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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Collection of Indiana authors

Gift of
Mrs. William Henry Coleman
In memory of
WILLIAM COLEMAN ATKINS, '33S

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THE
Unknown God

Other Orthodox Essays

BY

JACOB PIATT DUNN
hi
secretary of the Indiana historical society

Sentinel Printing Company
Indianapolis, Indiana
1914

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DEDICATORY.
To Dr. Charles P. Emerson, Teacher of the
Men's Bible Class of the First Presbyterian
church, Indianapolis, who, while in nowise re
sponsible for the positions taken herein, has, by
his Bible teaching, led me to views of the scrip
tures that were to me in many respects novel, this
little book is gratefully dedicated. .

THE
UNKNOWN GOD.
The sermon of Paul on Mars' Hill has
long held a place in the front ranks of ex
amples of forensic oratory; and properly no
oratory holds such rank that is not effective,
for the object, of oratory is to convince, and
that which lacks convincing power lacks the
essential feature of true oratory. There
have been many comments on this effort of
Paul, many reflections on its ingenious
method, many on its immediate effects, many
on its permanent argumentative force. And
yet, when considered in the setting of its
known surroundings, it seems singularly in
adequate to the results attained.
Paul had just arrived at Athens from
Note: (The unknown God.)
This essay -was originally published in the Biblical
World of Dec. 13, 1913. When it was written, I sup
posed that my main thesis, that the Athenian altar to
"The Unknown God" was erected to the Supreme
First Cause, was absolutely novel in modern literature.
Since writing it, my attention has been called to a
recent publication, "Agnostos Theos" (Press of B. G.
Teubner, Leipzig-Berlin, 1913), by Eduard Norden.
In this erudite volume of 400 pages, the author, from
historical and philological premises, reaches the same

6 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Berea. His preaching in Macedonia up to
this point had not produced like results. On
the contrary, it had evoked persecution, and
he had been obliged to flee from Philippi,
from Thessalonica, and from Berea. While
he waited here for Silas and Timothy, his
spirit was stirred by the idolatry of the city,
and he began disputing in the synagogue
and in the market place. Soon he attracted
the attention of the philosophers, Epicureans
and Stoics, men who devoted their entire
time to the hearing and discussion of new
things, and especially to religious matters.
These people took him to the Areopagus —
possibly, but not probably, before the coun
cil which held sessions there — which was the
most prominent place of public discussion;
and said to him, with at least an appearance
of toleration and respect: "May we know
conclusion — that this altar was erected to the Su
preme First Cause. His process of reasoning, how
ever, and his other deductions, are entirely different
from my own. He devotes much space to the origin
of this idea of deity, holding that it is not of Grecian
but Oriental origin. This is quite possible. St. Justin
maintained that Plato derived his ideas from Moses.
However that may have been, it is not material here,
for Plato's philosophy had been taught in Greece for
four centuries before Paul's time and was then the
prevailing religious belief.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 7
what this new doctrine, whereof thou speak
est, is? For thou bringest certain strange
things to our ears : we would know what
these things mean."
And now Paul stood up in the most nota
bly intellectual city in the world, before an
audience that probably could not have been
excelled at that time in cultivation. It was
not an address to the masses. He was talk
ing to the' intellect of the age. He was alone.
There was not even a sprinkling of party
allies in the crowd to applaud a telling hit,
or to second his effort in any way. His
words stood absolutely on their own merit.
And these are his words, as given in our
authorized version:
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things
ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by and beheld your devotions,
I found an altar with this inscription, "TO THE
UNKNOWN GOD." Whom therefore ye igno-
nantly worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things there
in, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as
though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to
all life, and breath, and all things;
And hath made of one blood all nations of

8 THE UNKNOWN GOD
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and
hath determined the times before appointed, and
the bounds of their habitation ;
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they
might feel after him and find him, though he be
not far from every one of us ;
For in him we live, and move, and have our
being; as certain also of your own poets have
said, For we are also his offspring;
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the Godhead is like
unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and
man's device.
And the times of this ignorance God winked at ;
but now he commandeth all men everywhere to
repent; Because he hath appointed a day, in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by that
man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath
given assurance to all men in that he hath
raised him from the dead.
To this version modern criticism has of
fered little addition or change, the only ma
terial suggestions being as to the phrases
-'too superstitious" and "to the unknown
God." It is generally conceded that the
words rendered "too superstitious" may be
properly rendered "very religious", "very
devout", "truly god-fearing", or like terms
having none of the offensive meaning that

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 9
necessarily attaches to "too superstitious".
As to the other, it was suggested by some of
the early church fathers that the inscription
was probably in the plural — "to unknown
gods"; and conjecture has been made that
this implied gods .of foreign nations, whom
the Athenians fancied to have brought ills
to them, or who might do so. Modern critics
usually accept the singular form, but as
there is no article used in the Greek, the or
dinary translation would be "to an unknown
god". This, however, is not obligatory, and
the translation "to the unknown god" is gen
erally admitted as proper. It would be more
impressive to render it, as could properly be
done, just as it stands in the original : "To
Unknown God."
No critic rejects the account as above
given, or the description of the events fol
lowing, which is as follows :
And when they heard of the resurrection of the
dead, some mocked; and others said, We will hear
thee again of this matter.
So Paul departed from among them.
Howbeit certain men clave unto him and be
lieved ; among which was Dionysius the Areo-
pagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others
with them.

IO THE UNKNOWN GOD
Taking the entire account as it stands, two
things seem obvious on its face. First, the
address as recorded must be a mere sum
mary of the actual discourse, for it would
require less than two minutes for delivery.
It is too brief for Paul's known sermonizing
ability; too brief for the occasion, with the
special trip to the Areopagus; too brief for
the distinguished audience. Second, nothing
in the speech aroused criticism or dissent till
he spoke of the resurrection; and this point
is important because it implies assent to all
that precedes that. The common form of
all such discourses in Athens was disputa
tion or discussion. Paul himself was "dis
puting" in the synagogue and the market
place when the philosophers were attracted
to him. It was a form of discussion in
which anyone was free to join, and it was a
matter of give and take for all. The Greek
philosophers were skilled debaters, trained
particularly in this form of discussion, and
would quickly have interposed if they had
any objection. But they did not, and this
is vastly significant. For example, the fact
that Paul directly attacked idolatry and im
age-worship, in a city that was given over to

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 1
it, and where it was established by law, but
without interruption, demonstrates what we
know also from profane history, that at this
time the educated Greeks did not believe in
idols, and made no pretense of believing in
them, even though they joined in the statu
tory rites.
With these two deductions in mind, let us
look at the speech again. It has often been
suggested that Paul was too prudent, and
too skilled an orator to call his audience "too
superstitious", in an offensive way, at the
outset. That is a valid deduction, but we
can add to it the certainty that his hearers
did not take offense at his words ; and also
that he did not intend them in an offensive
or critical sense, because to have done so
would have been to overthrow his own argu
ment. How could he consistently urge that
the Athenians were unduly superstitious for
believing in an unknown god, and in the
next breath assure them that this god was
the only true god, whom they ought to wor
ship? Obviously the words rendered "too
superstitious" were intended and accepted as
commendatory. In like manner, as to the inscription on

12 THE UNKNOWN GOD
the Athenian altar, we can be sure that it
was in harmony with the interpretation
given to it by Paul. If the inscription had
been "to unknown gods," in a plural and in
definite form, or if it had been, as St. Jerome
cojectured, "To the unknown gods of Asia,
and Europe, and Africa ; to foreign and un
known gods," and Paul had proceeded to
state that it was an altar to the one god
"that made the world and all things there
in," he would have been interrupted and
mocked at once. Some philosopher would
have said: "Thou art indeed a babbler, and
ignorant, for this altar is not to one god, but
to all unknown gods." The assent of his
audience can be explained only on the basis
that this altar was erected to an unknown
god "that made the world and all things
therein." But further, what is meant by "the un
known god?" What could these words pos
sibly mean to the Greeks? The word "un
known" is universally the antithesis of
"known;" and the phrase could not possibly
mean anything to the Greeks, or to anyone
else, but "the unknown god" as distin
guished from their known gods. And how

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 3
did they know any god? Not by personal
acquaintance. No one pretended to that.
They knew their gods by their names and
their images. Zeus, Hera, Pallas Athene,
and all the rest, were familiar to the Athe
nians by their names and their images, just
as Cupid, and Liberty, and Santa Claus are
to Americans, but this altar was to a god
who had no name and no image.
The necessary inference is that this god
of the Greeks was one for whom they had
no name, of whom they had no image, and
yet whom they believed to have "made the
world and all things therein," — a god who
could plausibly be compared to Jehovah.
But did the Greeks recognize any such god?
Was there any deity in their pantheistic cir
cle that would answer to these requirements ?
Unquestionably there was; and he was the
supreme divinity of their most prominent
religious sect — the Platonists. Plato had
been dead for four centuries, but his philoso
phy had lived; and though it had ramified
into almost as many sectarian forms as the
teaching of Jesus Christ has since, this cen
tral feature of one supreme, unknown god
was preserved in all of them, as it is in all

14 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Christian beliefs. Moreover, it had tinctured
all other philosophies. The Stoics believed
in a supreme first cause, though they located
it in matter, as our materialists do. The
Epicureans conceded the possibility of such
a being, but held that if he existed he dwelt
apart, and took no heed of the affairs of
men. And this was not wholly repugnant to
the Platonian theory, for it held that the
Supreme Being created Jove, arid all the
other known gods, and left to^ them the
minor creations, and the supervision of man
kind, while he returned to a state of eternal
repose. Of all the gods of the Greeks, this one
alone had no name. Plato refers to him sim
ply as "God," "the Deity," "the Supreme
First Existence;" and he never received any
name. When Cicero had occasion to con
sider him, he referred to him as "the god of
Plato." Neither was any image ever made
of him by the Greeks or by the Romans, any
more than by the Jews. He was always and
everywhere "the Unknown God" until He
revealed Himself. But there was no reason
why the Platonists should not have erected
an altar to him; and from the known cus-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 5
toms of the ancients there was every reason
to expect them to do so. And we know from
profane writers that altars to unknown
gods were not peculiar to Athens. Pausan-
ias, Philostratus and Lucian mention their
existence at other places. The hypothesis
that this altar was a Platonian altar to the
Supreme First Cause is the only one on
which the- known historical facts and this
account of Paul's sermon can be reconciled.
Furthermore, we know that this pagan
conception of God was commonly referred
to as "the unknown God" in the early
church literature. The Gnostic heretics all
held to this conception in some form, some
even maintaining that the Supreme Being
was unknown to the inferior supernaturals
whom he created. This heresy was vigor
ously denounced by the orthodox Christians,
who maintained that God was known
throughout the spirit world, not only by the
angels who are his servants, but by Satan
who was driven from his presence, by evil
spirits who declared their knowledge when
cast out, and by the spirits of the dead, for
Christ said of little children, "In heaven
their angels do always behold the face of

1 6 THE UNKNOWN GOD
my Father which is in heaven." More than
this, He was now known to men, both
through Christ and through the Holy Spirit,
whom Christ had promised as a Comforter
that should teach them all things — not fully,
of course, but as "seen through a glass dark
ly," and so far as within finite comprehen
sion. Thus, Ignatius, in his epistle to the Tral-
lians, recites, among other heresies of the
Gnostics, that, "They introduce God as a
Being unknown." Irenaeus, who wrote the
first formal work against heresy that is pre
served to us, speaks of the Gnostic deity as
"the unknown God" (Ante-Nicene Chris
tian Library, Vol. 5, p. 79), "the unknown
Father" (lb., pp. 171, 288), "the Father un
known to all" (lb., pp. 80, 89), and "the
Unnameable," and "the Unspeakable" (lb.,
p. 171). He also refers to him as "the un-
originated, inconceivable Father" and the
"Father who cannot be named" (lb., pp. 56,
101 ) ; and calls these heretics "those who
know not God" (lb., p. 122) ; while he urges
at great length that God is known to Chris
tian believers (lb., pp. 179, 239, 291, 315,
370, 390).

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 7
Consider the sermon in this light. The
writings of Plato were known to all the
learned world at that time, and doubtless
were known to Paul, for he quotes from the
Greek poets in this same sermon, and was
able to talk Greek to a Greek audience. The
God of the Hebrews was known to his au
dience. The Jews had a synagogue in
Athens in which disputations were held, as
well as in the Athenian schools and in the
market place; and these philosophers who
made haste to inquire into all new things,
especially in connection with religion, did
not overlook the Hebrew teachings. The
controversial writings of the ancients de
monstrate clearly that the Hebrew theology
was very fairly understood.
What Paul undertook was to maintain
two theses in the Areopagus. The first was
that the God of Plato and the God of Moses
were in fact one God; and this the Greeks
heard with interest. The second was that
God had revealed Himself in Jesus Christ,
and had proven his personality by the resur
rection; and from this a part of his audi
ence at once dissented. As to the first of
these, the inadequacy of the recorded argu-

l8 THE UNKNOWN GOD
ment is at once apparent to anyone who has
given any attention to Socratic discussion.
With one exception the recorded sermon is
pure assertion, and that exception is the
quotation from the Greek poets, "For we are
also his offspring." There is no other proof
offered, and to us this is small proof; but
not so to the Greeks or- their Roman suc
cessors. We must remember that their con
ceptions of God were derived wholly from
the light of reason, and a statement like this
from the poets was evidence of a common
belief. It did not mean that it was conclusive
evidence of the" fact stated, but that it was
the basis of a tenable hypothesis, and this
was as high as the light of reason could
reach. Thus, in Cicero's great argument on
the immortality of the soul, which is prob
ably as high a reach toward certainty as
pure reason ever attained, after reviewing
the statements of the poets arid philosophers,
he avows that he believes the soul immortal
chiefly because all men believe it. And from
the standpoint of nature and reason this is
the strongest argument that can be made for
anything supernatural. For all men con
ceive God to be just, and he has not im-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IO,
planted in us any desire or aspiration as to
known things which is not capable of attain
ment. This is the argument to which Tenny
son, with all his enlightenment, turns back
at last —
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die ;
. And Thou hast made him; Thou art just.
It being evident that the record of Paul's
sermon is the briefest summary, we may
reasonably infer that the omitted portions
were such as would probably have been con
sidered satisfactory evidence by the Greeks,
though of no eternal weight to the world at
large; and there are points where the co
herence of the argument seems to call spe
cially for such matter. For example, the
words "Whom therefore ye ignorantly wor
ship, him declare I unto you," are followed
by what is apparently a conclusion of an
argument or exposition — "God that made
the world and all things "therein."
These gaps might have been filled by di
rect quotations from the Hebrew scriptures
and from Plato. As is commonly known,
Plato's chief presentation of his ideas of the

Z0 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Supreme Being is in his book entitled
"Timaeus," in which the astronomer Tim-
aeus presents to Socrates and his disciples
the conclusions as to the divine nature and
the creation of the universe which he had
deduced from astronomy and mathematics.
This book was universally known and
quoted, and might naturally have been
quoted by Paul on this occasion. Under
these circumstances it will not be irreverent
to conjecture what Paul might have said
in this line; and the desire to present
my thought more clearly may excuse the au
dacity of suggesting the following recon
struction of Paul's sermon as a possibility:
Ye men of Athens I perceive that ye are indeed
devoted to the worship of the Deity, for as I
passed along, and observed the objects of your
worship, I found among others an altar with this
inscription, TO UNKNOWN GOD. Him there
fore, whom ye worship without knowing, pro
claim I unto you. For this altar, as is known to
all, is erected to the Supreme Being who created
the universe, and whose existence is declared by
the philosopher Plato to have been discovered to
the astronomer Timaeus through observation and
contemplation of the heavenly bodies and of the1
laws of nature.
Now Timaeus, as ye know, distinguished first
between the eternal spirit existences and earthly

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 21
things, or as he saith, "between that which is
ever-existent, and has no generation or creation,
and that which is in a state of generation, or com
ing into existence, but never really is. * * *
And whatever is generated is necessarily gener
ated from a certain cause ; for it is wholly im
possible that anything should be generated with
out a cause. * * * Let this universe then be
called heaven, or the world, or by any other name
that it usually receives, * * * (and we
know) that it is generated ; — for this universe is
palpable, and has a body; and all such things are
perceptible (i. e., are to be apprehended by the
senses) ; and things perceptible, being appre
hended by reason in conjunction with percep
tion, appear to be in a state of generation.
And again, with reference to what exists, it must
necessarily have arisen from some cause."
So likewise the sacred writings of whose truth
I bear witness declare that God is a spirit, and
that "in the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth.'' And again, the prophet Jeremiah
saith: "He hath made the earth by His power;
He hath established the world by His wisdom ;
and by His understanding hath He stretched
out the heavens."
And Timaeus further testifies of the Creator.
"Pie was good, and in the good envy is never en
gendered about anything whatever; hence, being
free from envy, He desired that all things should
as much as possible resemble Himself. * * *
For as the Deity desired, as far as possible, that

22 THE UNKNOWN GOD
all things should be good, and nothing evil, he
accordingly took everything that was visible and
not in a state of rest, but in excessive agitation
and disorder, and then reduced it from disorder
into order, conceiving the latter to be far better
than the former.''
So, again, our sacred writings declare that when
Gor created the earth it was without form and
empty, but He proceeded to bring the seas into
their" places and also the land, and to make the
land for man's welfare by adding plants and ani
mals for man's use. And as each separate work
was finished He contemplated it, and pronounced
it good ; and when all was finished He pronounced
it. very good!
But before proceeding with these works, there
was another creation, for as Timaeus saith :
"Whatever has been generated must necessarily
have bodily shape, and be visible as well as tan
gible. But nothing can be visible without the
aid of fire," which is to say, light. Wherefore
after first making the heavens and the earth God
created light, that all His works might be seen
and known. And, furthermore, being Himself
eternal, and not created, it was Hi.s will that
man, who is created and not eternal', should be
given a way to judge of eternal things. Where
fore, as Timaeus further saith : "God resolved
to form a certain moveable image of eternity, and
thus, while lie was disposing the parts of the
universe, He, out of that eternity which rests in
unity, formed an eternal image on the principle

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 23
of numbers ; — and to this we give the appellation
of Time. But besides this he contrived the days
and nights, months and years, which had no exist
ence prior to the universe, but rose into being
contemporaneously, with its formation. All these
are but the parts of time; and the terms 'it was'
and 'it will be' are varying and evanescent forms
of time, which we have wrongly and unawares
transferred to an eternal essence. For we say
that an (eternal) thing was, is and will be ; while
according to truth the term 'it is' is alone suitable,
'was' and 'will be' being expressions suitable only
to created things, which move through time.
* . * * With this design then, and. after much
reflection on the generation of time, the Deity,
in order that it might be produced in full opera
tion, created the sun, moon, and five other stars,
which are denominated planets, to distinguish and
guard over the numbers of time."
And thus declare our sacred • books : "And
God said let there be lights in the firmament of
heaven to divide the day from the night and let
them be for signs and for seasons, and for days
and years ; and let them be for lights in the firma
ment of heaven to give light upon the earth, and
it was so. And God made the two great lights ;
the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser
light to rule the night ; He made the stars also."
But while He gave this image of eternity, God
did not confuse language by using the same terms
for eternal and temporal beings, as Timaeus truly

Z"4 THE UNKNOWN GOD
states that men do. For when He gave His com
mands to Moses, and Moses asked Him who he
should say to the Jews had given these com
mands, He answered, "Tell them I AM hath sent
thee." For this was The Eternal One, who exist
ed before time began, and before "was" and "will
be" arose as expressions of time. As David also
says of Him :
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the
world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art
God. ¦ ;¦ i
Being persuaded then that God is eternal and
not created, but that He created all things, ye
know that He should be worshipped as an eternal
spirit. For that God that made the world and
all things therein, He, being Lord of heaven and
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
neither is He served by men's hands as though
He needed anything; seeing He Himself giveth
to all life, and breath, and all things; and He
made of one every nation of men to dwell on all
the face of the earth, having determined their ap
pointed seasons, and the bounds of their habita
tion ; and hath willed that they should seek after
God, if perchance they should reach out to Him
and find Him. And it is His will that men should
see His greatness in His works, as Timaeus hath
done ; for as David testifieth :

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 25
The heavens declare the glory of God;
Th firmament showeth His handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth
And their words to the end of the world.
And indeed God is not far from each one of
us; for in Him we live and move, and have our
being: as certain of your own poets have said:
For we are also His offspring.
Being, then, the offspring of God, and knowing
His eternal nature, we ought not to think that
the Deity is like unto gold, or silver, or stone
graven by art and device of man. Neither do ye
believe this, but think that the worship of such
image is fitting only for those who have not by
contemplation and reason attained a knowledge
of the Eternal Spirit and First Cause of all things,
which indeed it is not possible for all men to do.
For Timaeus himself saith : "To discover then
the Creator and Father of this universe, as well
as His work, is indeed difficult; and when dis
covered it is impossible to reveal Him to man
kind at large."
But as God is good, He desires that all men
shall know the goodness that is in Him, and not
only those who have the good fortune to meet
with competent teachers, or to be able them
selves to understand the teachings of His works.

