A religion for the new day

Foreword

The author of this book will be very grateful if it proves helpful to ministers of religion, and specially to young ministers who wish to keep young. He has in mind, however, not so much professional ministers alone as that larger and more important class of men and women of whom the word minister may fairly be used to describe an honest purpose to add some value to the life of the world.

We are facing to-day a momentous crisis in history; certain profound facts are at last becoming obvious. Most people profess a religion in which they do not truly believe. They have come to the point where they are dimly aware of the unreality of their faith, and of the insincerity involved in this attitude: it hurts their consciences and lowers their moral health. The world is bound to come out of this state of mind either better or worse.

On the other hand, religion in its innermost essence emerges from the crucible of the fiercest criticism through which it ever passed freer than ever before of those irrational and extraneous elements with which it has almost always been encumbered. A beautiful and inspiring faith is within the reach of all men who love truth and desire fullness of life.

VI FOREWORD

This religion, quite modern, yet with its roots deep in the most precious inheritance of man's past, meets, as never did any form of religion before, the most tremendous needs of ethical inspiration. It offers the most radical and revolutionary, yet also the most progressive, comprehensive, and persuasive standards of human conduct, ruling, with the dynamic energy of a universal principle, every detail of private or public life. It is as individualistic as it is social.

The author, brought up in one of the most dogmatic sects, but happily while the note of sincerity still lingered in its teachings, had the unspeakable benefit of close acquaintance with a group of people of whom it seems true to say that their real religion was in " being good and doing good." Their sectarian interest was never so deep as their humanitarian purpose. It was impossible for him, therefore, ever to divide the domain of religion from the realm of daily conduct; nor could conscience to him ever mean anything else than a " social conscience."

To the youth born in the middle of the last century and eager to know something of the nature of life and human destiny, the idea of evolution, along with the scientific impulse and habit of open-mindedness and intellectual honesty that made Darwin's writings so memorable, offered a clue into every subject of thought. The fight with slavery and its actual destruction suggested the possibility that every mischievous institution in the world might be abolished and led us to be content with nothing less than the democratic welfare of mankind.

FOREWORD Vll

Meanwhile, forty years in the ministry of a creedless church with a remarkably kind, intelligent and hospitable congregation have convinced the author that, as a rule, all churches, Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Liberal, have alike come to a parting of the roads; that their general attitude toward the great and vital subjects of the time is practically the same; that, with noble personal exceptions, they do not believe their religion and therefore lack the power and the purpose to be leaders of the new world movement to which every clear sign of the times points. They are all survivals of an older faith — not heralds of a new. On this score, the lessons of the war have been very impressive.

It is the design of this book to set forth a mode of religion, already dawning upon many minds, which the author believes must under various forms serve now and henceforth, not for Christendom alone but for all mankind, as the spiritual gospel and working force for a humane and democratic world. Wherever it is applied it can without question transform life. Every step of success in the working of the new faith, every melancholy failure of the old surviving and bankrupt unfaith, constitutes a new call to press with all our might toward a spiritual reality so virile as to win all the peoples to believe in and practice it.

It may seem that I should have said something about the coming institutions and ceremonies of religion. To speak frankly, I care little for this side vin FOREWORD

of our subject. Every living human movement is sure to adopt forms and create institutions to meet its needs.

I am sure also that whoever comes to love and understand veritable religion will easily be able to interpret all forms and expressions of genuine people and adapt to his own use as much of what they say and do as he may find helpful. He will do this with their symbols and ceremonies, without taking them too seriously. He can find matter for humane recognition and sympathy in a temple or synagogue or the barest country meeting-house, provided the worshipers give him the impression of a decent sincerity.

I am unwilling, therefore, to assume an attitude of antagonism to existing churches or religions. Let us see all the good there is in them : let us not despise our own childhood. There are many admirable people who believe that they can develop a better religion out of the old roots. Let them do this wherever they can, provided they are able to tell the truth and not compromise their convictions. They may succeed in many cases. It is difficult to foretell the various methods through which the growing life will show its power. Let no one, however, be too certain that it is worth while to pour new wine into old bottles ! Let no one imagine that the spirit of religion must reflect itself through all time any more by means of pulpits and pews than by candles and crucifixes.

Of certain facts I am sure. A multitude of people

FOREWORD IX

are scattered through the nation for whom the existing institutions of religion have no vital word. There must be an immense " revival of religion," of a kind quite different from that in which the churches deal, before they can touch the world outside. The church people have not enough religion to be able to communicate it to others. People are weary of being told to " come to church," as if hearing sermons or posturing in the forms of worship fed the springs of human life. Priests and preachers naturally enjoy their own services and sermons more than those whose part it is to answer with Amens. There are many men deserving of high respect who have little use for any conventional outward expression of religion. Of course a really rich and warm popular religion would have life enough to meet the needs of the most various types of people.

The world immensely needs religion — I mean religion in the terms of faith, hope and humanity. There is no enterprise of human reform and betterment that is not dying at the top for the need of religion. Political leaders, the leaders of the great social movements, the internationalists, leaders of great labor unions as well as masters of industry, lack the religion to light the way where they seek to guide others. They have not enough religion to understand democracy, much less to use its fundamental principles. This is the pathos of " Bolshevism."

