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: X030944246 _LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

 

PRESENTED BY
MRS. GEORGE E. WALKER, JR.he Religion of the SutureThe Religion of
the Future

A lecture delivered at the close of the
eleventh session of the Harvard Summer

School of Theology, July 22, 1909

 

 

By
CHARLES WW. BL iren

 

 

 

 

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“Tue Oxtp Orprer CHANGETH ’
“Tur Kinepom or Gop”. .
RELIGIous COMPENSATIONS . .
Tue Fieur Acarnst Evin. .
Tue Divine Justice . . .
ReLigious CoNsoLATION

““Goop-WILL To Men” . .

Tue Urputrtine Love or Trutu

CuHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD . .

16
24
29
33
36
39
42
49Che Beligion of the futureThe Religion of the

Future

“Che Olt Order Changeth’?

As students in this Summer School of
Theology you have attended a series of
lectures on fluctuations in religious in-
terest, on the frequent occurrence of
religious declines followed soon by re-
coveries or regenerations both within
and without the churches, on the fre-
quent attempts to bring the prevalent
religious doctrines into harmony with
new tendencies in the intellectual
world, on the constant struggle be-
tween conservatism and liberalism in
existing churches and between idealism
and materialism in society at large, on
the effects of popular education andTHE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

the modern spirit of inquiry on reli-
gious doctrines and organizations, on ~
the changed views of thinking people
concerning the nature of the world and
of man, on the increase of knowledge
as affecting religion, and on the new
ideas of God. You have also listened
to lectures on psychotherapy, a new
development of an ancient tendency to
mix religion with medicine, and on the
theory of evolution, a modern scientific
doctrine which within fifty years has
profoundly modified the religious con-
ceptions and expectations of many
thinking people. You have heard,
too, how the new ideas of democracy
and social progress have modified and
ought to modify, not only the actual
work done by the churches, but the
whole conception of the function of
churches. Again, you have heard how.
many and how profound are the reli-

gious implications in contemporary
2“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ”

philosophy. Your attention has been
called to the most recent views con-
cerning the conservation of energy in
the universe, to the wonderful phe-
nomena of radio-activity, and to the
most recent definitions of atom, mole-
cule, ion, and electron—human imagin-
ings which have much to do with the
modern conceptions of matter and
spirit. The influence on popular reli-
gion of modern scholarship applied to
the New Testament has also engaged
your attention; and, finally, you have
heard an exposition of religious condi-
tions and practices in the United
States which assumed an intimate con-
nection between the advance of civili-
zation and the contemporaneous as-
pects of religions, and illustrated from
history the service of religion—and
particularly of Christianity—to the
progress of civilization through its

contributions to individual freedom, in-
3THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

tellectual culture, and social coopera-
tion. |

The general impression you have re-
ceived from this comprehensive survey
must surely be that religion is not a
fixed, but a fluent thing. ‘It is, there-
fore, wholly natural and to be expected
that the conceptions of religion preva-
lent among educated people should
change from century to century.
Modern studies in comparative religion
and in the history of religions demon-
strate that such has been the case in
times past. Now the nineteenth cen-
tury immeasurably surpassed all pre-
ceding centuries in the increase of
knowledge, and in the spread of the
spirit of scientific inquiry and of the
passion for truth-seeking. Hence the
changes in religious beliefs and prac-
tices, and in the relation of churches to
human society as a whole, were much

deeper and more extensive in that cen-
4“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ”

tury than ever before in the history of
the world; and the approach made to
the embodiment in the actual practices
of mankind of the doctrines of the
greatest religious teachers was more
significant and more rapid than ever
before. The religion of a multitude
of humane persons in the twentieth
century may, therefore, be called with-
out inexcusable exaggeration a “new
religion, ’—not that a single one of its
doctrines and practices is really new in
essence, but only that the wider accept-
ance and better actual application
of truths familiar in the past at
many times and places, but never taken
to heart by the multitude or put in
force on a large scale, arenew. I shall
attempt to state without reserve and in
simplest terms free from technicalities,
first, what the religion of the future
seems likely not to be, and secondly,

what it may reasonably be expected to
5THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

be. My point of view is that of an
American layman, whose observing and
thinking life has covered the extraordi-
nary period since the Voyage of the
Beagle was published, anaesthesia and
the telegraph came into use, Herbert
Spencer issued his first series of papers
on evolution, Kuenen, Robertson
Smith, and Wellhausen developed and
vindicated Biblical criticism, J. S.
Mill’s Principles of Political Economy
appeared, and the United States by
going to war with Mexico set in opera-
tion the forces which abolished slavery
on the American continent—the period
within which mechanical power came
to be widely distributed through the
explosive engine and the applications
of electricity, and all the great funda-
mental industries of civilized mankind
were reconstructed.

