
 
Its Passion for Men. 83 
 
 upon this false Jewish idea of righteousness 
 that Christ and the apostles flung their lives 
 in protest. The real thing, they contended, 
 was utterly other than this. " Except your 
 righteousness shall exceed the righteousness 
 of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall In no 
 wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 What a perversion, now. It Is to take this 
 evil, which was peculiar, in great measure 
 local, and the conspicuous trait of a deca- 
 dent national religion, and formulate from 
 It the doctrine that good conduct counts for 
 nothing! It counts, being real and from 
 the heart, for everything. As clothes put 
 on, as something assumed, it Is insincerity, 
 hypocrisy, an object, not for boasting (" lest 
 any man should boast "), but for contempt. 
 But as a real thing, as springing from the 
 heart, as an expression of character, and 
 as In that sense an embodiment of faith. It 
 Is precious alike with God and with men. 
 " Thine alms are had in remembrance in 
 the sight of God," exclaims the angel to 
 Cornelius. " I will show thee my faith by 
 mv works," writes Saint James. 
 
84 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 The newer religious thinking, therefore, 
 while depending in all things on God, and 
 while valuing as beyond price those Christly 
 motives which issue in the noblest living, 
 begs leave at the same time, as it thinks 
 better of God, so also to think better of 
 man, God s child, than longer to undervalue 
 or think lightly of true, heart-inspired good 
 conduct. 
 
 4. Nor can the newer religious thinking, 
 though resting alone, in the case of many 
 of its representatives, on Christ as the chan- 
 nel or medium, realized or unrealized, of 
 access to God, any longer believe that access 
 to God is exclusively, as a matter of terms, 
 through Christ. 
 
 God is too real, too omnipresent, too imma- 
 nent in man, for there to be any such literal 
 mediating as the old doctrine assumed. 
 Rather, as many believe, does God in Christ 
 so seek men, whether they realize it or not, 
 that he finds them ; and, in their sincere 
 response to his seeking, whatever the form 
 of their response, they have access to God. 
 In some such sense as this, through Christ, 
 
Its Passion for Men. 85 
 
 whether known by them or not, men find 
 God ; but not necessarily through Christ 
 outwardly, in terms, and by way of formality. 
 It might be expressed thus : Christ is the 
 manward side of God. Through him access 
 is thus had. But not formally, diplomati- 
 cally, forensically, or even, necessarily, as 
 matter of knowledge, but rather vitally. 
 
 The newer religious thinking ventures, in 
 other words, not to think so ill of man, as 
 God's child, as to suppose that his access 
 to God is analogous to access to the Queen 
 of England. " I was found of them that 
 sought me not," says Scripture. 
 
 5. Once more, regarding the destiny of 
 man as God's child, the newer religious 
 thinking begs leave to accept no dictum of 
 mediaeval theology, no dictum of a super- 
 ficial interpretation of Scripture, no dictum 
 not consonant with the whole conception 
 of man derivable from nature, from history, 
 from that charter of religious freedom, if 
 rightly used, the Bible, and from the heart 
 of man under the influence of God's Spirit. 
 
 Accordino^ to the most conservative sci- 
 
86 The Newer Religious T/iinking, 
 
 entific estimates, man has been on the earth 
 vastly longer than six thousand years, the 
 period set by the old chronology. What 
 was he doing ? What was God doing with 
 him ? He was unfolding, by slow degrees, 
 on both hemispheres, into being man as we 
 know man. Was God hurling him into 
 hell for that beneficent work, savage though 
 he was ? At an analogous stage of unfold- 
 ing are some peoples now living on this 
 planet. What is God doing with them 1 
 Hurling them into hell likewise ? Then 
 should good men wish, with Saint Paul, to 
 be accursed with them, to follow them, 
 love them, and, if it might be, to bring 
 them back. 
 
 Oh ! these questions pressed on us by our 
 enlarging knowledge ! What is the destiny 
 of man as a race on this planet ? What is 
 the destiny of man, individually considered, 
 after leaving this planet ? We can neither, 
 on the one hand, answer these questions 
 with a benevolent optimism, hoping for the 
 best, — because, unfortunately, there is much 
 in the survey which looks by no means 
 
Its Passion for Men. '^'] 
 
 toward the best, but toward the worst, — nor, 
 on the other hand, with the theologians of 
 an age which, for frequent offences, burnt 
 people, flayed them alive, and tortured them, 
 can we hasten to remand them to hell 
 torments. 
 
 What we want, on this subject, is more 
 light, a re-study of the whole matter, ampler 
 data and more comprehensive generalization. 
 Many are now engaged in this. For myself, 
 while this pursuit is outside the range of my 
 own special studies, I frankly confess that I 
 am unable to resist the hope that God's love 
 will yet find all souls ; nor the hope that, 
 here and hereafter, I, in common with all 
 who love him, may be used as a means for 
 his love to find all souls. But neither can I 
 resist the impression that it may be possible 
 for a soul always to withstand God's love. I 
 cannot, consequently, be a Universalist in 
 doctrine. At the same time my hope for 
 the future of every spirit that God ever 
 created is as infinite as God is infinite. 
 
 Of the newer religious thinking, then, I 
 may summarily state, that it is devoutly re- 
 
88 The Newer Religiotis Thinking. 
 
 studying this whole subject, impelled thereto 
 by that larger thought of man which the 
 larger thought of God necessitates; and that, 
 while it is teachable, and feels that it has 
 much to learn, it is at the same time at war 
 with ideas on this subject, long prevalent, in- 
 deed, but alike dishonoring to God and man. 
 
 Thus in respect to the doctrine of election, 
 of man's sinful state, of conduct when expres- 
 sive of character, of man's access to God, and 
 of man's destiny, not to mention others, the 
 newer religious thinking is at war with the 
 hard and fast conclusions of an earlier theo- 
 logy; and, while it recognizes much truth in 
 the old positions, and in respect to them, 
 rightly apprehended, is not destructive but 
 constructive, it claims at the same time the 
 right to re-study them, and more justly, 
 reasonably, and honorably alike to God and 
 man, to interpret them afresh. 
 
 III. In conclusion I can state hardly 
 more than in propositions some particulars 
 in which the newer religious thinking, be- 
 cause of its passion for men, is at war with 
 society, cries aloud, and spares not. 
 
Its Passion for Men. 89 
 
 1. The newer religious thinking does not 
 believe that man lives by bread alone. 
 
 Any proposed renovation of society, there- 
 fore, by contrivances, like Mr. Bellamy's, to 
 take the hardness out of life, to make every- 
 thing easy, to have done with the struggle, 
 to have reconstructed society into an organ- 
 ism working with precision like a factory, is, 
 in its judgment, like the holiness scheme in 
 religion, while w^orthy in more or less re- 
 spects, substantially a device to construct 
 moral weaklings. Not what we have en- 
 joyed, but what we have suffered, — even as 
 One of old was made " perfect through suf- 
 ferings," — has probably most benefited you 
 and me. 
 
 The remedy must not involve the sacrifice 
 of anything truly educational, tonic, and 
 character-affecting in the present order. 
 
 2. Similarly, the newer religious thinking 
 is shy of any proposed remedies for the evils 
 of mankind which ignore the very great 
 complexities of the problem. 
 
 The problem is vast. The wisest knows 
 little about it. Man and man's good, which 
 
90 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 unnumbered ages have only brought to the 
 present stage, are too nearly infinite, having 
 an infinite parentage, and are too Httle as yet 
 within the range of our comprehension, to 
 be fathomed in a day, a year, a century, or 
 an epoch. That is one of the mighty 
 teachings of the "Idyls of the King": — 
 
 " And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 
 ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' " 
 
 The newer religious thinking, therefore, 
 is lowly, cautious, tentative, teachable, recep- 
 tive in these matters. 
 
 3. But, on the other hand, it is not so 
 very meek after all. It has declared war on 
 some things, and will not capitulate. One 
 of them is laissez faire. 
 
 Every man for himself and the devil take 
 the hindmost is not its doctrine. The 
 older thinking might live along with such a 
 theory, having, under its category of justice, 
 done no wrong; but the newer thinking can- 
 not abide it. Let it, on the contrary, go to the 
 devil with the hindmost, and be blotted out 
 
Its Passion for Men. 91 
 
 or accursed with the same, rather than en- 
 counter the self-condemnation of having had 
 no pity on the hindmost, and of letting him 
 go to the devil with none to help. 
 
 It believes that capital has rights ; also, 
 that labor has rights. The indifference of 
 capital to labor, in multitudes of cases, it 
 believes to be as wrong in principle as the 
 indifference of labor to capital when it sets 
 costly buildings on fire. When labor destroys 
 capital it does a great wrong, for which it 
 should suffer the severe penalties of the 
 law. But it only does, bluntly and out and 
 out, against capital what capital, by indirect 
 and legal methods and by indifference, fre- 
 quently does against labor, impoverishing it, 
 crushing it, — yes, and through want and 
 misery often slaying it. The murders 
 wTOught, all legally by capital, will, in the 
 eyes of the just Judge, far outnumber the 
 murders by riot and violence which labor 
 has committed ; and every one of them will 
 be wicked in the eyes of that Judge. 
 
 The destruction of New York Central 
 property at Buffalo last summer by labor, 
 
92 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 and particularly the interruption of travel 
 over a highway of national importance, are 
 to me simply abominable. But so to me 
 also is that vast railway system simply abom- 
 inable. Grind the poor, proceed by laissez 
 fairc, let Gods child, 3^our brother, sink 
 whither the miner under the coal combina- 
 tion, and the over-w^orked railway employee 
 under the railroad monopoly sink, and con- 
 demn them for fire and bloodshed } Yes. 
 And if necessary, shoot them or hang them. 
 Before God, they deserve it. But you, 
 ye rich men, ye mighty combinations of 
 moneyed tyranny, proceeding all legally, 
 as our statute books allow, to oppress the 
 poor, — ye, too, are guilty, sinning, more- 
 over, under great light, great opportunity, 
 and great self-aggrandizement. " He that 
 is without sin among you, let him first 
 cast a stone." ^ 
 
 1 What is here said regarding capital and labor needs 
 amplification. The spirit of such amplification would be 
 understood by those who heard me. For the reader, I 
 add: — 
 
 (i) The corporation referred to is not a sinner above 
 many others. Nor is it, in common with many others, at 
 
Its Passion for Men. 93 
 
 4. The newer religious thinking is also 
 at war with the inordinate getting of wealth, 
 and the luxurious enjoyment of it. 
 
 Wealth is good, gotten within bounds, 
 rightly acquired, and rightly used ; but to get 
 it beyond bounds, to acquire it by question- 
 able methods, and in any case self-indulgently 
 to roll in its luxury, — this is to sin against 
 what wealth means, namely, untold toil, sweat, 
 and often blood ; and it is to sin against the 
 millions who are either starving, or know 
 not whither to look for the next meal. 
 
 fault throughout, for it is lacking neither in commendable 
 points of administration, nor in admirable managers. 
 
 (2) On the other hand, as regards organized labor, 
 exigencies might arise where violence on its part would be 
 justifiable. The tenet of non-resistance is hardly of univer- 
 sal application. 
 
 (3) Having said thus much in qualification of the vigor- 
 ous language used above, I reaffirm it in the spirit in which 
 I intended it, and as vehemently. For, in this age of the 
 world, and in the light, I will not say of the Gospel, but of 
 those economic principles with which the Gospel is replete, 
 capital has no right, as a matter of economics, other than to 
 work intelligently, obviously, and devotedly for the good of 
 labor ; and a reciprocal obligation, on the same grounds, is 
 laid upon labor. Without their marriage the world cannot 
 go forward. The household which they constitute has no 
 right to be divided against itself. " No man ever yet hated 
 his own flesh." 
 
94 The Neiver Religious Thinking. 
 
 And that is what this land is doing, — 
 having the most favorable country and gov- 
 ernment in the world, yet stretching every 
 nerve to outdo the other nations, to see that 
 the products of the skill of the poor laborers 
 of other lands shall not come hither, and to 
 get, get, get, and keep, keep, keep, adding 
 field to field, property to property, trust to 
 trust, monopoly to monopoly, — while the 
 poor man grows poorer, and it is harder and 
 yet harder to get on, and the wretched vic- 
 tims of such a spirit blaspheme the God 
 whom extortioners, in too many instances, 
 profess to worship in gilded temples dedi- 
 cated to his name. Of this there will be an 
 end and a judgment. 
 
 5. It is only just to say that, as the newer 
 religious thinking is at war with luxury, it is 
 also at war with asceticism. 
 
 Asceticism is a running away from manful 
 moral conflict. It is bad for the body, which 
 is made for right joys. It is bad for the 
 mind, which needs relaxation. It issues 
 often in calamity to the spiritual nature. 
 Nor is it necessary as a discipline ; for this 
 
Its Passion for Men. 95 
 
 world is liard enough at best, has pain 
 enough, heart-ache enough, trouble enough. 
 
 The right and pure use of every good gift 
 of God, and the real self-denial involved in 
 unselfishness, nobility of character, and brav- 
 est, truest thought, — these should take the 
 place so long usurped by the artificial self- 
 denial and discipline of asceticism. 
 
 6. The newer religious thinking, too, is at 
 war with unscientific living. 
 
 In the rich this brings pampering, and too 
 great comfort, and the limiting of families, 
 and presently deterioration. And in the 
 poor this leads to conditions utterly un- 
 healthful, wasteful, and often fatal. 
 
 To regard the human body, mind, and 
 spirit, and to regard the environment and 
 conditions of life of these, as a manifestation 
 of a divine wisdom, and discreetly and intel- 
 ligently, or, in one word, scientifically, to use 
 them, — this is duty; and the contrary, how- 
 ever well-meaning it may be, is sin. 
 
 7. To name only one other point, the 
 newer relio-ious thinkinsf is at war with the 
 individualistic tendency. 
 
g6 The Newer Religions Thinking. 
 
 It was, I think, Maurice, who said, at the 
 time of Wordsworth's death, that he w^as 
 the last great man of the age that was pass- 
 ing away, — the age of individualizing, intro- 
 spection, and self-elaborating, however well 
 meant, as in Wordsworth's case, these might 
 be. And he was right, and wrong: right in 
 that with more recent great men the drift is 
 in the other direction, as it is with the time 
 itself ; and yet wTong, for the tendency, 
 often indeed beautiful, lives on still. 
 
 The newer religious thinking reveres the 
 individual, wishes it all most harmonious 
 development, but knows w^ell that there is 
 only one law of life in this respect ; namely, 
 " None of us liveth to himself, and none 
 dieth to himself." Only in realizing and 
 fulfilling this law, in merging one's life into 
 the lives of others, and into, as it were, the 
 corporate life of the community, the State, 
 and the age, can one individually come to 
 the most, or be the most for others. " He 
 that is greatest among you shall be your 
 servant." 
 
 Thus in putting little faith either in ease- 
 
Its Passion for Men, 97 
 
 producing, or in superficial remedies for 
 the evils of society ; and in withstanding 
 laissez faire, inordinate wealth and luxury, 
 asceticism, unscientific living, and the indi- 
 vidualistic tendency, not to mention other 
 particulars, the newer religious thinking is at 
 mental war with society. It makes its own 
 the sentiment of one of this temper beyond 
 the seas : — 
 
 '' I will not cease from mental fight, 
 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 
 In England's green and pleasant land." 
 
Where'' er a hu7nan heart doth wear 
 Joy's tnyrtle-ivreath or sorrow's gyveSy 
 Where'er a human spirit strives 
 
 After a life more true and fair, 
 
 There is the true ma7i's birthplace grand^ 
 
 His is a world-wide fatherland ! 
 
 Where'' er a single slave doth pine, 
 
 Where'' er one man may help another, — 
 Thank God for such a birthright, brother, — 
 
 That spot of earth is thine and mine / 
 
 There is the true 7nan''s birthplace grand. 
 
 His is a world-wide fatherland ! 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
ITS THOUGHT OF NATURE, HISTORY, 
 LIFE. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Threefold category of the world, as Nature, History, and 
 Life. — These a means of perceiving " the invisible things 
 of him." — The newer religious thinking called to confront, 
 not only truth as manifested in the Bible, but truth as mani- 
 fested in these. — It must listen to the whole oracle, to the 
 whole truth, not to a part of it. — This solemn and momen- 
 tous, (i) As counter to tradition, and therefore sure to 
 meet with opposition, working various ills, but particularly 
 within a man ; (2) As tentative, therefore liable to err, and 
 that in matters of the utmost moment ; (3) In view of the 
 high qualities of mind and heart which it requires. — But it 
 has received its call and must obey. — Sympathy, love, prayer, 
 fitter to be given it than revihng. — Its reverence for the 
 world under this threefold category. — Bible in hand, it will 
 listen thereto, compare, learn, and derive, no matter by how 
 slow processes, the ampler, better balanced, more rational, 
 more heart-affecting truth. — The Bible enjoins this ; its an- 
 swer to the question, Whither is all this tending ? — Attitude, 
 in particular, of the newer religious thinking toward, (i) The 
 widening apprehension of the boundaries of space and time ; 
 (2) The widening thought of how life and how man came to 
 be ; (3) Other studies, especially those of force and psychic 
 energy; (4) The means, now at hand, for approximating 
 accurate historical knowledge ; thus {a) What impelled the 
 great migrations ? What are the race impulses, Semitic, 
 Latin, Germanic, Celtic, etc. ? and {b) What testimony for 
 the world has all truly creative literature .? (5) Life ; this last 
 the ultimate, the test. — " I came that they may have life." 
 
IV. 
 
 ITS THOUGHT OF NATURE, HISTORY, 
 LIFE.i 
 
 The invisible things of him since the creation of the world 
 are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that 
 are made. — Romans i. 20. 
 
 n^HERE lies all about us a threefold, 
 ■^ wonderful world. In its first aspect, 
 it is the world itself, with its surrounding, 
 shining worlds, with its infinite vast of space, 
 with its cloud-banks of stars, with its awe- 
 full distances and silences. These speak 
 to the soul of man with a voice fuller of 
 meaning than any articulate speech. They 
 are the ground facts of our being. They 
 are the background and foreground of exist- 
 ence. In the words of a poet of old : — 
 
 " There is no speech nor language ; 
 Their voice cannot be heard. 
 Their line is gone out through all the earth, 
 And their words to the end of the world." 
 
 1 Prospect Street, Sunday night, November 27, 1892. 
 
I02 The Newer Religiotis Thinking. 
 
