The new epoch for faith

Front matter

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Preface

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THE occasion of this book was an invitation received nearly three years ago, to deliver a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston. The writer’s sincerest thanks are due to the Trustee of the Institute for the honor of this appointment, and for the time granted in order to prepare to meet it. In the fulfillment of this duty last autumn, the substance of about one half of this volume was delivered as lectures.

The title of the book, which has not been selected without care, may seem to some persons to be excessive in its optimism. Even if this is so, there is really no help for it. It is the expression of a conviction, which, for the writer, has the force of truth. And when one thinks of the revolution in all matters of faith in which men are now living, it is not unwise to hope for ereat issues. In an unpublished address the late Professor C. C. Everett, of Harvard University, referred to the last third of the nineteenth cenvl PREFACE tury as having witnessed a greater revolution than took place under Luther. “That was a transition,” said Professor Everett, “‘ from one form of the letter to another; this has been a transition from the letter to the spirit.” If one might venture to add anything to these weighty and admirable words, it would be that the transition has made evident the true place of the . letter in the service of the spirit. It has been shown that while the spirit is master, it cannot live in this world without the letter as servant. The variations of the letter as the organ of the spirit, from the vagrant whispers about God and his divine order, found among all peoples and in all tongues, up to the full-toned and mighty utterance of the Hebrew seers and the supreme music of the speech of Christ, have also become apparent. The world’s speech about God is related to its object, as the world’s speech is related to thought. The one runs through many variations from the lispings of the child to the utterance of the man; the other runs a similar course from the fugitive words of the spiritual childhood of the race up to the expression of divine maturity in Jesus Christ. The place of the letter has thus been made more secure.

PREFACE Vil

Ideas in abstraction from their highest historic expression are not for this age, any more than dead mechanism usurping the place of insight and love. With this double movement in full force, this primacy of the spirit maintained, however, through the service of the letter, this recognition of history as the fruitful soil of all valid thought, this discernment of idealism in the facts of existence, this high conjunction of God and his world down to its least detail, its cup of cold water, its widow’s mite, its unconscious humanity and inhumanity, as in the Judgment parable of Jesus, there rests upon the modern believer an obligation to hope.

The purpose of the volume is to discover and announce the chief significance for faith of the nineteenth century. It is believed that the great witness of that century is the witness to man. In the second chapter the attempt is made to justify this position.

Assuming that this‘justification has been made good, Christianity, as the religion of the Divine

man, comes into the presence of this new consciousness of humanity for new appreciation. Doubt, however, of the sincerest and most searching sort is one of the moods of the cen-

Vill PREFACE tury; and this doubt means the falling of man from confidence in the witness of humanity, and in the high vocation of his kind. It is claimed that this negative mood is educational, and that it issues in a fresh assertion of humanity, that is, in a new return to faith. During the last hundred years history has acquired an immensely increased importance; and the association of the permanent and yet growing beliefs of the race with history would seem to result in a profounder assurance of their reality. As the first chapter is upon things assumed, the final one is upon things expected. The book is thus a consideration of what are believed to be the sovereign moods of the century, intervening between fundamental assumptions and final issues. <Assuming the validity of the religious view of the world, it seeks to appraise for that view the value of the century.

For such an undertaking it is obvious that knowledge is necessary. “This essential preliminary is indeed appalling in its extent. It may well seem that an adequate knowledge of the period under review is beyond human attainment, or that only a specialist in history can compass it. Against criticism of this kind the

PREFACE ix writer has nothing to say. He is forward to confess that such knowledge as he should be glad to possess he has found beyond his power. He has consoled himself with several reflections. It has seemed possible that ideal knowledge might lie beyond the widest learning. ‘Only one who is ignorant of the complexity of all historical phenomena could cherish the delusion that he could give an exhaustive and adequate account, or a final and authoritative estimate, of the intellectual situation of any age.” + Inadequacy thus falls alike, if not equally, upon the specialist and the non-specialist. Investigation has been made as wide and deep as could be done in the circumstances. Books have been read of many sorts, but chiefly those great books that constitute the watershed of the century’s opinion and feeling. Genius is the lawgiver in every age. The few men of original genius, and those who are great in the reproduction of ideas, thus abbreviate undertakings like the present one. For the writer, the last third of the century has meant opportunity, struggle, and life; and its atmosphere filled with many significant voices has been his chief source of knowledge. The

1 The Ritschlian Theology, p.5. Alfred E. Garvie.

x PREFACE time in which one has lived, the changes that one has witnessed, the faith and the struggle in which one has shared, are an unconscious discipline both in knowledge and in insight. The writer has also tried to investigate symbolically ; he has endeavored to find the whole in specially significant parts; and by way of comfort he has reflected that if one falling apple served Newton for his great generalization, certain facts may be presumed to include within their own meaning that of their entire class.

