A young man's religion and his father's faith

Front matter

bUNG MAN'S RELIGION ^D HIS FATHER'S FAITH iH'i'

hx

II'

Chapter First

YEAR or so ago, at one of the clubs, a dinner was given by a rich man to his son upon his twenty-third birthday. The young man was just graduated from college, and the father, with a proud heart had asked in half a hundred of his own friends to meet his boy. It was a proud moment — proud for the father, and proud for the boy. It was like the old Roman feast when the eldest boy assumed the Toga Virilis. Tears were in more than one eye when, in simple hearted speech and honest pride, the father said : " He's a good boy with a clean record. Neither Harry nor I know what he will do, nor how far he will go; but I want him to know his father's friends and be worthy of them." The speech-making went [3]

round. Merchant princes, august judges, statesmen, all joined heartily in the feast of friendship, and made pledges for the young man's future. At last the father arose and asked a minister to speak to the sentiment^ — " A Young Man's Religion and its Relation to his Father's Faith."

The discussion became informal, earnest, general. Some facts were brought out. The father was a Presbyterian Elder ; the son had not joined any church. He used the words of Mr. Lincoln: "I have never joined myself with any church because I found difficulty in giving assent, without mental reservation, to the long and complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will inscribe over its altars, as its sole substance of both law and gospel, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church shall I join with all my heart and soul."

and l^fjs fati^et'0 ^atti^

The father had been converted in a most dramatic manner; the son counted himself a Christian, but knew not the day or the hour. " Indeed," he said, " I have always been a Christian." The father believed the Bible to be an infallible book, and without question accepted its every statement as a literal fact. The son regarded the Bible as a library of religious literature, to be studied, questioned, and judged as any other literature. The father thought of creation as an act ; of conversion as an act ; of sanctification as an act ; of salvation as an experience. The son thought of creation as a growth. And in his thought salvation was character, and Evolution was the key to revelation and experience. Father and son were both sincere, but they viewed the great problems of Faith from different standpoints. They could not reach the same conclusions, because they started from different premises. The eighteenth and twentieth centuries do not see things with the same eyes. Sixty and twenty do not think alike.

This is a picture of many a family. It has in it the elements of pathos and the possibility of tragedy. It is a hard time for the boy when he outgrows his father's opinion. It is a hard time for the father when the son, true to his own personality, claims the responsibility of his own life. It threw a shadow over the home in Nazareth. For a time Mary thought her son crazy. But Mary waited, and Jesus was obedient, and the rift passed.

But alas! too often at such times the father loses patience, and the son forgets to be respectful, and there is a strife between son and sire. Moreover men are very sensitive about their religious ideas. Men go crazj about religion. Men turn persecutors for religion's sake. Religious disputes are acrimonious, and religious wars are cruel. All the wisdom of any age is sorely needed to understand a young man's religion and determine its relation to his father's faith. Both the man and the boy should pray for guidance. Often they fail to understand one another. [6] V.

I heard an old man say, " The world isn't like it was in the olden days. Children were then seen and not heard; now they know it all. People do not go to church like they used to. People do not keep Sunday like they used to. People do not read their Bible like they used to. The church does not have revivals like it used to. People do not get converted like they used to. Joining the church does not mean what it used to. Young people to-day are taught all sorts of strange notions and they do not believe things we used to. It is an age of worldliness and freethinking. Religion is at ebb tide. The church is going to decay. Our young people have lost their faith." And the old man was sincere and he was sad.

I heard a young man talking, and he said: " I am glad I didn't live in the days when father was young, and Sunday began on Saturday night, and they went to church three times in one day. The gayest thing of all the week was the prayer-meeting. They were credulous then and believed in the super- [7]

natural. They were always meeting miracles by the way. Their creeds were long and formal and harsh, and all they knew about God was fear. They were Bibliolaters and regarded the Bible as a magical book. They worshipped it as the Roman Catholics do the bones of the Saints. I have got away from all that. I go to church when I feel like it, and play golf when I do not. I do not believe in creeds. I do not know what to think about the supernatural. As for miracles I never met any. The Golden Rule is a good enough creed for me. It does not matter much anyway what we believe. Our old minister was a dear old fossil, and father was a fogy. I cannot believe like them: but I love them. I believe in them. They had religion, if anybody ever did. I believe in their clean lives, and I wish I had their sure faith." Now both the old man and the young one are right, and both are wrong. The old man is right when he thinks the young man lacking in respect. Irreverence is the besetting sin of youth. In the Fifth Commandment [8]

and f ijs mW^ Mti)