26 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Nor, being good, is it His desire that men should
deceive themselves, and worship images of their
own creation, which as ye know they do in igno
rance of the Deity Himself. Wherefore He hath
prepared a more certain testimony to all men;
and though in time of men's ignorance He over
looked this false worship, He now commandeth
all men, everywhere, to repent ; inasmuch as He
hath appointed a day which He will judge the
world in righteousness by the man whom He
hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance
unto all men, both the learned and the ignorant,
in that He hath raised him from the dead.
Certainly Paul must have followed some
such line of argument as this, or he would
not have been able to hold the quiet attention
of his hearers. Nor is it strange that he
should make such an appeal on this occasion
to the learned men of his day, whom he
knew to believe in an eternal and supreme
Deity. It had the appearance of a promising
field. If they had so much of the light, why
should they not be prepared for more light?
But Paul never tried the experiment again.
He learned at Athens the lesson of the futil
ity of the appeal to mere worldly wisdom,
which he used so effectively thereafter. How
forcibly he puts it in his epistle to the Corin
thians :

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 27
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the gospel ; not with wisdom of words, lest the
cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that
perish foolishness ; but unto us which are saved,
it is_the power of God.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of
the wise, and will bring to nothing the under
standing of the prudent.
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where
is the disputer of this world? hath not God made
foolish the wisdom of this world ?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world
by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that be
lieve. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks
seek after wisdom.
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews
a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolish
ness. But unto them which are called both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom
of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than
men ; and the weakness of God is stronger than
men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not
many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble are called :
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen

Z8 THE UNKNOWN GOD
the weak things of the world to confound the
things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which
are despised, hath God chosen, yea and things
which are not to bring to naught things that are :
That no flesh should glory in His presence.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God
is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and
sanctification, and redemption :
That, according as it is written, he that glor-
ieth, let him glory in the Lord.
And I, brethren, when I came to you came not
with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring
unto ycm the testimony of God.
For 1 determined not to know anything among
you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear,
and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching was not with
enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demon
stration of the spirit and of power:
That your faith should not stand in the wis
dom of men, but in the power of God.
What a contrast to the sermon at Athens
is presented by this preaching at Corinth;
and remember that Paul went directly from
Athens to Corinth, and was found there by
Silas and Timothy. His changed attitude
was apparently fully understood by the
brethren, for Luke says: "But when Silas

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 29
and Timothy came down from Macedonia,
Paul was constrained by the Word, testify
ing to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ."
And this change was justified by the results,
for "many of the Corinthian.s hearing be
lieved;" and he continued to preach there
for eighteen months.
But the lesson of this experience con
tinued to grow in Paul's mind, and he saw
that worldly wisdom was an obstacle to sal
vation. Hence when he wrote to the Romans
after saying that he is "debtor both to
Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise
and to the foolish," he urges the superiority
of faith over worldly wisdom, saying :
For I am not ashamed of the gospel ; for it is
the power of God unto salvation to every one that
believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
For therein is revealed a righteousness of God
from faith unto -faith as it is written, But the
righteous shall live by, faith.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness;
Bcause that which is known of God is manifest
in them ; for God manifested it unto them.
For the invisible things of Llim since the crea
tion of the world are clearly seen, being perceived
through the things that are made, even His ever-

30 THE UNKNOWN GOD
lasting power and divinity; that they may be
without excuse :
Because that, knowing God, they glorified Him
not as God, neither gave thanks ; but became vain
in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was
darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools. And changed the glory of the incorruptible God
for the likeness of an image of corruptible man,
and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping
things. Wherefore God g'ave them up in the lusts of
their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies
should be dishonored among themselves.
For that they exchanged the truth of God for
a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.
Quite possibly the statement that these
passages refer to the Platonists will be met
by the objection that if Paul had referred to
the god of Plato in his sermon on Mars' Hill,
there would have been more explicit record
of it. Is it credible that his treatment of
Platonism there, and in his subsequent writ
ings to the Corinthians and the Romans,
would have been left in so obscure a condi
tion that they escaped notice in later times?
Did not the principal faith of the Greeks,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 3 1
and the one that has most profoundly af
fected the world since their day, call for
something clearer ?
This objection has force at first blush;
but consider the alternative. If these pas
sages do not refer to Platonism there is no
reference whatever in the New Testament
to Platonism. Yet it was the chief faith of
intellectual Greece, and the apostles were
preaching throughout Greece and the
Grecian colonies. Is this possible? Can you
conceive of a new treligion which 'should
spring up in America, and whose history
should make no mention of Christianity?
Can you believe that the apostles did not
meet and combat the highest form of re
ligious error of their day?
Surely not. The record is too plain that
Paul thus became the leader in the long
fight which the church maintained against
the votaries of "the unknown God," who
carried their trust in the wisdom of men,
and their idea of permissible indulgence in
sensual sin, even after professed conversion
to Christianity, in many cases. Their genera
tion is not wholly" passed, and the record still
remains with its lesson that when the appeal

32 THE UNKNOWN GOD
of the gospel is made to the wisdom of this
world, it receives assent only so far as it
coincides with the preconceived opinions of
the hearer. And when conviction of part of
the truth comes from the wisdom of the
world, it never rises higher. It is faith that
stands in the wisdom of men and not in the
power of God.
And Paul's words were perfectly intelligi
ble to his hearers, who were meeting these
same teachings of Greek philosophy daily.
To us, who look back over the ages, Platon
ism seems something wonderful and admir
able, but it is only by contrast with other
forms of heathenism. To the primitive
church it was merely one form of error,
worse, indeed, than the rest, "because that
knowing God, they glorified Him not as
God." It was not a thing to be magnified or
extolled. Flence Paul's statements become
clear and rational when we apply the sim
ple historical rule of interpreting words in
terms of the period and conditions of their
use.

THE FIRST HERESIES.
In approaching a historical consideration
of early heresies, it should be borne in mind
that the word "heresy" has had a somewhat
shifting meaning during the Christian era.
In modern thought it is commonly linked
closely with two things, persecution and
creed. The feature of persecution is now
more a matter of history than of experience,
for the world has grown to a point where
most men hold to the belief that,
Fie is the heretic who lights the fire,
Not he who burns in it.
Hence the present association of perse
cution with heresy dwarfs in comparison
with that of creed. Of course some people
feel that they are persecuted if they are
expelled from a church organization for
heresy, but in fact this is no worse than be
ing read out of a secret society or a political
party, when your views are in conflict with
those of the other members. It is the right,
as well as the nature of birds of a feather to
flock together, and the intrusion of an out
sider is a disturbing factor, whether it be the

34 THE UNKNOWN GOD
impertinence of the cuckoo, or the misfor
tune of the duckling that is hatched among
a brood of chickens.
In our day creeds have come to be re
garded lightly by many persons, and the
dissenter often accepts the name of heretic
with an air of gayety, or even pride. Per
haps Mr. Chesterton is theoretically right in
holding that the dissenter, if serious in his
dissent, ought to hurl back the epithet, and
maintain that he himself is orthodox. But he
overlooks the fact that, in such a case, the
dissenter accepts the name in a purely sar
castic way, and really implies all that he
could be asked to maintain as to the rectitude
of his own position. In apostolic times no
creed had been formulated — not even the
Apostles' Creed — and the punishment of
heresy was mild enough to satisfy any mod
ern liberal. The rule was, as laid down by
Paul, "A man that is a heretic, after the
first and second admonition, reject; knowing
that he that is such is subverted and sinneth,
being condemned of himself." As this plain
ly implies, a heretic was a member of the
church, or one who had been a member, who
proclaimed views contrary to the common

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 35
faith. The outsider, whatever his faith, was
not a heretic, but merely an unbeliever.
Paul evidently used "heretic" in its ordinary
Greek sense of one who set up his own views
as against those of his cult. Indeed, he uses
the same word concerning himself when he
told Agrippa that "after the straitest haere-
sis, or sect, of our religion I lived a Phari
see." But there was a difference in the applica
tion. Though Paul used this word as one
that Agrippa could understand, he did not
mean that the Pharisees were wrong as
compared with the Saducees. And though
the word is here used in a sense that is not
bad, it is never so used as to differences of
doctrine among Christians. As Greek philos
ophy was based on reason, the Greek was
not only at liberty to go where reason led
him, but was fairly bound to do so ; whereas,
Christianity being based on revelation, the
Christian was bound to hold to that which
had been revealed. And so while Paul in
writing to the Galatians includes heresies
among the works of the flesh, he does not
treat them as ordinary sins of weakness. For
example, he speaks to the Corinthians of be-

36 THE UNKNOWN GOD
ing carnal-minded, and quarreling about
baptism, as pardonable sins for which they
should repent, but he does not class these
with heresies, for he says: "There must be
also heresies among you, that they which
are approved may be made manifest among
you." Peter refers to "damnable" or "de
structive" heresies; and the other New
Testament writers do not use the word in
reference to false teachings, for the appar
ent reason that the word was not strong
enough to express their disapproval of such
teachings. It is perfectly plain to any fair-
minded person that the apostles did their
utmost to hold the church to the ideal of
"one God, one faith, one baptism."
It was only natural that false teachings
should increase as the church grew, and
some persons were attracted to it for other
reasons than a desire for eternal salvation.
It is quite possible that others than Ana
nias and Sapphira were drawn by prospects
of gain through the communal system which
first existed. It is quite possible that others
than Simon the Samarian were attracted by
a belief that the apostles had introduced a
new system of sorcery that put the magic of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 37
the rest of the sorcerers out of business. At
any rate it is certain that in the writings of
John, the last of the New Testament writers,
there are more, and more specific references
to heresies than in all the rest. He is the only
one who mentions any heretical sect by
name, referring in Revelations to "the doc
trine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate."
Flis reference to_the doctrine of Balaam is,
of course, to the Old Testament heresy,
which he defines as a teaching "to eat things
sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornica
tion." It is obvious that one must seek out
side of the New Testament for e>xact infor
mation as to what the heresies of that period
were. Or at least it is impossible to grasp
fully the meaning of the New Testament
writers in their references to heresies with
out some light from the outside.
In a search for information of this kind,
the most reliable source of instruction is the
writings of the early fathers of the church.
Of, these there were five who were contem
porary to some extent with the apostles, and
who are accepted by Protestants and Catho
lics alike as reliable witnesses in their state
ments of fact. Of these five, the one who

38 THE UNKNOWN GOD
makes the most specific statements as to
heresies, is Ignatius, who says in his epistle
to the Trallians, i. e., the Christians of the
city of Tralles, in Asia Minor :
For there are some vain talkers and deceivers,
not Christians but Christ-betrayers, bearing about
the name of Christ, in deceit, and corrupting the
word of the gospel. * * * For they alienate
Christ from the Father, and the law from Christ.
They also calumniate his being. born of the Vir
gin ; they are ashamed of his cross ; they deny his
passion ; and they do not believe his resurrection.
They introduce God as a being unknown ; they
suppose Christ to be unbegotten ; and as to the
Spirit they do not admit that he exists. Some of
them say that the Son is a mere man, and that the
Faher, Son and Holy Spirit are but the same per
son ; and that the creation is the work of God, not
by Christ, but by some other strange power.
These were doctrines of the Gnostics, who
were not a compact sect, but included all
those who professed a knowledge of divine
things outside of Christian revelation, and
whose views covered every phase of what
we now call New Thought. It will be noted
that the central points of attack were the
three doctrines known to us as the Virgin
Birth, the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 39
The assault on the dual nature of Jesus took
two forms ; one that he was only a man ; the
other that he was only divine, and that his
appearance as a man was phantasmal, and
not real.
Ignatius comes back to this last doctrine
again, in this same epistle, as follows : "Stop
your ears therefore, when anyone speaks to
you at variance with Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, who was descended from David, and
was also of Mary; who was truly begotten
of God and of the Virgin, but not after the
same manner. For, indeed, God and man are
not the same. Lie truly assumed a body ; for
'the Word was made flesh,' and lived upon
earth without sin. * * * Fie did in reality
both eat and drink. * * * He really, and not
merely in appearance, was crucified and
died." He reverts to this again in his epistle
to the Smyrneans, where, speaking of
Christ, he says: "Fie suffered all these
things for us, and he suffered them really,
and not in appearance only, even as also He
truly rose again. But not as some unbe
lievers, who are ashamed of the formation
of man, and the cross, and death itself, af
firm, that in appearance only, and not in

40 THE UNKNOWN GOD
truth, he took a body of the Virgin, and
suffered only in appearance."
Ignatius makes what is probably a full
summary of all the heresies up to his time
in his epistle to the Philadelphians, as fol
lows: "If anyone confesses Christ Jesus' the
Lord, but denies the God of the law and of
the prophets, saying that the Father of
Christ is not the Maker of heaven and earth,
he has not continued in the truth any more
than his father the devil, and is a disciple of
Simon Magus, not of the Holy Spirit. If
anyone says there is one God, and also con
fesses Christ Jesus, but thinks the Lord to
be a mere man, and not the only-begotten
God, and Wisdom, and the Word of God,
and deems Him to consist merely of a soul
and body, such an one is a serpent, that
preaches deceit and error for the destruction
of men. And such a man is poor in under
standing, even as by name he is an Ebionite.
* * * If anyone confesses the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost and praises the
creation, but calls the incarnation merely an
appearance, and is ashamed of the passion,
such an one has denied the faith not less
than the Jews who killed Christ. If anyone

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 4 1
confesses these things, and that God the
Word did dwell in a human body, * * * but
affirms that unlawful unions are a good
thing, and places the highest happiness in
pleasure, as does the man who is falsely
called a Nicolaitan, this person can neither
be a lover of God, nor a lover of Christ, but
is a corrupter of his own flesh."
It is in the light of these heretical doc
trines that we must interpret the Apostles'
Creed, which was the church's answer to
heresy, as well as its fortification against
heresy. It means that Christ was really be
gotten, conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of
the Virgin Mary ; that he actually suffered —
felt pain — under Pontius Pilate; was actu
ally crucified, dead and buried; that there
was nothing phantasmal or allegorical about
it. And further, it must be remembered that
every statement of this creed is an article of
faith, based on revelation. There is not a
statement in it that could be ascertained by
reason, or by any earthly means. It is the
credo. Ignatius furnishes the names of some her
esiarchs in his epistle to the Trallians : "Do
ye also avoid those wicked offshoots of his

42" THE UNKNOWN GOD
(Satan's), Simon his firstborn son, and Me-
nander, and Basilides, and all his wicked
mob of followers — the worshippers of a
man, whom also the prophet Jeremiah pro
nounces accursed. Flee also the impure
Nicolaitans, falsely so-called, who are
lovers of pleasure, and given to calumnious
speeches." This Father wrote somewhere
about the year A. D. 100, and Basilides
reached the climax of his fame a few years
later than that, but had probably taught
earlier. He is said to have been a Simonian,
and Hippolytus, one of the earliest writers
against heresies, says Basilides claimed that
Matthew, the Evangelist, revealed to him
"certain secret doctrines which had been spe
cially communicated to himself by Christ."
Hippolytus also says of the Simonians:
"They do whatever they please, affirming
that they are redeemed by his (Simon's)
grace. For nothing is the cause of damna
tion, supposing a man to act wickedly, for
evil is evil not through the nature of things,
but by convention." Justin Martyr, who
wrote some fifty years later than Ignatius,
adds the names of Saturninus, Valentine,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 43
and Marcion, who, he says, is still living at
that time.
For yet more specific information we must
drop still farther down in the second cen
tury to Irenaeus, who was presumably a na
tive of Asia Minor, though his writings
were made while he was Bishop of Lyons,
France. Fie states that he was a contempo
rary and personal acquaintance of Polycarp,
the apostolic father, who was a disciple of
St. John the Evangelist. It is to his work,
commonly known by the title "Against
Fleresies," that we are indebted for much of
our detailed knowledge of the earliest
heresies, and, incidentally, for much infor
mation as -to the customs and faith of the
church in apostolic times. But this book was
not given this title by Irenaeus. He called
it "A Refutation and Subversion of Knowl-
elge, Falsely So Called;" and there is a mani
fest significance in the similarity of this title
to "the oppositions of science falsely so
called," which Paul warned Timothy to
avoid. This book covers all phases of Gnosticism,
which was the professed knowledge of its
adherents; and which was in fact a most

44 THE UNKNOWN GOD
heterogeneous and shifting mixture of re
ligion, philosophy and magic. It covers the
religious deductions of "the wisdom of the
Greeks," which Paul pronounced "foolish
ness," and which is now commonly known to
be foolishness from a scientific point of view.
The argument of Plato's Timaeus is based
on astronomy that treated the sun and
planets as revolving about the earth, on
mathematics founded on mystical numbers
and letters, 'on physics !:hat held the so-
called elements, earth, air, fire and water, to
be convertible forms of a single unknown
essence. And yet from these premises were
deduced complete systems of all existences,
spiritual as well as material, and of the cre
ation and regulation of the universe. It was
against these theories, so far as they were
in opposition to the revelation of Jesus
Christ, in addition to other errors, that the
early church contended. That is why Paul
wrote to the Colossians: "Beware lest any
man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the world, and not after
Christ." That is why he wrote to the Ro
mans: "I would have you wise unto that

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 45
which is good, and simple unto that which
is evil."
And there is something in this defiance of
the science of their day, by the apostles, that
challenges attention; for as we look back
over the ages, we realize that the science of
today has been the foolishness of tomorrow,
even to men of science. And furthermore
we know that with all its mighty achieve
ments in ascertaining the processes of na
ture, science stands absolutely without the
threshhold as to their primary causes, even
in the most common things. Consider a com
monplace mystery. Every man knows that
in the spring the cherry tree puts forth its
leaves, and later its blossoms, and still later
it produces its fruit. But if I ask how the
cherry tree reaches its nerve fingers down
into the great storehouse of nature, and se
lects the emerald for its leaves, the alabaster
for its bloom, and the ruby for its fruit ? the
wizard Burbank stands as dumb as the most
ignorant child. Much more as to spiritual
things. When Zophar asked Job: "Canst
thou by searching find out God?" Job an
swered : "Ask now the beasts and thev shall

