»*. «J«\l J .»»»** , * # ».i IAY o i5J7 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM IN THE CLOSING AND THE OPENING CENTURY. This essay has no application whatever to the great Greek and Roman communions, those churches being founded on an unqualified authority which does not recog¬ nize the right of private judgment. It relates exclusively to the Protestant communions. The first thing to be observed about progressive liber¬ alism in the closing century is that it is characterized essentially by a series of slow, gradual, and related devel¬ opments, and not by a succession of sudden, spasmodic, and unconnected shocks. In the opening century it is sure to be characterized by a slow, quiet, giving-effect to a few ideas not new in themselves, but new in respect to diffused acceptance. I shall deal with only four as¬ pects of the broad subject. 1. One deep-striking change to which liberalism has contributed is the change in Protestant opinions concern¬ ing the Bible. The Reformation substituted for the in¬ fallibility of an institution and its official representative — an institution vast, varying, complex, pervasive, and on occasion vague — another infallibility ; namely, the in¬ fallibility of a small, unchanging, compact, apprehensible collection of ancient writings, the Bible. Contending vigorously against the infallibility of the Church and the pope, it set up the verbally inspired, inerrant Bible as 4 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. infallible authority. Fortunately, the Reformation taught that the humblest Christian might have direct access to this infallible Scripture; and, therefore, it ultimately set up the human reason as the legitimate interpreter of this new infallibility. Now the human reason since the Re¬ formation has not only added wonderfully to its stores of knowledge, but has also developed greatly its penetrating and exploring power. Some new sciences have arisen ; the old sciences of philology and history have made aston¬ ishing progress; and the general method of inductive reasoning has been applied during the nineteenth century more widely and with much greater success than ever before. The languages of Scripture and the literatures written in those languages are far better known now than they were before the present century; the other sacred writings of the world have become known to the Christian nations; the history of Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and the Roman Empire, has been illuminated by modern archaeological research; and the natural sciences have demonstrated countless facts, and have established a few general principles, which throw a flood of light backward on to the beliefs and practices of former generations and the real history of the human race on this earth. Gradu¬ ally there has appeared a new critical spirit toward the Bible and the supernatural side of religion. What is called the Higher Criticism is nothing but the application to the Bible of methods of research which have been suc¬ cessfully applied to other bodies of ancient historical and literary compositions. Naturally, the influence of these new powers and new growths is to-day felt chiefly by scholars and reading people. Nevertheless, the popular mind also is not with¬ out preparation for the acceptance of new views concern¬ ing revelation and supernaturalism in general. In the first place, all people have gradually learned to look MYSTERY NOT MIRACLE —■ PREFERENCE FOR FACTS. 5 always for a»natural explanation of the marvellous ; and, secondly, they are thoroughly habituated to incomprehen¬ sible or mysterious effects which they firmly believe to be due to natural causes, although they do not in the least understand the modes in which the effects are produced. Thus the comet and the eclipse have lost their terrors even for the most ignorant. All men are persuaded that these phenomena portend nothing, being due to natural though uncomprehended causes. The entire audience at a magician’s show is firmly persuaded that there is no magic in the performance, but only skill. The familiar miracle of driving a street-car by an invisible force, brought miles on a wire, though entirely incomprehensi¬ ble to the common mind, is universally believed to be a purely natural phenomenon. In short, many effects >nce called miraculous or magical are now accepted as purely natural; and, on the other hand, many effects known to be natural are just as mysterious and wonder¬ ful as most of the occurrences described in former centu¬ ries as miracles. This state of the popular mind, which has been chiefly developed during the nineteenth century, has prepared the way for the acceptance of new views concerning the Bible and the supernatural in religion. Again, all through this closing century the relative importance of fact in comparison with theory or specu¬ lation has been mounting. Down to the present century the prevalence of myth, fable, and imaginative narration, has characterized the most precious literatures;' and even history until lately has had highly imaginative elements. Of late years history has become realistic, and even fic¬ tion is photographic in quality. This preference for facts has grown stronger and stronger during the closing cen¬ tury, and is likely to be still more characteristic of the opening. Indeed, theory and speculation are almost