(1) The religion of the future will

not be based on authority, either spirit-
6“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH”

ual or temporal. The decline of the
reliance upon absolute authority is one
of the most significant phenomena of
the modern world. This decline is to
be seen everywhere,—in government,
in education, in the church, in business,
and in the family. The present gener-
ation is willing, and indeed often
eager, to be led; but it is averse to
being driven, and it wants to under-
stand the grounds and sanctions of au-
thoritative decisions. As a rule, the
Christian churches, Roman, Greek,
and Protestant, have heretofore relied
mainly upon the principle of authority,
the Reformation having substituted
for an authoritative church an authori-
tative book; but it is evident that the
authority, both of the most authorita-
tive churches and of the Bible as a
verbally inspired guide, is already
greatly impaired, and that the tend-
ency towards liberty is progressive,
7THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

and among educated men irresist-
ible. .

(2) It is hardly necessary to say
that in the religion of the future there
will be no personifications of the primi-
tive forces of nature, such as light, fire,
frost, wind, storm, and earthquake, al-
though primitive religions and the ac-
tual religions of barbarous or semi-civ-
ilized peoples abound in such personi-
fications. ‘The mountains, groves, vol-
canoes, and oceans will no longer be in-
habited by either kindly or malevolent
deities; although man will still look to
the hills for rest, still find in the ocean
a symbol of infinity, and refreshment
and delight in the forests and the
streams. The love of nature mounts
and spreads, while faith in fairies,
imps, nymphs, demons, and angels de-
clines and fades away.

(3) There will be in the religion of

the future no worship, express or im-
as

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MS bi, PEEK OG“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH”

plied, of dead ancestors, teachers, or
rulers; no more tribal, racial, or tute-
\ lary gods; no identification of any hu-

‘man being, however majestic in char- |
acter, with the Eternal Deity. In’

these respects the religion of the fu-
ture will not be essentially new, for
nineteen centuries ago Jesus said,
* Neither in this mountain, nor in Je-
rusalem, shall ye worship the Father.

God is a Spirit; and they that |
worship Him must worship in spirit |

and truth.” It should be recognized,
however, first, that Christianity was
soon deeply affected by the surround-
ing paganism, and that some of these
pagan intrusions have survived to this
day; and secondly, that the Hebrew
religion, the influence of which on the
Christian has been, and is, very potent,
was in the highest degree a racial reli-
gion, and its Holy of Holies was local.
In war-times, that is, in times when the
9THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

brutal or savage instincts remaining in
humanity become temporarily domi-

nant, and good-will is limited to peo-
ple of the same nation, the survival of
a tribal or national quality in institu-

‘tional Christianity comes out very

plainly. Whe aid of the Lord of Hosts
is still invoked by both parties to inter-
national warfare, and each side praises
and thanks Him for its successes. In-
deed, the same spirit has often been ex-
hibited in civil wars caused by religious
differences.

“ Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all
glories are!

And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of
Navarre!”

It is not many years since an Arch-

bishop of Canterbury caused thanks

to be given in all Anglican churches

that the Lord of Hosts had been in the

English camp over against the Kgyp-
10“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH”

tians. Heretofore the great religions
of the world have held out hopes of di-
rect interventions of the deity, or some
special deity, in favor of his faithful
worshippers. It was the greatest of
Jewish prophets who told King Heze-
kiah that the King of Assyria, who had
approached Jerusalem with a great
army, should not come into the city nor
shoot an arrow there, and reported the
Lord as saying, “I will defend this
city to save it, for my own sake, and
for my servant David’s sake.” “ And
it came to pass that night, that the an-
gel of the Lord went forth, and smote
in the camp of the Assyrians an hun-
dred fourscore and five thousand: and
when men arose early in the morning,
behold, they were all dead corpses.”
The new religion cannot promise that
sort of aid to either nations or individ-
uals in peril.

(4) In the religious life of the fu-
11THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

ture the primary object will not be the
personal welfare or safety of the indi-
vidual in this world or any other.
That safety, that welfare or salvation,
may be incidentally secured, but it will
not be the prime object in view. ‘The
religious person will not think of his
own welfare or security, but of service
to others, and of contributions to the

’ common good. The new religion will

not teach that character is likely to be
suddenly changed, either in this world
or in any other,—although in any
world a sudden opportunity for im-
provement may present itself, and the
date of that opportunity may be a pre-
cious remembrance. ‘The new religion
will not rely on either a sudden conver-
sion in this world or a sudden paradise
in the next, from out a sensual, selfish,
or dishonest life. It will teach that
repentance wipes out nothing in the
past, and is only the first step towards
12

t“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ”

reformation, and a sign of a better fu-
ture.