46 THE UNKNOWN GOD
teach thee ; and the fowls of the air and they
shall tell thee.
"Or speak to the earth and it shall teach
thee; and the fishes of the sea shall declare
unto thee.
"Who knoweth not in all these things that
the hand of the Lord hath brought this?"
But when the voice from the whirlwind
asked: "Flave the gates of death been
opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the
doors of the shadow of death?" Job an
swered: "Who is he that hideth counsel
without knowledge? therefore have I ut
tered that I understood not ; things too won
derful, which I knew not."
But to resume, Irenaeus says that the first
notable teacher of heresies was Simon the
Samarian, who, after his unsuccessful ef
fort to purchase the power of conferring the
Holy Spirit, returned to the former sorceries
with which he had "bewitched the people of
Samaria," but with startling additions from
his Christian experience. Irenaeus says:
"This man then, was glorified by many as if
he were a god; and he taught that it was
himself who appeared among the Jews as the
Son, but descended in Samaria as the

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 47
Father, while he came to other nations in the
character of the Holy Spirit." The suc
cessor of Simon was Menander, who like
wise claimed that he, himself, was the one
sent by the Supreme Being for the salva
tion of the world. After him came Sat
urninus, who "laid it down as a truth, that
the Savior was without birth, without body,
without figure, but was by supposition a vis
ible man." This genius also taught that two
kinds of men had been created, one wicked
and one good — that the wicked were assisted
by demons, and the good by the Savior.
While Saturninus taught his faith in Syria,
Basilides was spreading a somewhat simi
lar doctrine at Alexandria, of the phan
tasmal manifestation of Christ. He taught
that Christ transfigured himself and others
at will; and that, "he did not himself suffer
death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene,
being compelled, bore the cross in his stead;
so that this latter being transfigured by him,
that he might be thought to be Jesus, was
crucified, through ignorance and error,
while Jesus himself received the - form of
Simon, and standing by, laughed at them."
Carpocrates, the next mentioned by Iren-

48 THE UNKNOWN GOD
aeus, appears to have been an original Uni
tarian. ITe held "that Jesus was the son of
Joseph, and was just like other men, with the
exception that he differed from them in this
respect, that inasmuch as his soul was stead
fast and pure, he prefectly remembered
those things which he had witnessed within
the sphere of the unbegoften God." But he
emphasized the Simonian encroachment on
modern thought. Like all the other Gnostic
teachers, Carpocrates taught his followers
that they were free to commit sensual sins,
but his basis for this doctrine was "that
things are evil or good, simply in virtue of
human opinion."
Cerinthus, the next heresiarch, had views
similar to those of Carpocrates in part. "He
represented Jesus as having not been born
of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph
and Mary according to fhe ordinary course
of human generation, while he nevertheless
was more righteous, prudent and wise than
other men." The Ebionites also held that
Jesus was only a man. They used only the
gospel of Matthew, and repudiated the
Apostle Paul entirely. The Nicolaitans were
alleged followers of Nicolas, who was one

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 49
of the first seven deacons ordained by the
apostles. Irenaeus says of them: "They
lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The
character of these men is very plainly
pointed out in the Apocalypse of John, as
teaching that it is a matter of indifference
to practice adultery, and to eat things sacri
ficed to idols. Wherefore the Word has also
spoken of them thus : 'But this thou hast
that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans,
which I also hate.' "
While these heretics differed in many par
ticulars, there was, in addition to their com
mon doctrine of license to sin, another com
mon characteristic of their teachings. They
all attacked the dual nature of Jesus Christ.
Irenaeus, in summing" up their teachings,
says that some of them, "will have it that
the Word and Christ never came into this
world ; that the Savior, too, never became in
carnate, nor suffered, but that he descended
like a dove upon the dispensational Jesus;
and that as soon as he had declared the un
known Father, he did again ascend into the
pleroma. Some, however, make the asser
tion that this dispensational Jesus did be
come incarnate, and suffered, whom they

50 THE UNKNOWN GOD
represent as having passed through Mary
just as water through a tube; but others
allege him to be the son of the demiurge,
upon whom the dispensational Jesus de
scended; while others, again, say that Jesus
was born from Joseph and Mary, and that
the Christ from above descended upon him,
being without flesh, and impassible. But ac
cording to the opinion of no one of the here
tics was the Word of God made flesh. For
if anyone carefully examines the systems of
them all, he will find that the Word of God
is brought in by all of them as not having
become incarnate and impassible, as is also
the Christ from above. Others consider him
to have been manifested as a transfigured
man; but they maintain him to have been
neither born nor to- have become incarnate ;
while others hold that he did not assume
human form at all, but that, as a dove, he
did descend upon that Jesus who was born
from Mary. Therefore, the Lord's disciple
pointing them all out as false witnesses,
says: 'And the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us.' "
In explanation of the terms used in this
passage, it should be remembered that all

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 5 I
of these Gnostic theories were by-products
of Platonism; and all of them had the fea
ture of an unknown Supreme First Cause,
who is here referred to as "the unknown
Father." This supreme being was said to
have created or begotten subordinate deities,
one of whom was the demiurge, or- creator of
the earth. The assembly, or whole body of
these deities, or demons as they are called in
the New Testament, was called the "ple
roma." The heresiarchs above named are the only
ones specified by Irenaeus as -contemporary
with the apostles. He mentions that Cerin-
thus was especially obnoxious to St. John,
and gives a statement of Polycarp that on
one occasion John, when going to bathe, at
Ephesus, saw Cerinthus in the bathhouse,
and at once ran out, exclaiming: "Let us
fly, lest even the bathhouse fall down, be
cause Cerinthus/ the enemy of truth, is with
in." It is very evident that they, or others
who held similar doctrines, had very quickly
invaded the churches, from references to
these characteristic doctrines. Thus Jude
says: "For there are certain men crept in
privily, even they who were of old written

52 THE UNKNOWN GOD
of beforehand unto this condemnation, un
godly men, turning the grace of -our God
into lasciviousness, and denying our only
Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. * * * Woe
unto them ! for they went in the way of Cain,
and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for
h'ire, and perished in the gainsaying of
Korah. These are they who are hidden rocks
in your love-feasts when they feast with
you." Indeed, Jude indicates that these dan
gerous characters were Gnostics in his state
ment that "these rail at whatsoever things
they know not; and what they understand
naturally, like the creatures without reason,
in these things they are destroyed."
So Peter also says : "Among you also
there shall be false teachers, who shall priv
ily bring in destructive heresies, denying
even the Master that bought them, bringing
upon themselves swift destruction. And
many shall follow their lascivious doings.
* * * forsaking the right way, they went
astray, having followed the way of Balaam,
the son of Beor, who loved the hire of
wrong-doing." These heretics were quick to
take advantage of Paul's distinction between
living under the law and living under grace

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 53
without sin; wherefore Paul complains to
the Romans that "we be slanderously re
ported, and as some affirm that we say, let
us do evil that good may come, — whose con
demnation is just."
It is manifest that in the epistles the
apostles were not preaching abstractions ;
that they were fighting "not as one beating
the air;" but were striking at present sin,
and notably at these two Gnostic teachings.
And nowhere is this more manifest than in
the writings of St. John, for as Matthew
Arnold notes : "The two great points of that
close cousin of the Fourth Gospel, that docu
ment which we call First Epistle of St. John,
are these: Jesus Christ come in the flesh!
and: He that doeth righteousness is right
eous." But Matthew Arnold, in applying the
latter exclusively to his doctrine of "sweet
reasonableness," overlooks its direct applica
tion to the heresies of the day, of which the
denial of the dual nature of Christ and the
affirmance of freedom to sin were the twin
characteristics. And this is true as to many
of his citations in the same line from the Old
Testament, as well as the New; for the He
brews were always in contact with idolaters

54 THE UNKNOWN GOD
who, like the Midianites, held to this oriental
idea of sensual indulgence as a religious
thing; and the preaching against it was
necessarily constant and vigorous.
A consideration of the passages quoted
above, and others of similar import in the
epistles, will prepare one for acceptance of
the testimony of Irenaeus as to the special
purpose of the fourth gospel, which is as
follows :
John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this
faith, and seeks, by the proclamation of the gos
pel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had
been disseminated among men, and a long time
previously by those termed Nicolaitaris, who are
an off-shoot of that "knowledge" falsely so called,
that he might confound them, and persuade them
that there is but one God, who made all things
by His Word; and not as they allege, that the
Creator was one, but the Father of the Lord
another; and that the Son of the Creator was,
forsooth, one, but the Christ from above another,
who also continued impassible, descending upon
Jesus, the Son of the Creator, and flew back again
into His Pleroma ; and that Monogenes was the
beginning, but Logos was the true son of Mono-
genes ; and that the creation to which we belong
was not made by the primary God, but by some
power lying far below Him, and shut off from

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 55
communion with the things invisible and inef
fable. The disciple of the Lord therefore, desiring to
put an end to all such doctrines, and to establish
the rule of truth in the church that there is one
Almighty God, who made all things by His Word,
both visible and invisible ; showing at the same
time, that by the Word, through whom God made
the creation, He also bestowed salvation on the
men included in the creation ; thus commenced
his teaching in the gospel : "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. The same was in the be
ginning with God. All things were made by
Him, and without Him was nothing made. What
was made was life in Him, and the life was the
light of men. And the light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
But the ingenious Gnostics of later date
took even these words and quoted them in
support of their heresy, saying that the "all
the things" made by God meant "all things
in the Pleroma," and not in the world.
Irenaeus, however, shows that this interpre
tation is futile, saying : "John, however, does
himself put this matter beyond all contro
versy on our part, when he says : 'He was
in the world, and the world was made by
Him, and the world knew Him not. 'He
came unto his own, and his own received him
not.' * * * While the gospel affirms plain-

56 THE UNKNOWN GOD
ly that by the Word, which was in the begin
ning with God, all things were made, which
AVord, he says, 'was made flesh, and dwelt
among us.' "
This statement of the purpose of the
Fourth Gospel is confirmed in other ways.
For example, Luke and John, who were the
latest evangelists, are the only ones who
make mention of Christ's eating after his
resurrection, and of his flesh being" felt by
his disciples, John's gospel being especially
full on these points. Presumably when the
earlier gospels were written, the importance
of noting these facts had not been shown by
the heretical teaching that the resurrected
Christ was phantasmal, or in appearance
only. But John makes an express declara
tion of purpose, immediately after his ac
count of the doubt of Thomas, in these
words : "Many other signs therefore did
Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which
are not written in this book: but these are
written, that ye may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God." The only ob
jection that has been offered to the statement
of Irenaeus that the opening words of the
gospel of John , were intended to "put an
end" to these heresies, is that the gospel is

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 57
"not polemical." Centainly it is not polem
ical in form, and it would have been a breach
of literary propriety to make it so. It is
simply a statement of facts, as facts, which
of themselves refute the heresies. But if any
one desires a polemic by St. John against
the two heresies that Christ was not God
manifest in the flesh, and that Christians
were licensed to sin, he has only to turn to
his first epistle, and read:
That which was from the beginning, that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with
our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands
handled, concerning the Word of life (and the
life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear
witness, and declared unto you the life, the eter
nal life, which was with the1 Father) ; that which
we have seen and heard declare we unto you also,
that ye also may have fellowship with us. * * *
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we
have fellowship one with another, and the blood
of Jesus Hi.s Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we
say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us. Is we confess our sins he is
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say
we have not sinned we make Him a liar, and His
Word is not in us. My little children, these
things write " I unto you that ye may not sin.
* * * Beloved, no new commandment write I

58 THE UNKNOWN GOD
unto you, but an old commandment which ye had
from the beginning. * * * Little children, it
is the last hour; and as ye heard that antichrist
cometh, even now have there arisen many anti
christs, whereby ye know it is the last hour. They
went out from us, but they were not of us ; for if
they had been of us, they would have continued
with us; but they went out, that they might be
made manifest that they all are not of us. And
ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye
know all things. I have not written to you be
cause ye know not the truth, but because ye know
it, and because no lie is of the truth.
Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus
is the Christ. This is, the antichrist, even he that
denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever
denieth the Son the same hath not the Father ; he
that confe.sseth the Son hath the Father also. As
for you, let that abide in you which ye have heard
from the beginning. If that which ye heard from
the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in
the Son, and in the Father. * * * Whoso
ever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sin-
neth hath not seen Him, neither knoweth Him.
My little children, let no man lead you astray ; he
that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He
is righteous ; he that doeth sin is of the devil, for
the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end
was the Son of God manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil. * * * Be
loved, believe not every spirit, but prove the
spirits, whether they are of God; because many

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 5>9
false prophets are gone out into the world. Here
by know ye the Spirit of God ; every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is of God ; and every .spirit that confesseth not
Jesus is not of God; and this is the spirit of the
antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh ;
and now it is in the world already. * * * Who
soever believeth that Jesus " is the Christ is be
gotten of God. * * * And who is he that
overcometh the world, but he that believeth that
Jesus is the Son of God? * * * If we receive
the witness of men, the witness of God is greater ;
for the witness of God is this, that He hath
borne witness concerning his Son. Fie that be
lieveth on the Son of God hath the witness in
him ; he that believeth not God hath made Him a
liar; because he hath not believed in the witness
that God hath borne concerning His Son. And
the witness is this, that God gave unto u.s eternal
life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the
Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of
God hath not the life. * * * And we know
that the Son of God is come, and hath given us
an understanding, that we know Flim that is true,
and we. are in Him that is true, even in Hi.s Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal
life. Plain and explicit as these words are, it
seems certain that John himself lived to hear
them perverted by ingenious heretics, who
maintained that Jesus Christ was not God

60 THE UNKNOWN GOD
manifest in the flesh. If so, it must have
been trying even to the aged saint on
Patmos, whose gospel had been the gospel
of love, and whose life had been the life of
love, and who now had come to the time
when,
The soul's dark cabin, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has
made.
Possibly such perversion of his teaching
was the cause of his writing these impres
sive words, so in contrast with his nature:
"I testify unto every man that heareth the
words of the prophecy of this book, if any
man shall add unto them God shall add unto
him the plagues which are written in this
book: and if any man shall take away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God
shall take away his part from the tree of
life, and out of the holy city, which are writ
ten in this book."
But his warning was ineffectual, for truth
is no more eternal than error, and does not
spring" up again more certainly when
"crushed to earth." If a divine messenger
should appear on earth today, and make a
revelation, and print it, and copyright it,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 6 1
somebody would attempt to improve on it
before the copyright had expired. This has
been the fate of every religion that has been
promulgated in the world, and it is not sur
prising that heresies were rife in an age
when the world was saturated with "philos
ophy," and when everybody dabbled in it.
Surely, John had occasion to write : "Blessed
is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy
of this book."
And in this connection it may be noted
that Irenaeus has some cause for complaint
of misrepresentation, though in his case it
was probably a mere misunderstanding. In
his answer to these heresies he points to the
unity of doctrine in the church throughout
the world, beginning with these words :
"The church, though dispersed throughout
the whole world, even to the ends of the
earth, has received from the apostles, and
their disciples this faith: (She believes) in
one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all
things that are in them; and in one Christ
Jesus, who became incarnate for our salva
tion; and in the Floly Spirit, who proclaimed
through the prophets the dispensations of

62 THE UNKNOWN GOD
God, and the advents, and the birth from a
virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection
from dead, and the ascension into heaven in
the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our
Lord," etc. It has been assumed from this
that the Apostles Creed, or something very
similar to it, had been formulated prior to
this time and was used in the church; but
this is not a tenable historical proposition.
If there had been any set formula, Irenaeus
would have known it, and would have used
it as a direct authoritative answer to these
heresies. But he refers to these quoted
words only as "this teaching," "this faith,"
"this tradition." Moreover, the existence
of any set formula would have destroyed the
force of his argument in presenting this
faith, for he presents its unity as in contrast
with the divergent and conflicting features
of the heresies. He says he has "judged it
well to point out, first of all, in what respects
the very fathers of this fable (i. e., the here
sies) differ among themselves, as if they
were inspired by different spirits of error.
For this fact forms an a priori proof that
the truth proclaimed by the church is im-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 63
movable, and that the theories of these men
are but a tissue of falsehoods."
If there had been a fixed creed there
would have been no force in the fact that the
church was immovable. But there is a
logical force in his declaration that, "the
church, having received this preaching" and
this faith, although scattered throughout the
whole world, yet, as if occupying" but one ¦
house, carefully preserves it. She also be
lieves these points of doctrine just as if she
had but one soul, and one and the same
heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches
them, and hands them down, with perfect
harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth.
For although the languages of the world are
dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is
one and the same." Obviously if there had
been any formula, it must have been in some
one language, and in other languages there
would have been simply a translation, which
is a very different thing from "the import of
a tradition." And this is a difference which
neither Irenaeus nor his opponents could
have overlooked. The purity of the Chris
tian doctrine at this time was clue to the con
stant and vigorous opposition of the apos-

64 THE UNKNOWN GOD
ties and their disciples to anything inconsis
tent with the revelation they had received.
The church never attempted a creed or fixed
formula, until it was driven to it by heresy;
but after it started in creed-making it cer
tainly produced some things that, like Paul's
epistles, are "hard to be understood." And
in my opinion, Athanasius made a notable
1 start in trouble when he undertook to define
the Trinity, and asserted that anyone who
did not accept his definition could not be
saved. And it may well be questioned whether
any of the additions that have ever been
made to what we know as the Apostles
Creed have done more good than harm; for
the additions are practically all efforts to cir
cumscribe and limit the infinite, which by
their very incomprehensibility have led many
men to reject the simple faith of apostolic
times, which of itself should mark the boun
daries of orthodoxy. I take it that the real
problems of Christianity today are much the
same that they were in the time of the first
heresies. The really dangerous assaults are
not on any of the features that distinguish
our modern sects, but on the Apostles Creed

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 65
itself. But if you are inclined to the ortho
doxy of that creed, you need not be dis
couraged. You are fighting the same battle
that was fought by Irenaeus, and Polycarp,
and Paul, and John. And you have no more
reason to be ashamed of it than they had.
The simple faith is still "foolishness" to the
Greeks ; but science and philosophy are mak
ing no stronger bluff today than they did
eighteen centuries ago. The simple faith is
still greater than the wisdom of men. It may
be more attractive to the rich and the great,
but it is still the gospel of the poor. It is not a
prize for study or learning, but is still
equally accessible to all men. It is in sum and
substance the simple, yet infinite belief that,
So the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds,
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought ;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
Tn roarings round the coral reef.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH.
There is no doctrine of the Christian
church that has been assailed, from the be
ginning", more aggressively and persistently
than that of the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
And it is entirely natural that it should have
been questioned. When it was announced to
Mary, her answering question indicated her
belief in its impossibility. Joseph did not be
lieve it until its truth was especially reveal
ed to him. What wonder then that outsiders
questioned it ; and that this and its twin doc
trine of the Incarnation were the storm cen
ters of the heresies in the church before the
New Testament was written? It was this
fact that caused them to be immovably fix
ed in the Apostles Creed, or the baptismal
formula that preceded it. Today they are
doctrines of the Catholic church, the Greek
church, and of all Protestant churches that
accept the Apostles Creed.
The real wonder is not that it was ques
tioned, but from what source it could have
originated if it were an invention of man;
for the idea was absolutely novel at the time
of its origin. Ana this fact must be keot
in mind in the consideration of the scrip-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 67
tural basis of the doctrine, for it is not pos
sible to comprehend language except in the
light of the conditions of its, use, and the
state of knowledge at the time of its use.
At this period neither the Jews nor any
other people had any idea of reproduction
except through the cohabitation of a male
and a female. In Jewish thought all life was
created by male and female, and all life was
so preserved in Noah's ark. This idea was
universal for centuries, and it is only in com
paratively recent times that science has
made us acquainted with the myriad forms
of asexual and bisexual life that have exist
ed all the time. To the older atheists and
skeptics reproduction without the connec
tion of male and female was contrary to the
laws of nature. To the modern materi
alist and evolutionist sex is merely a matter
of. development, subject to remarkable vari
ations, which are manifest in many common
forms. The most commonly understood instance
is that of the honey bee. With this insect
the queen, or one perfect female in the hive,
has connection with males, but the semi
nal fluid is deposited in a sac in her body,

