Altar fires relighted; a study of modern religious tendencies from the standpoint of a lay observer

Front matter

Class Book ii

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GcpightK"

I

THE present age is pre-eminently one in which reverence for authority, both in the religious and the scientific realm, has greatly weakened, and to a large extent has already passed away. Accepted religious dogmas and scientific theories or hypotheses are being scrutinized as never before in the history of ages. There is a growing tendency to question or challenge^ much of that which we have been accustomed to regard as settled religious doctrine or scientifically proved facts. Beliefs are being tested in the crucible fires of our modern publicity.

There has been a destructive upheaval in Religion and Science and Philosophy as well, in which much of the work of learned theologians and equally learned scientists and philosophers have been repudiated or destroyed. Much of our theology has gone to the melting pot, and with it, too, has gone a great mass of materialistic theories and notions, for which thanks be. Materialism is fast becoming a back number. The creeds, dogmas and traditions of an antiquated ecclesiasticism and many of the afHrmations of the old theology no longer command the assent of men of the new school of thought. Old credal conceptions no longer harmonize with the advancement of science nor with the knowledge of historical development, or of philosophy and criticism.

The old fear on the part of the theologians of the church, not that the scientist might be wrong, but that he might be right in his discoveries of the secrets of nature, is fast passing away. The scientist, the geologist, the biologist, the astronomer, the chemist, is no longer charged with rashness or presumption in pursuing their investigations of objective phenomena. Let them go on making discoveries. Let them show more clearly how God works in nature. Let science continue its correction of the errors of material sense, undeterred by the anti-scientific instinct of the religionists, which is no longer hallowed as the cardinal virtue.

The world is beginning to realize that God is speaking through two voices or through two channels, science and religion; and that the truth which they both seek involves no contradiction. And if they seem not to be in harmony with each other, it is because we are not listening carefully, or because there are those who assume to speak in the name of religion or science, who are not His mouthpiece.

The words of the Hving God are in both science and religion. Science is giving up its mock belief in matter. Religion is learning the will of Heaven from within; science is learning it from without. But it is the same voice to which they listen, the voice of Him who created the heaven and the earth and the fountains of waters, and who calls upon men everywhere to worship and adore His great name. There was a time when the High Priests of Natural Science were building their altars to their unknown gods, but now Science and Faith may meet around a common altar of worship dedicated to the one only, true God. The spirit of genuine science is found to be the same as the spirit of genuine religion. Both scientist and theologian are beginning to understand that the truth which is the object of faith and the truth which is the object of science is one. For what is science but the search for truth and what is religion but the love of truth applied to practical life.

Orthodoxy has been for too many years a fata morgana, "an unsubstantial vision which ever eludes our groping hand and surrenders us to the illusions of blind sense." Nor should the institutional church longer remain a garden walled around to keep it from contact with the stream of human life which flows through and thrills the heart of man. The world believes in God never more than now, but its God is not contained in a mere church formula. "It believes in the elemental, eternal, immutable things of everlasting righteousness," says the Universalist Leader, "but it only smiles incredulously when some self-appointed vicar of the Almighty prepares his map of the everlasting years and denounces those as unbelievers who will not travel toward the forever on his schedule." We are in the midst of a great revival of interest in religious ideas and beliefs. "Recent discussions and controversies have caught the ear of the man in the street," says the British Congregationalist, "and has moved him to strike in and take a share. Theological reconstruction is becoming a familiar phrase."

What is happening is not an outbreak of caprice, here and there, but a mental and moral revolution as resistless as the tide. The Christian Register has these forcible words from the pen of the Rev. J. C. Jayness, which have a significant connection with the foregoing:

"A revolution is occurring in the social order such as the world has never seen before. A change is coming over the face of society, — a change in our conceptions of God and man, a change in our ideas of social responsibility, a change in our thinking in regard to the economic values of life. The church hears less of the intoning of the creed and more of the prayer, 'Give us this chsy onr daily bread.* Everywhere there is uppermost a discontent with existing conditions and the feverish desire to improve them."

Less and less are men disposed to bow down to their fellow men believing them to be the depositaries of divine inspiration. Orthodox Christianity and its priesthood are being put to the pragmatic test — "By their fruits ye shall know them." The giving of one's mere personal opinion in the guise of the traditional sermon is not reaching and holding the pubhc, nor is it accompHshing the purpose for which rehgious services are held.