 But this is only the first aspect. The 
 thoughts which you and I have had of the 
 world, others have had before us, and others 
 will have after us. The universe is such 
 that it begets thought, feeling, impulse, ac- 
 tion, the ongoing of events, the march of 
 history. The most interesting thing about 
 the sun is not the sun itself, nor its light 
 and warmth, but how it affects the men who 
 behold it. The most interesting thing about 
 the stars is not their distance, their splendor, 
 their value to navigation, their place in the 
 nautical almanac, but how they stir thought. 
 A mountain, a sea view, a winding river, a 
 brook sparkling and laughing through for- 
 est and meadow, the glory of a peaceful 
 sunset, all red, and golden, and purple, and am- 
 ber, the grandeur of dark, frowning clouds, 
 of forked lightning, and of deafening and 
 blinding tempest, — these are not so fine as 
 the emotions which they awaken in the 
 soul, as the impulses which they impart to 
 men, and as their formative influence on 
 individuals and on peoples. What adds an 
 inexpressible tenderness to sea-bordered Ayr- 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life, 103 
 
 shire, to the mountains and tarns of Cum- 
 berland and Westmorland, and to the weird 
 Scottish border, is the fact that here were 
 born, and here were developed, men who 
 helped restore thinking peoples, warped off 
 in other directions, to a normal attitude of 
 expectancy and teachableness toward the 
 influences of the world about them. Burns, 
 as another has said, " the greatest lyrist 
 since Pindar," Wordsworth, the high priest 
 of this reverence for nature, and others 
 who moved with them, wrought this for the 
 modern time. 
 
 We have, thus, nature itself ; and then the 
 thinking and conduct of men, nature-im- 
 pelled, as they have come down through 
 time, — that is to say, we have history. 
 But there is yet a third aspect of the 
 world ; not it itself, nor its unfolding pro- 
 cess through men, but present and now, 
 throbbing and responsive, yearning, hunger- 
 ing, aspiring, full of fresh traits, new differ- 
 entiations, and still awaking powers, — the 
 life of the world. This is the newest thing, 
 newer this year than last year, this Sunday 
 
I04 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 than last Sunday, this moment than the last 
 moment, — life. Life is more than nature ; 
 rather, it is nature breathing, feeling, think- 
 ing, doing. And life is more than history ; 
 rather, it is history brought down to date, 
 and in process of making. And nature, his- 
 tory, life, are the threefold, meaningful sub- 
 stance of the world ; so that when the 
 Apostle states for us our principle, saying, 
 " The invisible things of him since the cre- 
 ation of the world are clearly seen, being 
 perceived through the things that are made," 
 he means more than the world itself, or 
 nature ; for with nature, and inseparable 
 from it, is what nature comes to, namely, 
 the march of events or history ; and with 
 nature and history, and inseparable from 
 themx, is what we may call nature alive, or 
 history brought down to date, namely, life. 
 
 Thus it comes about that nature, history, 
 and life are the world expressed in adequate 
 terms ; and it is these which, as the Apostle 
 declares, manifest forth, as things made 
 since the creation of the world, the invis- 
 ible thincrs of God, — that is, his thoughts, 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 105 
 
 feelings, purposes, character, " even," as the 
 Apostle adds, " his everlasting power and 
 divinity." 
 
 Now the solemn and momentous fact 
 about the newer religious thinking is that 
 it deems itself charged, as the newer re- 
 ligious thinking of no preceding period has 
 deemed itself charged, with the responsibility 
 of confronting not only truth as manifested 
 in the Bible, but truth as manifested in na- 
 ture, history, and life. 
 
 It is sure that truth is truth ; that there is 
 no schism in it ; that it matches all around ; 
 that there can be no authority, even in the 
 Bible, to contravene the authority of God's 
 manifestation of himself in the world. As 
 the prophet who felt himself impelled by a 
 divine command to return at once out of 
 Israel after delivering his prophecy, is rep- 
 resented to have lost his life because he 
 credited a contradiction of the divine com- 
 mand uttered to him by a brother prophet, 
 then lying, and tarried ; and as the Saviour 
 rescued from the divine authority of Moses 
 the diviner authority of nature, saying, 
 
io6 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 " Moses for your hardness of heart suffered 
 you to put away your wives : but from the 
 beginning it hath not been so," — similarly, 
 in principle, does the newer religious think- 
 ing feel called upon to listen to the whole 
 oracle, not to a part of it ; to the whole truth, 
 not to a part of it ; to the Book of Nature as 
 well as to the Book of Grace ; to the whole 
 history of man as well as to the history of 
 Israel ; to the present life of the world as 
 well as to that life as it inspired prophets 
 and apostles ; and to interpret them respec- 
 tively in their blended light. 
 
 Of the Book of Grace, of the history of 
 Israel, and of the inspired life of prophets 
 and apostles, I shall speak next Sunday 
 night. Of the Book of Nature, of the whole 
 history of man, and of the present life of the 
 world, as they lie before the newer religious 
 thinking, I am to speak this evening. 
 
 I. Let me say, in the first place, that this 
 duty of listening to the whole oracle and of 
 hearing the whole truth, which I have char- 
 acterized as solemn and momentous, is so 
 for several reasons. 
 
Its Thought of Nature E'istory, Life, 107 
 
 I. One of them is that it runs counter to 
 the traditions of many centuries. Galileo 
 suffered for affirming planetary revolutions. 
 Copernicus dared not print his astronomy 
 until about to die. Both were deemed guilty 
 because they would hear the whole truth in 
 their lines of research, not a part of it. One 
 has only to keep his eyes open as he scans 
 the papers, and his ears alert as he walks 
 the earth, to learn that a like guilt is still 
 adjudged the men who will hear the whole 
 truth. 
 
 It is solemn and momentous to take such 
 a step. Not only is it not pleasant, but it 
 limits one's usefulness. It keeps a man in 
 America, who ought to be a foreign mis- 
 sionary, — even as I, this week, have received 
 a letter from the mother of such a one, 
 rejected, though from a conservative point of 
 view worthy to go, and though his mother, 
 herself an indefatigable worker for foreign 
 missions for many years, wished to give him, 
 her only son, to the work ; the ground of 
 rejection being technically of another sort, 
 but having an inseparable connection with 
 
io8 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 the purpose to hold back men of the newer 
 thinking from the Christly work of bringing 
 the " Good News " to the heathen. 
 
 It renders a man working at home the 
 object not only of ill speech, but of vague 
 suspicion and more or less general distrust. 
 
 What is far worse, such is psychic action 
 that the person thus limited and hindered, if 
 not well balanced, is apt to be impelled to 
 greater lengths of opinion than would nor- 
 mally be the case, even as persecution begets 
 fanaticism in those capable of it. On the 
 other hand, if the person is well-balanced, so 
 that he keeps a poise and symmetry of 
 opinion, he is apt to be depressed in spirit, 
 and not to develop joyously in his work, as 
 ought to be the case in order to a man's best 
 serviceableness. 
 
 In short, not only the guilt judged upon 
 those who dare to hear the whole oracle, and 
 listen to the whole truth, but the unfortunate 
 consequences of it outwardly in limitation of 
 work and restriction of influence, and in- 
 wardly in its psychic effect, render this duty 
 of the newer religious thinking solemn and 
 momentous. 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life, 109 
 
 2. Another consideration in the same 
 direction is the tentative nature of these new 
 interrogations of truth. 
 
 We are only in the beginnings of our 
 ampler knowledge of nature, of history, and of 
 life, and there is large consequent liability to 
 mistake as we study them. So, too, the 
 relative weight, or the correlation, of the two 
 lines of truth is a tentative science, liable to 
 error. Great, moreover, must needs be the 
 ill-consequences of mistakes in matters of so 
 grave a nature. One breaks new ground, 
 sails a sea not yet duly provided with charts, 
 may readily err, and finds himself conse- 
 quently in tremendously serious business 
 from this point of view. 
 
 3. It is tremendously serious business, 
 also, in view of those prodigious studies, of 
 that careful and unbiassed thinking, of that 
 courage and persistence, of that tact and 
 fearlessness, of that thoroughness, and of that 
 combined mental coolness and heart warmth, 
 all of which are required of the newer reli- 
 gious thinking in this aspect of the case. 
 
 How little do those who lightly animad- 
 
1 1 o The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 n 
 
 vert upon the consecrated Christian scholars 
 
 engaged in various departments of this one 
 general work realize what qualities must be 
 in these men to start with ; what toils, what 
 stresses of mind, and what fortitude amidst 
 evil report, must be constantly exercised by 
 them ; and how they are, in this respect, like 
 those who through much pain, loss, and 
 opprobrium have won for the world some 
 of its most precious discoveries, and most 
 gracious emancipations ! What an awaking 
 by and by it will be for the maligners of such 
 men to find that, as their fathers slew many 
 a prophet, they have practically been doing 
 the same thing to these ! May they be 
 accorded greater mercy then than their es- 
 chatology allows ! 
 
 But there is only one thing for the newer 
 religious thinking to do. It has received 
 its call. It must obey. Counting no cost, 
 shrinking from no peril, dismayed by no ar- 
 duousness of the task, it must gird up its 
 loins and march out into the untried. To the 
 struggling present, to the unborn future, to 
 the God after whom it hungers, to the men, 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, L ife, 1 1 1 
 
 his children, who are the objects of its holy 
 passion, it must not be found wanting. 
 Think of it, friends, as it prosecutes its task, 
 not with ill will against it as destructive ; not 
 with uncharitable thoughts of it, as if it were 
 wilful, wayward, and going forward for the 
 pleasure of it; but rather, with thoughts of 
 sympathy and of love, as for that which is 
 called to solemn, momentous, character-test- 
 ing responsibility, and is seeking to discharge 
 that responsibility, in the fear of God. Such 
 it is. Let us treat it accordingly. May it be 
 in our prayers. May God bless it ! 
 
 II. Let me say, in the second place, with 
 regard to the world as comprehended under 
 the categories of nature, history, and life, that 
 the newer religious thinking faces it with 
 reverence and expectation. Here are the 
 facts. Here are the data. It is of God as 
 related to these that the Bible speaks. It is 
 of these as related to God that the world 
 speaks. The two are one book ; each is 
 key to the other ; each is supplemental to 
 the other; each interprets the other. 
 
 What nature is, how it unfolds, what its 
 
1 1 2 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 types are, what its spirit is, whence it origi- 
 nates, whither it tends, — these are questions 
 best answered by interrogating nature itself. 
 It has a right to testify in its own behalf. 
 
 Similarly of the progress of events, or of 
 history. When did man appear on the 
 earth, where, and under what conditions } 
 How did he unfold } Was his oris^inal con- 
 dition that of infantile innocence, followed 
 by a great catastrophe of his moral nature; 
 or is the Genesis account of this matter a 
 spiritualized representation of crises in the 
 individual life 1 How did institutions origi- 
 nate.^ Was the order patriarchal, then .the- 
 ocratic, then despotic, then individualizing, 
 or what was the order ? Was Israel first 
 under priests and then under prophets, or 
 vice versa? In short, of men, of nations, of 
 tendencies, what are the facts 1 And on the 
 facts what light does the Bible throw 1 And 
 on the Bible what light do the facts throw } 
 All these are parts of a whole. What is the 
 whole } And what does it testify to us .? 
 
 Similarly of life now. What is this great 
 load of it which the globe is carrying .? — 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 1 1 3 
 
 the blubber-eating, ice-hut-inhabiting Esqui- 
 maux, the degraded cannibals, the sombre 
 masses of semicivilized nations, the throng- 
 ing populations of Christendom, the passions, 
 faults, virtues, hungerings, aspirings of them 
 all ? Is our thought large enough, compre- 
 hensive enough, teachable enough for all 
 this ? Is God manifesting himself in all 
 this, or only in a part of it? And what 
 is life, this flood of energy that emerges 
 into consciousness, that thinks, experiences, 
 feels, loves, hates, and reaches out after some 
 unknown satisfaction, seemingly as various 
 as the individuals are various ? Is it an in- 
 trinsic thing, individual and immortal, or is 
 it a something that characterizes the mass, 
 and passes away with the mass as that de- 
 scends to the grave ? You and I have each 
 our answ^er to all this. The Bible affords 
 us strong indications and presumptions re- 
 garding all this. But all this, duly studied, 
 answering for itself, and full of meaning and 
 enlightenment for us, is what we want. 
 
 Now the newer religious thinking is rever- 
 ent toward all this, as the w^ork of God ; and 
 
 8 
 
1 14 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 is full of expectation toward it, as manifest- 
 ing forth God ; and proposes to neglect 
 nothing of it, lest in doing so, it should miss 
 something of God, even as naught was to be 
 omitted from Holy Writ. God, it is sure, 
 cannot disagree with himself. The God in 
 the world and the God in the Bible cannot 
 be two, but must be one. And the newer 
 religious thinking lays its ear close to the 
 heart of nature, close to the phonograph of 
 history, close to the throbbing bosom of life, 
 Bible in hand, to listen, compare, learn, and 
 derive, no matter by how slow processes, the 
 ampler, better balanced, more rational, more 
 heart-affecting truth. And it does so, not 
 only because, like Luther, it " cannot other- 
 wise," but because the Bible bids it to, say- 
 ing, " The heavens declare the glory of God ; " 
 saying, " Consider the lilies of the field, how 
 they grow;" saying, "The invisible things 
 of him since the creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being perceived through the 
 things that are made." 
 
 And if the heart falters; if one asks, 
 *' Whither is all this tending.^ " if it seems as 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 1 15 
 
 if the old were passing away, and the new 
 were all in uncertainty, then are heard the 
 words, " I have yet many things to say unto 
 you, but ye cannot bear them now; " and the 
 words, " When he, the Spirit of truth, is 
 come, he shall guide you into all the truth." 
 For each age has seen only in a mirror, 
 darkly ; the thinking of the past has largely 
 yielded to far better thinking ; and as there 
 were ages and orders in geology, each imper- 
 fect, each preparative to another, and each 
 passing away, so there are ages and orders 
 of thought, and of religious thought. We 
 apprehend very imperfectly, and the one 
 thing to do is to get all the truth we can, 
 and live it out into golden deeds, and ex- 
 pect ampler truth to break forth, by means 
 of the golden deeds of the present, for the 
 men that shall come after us, and shall be 
 surprised at our limited vision, even as we 
 are surprised at the same limitation in those 
 who have gone before us. " Behold, I make 
 all things new," saith God ; and he is ever 
 verifying that word. Let us, then, be well 
 content that this is so, and not borrow 
 
1 1 6 The Newer Religious Tkiiiking, 
 
 trouble, but press fearlessly, truthfully, livingly 
 forward. Not in what is now present, but 
 in that which is to be, shall perfection and 
 finality reside ; but it is for us to further that, 
 and to be sharers in its glory by and by. 
 
 III. If I have now sufficiently indicated 
 the solemn and momentous nature of the 
 task laid upon the newer religious thinking, 
 namely, to listen to the whole oracle, and 
 hear all the truth ; and if I have sufficiently 
 suggested with what reverence and expecta- 
 tion the newer religious thinking is interro- 
 gating nature, history, and life, or, in one 
 word, the world, as the work of God, as 
 manifesting forth God, and as able to illu- 
 minate the Bible, even as the Bible illumi- 
 nates it, — permit me to name, in conclusion, 
 certain specific points as characteristic of 
 this newer approach to nature, history, and 
 life. 
 
 I. And, first, if we are to admit the objec- 
 tive reality of the universe, — that is to say, 
 if we do not conclude that the universe is 
 only an objectivization of thought or of 
 mind, — space must speak to us in a Ian- 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 117 
 
 guage far more impressive than has been the 
 case in the past; and so must time. 
 
 For, on the one hand, the progress in as- 
 tronomy, the revelations of tlie great tele- 
 scopes, the more accurate mapping of the 
 heavens, the better apprehension of the 
 movements of the so-called fixed stars, the 
 story told us by star-dust and nebulae, and 
 the more adequate apprehension of the origin 
 of such groups of celestial bodies as our 
 solar system, — all these impress the mind 
 with the vastness of space, with the fulness 
 of it, with the seemingly endless C3^cles of 
 its stellar movements, and with the small 
 part our planet has to play in so great an 
 order, and yet with the mighty persistence 
 of our planet's part in it. And, on the other 
 hand, all this is becoming so much better 
 known, and is so enterins: into the ordinarv 
 comprehension even of children, that its 
 effect on the mind is being greatly extended. 
 The facts, and the apprehension of the facts, 
 in short, cannot but affect our thinking. To 
 the universe, one must believe, there is a 
 unity. One thought is in it ; one directing 
 
1 1 8 The Newer Religiotts Thinking. 
 
 purpose. Of it, as a part, our planet must 
 have been during an unimaginably long past, 
 and, as would seem, must be during an unim- 
 aginably long future. The widening boun- 
 daries of space thus call for widening 
 boundaries of time, — a thing also suggested 
 by such extremely slow land-making as must 
 have marked the emergence from the ocean 
 of such territory as the peninsula of Florida ; 
 a thing suggested by the periods of glacia- 
 tion on the earth's surface ; and a thing 
 suggested, also, by the obviously great an- 
 tiquity of man. 
 
 If, now, space is so great, and time so long, 
 and our earth so little and yet so linked 
 to the greatness and the long continuance 
 of the universe, must it not be evident that 
 the Bible men are speaking to us out of 
 inadequate space and time categories, even 
 as the Saviour warned the Apostles when he 
 said, " But of that day and hour knoweth no 
 one, not even the angels of heaven, neither 
 the Son, but the Father only " } Has not the 
 time been long ? And will it not, by all 
 universe and planet indications, be long } 
 
Its Thought of Natter e. History, Life. 119 
 
 And is not the plan, therefore, by so much 
 the greater? And is it not as extensive as 
 space, and as inclusive ? And yet wherein 
 have our systems, shut into the old, imper- 
 fect time and space categories, recognized 
 this ? These are questions which the newer 
 religious thinking, laying the world Bible 
 and the pen-and-ink Bible side by side, and 
 reverently scrutinizing both, cannot help 
 asking:. And with the answer to these 
 questions much else is associated. 
 
 2. Then, too, regarding the origin and 
 unfolding of life on this planet, the new^er 
 relio-ious thinking: "cannot otherwise" than 
 repair to the Museum of Comparative Zool- 
 ogy, which its great founder, in his modesty, 
 specified should not be called by his name, 
 but which everybody speaks of as the Agassiz 
 Museum ; and " cannot otherwise " than re- 
 pair to the Peabody Museum of American 
 Archaeology and Ethnology, and to like 
 places, to learn how gradually, by what pro- 
 gressive stages, and in what long cycles, 
 animal life led the way to the life of man, 
 and man, in turn, has come to be man as we 
 know him to-day. 
 
I20 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 Ah ! there was an evolution. It is a mere 
 question of detail, relativel}^ what its stages 
 were. Slowly, gradually, type succeeding 
 type, intelligence more and more predomi- 
 nating, and heart more and more interplay- 
 ing with intelligence, did life come, and man 
 come, and the man that now is, come to be 
 what he is ; and how can we infer, off-hand, 
 that the clock has struck, that we are the 
 culmination of being, that other, larger life 
 is not to succeed } At this great question 
 the newer relisfious thinking: dares to look. 
 It places the two Books, both of God, side 
 by side, — the world Book and the pen-and- 
 ink Book, — and interrogates both and waits 
 for light. And while it lingers thus, awe- 
 struck, amidst its studies, determined to listen 
 to the whole oracle, not to a part of it, it 
 hears again the words, " Of that day and 
 hour knoweth no one, not even the angels 
 of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father 
 only ; " and it hears that disciple whom Jesus 
 loved chanting, in old age, as a newer world 
 on this earth was in like manner confront- 
 ing him, " It doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be." 
 