(5) The religion of the future will
not be propitiatory, sacrificial, or expi-
atory. In primitive’ society fear of the
supernal powers, as represented in the
awful forces of nature, was the root of
religion. These dreadful powers must
be propitiated or placated, and they
must be propitiated by sacrifices in the
most literal sense; and the supposed
offences of man must be expiated by
sufferings, which were apt to be vica- |
rious. Even the Hebrews offered hu-’
man sacrifices for generations; and al-
ways a great part of their religious
rites consisted in sacrifices of animals.
The Christian church made a great
step forward when it substituted the
burning of incense for the burning of
bullocks and doves; but to this day
there survives, not only in the doctrines,

but in the practices of the Christian
13THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

church the principle of expiatory sacri-
fice. It will be an immense advance if
twentieth-century Christianity can be
purified from all these survivals of bar-
barous, or semi-barbarous, religious
conceptions; because they imply such
an unworthy idea of God.

(6) The religion of the future will
not perpetuate the Hebrew anthropo-
morphic representations of God, con-
ceptions which were carried in large
measure into institutional Christianity.
It will not think of God as an enlarged
and glorified man, who walks “in the
garden in the cool of the day,” or as a
judge deciding between human liti-
gants, or as a king, Pharaoh, or em-
peror, ruling arbitrarily his subjects,
or as the patriarch who, in the early
history of the race, ruled his family ab-
solutely. These human functions will
cease to represent adequately the attri-

butes of God. ‘The nineteenth cen-
14“THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ”

tury has made all these conceptions of
deity look archaic and crude. |

(7) The religion of the future will
not be gloomy, ascetic, or maledictory.
It will not deal chiefly with sorrow and
death, but with joy and life. It will
not care so much to account for the evil
and the ugly in the world as to inter-
pret the good and the beautiful. It
will believe in no malignant powers—
neither in Satan nor in witches, neither
in the evil eye nor in the malign sug-
gestion. When its disciple encounters
a wrong or evil in the world, his im-
pulse will be to search out its origin,
source, or cause, that he may attack it
at its starting-point. He may not
speculate on the origin of evil in gen-
eral, but will surely try to discover the
best way to eradicate the particular
evil or wrong he has recognized.

15““@he Kingdom of God”

Havine thus considered what the re-
ligion of the future will not be, let us
now consider what its positive elements
will be.

The new thought of God will be its
most characteristic element. This
ideal will comprehend the Jewish Jeho-
vah, the Christian Universal Father,
the modern physicist’s omnipresent
and exhaustless Energy, and the bio-
logical conception of a Vital Force.
The Infinite Spirit pervades the uni-
verse, Just as the spirit of a man per-
vades his body, and acts, consciously or
unconsciously, in every atom of it. The
twentieth century will accept literally
and implicitly St. Paul’s statement,

“In Him we live, and move, and have
16

srry“THE KINGDOM OF GOD”

our being;” and God is that vital at-
mosphere, or incessant inspiration.
The new religion is therefore thor-
oughly monotheistic, its God being the
one infinite force; but this one God is
not withdrawn or removed, but in-
dwelling, and especially dwelling in
every living creature. God is so abso-
lutely immanent in all things, animate
and inanimate, that no mediation is
needed between him and the least par-
ticle of his creation. In his moral at-
tributes, he is for every man the multi-
plication to infinity of all the noblest,
tenderest, and most potent qualities -
which that man has ever seen or imag-
ined in a human being. In this sense
every man makes his own picture of
God. Every age, barbarous or civi-
lized, happy or unhappy, improving or
degenerating, frames its own concep-
tion of God within the limits of its own
experiences and imaginings. In this
17,THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

sense, too, a humane religion has to
wait for a humane generation. The
central thought of the new religion will
therefore be a humane and worthy idea
of God, thoroughly consistent with the
nineteenth-century revelations  con-
cerning man and nature, and with all
the tenderest and loveliest teachings
which have come down to us from the
past.

The scientific doctrine of one omni-
present, eternal Energy, informing
and inspiring the whole creation at
every instant of time and throughout
the infinite spaces, is fundamentally
and completely inconsistent with the
dualistic conception which sets spirit
over against matter, good over against
evil, man’s wickedness against God’s
righteousness, and Satan against
Christ. The doctrine of God’s imma-
nence is also inconsistent with the con-

ception that he once set the universe
18“THE KINGDOM OF GOD”

a-going, and then withdrew, leaving
the universe to be operated under phys-
ical laws, which were his vicegerents or
substitutes. If God is thoroughly im-
manent in the entire creation, there can
be no “secondary causes,” in either the
material or the _ spiritual universe.
The new religion rejects absolutely the
conception that man is an alien in the
world, or that God is alienated from
the world. It rejects also the entire
conception of man as a fallen being,
hopelessly wicked, and tending down-
ward by nature; and it makes this em-
phatie rejection of long-accepted be-
liefs because it finds them all inconsist-
ent with a humane, civilized, or worthy
idea of God.