Moses made a law against it. The old man is right when he says that the times have changed, and the customs have changed, and the creeds have changed. Only we have changed more than he dreams. We live in a world of change. Snakes change their skins once a year. Once a year the earth has a new bridal dress. Truth also grows and outgrows. Every generation demands a new and larger expression. We do live in a different world from that in which our fathers lived.

We live after Columbus.^ He is the man who, with ninety others, defied the wisdom of their age and the superstition of their time, and took their lives in their own hands, and impiously sailed away into the darkness of that sea which was believed to be the fringe on the edge of the world. When months had passed, and they were long given up for dead, one breaking day their eyes rested upon a land-locked horizon, and the stillness of a lost world and the knowledge of an old ^Jefferson's "Things Fundamental."

one were disturbed by the shout of " Land ! Land ! '' Our fathers had supposed that the world was a flat field, and lo ! it was found out to be a round ball. That day the world was multiplied by two.

We live in the days since Martin Luther. For one thousand years the priests had kept the conscience of every man. For a thousand years darkness had rested upon the earth. Then a German priest, heavy hearted with the ignorance of the people, and aflame with wrath because of the corruption in the church and the oppression of the priests, put a trumpet to his lips and blew on it such a blast that the slumbering masses of Europe were awakened as from a dream. And these were his words, " The just shall live by faith." When he was cited for trial, he stood up in the presence of the priests and the powers of the church and thundered back — " Convince me of error from the Holy Scriptures and I will cheerfully recant. But I will not be silenced by man's wisdom." Our fathers had supposed that the salvation of a soul [10]

was in the keeping of the priest; but Luther made us understand that every man could come alone, without a priest, into the presence of God. That day the world learned that religion was larger than men had dreamed. We live in the days since Copernicus and Galileo. One of them discovered a truth and was afraid to publish it to the world; the other one published that truth and went to the prison and the rack for his deed. But these are the men who have taught us that the world was not the centre of the universe, but instead only a very little star. And that with other stars it walks by day and by night around the great, wonderful sun. That day we found out that the universe was a thousand times larger than our fathers had dreamed.

Other scholars came. One, a little while ago, was a student of books, and lands, and seas. He read God's handwriting upon the rocks and stars. Gathering up bits of wisdom from field and mountain, mica-flake and ocean ooze, he pieced together the great story of

God's creation. And lo ! the world was not made in a week and man in a moment, but instead —

^' I doubt not through the ages an increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.[^

Evolution is a larger story of divine providence than any of the fathers dreamed. Other scholars came. And these began to study the Bible and lo ! instead of a book, a library; instead of a proof text, a literature; instead of a dictation, an experience; instead of a typewriter for an inspired man, a poet, a seer, a martyr. And the Bible became greater and grander than ever before. Revelation instead of being a tiny lake, crystal in depth, and lost amid the hills, was like the boundless ocean, thundering on all shores and refreshing all lands. The Bible took on a new splendor and a new dignity that day.

Aye, the old man was right, we do live in a [12]

and i^ijj ifati^er'js faiti^

new world. Things have changed and the boy cannot think as his father thought. Look at him a moment. He was reared in a Christian home and learned to pray when he learned to talk. His mother taught him whole chapters of the Bible by heart. He was taught to believe that the Bible was literal prose, a dry-as-dust history. He believed that Joshua told the sun to stand still. He believed that a fish swallowed Jonah. He believed that God made the earth in six days. He grows up and he goes to college. He finds out that there was not one flood, but many floods. He finds out that the sun always stood still. He finds out that the earth was made through a long process of millions of years and is still being made. Now what is he to say? "Lost my faith?" "I must throw away my mother's Bible? " Not at all. Those opinions were not faith: mere credulity is not faith. For a thousand years the universities taught and the church taught that the sun revolved around the earth, now because we have found out that the earth revolves [13]