Its Thotight of N'aiMre, History, Life. 121 
 
 3. The newer religious thinking con- 
 fronts in the same spirit other aspects of 
 nature, into which It Is Impossible now to go, 
 thouorh I cannot but refer to two of them. 
 
 One is force, or life, or whatever It Is to 
 be called, — the thing alive In nature, the 
 active principle, forceful in gravity, forceful 
 In cohesion, forceful In capillary attraction, 
 forceful In chemical affinity, forceful In elec- 
 tricity, heat, and light, forceful in vegetation, 
 In animal life. In brain life. What Is this 
 force ? What Is this energy 1 Is it one 
 thing and the same, or is it many things } 
 Has It consciousness In any sense t By what 
 medium Is it directed ? Is the old category 
 of law enough for it .^ Has it some sort of 
 volition and power of initiative } Studies In 
 energy, in force, how they stir the soul ! 
 How they seem to pierce the veil and show 
 us the invisible ! 
 
 This Is one direction. The other which I 
 will mention Is psychic energy. From this 
 platform, not long since, that great psychol- 
 ogist, Professor James, told us some of its 
 wonders. Through what medium does it 
 
122 The Newer Relio-iotis Thinkiiicr. 
 
 work ? By what processes ? What is mem- 
 ory ? What are associations of ideas ? What 
 part has heredity in it all ? The mind, con- 
 sciousness, processes of thought, powers of 
 inter-mental influence, — toward these, too, 
 as well as toward force or energy, does the 
 newer religious thinking face, Bible in hand, 
 interpreting each book in the light of the 
 other, and bent on hearing the whole oracle, 
 the whole truth. 
 
 I have mentioned specifically, thus far, 
 certain aspects of nature only ; namely, space 
 and time, the unfolding of life and of the life 
 of man, and, as samples of much more, force 
 or energy, and psychic energy. What is 
 still further to be said relates, first, to history, 
 and, after that, to life. 
 
 4. The newer religious thinking hungers, 
 then, for accurate historical knowledge ; that 
 it may know how, nature-impelled, life, but 
 particularly human life, has unfolded itself. 
 This, of necessity, must be a mighty com- 
 mentary on nature as well as on life. And 
 the newer relis^ious thinkinsf is well aware 
 what a shock almost all historical inquiry 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 123 
 
 must needs be to conventional ideas. For 
 only recently has history been so studied 
 as thoroughly to distinguish between the 
 loose, popular, and often entirely erroneous 
 form which history has taken, and the facts 
 of history itself ; so that accurate historical 
 knowledge must often be at variance with 
 popular conceptions. On such studies the 
 newer religious thinking waits for an ade- 
 quate account of nature brought down to 
 date, and particularly of man. What, it 
 asks, has been the order of events, what the 
 true relations of cause and effect, what the 
 inherent possession of man, and whither his 
 tendency } 
 
 {a) In this inquiry — strongly suggested 
 to us by the continuous historical impulse of 
 the Old Testament, and by the tendency to 
 historical summary in the speakers and 
 writers of the New Testament — there are 
 two matters of which the newer religious 
 thinking takes special account; namely, the 
 contributions to thought of the different 
 peoples, and of the great spokesmen of the 
 peoples. What, for instance, was it that 
 
1 24 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 inspired the great migrations coincident 
 with the migration of Abraham ? What 
 impelled the great Indo-European march 
 from the Aryan table-lands of Central Asia, 
 toward the West, until Europe was possessed 
 by it, and it passed on to the New World ? 
 What was it, characteristically, that Egypt 
 gave to the world, that Assyria gave, that 
 Palestine and Greece and Rome gave ? 
 What is the Teutonic impulse, one side of 
 it forceful through Anglo-Saxons, another 
 through Germans? So of the Celt, the 
 Slav, the Red Indian ? All these have a 
 place in that revelation of God which the 
 world is, and, Bible in hand, the newer reli- 
 gious thinking presses these questions.^ 
 
 (J)) But especially significant in the eyes 
 of the newer religious thinking is all this, 
 as expressing itself in national impulse and 
 in creative literature. The Hebrews came to 
 the front from a national impulse, guided 
 of God. So must all nations have come 
 forward. Therefore, analogously to the 
 
 1 For something further on the subject of this paragraph 
 and the next, see Appendix A. 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History, Life. 125 
 
 contributions to thought which the Hebrews 
 offered, though of a different importance, one 
 awaits the testimony of all national impulses, 
 — for instance, of that national impulse which 
 found expression in the Arthur legends, and 
 which Tennyson has idealized for all coming 
 time. It is not true alone of men, but also 
 of nations, that there is a spirit in them, 
 " and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
 them understanding." In the same spirit 
 the newer religious thinking listens teach- 
 ably to all truly creative literature. Homer 
 can teach it; the hymn-makers of India; 
 the tablets of Nineveh ; the Latin poets ; the 
 cycles of the Nibelungen Lied and of King 
 Arthur ; Dante and Shakespeare and Mil- 
 ton, and the poets in prose and rhythm of 
 our own age. In a certain quality, none of 
 them touches the high-water mark of the 
 great, constructive Hebrew writers, but all 
 of them have a part to contribute to the 
 expression, emphasis, idealization, and actu- 
 alization of truth. Therefore, Bible in hand, 
 the newer religious thinking addresses itself 
 to these imperishable aspects of history, bent 
 
126 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 here, as elsewhere, on hearing the whole 
 oracle and the whole truth. 
 
 5. Finally, before life, the newer religious 
 thinking, Bible in hand, sits docilely. 
 
 There is nothing like it. One touch of it, 
 as our great dramatist said of nature (using 
 it in the sense of life), " makes the whole 
 world kin." Life, life, life, seen in the smile 
 or the tears of an infant ; seen in the laugh- 
 ter and new discoveries of boys and girls ; 
 seen in that strange apocalypse, the oncom- 
 ing of maturity and the dawn of love in 
 young men and women ; seen in maturity as 
 it advances through ever fresh stages, new 
 youths, as it were, till the head is white, and 
 the strong limbs totter, and man goeth to his 
 long home ; seen in the ever new combina- 
 tions of the family, of the community, of the 
 State, of the nation; seen in the movements 
 of population ; seen in the controversies 
 which agitate society ; seen in the mighty 
 enthusiasms which ever and anon seize the 
 world ; seen in the march of armies to battle, 
 and in those peaceful triumphs which issue 
 in international arbitrations, in peace con- 
 
Its Thought of Nature, History^ Life. 127 
 
 grosses, and in the great world's fairs ; seen, 
 in short, on every hand, and felt in every 
 heart, and only apprehended by our being 
 ourselves alive, — life, life, life, this is the 
 ultimate, the test, the arbiter, the luminous 
 thing on this globe. 
 
 Hence, at its feet, the newer religious think- 
 ing sits, Bible in hand still, which tells of 
 One who said, " I came that they may have 
 life, and may have it abundantly." The 
 thoughts which come rolling in upon this 
 thinking it proposes to reduce to life, to test 
 by life, to put to the proof in the conflict of 
 life ; and, while it studies the pen-and-ink 
 Bible, also to study the world Bible, in 
 nature, history, life, — sure that he who was 
 " the Life," and is it, wishes the whole of it 
 to be apprehended, appreciated, obeyed, and 
 made alive in Christly living. 
 
 " In him was life ; and the life was the 
 light of men;" and in like manner all the 
 life which he has touched and inspired — 
 and his touch and inspiration are on and in 
 all life — is also, in larger or smaller degree, 
 the lii^ht of men. So believing, the newer 
 
128 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 thinking presses on in the path, the infinite 
 path, stretching before it forever. Shall 
 not we be of it ? Ah ! but we cannot help 
 being of it ! No man can quite escape from 
 his time. No man can quite shut out the 
 light of God. 
 
ITS IDEA OF THE BIBLE. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Phenomenal antiquity, sunnval, and world-affecting influ- 
 ence of the Bible. — Greatly diverse, and yet a unit. — Effec- 
 tiveness of its form ; its fiiidiiig power. — Universality of 
 its hold on men. — It is The Book. — Its influence steadily 
 augmenting. — Anxiety regarding it superfluous and wasted 
 (historical examples). — Reverence of the newer religious 
 thinking for it. — Certain inquiries about it now much at the 
 front: (i) How are the Genesis forewords to be understood? 
 Ecclesiastical ill treatment of them in the past ; also in the 
 present ; why the belief is growing that the forewords are a 
 poetic treatment, inspired, and for moral and spiritual ends, 
 of matter derived from a common stock of ancient tradition. 
 (2) Was the order of Israel's life from priests to prophets, 
 or vice versa ? Why belief is tending in the latter direction, 
 with the recognition of needful consequent re-arrangement 
 of historical details. (3) The New Testament documents 
 largely original and nearly contemporaneous. But : («) Not 
 enough allowance is ordinarily made for the immediate use 
 for which they were intended ; also {b) Should they prove 
 less largely original and less nearly contemporaneous, their 
 power for moral and spiritual helpfulness would not be 
 impaired thereby. — The Bible bound hand and foot in the 
 past in certain respects, and needing deliverance. — Its free 
 investigation imperative, and conducive to its highest useful- 
 ness. — The book is from God; its light and warmth are 
 eternal. 
 
V. 
 
 ITS IDEA OF THE BIBLE.i 
 
 Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
 teaching, for reproof for correction^ for instruction 
 which is ill righteousness : that the man of God 
 may be cotnplete, furnished completely unto every good 
 work. — 2 Timothy iii. i6, 17. 
 
 T 
 
 HERE is a book containing fragments 
 of literature probably older than any 
 other literature ; a book, in itself and as a 
 whole, among the oldest of books ; a book 
 preserved with a care so scrupulous that the 
 variations in its exceedingly ancient manu- 
 scripts, though numerous in minor respects, 
 are far fewer than in any other ancient 
 writing of like extent and often transcribed ; 
 a book regarded for many ages as sacred ; a 
 book the embodiment of that W'Onderful 
 relio^ious life which marked the Hebrew 
 people, — the embodiment of that thinking 
 
 1 Prospect Street, Sunday night, December 4, 1892. 
 
132 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 and history which, in the fulness of time, 
 made a sharp break with the Hebrews, and 
 which retaining what was germinal in the 
 Israelitish religion suddenly emancipated 
 the same from narrowing Hebrew bounds, 
 enriched it marvellously, and gave it, with 
 exulting joy, to become the possession of 
 all mankind. 
 
 This book had a most diverse authorship, 
 some twoscore hands at least appearing in 
 it. It sprang likewise out of many ages, 
 and out of vastly different environments 
 and thought-currents. Much of its upspring- 
 ing, moreover, was out of heated conflicts 
 of opinion, when, from time to time through 
 ages, the old was dying, and the new was 
 strusfoflino: to be born. There were great 
 diversities of specific purpose for which 
 its different parts were respectively com- 
 posed. And yet its many hands, its varied 
 settings and varied age-marks, the succes- 
 sive intellectual and spiritual conflicts out 
 of which it sprang, and the diversities of 
 specific purpose for which its parts were 
 written, — all these have not caused in it 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 133 
 
 confusion, but rather unity, as if still, in dif- 
 ferent aspects, one and the same thought, 
 purpose, inspiration, was getting for itself 
 expression. 
 
 Thus wonderfully a unit, it is nevertheless 
 literature multiform, — history, biography, 
 poetry, parable, philosophy, proverb, law, 
 maxim, and much besides. As regards finish, 
 it is not, in most parts, elaborated to the 
 degree which some literature exhibits ; but 
 the plainness, directness, and simplicity 
 gained thereby more than offset any loss 
 in literary form, while it contains many 
 passages as exquisite in this respect as 
 anything even in the Greek tongue. It is 
 strangely able, out of these characteristics, 
 to find its reader, to touch his heart, to stir 
 his mind and conscience, to illumine his 
 understanding, and to make him truly wise. 
 Hereby it has entered into the lives of whole 
 peoples, has moulded them, swayed them, 
 and given them laws, liberty, and spiritual 
 momentum. 
 
 It has, moreover, been able to affect equally 
 all classes and types of men, — the doubter 
 
1 34 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 and the man of intense faith ; the man coldly 
 intellectual and the man of great heart fer- 
 vors ; the cultivated and the illiterate ; the vile 
 and sinning and the pure and holy ; great 
 patriots and great scientists ; great statesmen 
 and ofreat inventors and discoverers ; women 
 equally with men ; the aged equally with 
 little children ; those marching into the 
 leaden hail of battle and those studying in 
 the quiet cloisters of universities ; those keep- 
 ing step to marriage music and those bearing 
 the dead to their last home. It has been 
 a comfort alike to sovereigns and to slaves, 
 in palaces and in prisons, to laborers and to 
 the luxurious, to those toiling, sorrowing, 
 despairing, and to those hoping, thriving, 
 successful, — in short, to every human being 
 whom, in whatsoever circumstances, it has 
 reached, and who would let it reach him. 
 
 For reasons such as the foregoing, it is 
 The Book, and accordingly it has come 
 about that it bears the name for " book " in 
 the Greek tongue, with the definite article 
 prefixed, and is called, in our dear English 
 speech, with almost the letters corresponding 
 to those in Greek, The Bible. 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 135 
 
 Nor is the power of this book waning. 
 It is rather steadily augmenting, as it is 
 more and more spread abroad, more and more 
 freed from misconceptions, and better and 
 better understood. Its force is moral, and, 
 as the moral sense is developing, it is more 
 and more finding men. It was never read 
 by so many people as are reading it to-day, 
 and never was bearing fruit in so many lives 
 as it is bearing fruit in to-day. 
 
 Anxiety is often expressed for its future. 
 Never was anxiety more utterly superfluous 
 and wasted. The Bible has survived crises 
 to which, at present, there is no parallel. 
 It has been almost destroyed from the earth 
 literally, more than once, as, for example, in 
 Josiah's time. It has been buried in inade- 
 quate translations, for example, the Latin 
 Vulgate, for centuries. It has repeatedly 
 been hid from the common people, as during 
 the Dark Ages. It has been loaded down 
 with paraphrases and commentaries in past 
 times to an extent which nearly extinguished 
 the book itself. It has been embarrassed by 
 good men's making claims for it which it 
 
1 36 The Newer Religions Thinking. 
 
 never makes for itself, and by suffering 
 attacks upon it in consequence, for the mak- 
 ing of which there was no just ground. But 
 it lives. Its influence is steadily widening 
 and deepening. It does not need any of our 
 anxiety; it is abundantly able to take care 
 of itself. 
 
 The newer religious thinking responds to 
 all this. It reverences the Bible. Those men 
 outside the lines which include you and me, 
 the men who would call themselves of unfaith 
 and of no faith, freely and often express their 
 great regard for it, and, in their way, bear 
 testimony to its benign influence upon them. 
 So of the so-called " Unevangelicals." So 
 of the men outside the boundaries of Prot- 
 estantism. Men of these different classes, 
 as I pointed out in the first of these dis- 
 courses, are themselves also in a newer 
 religious thinking ; and their types of such 
 thinking are steadily making. In their respec- 
 tive manners, more, not less, of the Bible. 
 Of the newer religious thinking within so- 
 called " evangelical " lines, in its manner also, 
 the same is true. The Bible was never so 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 137 
 
 much to its men as now. It was never 
 so much to me as now. 
 
 From this preliminary statement, I ask 
 you to pass to the consideration of two 
 points : first, certain inquiries about the 
 Bible now much at the front ; and, secondly, 
 the sense in which, to the newer religious 
 thinking, the Bible is so much ; yes, more 
 even than ever before. And, — 
 
 I. Certain inquiries about the Bible now 
 much at the front. 
 
 I. The first of these is about the prole- 
 gomena, or forewords, of the Bible ; those 
 sententious, wonderful passages which brood 
 for us amidst the beginnings of things, and 
 afford us a tender, simple, luminous setting 
 for all that follows after them. How impor- 
 tant, for comprehensiveness, background, and 
 symmetry, it is, that the Bible should get 
 some such introduction to its readers, it is 
 easy to see. The question is. How are we 
 to understand these forewords, — Creation, 
 Man and Woman, Eden, The First Sin, The 
 First Murder, The First Civilization, The 
 Flood, The Origin of Diversity in Lan- 
 c^uages, etc. ? 
 
138 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 But, first, let it be premised that, among 
 other ill treatments of the Bible, there has 
 been one centring at these very forewords, 
 which the newer religious thinking can never 
 forget. The study of astronomy was long 
 hampered by the old Church interpretation 
 ol these passages. This was why Copernicus 
 delayed the publication of his astronomy 
 until he was about to die, and why Galileo 
 was persecuted for afiirming planetary revo- 
 lutions. Similarly, within years more recent, 
 the studies, first of geology, and then of 
 glaciation (so recently as the lifetime of 
 Agassiz), have been hindered by the same 
 understanding of these passages. The earth, 
 it was claimed, could not have been strati- 
 fied by the causes which geology affirmed, 
 because the six days of creation gave no time 
 therefor ; and glacial epochs were alleged to 
 have been superfluous, because the Flood 
 took care of all that. But Copernicus and 
 Galileo, and Kepler and Newton, had their 
 way ; and then the great geologists had 
 theirs ; and the utterly unwarrantable claims 
 which holy men had put forth for the Bible 
 
Its Idea of the Bible, 139 
 
 had to be withdrawn, after all the hard 
 words, and the trembling of devout souls, 
 and the humiliating position for a great, 
 comprehensive book like the Bible to be put 
 in, — namely, the position of defence. 
 
 And while the newer religious thinking 
 is recalling this, it sees before its eyes the 
 present prodigious studies in zoology, in 
 ethnology, and in the gradual unfolding of the 
 race of man on this planet, — studies more 
 recent than those to which I have referred 
 in astronomy, in geology, and in glaciation, 
 which raised such a hue and cry, and against 
 which Scripture texts were hurled ; but 
 studies pursuing those same slow, plodding 
 methods of induction by which we came to 
 our present views of astronomy, geology, and 
 glaciation ; and as seemingly likely to prove 
 true as they proved true. And here again 
 the newer religious thinking sees the Bible 
 put in the same false and humiliating posi- 
 tion, of trying to conquer Darwin by proof- 
 texts, and the godly McCosh by creed-bound 
 professors of Hebrew. 
 