This book would be absurd without a solid basis in fact; yet the fact is but the beginning. The attempt is at valuation. The search is for the meaning of ideas and events, the appraisal of moods and achievements. And here again abundant fault may justly enough be found. The criticism as to the adequacy of the basis in fact may be matched by that which questions the competence and disinterestedness of the insight. The writer’s weights and measures may seem to be all wrong. His mood may appear to be too confident, too dogmatic; or even that of one committed to a side. Such criticism cannot be obviated. If it is entirely true, the truth cannot be concealed by a polemic phrase. If it

PREFACE x1 is not wholly true, the truth may still be, like the foreign accent upon speech, unobvious to the writer, although ludicrously plain to others. Let it be considered what the design of the work is. It is an interpretation. A history of ideas and events is not written but presupposed. Knowledge has been sought for the sake of wisdom. That a writer should take sides, in a work of this kind, would seem to be essential. The person who has no interests at stake is at the greatest disadvantage in understanding any part of the world. One thing is certain, and that is the stern straightforwardness of the universe in which men live. Play is incidental, purpose, high and serious, is the soul of the world. The inevitable is on every hand.

“But heard are the voices, Heard are the sages, The Worlds and the Ages:

‘Choose well; your choice is

Brief, and yet endless.’ ”

It is believed that there is a movement in history subduing the world’s divisions into eternal unity ; but up to date the end is unaccomplished, the dualism is still extant; and the camps of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, hope and dexii PREFACE spair, life and death, confront one another in deadly battle. In this state of affairs, the writer has no desire to become “president of the heaven-and-hell amalgamation society.” If what he has written is of any value, it is because it is an honest and emphatic opinion concerning crises upon which he has looked through his own eyes, and through all other available eyes. That the situation is greater than his vision and that its meaning is vaster than his judgment are freely and, indeed, gratefully confessed ; and yet it is believed that his work may be of some slight help both to knowledge and to wisdom.

There should plainly be a sequel to this discussion to indicate, in an orderly way, the conceptions of faith that come out of the nineteenth century. Such an outline was at one time contemplated as the conclusion to this book. It was found, however, to be foreign to its essential design ; and it is the writer’s hope that another volume will follow, in the near future, upon Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, and dealing with the theology that rises out of this day of crisis, freedom, and necessity. ) GrorRGE A. GORDON.

Chapter I

That the religious view of the universe is true That God is present in human life

That God works for ends

That human progress is real

That man’s world possesses imperishable Dont ase, Poe

Chapter II The Advent Of Humanity

I. Humanity the central message of the nineteenth century II. The idea of the ae of ine race, “like he idea of the unity of nature, ade an arte of religious genius III. Forces that have delayed the coming of the Agnes dom of man .

1. Personal: (a) the Sahl tA of ‘ie ee (b) the weakness of reason, (¢c) the perversity of the will bere ey eee one

2. Social and institutional: (a) Israel’s misconception of election or vocation, (b) the perpetuation of this misconception eh the Christian Church

3. The relation of the Divine will to peed na an insoluble mystery: (a) this does not prevent certain steps into clearness .

(b) Mr. John Fiske’s metaphysics of rel evil

X1V CONTENTS

IV. Periods in which the idea of the unity of the race has gained strength . .. . 53 1. Not announced but implied in eer ideatiark of the Hebrew prophets .. . . 300

2. The value of the Jonah story and its Cig . be

38. Indirect influence of Greek literature and Romanlaw .. . aes | 4. The humanity of the Potente Reformation 2 ae

V. Witnesses to the advent of humanity in the nineteenth century, 7... fs =. Gps ee

1. The French Revolution. . . 63 2. The poetry of Robert Burns an the iotisaone

of literature s:,5° (<. 4) 5) ee bien, Ce ee 8. Socialism. . . . coke” inden te. Ln enn 4. The transformation of scionde) <..f). 0 ea ee eee 5. ‘The missionary interest... jabs) eee | ee 6. The influence of the United States . . .. . 91