If, now, man discovers God through
self-consciousness, or, in other words,
if it is the human soul through which
God is revealed, the race has come to
the knowledge of God through knowl-

19THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

edge of itself; and the best knowledge
of God comes through knowledge of
the best of the race. Men have always
attributed to man a spirit distinct from
his body, though immanent in it. No
one of us is willing to identify himself
with his body; but on the contrary
every one now believes, and all men
have believed, that there is in a man an
animating, ruling, characteristic es-
sence, or spirit, which is himself. This
spirit, dull or bright, petty or grand,
pure or foul, looks out of the eyes,
sounds in the voice, and appears in the
bearing and manners of each individ-
ual. It is something just as real as the
body, and more characteristic. To
every influential person it gives far the
greater part of his power. It is what
we call the personality. This spirit,
or soul, is the most effective part of
every human being, and is recognized

as such, and always has been. It can
20“THE KINGDOM OF GOD”

use a fine body more effectively than it
can a poor body, but it can do wonders
through an inadequate body. In the
crisis of a losing battle, it is a human
soul that rallies the flying troops. It
looks out of flashing eyes, and speaks
in ringing tones, but its appeal is to
other souls, and not to other bodies.
In the midst of terrible natural catas-
trophes,—earthquakes, storms, confla-
erations, volcanic eruptions,—when
men’s best works are being destroyed
and thousands of lives are ceasing sud-
denly and horribly, it is not a few espe-
cially good human bodies which steady
the survivors, maintain order, and or-
ganize the forces of rescue and relief.
It is a few superior souls. The lead-
ing men and women in any society,
savage or civilized, are the strongest
personalities,—the personality being
primarily spiritual, and only seconda-
rily bodily. Recognizing to the full
21THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

these simple and obvious facts, the fu-
ture religion will pay homage to all
righteous and loving persons who in
the past have exemplified, and made
intelligible to their contemporaries, in-
trinsic goodness and effluent good-will.
It will be an all-saints religion. It
will treasure up all tales of human ex-
cellence and virtue. It will reverence
the discoverers, teachers, martyrs, and
apostles of liberty, purity, and right-
eousness. It will respect and honor
all strong and lovely human beings,—
seeing in them in finite measure quali-
ties similar to those which they adore
in God. Recognizing in every great
and lovely human person an individual
will-power which is the essence of the
personality, it will naturally and inev-
itably attribute to God a similar indi-
vidual will-power, the essence of his in-
finite personality. In this simple and

natural faith there will be no place for
22“THE KINGDOM OF GOD”

metaphysical complexities or magical
rites, much less for obscure dogmas,
the result of compromises in turbulent
conventions. It is anthropomorphic;
but what else can a human view of
God’s personality be? ‘The finite can
study and describe the infinite only
through analogy, parallelism, and
simile; but that is a good way. The
new religion will animate and guide
ordinary men and women who are put-
ting into practice religious conceptions
which result directly from their own
observation and precious experience of
tenderness, sympathy, trust, and sol-
emn joy. It will be most welcome to

the men and women who cherish and {

exhibit incessant, all-comprehending
good-will. These are the “good”
people. ‘These are the only genuinely
civilized persons.

23

“tightReligious Compensations

To the wretched, sick, and downtrod-
den of the earth, religion has in the
past held out hopes of future compen-
sation. When precious ties of affec-
tion have been broken, religion has held
out prospects of immediate and eternal
blessings for the departed; and has
promised happy reunions in. another
and a better world. To a human soul,
lodged in an imperfect, feeble, or suf-
fering body, some of the older religions
have held out the expectation of deliv-
erance by death, and of entrance upon
a rich, competent, and happy life,—in
short, for present human ills, however
crushing, the widely accepted religions
have offered either a second life, pre-
sumably immortal, under the happiest
24RELIGIOUS COMPENSATIONS ~

conditions, or at least peace, rest, and
a happy oblivion. Can the future re-
ligion promise that sort of compensa-
tion for the ills of this world, any more
than it can promise miraculous aid
against threatened disaster? A can-
did reply to this inquiry involves the
statement that in the future religion
there will be nothing “supernatural.”
This does not mean that life will be
stripped of mystery or wonder, or that
the range of natural law has_ been
finally determined; but that religion,
like all else, must conform to natural
law so far as the range of law has been
determined. In this sense the religion
of the future will be a natural religion.
In all its theory and all its practice it
will be completely natural. It will
place no reliance on any sort of magic,
or miracle, or other violation of, or ex-
ception to, the laws of nature. It will

perform no magical rites, use no occult
25THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

processes, count on no abnormal inter-
ventions of supernal powers, and admit
no possession of supernatural gifts,
whether transmitted or conferred, by
any tribe, class, or family of men, Its
sacraments will be, not invasions of law
by miracle, but the visible signs of a
natural spiritual grace, or of a natural
hallowed custom. It may preserve
historical rites and ceremonies, which,
in times past, have represented the ex-
pectation of magical or miraculous ef-
fects; but it will be content with nat-
ural interpretations of such rites and
ceremonies. Its priests will be men
especially interested in religious
thought, possessing unusual gifts of
speech on devotional subjects, and
trained in the best methods of improv-
ing the social and industrial conditions
of human life. There will always be
need of such public teachers and spirit-
ual leaders, heralds, and prophets. It
26RELIGIOUS COMPENSATIONS

should be observed, however, that
many happenings and processes which
were formerly regarded as supernat-
ural have, with the increase of know]-
edge, come to be regarded as com-
pletely natural. The line between the
supposed natural and the supposed
supernatural is, therefore, not fixed
but changeable.