 Another fact under the eye of the newer 
 
140 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 religious thinking Is the Hebrew Itself, and 
 its cognate languages ; and what the monu- 
 ments of Egypt and of Assyria, with a great 
 variety of other ancient memorials, have to 
 tell us. From these and other studies it 
 appears that counterparts of these forewords 
 of the Bible were numerous in the early 
 ages, and in a great variety of forms, — Crea- 
 tion, and The Flood, for example. Almost 
 every ancient people had accounts like these, 
 but with diversified details. Which were 
 original? Did the Bible borrow from them? 
 Did they borrow from the Bible ? Or did 
 they and the Bible alike draw from a com- 
 mon store of tradition in the possession of 
 antiquity ? Of these three suppositions the 
 last — namely, that the Hebrew writers drew, 
 as did the writers of other nations, from a 
 general and common store of tradition — 
 seems to many In the newer religious think- 
 ing as the most probable. 
 
 Moreover, a comparison of the Hebrew 
 treatment of a particular tradition, and the 
 treatment of the same tradition by the 
 writers of other peoples, reveals the fact that, 
 
Its Idea of the Bible, 141 
 
 in each instance, the Hebrew treatment 
 differs from the rest in the accentuation of 
 the moral aspect of the story. For instance, 
 in the very common story of The Fratricide, 
 the other writers make a hero of him, or 
 even a demigod ; but the Hebrew account, 
 while indicating his city-building, etc., points 
 out the shame and crime of his bloody deed, 
 — the mark of Cain. These comparisons, 
 together with the seemingly conclusive infer- 
 ence that the Hebrew and the other writers 
 were not drawing, the one from the other, 
 but all from a common store of tradition, 
 lead naturally to the inference that these 
 Bible forewords, instead of being historical 
 and literal accounts of the First Things, were 
 the attempt of holy men of God, " moved by 
 the Holy Ghost," to redeem the common, 
 and often gross and impure, traditions of 
 early antiquity, from such grossness and 
 impurity, and to make them vehicles for 
 conveying moral and spiritual truth. 
 
 This inference becomes almost impera- 
 tive in the attempt of these writers to handle 
 the old traditions about the illicit marriages 
 
142 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 of demigods to women. This was the com- 
 mon ancient belief. The Hebrew writers 
 on the ancient beliefs could not bring them- 
 selves to look at such marriages as anything 
 other than in the highest degree immoral, 
 and yet could not prevent the wide credence 
 of these celestial-earthly unions. What, then, 
 did they ? They took, very wisely, the old 
 stories and wrought from them that myste- 
 rious narrative in the first eight verses of the 
 sixth of Genesis, where, as they taught, such 
 conduct was so abhorrent to the God of the 
 Hebrews that he repented himself that he 
 had made man upon the earth, and was 
 moved thereby to bring on the Flood. How 
 natural, reasonable, and morally tonic it thus 
 is to see the whole cycle of such tales on the 
 part of the Jupiters of the skies, and the mis- 
 guided fair ones of earth, dismissed in eight 
 solemn verses, not attempting to controvert 
 the common stories, — an attempt which could 
 not then have been successful, — but brand- 
 ing them as abhorrent to Deity, as causing 
 him to say, " My Spirit shall not always 
 strive with man," as making him repent that 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 143 
 
 he had created man at all, and as issuing in 
 the Flood ! 
 
 The newer religious thinking, then, while 
 its representatives by no means concur on 
 this subject, and particularly in matters of 
 detail, is greatly inclined, nevertheless, — 
 (i) in view of the great mass of such matter 
 in the early traditions of our race ; (2) in view 
 of the improbability, either that the Bible 
 narrative was what the traditions sprang 
 from, or that the Bible narrative sprang from 
 particular versions of the traditions ; and 
 (3) in view of the method of treatment in 
 the Bible writers, as for moral and spiritual 
 ends, — is greatly inclined, I say, to believe 
 that these Bible forewords, instead of being 
 historical and literal in the sense of annals, 
 are spiritual and moral, like poems. Similar, 
 though in a far less important connection, 
 is the treatment by which the more or less 
 gross matter in the Arthur legends has 
 been purified, and made didactic of moral 
 and spiritual truth, in Tennyson's " Idyls of 
 the King." 
 
 If this supposition is correct, not only 
 
144 1^^^ Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 may Copernicus and Galileo, and Lyell and 
 Agassiz, go on with their astronomy, geol- 
 ogy, and glaciation, but Darwin and John 
 Fiske may go on with their studies in and 
 philosophizings concerning the origin of 
 man, unmolested. A simple, noble, spiritual 
 account is given, and purpose shown, in these 
 forewords ; they make a natural introduc- 
 tion, poem-wise, to the history which succeeds 
 them ; and holy men of God are still speak- 
 ing as they are " moved by the Holy Ghost," 
 "for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for 
 instruction which is in righteousness." 
 
 2. There is another question now much 
 at the front. It, and the inquiry about the 
 forewords, are the primary Old Testament 
 questions. It is much the more complicated 
 of the two. But the same simple principle 
 of growing life seems to underlie it. Ah ! 
 life is such a touchstone ! The question to 
 which I allude is this : Which was prior in 
 the order of time in the life of Israel, the 
 priestly and legal impulse, as has been the 
 traditional view, or the prophetical ? 
 
 According to almost all historical analo- 
 
Its Idea of the Bible, 145 
 
 o-ies the religious life of nations is marked, 
 first, by mighty moral and spiritual impulses, 
 and then by their taking form in law and 
 ritual. But the Old Testament, in the order 
 of its present arrangement, reverses this pro- 
 cess. There is, first, very elaborate law and 
 ritual, and then a passing from these to the 
 true inspirers of a people, their prophets and 
 psalmists. 
 
 Moreover, enough is now known about 
 the origin of religions ; and, in particular, 
 enough is now known about the great Semitic 
 life of which the life of Israel was the most 
 conspicuous part, as well as about the life 
 of Israel itself, — to render it, inductively, 
 highly probable that the order was from spirit- 
 ual impulse in men like Abraham, Moses, 
 Samuel, and David, to ritual and legal form, 
 from about the general period of Ezra, 
 though having its beginnings much earlier, 
 — a view of the case with which the fearful 
 development of the formal and legal spirit 
 among the Jews in our Saviour's time seems 
 
 to agree. 
 
 This general probability in the case — 
 
146 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 namely, that spirit would precede form, and 
 that the mighty spiritual impulse would pre- 
 cede the elaborations of ritual and law, in the 
 shape in which we now have them — is 
 vastly augmented by the relief which such a 
 view at once brings to difficulties that are 
 constantly coming up on the ordinary view. 
 For instance, there had been, we are told, no 
 such Passover as Josiah's since the days of 
 the Judges. But why not, if this was the 
 formal law for all the years intervening ? 
 Again, Samuel, not a priest, probably not 
 even a Levite, offered sacrifices. Why did 
 he do that, if the formal law as we have it, 
 which assigned that duty to the priestly class, 
 was then in existence ? So, too, numerous 
 reformations in the history of Israel throw 
 up items of detail v/hich are most explicable 
 on the contrary supposition. 
 
 I am aware that efforts are made, by one 
 method or another, to explain away all these 
 difficulties, in order to maintain that view 
 which is traditional, and which the surface 
 of the Old Testament seems to justify. 
 But the attempt reminds one of the cycles 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 147 
 
 and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy, by 
 which, on the supposition that the heavenly 
 bodies revolved in a hollow sphere around 
 the earth, it was sought to explain the diffi- 
 culties in the way of this view occasioned 
 by the seemingly irregular and arbitrary 
 movements of the planets. The moment the 
 Copernican astronomy came in, the cycles 
 and epicycles vanished ; the planets were 
 seen to revolve, not in peculiar but in normal 
 orbits ; and a whole system of irregularities, 
 until that time ingeniously and variously 
 explained, became no longer irregular, but 
 parts of one vast, simple, and comprehensive 
 working of astronomical principles. 
 
 So of the seeming anachronisms and arti- 
 ficialities of the life of Israel. They are 
 capable, indeed, of a great variety of inge- 
 nious explanations; but first become entirely 
 thinkable if the writings, as now collected, 
 were, by holy men of God " moved by the 
 Holy Ghost," from time to time rewritten, or 
 re-edited and elaborated, out of a yearning 
 and burning passion to adapt them to the 
 successive needs and exigencies of the moral 
 and spiritual life of Israel. 
 
148 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 There would be nothing dishonest, neces- 
 sarily, in such a course. The people who 
 first heard or read the writings in their 
 newer form would understand it, as we under- 
 stand a poem or a sermon now, and as a 
 similar treatment of the forewords was 
 probably understood. So far as there were 
 fictions in the process, they would either 
 be legal fictions, like many in constant use 
 to-day, w^hich are neither deceits nor are 
 capable of deceiving anybody ; or they would 
 be the analogues of certain writings in the 
 earlier history of Christianity, put forth by 
 men sincerely seeking to serve God, and that, 
 too, not under Old Testament, but under 
 New Testament light. 
 
 Such a course would also be true to that 
 law of spiritual life by which knowledge and 
 growth in things spiritual ensue upon effort, 
 and especially effort for others. The disci- 
 ples who go out to teach in the Saviour's 
 name and to do helpful works, learn and 
 grow as they cannot even by staying with 
 him. He wisely tells them relatively little, 
 and leaves some of the greatest apostolic les- 
 
Its Idea of the Bible, i49 
 
 sons to be learned in the stress of later work, 
 as Saint Peter's at Joppa, and Saint Paul's 
 in the obscure years in Arabia and Cilicia, 
 and in the failure at Athens which prepared 
 the way for the success at Corinth. 
 
 Such a course is called for, as I have 
 intimated, by any quantity of phenomena 
 brought to light in a critical study of the 
 Old Testament. They seem to compel the 
 conclusion that its present state is that into 
 which it was gradually brought through suc- 
 cessive attempts of holy and inspired men to 
 adapt its matter to current national needs. 
 
 What suffers, if this conclusion stands? 
 Nothing, except our preconceived notion of 
 how the Old Testament came into existence ; 
 a notion which the Old Testament nowhere 
 
 affirms. 
 
 What gains ensue, if this conclusion 
 stands? A general induction is confirmed. 
 Difficulties, met as it were by interminable 
 Ptolem.aic epicycles, vanish. The growth of 
 the Old Testament becomes reasonable, like 
 apostolic growth. No essential fiction is in 
 the process, but life, warm and unmistakable. 
 
1 50 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 We have first spirit, then form ; in short, 
 correspondence to the well-nigh universal law 
 of national and religious unfolding, — this 
 whole vast matter becoming thus amenable 
 to the operations and reign of spiritual law, 
 instead of their inversion. 
 
 Here again the representatives of the 
 newer religious thinking are not altogether 
 concurrent, and particularly in matters of 
 detail. They are, however, moving in this 
 direction. They incline to the belief that the 
 life of Israel, as it appears on the surface of 
 the Old Testament, needs re-arranging to 
 agree with facts now^ ascertained, and in 
 accordance wdth the laws of spiritual life.^ 
 
 3. Coming to the New Testament, those 
 of you who have perhaps been demurring at 
 what I have said about the Old, will be glad 
 
 1 *' Needs re-arranging." Not the Old Testament. That 
 is inspired Kterature, and should remain substantially as it is. 
 Some editions, however, as is beginning to be done, should 
 be so printed as to exhibit the real order of the writings, 
 and, in the case of those books which are composite, the 
 respective elements entering into them, so far as they can 
 be ascertained. " The life of Israel," the rather, " needs 
 re-arranging." That is, it needs to be written, studied, and 
 thought of in its real, rather than in its apparent, order. 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 1 5 1 
 
 to hear me say that prodigious critical 
 studies, relatively new in the Old Testament, 
 have been concentrated on the New for 
 nearly a century, with the result mainly to 
 confirm the historical and detailed accuracy 
 of the New Testament writings. That is to 
 say, these writings are largely original, and 
 nearly contemporaneous. I say, " mainly to 
 confirm;" for there are points on which the 
 liighest scholarship still hesitates. 
 
 The general result here indicated was to 
 have been expected. For the years covered 
 by the New Testament story were relatively 
 few ; the events occurred at the blazing fore- 
 front of history ; they occurred in what was 
 itself a not altogether uncritical age ; and 
 they immediately, as narrated in the New 
 Testament documents, fell into the hands of 
 the great scholars of the second and third 
 Christian centuries, who must have verified 
 them in greater or less degree. On this part 
 of the subject there are only two remarks 
 which I desire to make. 
 
 {a) The first is, that, while we prob- 
 ably have in the New Testament either 
 
152 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 documents in substantially their original 
 form, or documents which for substance 
 reproduce original matter, so that, speak- 
 ing critically, we are treading on somewhat 
 solid ground, we have never enough allowed, 
 on the other hand, for what the Apostle Paul 
 asserts in the text, and implies elsewhere, to 
 have been the purpose of these writings ; 
 namely, immediate usefulness. 
 
 The Apostle expects the world soon to 
 end. He is writing hurried letters to his 
 convert churches. He so writes as to go 
 back and correct himself without erasure, as 
 in the matter of the persons he baptized at 
 Corinth. He expressly says, in one instance, 
 that he is using his own judgment about a 
 particular case, and thinks he has the mind 
 of Christ.^ In short, the writing is not for 
 
 1 For a brief, clear, and searching exposition of difficulties 
 attending our traditional approach to the Bible, written by a 
 rare scholar and a rare Christian, see " The Change of Atti- 
 tude towards the Bible," by Prof. Joseph Henry Thayer, 
 D.D. Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, Boston. 1891. 
 
 For an excellent discussion, in some detail, of this whole 
 general subject, see (same publishers and year) Dr. Wash- 
 ington Gladden's " Who Wrote the Bible ? A Book for the 
 People." 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 153 
 
 abstract and scientific purposes, but for imme- 
 diate and practical use, "that the man of 
 God may be . . . furnished completely unto 
 every good work." He also speaks of his 
 own limitations of knowledge, knowing, as 
 he says, in part, and prophesying in part. 
 
 All this suggests to us, what Christ says, 
 that the words he speaks are "spirit and 
 life." Are they not, then, to be taken in 
 their spirit and life, for constructive moral 
 purposes, rather than as arbitrary and hard 
 and fast proof-texts } 
 
 (b) My second remark is that if the criti- 
 cal studies of nearly a century had turned 
 out the other way, or, by the arrival of fresh 
 historical light, should turn out the other 
 way ; that is to say, if it had turned out, or 
 should turn out, that these precious docu- 
 ments belonged to the second century, or the 
 third, rather than the first, the same rewrit- 
 ing and readjustment to the new needs of 
 the Church taking place, as would seem to 
 have taken place in the Old Testament, — 
 if, I say, this had been proved (as has not 
 been the case), or if it should be proved in 
 
154 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 the larger light of the future (which seems 
 hardly likely), still this discovery would not 
 invalidate the New^ Testament documents 
 in the matter of their appropriate moral and 
 spiritual teaching, any more than those of 
 the Old Testament on the corresponding 
 supposition. 
 
 These writings, in any case, breathe a 
 lofty moral and spiritual life, and that life 
 begets life in men. " The letter killeth, but 
 the spirit giveth life." That spirit, in any 
 event, the New Testament contains to an 
 unequalled degree. And so long as men 
 shall continue to hunger after and be impres- 
 sible by such a spirit, the New Testament 
 wdll retain its peerless authority over life. 
 It is not authoritative because certain theo- 
 logical claims can be substantiated for it. 
 As they have all come, so it would matter 
 little if they should all go. It is authorita- 
 tive, rather, because it has succeeded, as no 
 other literature, in commanding the spirits 
 of men. 
 
 II. We now come, in closing, to the sec- 
 ond division of the subject, namely : The 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 1 5 5 
 
 sense in which, to the newer religious think- 
 ing, the Bible is so much ; yes, more even 
 than ever before. 
 
 The Bible has been bound hand and foot, 
 for several centuries, by what is a compara- 
 tively modern doctrine, namely, that of the 
 literal and verbal inspiration of Scripture. I 
 say this is a comparatively modern doctrine, 
 for the apostles quoted the Old Testament 
 loosely, as they could hardly have done, had 
 they regarded its very letters as inspired. 
 They themselves, also, wrote as I have 
 described, which they could hardly have 
 done, had they thought of the letters of the 
 alphabet, and the phraseology which they 
 used, as inspired. Moreover, the writers of 
 the early Church quoted with the same loose- 
 ness, and, like the apostles, were driving at 
 the point, not the words. 
 
 By this doctrine, — comparatively modern, 
 because unknown to the apostles and their 
 immediate successors, — the doctrine, namely, 
 of literal and verbal inspiration, the Bible 
 has long been hampered and mistreated. 
 It was set up to fight Copernicus and Gali- 
 
156 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 leo ; later, to fight Lyell and Agassiz ; at 
 length, to fight Darwin and John Fiske. 
 These positions into which, entirely with- 
 out warrant, it has thus been forced, have 
 proved, unless we except the last, — and 
 probably the substance of that should be 
 included, — utterly untenable. Similarly, 
 under this same theory of literal and verbal 
 inspiration, it has been set up to fight, with 
 proof-texts, nearly every advance in a pro- 
 founder, simpler, truer thought of God, 
 which has been suggested since Anselm in 
 the eleventh century, — positions which, in 
 most instances, as in the matter of astron- 
 omy, of geology, and of glaciation, have 
 likewise proved untenable. 
 
 Now the newer religious thinking does not 
 want the Bible to be subjected any longer 
 to such humiliating work. It is good for 
 something better than the fighting of need- 
 less and losing battles. It is inspired, the 
 newer religious thinking believes, in a far 
 nobler way, namely, in spirit rather than 
 in letter. It is inspired for ends spiritual, 
 moral, and practical. Holy men of God, 
 
Its Idea of the Bible. 1 5 7 
 
 "moved by the Holy Ghost," spake in it "for 
 teaching, for reproof, for correction," and 
 "for instruction which is in riorhteousness." 
 In the matter of its forewords, of the order 
 of unfolding in the life of Israel, and of the 
 New Testament documents, — in fact, in 
 every respect, — it should be subjected to 
 the same criticism, the same research, and 
 the same interpretation as any literature. 
 
 So the newer religious thinking believes, 
 and of this it is not afraid. It welcomes all 
 new light. Just as the new astronomy and 
 the new geology have vastly expanded and 
 illuminated the human mind, so, as these 
 studies advance, it anticipates that the new 
 understanding of history, and the true ap- 
 prehension of the order and meaning of 
 the Bible documents, will vastly expand 
 and illuminate the human soul. When the 
 Bible is thus freed, when it is stripped of a 
 false mediaeval authority and clad in its own 
 pristine authority of spirit and life, it be- 
 comes, more even than ever, a new and life- 
 giving book. 
 
 And that it is an inspired book, — inspired 
 
158 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 by the same Spirit which has inspired all 
 other literature, and has inspired you and 
 me, but inspired in a more conspicuous and 
 life-giving degree than is ordinarily the case 
 with literary or individual inspiration, — the 
 newer religious thinking fully believes. The 
 book is from God. Its light and warmth are 
 eternal. Side by side it stands with that 
 other book, of nature, history, life, of which I 
 spoke last Sunday night. Each throws light 
 on the other. Each supplements the other. 
 Between them, rightly interpreted, there is 
 no schism. Their truth is one. And that 
 truth, it is given you and me reverently to 
 seek after, to receive into our hearts, and to 
 make the lamp of our feet, and the light of 
 our path. 
 