dis¬ credited, except in a hypothesis which temporarily or 6 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. provisionally explains or correlates a group of facts. Even in such cases the hypothesis is avowedly accepted on sufferance and with suspicion. Still further, we observe that by the present generation broad and hasty generalizations from few particulars, and immense superstructures on small, slight foundations, are in modern instances almost universally derided. They do not excite indignation or scorn: they excite ridicule and contempt. Now the hugest superstructure ever reared on a diminutive foundation, and the most formid¬ able speculation ever based on a minimum of doubtful fact, is the Augustinian systematic theology, resting on the literal truth of the story in Genesis about the dis¬ obedience of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. The whole superstructure of the generally accepted Prot¬ estant systematic theology is founded on the literal ac¬ ceptance of the Scriptural account of the fall of Adam and Eve. If this account is not a true history, then the whole logical system built on it, including the doctrines of original and imputed sin, of the plan of salvation, of grace, mediation, and atonement, of blood satisfaction and blood purchase, and of regeneration, falls to the ground. Hear Dr. Charles Hodge, the great Presbyterian theo¬ logian, writing about 1870-71, on the nature of the con¬ nection between the above doctrines and the account in Genesis of the Fall of Man : — “ Finally, these facts [the Garden of Eden facts] underlie the whole doctrinal system revealed in the Scriptures. Our Lord and his apostles refer to them not only as true, but as furnishing the ground of all the subsequent revelations and dispensations of God. It was because Satan tempted man, and led him into disobedience, that he became the head of the kingdom of darkness, whose power Christ came to destroy, and from whose dominion he redeemed his people. It was because we died in Adam that we must be made alive in Christ. So that the Church Universal has felt bound to receive the record of Adam’s temptation and fall as a true historical account.” THE FABRIC BUILT ON THE EDEN STORY. 7 Hear Dr.Jbtodge again when he describes what the sys¬ tem is which is buiit on this indispensable foundation : — “In the Old Testament and in the New, God is declared to be just, in the sense that his nature demands the punishment of sin ; that, therefore, there can be no remission without such punishment, vicarious or personal; that the plan of salvation symbolically and typically exhibited in the Mosaic institution, expounded in the prophets, and clearly and variously taught in the New Testament, involves the substitution of the incar¬ nate Son of God in the place of sinners, who assumed their obligation to satisfy divine justice, and that he did, in fact, make full and perfect satisfaction for sin, bearing the penalty of the law in their stead. All this is so plain and undeniable that it has always been the faith of the Church, and is admitted to be the doctrine of the Scripture by the leading rationalists of our day.” Assuming the infallibility of the Bible, the Augus- tinian systematic theology starts from the Fall of Man, as recorded in Genesis, and then by a strict, logical process, proves its appalling doctrines from the usage of words, the habitual forms of expression, and the pervading modes of presentation in the infallible Scriptures. All its doctrines are proved by explicit statements or as¬ sumptions made in the Bible, or by inferences from these statements or assumptions. The process involves something beyond the infallibility of the Scriptures themselves; namely, the unerring interpretation of the Scriptures. In the centuries since the Reformation, and particularly in the nineteenth century, the human reason, enriched by new stores of knowledge, equipped with new methods of incisive inquiry, and fired with a new zeal for truth, has gradually undermined the faith of the majority of Protestant scholars, first, in the unerring interpretation, and, secondly, in the infallibility of the Bible itself. These scholars no longer believe in the Fall of Man or in the fabric of doctrine which a purely 8 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. human logic has built on the Fall. When men begin to protest or resolve that they believe a given doctrine, it is a sure sign that real belief in that doctrine is fading away. Among the masses of Protestants some belief in the infallibility of the Bible still survives; but the open¬ ing century will doubtless see the gradual surrender of this transitional belief throughout the Protestant world. The controversial writings of Saint Augustine have domi¬ nated Christian systematic theology for fifteen hundred years. Luther, Saint Augustine’s disciple, prepared the ruin of his master’s system when he declared the Bible infallible, but opened it to the individual inquirer. The nineteenth century has seen the foundations of the struc¬ ture undermined. The twentieth will see it given over to the bats and the owls, so far as Protestants are con¬ cerned. It is not, however, the real Bible which is thus losing its hold. It is the inferential structure which has been built around and over it. If it be said that, though implicit faith in the Bible as