It is obvious, then, that the com-
pletely natural quality of the future
religion excludes from it many of
the religious compensations and conso-
lations of the past. 'Twentieth-cen-
tury soldiers, going into battle, will not
be able to say to each other, as Moslem
soldiers did in the tenth century, “If
we are killed to-day, we shall meet
again to-night in Paradise.” Even
now, the mother who loses her babe, or
the husband his wife, by a preventable
disease, is seldom able to say simply,
“It is the will of God! The babe—or

27THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

the woman—is better off in heaven
than on earth. I resign this dear ob-
ject of love and devotion, who has gone
to a happier world.” The ordinary
consolations of institutional Christian-
ity no longer satisfy intelligent people
whose lives are broken by the sickness
or premature death of those they love.
The new religion will not attempt to
reconcile men and women to present
ils by promises of future blessedness,
either for themselves or for others.
Such promises have done infinite mis-
chief in the world, by inducing men to
be patient under sufferings or depri-
vations against which they should have
incessantly struggled. The advent of a
just freedom for the mass of mankind
has been delayed for centuries by just
this effect of compensatory promises
issued by churches.

28Che Sight Against Evil

Tue religion of the future will ap-
proach the whole subject of evil from
another side, that of resistance and pre-
vention. The Breton sailor, who had
had his arm poisoned by a dirty fish-
hook which had entered his finger, made
a votive offering at the shrine of the
Virgin Mary, and prayed for a cure.
The workman to-day, who gets cut or
bruised by a rough or dirty instrument,
goes to a surgeon, who applies an anti-
septic dressing to the wound, and pre-
vents the poisoning. That surgeon is
one of the ministers of the new religion.
When dwellers in a slum suffer the fa-
miliar evils caused by overcrowding,
impure food, and cheerless labor, the
modern true believers contend against
the sources of such misery by providing
29THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

public baths, playgrounds, wider and
cleaner streets, better dwellings, and
more effective schools,—that is, they at-
tack the sources of physical and moral
evil. The new religion cannot supply
the old sort of consolation; but it can
diminish the need of consolation, or re-
duce the number of occasions for con-
solation.

A further change in religious think-
ing has already occurred on the subject
of human pain. Pain was generally
regarded as a punishment for sin, or as
a means of moral training, or as an ex-
piation, vicarious or direct. Twentieth-
century religion, gradually perfected in
this respect during the last half of the
nineteenth century, regards human pain
as an evil to be relieved and prevented
by the promptest means possible, and
by any sort of available means, physical,
mental, or moral; and, thanks to the

progress of biological and chemical sci-
30

=}THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL

ence, there is comparatively little phys-
ical pain nowadays which cannot be
prevented or relieved. The invention
of anaesthetics has brought into con-
tempt the expiatory, or penal, view of
human pain in this world. The
younger generations listen with incred-
ulous smiles to the objection made only
a little more than sixty years ago by
some divines of the Scottish Presbyte-
rian church to the employment of chlo-
roform in childbirth, namely, that the
physicians were interfering with the
execution of a curse pronounced by the
‘Almighty. Dr. Weir Mitchell, a physi-
cian who has seen much of mental pain
as well as of bodily, in his poem read at
the fiftieth anniversary of the first pub-
lic demonstration of surgical anaesthe-
sia, said of pain:
“What purpose hath it? Nay, thy quest is vain:

Earth hath no answer: If the baffled brain

Cries, "Tis to warn, to punish, Ah, refrain!
otTHE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

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.”

82

1 aeChe Divine Justice

A sIMILAR change is occurring in re-
gard to the conception of divine justice.
‘The evils in this world have been re-
garded as penalties inflicted by a just
God on human beings who had violated
his laws; and the justice of God played
a great part in his imagined dealings
with the human race. A young gradu-
ate of Andover Theological Seminary
‘once told me that when he had preached
two or three times one summer in a
small Congregational church on Cape
Cod, one of the deacons of the church
_said to him at the close of the service,
“What sort of sentimental mush is this
that they are teaching you at Andover?
You talk every Sunday about the love
of God; we want to hear about his jus-
tice.” The future religion will not un-

dertake to describe, or even imagine,
$3THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