CHRIST ITS CENTRE. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Importance of indicating the fact of the newer relig- 
 ious thinking. — Obedience unto the heavenly vision its 
 foremost trait. — Its other characteristics have underlying 
 them the principle of a thoroughly enlisted intellect, as well 
 as of a thoroughly stirred heart ; the appeal, in short, is to 
 the whole man. — This true even of the practical bent of the 
 newer religious thinking (illustrations). — Hunger after God 
 and passion for men its inspirations ; their fine reciprocal re- 
 lation ; their image-breaking but pacific purpose. — The 
 world Book and the pen-and-ink Book its material to work 
 in and grow by ; this the highest application of the inductive 
 method ; it constitutes an epoch in religion. — Christ its 
 centre: (i) For men outside the faith; in what sense; 
 (2) For "Unevangelicals; " two illustrations ; (3) For conser- 
 vative " Evangelicals " (examples) ; (4) For hberal " Evan- 
 gelicals " (examples). — The law of eternal sacrifice. — This 
 the true In hoc signo vtnces. — This is not getting salvation, 
 but salvation getting us ; this is not gaining heaven, but 
 heaven gaining us. — This the divine handwriting on the 
 newer religious thinking. — There is only one thing for you 
 and me to do, namely, to throw ourselves into this infinite 
 Christ principle. 
 
VI. 
 
 CHRIST ITS CENTRE.i 
 
 JV/io, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize 
 to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, 
 taking the form of a sefvant, being made in the like- 
 ness of men ; a?id being found in fashion as a man, he 
 humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, 
 yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly 
 exalted him, a7id gave unto him the name which is 
 above every name ; that in the name of Jesus every 
 knee should bow, of tlwigs in heaven and things on 
 earth and things under the earth, and that every 
 tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 
 glory of God the Father. — Philippians ii. 6-11. 
 
 T UNDERTOOK, in the first of these dis- 
 ^ courses, to indicate the fact of a newer 
 religious thinking, and to characterize that 
 thinking. 
 
 It is important to indicate the fact, — not 
 unduly, not out of proportion, especially not 
 
 1 Prospect Street, Sunday night, December 18, 1892. 
 Down to the paragraph beginning, "It is to this point, then, 
 that we now come," on page 171, I have substituted a differ- 
 
1 62 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 in neglect of much else of large importance, 
 and, particularly, not in neglect of simple, 
 every-day duty, thought, and devotion. But, 
 assuming that due proportion is maintained, 
 this great, present-day fact needs making 
 known. The ostrich, hiding her head in the 
 sand upon the approach of peril, is not a wise 
 bird. Neither, unless in appearance, is that 
 bird wise which, when all the woodland is 
 carolling the glory and joy of the dawn, hides 
 from it in some cleft of tree or of rock. To 
 know one's time, to apprehend its perils and 
 possibilities, to feel with quick and tender 
 sympathy the heart-throb of its great aspira- 
 tions and inspirations, — this is to live. Its 
 contrary is to fall under our Saviour's sur- 
 prised and pained rebuke, " Ye cannot dis- 
 cern the signs of the times." 
 
 In characterizing the newer religious 
 thinking I spoke of its spring in " heavenly 
 vision," and its obedience thereto. That is 
 
 ent opening of the discourse from that used in preaching it. 
 I have also permitted myself an anachronism of two days in 
 the illustration taken from my own parish on pages 165 and 
 166. For the original opening, with the reasons for the 
 transposition, see Appendix B. 
 
Christ its Centre, 163 
 
 its most important trait. No prophet of old 
 was ever more truly moved of God than the 
 best spirit in this thinking. And the very 
 obloquy which it is sure to encounter, chas- 
 tens and makes higher than of this earth 
 the holy resolution with which it presses for- 
 ward. I can only repeat what I stated as I 
 drew attention to the point : " Let no man 
 say, or even imagine, that this thinking is 
 other than inspired by, and obedient unto, a 
 ' heavenly vision,' which ever hovers in its 
 foreground, and beckons it on." 
 
 The other characteristics which I named 
 were : " its scientific temper ; " " its practi- 
 cal bent ;" and " its purpose to include in its 
 concept the entire religious impulse of the 
 world." 
 
 One principle underlies all these. It is 
 the principle of a thoroughly enlisted intel- 
 lect, as well as of a thoroughly stirred heart. 
 This is the glory of the religion of the new 
 time. It appeals to the whole man. There 
 is no servility of a half or two thirds of the 
 man to the other half or third. 
 
 Take, for example, what might seem an 
 
164 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 exception to this, namely, the "practical 
 bent " of the newer thinking. One might 
 point, with this in mind, sneeringly at the 
 thinking, and say, " It may do for professors 
 and essay-preachers, but practical men don't 
 care for it." But he would have reflected 
 little who should so employ this trait. The 
 fact is that many of the most practical Chris- 
 tians, to-day, are practical, as a sheer intel- 
 lectual necessity. They cannot abide the 
 idols still standing upright in the imagery 
 chambers of traditional theology. Neither, 
 on the other hand, can they give up their 
 hold on God. Therefore they turn, almost 
 desperately, to work. Here they will find, 
 they are sure, light. " If any man willeth 
 to do his will," they console themselves, " he 
 shall know of the teaching." I adduce two 
 illustrations of this. 
 
 When the profoundest theologian of our 
 century, Maurice, was spending his days and 
 nights for the London workingmen, and 
 in that work discovered Charles Kingsley, 
 Thomas Hughes, and many another, it was 
 the intellectual necessity of something prac- 
 
Christ its Centre. 165 
 
 tical, not less than sympathy for the men 
 needing help, which became the key to that 
 remarkable chapter in our century's history. 
 This, and, so far as we can see, this alone, 
 gave Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes 
 not only to literature, but also to the intel- 
 lectual enrichment of our century's religious 
 life. 
 
 But to come nearer home. There listened 
 eagerly to the earlier of these discourses a 
 physician, second to few in this Common- 
 wealth as a general practitioner, who, the 
 last two nights he was out, spent them devis- 
 ing ways for increasing the practical efficiency 
 of this church; who, with pneumonia upon 
 him, answered, nevertheless, a night call the 
 second of those nights, and desired to start 
 out in the morning ; and who, ten days there- 
 after, was with the great Physician. His 
 hands and his heart were ever full of all sorts 
 of practical helpfulness to men. And his 
 last testimony in our meetings was in a vein 
 of rejoicing that creed-wars were waning, and 
 that the Christian Church was getting to 
 work. And what was he 1 A man of deep- 
 
1 66 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 est, tenderest sympathies ? Yes ; but also 
 a man of doubts, questionings, perplexities, 
 who at once conquered them, used them, 
 and became a humble servant of the Lord 
 Jesus through practical work.^ 
 
 The practical bent, then, as well as the 
 scientific temper, and the purpose to com- 
 prehend and utilize the truer impulses of all 
 religions, noticeable as traits of the newer 
 religious thinking, indicate, all of them, as 
 I said, the thoroughly enlisted intellect, as 
 well as the thoroughly stirred heart. The 
 whole man, in short, is coming to the front 
 in religion. Is not this significant? Does it 
 not betoken a new time? Ought it not to 
 make our hearts sing? 
 
 But the measure of a movement is in its 
 inspirations. We saw the fact and some 
 traits of the newer religious thinking in the 
 first discourse. It was in the second and 
 third that we saw what its inspirations are. 
 They are the highest, the noblest, — hunger 
 afler God, and passion for men. Not since 
 
 1 Dea. David Marks Edgerly, M. D., truly a " beloved phy- 
 sician." Born, August ii, 1839; died, December 20, 1892. 
 
Christ its Centre, 167 
 
 Christ was in the flesh has a movement in 
 reHgious thought been more thoroughly im- 
 bued with either of these impulses ; and the 
 most blessed aspect of the present move- 
 ment is that they are in such fine balance, 
 each equally present, and each giving sym- 
 metry and glory to the other. 
 
 We saw, also, how these impulses lead 
 inevitably to a certain image-breaking, in 
 Godward and manward theology not only, 
 but also in the life of society. For the " stone 
 cut out of the mountain without hands " is 
 to " break in pieces and consume " not only 
 the image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, but 
 all images. It has not come " to send peace, 
 but a sword." It ought not, however, to be 
 thought of as a conquest, but as, the rather, 
 a measureless love, with its end peace. 
 Happy will it be for us if we shall capitu- 
 late with it early. 
 
 Having these noble and so reciprocal in- 
 spirations, and this at once destructive and 
 constructive work in hand, has the newer 
 religious thinking adequate material to work 
 in and grow by, or is it a kind of wild pas- 
 
1 68 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 slon of the age, like the crusades, which 
 were utterly barren, except in their indirect 
 results ? You remember how the wise Ar- 
 thur deprecated for most of his knights the 
 quest of the Holy Grail : — 
 
 '' Go, since your vows are sacred, being made : 
 Yet — for ye know the cries of all my realm 
 Pass through this hall — how often, O my knights, 
 Your places being vacant at my side, 
 This chance of noble deeds will come and go 
 Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires 
 Lost in the quagmire ! Many of you, yea most, 
 Return no more." 
 
 Is the newer religious thinking such a quest, 
 or has it adequate material to work in and 
 grow by ? 
 
 The fourth and fifth discourses afforded 
 us the answer to this most serious question. 
 We saw that the unique distinction of the 
 newer religious thinking of the present is its 
 being set to read two books, not one ; to listen 
 to the whole oracle, not to a part of it. 
 Whereas, before, mainly only one book has 
 been read, and only one philosophical method 
 followed, namely, deduction, we saw that in- 
 
Christ its Ce^itre, 169 
 
 duction is now to take its appropriate place 
 along with deduction in the work of this 
 thinking, and that that other God's Book, 
 nature, history, life, or, in one word, the 
 world, is now to be laid side by side with the 
 pen-and-ink Book, the Bible, and each made 
 to interpret the other. 
 
 This change in philosophical method ; 
 this recognition of the larger handwriting 
 of God, — 
 
 " And Nature, the old nurse, took 
 The child upon her knee, 
 Saying : * Here is a story-book 
 Thy Father has written for thee.' 
 
 " '■ Come, wander with me,' she said, 
 * Into regions yet untrod; 
 And read what is still unread 
 In the manuscripts of God ; ' " 1 
 
 this sublime purpose to find God in his 
 whole universe, and to let him speak to men 
 out of his whole universe ; and this arduous 
 task of rethinking everything into the larger 
 terms of God as so manifested, — constitute 
 an epoch in religion not less momentous 
 
 i Longfellow, " The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz." 
 
1 70 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 than was constituted for science when it 
 gave itself to the Baconian method. In fact 
 it is that method, given its highest applica- 
 tion. The other method in religion, in point 
 of fact, was too often only a kind of quest 
 of the Holy Grail, following " wandering fires 
 lost in the quagmire." Employing this better 
 method the quest is becoming substantial and 
 real, with promise of results more reasonable 
 and permanent. 
 
 Thus, from the indicating and character- 
 izing, through the splendid inspirations and 
 tasks, and then through the new and mag- 
 nificent material and method, we are come, 
 for the newer religious thinking, to this 
 crucial inquiry : What is its centre ? Indeed, 
 has it a centre ? Is there any Arthur, in his 
 Hall of Camelot^ (for this seems the mean- 
 
 1 This was how Camelot looked as men approached it, 
 eluding and yet winning them, and drawing them within 
 itself : — 
 
 " Far off they saw the silver-misty morn 
 Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount, 
 That rose between the forest and the field. 
 At times the summit of the high city flashed ; 
 At times the spires and turrets half-way down 
 Pricked through the mist ; at times the great gate shone 
 Only, that opened on the field below : . . . 
 And there was no gate like it under heaven." 
 
Christ its Centre, 171 
 
 ing of the " Idyls "), for it ever to come back 
 to, and ever to start out afresh from, and 
 ever to live under the vow of? 
 
 Blessed be God, there is ! It is that mys- 
 terious Person, of whom the mystery of 
 Arthur's " Coming," and " Passing," and 
 wondrous defeated and yet triumphing life, 
 seems to be speaking to us. And we grossly 
 wrong the mystery, — mysterious from any 
 point of view, — if we seek too deeply to 
 penetrate, or too precisely to define that Per- 
 son. That was how they treated Arthur, — 
 some denying that he was what he claimed 
 to be ; others maintaining that he was more 
 than he claimed to be ; none compassing his 
 practical meaning for life ; and even his last 
 knisht fain to deceive him in the matter 
 of his dying request. Ah! what an epic 
 is that of Tennyson's! Would it might 
 teach us ! 
 
 It is to this point, then, that we now come 
 in closing ; namely, to note that Christ is the 
 centre of this movement. 
 
 I. I wish to indicate this, first, in regard 
 to many men outside the Church altogether, 
 
172 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 the earnest doubters and unbelievers, who, 
 as we saw in the first discourse, are also in 
 a movement, an advance, which differen- 
 tiates them from the like type in earlier 
 periods, so that the true men among them 
 are more earnest and reverent, and are 
 pained not to believe. 
 
 We are told that, as Jesus hung upon the 
 cross, it was where many passed, and that 
 they looked on him, and that some, even 
 amonsf those farthest from the faith, were 
 touched; for example, the Centurion. I 
 should like to follow the lives of those who 
 saw him, and observe if they were not per- 
 manently affected by the sight. Christ said 
 he would, if lifted up, draw all men unto him. 
 I wonder if this saying of his did not begin 
 to be fulfilled while he hung there on the 
 cross. It is so, at any rate, with the men 
 of whom we are now thinking. Jesus of 
 Nazareth, whom they do not confess to be 
 Jesus also of the skies, has his hold on them. 
 Of course it is not just the hold he has, I 
 hope, on you and me. Would God it were 
 an ampler hold on them ; yes, and on us, 
 
Christ its Centre, 173 
 
 likewise ! But, of its kind, it is as real as 
 on you and me, — if not as adequate, at any 
 rate as real. Let us see how this is. 
 
 There have been certain figures in history 
 from which the world never has been able to 
 get away. One of them is composite, the 
 figure of the old Greek life, shown us by 
 wonderful Homer. Whatever person, and 
 whatever civilization, has beheld this com- 
 posite portrayal of antique life, will never be 
 the same, after the sight, as before. So, too, 
 specifically, of the figure of Socrates, or the 
 figure of Dante, or the figure of Martin 
 Luther, or the figure of William the Silent, 
 or the figure of Shakespeare. 
 
 Now like these, only vastly deeper, more 
 acute, more potent in influence, more con- 
 structive of life, is the figure of Jesus, with 
 these men. Homer gives a composite, uni- 
 versal expression of the antique ; Socrates, of 
 the moral, — of truth-seeking, inward-voice- 
 obeying, spiritual intelligence ; Dante, of 
 lofty spirit, betwixt the old world and the 
 new; Luther, of the Germanic impulse, and 
 of its emancipation into spiritual liberty; 
 
1 74 The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 William the Silent, of the spirit of tolerance 
 and freedom and comprehension ; Shake- 
 speare, of the heart of man In all time. 
 
 But not one of these approaches the signifi- 
 cance of the figure of the Lord Jesus, nor do 
 all of them. There he Is. There he depends 
 from the cross. One cannot say ancient or 
 modern of him, for he Is of all time, as ap- 
 propriate to Homer's age as to the age of 
 Augustus, as appropriate to the age of Vic- 
 toria as to the age of Dante ; In fact, dateless, 
 timeless, a being belonging to the forever. 
 One cannot associate hlmi with Socrates, for 
 he Is morally much vaster than Socrates ; nor 
 with Luther or William, for they are only 
 tapers from him ; nor with Shakespeare, for 
 he knows all that Shakespeare knows, is 
 vastly more universal, being Semitic as well 
 as Indo-European, and, where Shakespeare 
 gropes In the dark, as in the Sonnets, he is 
 all light, as in the fourteenth to the seven- 
 teenth of Saint John. 
 
 Now this universal figure, this Man of 
 sorrows depending from the cross, Is there, 
 — there and unremovable ; and, being now 
 
Christ its Centre. 
 
 1/5 
 
 universally diffused abroad, through the lives 
 of him, the comments on him, the universal 
 impression of him, he is swaying these men, 
 — swaying them by the power of his tran- 
 scendent character, his unequalled sayings, 
 and the tout-ensemble of his personality. To 
 his thoughts these men bow. To his con- 
 ceptions they more and more adapt their 
 lives. He has softened their scoffing. He 
 has made them tender and earnest. They 
 do not acknowledge, as we do, his Deity, 
 but they bend to his character. 
 
 And thus it comes about, in peoples that 
 know Christ, even though many among them 
 are ungodly, that the Christ-thought gets the 
 upper hand ; that complicated elections sim- 
 plify themselves ; that an aroused public 
 conscience registers the verdict of the Lord 
 Jesus; that great tyrannies fall down; that 
 ereat wars come to the rig^ht end ; and that 
 the King of kings, in the person of our 
 Lord, goes forth to every conflict with 
 no uncertainty what the ultimate outcome 
 will be. 
 
 It would be easy to establish what I have 
 
176 The Newer Religions Thinking. 
 
 affirmed from the sayings of men of this type, 
 but I have enough suggested the proof. Of 
 the truer spirit outside the faith, Christ is the 
 centre. Already it is under his resistless 
 eye. Already it swings, however unwit- 
 tingly, to his bidding. 
 
 2. The same is true, with augmented 
 force, of those in the Church, but outside 
 so-called " evangelical " lines. And the aug- 
 mented force lies in this, that, while, in 
 distinction from you and me, they deny the 
 true Deity of the Lord Jesus, they regard 
 him as very specially related to God. 
 
 In him, they say, God has most perfectly 
 manifested himself. There is a divine mys- 
 tery, they affirm, about this wonderful being. 
 Him they count their Saviour, their leader, 
 their glorious exemplar. They do not go as 
 far as we. We are sorry they do not. But 
 they go a good distance. They accept him 
 as Master. He marshals them. He directs 
 them. Now these men, as I have earlier 
 pointed out, are in one section of the newer 
 religious thinking ; and, in their newer 
 thought, Christ is central, — his character, 
 
Christ its Centre, 177 
 
 his way of helping men, his simplicity, his 
 incisiveness, his lofty and tender spirit. If 
 afar off, as some of us would say, they never- 
 theless follow Jesus. Yes, and perchance, 
 many a time, nearer than we. 
 