an infallible revelation of literal truth be lost, the real founda¬ tions of the old dogmatics will remain unshaken, because they rest on human nature and experience, the answer is that civilized society’s convictions about human nature and human conduct have undergone profound modifica¬ tions during the nineteenth century, and are manifestly undergoing still further modification. Thus, instead of attributing sin in the individual to the innate corruption and perversity of his nature, modern society attributes it in many instances to physical defects, to bad environ¬ ment, to unwise or wrongful industrial conditions, to unjust social usages, or to the mere weakness of will which cannot resist present indulgences, even when the cost in future suffering stares the victim in the face. With this fundamental reconsideration of the whole doc ¬ trine of sin goes grave discussion of the till-now-accepted THE M0DES1 CENTURY — AUTHORITY DECLINING. 9 ideas of justice, punishment, and reformation. The theo¬ logians used to be sure that they perfectly understood God’s justice. The jurists and legislators of to-day are not at all sure that they understand even what human justice ought to be. Oii the whole, the nineteenth cen¬ tury is the least presumptuous of the centuries. The twentieth will be more modest still. Calvin and Jona¬ than Edwards imagined that they perfectly understood the object of the eternal, hopeless agonies of the damned. In contrast, listen to what a poet-physician says about the mystery of occasional pain in this world: — “ One stern democracy of anguish waits By poor men’s cots — within the rich man’s gates. What purpose hath it ? Nay, thy quest is vain : Earth hath no answer: if the baffled brain Cries, ’t is to warn, to punish— Ah, refrain ! When writhes the child, beneath the surgeon’s hand, What soul shall hope that pain to understand ? Lo! Science falters o’er the hopeless task, And Love and Faith in vain an answer ask, When thrilling nerves demand what good is wrought When torture clogs the very source of thought.” 2. It is not the authority of the Bible only which has declined during the closing century : all authority has lost force, — authority political, ecclesiastical, educational, and domestic. The decline of political or governmental author¬ ity since the Reformation is very striking. The present generation received with derision the sentiment attributed some years ago (incorrectly, in all probability) to the present Emperor of Germany, —salus populi regis volun¬ tas ; yet at the period of the Reformation nobody would have questioned that sentiment. Ecclesiastical authority has declined in a still more marked degree ; and whereas the Church used to rule not only the consciences and opinions, but the daily habits of all Christians, there is now even among devout Catholics the sharpest demarca¬ tion between the limited province in which the Church is 10 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. absolute and the large secular rest of the world. In education the whole conception of the function of the teacher has changed within fifty years. He no longer drives his pupils to their task, but leads and inspires them ; he no longer compels them to copy or commit to memory, but incites them to observe and think. Instead of imposing on them his opinions, tastes, and will, he in¬ duces them to form their own opinions, studies their tastes, and tries to invigorate their wills and teach them self-control. But in no field is the diminution of arbitrary authority more striking than in the family and the home; and in no field has the law more clearly recognized the new liberty than in the domestic relations. What authority is taking in some measure the place of these declining authorities? I say in some measure, be¬ cause the world has had too much of authority and not enough of love and freedom. There is an authority which during all the closing century has been increasing in in¬ fluence : it is the developing social sense, or sense of kin. On the negative side, the restrictions which this sense of social solidarity and mutual accountability impose are in some ways extraordinarily comprehensive and absolute. The conviction that one must not do anything which can be offensive or injurious to one’s associates is highly re¬ strictive, — especially when this conviction becomes com¬ mon and gets incorporated in statute law. Thus it may be doubted if any autocrat ever imposed on a population such a personal restriction as the prohibition of spitting on sidewalks and in public vehicles; yet this prohibition is a public regulation in Massachusetts and many other parts of the Union, although it springs solely from the social sense that the individual must not do what might propagate disease from himself to others. In many parts of modern society the social sense plays the part of a very arbitrary ruler, as appeal’s clearly in the surrender to THE SOCIAL SENSE — SOCIOLOGY. 