Chapter III The New Appreciation Of Christianity

I. The two paths to the Infinite . .. . . it 1. The worth of natural or cosmical sechen >) 1aaip eae 2. Man the interpreter of nature ..... . 116 II. Christianity the religion of man . . . uw « 1. The prophethood of Christ and the race . . . 141 2. The priesthood of Christand the race.. . . . 146 3. The kinghood of Christand the race . . . . 1538 4. The sacramental idea in Christ and in the race. 158 IJ. Christianity the revelation of God in Jesus Christ . 169 1. The new view of the Bible an aid to thisinsight 171 2. The disintegration of orthodoxies providential . 174

3. The vanishing of old heterodoxies a sign of the times . . ee vr are 4. The judgment of peu ae 176

5. The optimist of the first century nee an ioe ie ee eee i Me ep ee

CONTENTS

Chapter IV The Discipline Of Doubt

I. The ordinary opinions concerning religious doubt . 1. Something to be overcome by force . 2. Essentially dishonest . ae 3. Mean logical strategy . ... . 4, Sign of weakness . : II. The persistence of doubt upon the apostate issues eae eioe ers f . Sai sre ares te ee 1. The Puritan niceties 5 pre er a 2. The medizval and patristic anxiety 3. Doubt in the apostolic age . 4. Hebrew doubt as expressed in the eae 5. The forms of nineteenth century doubt: (a) scientific, (b) sentimental, (c) philosophic III. Sources of doubt especially active in the nineteenth century . . ee te Pee ee ee 1. The ideal of aed vt Fer ieee eed eal vek ake 2. The ideal of life : 3. Personal fortune in the world 4. The terrestrial habit of mind . Pane: 5. The failure of the negative mood to look a Godin man . Si ne ksi out oe ke IV. The services of doubt to faith AP ant ag a 1. The elimination of superstition 2. The giving to the negative mood its best errs expression: (a) pessimism, (b) naturalism, (c) Christianity minus its history 3. The reorganization of knowledge to seth doubt has led Ae WE at Us 4, A new spiritualrealism. ...... .

Chapter V

I. Manareligious being. . . ont sidice Waita’« 1. The return to faith in the een of life . .

XV

183 183 184 185 189

191 191 195 197 199

203 203 209 213 220

222 225 230 233

238 241

246 248

Xvi CONTENTS

2. The power of reaction ... 2. 5 « « «

3. The resurgence of conscious religious need .

4. The influence of an idealistic philosophy .

II. This return is to the God and Father of Christ .

1. To Calvinism there can be no return . 2. Faith in its Christian or Ideal form . 3. The logic of alternatives Ill. The return to faith is the return to nRctey

1. The race carried away from itself by science

2. Science taken captive by philosophy . 3. Both subdued by humanity ..... 4, Symbols of the century’s return . . . .

Chapter VI The New Help From History

J. The new consciousness of history. . . . .

IL: History defined": "so. ee ae a ee

Ill. History ‘and sentiment ©... . 2. . © « IV. History and humor.

1. The sense of perspective, or hatte aif eS ‘ 2. The sense of incongruity, or humor and beauty . 3. Irony, or the witness of humor to moral order .

Y. History and the human conscience

1. The immeasurably increased vista into the past 2. The immeasurable improvement recorded .

VI. History and the religious instinct . ....

1. Universal experience attests reality .

2. Religion man’s supreme interest . . . ° 3. Religion rises in response to the appeal of God . 4. Religion and reality in the soul of Jesus Christ .

Chapter VII Things Expected

1. Prevision an irrepressible function of thought . 2. Uncontradicted experience its ideal basis. . . 3. The anticipated influence of humanity upon

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382 386

CONTENTS XVii

4, The anticipated influence of Christianity upon FIC wn ct) ao | A Cee eae ee OO 5. The education of man the final end in life . . 392 6. The union of ethical rigor and unlimited hope POO IA. ti foe ee ae eeeae ee st te OOO 7. The progressive verification of basal assumptions 398 8. The contradiction of hope its vaster fulfillment. 399

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THE NEW EPOCH FOR FAITH

“Tt is the end of the earthly life of the human race to order all its relations with freedom according to reason.”

‘From this principle we arrive at five great and only possible epochs, exhausting the whole earthly life of the human race: First: That in which human affairs are governed by reason as instinct without violence or constraint. Second: That in which this instinct has become weaker, and now manifests itself in a few chosen individuals, and thereby becomes an external ruling authority for all the rest. Third: That in which this authority is thrown off; and with it reason in every shape which it has yet assumed. Fourth: That in which reason in the shape of knowledge appears among men. Fifth, that in which art associates itself with knowledge in order to mould human life with a firmer and surer hand into harmony with knowledge, and in which the ordering of all the relations of man according to reason is, by means of art, freely accomplished, the object of the earthly life attained, and our race enters upon the higher spheres of another world.’ — FicutE, Popular Works, vol. ii. pp. 69, 70.