68 THE UNKNOWN GOD
and is applied at her will to such eggs as
she chooses. The eggs that are not fructi
fied hatch male bees, or drones, only. The
fructified eggs hatch imperfect females, or
workers. If a queen is kept from her hyme
neal flight by clipping her wings, her eggs
hatch males only. If she makes her flight
with males of a different variety, the work
ers hatched are hybrids, but the drones are
pure-blooded. If it becomes desirable to
have an additional queen, the workers se
cure this result by enlarging a cell in which
one of the fructified eggs has been deposited,
and feeding the larva with a special kind of
food, whereupon it develops into a perfect
female. Occasionally a worker, whose or
gans do not permit connection with a male,
will lay eggs, and such eggs always hatch
males. But in the case of the bee there are males
present, and fructification may be imagined
to occur in some unknown way. A still more
conclusive example of the "miracle" of vir
gin birth may be seen by anyone, in the late
spring or early summer, by stepping unto a
garden and observing" a colony of plant lice,
which, unhappily, may be found in almost

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 69
any garden. At that season these insects
are all wingless, and all females. The eggs
are fructified in the female by some pro
cess of her own, and the young are hatched
within her, and brought forth alive. As
their reproduction is very rapid, several in
dividuals may be seen in the act of giving
birth at almost any time. But stranger still,
later in the season the winged plant lice ap
pear among them, and these are both male
and female, which cohabit as other insects;
and the females lay eggs that remain inac
tive during the winter, and hatch new
broods of wingless females in the spring.
The appearance of the winged insects is ap
parently clue to a change of temperature, for
if the colony is in a greenhouse or other
warm location, they do not appear. By
keeping them in such surroundings, a colony
has befen kept for four years, in a state of
continued reproduction, without any males
among them, and presumably, this might be
continued for an indefinite period.
So contrary was this to the universal opin
ion of the time, that when Bonnet announc
ed, in 1745, the discovery of the successive
generation of virgin plant lice, it was utterly

70 THE UNKNOWN GOD
discredited; and nearly a century passed be
fore the fact was fully confirmed and recog
nized by scientists as to these and other
forms of life. At the present time, not only
is parthenogenesis a well-known phase of
nature, but in some of the lower organisms
fructification has been accomplished artifi
cially, by scientists, through physical and
chemical agencies. In view of these unques
tionable truths, seventeen centuries of revil-
ings of the Virgin Birth as contrary to the
laws of nature may forthwith be consigned
to the waste-paper basket.
The Jews and other peoples of the time
of Christ never dreaued of such things as
these. The idea of a virgin birth was equal
ly foreign to the Hebrew scriptures and the
pagan mythologies. In the latter there are
numerous cases of alleged divine fatherhood,
but in all of them the divinity assumes so ,ie
earthly form, and has physical connec .on
with the mother. The nearest approac.i to
it in classic mythology is the birth of Perseus,
in which case Jove fell as a shower of gold in
to the lap of Danae. The New Testament
writers were dealing with a new proposition ;
and from, the purely historical standpoint,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS fl
this ignorance of the existing wonders of na
ture in reproduction will explain why no one
of them calls attention to the fulfillment of
this prophecy of Jeremiah (xxxi, 22) : "Turn
again, O Virgin of Israel, turn again to these
thy cities. How long wilt thou go about, O
thou blacksliding daughter? for the Lord
hath created a, new thing in the earth. A
woman shall compass a man." The word
rendered "compass" means to "include."
Critics have cudgeled their brains over this
passage for years, but there has never been
any plausible explanation found for it ex
cept the teaching of the Catholic church that
it is a prophecy of the Virgin Birth — a wo
man shall include a man — the female shall
give birth without any connection with a
male. It may be objected that such a lack of con
ception of a virgin birth is not consistent with
Matthew's adoption of Isaiah's sign: "Be
hold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call his name Immanuel." It is
hardly questionable that the Jews did not re
gard this as a Messianic prophecy ; and it is
certain that none of them understood it to
mean that a virgin should conceive and bear

J2 THE UNKNOWN GOD
a son while she remained a virgin. They
applied these, words to the son of the proph
etess described in the folowing chapter,
though his name was not called Immanuel,
or God With Us, either by his mother or by
anyone else, but Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or
Hastening to the Spoil. Moreover the proph
ecy continues, with an appearance of strange
inconsistency, as to this Immanuel : "And he
shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of
stumbling and for a rock of offense to both
the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a
snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And
many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be
broken, and be snared, and be taken. Bind
thou up the testimony, seal the law among
my disciples. And I will wait for Jehovah,
that hideth his face from the house of Jacob,
and I will look for him. * * % For unto us a
child is born, unto us a son is given; and
the government shall be upon his shoulders :
and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Fath
er, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of
his government and of peace there shall be
no end, upon the throne of David, and upon
his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 73
it with justice and with righteousness from
henceforth even forever. * * * And it shall
come to pass in that day, that the root of
Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the
peoples, unto him sTiall the nations seek."
What had the obscure and insignificant
Maher-shalal-hash-baz to do with this eter
nal kingdom? If this prophecy was not
fulfilled in Jesus Christ, it has never been
fulfilled. And so of all the other prophe
cies. Of the dozens of professed Messiahs
who have arisen during the ages, not one
has fulfilled any Messianic prophecy. This
is the consensus of the world. The Jew
stands today still awaiting the Messiah, but
in doubt whether the Messiah is to be a per
son or a time — a period of restoration.
In regard to the Hebrew word "almah"
which is here rendered "virgin," no one can
fairly dispute the Jewish contention that it
commonly signifies only an unmarried
young woman of marriageable age. The
significant points in the controversy as to
the word are these : Matthew took his state
ment of the text from the Septuagint, which
presented the impartial judgment of seven
ty of the most distinguished Hebrew scholars

74 THE UNKNOWN GOD
of the period immediately preceding its use,
as to the meaning of the word in this con
nection. In the Septuagint are two places,
and only two, where "almah" is translated
"parthenos" or "virgin." One is in the case
of Rebekah at the well (Gen. xxiv, 43) and
the other this passage in Isaiah. In the
passage in Proverbs, "the way of a man
with a maid," which is often cited by He
brew authorities against this use of the
word, the Septuagint reads "bealmaiv," and
translates, "the way of a man in his youth,"
which is much more consistent with the re
mainder of the passage. But the expres
sion in Isaiah is "ha almah," or "the virgin,"
indicating a special significance; and as a
"sign," the birth of a son to "a young
woman" could not be a surprising thing to
Ahaz, or to anyone else. Under these cir
cumstances, the impartial judgment of the
Seventy, before the present question arose,
is certainly not an authority that is to be
set aside lightly.
In the phases of the modern assault on the
divinity of Jesus, the attack on the Virgin
Birth has taken a new form, in the alleged
"silence of the scriptures" on the subject, out-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 75
side of the opening chapters of Matthew
and Luke. This argument is stated by Dr.
Orr (The Virgin Birth of Christ, p. 91) as
follows: "Why, it is asked, if the miracu
lous birth is a fact pertaining to the essence
of the Gospel, do we never hear any more
about it? Matthew and Luke themselves
are silent about it after the first chapters;
the other Gospels, Mark's and John's, are
devoid of all trace of it; there is no whis
per of it in the Book of Acts ; Paul and
Peter, the epistle to the Hebrews, the Book
of Revelation, all are silent about it."
The truth of these claims is a question of
the meaning of language, and it is not es
sential to identity of thought that the same
words should always be used. The doctrine
of the Virgin Birth involves two essentials ;
the fatherhood of God, and the motherhood
of a Virgin, the latter excluding the pos
sibility of an ordinary earthly fatherhood.
It is not questioned that Mary was Christ's
mother; and she was the one member of
His family who appears to have given full
credit to His claims during His ministry. She
was present at the crucifixion, and she was
with the disciples on the day of Pentecost.

76 THE UNKNOWN GOD
The real point of assault is the fatherhood of
God; and in what respect are the Evange
lists silent as to this? Without doubt their
most important statements are their records
of the statements of the Master, and as to
these it is necessary to consider but one in
this connection.
Why was Jesus crucified? Was it be
cause Fie claimed to be the Son of God in
the same sense as all other men? Was it
because He claimed to be specialty endowed
by God, or inspired as the prophets had
Deen? Unquestionably not. The one con
trolling question at His trial was that put by
the High Priest: "I adjure thee by the liv
ing God, that thou tell us whether thou art
the Christ, the Son of God." The wording
of the answer varies, but there is no vari
ance in its import. The High Priest pro
nounced it blasphemy, and all present
agreed with him. Jesus made no objection
to their interpretation of His words. It so
happens that the two Evangelists who are
said to be silent as to the miraculous birth
are the ones who are most explicit at this
point. Mark puts the question and answer
in these words: "Art thou the Christ, the

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS T]
Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, "I am:
and ye shall see the Son of man sitting at
the right hand of Power, and coming with
the clouds of heaven." John alone records
the charge preferred by the Jews to Pilate :
"We have a law, and by ,that law he ought
to die, because he made himself the Son of
God." What room for argument here? It
was not blasphemy at the Jewish law to
claim to be a specially endowed man. It
wes not blasphemy to claim- to be a prophet.
If his claim were no more than that, He was
not only going to death unnecessarily, but
He was deceiving His accusers, for they
certainly understood Him to claim more. 'He
could have stopped it all — saved His life,
and prevented their crime — by a word.
And He knew it. If He did not mean that
He was the Son of God as no other man
present, or in the world, was — if He did
not mean to make a claim that was olas-
phemy under the Jewish law, if it were not
true — what merit was there in thus accept
ing the truth of the charge, and submit
ting to death? What excuse. was there for
such a course?
It is noteworthy in this connection that

THE UNKNOWN GOD

neither Mark nor John gives any account
whatever of the childhood of Jesus, and
neither gives his earthly genealogy. Mat
thew and Luke give genealogies which, on
their face, are hopelessly in conflict. Mat
thew makes Joseph, the putative father of
Jesus, the son of Jacob, and derives his de
scent from David through Solomon. Luke,
in our version, appears to make Joseph the
son of Heli, and derives his descent from
David through Nathan. But neither states
that Joseph "begat" Jesus, or was die
father of Jesus ; or that Jesus was the son
of Joseph. Matthew says that: "Jacob be
gat -Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom
was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
Luke says that Jesus, "when he began to
teach, was about thirty years of age, being
the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the
son of Heli." It has naturally been inferred
that what Luke gives is the genealogy of
Mary, which would be indicated if the ar
bitrary punctuation were changed as fol
lows: "was about thirty years of age, (be
ing as was supposed the son of Joseph) the
son of Heli," etc.
There is a singular misapprehension as

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 79
to this interpretation of this genealogy in
Luke. Dr. Orr says : "the idea is a modern
one." (The Virgin Birth of Christ, p. 75)
Dr. Plummer more explicitly asserts: "It
is probable that so obvious a solution, as
that one was the pedigree of Joseph and the
other the pedigree of Mary, Would have
been very soon advocated, if there had been
any reason (except the difficulty) for adopt
ing it. But this solution is not suggested
by anyone until Anninus of Viterbo pro
pounded it, about A. D. 1490." (Internation
al Critical Commentary, Luke, p. 103.) As
a matter of fact, this interpretation was giv
en at length in the second century by Irena
eus, in his work against heresies (Book 3,
chaps. 21, 22), as if it were a matter of com
mon understanding in the church at that
time. He also gives a very sufficient rea
son for it by pointing out that the Messiah
could not come through Joseph's line/ as
given by Matthew, because it came through
Jechoniah and Joachim, who had been
cursed, and whose descendants had been ex
cluded from the succession. Irenaeus ar-
gties that as the promise to David was that
the Messiah, should be "of the fruit of his

SO THE UNKNOWN GOD
body," 2 Sam. vii, 12; Ps. 132, 11, and not
"of the fruit of his loins," descent through
a female was indicated. He also gives the
meaning of Paul's statement that Adam
was "the figure of Him that was to come,"
to be that he was not begotten of man, but
was made by the direct act of God. It is of
interest to note in this connection that Jew
ish writers recognize two distinct genealo
gies 'as seeming to be given for Noah, in the
fourth and fifth chapters . of Genesis, one
showing descent from Shem, and the other
from Cain. The latter is explained by some
Jewish authorities as being the genealogy of
Naamah, the sister of Tubal Cain, who is
said to have been Noah's wife. (Jewish
Encyc. Titles, Genealogy and Noah.) .
Flow do Mark and John dispose of gen
ealogy? Mark sums it up in his opening
words : "The beginning of the .gospel of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God." John, like
wise, refers only to the divine fatherhood:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God. * * * And the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us." After their opening state
ments both pass at once to the baptism of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 8 1
Jesus, which was the beginning of his gos
pel. There was nothing unnatural in this.
The calling of the Apostles was to preach the
gospel and it was unquestionably taught by
word of mouth long before it was reduced to
writing". The gospel of Mark was presumably
the first written, and it purports to be the
gospel only, in its opening words : "The be
ginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ." Mat
thew and Luke presumably added their open
ing chapters to explain how Jesus, who
was taught by all to be the Son of God,
came to be known as the son of Joseph. This
having been fully done by them, there was
no occasion for a repetition of it by John.
The mere fact -that a historical writer
deals only with a certain period raises no
presumption as to his view of things in oth
er periods, unless it be of assent to what is
commonly accepted concerning them. If the
fact that all of the Evangelists devote most
of their attention to the teachings of Jesus,
before and after his resurrection, reflects
any discredit on the record of his birth,
which is made by only two of them, what
should be said of a Flistory of England that
makes no mention of King Alfred the Great,

82 THE UNKNOWN GOD
on one hand arid King George the Third, on
the other? That is the case as to Macau-
lay's History of England; but no sane per
son imagines that it implies any disblief in,
or ignorance of, those monarchs. To argue
that the omission of Mark and John to re
cord the birth of Jesus implies discredit of
the records of Matthew and Luke is no more
reasonable than to contend that it implies
that he was not born of woman at all, as
was claimed by some of the Gnostics.
But all of the Evangelists do speak of
Mary as the mother of Jesus, and of God as
his father, in the plainest terms, and these
are the essential features of the divine birth.
Mark records in his first chapter the wit
ness of the voice from heaven at his baptism :
"Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am
well pleased." Later in the same chapter
is the testimony of the unclean spirit, "I
know thee who thou art, the Holv one of
God." In the second chapter he records
Christ's declaration: "The Son of Man is
Lord also of the Sabbath." In the third
chapter another unclean spirit testifies":
"Thou art the Son of God." In the fifth
chapter a third unclean spirit cries: "What

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 83
have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of
the most high God?" In the ninth chapter
is the account of the transfiguration, with
the heavenly witness, "This is my beloved
Son." And finally, when nature trembled
at the death of the Lord, he records the con
fession of the centurion: "Truly this man
was the Son of God."
As to the testimony of "unclean spirits,"
it is of course now the common belief that
demoniacal possession was merely some
form of mental or other derangement, and
that these speeches were of the demoniacs,
and not of evil spirits that possessed them.
But this does not lessen the sincerity of the
testimony of Mark, who apparently believed
in evil spirits which took possession of
men; and who regarded their recognition
that Jesus was the Son of God as super
natural. It is notable that John's gospel
makes no mention of casting out devils,
though he records that the Jews said of
Christ: "He hath a demon and is mad." It
is also striking that Jesus, in his answer to
the disciples of John the Baptist, makes no
mention of casting out evil spirits, although
he names specifically the other work per-

84 THE UNKNOWN GOD
formed in their presence. What inference
may be drawn from this as to the extent
to which he accomodated himself to
the manner of speech of the time, is a
matter of speculation ; but it cannot be fairly
questioned that Mark held the common
view, or that his record was intended to
convey his faith in the divinity of Christ.
The language, of John is even more ex
plicit. In his opening words, he says: "And
the word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of
the only begotten of the Father." This ex
pression, "the only begotten of the Father,"
or "the only begotten Son," is used repeat
edly by John, and it is not capable of any ra
tional interpretation but the fatherhood of
God, limited exclusively to Jesus Christ.
Throughout John's gospel are the strongest
declarations of Jesus' as to his relations to
his Father in his teachings, as well as special
express statements. To the Samaritan wo
man who said: "I know that Messiah
cometh, he that is called Christ," Jesus an
swered: "I that speak unto thee am he."
When the blind man asked who is. the Son
of God, he answered: "He it is that speak-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 85
eth with thee." To the Jews who would
have stoned him, he said: "Say ye of him
whom the Father sanctified and sent into the
world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I
am the Son of God?"
It would indeed be strange if the book of
The Acts were silent on this matter, for it
was written by Luke, and addressed to the
same person to whom his gospel was ad
dressed. It opens with a reference to that
gospel as a record of "all that Jesus began
both to do and to teach." It follows the for
mer communication niaturally, beginning
with the promise of "the Father," reveal
ed by Jesus, that the Holy Spirit should de
scend on his disciples, and the fulfillment of
that promise. Thereafter it is the record
of men who, as he says, "hazarded their
lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And this hazard was, as he records of Paul,
that they "proclaim Jesus, that he is the Son
of God."
Immediately following the clay of, Pente
cost come the two sermons of Peter, anoth
er of those who are said to be "silent." In
these he speaks of God's "Son," alternating
this title with "the Holy and Righteous

86 THE UNKNOWN GOD
One," "the Prince of Life," "the Prophet"
foretold of prophets. And when Peter arid
John "came to their own company" they
united with one accord in the prayer of
thanks for "the Floly Child, Jesus." It is true
that the revised version makes these words
"Son" and "Child" read "Servant," but
the alternative translation is only a
question of context. Mary herself
was with them there, and they were
all "of one heart and soul." It was Luke who
made the record, and in his gospel he was
the one who Spoke always of "the child,"
and recorded the prophecy: "Thou, child,
shalt be called the prophet of the Most
High." It was he who made the record:
"the Holy Thing which is begotten shall
be called the Son of God." Does not the
old version present the more rational choice
of words?
Note here the reverence with which this
conception is always spoken of, and its
freedom from the grossness of all pagan
ideas of divine fatherhood. Paul, who is
also one of the "silent," writes to the Gala-
tians : "When the fulness of time was come,
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman."