the justice of God. We are to-day so
profoundly dissatisfied with human Jus-
tice, although it is the result of centu-
ries of experience of social good and ill
in this world, that we may well distrust
human capacity to conceive of the jus-
tice of a morally perfect, infinite being.
The civilized nations now recognize the
fact that legal punishments usually fail
of their objects, or cause wrongs and
evils greater than those for which the
punishments were inflicted; so that pe- '
nology, or the science of penalties, has —
still to be created. It is only very
lately that the most civilized communi-
ties began to learn how to deal with
criminal tendencies in the young. In
the eyes of God human beings must all
seem very young. Since our ideas of
God’s modes of thinking and acting are
necessarily based on the best human. at-
tainments in similar directions, the new

religion cannot pretend to understand
34THE DIVINE JUSTICE

God’s justice, inasmuch as there is no
human experience of public justice fit
to serve as the foundation for a true
conception of God’s. The new religion
will magnify and laud God’s love and
compassion, and will not venture to
state what the justice of God may, or
may not, require of himself, or of any
of his finite creatures. This will be one
of the great differences between the fu-
ture religion and the past. Institu-
tional Christianity as a rule condemned
the mass of mankind to eternal tor-
ment; partly because the leaders of the
churches thought they understood com-
pletely the justice of God, and partly
because the exclusive possession of
means of deliverance gave the churches
some restraining influence over even the
boldest sinners, and much over the
timid. The new religion will make no
such pretensions, and will teach no such

horrible and perverse doctrines.
35 |Religious Consolation

Do you ask what consolation for hu-
man ills the new religion will offer? I
answer, the consolation which often
comes to the sufferer from being more
serviceable to others than he was before
the loss or the suffering for which con-
solation is needed; the consolation of
being one’s self wiser and tenderer than
before, and therefore more able to be
serviceable to human kind in the best
ways; the consolation through the mem-
ory, which preserves the sweet fra-
grance of characters and lives no longer
in presence, recalls the joys and achieve-
ments of those lives while still within
mortal view, and treasures up and mul-
tiplies the good influences they exerted.
Moreover, such a religion has no tend-

36RELIGIOUS CONSOLATION

ency. to diminish the force in this
world, or any other, of the best human
imaginings concerning the nature of the
infinite Spirit immanent in the universe.
It urges its disciples to believe that as
the best and happiest man is he who best
loves and serves, so the soul of the uni-
verse finds its perfect bliss and effi-
ciency in supreme and universal love
and service. It sees evidence in the
moral history of the human race that a
loving God rules the universe. Trust
in this supreme rule is genuine consola-
tion and support under many human
trials and sufferings. Nevertheless, al-
though brave and patient endurance of
evils is always admirable, and generally
happier than timid or impatient conduct
under suffering or wrong, it must be
admitted that endurance or constancy is
not consolation, and that there are
many physical and mental disabilities
and injuries for which there is no con-
37THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

solation in a literal sense. Human
skill may mitigate or palliate some of
them, human sympathy and kindness
may make them more bearable, but
neither religion nor philosophy offers
any complete consolation for them, or
ever has.

38“ ®ood-will to @en”’

In thus describing the consolations for
human woes and evils which such a reli-
gion can offer, its chief motives have
been depicted. They are just those
which Jesus said summed up all the
commandments, love toward God and
brotherliness to man. It will teach a
universal good-will, under the influence
of which men will do their duty, and at
the same time, promote their own hap-
piness. The devotees of a religion of
service will always be asking what they
can contribute to the common good; but
their greatest service must always be to
increase the stock of good-will among
men. One of the worst of chronic hu-
man evils is working for daily bread
without any interest in the work, and
39THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

with ill-will towards the institution or
person that provides the work. The
work of the world must be done; and
the great question is, shall it be done
happily or unhappily? Much of it is
to-day done unhappily. The new reli-
gion will contribute powerfully toward
the reduction of this mass of unneces-
sary misery, and will do so chiefly by
promoting good-will among men.

A paganized Hebrew-Christianity
has unquestionably made much of per-
sonal sacrifice as a religious duty. The
new religion will greatly qualify the
supposed duty of sacrifice, and will re-
gard all sacrifices as unnecessary and
injurious, except those which love dic-
tates and justifies. “ Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends.” Self-sacrifice
is not a good or a merit in itself ; it must
be intelligent and loving to be meritori-

ous, and the object in view must be
40

sr“GOOD-WILL TO MEN”

worth its price. Giving up attractive
pleasures or labors in favor of some
higher satisfaction, or some engrossing
work, is not self-sacrifice. It is a re-
nunciation of inferior or irrelevant ob-
jects in favor of one superior object; it
is only the intelligent inhibition of
whatever distracts from the main pur-
suit, or the worthiest task. Here,
again, the new religion will teach that
happiness goes with dutifulness even in
this world.