The Rev. Johnston ^Meyers, in a lecture delivered to a class of divinity students at the University of Chicago, makes this significant statement: "^lere preaching holds a minor place in the work of the church nowadays ; people are tired of it. This is not the age of the sermon." The Rev. Howard Allen Bridgman, of the Congregationalist, Boston, dealing with the same subject, declares: "the stern fact remains that our churches to-day do not appeal to men to that extent and that magnetic force that we could desire."

In an article in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago, Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall dealt in trenchant fashion with the subject of ministerial limitations. "Secure within the citadel of tradition," says he; "from its battlement, looking down over the non-conforming world, a man may have a ministerial idea which, like a spectre of Brocken, is only an enlarged and shadowy reproduction of himself."

The time has come when science need no longer be pilloried in the name of religion or religion be denounced as superstition. The traditional conception of science and religion as something to be sought in their externalities, is giving way to a better understanding of the real, the innermost spirit of each as Truth-seekers, Truth-finders and Truth-practicers. Science is becoming a Jacob's ladder which, as Dr. Paul Carus has felicitously said, "touches at its bottom the world of sense, while at its top it reaches the heaven of spirit."

What, then, is the innermost meaning of these days? What of its foreshadowings and portents? Do they presage the coming in of a new-old religion which shall be new in the simplicity' of its adjustments to modern scientific ways of thinking, and old in its grasp and possession of the essential, the elemental, the vital truths of the gospel of the New Testament ? Is the vision of the Brampton lecturer in the pulpit of St. Marys, Oxford, about to be realized?

"I see the rise of a new religious order, the greatest that the world has known, drawn from all nations and classes, and, what seems stranger yet, from all churches."

II

We hear much in these practical days of the pragmatist, and the pragmatic method. Pragmatism is that doctrine or philosophical system, whichever you may call it, which seeks the meaning of truth only in a pragmatic usefulness. Its dictum, in a nutshell, is that "that is true that works." Pragmatism implies that truth shall have practical consequences and that we may justly judge a tree by its fruits. It is in harmony with the teachings of the New Testament.

Christ Jesus was a pragmatist and measured religion by its fruits. He followed the pragmatic method in his answer to John the Baptist's inquiry concerning His claim to the Messiahship : "Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" The answer which John's messengers received from the Great Teacher and Demonstrator was couched in terms of practical experience. "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them."

What a thing really is appears from what it does. Many a religious doctrine, many a political platform or philosophical system of more or less reasoned ideas, many a hypothesis evolved in the workshop of human conjecture, has seemed on paper to be all that a Plato, a Moore or a Bellamy could dream, but when subjected in human experience to a "destructive dose of facts" has shattered every hope which it inspired. Herbert Spencer once told Huxley that he had written a tragedy in his youth. "I know the plot," said Huxley. "It was a beautiful theory that was slain by a wicked little fact."

Rousseau, the idealistic reformer of the eighteenth century, made a new declaration of human rights, but it ended in the terrors and savageries of the French Revolution. What this age demands is a higher platform of human rights than that of Rousseau ; a platform built on diviner claims ; one that will deliver mankind from the slavery of false beliefs and so ultimate in the downfall of all tyranny and oppression. But to affirm whatever one pleases is no proof of understanding; the anarchist, the socialist, the visionary, can do this to his heart's content; so likewise can the blatant reformer or the political demagogue; nevertheless there is no certainty that harm will not dog their footsteps. The growth of knowledge may turn many an aphorism into either a platitude or a fallacy.

"Most of the psychological literature of the day is waste paper," says Haeckel, the German scientist and philosopher. And what is true of psychology is true of the literature of human knowledge in general. The world is turning itself inside out so fast that most of our present text-books on science, theology, physiology and medicine, will soon find a place in that "Curio of Antiquities" which Professor James has so dehght fully instituted for outlived theories, dogmas, faiths and the bric-a-brac of human knowledge which has Ho further value except as relics of the past, and tokens whereby human progress may be measured.

III

There are multiplied instances to show that not only the religious but the scientific temper of the age is becoming more devout. We want science, but we also want and need religion. These two great forces should no longer remain antagonistic to each other. Their transforming power over the conditions of human life, when combined, is well nigh beyond our present conception. Such union would bring an answer to the prayer of ages ; even the reaHzation of that divine ideal — the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.