a Poung jEan'jS aseltgt'on

around the sun, astronomy is not destroyed, and we do not say that we will have to give up the sun. We have simply found out more about it than our fathers knew. When we outgrow the coats we wore at ten years old and put on a coat of twenty-one years, that does not mean we do not believe in clothes. We have only grown. So knowledge grows. Revelation grows. We have not lost our faith: We have added to it; we have enlarged it. Faith is not an emotion. Faith is not credulity. This point needs a good deal of emphasis. For on every side we hear prophets, Jeremiahs, moaning and sighing, " For the faith once delivered to the Saints." They tell us that the cause of all modern ills is the new theology, and their cry is, let us get back to the old gospel.

I wonder where they can find the old gospel they seek. If they go back to Jonathan Edwards, he was driven out of Northampton because he was a heretic. If they go back to John Wesley, he was stoned out of the Eng- [14]

and 1$\$ fatW^ Wti^

lish Church because he was unsound. If they go back to John Calvin, they have gone back to the Prince of new theologies. If they go back to Paul, they will find that he was hated by the Jewish nation for his heresy; and if they go back to Christ they will find that he was crucified on account of his doctrine.

Nay! in every age the great leader has always proclaimed a new theology. We have a new astronomy. We have a new education. We have a new geology and we must always have a new theology. Truth grows. To keep faith in astronomy is not to go back to the day of Copernicus. To keep faith in education is not to go back to the days of Erasmus. To keep faith with Methodism is not to go back to the time of Wesley; it is like Wesley to be in the very front of progress. To keep faith with the Puritans is not to go back to the days of John Robinson: but it is to keep firm hold of his great saying, " God has yet more light to break out of his word."

a ^oung jEan'jcJ Beltijton

" New occasions teach new duties ; Time

Makes ancient good uncouth.

They must upward still and onward

Who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires ! we

Ourselves must Pilgrims be; Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly

Through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future^s portal^

With the Pastes blood-rusted key.''

'The young man is right when he claims the responsibiHty of his own life. Personality is sacred, and not even a father may violate it. No man, howsoever wise or howsoever beloved, can be judgment, or conscience, or faith, for any other man. I will listen to a man's reason, but I cannot believe because he tells me to. I must live my own life in my own way. I must have my own experience. I must write my own creeds.

But the young man is wrong when he believes that wisdom was born with him, or when he scoffs at the customs or faiths of the olden times.

We are our father's children, but we little [16]

remember what our fathers have done for us. We are heirs of far-off lands and ancient ages, and yet we have seldom thought of our indebtedness to the past. We remember the name of Guttenberg as that of the man who invented movable type, but we have never stopped to think that we should be personally grateful to him for all books. We have never given a thought to the man who first found out the use of fire; we do not know his name, and yet he it is who kindles the flames on our every hearth-stone. How much do we owe to the man who first invented speech? How much do we owe to the man who first found music? We have been ungrateful and we have even forgotten the names of our benefactors. It is easy enough to see what our fathers have given us — food, clothes, houses, and lands. It is not hard to realize what we have that we would not have if we had lived in our grandfather's time, — the telephone, the telegraph, the railroad. If we go back another generation, we find that men had no matches, no free schools, no libraries, [17]

a poung pian'^ EeUgiott

no machinery, no churches, no country. For only that long ago men were pioneers, and dwelt in cabins, and fought with the wild beasts, and wilder men. They lived in a beginning of the world. And yet the American pioneer is not a real starting point. He had a grandfather and an ancestral home across the sea. He had invention in his hand and science in his heart. He was a long way from the first man.

Go back to the cradle of our Anglo-Saxon race. It is in the forests. This race ©f ours lived in huts and caves. Their raiment was the untanned skins of wild beasts, and their food was roots, and berries, and raw flesh, and reeking blood. They had not learned the use of fire in the preparation of food. It was a giant race, blue-eyed, golden-haired, cruel, and blood-thirsty. They were robbers on the land and pirates on the sea. Their sin was drunkenness. Their virtue was chastity. Their genius was freedom. And for religion, these stern men worshipped the stern Wodin in the forests at night, where amid the rays [18]

of flickering torches they sacrificed their own children in the worship of the gods. This is your family and mine, as it lived only a little while ago. We were like that long after the first Christmas. We were like that long after Csesar built his Roman roads in Great Britain. We were like that when the wise men of Italy had already built cathedrals, and written theologies, and composed masses, and painted pictures. We were like that more than five hundred years after Christ came and Paul preached. We were Kke that to the very twilight of the modern world. And why are we not like that to-day? What has happened?