 I have met personally with two affecting 
 illustrations of this within a few days. A 
 young minister of a " non-evangelical " body, 
 consuming with zeal, love, service, introduced 
 me to an aged parishioner of his, and left us 
 together. Then began this old man to testify, 
 almost with tears, to what this young man 
 was doino- for him and for his church. " We 
 never had," he said, " such a minister. There 
 was never a minister that did so much for 
 me." Why ? I knew why. He never had 
 had a minister who so completely, however 
 defective his doctrine, lived as in the pres- 
 ence and power of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 The other illustration was in a well- 
 stocked private library. I took down a 
 book bearing on the life of the Lord Jesus. 
 Struck by it, I asked my host what he knew 
 of its author. " He is an Englishman," 
 replied my friend, " ' non-evangelical,' an 
 
 12 
 
178 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 advanced man. I visited him when I was 
 abroad. He is a great scholar, a great 
 thinker, but, like Martineau, most devout. 
 His home suggests an oratory, redolent of 
 sanctity and prayer." 
 
 Here, then, were a young Nevv^ England 
 pastor, of one " non-evangelical " denomina- 
 tion, and a great English scholar of another, 
 the doctrinal deficiencies of both of whom 
 you and I would regret; but both of whom 
 were not only under the general moral influ- 
 ence, as in the case of men outside the faith, 
 but also under the personal and spiritual 
 power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The exam- 
 ples are typical. They suggest, out of life, 
 my point.-^ 
 
 3. Without going into other divisions of 
 the Church, I come now to " Evangelicals," 
 such as we. And, first, those of them who 
 
 1 One has only to think of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the 
 author of "In His Name," and of Dr. Andrew P. Peabody 
 (passed on March 10, 1893), who was as devout and tender a 
 disciple as the Saint John he loved so well, to understand 
 how truly Christian, in the New Testament sense of that 
 word, are multitudes whom those who claim to be more ac- 
 ceptable Christians than they, have so far forgotten the spirit 
 of Christ as to pronounce "unevangelical." (Seepp. 208, 209.) 
 
Christ its Centre. 179 
 
 have little responsiveness to the freshened 
 religious'thinking of our time. 
 
 Conservatives, we should call them. But 
 some of them are, along practical lines, 
 mightily parts of a progressive movement. 
 The dead Spurgeon Is an example. Very 
 conservative In theory, In practical directions 
 he v^as radical, — pushing for new methods, 
 new appliances, new Instrumentalities, build- 
 ing up his great Metropolitan Temple work, 
 his Lay College, his Orphanage, etc. The 
 living General Booth, of the Salvation Army, 
 is another example. Book after book falls 
 from his pen. The drum-beat of the army 
 associated with his name, like the drum-beat 
 of the army of England, follows the rising 
 sun around the world. Dwight L. Moody 
 Is another example, — fearless, hospitable, 
 asking Professor (now President) Harper, 
 who so much disturbs some people about 
 the Old Testament, to speak at his Sum- 
 mer School. 
 
 Conservative men are all these, and 
 many another, yet advancing men ; mainly 
 advancing In practical directions, it is true. 
 
i8o The Newer Religious Thinking. 
 
 but parts of the great world movement. 
 Need I ask who inspires them ; who is 
 central to their progress ; who is the 
 Leader, Captain, All-in-AU of the Spur- 
 geons, Booths, Moodys, and those of like 
 temper, in the great marching army of 
 Christian workers of this type ? It is he 
 with the thorn-marks in his brow, the nail- 
 prints in his hands, the spear-thrust in his 
 side. 
 
 4. And next, and finally, we come to those 
 members of " evangelical " bodies, to whom 
 I have made repeated reference, who, in in- 
 tellectual as well as practical lines, are parts 
 of the newer religious thinking. 
 
 They are the Coleridges, the Arnolds, 
 the Robertsons, the Maurices, the Kingsleys, 
 the Bushnells, among the dead. They are the 
 Farrars, the Phillips Brookses,^ the Heber 
 Newtons, the T. T. Mungers, the Wash- 
 ington Gladdens, the Lyman Abbotts, the 
 Egbert C. Smyths, among the living. They 
 
 1 Dead, alas ! January 23, 1893. But never so alive as 
 now, on the earth as well as in heaven. " It is expedient for 
 you that I go away." 
 
Christ its Ce^itre, i8i 
 
 are, at once as practical men and as intel- 
 lectual men, in the newer religious thinking. 
 They have their faults, perchance their errors. 
 But to their voices the voice of the souls of 
 sinning, fallen, needy humanity responds. 
 
 And there is but one centre to their think- 
 ing and their work, — namely, the Crucified 
 One. Believing that he was in the form of 
 God, but counted it not a thing to grasp 
 after to hold equality with God, but, the 
 rather, emptied himself, took the form of a 
 servant, was made in the likeness of men, 
 humbled himself, and became obedient to 
 death, even the death of the cross, — they 
 hold him therein to have impersonated, as 
 in no other way it could be done, the great 
 heart of God ; and that therefore, not so 
 much because he was God, though he w^as 
 God, but because in flesh and blood he 
 embodied the infinitely sacrificial heart of 
 God, " God highly exalted him, and gave 
 unto him the name which is above every 
 name ; " and " that In the name of Jesus 
 every knee" shall "bow, of things in heaven 
 and things on earth and things under the 
 
1 82 The Newer Religious Thinking, 
 
 earth, and that every tongue " shall " con- 
 fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory 
 of God the Father." 
 
 This is their conviction, this their faith, 
 this their inspiration. Along this line they 
 are moving. God is God, they believe, and 
 Christ is God, not so much because they 
 are God, though they are that, but because 
 they are God-like, — self-emptying, sacrificial, 
 spending and being spent for others, for 
 men, and for the spirits above and beyond 
 men. Here they see God resting his high- 
 est claim, and Christ his highest, not in 
 Deity per se, though they are that, but in 
 God-like love, sacrifice, self-emptying. 
 
 A universe could not be called into being, 
 these men remember, without infinite suffer- 
 ing. This infinite suffering, God, — this 
 infinite suffering, Christ, — these men re- 
 member, was ready to undergo, and thus to 
 be, as it were, " slain from the foundation of 
 the world." Human beings, and other spir- 
 itual existences, could not be called into 
 being — any more than the coming into 
 being of a family of children is possible — 
 
Christ its Centre, 
 
 without immense suffering, and immense 
 sin as the sequel. These, too, God, — these, 
 too, Christ, — was wilHng to undergo and 
 endure. This self-emptying and self-forget- 
 ting — as is slightly suggested by the self- 
 emptying and self-forgetting of a parent — 
 did God, and especially God in Christ, 
 make the law of the Divine Beins:. There- 
 fore, by highest right, God is God ; therefore 
 Christ is highly exalted, and given "the 
 name which is above every name." 
 
 Do you catch the thought } Do you see 
 how far-reaching it is } " God is love." 
 " God so loved the world." God's claim is 
 based there. God's command of us is ful- 
 crumed there. Not on sovereignty, though 
 there is sovereignty enough ; not on law, 
 though there is law enough ; not on right, 
 though there is right enough ; not on jus- 
 tice, though God Is just; but on love, — the 
 love of an infinite and eternal sacrifice, pene- 
 trating the world, pervading it, conquering 
 it, lowering its proud look, bringing down its 
 lofty head, turning it as the rivers of water 
 are turned. Love Is the clew ; love Is the 
 
1 84 The Newer ReligioMS Thinking, 
 
 key, — and love running through everything: 
 through nature, making it sacred ; through 
 history, hallowing it ; through life, imparting 
 to it a new meaning, so that light comes, 
 freedom comes, growth comes, yea, the new 
 heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. 
 
 Constantine, on the eve of battle, seemed, 
 as everybody knows, to see in the sky a 
 cross, and the legend, " In this symbol con- 
 quer."^ In it he did conquer. But little did 
 he guess, or did the Church of his age, or of 
 the succeeding ages, guess the full import 
 of the symbol. The full import is the eternal 
 sacrifice in the heart of God. Of this im- 
 port our age, enabled thereto by its mighty 
 enlargings on every side, is, for the first 
 time, getting some adequate glimpses. To 
 its power this age is bending, — love, the 
 cross, the infinite sacrifice in the heart of 
 God, emulated in the hearts, the thoughts, 
 the lives of men. And, as if it blazed 
 before the sight of men in every sky, it is 
 saying, " In this symbol conquer," — breaking 
 down all oppressions, righting all wrongs, 
 
 ^ Strictly, " thou shalt conquer." 
 
Christ its Centre. 185 
 
 bettering steadily a world so in need of bet- 
 terment, lifting life into higher thoughts, 
 nobler ideals, loftier conceptions, more ade- 
 quate realizations and completions, under 
 the lead of the Crucified, — he the centre, 
 he highly exalted, and, in some sense, all 
 knees bent to him, and all tongues confess- 
 ing him. 
 
 This is more than getting salvation, though 
 it is salvation. It is salvation getting us. 
 This is more than gaining heaven, though it 
 gains heaven. It is heaven gaining us, — 
 gaining us over to its ruling idea, filling us 
 with it, transfiguring us by it, and making 
 it to be true that we, his servants, both here 
 and there, serve him, and have his name in 
 our foreheads. 
 
 Here it is that the newer religious think- 
 ing, — not mine, not yours, not any man's, 
 not perfect either, but still faulty and inad- 
 equate enough, — along the pathway of which 
 God is leading the world, and of which I 
 have sought to say something to you these 
 closing Sunday nights of the year, shows 
 upon it the divine handwriting, being from 
 
1 86 The Newer Re ligio2is Thinking. 
 
 Christ, and centred in him, and moving 
 toward him. 
 
 And there is only one thing for you and 
 me to do, — a thing which, at the best, we 
 never have enough done yet, — namely, to 
 throw ourselves into this infinite Christ prin- 
 ciple, into this infinite law of the spiritual 
 kingdom, into this divine imperative of the 
 universe, and to become the very children 
 and personal presentments of the cross. 
 He who therefrom depends, leads, and ever 
 will lead, turning and overturning, conquer- 
 ing and to conquer, and renewing evermore 
 — even as it is written, " Behold, I make all 
 things new " — thought, feeling, life, yea, 
 even you and me. To him be the glory, 
 both now and forever. Amen. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 ONE TYPE OF NATURE TEACHING. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 At the point in Discourse IV. (page 124) whence reference is 
 made to Appendix A, I have spoken not only of the testifying 
 power of nature indirectly and in general ways, but of its more 
 direct voice. What, it was asked, are those impulses of peoples, 
 those movements of them, those peculiarities which give them 
 each, as it were, a vocation and a distinctive message for the 
 world? "All these," as was there said, "have a place in that 
 revelation of God which the world is." 
 
 To illustrate this subject in a single direction, I append the 
 closing observations in an address of mine before the New Eng- 
 land Water Works Association, given in Boston, December 12, 
 1888, entitled " Water in Some of its Higher Relations," and 
 printed in the Association's "Journal" for March, 1889. The 
 last paragraph, not in the address, but added as a note when it 
 was printed, is here brought into the text. 
 
 Nature being of God not only, but God being in nature, and 
 speaking through it, when shall that great heresy be arrested by 
 which the two are put in antithesis, and by which nature is so 
 demeaned as at best only now and then to be summoned into 
 court " evidentially " ? When shall its holy voice on all sides of 
 us be simply and livingly heard ? Children so hear it, — " the 
 greatest in the Kingdom of heaven." So do the poets, — suc- 
 ceeding, as they know how to, in remaining children always. We 
 must come to their place, or miss much of the sweetness, depth, 
 and glory of God. 
 
ONE TYPE OF NATURE TEACHING. 
 
 IF this seems fanciful to you, this mighty impulse 
 of descending streams, of great rivers, of spark- 
 ling archipelagoes, and of bordering seas, in giving 
 a type to national life, and in helping set forward 
 world-historical movements, I ask you to think of 
 two or three more modern instances. 
 
 What, then, let me ask, was the Anglo-Saxon 
 fatherland? It was Teutonic. Why, then, do our 
 brothers of Germany, and of the Low Countries, 
 stay mainly on their own soil, or colonize only 
 feebly, while we ourselves, having been first trans- 
 ferred to the mother Islands, have colonized the 
 world, are erecting mighty nationalities on three 
 continents, and are giving to the whole world our 
 institutions and our speech? Before you answer 
 this question I ask you to sail along the shores 
 of the Continent, opposite Great Britain ; to note 
 that there is hardly a respectable natural harbor 
 on the French coast; to note how remote and 
 difficult of access are the better harbors of the 
 North Sea and of the Baltic; and then, crossing 
 
1 90 Appen dix A . 
 
 the Channel, to observe that our mother Islands 
 are fairly fringed with bays, inlets, safe harbors, 
 and inviting river mouths. Sail up the Irish coast, 
 for example, with this distinction in mind. The 
 whole coast configuration, the whole maritime 
 quality of these islands, were a perpetual predis- 
 position to the sea, to its hardy employments, to 
 its openness of mind, to its far-reaching adventure. 
 Water, and the water impulse and opportunity, are 
 the answer, physically, to the question why the 
 Anglo-Saxon civilization, which, indeed, had within 
 itself elements mightily adapted to the same end, 
 is erecting great nationalities on three continents, 
 and is imparting its spirit to the world. 
 
 But let us keep within the lifetime of our own 
 generation. Go back, in our own country, to i860. 
 Why was it, in all the stress and conflicting senti- 
 ment of that stormy period, that North and South 
 did not separate, like Abram and Lot dividing the 
 land? One great reason, one conclusive practical 
 reason, one unanswerable argument to multitudes 
 who would not have stood upon theory, was the 
 simple natural fact that a mighty river coursed 
 from north to south through the alienated sec- 
 tions ; that the natural flow of waters, and the 
 natural dip of water-sheds, pointed out that this 
 ought to be one land, not two ; and that it was 
 impracticable for it to maintain itself as two. 
 
One Type of Nature Teaching. 191 
 
 Or go back to 1870. There is a magnificent 
 river, almost a second Rhine, descending from the 
 southwest by a northeasterly course to the Rhine, 
 and joining it at Coblenz, namely, the Moselle. 
 The two streams are, for all practical purposes, 
 one. The country drained by them is the same in 
 character. The Moselle belonged within the old 
 German frontier. All the Rhine love was shared 
 by it. But France had claimed and held the 
 Moselle. The struggle of 1870 came. Then 
 the old river passion awoke. That fair valley was 
 wrested back. In the great German national 
 monument, far up on the heights overlooking the 
 Rhine at Bingen, where colossal bronzes have been 
 erected as a memorial of the uprising and uni- 
 fication of the German peoples in that war, one 
 member of the group is a figure representing the 
 Moselle, won back to its sisterhood with the Rhine. 
 But the river love and the river spirit, expressed 
 thus in bronze, were even realer and more con- 
 structive than the statue indicates in that fierce 
 national struggle. 
 
 The final higher relation of water which I men- 
 tion is one difficult to be defined, and of which 
 I can take time to give only two illustrations ; but 
 it is as real and mighty as any of the others. 
 I refer to the power of water on the human imagi- 
 nation. And I think I need hardly contend, before 
 
192 Appendix A. 
 
 a company as intelligent as this, that genuine 
 and profound influences on the imagination are 
 among the most powerful springs of human 
 conduct. 
 
 I ask you, then, first, to think of the Arthurian 
 legends. There is a great mass of them. Their 
 principal home is the British Isles. Their con- 
 structive thought is, the reappearance of Arthur, 
 in the ages to come, to bring in days better even 
 than the old days of that king and of his Table 
 Round. They have been cast into perhaps their 
 best practical, as certainly into their most poetic, 
 form in Tennyson's " Idyls of the King." Any 
 one who has studied them, and who is at all 
 familiar with the spirit of Anglo-Saxon history, 
 will, I think, admit, that they well typify the best 
 movements of that history ; that they are true race 
 legends ; and that much of their promise bids fair 
 yet to be practically fulfilled. Now the point 
 which I ask you to notice is, the play of springs, 
 waters, and inland lakes in them. They are water 
 and insular legends. Their delicacy, their purity, 
 their freshness, their promise, their sense of mys- 
 tery and of fate, their sense, too, of goodness, of 
 trust, and of love, are water born. They are 
 genuine idyls. But they are insular, they are of 
 springs, streams, and inland lakes. These begot 
 those. From the waters, that is to say, came the 
 
One Type of Nature TeacJimg. 193 
 
 thoughts, the ideals, the aspirations. The whole 
 intellectual and moral fabric, so true to our 
 history, and so prophetic of its issue, is insep- 
 arably connected with the power of water over 
 the imagination. 
 
 But, as you may consider this too vague and 
 general, I ask you to think of a phenomenon of 
 our own century. Just at its dawn two young 
 men, warm friends, took a journey together into 
 the region of the English Lakes, then little fre- 
 quented, — and now, by the bye, about to be 
 utilized for the supply of water for the great city 
 of Manchester, perhaps seventy-five miles away. 
 The young men were more than charmed, they 
 were fascinated, by the seclusion of those vales, 
 by the beauty of the wild glens, by the fantastic 
 shapes of the mountains (themselves water-carved), 
 by the humidity of the region which the perfect 
 drainage of the soil hindered nevertheless from 
 being wet, by the play of cloud, mist, and sunlight, 
 but especially by the lakes themselves, and par- 
 ticularly by Grasmere and Rydal Water. One of 
 the young men, by far the greater genius of the 
 two, was enamoured instantly, and kindled the 
 slower susceptibilities of the other. The former of 
 these young men was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 The latter was William Wordsworth. Within a 
 year Wordsworth settled by Grasmere, and in its 
 
 13 
 
194 Appendix A. 
 
 neighborhood lie spent a long life. Coleridge set- 
 tled by Derwentvvater, not far away, but after some 
 years removed to London. It would be easily 
 possible to show that the lives of both these men 
 were definitely affected by the then wild lakes ; 
 that the lakes entered into their thinking and 
 their theories; that, in the case of Coleridge, his 
 power over English and American thought in the 
 first half of this century — a power so great that it 
 can hardly be estimated — was largely contributed 
 to by the lakes ; and that, as for Wordsworth, who 
 lived by Grasmere and Rydal all his life, and now 
 lies in Grasmere churchyard, and who marks a 
 new epoch in English poetry, the lakes were as the 
 water of life to him. Of Southey, De Ouincey, and 
 Scott (whose own lakes were, however, those of 
 the Scottish Highlands), of Wilson, and of Thomas 
 Arnold, much might be said in the same direction. 
 There was never really any " Lake School," except 
 in fancy, but there was a mighty, deathless lake life^ 
 whose power in English literature and in Anglo- 
 Saxon living will not soon die. And here was 
 done for a few rare minds by these inland lakes 
 and streams, visibly, palpably, and in a way vastly 
 affecting our age, what less palpably, but not less 
 really, was done by the operation of the same 
 causes, through the Arthurian legends, for our 
 Anglo-Saxon people during many centuries. 
 