Where, then, shall we look for a religion which is religious because it is of God and which is scientific because it is founded upon eternal Principle instead of human doctrines or blind faith, and which will meet human want in sickness as well as in health? We can find many a philosophical system which we may throw away because it is not religious enough. We may turn to scholastic theology, only to find that it is not empirical enough to suit the views and purposes of those with a fact-loving temperament. To use a phrase coined by Professor William James, 'There is that 'Rocky Mountain tough,' Haeckel, with his materialistic monism, his ether god and brutal jest at the Christian's God as a 'gaseous vertebrate.' And there is that materialistic philosopher, Herbert Spencer, treating the world's history as a redistribution of matter and motion, solely, but you will find both Haeckel and Spencer bowing religion politely out of the front door ; 'she may indeed continue to exist, but she must never show her face inside the temple.' "

In what direction shall we turn to find a religion that is scientific enough to satisfy the man who wants facts, and which at the same time is religious enough to satisfy the man of feeling, emotion and Christian faith? Will a study of facts and conditions in the religious world of to-day disclose to our view that which will prove a happy harmonizer of empirical ways of things with the more reHgious demands of human beings? Will such an investigation give us any hint of a system that is demonstrably true, or of a religion that is both Christian and scientific; one that sounds an active, optimistic and aggressive note; that does not dwell upon an inaccessible height of mere idealism; that is something more than the shallow, airy vaporings of current theological or metaphysical abstraction, or a mere bundle of paradoxical theories; something, in fact, which has a firm grasp upon reality and will reconcile both science and religion "with signs following?" To quote a learned speaker at the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, "the world is waiting for the man of genius, who shall come forward and establish union between science and Christianity."

Let me repeat the question again: Is it possible to find a religion that will not only exercise the powers of the soul in its subjective states of religious experience, but will have a positive and direct connection with the actual world of finite human lives; that will be in definite touch with concrete facts and joys and sorrows; that will satisfy the scientific, fact-loving mind because it is based on a scientific, demonstrable Principle; because it is practical and operative and produces results which can be seen and known of all men ; something, in short, destined to abide because it can be made practical and because it meets and satisfies the fulness of man's needs?

This age is becoming more and more insistent in its demand for a religion that will exert a vital influence upon the controUing forces of human life; that need not be banished from the home, or outlawed from education and have no place in the world of living thought; a religion, in short, which is something higher, better and more satisfactory than mere religious formalism. These questions have a deep significance in these latter days inasmuch as Jesus taught and demonstrated that there is available to man a religion which is scientific and so unerring and so comprehensive in its nature and operation as actually to meet the needs of the race in overcoming all ills ; this rehgion and this science is the Christianity of the New Testament; it is the knowledge of God and His eternal laws, and it achieves the purposes of good.

IV

There are multitudes of men and women, religiously inclined, who find little in Protestant creeds and formulas to attract them. The Roman Church on the other hand, repels them by its absolutism. In this age of spiritual liberty for the individual, an age becoming more and more pre-eminent for its emancipation of the spiritual man, it is doubtful if they could present credentials of belief sufficiently orthodox upon which to gain admission to any of the evangelical churches.

Men everywhere are coming out into the open. Religiously speaking, they are breathing the air of spiritual freedom, unfettered by outworn dogmas, creeds and theological formulas. There are not wanting signs of a deepening spirit of true religion, of a spiritual receptivity and of a truer Christianity, that, "rising from the death of sectarianism," as Dr. Newman Smyth has well observed, "will be fashioned of the spiritual elements and made luminous with love, and yet be so visible wherever its disciples meet together, that the presence of the glory of Christ will be made manifest even as He prayed."

The thought of some new, more universal order of Christianity is coming to men's minds spontaneously and generally. But how to solve the problem of religious modes and methods with the largest liberty of thought ; how to reconcile the freedom of the spirit with an outward order, how to find the source and vitality of religion in immediate personal experience, and yet maintain Christianity as a visible and supreme authority in the world ; this indeed is a task which calls for the highest, most consummate constructive religious statesmanship.

We are witnessing a crisis in the domain of religious authority. And at no time in the history of the church has the necessity of an appeal to Jesus Christ and the Truth which He proclaimed, been so deeply felt. The idea of a Christian society based on a personal and vital fellowship with Jesus Christ is becoming enthroned in men's mind. The question,

"are we to have in this century a gospel for all men such as He gave to the world?" is fast becoming the vital issue in the religious world of to-day.