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 87
In the common belief in the unity of the
Holy Trinity, he varies this expression in
his epistle to the Philippians, and says:
"Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal
with God: But made himself of no reputa
tion and took upon him the form of a ser
vant, and was made in the likeness of man."
And so he writes to the Romans'of "his Son
Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of
the seed of David according" to the flesh ; and
declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the
resurrection from the dead." It is fully
manifest that the primitive church held the
same pure and sacred ideal of the concep
tion and birth of Jesus that is expressed by
Ignatius in his epistle to the Trallians:
"Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was de^
scended from David, and was also of Mary;
who was truly begotten of God and of the
Virgin, but not after the same manner. For
indeed God and man are not the same."
Among the New Testament epistles, that
to the Hebrews stands apart in its unknown
• authorship and its special appeal to the Old
Testament. It opens: "God, who at sundry

CO THE UNKNOWN GOD
times and in divers manners spake in time
past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by his
Son." Then come, a few verses later, these
words: "For unto which of the angels said
he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day
have I begotten thee? And again, I
will be to him a Father, and he
shall be to hie a Son? And again, when he
bringeth in the first begotten into the world,
he saith, and let all the angels of God wor
ship him." What is this if not a reference
to the angel hymn of the nativity? Then
he develops his argument that Moses was
faithful as a servant, "but Christ as a Son;"
and that "it behooved him in all things to be
made like unto his brethren, that he might
become a merciful and faithful high priest,"
of that unique priesthood of Melchizedek,
"without father, without mother, without
genealogy, having neither beginning of days
nor end of life but made like unto the Son of
God." But if these men believed that Jesus was
the Son of God, why did they not put great
er stress on the circumstances of his birth?
In a historical investigation of any other

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 89
documents, one would naturally look for the
answer to such a question in the purpose
of the writings. Obviously the chief pur
pose of the New Testament scriptures, and
of the preaching of ' the Apostles, was to
convince men of the divine mission of Christ.
And this was a vast undertaking. The
whole scheme of Christianity as we under
stand it was absolutely novel and startling
to Jewish thought. The doctrines of the In
carnation and the Holy Trinity were as for
eign to the Jewish mind as the doctrine of
the Virgin Birth. They did not look for
Messiah as God manifest in the flesh, but
as a specially endowed man who was to be
the chosen representative of God. The idea
of a reviled, abused, rejected and crucified
Messiah was apparently as far from the
thoughts of the disciples while Jesus was liv
ing as it was from the expectation of other
Jews. It was only after his death that they had
any comprehension of his real mission, for
as Cleopas said: "We trusted that it had
been he which should have redeemed Is
rael." It was not until after the risen Christ
had explained to them that "all things must

90 THE UNKNOWN GOD
be. fulfilled, which were written in. the law
of Moses and in the prophets, and in the
Psalms, concerning me," and after he had
"opened their understanding, that they might
understand the scriptures," that they began
to see the application of the many predictions
of the "man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief." And this understanding was fur
ther developed in accordance with the prom
ise: "But the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my
name, he shall teach you all things." It is
very clear that while the miracles and the
teachings of Jesus convinced his disciples
that he was the Messiah anticipated by the
Jews, it was his resurrection and the visita
tion of the Holy Spirit, beginning on the day
of Pentecost, that convinced them that he
was the Messiah from the Christian point of
view. In any effort to convince others, it is
the natural course for men to rely on the
arguments that convince themselves.
It is noteworthy that there is not a single
instance where Christ himself referred to his
birth as an evidence of his divinity. His
claim was based on three grounds, the works
he performed, his teaching, and the fulfill-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 9 1
ment of prophecy. The multitudes at Lys-
tra were ready to worship Paul and Barna
bas after one miracle, but Jesus recognized
the inefficiency of his works to overcome the
prejudice of the Jews in his words : "If the
mighty works had been done in Tyre and
Sidon, which were done in you, they would
have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth
and ashes." To his evidence there were
added in apostolic times his resurrection and
the witness of the Holy Spirit, and these
remain the effective arguments for Chris
tianity to this day. It is doubtful that any
person was ever converted by the story of
the birth of Jesus.
But there are manifestly secondary pur
poses in the several books of the New Testa
ment. On its face, Matthew's gospel was
written with a special view of showing the
fulfillment of prophecy. On its face John's
gospel was written with a special view of
meeting heresies that had arisen in the
church. Luke expressly declares the special
purpose of his gospel to Theophilus, "that
thou mightest know the certainty concerning
the things wherein thou wast instructed."
Theophilus was presumably a Greek con-

92 THE UNKNOWN GOD
vert, who, perhaps with others, had need of
a full statement of all the evidences of the
faith from the beginning. Luke had been
with Paul, and their instruction must have
been the same. And there must have been
much of that instruction that is merely re
ferred to in Paul's epistles, for he exhorts
the Colossians to be "stablished in the faith,
as ye have been taught," and the Thessa
lonians to "hold the traditions ye have been
taught," and indeed most of the epistles indi
cate the preference expressed by John to
"speak face to face." It follows then that
the gospel of Luke covers the things that
were taught by Paul. And, likewise, Paul,
if he believed that Jesus was the Son of God,
as he repeatedly says he did, could not have
said to the Jews of Antioch, concerning
David, "Of this man's seed hath God, ac
cording" to his promise, raised unto Israel a
Saviour, Jesus," unless he believed with
Luke that Mary was of the lineage of David.
As a matter of evidence, it is apparent
that the record of the miraculous events at
tending" the birth of Jesus rests primarily on
the testimony of Mary, and secondarily on
the testimony of Joseph. If the facts to

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 93
which they testified stood alone, their evi
dence, in all probability, would have received
scant credence ; because the story was so ex
traordinary, and was so easy of fabrication.
There could be no testimony to the Virgin
Birth but theirs. But as to the teachings
and the works of Christ, the early church
was "compassed about with a cloud of wit
nesses." -And the Apostles regarded these
evidences sufficient, as Christ himself did,
. or he said to John's disciples : "Go and
show John again those things which ye do
hear and see." So to the Jews : "The works
that I do in my Father's name, they bear wit
ness of me;" and again: "If I do not the
works of my Father believe me not." And
to Philip: "Believe me that I am in the Fath
er and the Father in me, or else believe me
for the very work's sake."
Paul was an eminently practical man, and
as a logician who aimed at results he de
voted himself to the effective arguments.. It
is evident that to him the strongest argument
for the truth of Christianity was his own
conversion, and he used this effectively,
because his persecution of the Christians
prior to his conversion was notorious. In-

94 THE UNKNOWN GOD
deed to the present time, the personal ex
perience of conversion, and the witness of
the Holy Spirit, which make the convert able
to say: "I know that my Redeemer liveth,"
are the most convincing evidences known;
and anyone who is at all familiar with prac
tical Christianity is familiar with this fact.
In the writings of Paul and the other epis
tles, there is no occasion to expect anything
in reference to the Virgin Birth, except the
use of language that is in harmony with it;
and that abounds.
But while it was of little force as evi
dence, the Virgin Birth was an important
truth for the edification, confirmation, and
comfort of those who had accepted. the faith,
and who desired to know more of the won
derful divine incarnation. In all the his
tory of the church, it is doubtful if any
other one thing has so impressed the human
ity of Jesus on his followers as the story of
the Christ child-, or if any other one thing
has made greater impress on the spirit of
Christianity than the angel chorus of "Peace
on earth, good will to men." And if these
are taken away, how much goes with them !
If Mary's story be not true, the one histor-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 95
ical alternative is the ancient Jewish slander
of an unchaste love, for the scripture record
is plain that Joseph was not the father of
Jesus. If she deceived her husband and her
Son, and all his followers in this, all the rest
of the story is equally false — the annuncia
tion, the wise men, the shepherds, Elizabeth,
Zacharias, Simeon, Anna, all must go. The
Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis, the Angel
Song, are but the phantasies of a lying har
lot. More than this, if Jesus Christ were
not indeed the Son of God, he died to per
petuate the falsehood. And if his disciples
were not convinced that he was the Son of
God, they gave up lives of peaceful security,
and accepted hardships and persecution, and
death, to hand the falsehood down to the
millions who have followed them. One can
understand how an unbeliever can accept
this alternative; but it is riot easy to under
stand how any human mind can imagine it
as presenting "a nobler ideal of the Christ."

THE PASSING OF DARWINISM.
Of all the tyrannies that oppress man
kind,
The worst are those that tyrannize the
mind.
So wrote the poet. Whether he had in
mind the tyranny of scientific theories, I
cannot say; but he might well have had
them in mind. Science, theoretically, is
knowledge, and the science of each age is
what passes for knowledge in that age.
Heretofore a considerable part of the
science of every age has been the exposed
error of succeeding ages, and presumably
this will continue to 'be the case for some
ages to come. Of course the scientist is
an extremely important factor in human
progress, and unquestionably we are in
debted to him for the larger part of the
knowledge we possess; but he is not infalli
ble. Losing sight of this, the great majority
of mankind, in each age, accept the "teach
ings of science" without much question, for
the simple reason that they know that the
scientists know more than they do, and they
accept these dicta with little thought or in
vestigation of their own.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 97
Most of the untruths thus accepted are
theories, as distinguished from recorded ob
servations, for your scientist usually gets the
habit of asserting a theory that satisfies his
mind with the same assurance that he states
an observed fact. Still there are numerous
instances of untruths advanced as observed
facts, for there are always scientists who
are credulous of untruth and incredulous
of truth. As an amusing illustration of this,
which came within my personal knowledge,
Prof. Alexander Winchell, in his valuable
work entitled "World Life" (pp. 14, 15),
gives an account of a meteor falling through
a house, and through the body of one Leon-
idas Grover, who was sleeping there. He
says he took the story from the Indianapolis
Journal; and the original account there
states that the meteor was not found until
the next day by people who slept in the
house that night, that it was still hot when
it was found, and that it still bore the blood
stains of Grover. As a matter of fact there
was no such man, and no such event. The
story was a newspaper hoax, which was fully
exposed within a week of its publication.
It was absurd on its face, for meteors do

98 THE UNKNOWN GOD J
not fall perpendicularly, and in passing
through the atmosphere they become in
tensely heated, often being entirely con
sumed. That one should fall through in
flammable material without setting fire to it,
and should retain blood-stains, is so prepos
terous that it might well challenge the skept
icism of any 'scientist. But it did not, and
possibly Prof. Winchell's readers ,are still
accepting it.
Practically, it matters little if people do
believe such a thing as this, for they are
quite as happy in their ignorance ; but occa
sionally we find an accepted scientific theory
which is false, and which is more serious in
its effects on mankind. Of this class the
most tremendous air-bubble of all the ages
is what is commonly known as Darwinism.
It began when Charles Darwin returned in
H. M. S. Beagle, in 1836, with his "ship
load of knowledge," though it did not at
tract very general notice until he published
his later works, chiefly devoted to the effects
of domestication on animals; and its cloud
still hangs «over us. There are thousands of
fairly intelligent people who still accept the
Darwinian theories as established facts, and

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 99
doubtless there will be such for many years
to come. These theories formed the basis
of religious controversy for years. Atheists,
skeptics and materialists hailed them as
knocking the bible account of creation
"higher than Beecher's Life of Christ."
Alarmed and angry theologians hastened to
assail them, but while these were strong in
satire and ridicule they were hopelessly weak
in scientific information, and in conse
quence they were visibly routed, until it oc-
cured to some of the more thoughtful that
there was not necessarily anything inconsis
tent with religion in the theory of evolution
— that if the omnipotent desired to create
a universe by evolutionary processes it was
just as easy to do it in that way as by a
direct fiat of creation ; and this is the theory
most generally accepted today. Indeed some
theologians have reached the point where
they champion evolution in everything as
the only rational mode of divine procedure,
and it would not be surprising to see it in
troduced as an article of faith in some new
creed. It is only fair to Darwin to say that he
was not responsible for all of this. He of-

I0O THE UNKNOWN GOD
fered no theory of the origin of life. He
said he had "nothing to do with the origin
of the sotil, nor with that of life itself." His
theories were concerned only with the modes
of descent, or development, from primary
forms. Fie says : "I imagine that probably
all organic beings which ever lived on this
earth descended from some primitive form
which was first called into life by the crea
tor." He also quotes with approval the let
ter of a divine who wrote that he had "grad
ually learned to see that it is just as noble
a conception of the Deity to believe that he
created a few original forms capable of self-
development into other and needful forms,
as to believe that he required a fresh act of
creation to supply the voids caused by the
action of his laws."
But this modest position was not satis
factory to many of Darwin's followers, and
notably to Haeckel, who is perhaps more
widely known than any of the others, and
whose views probably more nearly repre
sent the popular conception of Darwinism
than those of Darwin himself. Haeckel was
an avowed materialist. Fie rejected any su
pernatural influence in the development of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IOI
the world or of anything in it, from the
period of nebulous gas to the present. To
him, life was simply a matter of spontaneous
generation. And he was gracious enough
to reval to the world just how it was de
veloped from the "urschleim," or proto
plasm, which he calmly identifies with al
bumen — though there is no such thing
known to science as albumen that is not the
product of living organism. This is his
method :
The most important process is the formation
of a kernel or nucleus in the simple little lump
of albumen. We can conceive this to take place
in a purely physical manner by the condensation
of the innermost central part of the albumen.
The more solid central mass, which at first grad
ually, shaded off into the peripheral plasma, be
came .sharply separated from it, and thus forms
an independent, round, albuminous .corpuscle ; and
by this process the Moheron becomes a cell.
* * * In the same way as the kernel of the
organic cell arose in the interior or central mass
of the originally homogeneous lump of plasma, by
separation, so, too, the first cell membrane was
formed on its surface. This simple, but most im
portant process, as has already been remarked,
can likewise be explained in a purely physical
manner, either as a chemical deposit, or as a phys-

102 THE UNKNOWN GOD
ical condensation in the uppermost stratum of
the mass, or as a secretion. One of the first pro
cesses of adaptation effected by the Moneron,
originating by spontaneous generation, must have
been the condensation of an external crust, which
as a protecting covering shut in the softer interior
from the hostile influences of the outer world. As
soon as by condensation of the homogeneous
Moneron a cell-kernel arose in the interior, and a
membrane arose on the surface, all the fundamen
tal parts of the unit were furnished, out of which,
by infinitely manifold repetition and combination,
as attested by actual observation, the body of the
higher organisms is constructed.
This is the great Haeckel's explanation of
the origin of life — an explanation that has
actually been accepted by people who think
they are thinking beings — but if you will read
it over carefully you will see that it does not
mention the origin of life at all. It does not
offer a suggestion of a suspicion of an expla
nation of the origin of life. It does nothing
but state that a nodule may be formed of
inorganic matter, with a harder crust about
it, by chemical or physical processes; all of
which is very true. But you are no nearer
life with your nodule than you were before.
You may pick up hundreds of such nodules
of clay in the gravel of our streams; but

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IO3
they are just as dead and just as inorganic as
any other clay.
Morever, other scientists have not been
satisfied with a theory of spontaneous gene
ration. They have tried to effect it in fact
but every effort, from those of Huxley in the
glacial regions to hundreds of others in the
laboratories, has failed; and spontaneous
generation is now abandoned, even by be
lievers in the theory of descent, to the ceme
tery of "waiting for more light." The ques
tion of the origin of life is simply pushed to
one side; and yet life is the great essential
of the theory of descent itself. For the
present, at least, science has to treat as a
fact the proposition that inanimate matter
does not progress or retrograde. So far as
we have any evidence, it is the same yester
day, today and forever. It knows neither
ascent nor descent. And so the materialist
scientist, who rejects any consideration of
supernatural interposition, stands, at the
outset, baffled by the question of the cause of
the process by which he avers creation to
have been effected. Nobody knows what life
is- or whence it conies, or whither it goes, any
more than he knows the nature of God.

104 THE UNKNOWN GOD
But Haeckel took two other positions, and
they are positions to which the materialist
is irresistibly driven. The first is that there
is no such thing as "life," other than as a
property of all matter. He says : "We thus
arrive at the extremely important conviction
that all natural bodies which are known to
us are equally animated, that the distinction
which has been made between animate and
inamimate bodies does not exist. When a
stone is thrown into the air, and falls to
earth according to definite laws, or when in
a solution of salt a crystal is formed, the
phenomenon is neither more nor less a me
chanical manifestation of life than the
growth and flowering of plants, than the
propagation of animals or the activity of
their senses, than the perception or the for
mation of thought in man. This final tri
umph of the monistic conception of nature
constitutes the highest and most general
merit of the Theory of Descent, as reformed
by Darwin."
This thought, not of Darwin, but of the
great Haeckel — the wonderful German phil
osopher, biologist, scientist — was fully
adopted by the small boy who brought in a

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IO5
dead cat, and exclaimed: "Mamma, here is
a perfectly good cat that someone has left
in our alley." "Right," says Haeckel,
"every atom of matter is in it that was there
before it died. Life is not gone. If you
throw it up in the air it will fall just the same
as a stone." This is "the final triumph of
the monistic conception" — a dead cat is a
live cat. But the genial materialist over
looks one point. If you threw that cat up
in the air, when it was alive, it .would light
on its feet; but if you threw it up after
death, it would light "any old way."
Second, Haeckel denies any purpose in
nature, — says it "no .more exists than the
much-talked-of beneficence of the Creator;"
that "if we contemplate the common life and
the material relations between plants and
animals (man included), we shall find
everywhere, and at all times, the very oppo
site of that kindly and peaceful social life
which the goodness of the Creator ought to
have prepared for his creatures — we shall
rather find everywhere a pitiless, most em
bittered struggle of All against All." Quite
possibly Haeckel could have arranged the
universe more satisfactorily; but no Dar-

Io6 THE UNKNOWN GOD
winian really rejects purpose in nature, and
Haeckel accepts it as fully as any, under the
name of adaption. In the quotation above
as to the development of the Moneron, he
says that one of its "first processes" was the
formation of an external crust or cell mem
brane. Why? He says "for a protective
covering, to shut in the softer interior from
the hostile influences of the outer world."
That is the purpose of the cell membrane;
and the whole theory of development is
built on the purpose, or supposed purpose,
of forms, organs and other characteristics.
The real difference beween the materialistic
and deistic conceptions of nature is that the
former holds these characteristics to have
been developed unconsciously by the organ
ism itself, to meet its needs — to serve these
purposes ; while the latter holds them to have
been created by an intelligent power to serve
the same purposes.
This is especially observable in Darwin,
for his whole argument is that because cer
tain changes have been produced by breed
ing in animals, and cultivation in plants,
through the intelligence of man interposed
for the purpose of producing these results,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IO7
similar results might have been attained by
animal and plant organisms without any in
terposition. Haeckel makes the proper dis
tinction that Darwin did not originate the
theory of descent, but makes this claim for
him: "He has established a new theory which
reveals to us the natural causes of organic
development, the acting, (efficient) causes of
organic form production, and of the
changes and transformations of animal
and vegetable species. This is the Theory
of Selection, or more accurately the Theory
of Natural Selection, * * * which shows
us why this progressive transformation of
organic forms took place, and what causes,
acting mechanically, effected the uninter
rupted production of new forms, and the
ever increasing variety of animals and
plants. Darwin's immortal merit cannot be
justly estimated until a later period, when
the Theory of Development, after over
throwing all other theories of creation, will
be recognized as the supreme principle of
explanation in anthropology, and consequent
ly in all other science."
Flow cocksure is this foremost exponent
of Darwinism! He leaves his avowed one

I08 THE UNKNOWN GOD
and only basis of scientific proof, and essays
the role of a prophet. And yet, it is precise
ly this theory of development — this theory
of natural selection — that has been assailed
and torn to pieces; not by clergymen; not
by popular orators; but by biologists, bota
nists, zoologists, paleontologists; and these
largely German materialists. For it is the
redeeming grace of science that it constant
ly seeks for evidence, and though it accepts
a theory as plausible today, it abandons it
as readily tomorrow if it fails to hinge with
known facts.
In 1903, Dr. Dennert, of Stuttgart, col
lected the views of contemporary scientistis,
under the title, "Vom Sterbelager des Dar-
winismus;" and said: "What I seek to show
in these statements is the fact that Darwin
ism now almost belongs to the past — to his
tory — that we stand by its death-bed, and
that even its friends are endeavoring to se
cure for it at least a decent burial." In
1907, Prof. Kellogg, of Leland Stanford
University, in his book "Darwinism Today,"
protested against this as too sweeping, yet
practically admitted its truth. He says: "It
is precisely the German biologists who are

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS IO9
most active in this undermining of the Dar
winian theories. But there are others with
them; Holland, Russia, Italy, France, and
our own country all contribute their quota
of disturbing questions and declarations of
protest and revolt. The English seem most
inclined to uphold the glory of their illus
trious countryman. But there are rebels
even there. Altogether it may be stated
with full regard to facts that a major part
of the current published output of general
biological discussions, theoretical treatises,
addresses and brochures dealing with the
great evolutionary problems, is distinctly
anti-Darwinian in character. This major
part of the status of evolution and its
causes, its factors and mechanism, by work
ing biologists and thinking natural philos
ophers, reveals a lack of belief in the effec
tiveness or capacity of the natural selection
theory to serve as a sufficient causo-mechani-
cal explanation of species-forming and evo
lution. * * * The fair truth is that the Dar
winian selection theories, considered with
regard to their claimed capacity to be an in
dependently sufficient mechanical explanation