One Type of Nature Teaching. 195 
 
 The reader will observe that the two illustra- 
 tions are drawn from within the ancient northern 
 glacial belt. It would have been interesting to 
 draw a third from within the same belt on our side 
 of the Atlantic. What Lake Walden and other 
 New England lakes similarly formed, and their 
 associated streams, did for Thoreau, Emerson, 
 and Hawthorne, there is no estimating. Indeed, 
 perhaps Hawthorne is never so much at home in 
 any of his foreign writing as in his English Lake 
 Notes. The waters of the old ice lands, having 
 their own peculiar setting and character, need 
 to be studied in relation to the history of the 
 imagination, and of national spirit, by some one 
 expert both in glacial action, and in literature 
 and folk-lore. Were all the facts known, it would 
 probably appear that the lakes and streams of 
 this belt, presenting as they do a singular com- 
 bination of thought-impressing elements, have, 
 from the times when man began to think, over 
 and over again induced such personal expe- 
 riences as the Arthurian legends seem to imply, 
 as the Coleridge-Wordsworthian lakes passion has 
 put into biography, and as Thoreau, the New 
 England sohtary, lived out. There seem to 
 have been analogous experiences among our 
 [American] aborigines. It is doubtful if Scandi- 
 navian literature can be explained without them. 
 
196 Appendix A, 
 
 The Tell legends spring ashore, as it were, from 
 the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons. How 
 well the ice wrought ! How much mightier than 
 Merlin's is the water's enchantment in the old ice 
 lands ! 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 OMITTED PART OF DISCOURSE VI. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 "Ye cannot bear them now," said Christ of "many things" 
 he wished to utter, and refrained himself. He is doing so still. 
 And, friend, he is doing so by you and me. This should humble 
 us. It should also give us quick insight and tact what to say to 
 others. For one man's noonday is another's midnight ; one man's 
 holiest truth of God, another's heresy or blasphemy. " He hath 
 spoken blasphemy," they said of him, the blameless, to whom be- 
 longed perfect vision. Here is one range in which ministers need 
 Chris tliness. What to say, what not to say, and how to express 
 the message given them, only Christ can teach. 
 
 When we had come to the last discourse of this series, I could 
 not go right on, but must pause. The substance of what I said 
 in the pause, follows. It is not included in the discourse as 
 printed, because matter more pertinent to the close of the dis- 
 cussion had a right to be substituted for it there. (See note, 
 p. i6i.) It appears here for the same reason thatVaused it to be 
 spoken, namely, to help any persons who, having come thus far, 
 may need its help. God bless them, every one ! 
 
OMITTED PART OF DISCOURSE VI.^ 
 
 THERE is in this age, as in every thinking age, 
 a movement, or progress, of religious thought. 
 This is not a movement of any man, or of any 
 institution, or of any sect or denomination, or of 
 any great division of the Church, such as Pres- 
 byterian or Anghcan or Lutheran, or such as 
 Protestant or CathoHc or Greek, or, indeed, of any 
 yet wider division among men, Hke that between 
 
 1 Synopsis. — There is in this age a movement, or progress, 
 of religious thought. — This not of a man, or institution, or sec- 
 tion of the Church, or of the Church itself, exclusively, but of the 
 world. — Multiform, doubtless in error in part, but God-inspired 
 and Godward-moving. — Illustrated by the analogy of the literary 
 movement of the past century within the languages of Europe. — 
 Able to be perceived by us contemporaneously. — Profitable for 
 preaching. — Our Saviour's desire that men should note the signs 
 of the times.— His Spirit to guide into all the truth. — This, 
 properly, the temper of Protestantism, and particularly of Con- 
 gregationalism.— The preacher had been understood hardly 
 rightly by some, conscientiously, however. — Why he had spoken, 
 with what shrinking, and in what attitude toward the subject.— 
 A personal Credo. — Short summary of these discourses. — Christ 
 the centre of the present movement, or progress, — (i) For, etc. 
 [as on page i6o]. 
 
200 Appendix B, 
 
 Christians and those who are Theists merely, or 
 Hke that between the men of faith and the men of 
 unfaith. It is a movement, rather, of our whole 
 race, in the realm of the religious faculty. It 
 affects different individuals, different classes of 
 men, different divisions of the religious world, 
 variously, according to their characteristics and 
 points of view, but it is one movement, in different 
 parts and in different manifestations. 
 
 I hope I make my meaning clear. I am not 
 speaking now of particular religious beliefs. I am 
 speaking of the religious heart of men. This heart 
 is moving. God is touching it. Sometimes it is 
 moving under forms of error, feeling after God. 
 Sometimes it is moving under simple, clear 
 thoughts of God, in holy men as it were seeing 
 him. But it is one movement. And that Infinite 
 Being who lives and moves in all things, lives and 
 moves in it. 
 
 Perhaps I can illustrate what I mean from an 
 altogether different subject, namely, literature. 
 We have long known that there was a distinct 
 movement in English literature, beginning late in 
 the last century, blossoming forth early in this, and 
 unfolding with the century. Now those who have 
 given themselves to the comparative study of the 
 literature of the same period in other languages on 
 the Continent of Europe, have discovered, and are 
 
Omitted Part of Discourse VI, 201 
 
 gradually tracing out, a corresponding movement 
 in the literature of those languages. The lan- 
 guages were different; the races were different; 
 the points of view were different. But the move- 
 ment was one, and marked by almost identically 
 the same impulses. This has been specially im- 
 pressed upon me by a conversation lately had on 
 the subject with a gentleman ot high attainments 
 who is making this comparative study his specialty, 
 and who, I hope, will by and by write on it. 
 
 Consider, I pray you, what an impressive thing 
 this is, — to know that, while our English literature 
 was taking a new form and bent, almost unwit- 
 tingly the literature of the Continental languages 
 was taking, intrinsically, a corresponding form and 
 bent. What does such a fact say to us? Does it 
 not say that the men speaking the different lan- 
 guages of Europe, having been for ages under 
 the same general tutelage of civic struggle and of 
 Christian influence, were responding under one 
 and the same guidance of God, to the touch of his 
 breath and mind, and through representative 
 writers, each unknown to the others at the start, 
 were breaking forth into new and higher literary 
 expression ? I cannot look at it in any other way. 
 And this circumstance I regard as yet another evi- 
 dence that the God and Father of us all has not 
 left the world alone, either in religious or in secular 
 
202 Appendix B. 
 
 matters, but is moving in it, and bending it to his 
 thoughts. 
 
 Now, similarly, in the matter of the religious 
 impulse and thought in men, there is a movement, 
 pervasive, world-wide, diverse in form, diverse 
 in expression, often faulty, perchance repeatedly 
 in error, but, in one way or another, feeling its 
 way or thinking its way nearer to God. In ages 
 past, so isolated were men, and so inadequate was 
 their interchange of thought, that such a move- 
 ment could not be discerned as of wide extent in 
 its time, but was so revealed later to the student 
 of the history of the respective times. But to-day, 
 so near is the world, in its parts, brought to itself 
 as a whole, by steam, electricity, and the printing- 
 press, that we can see on its many sides this 
 movement going on, and, contemporaneously, can 
 watch it. 
 
 It has accordingly seemed to me that this im- 
 pressive thing, the movement of religious thought 
 at the present day, discernible by us contempora- 
 neously, and of as much vaster moment than any 
 movement of literature as religion itself is of 
 vaster moment than literature, would be a profita- 
 ble subject for our meditation these closing Sunday 
 nights of the year, so far as absence of other Sun- 
 day-night appointments left us the evenings free 
 for such meditation. We were to climb, so to 
 
Omitted Part of Discourse VI, 203 
 
 speak, into a lofty lookout, and gaze over wide 
 extending land and sea, to observe how the 
 thoughts of men were moving, and how freshly 
 they were thinking of God. 
 
 Our Saviour criticised the children of light for 
 not being wise enough in their generation. He 
 indicated that it might be a mark of hypocrisy to 
 have insight about such signs in the outer world 
 as those of the weather, but not to be able to dis- 
 cern the signs of the times. By this, I suppose he 
 meant that the persons addressed, being discerning 
 enough to detect the indications of the face of 
 nature, but wilfully shutting their eyes against the 
 new spiritual light which was breaking upon the 
 world in their time, were not candid ; and that, 
 therefore, since they professed to be holy men, 
 they were, in so far, untrue to their profession, 
 or, in other words, hypocritical. And if ever I, 
 for one, find myself unwilling with open eyes to 
 behold the light on religious matters which God 
 is bringing to our time, I shall fear that it is 
 from some timidity or prejudice or self-interest 
 in me ; and that thus, professing to be a child of 
 God, I am to this degree hypocritical in it, that I 
 will not let God teach me, his child, the lessons 
 he is trying to teach me. 
 
 Our Saviour also affirmed that he had many 
 things to say which men could not then bear, and 
 
204 Appendix B. 
 
 promised the Spirit of Truth to guide men into 
 all the truth. The same has been the characteris- 
 tic attitude of Protestantism, — not to fear the truth, 
 but to seek it and be ready for it. The same, 
 particularly, has been the temper of our Congrega- 
 tionalism, Robinson urging the departing Pilgrims 
 to expect fresh light to break from the Bible, and 
 — as an early New England writer reports — de- 
 ploring the tendency of the Reformation to stick 
 where Luther or Calvin or Knox stopped, instead 
 of, in their spirit, going on into the whole truth 
 as God should continue to make it clear. 
 
 I would not say an unkind word of any one, 
 nor judge any one. I would only criticise myself, 
 and judge myself, and I do that severely. But I 
 am at a loss to see how I could have been under- 
 stood in some instances quite as I have, in the 
 matter of these discourses, — I doubt not conscien- 
 tiously, and from true motives, so that I entertain 
 for any so understanding me not only respect, but 
 a tender and sincere love. Such are, indeed, 
 among the truest people that I know. 
 
 In this spirit of respect and love let us look at 
 the matter for a moment. And, first, speaking 
 generally, think you, dear friends, it is a right 
 thing, or not a right thing, for a Christian preacher 
 to attempt to describe a general age movement 
 of religious thought in this the most wonderful 
 period since Christ left the world? 
 
Omitted Part of Discourse V/. 205 
 
 And, next, speaking personally, do you think 
 that I, who love you, could lightly give you one 
 troubled or anxious moment? I trust what you 
 know of me will lead you to believe otherwise. 
 The fact is, — I may as well confess it, — that when 
 the question arose in my own soul whether I should 
 attempt to do this or not, — and I consulted on the 
 subject with no human being, — I shrank from it 
 almost with trembling. Having put the title of 
 the sermons in the printer's hands for announce- 
 ment, I came pretty near resolving to draw my 
 pen through the proof, and to have the type dis- 
 tributed before it went to press. And I only re- 
 frained from doing so under a solemn conviction 
 of the duty of speaking to my people, and to 
 any who cared to come and hear, of this move- 
 ment of religious thought in our time, — not as 
 indorsing it in all respects, for in some respects I 
 could not indorse it, but as describing and char- 
 acterizing it for our information and help; and 
 under a solemn conviction, likewise, that not to 
 speak would be to fail to act the part of the house- 
 holder spoken of by our Lord, who " bringeth 
 forth out of his treasure things new and old." 
 
 And this was all that I was doing. I was not 
 expressing, except where I indicated it, my own 
 opinions, or those of any other man, or of any set 
 of men, or of any institution, or of any wing of 
 
!o6 Appendix B. 
 
 thought; but I was characterizing a movement, a 
 trend and march of current history, of which, in 
 one form or another, whether we will or not, we 
 are all a part. And I expressly stated that this 
 movement might err. We are liable to err in 
 everything, particularly in everything new or un- 
 tried ; and I said that it was one of the perils of 
 our time that its newer religious thought might 
 stray in this or that particular.^ 
 
 But what, then, are we to do ? Are we to shut 
 our eyes? Are we to stop thinking? When the 
 age is thinking, are we to refuse to consider its 
 thoughts, and learn from them? I cannot do so. 
 Nor can I, as a Christian preacher, think it right 
 to do so by my people. Especially I cannot when 
 I see our Lord, who, had he remained quiet on 
 certain subjects, might have received a wide pop- 
 ular following, refusing to do so, but truly speak- 
 ing his thought, though death in consequence was 
 certain; and when I see Saint Paul, all through 
 the Acts, while conciliatory and charitable, bear- 
 ing witness to unpopular truth, and suffering for it. 
 I must follow in our Lord's steps and in Saint 
 Paul's in like exigencies, should they arise. 
 
 It has seemed to me right, in this discourse, — 
 which, in closing the series, is partly of the nature 
 of recapitulation, — that I should allude, lovingly, 
 1 See, for example, p. 109. 
 
Omitted Part of Discourse VI. 207 
 
 to this matter. I again testify to the conscientious- 
 ness and true motive, as I trust, of any dissent, and 
 to my love for those who may be in such a case. I 
 can well understand that approach to truth which 
 is theirs, and which seems to compel dissent. And 
 I ask you who, in such numbers, have followed 
 the discourses with eager interest, to have for any 
 such the same respect, love, and sense of point of 
 view. For if any of us have larger light, the 
 proof of the true heart in that light will be love, 
 and love's power to appreciate and understand 
 those who have not the same light. 
 
 I ought to add that, while I have not been ex- 
 pounding my opinions, but describing a move- 
 ment, it is true, nevertheless, that my heart joys 
 and sings with the movement. Not able to agree 
 with it in every particular, I believe its trend to be 
 in the right direction, and it stirs and thrills my 
 whole being. But, lest any misunderstand, I giv^e, 
 what will perhaps be reassuring, this my personal 
 Credo: — 
 
 / believe in the living God, Father, Son, and 
 Holy Spirit, 07ie and yet three: the Son and the 
 Spirit with the Father very God: the Son eternally 
 begotten: no man saved except througJi the Son: no 
 man saved except born into a new life tJirongh the 
 Spirit: the Bible, rigJitly interpreted, the one tran- 
 scendent literature, pointing tis to God, authoritative 
 
2o8 Appendix B. 
 
 over life: sin awful, its conseqitences terrible, its 
 punishnieni inevitahle, perhaps without end: man 
 deathless, to be clothed upon with a spiritual body, 
 hardly so ninch to be judged as forever being judged 
 by holy, and yet pitying and helping, God, and for- 
 ever going, under sneJi a God, to his own place: 
 and eye not having seen nor ear heard nor heart of 
 man conceived the things prepared, of good for the 
 true and of evil for the false, in the larger life. 
 Amen. 
 
 I should need to say much more, fully to round 
 out what I have put into so few words ; and my 
 use of these words might, in turn, easily be misun- 
 derstood : but so I believe, sincerely, and not hand- 
 ling the words in any other than their obvious sense. 
 And, so believing, I do not belong under certain 
 denominational names which have been at one 
 time or another spoken of as if they might be 
 mine. I must, however, confess this, that I respect 
 those denominations, love every true soul in them, 
 wish I might go out in outward as well as in spir- 
 itual fellowship to them, and believe that they, 
 though I must dissent from them in certain par- 
 ticulars, are, nevertheless, true parts of Christ's 
 Church, are bearing witness to aspects of truth 
 which we are prone to overlook, and are only disfel- 
 lowshipped by us through what, in the broad light 
 of eternity, will be looked back to as a denying 
 
Omitted Part of Discourse VI. 209 
 
 of the very spirit of our Lord, — done, however, 
 through our having honestly mistaken what that 
 spirit was. 
 
 I now turn to our subject proper, namely, Christ 
 the centre of the newer religious thinking. But 
 even here, I must delay for a brief recapitulation. 
 
 In the first, then, of these discourses I showed 
 that, as there has been in the past, so there is now, 
 a movement of religious thought, — not your 
 movement, or mine, or that of any set of men, or 
 division or denomination of Christendom, but a 
 movement, — and I indicated some of its charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 In the second and third of these discourses I 
 asked you to think of the mighty spring, or 
 motive, underlying this movement. I pointed out 
 how, both in its nature, and as regards the men in 
 it, it is impelled by hunger after God and passion 
 for men ; and, also, how this hunger and passion 
 are leading to the re-study — not necessarily the 
 rejection, but the re-study — and more adequate 
 interpretation of some Christian doctrines and 
 practices, with the consequent overthrow of certain 
 idols of the mind in these directions. 
 
 In the fourth and fifth discourses I asked you to 
 think of the material, or data, out of which, induc- 
 tively, this movement is going forward into larger 
 and, as I believe it will ultimately prove, juster 
 
 14 
 
2 1 o Appendix B. 
 
 and more adequate conceptions of religious truth. 
 I pointed out how it studies two books : the un- 
 written book, consisting of nature, history, and life, 
 or, in one word, the world ; and the written book, 
 the Bible. I pointed out how it seeks to let each 
 book throw light on the other, and help interpret 
 the other ; but that it has an undiminished rever- 
 ence for, and submission to the Bible, rightly 
 understood and interpreted. 
 
 It is to this point, then, that we now come in 
 closing; namely, to note that, etc. [as on page 
 171]. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 SOME PLAIN QUESTIONING. 
 
N O T E. 
 
 There are aspects of discussion which are incapable of system- 
 atic treatment. They are matters of point of view, of antago- 
 nistic or sympathetic approach, of objections or confirmatory 
 considerations suggested by the mind, etc. They require per- 
 sonal conference, question and answer, and downright, thorough 
 talk. Three supposed persons are accordingly suffered to do 
 some of this hereinafter. One should not forget the dear resur- 
 rection dialogue. The voice even of angels sutfices not. The 
 questioning mind insists on feeling its own way toward the light. 
 And so it is written : — 
 
 I. 
 
 They [two angels] say unto her. Woman, why weepest thou ? 
 She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, 
 and I know not where they have laid him. 
 
 II. 
 
 She turned herself back, and beholdeth Jesus standing, and 
 knew not that it was Jesus. 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou ? whom 
 seekest thou ? 
 
 She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him. Sir, if 
 thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and 
 I will take him away. 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, Mary ! 
 
 She turneth herself, and saith unto him, Master ! 
 
SOME PLAIN QUESTIONING. 
 
 I. 
 
 UNDER this '' newer religious thinking," 
 which, you say, is not yours, — though I 
 should consider it a tolerably faithful reflection of 
 your ideas, — but which is, the rather, of the time, 
 and, indeed, of all of us, — a statement from which 
 I beg to dissent, — what becomes of the religion of 
 the lowly Jesus? 
 
 B. It seems to me, friend, that the religion of 
 Jesus is for the first time beginning to get ade- 
 quate expression in this thinking. 
 
 A. What! in such a worldly time as this? This 
 is not such a time as Edward Payson's, or as Jona- 
 than Edwards's, or as that of the Reformers, to go 
 no farther back. 
 
 B. I should hope it might in some ways im- 
 prove upon those times. 
 
 A. But I mean in spirit. We do not pray as 
 much, nor fast as much, nor do we eschew the 
 world as they did. 
 
 B. Nor, let me add, as John the Baptist did. 
 *' He that is but little in the Kingdom of heaven 
 
2 14 Appendix C. 
 
 is greater than he." *' The Son of man came 
 eating and drinking." 
 