Never in the life of Christianity was there a greater need for the recognition of the fact that the starting point of Christian faith and doctrine is to be found in the acceptance of the truth that man is spiritual — made in God's image and likeness — and belongs by right of birth to the one Church of Christ, the one Christian society or Brotherhood, which Jesus Christ came to establish.

These questions invest with a profound interest and significance the religious movement inaugurated by Mary Baker Kddy, a movement which is remarkable not only for the influence which it exercises over its followers, and for the emphasis which it places upon the Christ-Truth as the supreme authority; but for the bond of unity which holds its members in loving accord and for its vital energy and capacity to adapt itself with seemingly inexhaustible grace to the ever-changing demands of its environment in human thought and life.

"What more visible shall be the one universal church, seeing which the world will beHeve?" asked a prominent churchman recently. Is it other than the ideal of Jesus Christ, the ideal of the New Testament, the ideal church of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, a church which shall live among men in the love of the Son of Man as the servant of all ; obedient in every thought to the truth that makes free ; a church which shall possess as its own the fulness of its creeds, "and ever follow on to know the Lord ; praying always with all the saints that it may be strong to know the love of Christ which passeth all knowledge?" Is this the ideal which the Christian Science movement is holding before its followers, and if so, to what extent is the Christian Science Church realizing this ideal in the lives of those who espouse its cause?

In the treatment of the subjects with which this volume deals, the aim has been to make the work expository rather than argumentative. The conclusions which it suggests or enforces are the result of careful study and reflection, but their basis is one of fact. The issues with which it deals are issues of tremendous import; the questions which it raises are of grave concern and demand a conclusive answer.

Is Protestantism or the Roman Church gradually ceasing to be, in any true sense, a final or permanent religious organism in society, or are these denominations to be accepted as a Christian finality? Will Christendom conform to the demands of the times or continue to obstruct or prevent a return to the simplicity and heahng power of the early Christian Church? And if not, will there be a final breaking away of its followers and the estabHshment of a new religious order or visible church patterned after Jesus Christ's ideals?

The age of creed-building and of ecclesiasticism belongs to the past. Theologians are no longer addressing themselves to the task of devising new formulas of faith. Time was when orthodox theologians were accustomed to formulate religious propositions and then bend their intellectual powers to prove them. Now, the greater part of this sort of scholastic theology is being relegated to the scrap-heap.

Over and against the waning influence of the orthodox churches upon the Hves of men and women; amid the confusion of counsel among church leaders themselves in the face of the seriousness of the crisis that confronts them, we may discerij the signs of the times, writ large upon the horizon, which presage the dawn of a larger Christianity, a broader Catholicism which is already coming to the hour of its nativity.

V

To exalt the person and the work of the great Founder of the Christian religion ; to emphasize the pure type of religion which Jesus gave to the world, a religion which is both scientific and Christian and in which is to be found God's response to human need ; to expose false behef s and thus help to arrive a little nearer to ultimate truth ; to bear a useful part in ridding the human mind of illusions ; to break the fetters which enslave humanity and hold it in bondage to ignorance and fear; such, in brief, are some of the objects of this volume. In these pages an endeavor is also made to expound anew the meaning of that existence which is called life; to reveal realities; to open, as it were, the gates of Paradise which falsity has closed upon the human race ; to help roll away the stone which a gross materialism has placed before the door of human faith and hope and aspiration, and to scatter "the dark pile of human mockeries" raised by a materialistic science, and a scarcely less materialistic theology.

The outlook upon life which this book presents is one of optimism. It hails the dawning light of a new era in religion and medicine; an era when health will triumph over sickness and mortality; when pain and suftering will be replaced by happiness, and goodness will be on the winning side; a time when materiality will give place to spirituality; when justice and honesty will replace fraud, covetousness and iniquity, and truth will have its final victory over error. It foresees a revival of the purity, the simplicity of faith and worship and the spiritual power of primitive Christianity. It marks the signs and foreshadowings of a higher reality for the human race ; the hastening to a climax of that evolutionary travailing of the whole creation of which Tennyson dreamed and wrote :

"One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off Divine Event,

To which the whole creation moves.''

I.