1IO THE UNKNOWN GOD
of descent, stand today seriously discredited
in the biological woidd."
The Darwinian . theories proper may be
summed up in two propositions : First, by ar
tificial selection — breeding and cultivation —
such changes have been produced in animals
and plants that the resultant forms would
be classed as new species, iLthe process and
causes of change were not known. Second,
the changes produced by artificial selection
might be duplicated, equaled, or even ex
ceeded by natural selection — chiefly through
the influences of sexual selection, heredity,
and survival of the fittest.
The first proposition looks almost axio
matic, but on scientific consideration it is
found to have little basis except in minor and
non-essential variants of form, color and the
like, which naturally appeal to the senses.
For example, would anyone, not knowing the
facts, say that the Poodle and the Great
Dane were of the same species or the Manx
cat and the Angora, or the Bantam chick
en and the Shanghai, or the draft horse and
the Shetland pony, or the pound pippin and
the wild crab-apple ? Certainly not from ap
pearance; but that is not the determinant of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS III
species. The word "species" is somewhat
indefinite in meaning and application ; and in
various cases some naturalists class certain
animals and plants as different species when
others make them only varieties. The old
definition of "species" was a class of ani
mals or plants that might reasonably be sup
posed to have descended from a common an
cestor. The one now most generally accept
ed involves the same idea in another form
¦ — a class of animals that have the capacity
for indefinite, fertile interbreeding. Thus
the horse and the ass interbreed, but their
progeny are not fertile; and consequently
the horse is classed as equus caballus, and
the ass as equus asinus.
On application of this test, no scientist
would call the various breeds of domestic
animals different species; for all of them,
dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep, chickens,
pigeons and rabbits, have the capacity for
fertile interbreeding. Furthermore, all of
these animals know their kind. Every dog
recognizes any other dog as a dog, no mat
ter what his race, color or previous condi
tion of servitude. We can say, therefore,
with assurance, that artificial selection,

I 12 THE UNKNOWN GOD
through all the thousands of years of its
known progress, has never produced a new
species. And this is a vital point, for this
was the boundary line that Darwin essayed
to cross. The species line is the primary, the
simplest point of division in animal and
plant life. If that cannot be crossed — if the
first step in the theory of development can
not be taken — the jump from protoplasm to
man becomes an absurdity; and that first
step has never been taken, either by nature
or by the aid of man, so far as the world
knows. The results of artificial selection are not
new species, but extreme variants ; and these
variants follow the same rule that natural
variants follow, of reversion to the common
or ancestral type. As soon as you stop what
is called "pure breeding," and allow domes
ticated animals to mate by choice, inter
breeding becomes common, and the progeny
lose their variating features. Everybody
has seen this in clogs and chickens. The
same principle applies in the cultivation of
plants. You can take the finest varieties of
strawberries, and in a few years, without

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS II3
proper cultivation, they will retrograde to
the level of the common wild berry.
This principle of recurrence to the type is
of great significance, for it is as fixed a rule
of nature as variation, on which all breeding
and cultivation is based. A certain, almost
fixed, percentage of animals will vary from
their parents in some respect. The study of
these variations has established a new
science, known as biometry. This word was
originally applied to the measurement of du
ration of life, in compiling mortality tables,
but now has a much broader application.
This science has established the fact that,
just as a practically fixed number of people,
out of a thousand, will die in a given time,
so, out of a thousand, a practically fixed
number will vary from the medium, or type,
in height, weight, and other characteristics.
These tendencies to variation may be in
creased by changes of climate, soil, food, and
other external conditions, but the inherent
tendency, under the same conditions, is to
recur to the type. These lines of investiga
tion have been followed extensively in recent
years in the systems of measurement in ar
mies, in police records of criminals, and in

114 THE UNKNOWN GOD
medical work, as to men. At the same time
scientists have been examining and record
ing the details of variation in lower organ
isms with a patience and assiduity that are
almost incredible. The result has been a
general agreement in the regularity of the
law of recurrence, as fully as in the law of
variation; and that one about offsets the
other. None of Darwin's theories met readier ac
ceptance than that of sexual selection. It
hinged so fully with common ideas. Every
body was familiar with the brighter colors
of many male birds, and many were aware
that these colors often took on more than
common brightness in the mating season.
As Tennyson puts it:
In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the
robin's breast;
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself
another crest;
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the bur
nished dove ;
In the. spring a young man's fancy lightly turns
to thoughts of love.
What is all of this for if not to attract the
female ? That seems an evident purpose of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 115
nature. Darwin did not point it out. He
merely adopted a belief that had continued
for centuries. And yet no theory has been
more completely dropped, even by those who
at first gave it warm support. As a matter of
scientific observation, the female, in the
lower animals, does very little selection.
This is easily noted in barnyard fowls, in
which the ornamentation of the males is
marked. If there is any rivalry of the
males, it is settled by a fight, and the female
accepts the victor without regard to looks.
In all his experience Darwin recorded eight
instances in which he thought the female
made a selection, and since then not over
half a dozen cases have been recorded; all
doubtful. This as to birds — the highest class
of animals showing this color feature. Its
most notable occurrences elsewhere are in
reptiles, insects and fishes. It is almost in
conceivable that these lower forms of life
should have aesthetic tastes as to color, and
especially enough to cause through countless
generations a development of the favorite
colors in the males. We commonly fancy
such tastes in birds, but on our poetic side we
have developed an estimate of the intelli-

Il6 THE UNKNOWN GOD
gence of birds that has no foundation in fact.
It is only in nursery rhymes that Jenny Wren
is attracted by the plumage of Cock Robin.
In real life she pays no attention to him, but
mates with her little Quaker as if he were the
only bird on earth.
When you pass lower in the scale, what
imaginable effect could bright colors have on
the female fish, which sometimes does not
even see the male that fertilizes the spawn
which she has left? We have throughout
temperate America a notable example of this
characteristic in the rainbow darter. It is a
small fish, three or four inches long, and or
dinarily of plain brown and white color; but
in the mating season the male takes on a
complete suit of purple and orange that
makes it a typical representative of this
phase of nature. No tropical fish is more
brilliantly colored than the male rainbow
darter in the mating season; but to say that
its colors are the result of countless ages of
selection by the female is inconceivable rot.
The experiments of Douglass and Duerigen
with lizards demonstrated that alterations of
color in the males had no effect at all on their
acceptance by the females ; nor did disfigure-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 1 "J
ment, for tailless males were as readily ac
cepted as any.
But the most convincing experiments in
this line were those of Maver with the
Promethea moth, and later those of Mayer
and Soule. The Promethea is one of our
rather common large moths, whose larvae
feed on the leaves of the sassafras, and
which was grouped by Linnaeus with the
silkworm moth, the Luna, and our common
Cecropia, in the genus Attacus. The wings
of the female Promethea are reddish brown
and those of the niale are much darker,
which, by the sexual selection theory, would
be due to the preference of the female for
that color. Mayer collected 450 Promethea
cocoons, and took them to Loggerhead Key,
one of the Dry Tortugas, which is far out of
the habitat of this moth, and where there
could be no outside interference.
The male of this species seeks out the fe
male, and is able to find her at quite a dis
tance. Mayer's first task was to learn by
what sense this was done, and to locate the
sense. When the females were put in trans
parent glass jars, covered so that no odor
could escape, the males could not find them

IlS THE UNKNOWN GOD
at all. When the same jars were covered
only with netting, the females were found
readily; and the same was true when the
females were put in boxes or wrappings
where they were not visible, but from which
odors could escape. When the wings of fe
males were cut off and the wings of males
glued in their places, the males went to them
just the same. When the wings of males
were cut off, and wings of females glued in
their places, the other males paid no atten
tion to them whatever. Finally, a number of
females were cut in two, and the abdomens
put in one place, and the heads, thoraxes and
wings in another. The males then went to
the abdomens, and never to the other parts.
It was thus conclusively shown that the male
found the female by smell and not by sight.
The sense of smell was rightly guessed to
be located in the antennae, and this was
proven by covering the antennae of various
males with shellac, photographic paste, glue
or paraffin, whereupon these males could not
find the females at all. When the wings of
the males were removed, and wings of fe
males put in their places, the females ac
cepted them quite as readily ; and so they did

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 19
when the males were left wholly wingless,
and the scales all brushed off their bodies.
These very conclusive experiments con
vinced Mayer that "the coloration of the
male has not been brought about through the
agency of sexual selection on the part of the
female." Later, Mayer and Soule repeated the ex
periments on a larger scale, and with varia
tions. They took 1,500 Promethea cocoons,
and of the males that hatched, the wings of
about one-half were painted with red and
green ink. They were accepted by the fe
males as readily as the normal males, and
sexual selection received another black eye.
Similar experiments were tried with the
moth Porthetria dispar, the male of which is
brown and the female white; and with the
same results. In consequence the items of
color and sight as factors in mating must be
dropped as to these moths ; and, indeed, they
may be safely dropped as to all moths, among
which the color variations are very frequent,
for the simple reason that they are nocturnal.
It would be a strange provision of nature, on
any theory, if the mating of a nocturnal ani
mal were made dependent on color and sight.

120 THE UNKNOWN GOD
In brief, so far as the experiment and ob
servation of the last quarter of a century go,
sexual selection may be pronounced a de
lusion and a myth ; and it may be eliminated
or disregarded as a factor in the accelera
tion of natural selection.
Without it, natural selection by the mating
of variants falls back to the law of chance,
and here we get to a mathematical basis.
For example, if one individual of a species
in 100 had a notable variation of a certain
kind, out of 20,000 individuals there would
be 200 with this variation. In the matings
of these 20,000 individuals, by the law of
chance, there would be 9,801 pairings of in
dividuals that did not have the variations;
198 pairings of variants with non-vari
ants; and a single pairing of variants. In
other words, 99^ per cent of the original
variation would be wiped put by the dilution
of blood in the second generation. This is
one of the chief factors in the law of recur
rence to the type; and another equally im
portant one is the conflict of variations.
Variations are not in one direction, but in
all directions. A certain proportion of the
progeny of any generation will be larger

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 121
than the average, but an equal proportion
will be smaller, and the tendency of this in
subsequent matings is to make an offset, or,
in other words, a recurrence to the type. The
law of nature is not the development of new
types, but the preservation of existing ones.
Strangely enough the Darwinian hypothe
sis of "survival of the fittest" has also been
badly damaged, for this seemed the strong
est of all his hypotheses. As a matter of
common sense, why should not the strongest
and best equipped for defense have the best
chance of survival in the struggle for life?
And yet we all know there have been thou
sands of decrepit fathers mourning their ro
bust Absaloms — "O Absalom, my son, my
son Absalom, would God that I had died for
thee." But, you say, that was war. Of
course it was war ; and the whole basis of the
evolution theory is that animal life is an un
ending, bitter, pitiless war — a struggle to the
death for the perpetuation of life. And it is
not only man that sends the strongest and
best equipped to the front. All animals that
resist dang'er do the same. It is the leader of
the herd that goes to meet threatened dan
ger; the one who has whipped the other

122 THE UNKNOWN GOD
bucks, and demonstrated his superiority.
And when the fittest is not on hand, the next
best goes to the front. When a hen and her
chicks are threatened, it is the hen that gives
battle. The records of sportsmen show many
similar cases. Even so shy and timid a bird
as a mother woodcock, when surprised with
her brood by the hunter, will pretend to be
wounded, and fall and flutter almost within
the hunter's reach, while her chicks are
seeking places of safety. The world is so full
of such things that we might use in more
than one sense the poet's words :
Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the strongest
suffer most?
That the wisest wander farthest, and most hope
lessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for
pain?
That the anguish of the singer marks the sweet
ness of the strain?
But this is an individual aspect of survival
that does not meet the broader Darwinian
proposition of survival in convulsions of na
ture, when "fitness" must necessarily lie in
power of endurance. When at college, my
daily walk from my lodging took me past a

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 23
depression in a bit of woods. Every spring
this depression filled with water, in which
the frogs and toads of the neighborhood de
posited their spawn, which duly developed
into tadpoles. As the season advanced, and
the tadpoles grew, the pond shrank. Finally
the day would come when only a gallon or
two of water was left, and it was alive with
squirming, suffering tadpoles. The next day
nothing was to be seen but a black mass of
shriveled remains. Where was the advantage
of the fittest in that struggle? Possibly the
strongest ones may have lived half an hour
longer than the others, but of what avail?
It might be imagined that during the half
hour a rain came up, and gave the pond
enough water to carry the- fittest through to
f roghood ; but you could hardly imagine such
a chance year after year until a superior type
of frogs was produced.
Now this annual tragedy was a miniature
of the vast recurrent cataclysms to which the
theory of the survival of the fittest must be
applied. Not only at- the end of the geologic
ages, but also at the close of numerous
epochs of those ages, mighty convulsions of
nature occurred, in which hundreds of

T24 THE UNKNOWN GOD
species of animals and vegetables were
totally extinguished; and in the next follow
ing epochs many new species came into ex
istence. The Darwinian proposition is that
these new species were developed from vari
ants of the old species that were best fitted to
endure the shock. There has been little op
portunity for practical study of this hypothe
sis, on account of the lack of cataclysms in
the historic period. It is quite possible that
man was on earth in the Glacial Period, and
there are very widespread traditions of a
delug'e ; but within historic time there is only
one recorded outbreak of nature that de
stroyed a species. A West Indian hurricane,
in 1898, is believed to have totally extermi
nated one species- of humming-bird peculiar
to the island of St. Vincent ; but it is believed
that the great eruptions of Krakatoa, in
1883, and of Mont Pelce in 1902, did not ex
terminate a single species of animal or plant.
Still there have been some scientific ob
servations that throw light on the question,
and the trend of these observations is di
rectly opposite to the Darwinian hypothesis,
which locates the "fittest" among the vari
ants from the type. Perhaps the most

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 25
notable illustration is that recorded by Bum-
pus, in his Biological Lectures at the Woods
Holl Laboratory. He was making a study of
the English sparrow in the United States,
and after a severe storm, on February 1,
1898, he collected 136 of these birds that had
been wounded. Of these 64 died, and 72 sur
vived. A careful study of all of them, with
measurements of their parts, convinced
Bumpus that the ones that died "perished not
through accident, but because they were
physically disqualified;" and the physical dis
qualifications consisted of variations from
the type. The extreme variants were the
ones that perished; and Bumpus drew this
conclusion: "The process of selective elimi
nation is most severe with extremely variable
individuals, no matter in what directions the
variations may occur. It is quite as danger
ous to be conspicuously above a certain
standard of organic excellence as it is to be
conspicuously below the standard. It is the
type that nature favors."
The only conceivable explanation of this
that a Darwinian could offer would be that
the existing types have attained such fitness
through ages of development, that natural

126 THE UNKNOWN GOD
selection by destruction of the unfit has
ceased to be a cause of progress and develop
ment of new species. But if that be true, why
not equally true of the types of geologic
time? They had gone through this same
process of development and elimination, ac
cording" to the Darwinian premises, and yet
the types perished when the cataclysms
came, and by the Darwinian conclusion, the
variants lived and developed new species.
On the other hand, there is at least a sug
gestion of an intelligent creator in the fact
that existing types are better fitted to en
dure nature's hardships than any variants
from them that we might suppose to be more
"fit." Of all the Darwinian hypotheses, the one
least susceptible of proof, one way or an
other, is the theory of the development of or
gans to meet needs of animals. And it is
here that adaptation comes most forcibly in
conflict with design in nature. To illustrate
the distinction, take the eye. No one ques
tions that its purpose is sight. The believer
in design in nature holds that it was made
for that purpose by an intelligent creator.
The Darwinian holds that it was developed

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 27
by animals to meet a need; developed
through countless ages, by natural selection
of advantageous variations. Nobody has
ever suggested when, or by what animal or
ganism, the eye was begun ; but if evolution
be true, there must have been a time when
some sightless organism, by variation, began
the development of an organ of sight. Now
it is not hard to conceive of a rudimentary
eye, for eyes exist in immense variety, and
some are so rudimentary that they merely
distinguish between light and darkness, as,
for example, those that line the mantles of
some of the mollusks. But can you con
ceive of the first start toward the de
velopment of a rudimentary eye; of what
form it took ; or of any imaginable advantage
it gave its possessor in the struggle for exist
ence that would cause it to be perpetuated
and improved till, after some centuries, a
rudimentary eye was developed? Perhaps
you can imagine how rudimentary eyes, once
developed, might multiply, and reach the
stage of the composite eyes of insects, with a
few independent single eyes scattered about
jn addition ; but can you conceive of the leap
from that to the vertebrate eye, with its pro-

£28" THE UNKNOWN GOD
tective socket and lid, its camera with self-
adjusting focus, muscle and nerve attach
ments, and lacrimal apparatus ?
Take another example. It is generally be
lieved that the horns of animals are for de
fensive purposes, and this seems probable.
The first step in their development, if they
were developed, was presumably a slight in
crease in the thickness of the skull at the two
points of attachment, symmetrically located,
or some excrescence of the skin, for horns
have indicia of skin developments if they be
developments. In five hundred years of per
sistent selection, these might have developed
half an inch in thickness. But during this
period, of what imaginable use could they
have been to their possessors as weapons, or
for any other purpose, that would make it a
factor in the survival of the fittest? And if
horns were developed by nature for protec
tion, by natural selection and survival of the
fittest, how did the ruminants of the deer
family ever happen to develop the unfortu
nate quality of shedding their antlers an
nually, and leaving themselves for several
months without any weapons of defense?
And if developed as weapons on the theory of

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 29
advantage, why was the process carried far
beyond the point of advantage in the antlers
of the elk, the moose, the big-horn, and the
reindeer? It would be as absurd to arm an
infantryman with a howitzer, instead of a
musket, as to imagine that need or advantage
in defense caused the development of such
antlers. But what is the purpose of these eccentric
ities of development on the theory of design ?
I do not know. I disclaim any power to
fathom the infinite. That is the province of
the evolutionist. In fact, one of the evidences
of divine guardianship is the fact that no
body is under any obligation to accept the
revelations of purpose in nature offered by
various discerning minds. A few years ago
a popular divine in London, England, de
livered a sermon on special providences, in
which he gave as an example the flattened
antlers of the reindeer, with which it could
scrape away the snow from the mosses and
lichens on which it feeds. Moncure D. Con
way, the well-known newspaper correspond
ent, happened to be in London at the time,
and made the comment that, unfortunately
for the illustration, every Laplander knew

130 THE UNKNOWN GOD
that the reindeer sheds its antlers in the fall,
and its new ones are not grown till the fol
lowing- spring. If the divine had been posted,
he might have replied that while this was
true in general, there was a notable excep
tion to it in the fact that the female reindeer,
if with young, does not shed her antlers, but
carries them through the winter, which looks
still more like a special providence. In real
ity, however, the reindeer does not use its
antlers to scrape snow, but does what snow-
shoveling it has to do with its hoofs, so that
purpose may safely be dropped.
It must be a heavy strain on vital re
sources to reproduce the heavy antlers of the
reindeer and other kindred animals, and this
exemption of the female, when her strength
is needed for something more important in
nature, would probably be recognized by
physicians as one of nature's provisions to
protect the mother, for the benefit of the off
spring. This provision has often been noted,
as, for example, in the fact that ordinarily
the female will not conceive not only when
pregnant, but also when nursing new-born
offspring. It is difficult to conceive how an
intermittent quality or characteristic of that