11 trades-unions of the most important elements of their per¬ sonal liberty by hundreds of thousands of persons. On the positive side, this social solidarity is quite as effectual to procure affirmative action as it is to secure prohibitions. The British navy used to be recruited by the press gang; that is, promising young sailors were seized by force in the coast towns, and dragged on board the ships. Now Kipling and his kind write ballads ; and the newspapers, pulpits, and popular meetings arouse a gregarious enthu¬ siasm which sends thousands of young men to labor, suffer, or die in South Africa. It is the sense of common cause which supplies the impelling motive. Would it not be hard to state this doctrine better than it is stated in the brief phrase, “ No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself ” ? Another manifestation of the power of the new social solidarity is the tendency in democratic governments, and in some measure in all governments, to relieve the neces¬ sities and increase the satisfactions of the poorest classes on the one hand, and on the other to appropriate in part, and to divide anew as soon as possible, large accumula¬ tions of property in single hands. The recent legislation of Switzerland, France, England, and the United States, illustrates the strength of this new authority, — particu¬ larly the laws of these countries concerning progressive income taxes, succession taxes, and hours of labor, and for the protection of workmen against accident, and of women and children against overwork. Much of the leg¬ islation stigmatized as parental is really due to this strong sentiment of social solidarity. It has all sprung up in the nineteenth century, and it will doubtless grow rapidly in the twentieth. 3. The nineteenth century has seen the rise of a new body of learning called sociology. It is a body of doc- 12 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. trine clearly founded on the ethics of the New Testament: «/ but it is at present in a confused, amorphous state. One of its characteristics, however, is hopeful. It aims at the prevention rather than the cure of sin and evil, just as preventive medicine aims at the prevention of disease both in the single individual and in society at large. The Old Testament relies chiefly on prohibition and penalty. It says, “ Thou shalt not.” For breaking this command, so much penalty is imposed : “ In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children all the days of thy life.” “ Thy seed shall be cut off forever.” “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” Now, faith in penalty as a pre¬ ventive of wrong-doing and evil has rapidly declined dur¬ ing the nineteenth century; and this is equally true of penalty in this world and of penalty in the next. Bar¬ barous punishments have been everywhere abolished in the civilized world, or are used only in moments of panic or delirium; and barbarous conceptions of punishment after death have been everywhere mitigated or aban¬ doned. The new sociology, based on the Gospel doctrine of love to God and love to man, seeks the improvement of environment, the rectification of vice-breeding evils and wrongs, and the actual realization of the ideal, — “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Sociology rejects also a motive which systematic theol¬ ogy has made much of for centuries, — the motive of personal salvation, which is essentially a selfish motive, whether it relates to this world or to the next. Certainly, it is no better a motive for eternity than it is for these short earthly lives of ours. The motive power of per¬ sonal reformation and good conduct, and the source of happiness must always be found in love of others and desire to serve them, self-forgetfulness and disinterested¬ ness being indispensable conditions of personal worth REVERENCE AND LOVE FOR JESUS. 13 and of well-grounded joy. Sociology perceives that the multitude can no longer be reconciled to a state of misery in this world by the deceptive promise of comforts and rewards in the next. It sympathizes with them in loudly demanding joys in this world. The promise of Abra¬ ham’s bosom after death should not reconcile Lazarus to lying at the gate, full of sores, now. The multitudes themselves perceive that wretchedness in this world may easily unfit them for worthy enjoyments either now or hereafter, since it may dwarf the mental and moral facul¬ ties through which high enjoyments come. Sociology is of the mind of the angel who bore a torch in one hand and a vase of water in the other, with the one to burn heaven, and with the other to quench hell, that men might be influenced neither by the hope of the one nor the fear of the other. 4. What effect will the great changes in public opinion about revelation and religion which the nineteenth cen¬ tury has wrought, and the twentieth will spread, have on the estimate which the next two or three generations will place on the character and life of Jesus of Nazareth ? We have already learnt that the fundamental ethical con¬ ceptions recorded in the Gospels had all been anticipated. The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the con¬ ception of God as a spirit, and the Golden Rule, — to name some of the most fundamental of these conceptions, — all occur in writings earlier than the Gospels. But what of that? The true reformer is not he who first conceives a fruitful idea; but he who gets that idea planted in many minds, and fertilizes it there through the power of his personality. Such a reformer was Jesus. He spread abroad, and commended to the minds of many men, the loftiest ethical conceptions the race had won. He vitalized them by his winning and command- 14 PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. ing