 A. But tell me, if you please, how the religion 
 of the lowly Jesus is, as you have just said, '' for 
 the first time beginning to get adequate expression 
 in this thinking." 
 
 B. In the matter of God. 
 
 A. How? 
 
 B. Jesus was in a living touch with his Father. 
 He did not get it roundabout through Moses or 
 Isaiah, but in direct consciousness. So getting it, 
 he swept aside various traditional thoughts of God, 
 to the scandal of many. The newer thinking is in 
 an analogous temper. It, as it were, sees God, and 
 hates the idols which have usurped his place. 
 
 A. I call that very irreverent, to say the least. 
 ** No man hath seen God at any time." Besides, 
 how can this human thinking, or any other, be 
 likened to the thinking of the omniscient Jesus? 
 
 B, *' The pure in heart . . . shall see God." 
 
 A. In heaven, it means. 
 
 B. Yes, and also, in beginnings at least, on earth. 
 We are bidden, moreover, to have the mind in us 
 " which was also in Christ Jesus," and does not 
 that mean that human thinking may — nay, should 
 — be like that of Jesus? He, by the way, has 
 told us that, at least in one particular, he is not 
 omniscient. 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 2 1 5 
 
 A. Well, go on. 
 
 B. In this thinking, also, the passion of Jesus 
 for men is waking up. 
 
 A. I don't call these university extensions, these 
 boys' clubs, etc., the passion of Jesus for men. 
 He was seeking to save their immortal souls. 
 
 B. Did he ever use the expression " immortal 
 soul"? In his personal handling of men did he 
 ordinarily thrust forward that idea? Was he not 
 feeding them, telling them where to cast the net, 
 and becoming the friend of publicans and sinners? 
 
 A. Go on. 
 
 B. In this thinking, too, to a degree never 
 equalled before, we are getting the approach of 
 Jesus to nature. He was in the most perfect in- 
 timacy and harmony with it, no naturalist or poet 
 so much so.^ In this spirit the newer thinking 
 
 1 With the Saviour, let us not forget, it was all vision. He 
 had the second sight. The hen brooding her chickens; the 
 sparrow fallen by the hedgerow ; the woman making bread ; the 
 mason slowly raising the four walls of a house on rock or on 
 sand ; the lily tossing on its stem ; the azure or* murky sky ; the 
 sower going forth to sow ; the fishers drawing their nets ; the mer- 
 chantmen passing up and down along the Galilean caravan route ; 
 the self-mastered centurions, under authority, and therefore keep- 
 ing a peace and winning a love among a turbulent population, 
 which proconsul, king, and emperor alike were unable to win ; the 
 new Roman coinage finding its beneficent Avay into Palestine ; 
 priest, Levite, and wretched Samaritan ; phylacteried and admired 
 Pharisee, and native-born farmer of taxes for the foreigner, uni- 
 versally hated; the wind blowing where it listed; the fig tree 
 
2 1 6 Appendix C. 
 
 approaches nature, history, and hfe, — that Is to 
 say, the world, or nature in its larger sense. 
 
 A. "The approach of Jesus to nature"? He 
 lived above nature, and only used an occasional 
 illustration from it, and — 
 
 B. More than " occasional," friend. 
 
 A. That does not make any difference. His 
 only use for nature was to illustrate spiritual truth 
 by it. 
 
 B. Did he not say that his Father, with whom 
 he was one, fed the birds, and so clothed the grass 
 of the field? Was not a divine intimacy with 
 nature implied? 
 
 A. We can't stop to dispute every point. I 
 was about to say that he only used an occasional 
 illustration from nature, and that his strong hold 
 was with Scripture. 
 
 B. And there, again, we have, in the newer 
 thinking, an approach to the spirit and meaning 
 of Scripture such as has not been had since Christ. 
 It is for the real life of the Bible, for its very heart, 
 that the newer thinking seeks. The Saviour was 
 
 putting forth her leaves; the eagles gathering themselves to- 
 gether, both zoological and Roman ; Herod's marble wonder, not 
 yet builded after forty and six years, — all, everything, spoke to 
 him, and through him to men. " Never man so spake," they 
 freely said. 'T was because he saw so much. Out of the abun- 
 dance of the heart the mouth spake. — " Primary QuaUficatiotts 
 for the Ministry,'' in " Andover Review,'' May-June, 1893. 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 2 1 7 
 
 doing that. Because he was doing it, his coun- 
 trymen thought him destroying law and prophets ; 
 just as many good people think now regarding 
 some of the most thorough and devout Bible 
 students. And as it is the real life of the Bible, 
 its very heart, that the newer thinking seeks, 
 so, as never before since Christ, it is finding it. 
 Compare, for example, George Adam Smith's 
 Isaiah with even so modern and strong a work as 
 Alexander's on that book. 
 
 A. ''George Adam Smith's Isaiah".? It is all 
 politics ! 
 
 B. Which are God in the world. You thought 
 so when the Emancipation Proclamation went into 
 effect. 
 
 A. But politics when Lincoln freed the slave 
 and politics now are two very different things. 
 
 B. God not in them now? 
 
 A. I should sooner call it the Devil in them. 
 But I will ask you one question. What you have 
 said maybe all very well in theory, — though, to 
 be frank, I don't believe one syllable of your 
 theory; it seems to me a mere playing with 
 words, — but what becomes of the Bible on such 
 a view of it? 
 
 B. Precisely what became of it before. It 
 speaks to life just as then; only its meaning is 
 greatly deepened, because its spirit more than its 
 letter speaks now. 
 
2i8 Appendix C, 
 
 A. But who is to determine what its spirit is? 
 Before these new theories came along, we had a 
 plain '' Thus saith the Lord " about everything. 
 
 B. Yes, " Thus saith the Lord, Send back the 
 fugitive slaves as Saint Paul sent back Onesimus." 
 
 A. I deny that. The pro-slavery men never 
 took the spirit of the Bible. That little epistle to 
 Philemon, only twenty-five verses of it in all, a 
 mere note going back with the man's slave, they 
 made more of than of all the rest of the Bible put 
 together. For my part, when I used to hear the 
 sermons from it, I often wished that Paul had never 
 written it, or Onesimus had lost it, or Philemon's 
 baby had thrown it into the fire. 
 
 B. That is the very point. There are other 
 passages, here and there in the Bible, which many 
 a devout soul has wished had never been written, 
 or had been lost, because they have been so 
 misused. 
 
 A. Hold ! I was only talking about Philemon. 
 
 B. But I was talking about some other passages. 
 
 A, Then I count what you say heterodox. 
 
 B. It is not the first time I have heard that. 
 Let us go back. The anti-slavery people insisted 
 on the spirit of the Bible, and their opponents on 
 its letter ; and the latter asked, in effect, precisely 
 the question which you were asking a moment 
 ago, '*Who is to determine what its spirit is?" 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 2 1 9 
 
 Ah ! my friend, only the Hving Spirit of God, in 
 the living spirits of men, can determine what the 
 spirit of the Bible is. 
 
 A. You mean that nothing is stable? 
 
 B. Matters are stable in one sense. They are 
 working ever toward the truth. But nothing is 
 stable in another sense, if it be alive. Growth, con- 
 tinual advance, as you grew from a boy to a man, 
 and as slave days advanced into days of freedom, 
 — this is the order of life. 
 
 A. But we have those things now. 
 
 B. And would you leave no future for you, and 
 me, and our race? 
 
 A. A future in heaven. 
 
 B. But what shall we do there, with growth at 
 an end? 
 
 A. We shall not get there, if nothing is stable 
 here. I want everything exact, fixed, and man- 
 datory. 
 
 B. The craving for that — the craving, that is 
 to say, for outward authority — has taken many a 
 good man to Rome. 
 
 A. I am not that kind of a person. I take my 
 stand with the Reformers, and demand a " Thus 
 saith the Lord " for everything. 
 
 B. Not apprehending what the spirit of the 
 Reformers was, my friend. But let us see. Was 
 not that what your son desired last night? Per- 
 
2 20 Appendix C. 
 
 plexed on a certain question, did he not ask you 
 to tell him just what to do? But you did not tell 
 him. You were too sensible to do so. You said, 
 " My son, you have arrived at years of discretion, 
 and while I will give you any light on this matter 
 which I can, you must be a man now, and decide 
 your own questions." You did not give him, in 
 other words, for reasons which seemed to you 
 wise, what he wanted, namely, a *' Thus saith my 
 father." 
 
 A. But that was only on a business matter. To 
 learn business, a man must use his own head, not 
 some other person's. But, for the infinite concerns 
 of the immortal soul, a " Thus saith the Lord " is 
 needed; not a "Thus saith President Harper, or 
 Professor Briggs, or these new departure preach- 
 ers that are getting into the pulpits nowadays." 
 
 B. Do you mean to say that, in order to train 
 your son for business life, finer methods are needed 
 than to train him and you and me for our being 
 about our Father's business forever? 
 
 A. That is how you play with words. There 
 is no logic in theology nowadays, no major prem- 
 ise, minor premise, nor conclusion. I have been 
 wasting your time and mine, too, in so long a 
 talk. Here comes Mr. C. He is one of your 
 kind. I don't mean you any harm, remember. 
 Good-day. 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 221 
 
 B. I had rather you would harm me than harm 
 my influence. But God will take care of that. 
 Good-day, and may he be with and bless you ! 
 
 II. 
 
 C. Good-morning. 
 
 B. Good-morning. 
 
 C. I am so glad I have found you. I take the 
 train to-night for my little mission among the 
 mountains. We shall not have a chance to do 
 church work together again, perhaps ever, nor 
 shall we meet for a long time. I want to ask you 
 some questions. Put the answers in pat. 
 
 B. I have not much wisdom. Let us have the 
 questions. I will do the best I can with them. 
 
 C. Is there, to begin with, any truth in the 
 sneering remark that the newer religious thinking 
 ''is a theology without a theologian"? 
 
 B. We have the same state of things in that 
 matter which always ensues when general work, 
 which has probably inclined to a priori, yields 
 place to induction, with detailed work. The latter 
 sets everybody a task. There are fifty or five 
 hundred scientists, or theologians, where there used 
 to be five. They subdivide the subject. Each toils 
 in his own field. There is, thus, not the chance 
 for individual prominence which there once was. 
 
2 22 Appendix C, 
 
 The popular imagination, therefore, is not so much 
 appealed to, and the remark you quote is readily 
 caught up. " Make us a king to judge us," the 
 popular imagination is always demanding, no longer 
 of Samuel, but of theology. But the remark is 
 very superficial. It would imply, in principle, 
 that natural history in America is going backward 
 because no man among us has succeeded to the 
 precise eminence of Agassiz. Agassiz, on the con- 
 trary, strove to pass the blessing on to thousands. 
 This was the meaning of his summer schools. It 
 is inconceivable that he could make such a re- 
 mark of the newer science, were he still with us, 
 as this about the newer religious thinking. 
 
 C. What you say leads to my second question : 
 Is our instruction in theology up to the necessi- 
 ties of the hour? 
 
 B. On the whole it is doing well, — in some 
 of our institutions very well. There does not 
 always go with the necessary subdivision of work 
 so much of a unifying spirit as there should. 
 There is lack, sometimes, of a temper, in this 
 respect, like Agassiz's in natural history, or Mark 
 Hopkins's in ethics. Neither has theology proper, 
 as it seems to me, enough broken with the old 
 topical divisions, subdivisions, etc. The Linnsean 
 classification in Botany had its uses, but was 
 obliged to yield to a better. Courage and con- 
 
Some Plain Questioning' 223 
 
 structive genius are needed in this respect. All 
 things considered, however, — for we must not 
 forget that we are in a change of outlook almost 
 revolutionary, and that the conditions of work are 
 therefore difficult, — the situation is gratifying, 
 though there are some things yet to be desired. 
 
 C. I am glad to hear you say so. Is there not, 
 however, danger that the newer approach to truth 
 will constitute yet another dogmatism? 
 
 B. Certainly. In individuals it surely will. 
 Few men have the calibre and heart to remain 
 always teachable and learning. Against this peril 
 in ourselves let us both strive. But I think, under 
 the inductive spirit, dogmatism can never again 
 reign. When I spoke of '' constructive genius," I 
 did not mean constructive of dogmatic systems. 
 Their day has passed. 
 
 C. Bless God, if it shall prove so ! I think I 
 have heard you say that there is an advantage 
 for the Old Testament in the new view of it? 
 
 B. A very great advantage. Before, its uses 
 were fragmentary. Certain passages, certain 
 phrases, and here and there a portion of it, were 
 specially comforting or helpful, but, as a whole, 
 particularly in the prophets, it was a sort of Urra 
 incognita, however well traversed by the reader. 
 Everything in it, on the contrary, now leaps into 
 meaning. The life within it speaks. We see it 
 
2 24 Appe7idix C 
 
 growing, advancing, struggling in the process, but 
 victorious. Some one has hkened this to the 
 difference between knowing the perorations of 
 Burke or Webster, and knowing the men them- 
 selves and the national crises through which they 
 passed. 
 
 C. That is what I so much like about the new 
 idea of the Bible. God's living Spirit and men's 
 spirits are brought to the front. There is a voice 
 now as truly as to Moses or Isaiah. For this the 
 Bible is finger-board, indicates directions, suggests, 
 stirs the heart. It is an indispensable auxiliary. 
 Breathing with intense life, it is a kind of Mar- 
 seillaise Hymn to which the soul marches. But it 
 is no longer put forward as if it were itself life. 
 It does not bind thought and truth fast forever. 
 Individual men, the human race, and the heav- 
 enly life, are left their chance to expand evermore. 
 The crustacean stage is over. 
 
 B. You catch the thought. 
 
 C. I am so thankful that you magnify Christ. I 
 have two perplexities there, however. One of 
 them is practical. How can so broad a Christian 
 union as you yearn for come while some whom 
 you would include in it believe Christ to be far 
 less than most who are to be included in it believe 
 him to be? 
 
 B. Saint John had that difficulty. It was he 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 225 
 
 who spoke where we read : *' Master, we saw one 
 casting out devils in thy name; and we forbade 
 him, because he foUoweth not with us. But Jesus 
 said unto him, Forbid him not : for he that is not 
 against you is for you." Our Lord seems also to 
 have had in view and been hospitable toward the 
 two types of mental outlook when he said, '' Be- 
 lieve me that I am in the Father, and the Father 
 in me : or else believe me for the very works* 
 sake." There exist necessarily these two types. 
 Their existence should be a perpetual caution to 
 us not to be too certain that we have compassed 
 this great subject. But, in any case, the irrepres- 
 sible yearning of Christendom in our time to be 
 one is a voice of God, if ever God spoke in the 
 soul of an age. 
 
 C. So it seems to me, though there are complex- 
 ities about the problem. But, again, you speak of 
 the infinite Christ principle, the Lamb slain from 
 the foundation of the world. Is this concept 
 enough ? 
 
 B, No. No concept is enough. There are as 
 many sides of Christ as there are of this round 
 globe. We must be open and alert for all of them. 
 But this concept is primary. It will last us a good 
 while. The skipper's boy, you remember, having 
 been told to steer the sloop by a certain star, woke 
 him up after a little, saying, " Father, give me 
 
 15 
 
2 26 Appendix C 
 
 another star, I 've got past that one." We shall 
 not soon get past this. 
 
 C. Indeed we shall not. Do you not think, to 
 touch on another subject, that there is a practical 
 peril about what is called the " larger hope "? 
 
 B. Yes. And there was practical peril about 
 the old eschatology. It was the wrecking of many 
 a man's faith. It hardened men. The " larger 
 hope" has, no one should forget, a sense, almost 
 awful, of the evil of sin and of its sure punishment 
 in any event. With this, on the other hand, it 
 couples thoughts of God worthier, as it believes, 
 than those of the other view. 
 
 C. I think that a fair way to put it. Only one 
 question more. Does the newer thinking make as 
 good Christians? 
 
 B. How good Christians? 
 
 C. As good as the old made. 
 
 B. How good did the old make? 
 
 C, Well, I admit that it did not always make 
 good ones ; it made, for instance, Judas, and Car- 
 dinal Wolsey, and — well, me. 
 
 B. Have you not known Christians holding 
 obvious errors who were shining Christians, 
 nevertheless? 
 
 C. Yes. 
 
 B. And Christians holding ideal views who, not- 
 withstanding, belied the name of Christ? 
 
Some Plain Questioning. 227 
 
 C. Yes. 
 
 B. While we recognize, then, that a transitional 
 period in thought, like that in which we now are, 
 must affect temporarily some Christian life for the 
 better and some for the worse, shall we not say, 
 nevertheless, that it is not the thinking that makes 
 the Christian, but the following Christ that makes 
 him? 
 
 C. That is it. 
 
 B. And you and I will do it? 
 
 C. God helping us, we will. Good-by. 
 
 B. Good-by, and may God bless the little mis- 
 sion among the mountains ! 
 
In how jnany and what uncertain words do men strive 
 to express the simplest truth when that truth is only dawn- 
 ing Oft themselves a fid ofi others / // is like the shrilly 
 disordered jargonifig of birds when fjiorfiifig first finishes 
 the east. Presefitly the whole firmaffient glows, the sufi is 
 7ip, the ftiists flee away, jargon is dofie, afid day reigns. 
 
LIST OF PRINCIPAL NOTES. 
 
 Page 
 
 Concerning these Discourses 13, i6i, 198 
 
 Had Christ Mental Advance during his Ministry? . . 15 
 
 Mr. Bullard and Dr. Bushnell I7 
 
 Professor Tucker's "From Liberty to Unity". ... 27 
 
 Dr. Sheldon (and see text) 3^ 
 
 Channing, Parker, Emerson, Carlyle 43 
 
 " Plain Words on our Lord's Work " 53 
 
 Capital and Labor 9^ 
 
 Restoring the Order of I sraelitish History 150 
 
 Professor Thayer and Dr. Gladden on the Bible . . . 152 
 
 Dr. Edgerly (and see text) 166 
 
 How Camelot looked as men approached it .... 170 
 
 Disfellowshipping Drs. Hale, Peabody, and Others . . 178 
 
 Death the Enhancing of Phillips Brooks's Influence . 180 
 
 Heresy of the Antithesis between Nature and God . . 188 
 
 " Ye cannot bear them now " 198 
 
 The Resurrection Dialogue 212 
 
 With the Saviour it was all vision 215 
 
/ saw a new heaven and a new earth. 
 I saw no temple therein. 
 His servants shall serve him. 
 They shall see his face. 
 His name shall be in their foreheads. 
 There shall be no 7iight there. 
 I JoJui saw these things^ and heard thejn. 
 Love is of God. 
 Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 
 
 Saint John. 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
 AP20'5| 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 -M^H^ 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 1 
 
 ,p«,««.p.y«^«^^ 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 JUN ^ mm 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a\ 
 
 
 
 »# 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 ..^ 
 
 ^1^44 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 !\ 
 
 
 
 >■, N 
 
 KJ 
 
 
 
 
 ^^"^^i^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f