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS I3I
sort could be developed by the animal itself ;
and the vast importance of it in the function
of reproduction, which is manifestly nature's
greatest care, makes it a strong evidence of
intelligent design.
There are still more remarkable facts in
this connection. In most species of deer the
females normally have no antlers ; but when
they cease to be fertile, especially in case of
atrophy or degeneration of the ovaries, rudi
mentary antlers appear, and these are never
shed. This has been observed authentically
in the roedeer, the Virginia deer, the moose,
and the red deer; and is presumably true in
less known species. So in birds, females that
have ceased to breed havfe in numerous cases
been known to a ssume male plumage, though
not so pronounced as in the average male.
This has been observed in pheasants of vari
ous kinds, chickens, peafowls, wild and do
mestic ducks, partridges, bustards, the
American pelican, chaffinches, buntings, etc.
These facts indicate more probably that
Wallace is right in his idea that female plum
age represents a "degenerate" condition of
the female than that Darwin and his follow
ers are correct in their theory that male

132 THE UNKNOWN GOD
plumage is a development of the male. But
if that be true, how did the normal plumage
of both originate? And are not the facts
again suggestive of an intelligent purpose to
save the strength of the female for her off
spring, instead of dissipating it in orna
mentation ?
Another weak point in the theory of
adaptation that has attracted attention is the
difficulty of applying it to correlations in na
ture, of things that are claimed to be the re
sult of development. For example, we have
the honey-bee and the honey-producing
plant. Darwinism asserts that both are de
velopments, and it is fairly bound to assert
that one developed on account of the other,
or that both developed contemporaneously,
as a matter of correlation. In the case of the
•eye, it were of no use that the lens developed
unless there also developed the nerve that
gives preception of sight. In the horns of ani
mals, no use would be served without the
muscles and sinews, and also the bone devel
opments to which these are attached, to sup
port the added weight on the head, and make
the practical use of the horns possible. There
are some of these correlations in nature as to

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 33
which it seems equally difficult to conceive
of either development preceding the other,
or of the two developing simultaneously
from any need of the animal.
This is illustrated by the honey-bee. In
each hive or colony of these insects there is
but one perfect female permanently. If an
other perfect female develops, she has to be
concealed from the queen regnant by the
workers, until she leads a new swarm or
community from the hive, or the old queen
will sting her to death. The queen bee is fer
tilized but once, after which the drones, or
male bees are killed by the workers. The
seminal fluid received by the queen is not de
posited at once on the eggs, but is retained
in a sac in her body, from which it is ejected
on such eggs as she chooses. The unfer
tilized eggs hatch drones. The fertilized
eggs hatch workers, or, more properly, un
developed females. This provision of only one
perfect female may seem a strange excep
tion to nature's usual profuse sexual pro
vision for the preservation of the type; but
the removal of any additional female from
the hive with a new swarm is an adequate
and striking mode of attaining the same end ;

134 THE UNKNOWN GOD
and still more remarkable is the fact that if
the queen bee should die, the workers will
take a worker pupa, and by enlarging its
cell, and modifying and increasing its food,
cause it to become a fully developed female.
This system of reproduction is peculiarly
fitted to the community life of bees, and to
nothing else. If anyone can imagine the pos
sibility of its development from the needs or
adaptations of the moneron, or any of the
later-ons, such person should enlighten the
world by suggesting the need from which
the development proceeded. A single female
is no essential of community life; there are
numerous insect and other communities in
which females are abundant. The control of
fertilization, the modified development of
fertilized eggs, the emergency development
of sex after an egg has hatched, are things
that would naturally be pronounced contrary
to nature, if we did not know the facts. What
need of nature caused the development of
this unique social system, and the extraordi
nary modification of reproduction that so
peculiarly fits it ?
While such unsolved problems confront
the Darwinian in the animal world, there are

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 135
still more serious ones in the vegetable world,
for plants have no volition. We naturally
entertain a lurking suspicion that the Ethio
pian might in some way change his skin, or
the leopard his spots ; but you cannot so hos
pitably entertain the idea that the banana
could change its skin, or the tiger-lily its
spots; though in all probability one would
be as easy as the other. For example, color
in flowers cannot be attributed to sexual se
lection ; and Darwin accounts for it thus :
"Flowers rank amongst the most beautiful
productions of nature; but they have been
rendered conspicuous in contrast with the
green leaves, and in consequence at the same
time beautiful, so that they may be easily ob
served by insects." The stated object of this
attraction is that the insects may carry pol
len and fertilize the female flowers.
There is no question that insects have a
large part in the fertilization of flowers in
this way, but it is now conceded that they are
guided in their movements almost wholly by
smell, and not by sight. The experiments of
Plateau, the Belgian naturalist, and others
have shown that insects visit any nectar-
bearing flower, no matter how colorless or

I36 THE UNKNOWN GOD
inconspicuous it may be ; that the removal of
the colored parts of the flower made no ma
terial difference in the visits; that they did
not visit gayly colored flowers that were not
nectar-bearing; but that they at once began
visiting such flowers when nectar was placed
in them. Moreover it has been shown that
while some insects have a sense of color,
most of them are near-sighted — the keenest
sighted being the dragon flies, which are in
sectivorous, and do not visit flowers. Indeed,
the evidence of guidance by smell has been
seen by hundreds who were not experiment
ing, for if honey or sirup, or sugar be placed
on a board, or on the ground, in the open, in
sects will come to it, although sight could
give no possible association of color or mem
ory in such a case.
Another group of inexplicables is found in
the provisions of nature for the preservation
of the type, through multiform arrangement
for the protection and dissemination of seeds.
Many persons who are not scientists have
noticed that tall trees have provision for pro
tecting their seeds in the fall to the ground ;
such as the seed-wings of the maple and ash,
and the shells of nuts. In very tall trees this

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 37
is especially striking, as in the remarkable
double coverings of the cocoanut and the
Brazil nut. You cannot very well assume
that a variation of increased height in the
plant caused a thickening of the seed cover
without some assumption of knowledge or
volition in the plant. Neither can you as
sume as a law of nature that a variation of
increased thickness in the seed cover caused
the plant to grow higher. If that were true,
the hazel would not have remained a bush,
while the oak and the chestnut developed into
monarchs of the forest. A more highly de
veloped Darwin is needed for the explana
tion of the wonders of plant life.
Darwin disposed of the suggestion that
the colors of flowers were for the, pleasure
and refinement of man, with the statement
that such a supposition was "utterly subvers
ive of his theory," which is apparently true.
He says that "natural selection cannot pos
sibly produce any modification in a species
exclusively for the good of another species."
If this be true of development, it can as well
be assumed throughout nature; and Hae
ckel' s conclusion that there is no purpose in
nature becomes quite logical. We are then

I38 THE UNKNOWN GOD
reduced to the inevitable conclusion that
nothing on earth exists for the benefit of any
other existence. Of course we know that all
living existences derive benefits from other
things, but that is merely incidental. The
beneficial results are rto part of the cause of
existence of the beneficial things. Thankful
ness for the bounties of nature is a complete
waste of time and effort.
This thought is clearly not conducive to
the higher mental and moral development of
man, if evolution has any part in those fea
tures of life. It is repulsive to reason when
applied to thousands of things in the inor
ganic world that are of vast use to man and
other living things, many of which are due
to variations of general laws of nature. To
take a simple illustration, the general rule of
the action of heat on inorganic matter is that
"heat expands and cold contracts ;" but with
antimony this rule is reversed, and it con
tracts with heat and expands with cold. This
variation is of great value to man, because,
on account of the general rule, it is impossi
ble to make an exact mold of any of the com
mon metals; but by mixing antimony with
other metals we get a compound which

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 39
neither expands nor contracts with heat, and
so we can produce the exact forms required
for types and other things in which exactness
is necessary.
This is a reminder of human limitations,
for what we call "a law of nature" is merely
a statement of what man thinks he knows
about some process of nature; and when he
learns that nature does not always proceed
in that way, the "law" has to be changed.
The most extraordinary variation of this
rule occurs in one of the commonest forms
of matter — water — which follows the gen
eral rule except that below four degrees
centigrade it reverses, and contracts with
heat and expands with cold. This eccentric
variation is of tremendous importance. But
for the fact that cooling water begins to ex
pand above the freezing point, ice would ,
form first at the bottom of lake and streams'
instead of at the top. In a very short period
of freezing weather they would freeze up
solidly, and so would the underground
waters connecting with them. In summer,
as the warmer water would remain at the
surface, the thawing process would be very
slow, indeed, nothing of any depth could

140 THE UNKNOWN GOD
thaw out at all. Water animals and plants
would be unable to exist. Land animals and
plants would be deprived of water except in
summer. Underground streams would not
thaw out at all. The cold produced in sum
mer by the continued thawing would ma
terially reduce the temperature of the entire
region subject to frost. The present Temper
ate Zone would be rendered desert and un
inhabitable. Darwinism does not attempt to account for
the origin or properties of matter; neither
does Evolution. The materialist says simply
that matter and its properties are eternal —
in other words incomprehensible; because
the infinite is always incomprehensible. We
say that space is infinite because we cannot
comprehend any limit to it. Equally we can
not comprehend anything without a limit.
This confession of the materialist that there
is something that he does not understand
would be cheering, but for the fact that he
is just as sure that matter was not made, or
is not controlled, by a superior being as he
is of anything else. The deist has no ad
vantage over him in knowledge on this point.
It is a matter of opinion. But if a scientist

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 141
tells me that so remarkable a thing as this
variation in the expansion of water, a varia
tion so unique in nature, a variation in a sub
stance so universal and so essential to every
living thing, a variation occurring at just
the point where it becomes of vital sig
nificance to all life, is a mere matter of
chance — a thing of blind forces acting blind
ly, I can answer only that his superstition is
greater than mine.
But, to return to Darwinism, let no one
consider it vain and useless from the deistic
standpoint. Holding it an exposed error, it
was a magnificent error. It has turned hu
man thought to great eternal problems, and
has broadened it by bringing a clearer per
ception of the impossibility of finite compre
hension of the infinite. Men are less prone to
set bounds to Divine power, except in the
scientific world, to which, most happily, a
large part of the functions of dogma have
been transferred from religion. Theologians
even hesitate to specify the exact conditions
under which the Omnipotent may be recon
ciled to erring humanity. The whole think
ing world realizes more fully that there is a

142 THE UNKNOWN GOD
great deal that it does not know — approaches
more closely to the realization that,
Knowledge is from man to man,
And not from man, O God, to Thee.
But Darwinism has also greatly stimu
lated scientific research, and modern science
has strengthened the basis for belief in de
sign in nature by revealing wonders in life
that our fathers never dreamed of. More
over, Darwinism has demonstrated and em
phasized most impressively, the fact that the
greatest changes known to mankind to have
occurred in animal and vegetable forms —
the nearest approaches to the origin of new
species — have been the result of the inter
position of man, applying and regulating the
laws of nature, as he understands them. It
is a perfectly safe proposition that if you take
all the results of natural selection known to
mankind, and put them together, they do not
equal the transformations of living organ
isms accomplished by Luther Burbank alone.
So far as human knowledge goes, the great
est agency in the mutation of animal and
vegetable life has been the knowledge and
power of man ; and yet those changes are in
significant in comparison with what would

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 43
have been necessary to transform pro
toplasm, even if it had life, into the myriad
forms we see about us. If we would explain
those mighty changes, from the beginning of
geologic time, we face the logical deduction
of the interposition of some power and some
knowledge far superior to man's — a power
and a knowledge of which might appropri
ately be written :
O JEHOVAH, how manifold are thy works!
In wisdom hast Thou made them all :
The earth is full of Thy riches.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
Wherein are things creeping innumerable,
Both small and great beasts.
There go the ships ;
There is leviathan, whom Thou hast formed to
play therein.
These wait all for Thee,
That Thou mayest give them their food in due
season.
Thou givest unto them, they gather ;
Thou openest Thy hand, they are satisfied with
good.
Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled ;
Thou takest away their breath, they die,
And return to their dust.
Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created ;
And Thou renewest the face of the ground.
Let the glory of Jehovah endure forever.

THE DEBT OF ENGLISH LITER
ATURE TO THE BIBLE.
When Rome was at the zenith of her lux
ury and splendor; when every known land
was ransacked for all that was wonderful in
nature to grace her festivities; when the
gold, and silver, and precious stones of the
world were lavished on the trappings of man
and beast that made up the public pageants ;
there dwelt on a barren island of the Aegean
Sea an aged man for whose eyes a spectacle
was prepared grander than ever Roman Em
peror looked upon. There was nothing in the
place to suggest such an occurrence. The
island was occupied by a Roman penal col
ony. Its rugged outline and scant soil pro
claimed its volcanic origin. The old ' man
dwelt in a little grotto among the jagged
rocks on the southern coast, where the cease
less beat of the sea upon the shore — the sea
that formed his prison walls — was never out
of his ears, but yet there came to his view
scenes of such ravishing beauty, scenes of
such grewsome horror, actors so colossal,
and events so stupendous, that the boldest
imagination has never produced their equals.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS I45
To those who seek to know the philosophy of
English literature, nothing could be more
significant than the portion of his vision
which is described in these words :
And I saw a great white throne, and Him that
sat on it, from whose face the earth and the
heaven fled away ; and there was found no place
for them.
And I saw a new heaven- and a new earth; for
the first heaven and the first earth were passed
away ; and there was no more sea.
And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and
he will dwell with them, and they shall be his peo
ple, and God Himself shall be with them and be
their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain ; for the former things are passed away.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I
make all things new. And he said unto me,
Write — for these words are true and faithful.
Write! Write of the new heaven and the
new earth! Write of the heaven and the
earth which men never dreamed of before,

I46 THE UNKNOWN GOD
but which henceforth shall be their highest
ideals. Write ! for this inspiration comes not
for thee alone ; and we who stand here at the
foot of nineteen centuries can look back over
them and see that, to all who have written
living words since then, has come this same
vision, and for all the world to whom those
words have-reached there is now no heaven
but that where tears are dried, and where
there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor
crying, nor any more pain — the heaven of
peace — the heaven of rest, — unending rest.
Search English literature through and you
find this the ever recurring ideal of heaven,
whether the writer be believer or skeptic.
There is no other conception of Heaven that
can stand beside it, "for they are fled away
and there is found no place for them."
Turn if you please to the Iliad and the
Odyssey and read the descriptions of scenes
in the heaven of the Greeks and Romans —
the petty bickerings of the gods and god
desses, and the fierce threats of old Jove to
castigate all of them if they did not behave
better. How childish is this conception of a
heaven of perpetual breach of the peace as
compared with the heaven of rest. And

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 47
equally faulty is every other conception when
put beside it. Not even the living death of
Nirvana, the highest of them all, can find
favor or approval when viewed in the light
of the vision of Patmos. And this conception
of a heaven of peace has so passed into the
hearts of men — this longing for rest has so
taken possession of them — that we adopt it
in the purely material sense and seek for
places of quiet and peace to lay away the
bodies of our dead. Our Tennyson sings :
We have idle dreams —
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies — O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains —
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp'd in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
Yes and no. Not fools of habit. This is
but the natural expression of the longing of
the soul for the heaven of its highest dreams

I48' THE UNKNOWN GOD
— natural as the worship of the crucifix, or
the feeling of awe in the sanctuary. The old
heavens are gone and the new heaven ha^
come. And- with the old heaven are gone the old
gods. They fled so long ago that they are
almost forgotten. Their names, their at
tributes, and the devoirs men paid to them
are become the subject of study by the anti
quarian. Listen to the song of their flight and the
triumphal approach of their successor:
The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words de
ceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can do more divine
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leav
ing.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale ey'd priest from the prophetic
cell.
Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-batter'd God of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS I49
Heav'n's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with taper's holy shrine,
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their- wounded Tham-
muz mourn.
And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbal's ring
They call the grisly King
In dismal dance about the furnace blue ;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green
Trampling the unshow'r'd grass with lowings
loud;
Nor cair he be at rest
Within his sacred chest ;
Naught but profoundest hell can be his
shroud ;
In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped
ark.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn.
Nor all the gods beside

150 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine;
Our babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damned
crew.
It may seem somewhat Milesian to prove
that these ancient gods have vanished from
English literature by emoting Milton's verse
concerning them, but with him, as with all
our writers, they have vanished as gods.
There has, in their place, come into our lit
erature the one supreme ruler, omniscient
and omnipotent, and the effect of this change
is to be seen throughout its farthest reaches.
What greater change could come to a people
than a change of the being it worships, and
what greater change of such beings could
there be than that brought by the Bible. A
moment's reflection on its necessary relation
to all that we hold most sacred, and the fact
that the force of the change must be recog
nized whenever there is allusion in literature
to what we hold sacred, will give some faint
realization of the vast effect it has had in
ennobling our literature. It is true that the
ancient gods are occasionally used "to point a
moral or adorn a tale," but even the popu-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS I51
larity of "classic allusion" is fast dying out,
and what was considered "fine writing" a
century ago, on this account, is now re
garded as pedantic. The red, Cracker blood
of America calls for something closer home,
something more practical, something that
hinges with the faiths of today, and our
writers respond to the demand. Through
music we have had some influx of the gods
of the northern barbarians, but these, too,
come not as gods, but as heroes or myths,
who are gone forever, save as memories, and
whose highest mission was to make room for
something better. Their relation to our life
and our literature is well presented in Long
fellow's translation of Tegner's beautiful
lines :
I heard a voice, that cried,
"Balder, the Beautiful,
Is dead, is dead."
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.
Balder, the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the gods !

152 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword. -f
They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.
They launched the burning ship :
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed.
Sinking beneath the waves,
Balder returned no more.
So perish the old Gods !
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.
Build it again,
O ye bards,
Fairer than before ;
Ye fathers of a new race,
Feed upon morning dew,
Sing the new Song of Love.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 153
The law of force is dead!
The law of love prevails !
Thor, the thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more.
No more, with threats,
Challenge the meek Christ.
Woe! indeed, to the gods whom the bards
do not sing, for if their characters and at
tributes cannot possess and fill the souls that
have caught the inspiration to sing the true
and the beautiful, how may they hope to
reach the hearts of the surging masses to
whom sentiment is but an occasional visitor ?
The old gods
Are dead, poor sinners, all of them but Death,
Who has laughed down Jove's broad ambrosian
brow,
Furrowed with earthquake frowns; and not a
ghost
Haunts the gods' town upon Olympus' peak.
The old gods are gone, — and with the old
gods we may include the lesser spiritual, or
at least supernatural, beings with which the
world was peopled when it was young. Gone
are the djins and the genii. Gone are the
kobolds and the gnomes. Gone are the elves
and the fairies. Gone are the naiads, the

154 THE UNKNOWN GOD
nymphs, the "gorgons, hydras and chimeras
dire." And in the place of these mischief-
making and terrifying creatures we have the
holy angels — the angels who watch over the
sleep of innocent childhood — the angels
whose soft pinions fan the fevered brow —
the angels who whisper hope to the parting
soul and bear it away to the new heaven.
"Are they not all ministering spirits?"
Flow far this conception of supernatural
beings Who stand intermediate between us
and divine perfection, loving, sympathetic,
surpasses any that can be found in any other
than the Hebrew mythology! What other
form of spirit is there as to which there
could be any feeling that kinship ennobled
man? What other conception could sustain
that exquisite touch of Poe's in the death of
Annabel Lee — "So that her high-born kins
men came and bore her away from me?"
What other conception could give inspira
tion for that description of Uncle Toby's
oath — "The accusing spirit which flew up to
heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as
he gave it in ; and the recording angel, as he
wrote it down, dropped a tear on the word
and blotted it out forever?"