AlChe Uplifting Love of Cruth

‘Aru the religions have been, to a
greater or less extent, uplifting and in-
spiring, in the sense that they raised
men’s thoughts to some power above
them, to some being or beings, which
had more power and more duration
than the worshippers had. When
kings or emperors were deified, they
were idealized, and so lifted men’s
thoughts out of the daily round of their
ordinary lives. As the objects of wor-
ship became nobler, purer, and kinder
with the progress of civilization, the
prevailing religion became more stimu-
lating to magnanimity and righteous-
ness. Will the future religion be as
helpful to the spirit-of man? Will it
touch his imagination as the anthropo-
42THE: UPLIFTING LOVE OF TRUTH

morphism of Judaism, polytheism, Is-
lam, and paganized Christianity have
done? Can it be as moving to the hu-
man soul as the deified powers of na-
ture, the various gods and goddesses
that inhabited sky, ocean, mountains,
groves, and streams, or the numerous —
deities revered in the various Christian
communions,—God the Father, the
Son of God, the Mother of God, the
Holy Ghost, and the host of tutelary
saints? All these objects of worship
have greatly moved the human soul, and
have inspired men to thoughts and
deeds of beauty, love, and duty. Will
the new religion do as much? It is rea-
sonable to expect that it will. ‘The sen-
timents of awe and reverence, and the
love of beauty and goodness, will re-
main, and will increase in strength and
influence. All the natural human af-
fections will remain in full force. The

new religion will foster powerfully a
43THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

virtue which is comparatively new in
the world—the love of truth and the
passion for seeking it, and the truth will
progressively make men free; so that
the coming generations will be freer,
and therefore more productive and
stronger than the preceding. The new
religionists will not worship their an-
cestors; but they will have a stronger
sense of the descent of the present from
the past than men have ever had before,
and each generation will feel more
strongly than ever before its indebted-
ness to the preceding.

The two sentiments which most in-
spire men to good deeds are love and
hope. Religion should give freer and
more rational play to these two senti-
ments than the world has heretofore
witnessed; and the love and hope will
be thoroughly grounded in and on effi-
cient, serviceable, visible, actual, and

concrete deeds and conduct. When a
44THE UPLIFTING LOVE OF. TRUTH

man works out a successful treatment
for cerebro-spinal meningitis—a disease
before which medicine was absolutely
helpless a dozen years ago—by apply-
ing to the discovery of a remedy ideas
and processes invented or developed by
other men studying other diseases, he
does a great work of love, prevents for
the future the breaking of innumerable
ties of love, and establishes good
grounds for hope of many like benefits
for human generations to come. The
men who do such things in the present
world are ministers of the religion of
the future. The future religion will
prove, has proved, as effective as any
of the older ones in inspiring men to
love and serve their fellow-beings,—
and that is the true object and end of
all philosophies and all religions; for
that is the way to make men better and
happier, alike the servants and the

served.
45THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

The future religion will have the at-
tribute of universality and of adapta-
bility to the rapidly increasing stores of
knowledge and power over nature ac-
quired by the human race. As the reli-
gion of a child is inevitably very differ-
ent from that of an adult, and must
grow up with the child, so the religion
of a race whose capacities are rapidly
enlarging must be capable of a corre-
sponding development. The religion of
any single individual ought to grow up
with him all the way from infancy to
age; and the same is true of the reli-
gion of a race. It is bad for any peo-
ple to stand still in their governmental
conceptions and practices, or in the or-
ganization of their industries, or in any
of their arts or trades, even the oldest;
but itis much worse for a people to
stand still in their religious conceptions
and practices, Now, the new religion af-

fords an indefinite scope, or range, for
46THE UPLIFTING LOVE OF TRUTH

progress and development. It rejects
all the limitations of family, tribal, or
national religion. It is not bound to
any dogma, creed, book, or institution.
It has the whole world for the field of
the loving labors of its disciples; and
its fundamental precept of serviceable-
ness admits an infinite variety and
range in both time and space. It is
very simple, and therefore possesses an
important element of durability. It is
the complicated things that get out of
order. Its symbols will not relate to
sacrifice or dogma; but it will doubtless
have symbols, which will represent its
love of liberty, truth, and beauty. It
will also have social rites and reverent
observances; for it will wish to com-
memorate the good thoughts and deeds
which have come down from former
generations. It will have its saints ;
but its canonizations will be based on
grounds somewha* new. It will have
ATTHE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

its heroes; but they must have shown
a loving, disinterested, or protective
courage. It will have its communions,
with the Great Spirit, with the spirits
of the departed, and with living fellow-
men of like minds. Working together
will be one of its fundamental ideas,—
of men with God, of men with prophets,
leaders, and teachers, of men with one
another, of men’s intelligence with the
forces of nature. It will teach only
such uses of authority as are necessary
to secure the codperation of several or
many people to one end; and the disci-
pline it will advocate will be training in

the development of codperative good-
will.