“At last the kingdom and the power and the glory of God must surely come.” — Ibid.

THE NEW EPOCH FOR FAITH

Chapter I Things Assumed

THE ultimate premise of thought is not proof. It is insight or assumption in accordance with sane reason. ‘This familiar idea runs_ back through all the books on logic to Aristotle’s ‘*¢ Posterior Analytics,’ where the ultimate judgment of infinite fruitfulness is described as a function of the mind itself. In perception there is seen at work a native discriminative power. Rational experience is possible because the soul is of such a nature as to be qualified for it. The home of the original principles of knowledge is the mind.’ The organ of knowledge must be assumed ; its essential trustworthiness must be taken for granted. Back of this position it is impossible to go. That there exists in man. intellect, critical and constructive, with an eye for reality and with the power to reach it, is not something that has been proved. It

1 Post. Analytics, ii. 19.

lies deeper than all proof. It is an assumption made in accordance with sane reason.

The temptation is to linger for a moment to fix the reality of this subjective ultimate. Plato remarks, with an exquisite touch of humor and pathos, that the insane man is only somewhat more emphatically out of his head than the rest of society.1 There is in all men an original uncertainty of mind. Paul calls it the carnal mind, which in all high matters is incompetent. This apostle describes the dualism in his soul, the conflict between the sane and the insane moods of his spirit.2. The old thinkers called this original and persistent uncertainty in vision and in feeling and in preference depravity; to-day it is known by the softer names of prejudice, eccentricity, abnormal development, excessive sensibility. The fact is the same, however, under the old names and the new. Man is originally like turbid water; the beginning of wisdom is to wait for the settling of this sediment of insanity.

This result the great Greek thinkers described as the emergence of dp6ds Adyos, right reason. It meant something like rational transparency, clear and sure insight. It was the fountain of all speculative power, no less than of all valid practical judgment. It was a power that grew through use, that acquired mastery through the

1 Laws, 929, D. 2 Romans vii.

THE FORCE OF RIGHT REASON 5 experience which it tested. It became at length the philosopher’s sane vision, and the sure discrimination of the man of the world. It is the origin, in all ages, of genuine critical power, and of valid insight. It is the last and best resource of the highest thinker and the humblest man. It is this faculty against which the system of a Spinoza goes to wreck. The philosopher’s intoxication with God is sublime; but his treatment of human life runs against right reason; and the God who thus reduces human life to a mere and miserable mode of his own infinite and irresponsible existence is himself discredited in the presence of right reason. There has been no argument with the philosopher ; perhaps the critic is altogether incompetent clearly and elaborately to expose the latent incoherence and unwarrantable assumptions in the system that he rejects. The great system goes because right reason is against it. The system of Jonathan Edwards is a vital American example. Much as there is in it to admire and to accept, there is much in it to deplore and reject. And this result is reached not only by the competent critical thinker, but also by the average layman. Elaborate refutation is unnecessary ; right reason is the spear of Ithuriel that lays open the hidden error. It is this priceless gift that enables the furnace tender of whom Tennyson speaks to offer availing comfort to his wife, whose mind had been unbalanced by a sermon on everlasting torment in the fire of hell; it is not true, “‘no constitution could stand it.” The same instinct enabled Father Taylor to maintain the integrity of his faith under the influence of Emerson, whom he deeply admired and loved. He was sure there was a screw loose in Emerson, although after listening a year he had been unable to hear it jar. The sense of that loose screw, undetected althoigh it was, protected the smaller mind against the undue domination of the greater.

The presence in man of the possibility of a right mind is abundantly recognized in the teaching of Jesus; but nowhere more strikingly than in the poor madman whose dwelling was in the tombs. After his subjection to the influence of Jesus his friends found him clothed, and in his right mind. The sediment of insanity had settled, and again the water of life was clear and calm. Here the insight is the issue, not of rational, but of moral discipline ; and the resulting vision is not so much for speculative purposes as for ethical ends. And here one comes upon the inmost secret of Jesus. He is himself absolutely sane; the rational and the moral vision are in him one, and the discovery is as true and sure as the order of the world. The power of Jesus over the mind is always in the interest of sobriety and fidelity. He affects

THE EXPANSION OF RIGHT REASON 7 the judgment and the will through the heart, yet his final work is in giving wisdom. The school of Christ is the great discipline in mental health. There, as nowhere else, men learn to see straight. The Christian view of the world is addressed to the mind previously recovered to sure judgment. The ecstasy of Christ is the lifting men out of the insanities born of the animal nature, into the insight and love of his own pure humanity. The Pauline ecstasy is of this kind. It is not a wild whirl of feeling; it is the resolution of the soul into extraordinary clearness and range and sureness of vision. It is, the unwonted expansion of the right reason, the high inspiration of the right mind, that as possibility lives in every man. It helps to fix attention upon the subjective ultimate, without which there could be for man neither truth nor righteousness in the world.