There is only one answer — " Our fathers have wrought." They have lived, and labored, and thought, and sought, and suffered, and died. Wisdom, it is true, did not die with them; but it is also true that Wisdom was not born with us. To deny or neglect their wisdom is to be a fool. Insane would be the man who would throw away all he has inherited in the material world — every house, [19]

a poung jHan'j8 EeUgton

every clearing, every tool, every art, and go back to the wilderness and naked savagery. Who would burn every book, forget every science, ignore all knowledge, scoff at every faith, mock at every prayer? Not even a young man could be so silly.

The father was right. He had a right to the attention, and obedience, and reverence of his son. Men before us have blazed out the great truths in agriculture, and commerce, and invention, and science, and philosophy, and religion. There they are, and there they will remain forever. And the roads they have built over the valleys, and the tunnels they have dug through the hills, are no more real and lasting than their great discoveries in thought and religion. They have given us all we have. They have a right to our respect and reverence forever. A man who would laugh at his father's faith, and see in all the creeds of the past only ignorance and absurdity, but exhibits his own narrow-mindedness and lack of comprehension. " I know it is through ignorance that ye did [20]

and i^ijs dfatj^er'js faitl^

it." Larger experience in life will give us more wisdom. You will find out, O young man, as you come into the realities of life, that there are many things both " in heaven and earth which have never been dreamed of in your philosophy." When you have fought as well as your fathers, you may become as wise as your fathers. It takes experience to make us wise.

In the State House in Boston are a hundred old battle-flags. Some of them are silk, some wool, and some only cotton. None are woven without a flaw, and some have glaring imperfections — not a stripe is straight, not a single star has a perfect angle. Not one of them have two-and-forty stars. Some of them have thirty-five; some have twenty, and some have only thirteen. There is not one that I would take to be my flag, to carry at the head of a regiment, or to be an emblem of my country. My country is larger, and grander, and greater than anything those flags know. But I love them, and I will teach my children to stand before them [21]

with uncovered brow. I love them for the rents and stains that tell of sufferings borne, of the battles won, of courage, and patriotism, and heroism. No, they are not my flags ; but without them, and that for which they stand, my flag could never have been. The flag of forty stars is the child of the flag of thirteen stars. The old ideas of the past and the old definitions of the fathers, and the old creeds of the saints, may not represent our faith, and our hopes, and our fears, of to-day, but they are the creators of it. Without their faith our broader faith would never have been. Even as to-day is the child of a hundred yesterdays, the religion of the young man is the legacy of the old man's faith. It is only because of their partial knowledge that the young and the old stumble over one another. There have always been the old and the young, and they need one another. The Conservative and- the Radical supplement one another. If there were only young men, the race would forever rest in the ignorance of childhood. If there were only old men, [22]

and i^(j8 mW^ ifaiti^

thought would petrify. Both minister to the kingdom of God.

Forms change, but the spirit abides. Definitions change, but Christ is the " same to-day, yesterday, and forever." Creeds are modified, but the verities never die — and now abideth Faith, Hope, Love — and they are more undimmed than ever. Sin still is, and still there is a Saviour " who saves His people from their sins." Men are not converted in the same dramatic way as their fathers, but they are converted. They do not go to church from the same motives as of old — duty and fear — but more young men are Christian and engaged in Christian work than ever before. Men love Christ as of old, and never in all history did He have such authority. The statecraft of the world affirms that its highest principles are drawn from the man of Galilee. The kings of the earth and the rulers acknowledge Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords !

The working-man has doubted the church;

but he does not doubt Christ. The sermon on

31 ^oung jttan'js ISeltgton

the mount is his inspiration and the brotherhood of man his dream.