presence, and sent them flying abroad on the wings of his own beautiful and heroic spirit. In a barbarous age he was inevitably given the reward of deification, just as the Pharaohs and Alexanders and Caesars were; and his memory was surrounded b}^ clouds of marvel and miracle during the four or five generations which passed before the Gospels took any settled form. The nine¬ teenth century has done much to disengage him in the Protestant mind from these encumbrances; and the twen¬ tieth will do more to set him forth simply and grandly as the loveliest and best of human seers, teachers, and heroes. Let no man fear that reverence and love for Jesus will diminish as time goes on. The pathos and the heroism of his life and death will be vastly height¬ ened when he is relieved of all supernatural attributes and powers. The human hero must not have foreknowl¬ edge of the glorious issue of his sacrifices and pains. He must not be sure that his cause will triumph; he must suffer and die without knowing what his sacrifice will bring forth. The human exemplar should have only human gifts and faculties. If these principles are true, the more completely progressive liberalism detects and rejects the misunderstandings and superstitions with which the oral tradition and written record concerning the life of Jesus were inevitably corrupted, the more will love and reverence grow for the splendors of truth and moral beauty which, as a matter of indubitable fact, have shone from the character and teachings of this Jewish youth. Already we see many signs of the ap¬ proaching fulfilment of Whittier’s prophecy, — “ Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, What may thy service be ? Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, But simply following thee.” PIONEERS OF RELIGIOUS LIB¬ ERTY IN AMERICA Being the Great and Thursday Lectures Deliv¬ ered in Boston in Nineteen Hundred and Three Size, 5 1*2 x 8 inches; pages, 3g6; price, $1.50 net; postage, 13 cents. T HE purpose and scope of this volume cannot be better shown than by giving the subjects and authors of the thirteen chapters which make up its contents. These are: I. “William Brewster and the Independents,” by Edwin D. Mead; II. “Roger Williams and the Doctrine of Soul Liberty,” by W. H. P. Faunce; III. “Thomas Hooker and the Principle of Congregational Independency,” by Williston Walker, IV “ William Penn and the Gospel of th Inner Light,” by Benjamin B. Trueblood; V. “Thomas Jefferson and the Influence of Democracy on Religion,” by Thomas R. Slicer; VI. “William Ellery Channing and the Growth of Spiritual Christianity,” by William W. Fenn; VII. “Horace Bushnell and Progressive Orthodoxy,” by Washington Gladden; VIII. “Hosea Ballou and the Larger Hope,” by John Coleman Adams; IX. “Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Teaching of the Divine Immanence,” by Francis G. Peabody ; X. “Theodore Parker and the Naturaliza¬ tion of Religion,” by James Eells; XI. “Phillips Brooks and the Unity of the Spirit,” by Samuel A. Eliot. The chapters making up this book were delivered as lectures in Boston in the spring of 1903, and attracted much attention. The purpose of the lectures and of the book is to set forth some of the great principles through which religious freedom in this country was achieved, and the connection with these principles of the great men who advocated them and gave them their power and enduring vitality. These thirteen champions of relig¬ ious freedom were truly pioneers in the work in which they became so conspicuous, and no one can so fully realize the sig¬ nificance of our present freedom of thought in religious matters as by reading these accounts of the inception and growth of the religious principles which constitute so valued a part of our religious inheritance. AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 25 Beacon Street, Boston T HE American Unitarian Association is the working missionary organization of the Unitarian churches cf America. It seeks to promote sympathy and united action among Liberal Christians, and to spread the prin¬ ciples which are believed by Unitarians to be essential to civil and religious liberty and progress and to the attain¬ ments of the spiritual life. To this end it supports missionaries, establishes and maintains churches, holds conventions, aids in building meeting-houses, publishes, sells, and gives away books, sermons, tracts, hymn-books, and devotional works. A list of free tracts will be sent on application. A full descriptive catalogue of the publications of the Association, including doctrinal, devotional and practical works, will be sent to all who apply. The Association is supported by the voluntary contri¬ butions of churches and individuals. Individuals desiring to co-operate with this Association may receive a certificate of Associate Membership by signing an application card (sent on request to the Associate Department) and the payment of one dollar. Address communications and contributions to the Secretary at his office, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. FORM OF BEQUEST. I give and bequeath io the American Unitarian Associa¬ tion, a corporation established by law in the State of Massa¬ chusetts, the sum of \ . dollars , the principal to be securely invested and the income to be used to promote the work of the Association.