In like manner, there is an objective ultimate, which, however, beyond the statement of the fact, need not detain us. The basal premise of science is the reality of the external world. Of this reality there is no proof. None is needed. Every one knows that the world is real. This conviction is the result of insight; again it is an assumption made in accordance with sane reason. Insight does not determine the nature of the reality; that remains to be investigated. Assumptions do not interfere with the work of the sciences. But the question comes, Is the object of science real? The universal answer is that it is real. This answer is, however, not the result of proof. In the light of reason the reality of the external world is seen, and the truth of the insight is taken for granted.

The fundamental ideas of faith are of this order. Their reality for the life of man is discovered by their own light. They are not the issue of demonstration. They are the subject of verification, but not of proof. The certainty to which men come concerning them is the certainty of insight, of sane reason, of repose upon the ultimate conditions of the life of human beings. For example, if one shall exclude God from life, and then try to find him by logical process, the quest will be vain. One may as well try to construct a flight of stairs to enable one to touch the sky. The attempt is fruitless and unnecessary; fruitless because as fast as one rises the sky recedes; unnecessary because the sky is with one now. It is the condition of one’s physical existence ; it is in one’s blood and sinew and brain. There is no need to mount to heaven to find it; walk abroad in it, and it will renew the revelation of its reality in the wonder of renewed life. God is not reached as the last conclusion of the intellect from premises that exclude him. No logical flight of stairs can convey the mind from a godless earth to any-

DIVINE TRUTH ITS OWN LIGHT 9 thing other than a godless heaven. God is known as the supreme condition of spiritual life. Men know him through the life that he first makes possible and afterwards real. They live and move and have their being as men in him. He is in the blood and substance of character, and from him spiritual existence is renewed day by day. The being of God, the moral order of the world, the worth of history, the immortality of man, and the social life beyond time are fundamental assumptions. They are best discussed when they are discussed in their own light as they stand in the service of human life.

In this book they are not discussed ; they are taken for granted. At another time the basal things of faith may occupy the writer’s attention; here they are assumed, and the discussion goes forward upon the assumption that they are valid. This is the background against which the writer’s work is to be judged. Has he read aright the signs of the times? that is the question which his book should raise. And the answer should be made with a clear sense of the things which he has assumed. He has indeed read the ideas and events of the nineteenth century in the light of certain fundamental conceptions. The meaning of the times does not lie in the times themselves, but in the ideal forces behind them and that work through them. The test of this work must therefore lie in the responsiveness or unresponsiveness of the facts with which it deals to its fundamental assumptions. In the light of these assumptions this book is written ; it is waste of time to read it in any other.

It is assumed that the religious view of the universe is true. It is the manifestation of the Supreme being, to whom men are bound by the sense of obligation and by the sense of privilege. The basis of nature and the ground of humanity is the Eternal spirit. The universe has its meaning in the ancient insight : —

“The eternal God is thy dwelling-place

And underneath are the everlasting arms.” There is the Infinite behind nature and above man and in them. Nature is for industry, art, science, and for something more. She is the condition of physical life, and one of the conditions of the highest life, and she may be something for herself. But these are stages in the journey toward her ultimate meaning; they do not constitute the journey’s end. Nature has something to say for God, not a great deal to be sure, but nevertheless an authentic and significant utterance. She is not her own; she belongs to another; of her Owner she is a manifestation, and her final meaning is found in the terms of his life. Man is for knowledge and achievement and love; he is an end unto himself, a value for himself. In a certain sense

THE UNIVERSE A VALUE FOR Gop tI1 the significance of man lies within the circle of his own activities and experience. But in the last analysis he is forced beyond himself for the full account of himself. Like nature, only in a sense immeasurably higher, he is for God. The religious view of the universe is given with great power in the one hundred and forty-eighth psalm. The universe has its primary meaning as a value for God. The heavens are called upon to praise him; all angels, all hosts, sun and moon and stars of light, all the fullness of power that floats in the upper air; the earth is called upon to praise him; “fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl.” And in unbroken continuity the summons is served upon man : — “ Kings of the earth and all peoples ;