When has the intellect of the world found fault either with Christ's character or Christ's message? Take His word on immortality — is not it our highest word, and is not even science of our day building arguments to prove it from the world of time and matter? Take Christ's idea of God — a loving, personal Father. That it is true and reasonable is not only the Christian's hope to-day, but the philosopher's affirmation. Whether it be certain or not, is it not a unanimous testimony of believer and sceptic that it is altogether the noblest notion of God the world has ever had? The intellectual grip of Jesus on this age is secure. Alike in politics and social questions and in religion do the masters, whether they call themselves Christian or Agnostic, rest their teaching on the precepts of Jesus. The scholarship and the thought of the world looks upon Jesus crying, " Master — unto whom shall we go : thou hast the words of Eternal Life ! " [24]

The spirit of Christ is to-day in men's hearts as truly as ever. Is not the haystack at Williamstown, and the missionary's monument at Oberlin? Is not Damien the martyr of Molokai, and Stanley of Africa? Did not some of us see and know Paton who shed his blood for Christ's sake and lost men's sake? Where is there any speech that can tell the inside story of the Boxer Rebellion? The Anglo-Saxon missionaries were heroic as any who sleep in Westminster Abbey. But they were no whit more heroic than the Chinese men and women who were offered life upon recantation, but who never wavered, but like Stephen, crying " O Lord Jesus," gave up the ghost.

The letter has changed, but the spirit remains. Our conception of it is new and enlarged, but it is the same old Bible. Our account of creation is fuller, but it is still the wonder and work of God. Our creeds may be new, but they still seek to define the ways of the same good and loving God. The old and the new differ some, but they are alike [25]

a poung jman'js iReltgion

more. Their differences are non-essentials. Their resemblances are fundamentals. After all the father is like the child. When morning dawns they look out on the same world. At the noontime they bear the same burdens, face the same heat, and enter the same storms. They have the same faults ; they suffer the same pain; they are healed by the same physician. Alike they hope and fear, do and dare, and strive and thrive. They are baptized with the same sorrow; crowned with the same love, and comforted with the same divine hope. And when night comes, seventy and sixteen say the same prayer —

^^Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come;

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven : Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us: And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil; For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen.^' [26]

These are the last words our fathers utter as they fall asleep: and they make music on the lips of every child.

wm i^ melffiton?

/ perceive that in all things ye are very religious,

Paul to the Athenians.

Man is incurably religious,

Sabatier.

Religion is morality touched by emotion.

Matthew Arnold.

The thing a man does practically believe; the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny therein,

Carlyle.

A soul with no religion . . , Was without rudder, anchor, compass — might be Blown every way with every gust, and wreck On any rock.

If man be only A willy-nilly current of sensations — Reaction needs must follow revel — yet — Why feel remorse, he, knowing that he must have Moved in the iron grooves of Destiny? Remorse then is a part of Destiny, Nature a liar, making us feel guilty Of her own faults.

The last gleam of an after-life but leaves him A beast of prey in the dark,

Tennyson.

Chapter Second

O man remembers when he first heard of God. When we learn to talk, we already know how to pray. The church of our childhood is as familiar as " the little house where we were born.'' Over our youth the minister, as well as the teacher, stood guard; and when we met them in the street, to each alike, we took off our hat. The first day of every week was as much given up to religion as, once a year, the Fourth of July was given up to patriotism. Religion was as much a part of our surroundings as air, or sunshine, or the summer, or the family affection.

Our world began to grow. Grandmother told us stories. The first one was about the birth of a baby when a star shone and the angels sang. Another one was about a babe whose mother [31]

a Poung jEan'js meltfiton

defied a great king and saved the baby's life by casting him adrift upon a great river in an ark, which she had made for him with her own hands. In every one of these stories there was hidden away a knowledge of God. Since then we have read many books. But among them all, there are no books like those in which the great stories of the race are writ. Men never grow too old for the storyteller. Herodotus is still young, and has the power to charm. Ulysses, with his wanderings, is still the hero of the growing boy. Americus may have been uncertain, and untruthful even, but because he first described it, men have named the new world after him. One reason why Paul has so large a place in the New Testament is because his life reads like a fairy tale, and because he was a traveller in many lands. We may have neglected his letters, and cared nothing for his words on fore-ordination and sin ; but we have never grown weary of tracing his journey on the map, and listening to him as he speaks of the strange customs of many lands. His shipwreck, and the [32]