AsChristian Wrotherbood

WILL such a religion as this make
progress in the _ twentieth-century
world? You have heard in this Sum-
mer School of Theology much about the
conflict between materialism and reli-
gious idealism, the revolt against long-
accepted dogmas, the frequent occur-
rence of waves of reform, sweeping
through and sometimes over the
churches, the effect of modern philoso-
phy, ethical theories, social hopes, and
democratic principles on the established
churches, and the abandonment of \
churches altogether by a large propor-
tion of the population in countries |
mainly Protestant. You know, too,
how other social organizations have, in
some considerable measure, taken the
49

ER
(oTTHE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE
place of churches. Millions of Ameri-

cans find in Masonic organizations,
lodges of Odd Fellows, benevolent and
fraternal societies, granges, and trades-
unions, at once their practical religion,
and the satisfaction of their social
needs. So far as these multifarious or-
ganizations carry men and women out
of their individual selves, and teach
them mutual regard and social and in-
dustrial codperation, they approach the
field and functions of the religion of the
future. The Spiritualists, Christian
Scientists, and mental healers of all
sorts manifest a good deal of ability to
draw people away from the traditional
churches, and to discredit traditional
dogmas and formal creeds. Neverthe-
less, the great mass of the people re-
main attached to the traditional
churches, and are likely to remain so,—
partly because of their tender associa-

tions with churches in the grave crises
50CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD

of life, and partly because their actual
mental condition still permits them to
accept the beliefs they have inherited
or been taught while young. The new
religion will therefore make but slow
progress, so far as outward organiza-
tion goes. It will, however, progress-
ively modify the creeds and religious
practices of all the existing churches,
and change their symbolism and their
teachings concerning the conduct of
life. Since its chief doctrine is the doc-
trine of a sublime unity of substance,
force, and spirit, and its chief precept
is, Be serviceable, it will exert a strong
uniting influence among men.
Christian unity has always been
longed for by devout believers, but has
been sought in impossible ways. Au-
thoritative churches have tried to force
everybody within their range to hold
the same opinions and unite in the same

observances, but they have won only
51THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

temporary and local successes. As
freedom has increased in the world, it
has become more and more difficult to
enforce even outward conformity; and
in countries where church and _ state
have been separated, a great diversity
of religious opinions and practices has
been expressed in different religious or-
ganizations, each of which commands
the effective devotion of a fraction of
the population. Since it is certain that
men are steadily gaining more and
more freedom in thought, speech, and
action, civilized society might as well as-
sume that it will be quite impossible to
unite all religiously-minded people
through any dogma, creed, ceremony,
observance, or ritual. All these are
divisive, not uniting, wherever a reason-
able freedom exists. The new religion
proposes as a basis of unity, first, its
doctrine of an immanent and _ loving

God, and secondly, its precept, Be serv-
52CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD

iceable to fellow-men. Already there
are many signs in the free countries of
the world that different religious de-
nominations can unite in good work to
promote human welfare. The support
of hospitals, dispensaries, and asylums
by persons connected with all sorts of
religious denominations, the union of
all denominations in carrying on Asso-
ciated Charities in large cities, the suc-
cess of the Young Men’s Christian As-
sociations, and the numerous efforts to
form federations of kindred churches
for practical purposes, all testify to the
feasibility of , extensive cooperation in
good works. -Apain, the new religion
cannot create any caste, ecclesiastical
class, or exclusive sect founded on a
rite. On these grounds it is not unrea-
sonable to imagine that the new religion
will prove a unifying influence, and a
strong reinforcement of democracy.
Whether it will prove as efficient to
53THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE

deter men from doing wrong and to en-
courage them to do right as the prevail-
ing religions have been, is a question
which only experience can answer. In
these two respects neither the threats
nor the promises of the older religions
have been remarkably successful in soci-
ety at large. The fear of hell has not
proved effective to deter men from
wrongdoing, and heaven has never yet
been described in terms very attractive
to the average man or woman. Both
are indeed unimaginable. ‘The great
geniuses, like Dante and Swedenborg,
have produced only fantastic and in-
credible pictures of either state. The
modern man would hardly feel any ap-
preciable loss of motive-power toward
good or away from evil if heaven were
burnt and hell quenched. The prevail-
ing Christian conceptions of heaven and
hell have hardly any more influence

with educated people in these days than
54CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD

Olympus and Hades have. The mod-
ern mind craves an immediate motive or
leading, good for to-day on this earth.
The new religion builds on the actual
experience of men and women, and of
human society as a whole. ‘The motive
powers it relies on have been, and are,
at work in innumerable human lives;
and its beatific visions and its hopes are
better grounded than those of tradi-
tional religion, and finer,—because free
from all selfishness, and from the 1m-
agery of governments, courts, social
distinctions, and war.

Finally, this twentieth-century reli-
gion is not only to be in harmony with
the great secular movements of modern
society—democracy, individualism, so-
cial idealism, the zeal for education, the
spirit of research, the modern tendency
to welcome the new, the fresh powers
of preventive medicine, and the recent

advances in business and industrial
55CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD

ethics—but also in essential agreement
with the direct, personal teachings of
Jesus, as they are reported in the Gos-
pels. The revelation he gave to man-
kind thus becomes more wonderful than
ever.

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