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 55
What other could carry the thoughts of
aid, companionship and sustaining sympathy
in Whittier's lines :
To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God's meekest Angel gently comes ;
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again.
He mocks no grief with idle cheer,
Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear ;
But ills and woes he may not cure
He kindly trains us to endure.
Angel of Patience ! sent to calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ;
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life's smile and tear.
O thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day;
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers, "Be resigned :
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell
The dear Lord ordereth all things well."
And with this conception of the angels and
of their passage to and from the spirit world
there comes of necessity the unique and sat
isfying thought of a passage way — a means

I56 THE UNKNOWN GOD
of transit. The old patriarchs saw it as a lad
der over which they ascended and descended
in their constant journeyings, but that is too
material an image for so ethereal a pathway.
Our American poet portrays its architecture
with more artistic touch —
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night —
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,'
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
A new heaven and a new earth! Not a
new earth in any physical sense. The moun
tain top was not to be lower, or the beetling
cliff less difficult to scale. The snow was
still to hurtle through the pine forest, and
the dry simoon to drive the hot sand of the
desert before it. The rivers were not to
cease their flow to the sea, nor old ocean to
cease his fierce beating against his bounds.
Harvest was still to follow seed time, and
winter summer, just as it all had been from
the creation dawn. But it was to be new to
man — new in its meaning — new in its inspi-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 57
rations — new in all that pertains to the rela
tion of man to man, and man to the infinite.
And -first and greatest of all is the view of
life itself. What is the object or end of hu
man life ? Why are we here ? I take it that
the bible — more especially the New Testa
ment — first gave mankind the clear teaching
that life on earth was primarily a prepara
tion for a future life — a life of infinite dura
tion under new conditions, compared to
which our present being is a thing of small
importance. Perhaps the thought may be
expressed as living chiefly with a view to
death. I do not underrate the scriptural
teachings as to the good that may be done in
this world by right living. I do not desire
to question the laudability of ambitions of
various earthly kinds. My thought is that
all this is made subordinate to the one central
purpose of attaining blessedness in a world
beyond. It cannot be more forcibly put than
in those ominous words, "What shall it profit
a man if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?" And though this con
ception may at first seem repulsive, it is the
conception that pervades our literature.
Bryant puts it direct in his stately lines :

158 THE UNKNOWN GOD
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and
soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
So live that you may die in the hope of a
blessed immortality. Death is but the cur
tain that hangs between the two lives, and
the life that lies beyond is so much grander
than this little space that its contemplation
robs death of its terrors —
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life, that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process,, moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks ;
And these are but the shattered stalks,
Or ruined chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because she bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit otherwhere.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 159
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart ;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
You say this is somber. In one sense it is,
and yet it is the least somber and most com
forting idea of the purpose of life and the re
lations of life and death that was ever given
by any religion. The fact is, in spite of all
the lightness we may throw into it, that life
is a serious matter and death is even more so.
But neither .can be escaped. They are the
two great inevitables — the is and the must
be. We. fight off the contemplation of what
must be — we strive to forget — but time and
again we must remember, and when we must
this bible idea conies as a consolation that
surpasses any other, and which therefore
has won the full assent of our thinkers — of
our great poets. If there be a time when the
awfulness of it all can be contemplated with
satisfaction, or even with perfect equanim
ity, I should think it would be when lost in
the sonorous roll of the Coplas de Man-
rique —

l6b THE UNKNOWN GOD
Our lives are rivers gliding free
To that unfathomed, boundless sea,
The silent grave !
Thither all earthly pomp and boast
Roll to be swallowed up and lost
In one dark wave.
Thither the mighty torrents stray,
Thither the brook pursues its way,
And tinkling rill —
There all are equal ; side by side
The poor man and the son of pride
Lie calm and still.
This world is but the rugged road
Which leads us to the bright abode
Of peace above ;
So let us choose that narrow way,
Which leads no traveler's foot astray
From realms of love.
Our cradle is the starting place,
Life is the running of the race,
We reach the goal
When, in the mansions of the blest,
Death leaves to its eternal rest
The weary soul.
Did we but use it as we ought,
The world would school each wandering thought
To its high state.
Faith wings the soul beyond the sky,
Up to that better world on high,
For which we wait.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS l6l
There are many features of the Bible
teaching whose adoption in the prevailing
sentiment of English literature could not be
shown in a single essay, although we may be
justified in assuming that the Bible teaching
controls them, even if it be not their original
source. The common rules of morality, and
the duties of the various social relations, are
not sufficiently distinctive of the Christian
religion to admit of an exclusive claim for it
as their origin, without an investigation of
comparative religions, and of historical in
fluences that would be very extensive. The
relations of parent and child, husband and
wife, ruler and subject, master and slave,
guardian and ward, judge and suitor, are
regulated in all religions known to mankind,
and there is such similarity in their regula
tion that it would be difficult, indeed, to lay
claim to any particular teaching for one re
ligion exclusively. And so with the more
common moral offenses, as murder, theft,
blasphemy, deceit, fraud, cruelty and the
like. The more apparent influence will there
fore be found in the doctrines concerning the
relations of God to man, and of these there
is none more peculiar to Christianity than

l62 THE UNKNOWN GOD
the doctrine of the mediation of love. There
is nothing exclusive in the doctrine of media
tion, and nothing exclusive in the Jewish idea
that "without the shedding of blood there is
no remission of sins." These are almost uni
versal, and for centuries untold nations have
groaned under the belief in angry deities
who could be appeased only by the sacrifice
of life or the offer of material gifts. If you
turn to Homer you are wearied with the
ever recurring statement of how someone
poured libations, or Laid
On the rich fat, raw portions from the limbs
For sacrifice, and other parts he cast
Sprinkled with flour of meal, into the flames.
And so the doctrine runs through all the
old religions in some form, reaching its cli
max in the horrors perpetrated on the teocal-
lis of Mexico. This idea of a divine being
whose wrath can be appeased only by the
blood of his creatures is so puerile, and so
repugnant to common sense, that its general
adoption can be explained only by the low
conception of divinity. It is quite possible
that it is to some extent still held among
Christian nations on account of the promi-

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 163
nence of the figurative sacrificial idea in the
Christian mediation, but the belief in blood
atonement is so far dispelled that I presume
I may refer to it here, without offense, as
abandoned by the thinking world. The
theory of the mediation of love, in its first
stage, is set forth in the words
For God so loved the world, that He gave His
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Note the distinction. It is not a God of
wrath, but a God of love; and the sacrifice
is offered not by guilty men, but by a loving
deity. But why the cruel death? It was the
supreme test of love —
Greater love hath no man than this ; that a man
lay down his life for his friends.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die.
Yet peradventure for a good man some would
even dare to die.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in
that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
We love him because he first loved us.
If a man love me he will keep my words ; and
my Father will love him, and make our abode
with him.
These extracts cover the line of the doc-

164 THE UNKNOWN GOD
trine of the mediation of love, which is a
doctrine of the Bible alone. It places love
above all else. It makes Christianity the re
ligion of love; and love the drawing power
of religion. This was Christ's teaching of
his mission : "And I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me." And this
is the mediation not only between God and
man, but also between man and man. Again
and again is the injunction made not merely
to love among the brethren, but also for a
reaching out of love to those who may be
affected by it and so reclaimed; even as the
love of God reached out in mediation. Con
sider this strange teaching:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use
you and persecute you :
That ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven.
For if ye love them which love you, what re
ward have ye? Do not even the publicans the
same? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 65
Now this conception of love as a means
of mediation — as a power to reconcile God to
man and man to man — is absolutely unique
with the religion of the Bible. It is the very
central thought and essence of that religion,
and it can be put no stronger than in the
words of St. John:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of
God ; and everyone that loveth is born of God,
and knoweth God.
He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God
is love. And I submit that this idea permeates
English literature — not merely religious lit
erature, but poetry and fiction and the drama.
It is not only on the Angel's list' that Abou
Ben Adhem's name leads all the rest because
he loves his fellow men. The novelist writes
it there. The poet writes it there. The dram
atist writes it there. It is an universal ideal.
Literature dare not refuse it. It would sacri
fice itself if it did not recognize that senti
ment which but a few years ago made friend
and foe stop in their heated contest and stand
uncovered before the bier of Henry Geprge,
because he had proven his love for the hu
man race, broadly and beyond dispute. I

l66 THE UNKNOWN GOD
believe that Flolland does not at all exag
gerate the effect of this sentiment in his
lines, so far at least as the general tenor of
English literature is concerned :
In all the crowded universe
There is but one stupendous Word;
And huge and rough, or trimmed and terse,
Its fragments build and undergird
The songs and stories we rehearse.
And this great word, all words above,
Including, yet defying all — ¦
Soft as the crooning of the dove,
And strong as the Archangel's call —
Means only this — means only love!
The love of home and native land,
The love that springs in son and sire,
And that which welds the heart and hand
Of man and maiden in its fire,
Are signs, by which we understand,
The love whose passion shook the Cross; —
And all those loves that, deep and broad,
Make princely gain of piteous loss,
Reveal the love that lives in God
As in a blood-illumined gloss.
It is hardly necessary to offer proof that
we set as our very highest ideal the spirit of
self-sacrifice and earnest effort for race, for

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 167
nation, for neighbors — the spirit that seeks
especially to help the poor and friendless —
the spirit of love to man. There is the whole
of our Christmas literature, and a very large
literature it has grown to be, which is based
exclusively on this motive, and which could
not exist without it. And who would wish
to live without it — who — pagan, Jew, or in
fidel — would wish to have the world lose the
beautiful Christmas spirit? It is the climax
of religious aspirations known to man —
Peace beginning to be
Deep as the sleep of the sea
When the stars their faces glass
In its blue tranquillity —
Hearts of men upon earth
Never once still from their birth,
To rest as the wild waters rest
With the colors of heaven on their breast.
Love, which is sunlight of peace,
Age by age to increase
Till anger and hatreds are dead,
And sorrow and death shall cease —
"Peace on earth and good-will !"
Souls that are gentle and still
Hear the first music of this
Far off, infinite bliss.

1 68 THE UNKNOWN GOD
I have now endeavored to demonstrate, or
rather to illustrate, the fact that the really
great debt of English literature to the Bible
is a debt for ideas — for great thoughts which
have given the best of our literature. The
debt is of this character because the religion
of the Bible is the religion of the English-
speaking peoples, and all that is highest and
best of any people is included in the religion
of that people. But the illustrations I have
given are the barest suggestion of the full
truth, which is that the religion of the Bible
permeates English literature. It cannot be
separated out any more than the blood can
be taken out of a man and leave him a living
creature. This is particularly noticeable in
Shakespeare, for it is clearly impossible that
any man should have written Shakespeare's
works, without being familiar with Bible
thought — almost with Bible phrases. Note
how closely they follow in common in
stances.* The Bible phrase is : "A good name
*Note — The quotations are from the King James'
version, which Shakespeare did not know, but they do
not differ materially from the same passages in the
Bishops' Bible, which he did know.

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 69
Is rather to be chosen than great riches."
Shakespeare's words are:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash, etc.
The Bible phrase is :
The merciful man doeth good to his own soul.
Shakespeare's words are:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless'd,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
The Bible phrase is :
I have been young, and now am old, yet have I
not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread.
Shakespeare's words are:
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
And so it is throughout English literature,
in the poem, the novel, the essay, the drama.
Whenever you pass out of the realm of com
mon things and approach the supernatural,
or the higher levels of human life, you come
to Bible suggestions. It is just as naturally
and necessarily so as that you should come

179 THE UNKNOWN GOD
on suggestions of Anglo-Saxon derivations.
At least it seems natural to us who look on
literature as not only the product of the
thought of a nation, but also as the product
of the demand of a nation. And yet it must
have been that this was not so before the in
vention of printing had made literature ac
cessible to the masses, and, indeed, long aft
erward, for books were luxuries long after
printing was invented. And it is an historical
truth that while books remained the luxu
ries of the learned few there was in them a
vast surplusage of the mythologies of Greece
and Rome in particular, and this continued
even to the opening of the present century in
what is called "a wealth of classic allusion."
And now that we have reached this con
clusion as to the facts — now that we may
say that the religion of the Bible has driven
all other religions from English literature
as potential factors — now that we recognize
that our whole literature adopts its concep
tions of heaven and earth, of the divine and
the human, of good and bad, of the noble and
the vile, what is the debt ? How shall we item
ize the statement of what is owing? Clearly
the first and the plainest item is the superior

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS \Jl
character of the ideas introduced, their
loftier tone, their grander aspirations, their
tendency to make mankind more lovable to
mankind. This is a great debt. Its measure
is the superiority of the Christian religion
over other religions in its teachings _ of the
relations of God to man, and man to man.
The second, and in purely literary considera
tion, the greater item, is that it makes our
literature comprehensible to the people. It is
essential to the utility of a literature that it
be understood. I am aware that there is a
school of would-be literati who imagine that
merit lies in concealment, who veil thought
with meshed words, who study out symbols
and signs to convey hidden meanings, whose
aim is to mean what they do not say; and I
am aware that the devotees of this vogue in
sist that our great English writers have all
been similarly afflicted, and that they put in
hours seeking for hidden meanings that the
author never dreamed of, even going so far
as to find cryptograms showing that he did
not write what he wrote. But I avow that
there was never a man wise enough to think
a great thought who was not also wise
enough to know that the masses would have

172 THE UNKNOWN GOD
a hard enough time to understand it even
when written large in plain English and with
explanatory footnotes. The object of the
great author is to convey thought — not to
conceal it. And to this end the thorough
adoption of the religion of the people into
literature is of the utmost aid.
Possibly we can reach a clearer conception
of what the Bible has done for literature in
this respect by a consideration of what it has
not done for something else. We divide the
learning of men into science, literature and
art. Has the Bible done anything for sci
ence? The controversy is a vast one. The
enemies of religion urge that it has stood in
the way of science. They point to the Chris
tian world forced for years to use the Ro
man numerals instead of the Arabic on ac
count of religious prejudice. They point to
Galileo and the hindrance to astronomical
study. They point to Columbus and the
Spanish bishops declaring the impiety of the
belief in a new world where the gospel could
not have reached. They come down much
later, in the controversy over geology, to the
point where the Christian world sneered
with Cowper at those who

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 73
Drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That he who made it, and reveal'd its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
But looking back over all this from- the
vantage ground of today men on all sides
concede that all this controversy resulted
from a misconception of the religion of the
Bible, and that the opposition to scientific
progress was the product of human stupidity,
not of divine wisdom. The consensus of mod
ern thought leaves the relation of the Bible
to science just where it stood on the creation
morn, when the Lord said :
Let us make man in our image, after our like
ness ; and let them have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air;
and brought them unto Adam to see what he
would call them; and whatsoever Adam called
every living creature that was the name thereof.
In other words the religion of the Bible
simply opens wide the door of nature and

174 THE UNKNOWN GOD
says to man "enter and learn what you may."
But it stops there. Its sturdiest champions
cannot claim that the Bible was intended to
teach science. There is no debt of science to
the Bible as there is of literature to the Bible.
And how about art? Is it indebted to the
Bible? Certainly not in ancient times. The
Jews had no art. The stern command from
Sinai — "Thou shalt not make unto thee any
grave image, or any likeness of anything
that is in heaven above or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth" — was enforced in its literal sig
nificance. The art of Greece and Rome had
fallen into decay before Christianity became
associated with temporal power, and it con
tinued little more than a memory throughout
the centuries until the Dark ages gave way
to the Revival of Learning. In its beginning
modern art seems to have drawn its inspira
tion from the Bible. The painting of
Raphael Da Vinci, Titian and Corregio, and
the sculpture of Donatello, Michel Angelo,
and Sansovino were largely of Bible sub
jects, but it must be remembered that the
great patron of their art was the Church,
and the demand controlled to a large extent

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS 1 75
the nature of the supply. The old masters
must have drawn their inspiration largely
from what remained of ancient art, aided by
classic literature; and certainly as art de
veloped from its new birth the earlier
Christian motives yielded to pagan subjects,
and the trend has been so steadily in that di
rection since then that to know high art to
day you must know the mythologies. The
renaissance of art followed the renaissance
of literature, and the two are bound together
by subtle ties. Art has two sources of inspi
ration — literature and nature. It cannot live
and thrive in defiance of literature, and for
that reason art, in its common acceptation,
has been repressed among the English-
speaking peoples by the influence of the Bible
on English literature. The permeating influ
ence of the Bible religion has destroyed the
demand for classic subjects and the ability
to comprehend them. You cannot force the
pagan mythologies in that unfriendly cli
mate. They are taught in vain in colleges
and seminaries. The people will have none
of them. In English and American homes
— protestant homes at that— you will find a
thousand Madonnas where you find one

176 THE UNKNOWN GOD
Venus — a thousand Christs where you find
one Apollo. The Englishman or American
knows nothing of the mythologies unless
specially taught, and cares nothing for them.
The figure of a Greek god or goddess wakes
no sentiment in his breast. If he knows who
it is he knows it only as he knows that "lbs."
stands for pounds. To the Greeks it was dif
ferent. These were the gods and goddesses
they worshipped — to whom they prayed — to
whom they poured libations — to whom they
offered sacrifices.
They understood what these figures meant
— not usually from the figure itself, which
was that of a typically perfect human being,
but from the dress or insignia. And so the
statuary and the paintings of the ancients
carried messages to the masses which were
understood, and which wakened responsive
chords in their breasts, because the highest
feelings of every people are the religious
feelings. We can never have a distinctively
English or American art except it be one
that explains itself to the people and is com
prehended by them, and in its higher levels
it must be founded in the religion of the
Bible. And such an art will surely develop in

AND OTHER ORTHODOX ESSAYS. 1 77
this country, for the Bible has driven out the
possibility of any other art, and has held the
ground fallow until the master minds shall
arise who shall be able to express the ideals
of that religion in the forms which nature
has put about us here.
That work has already been done for lit
erature; and what art will owe to the Bible
when there shall arise in this land a new and
unique art — grand in its conceptions — rev
erent in its teachings — elevating in its influ
ences — speaking a language that the untu
tored can understand — unfettered by the su
perstitions and false traditions of other lands
— that is what English literature now owes
to the Bible. It is a great debt — one whose
magnitude is so far beyond our grasp that
we lose ourselves in the effort to compre
hend it. We realize ourselves but pygmies
on the sands of time gazing with curious eyes
at the mighty surf beat of an ocean that
mocks human power and submerges human
endeavor. We build our puny dykes and dig
our channels, but with the incoming tide they
are lost forever, and the relentless sea goes
on shaping the land ever to its will.

178 THE UNKNOWN GOD
You may doubt; you may question; you
may deny; but before you are spread the
pages of history recording the continued
movement of man in ways that were not his
ways and to ends that were not his ends.
and there stand the words — "Behold I make
all things new. And he said unto me,
Write!" Can you deny that the prophecy is
fulfilled?

OTHER BOOKS. BY SAME AUTHOR
MASSACRES OF THE MOUNTAINS—
A history of the Indian Wars of the Far
West, by Jacob Piatt Dunn Harper &
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much straightforward history and furnishes enough of romance,
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INDIANA — A Redemption from Slavery.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (American Com
monwealth Series), by Jacob Piatt Dunn ;
price $1.25; for sale by all dealers.
" Mr. Dunn has struck on the line of genuine interest and
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OTHER BOOKS, BY SAME AUTHOR
TRUE INDIAN STORIES— With Glossary
of Indiana Indian Names, by Jacob Piatt
Dunn ; Sentinel Printing Company, Indi
anapolis; price $1.00, post-paid.

" The author of this little volume of studies from the pioneer
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hunted down, brought into connected sequence, and told in a
way to convey their full meaning of tragedy and human interest.
* * * An index glossary of 67 pages gives the correct Indian
form and etymology of nearly all the local names in the State
of Indian origin or connection. The numerous illustrations
are nearly all of special historical value. The volume might
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(Signed review by James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology.)

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Includes the stories of The Little Turtle, Tecum-
tha, the Shawnee Prophet, Frances Slocum, etc.
Sent, post-paid, by The Sentinel Printing Company,
Indianapolis, on receipt of $1.00.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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