THE JURY OF THE VICINAGE

AMONG the things which have given constant impulse to the putting forth of this volume has been the warm interest in its completion and issuance evinced by so many of my friends. The topic v^hich I have undertaken to consider has already awakened a profound and widespread interest. It is a theme of frequent discussion, not only around the dining table at home, but in the hotels and on the railway the dining table at home, but in the hotels and on the railway trains; nor is it less a topic of animated conversation among the employees in the counting room and factory. The man on the street will stop to talk over the subject with the friend whom he chances tO' meet ; the artisan at the bench finds opportunity to question his fellow worker about it. In business, professional, religious and scientific circles, in the newspapers, in the magazines and the periodicals, it is no less a subject of earnest discussion. It has been taken by society as a matter of serious consideration to an extent scarcely realized by the world at large.

In preparing my material, I have allowed myself the pleasure of constituting my friends, acquaintances and others a Jury of the Vicinage, to whom I may present facts bearing upon this topic. Nor has this pleasing fancy been simply an idle notion of the writer. I have found it an inspiration in many ways. It has conduced to greater care in my selection of facts appropriate to the subject in hand. It has prompted me frequently to ask and apply these questions : "Are the statements which you are considering such as can be formulated in terms of practical experience ; are they suited to the purposes of this book; will they stand examination by the Jury as a body of critics; will they be approved as germane to the subject, or are they likely to be thrown out of court, in part or in whole, as invalid testimony?"

The quest which I have undertaken has been a quest for the vital truth, for ultimate realities. The standpoint which I have taken is that of the lay observer. The motto which I have held constantly before me has been this : "Give the Jury the evidence which you are able to collect and let its members, as a Court of last resort, jointly and severally thrash out the Truth."

In marshalling my facts I have tried to remember that there are sincere, honest-minded men and women who hold opinions the reverse of my own; and by this I mean the kind of people who are what might be termed thorough -going conservatists ; who cling tenaciously to the faith of the fathers and would hesitate to accept an invitation to tread the pathway of that genial and radiant optimism which to me seems so alluring. Nor have I lost sight of the fact that, while the Idealist undoubtedly succeeds from time to time in ridding the world of "antiquated and useless baggage," the conservative performs quite as useful a part in saving the priceless things that maintain an unchanging worth through every generation. Even though the liberal may offer many a new and inspiring idea of betterment for mankind, it is the conservative to whom we must look for protection from fraudulent imitations which have no real or substantial value.

There are doubtless members of the Jury who are in the habit of studying the questions and occurrences of the day; who are accustomed to form opinions of their own and to stick to them through thick and thin, and who, consequently, may not be at all disposed to accept everything that I may present, unless supported by a convincing array of facts. Be this as it may, T trust that no member of the ]ury will be lacking in

THE JURY OF THE VICINAGE

courage and readiness to subject his or her own personal opinions and beHefs to an honest review in the light of the facts which I have gathered. None of us can lay claim to infallibiHty on any given subject; besides, infallibility is a thing to be not merely proclaimed ; it is a thing to be demonstrated. Let us, therefore, study all the facts within our purview with an open mind, lest it should happen that the beliefs which we entertain prove to be out of harmony with truth, and ourselves out of harmony with reality.

Our Jury, no doubt, includes men and women of differing creeds and varying knowledge of the subjects which I have undertaken to discuss. Differences of opinion may arise; let us believe that there will be no irreconcilable divergence of views on the main issues and no difficulty in reaching a verdict from which there will be no occasion to appeal to some higher tribunal.

In our search for truth let us neither be too tolerant nor too critical. We all know that there are men of science and theology and medicine as well, with limited views and complacent opinions, who are intolerant of all that does not agree with those theories or doctrines which they consider well established. But we must not overlook recent developments, not only in the realm of science but in the realm of religion and medicine as well, nor the significant fact that they are changing in a revolutionary way some of our established ideas on these subjects.

This is a day and age of practical things, in which outworn and outgrown theories are being relegated to obscurity, where they properly belong. We live in an epoch-making period, an age eminent for its vast extensions of knowledge. New views of truth are constantly emerging and it is not safe to condemn new ideas because they are contradictory to our own. It is better to face the facts as we find them, rather than to follow the customary way of condemning too harshly new facts and phenomena, new opinions and new beliefs that make a serious arraignment of our own precious stock of ideas or convictions and experiences, or, what is worse, of ignoring them altogether, and abusing those who bear witness to them, or else of visiting them with a hailstorm of contempt and ridicule.

From the time of Protagoras, with his famous dictum, "Man is the measure of all things," down to the present time, every great movement in human thought has had to run the gantlet of criticism; nor need I remind the Jury that nothing is easier than to criticize ; nothing less constructive.