I am sure that this condition is perilous: it does not presage a wholesome world for our children.

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All kinds of people need religion, in the best sense of the word.

I am sure also that most of us, whether we have religion or suffer from the need of it, must get together. Religion is essentially social. Whoever has it enjoys it and wants to tell some one else about it. Religion does not permit selfishness and isolation; it urges us to expression, and most of all ways through social action. Wherever religion is alive and awake it hardly requires paid agents and ministers. The great popular religious movements, like the spread of early Christianity in the teeth of oppression, have run like a stream; one man tells another; groups of people meet on their holiday evenings in each other's houses or in upper rooms. A certain amount of opposition has served to challenge the chivalry and generosity that exist in every group of people.

In our new time, with altered outward conditions, we still look for great popular movements, born to meet great social and personal necessities.

I have no prejudice against organizations and institutions, whether old ones re-created or new ones made to fit the new day. But all human institutions, like our houses, require the closest attention and constant repairs, or they are not fit to live in. I have no prejudice against paid officials, but we know that in the moment when a man thinks about his salary instead of the work he is set to do, the spirit of religion goes out of him.

The very soul of religion is devotion, unselfishness,

FOREWORD xi

disinterestedness. Why is it that the success of the work of the humble Salvation Army in relieving the distress of the war is out of all proportion to the number of its workers? Is it not because here were men and women who obviously had no regard for money or anything except a single-minded devotion to the welfare of men ? In days of barbarism priestcraft and authority often captured men's fears; it is different now. The religion that does not flow out of devoted hearts must perish.

Charles F. Dole.

Jamaica Plain, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Feb. 25, 1919.

Section I Signs Of The Times: How The Facts Point

OHAPTEB PAOX

I The Defeat of the Current Religion . . i

II A Religion Behind all the Religions . . 14

III The Realm of the Spirit 25

IV Spiritual Evolution : A Working Formula 37

Section II The Course Of Spiritual Evolution

I The Natural Beginnings of Religion . . 53

II Changing Human Nature 65

III The Pharisee World 70

IV The Superman, or Man at His Best . . 86 V The Summum Bonum 99

VI Two Levels of Life: The Great Adventure 106

VII Evil: What to Make of It 121

Section III The Victorious Goodness

I How to Handle Evil: The Irrepressible

Conflict 135

II The New Force 149

III The Heresies that Hurt Men . . . .160

CONTENTS

Section IV The New Civilization Chapter Page

I Religion and Industrial Democracy . .175

II Education for the People 193

III The Tests of Good Education .... 205

IV The Winning of the World 212

V Democratic Government and the World

Order 222

VI The Gospel of Percentages 244

Section V The Religion Within

I Religion as an Experience 249

II Why We Say God 262

III The Eternal Life 276

Section I Signs Of The Times: How The Facts Point

I

Two vast institutions cover the world with their memorials: one is the war system; the other is the current religion. The most enduring of all buildings are fortifications and churches or temples. Between these two groups of monuments the glory, the pomp and the heroism of human history is divided and indeed shared. For they have rarely lived long apart in any spot, and they have mostly worked together. Battle flags have come to be the favorite decoration of the church. Priests and chaplains have marched with armies and helped to hold the forts.

The Great War has forced slowly upon the thought of the world a strangely disconcerting question. What is the use of religion which lives at peace with war, sanctions war, helps to win war, and

i prays in different languages to one and the same God to give opposite parties victory in the struggle to destroy each other? The poison of a deep skepticism lies behind this question. Where is the God of the current religion? Who is He? Can we name Him the " Father " of Men? What loving Power that cares for men could tolerate the horrors with which every land to-day has been stirred? The current religion not only did nothing to forbid this immense conflagration, but it blessed men on both sides who went to fight in the name of Christ, and it assured each fighting nation that however ill other wars might be thought, this war was " holy." What if the skeptical mind cries out upon this as the reductio ad absurdum of religion! Is it not at least possible that we are looking upon the failure and defeat of the current religions of Christendom? Show us a religion, if you can, that has a decided and effective gospel for a world at war.

The force of the arraignment against the current or popular religion does not depend on the fact that this religion proved helpless to prevent or put an end to war. It had been a religion of easy compromise with social evils. Indeed it had showed all the marks of the same Pharisaism which long ago had outraged the conscience and the straightforward honesty or Jesus. It said and did not. It was dogmatic where it had no right or need to be sure, and evasive, slippery and inconstant where it should have been unhesitating, decided and earnest. Does any one suppose that Pharisaism was a disease of Judaism only, that Christianity could not also suffer from it?

There is no end to the evidence confirming this diagnosis of the current religion. The leaders of the churches are telling us, now that the world is aflame, that they had no idea that such a collapse of civilization was possible. The process of civilization had seemed to them to be going on very comfortably. Did they not see how shallow the veneer of enlightenment was? Never had there been such preparation for a catastrophe. Several terribly significant wars had blazed up within a quarter of a century. Great Britain had taken part in one of them, enacting the most shameful deeds in South Africa. The United States, not fifty years away from the great Civil War, had set out on the road to empire by the way of a needless war against Spain, going on at once to soil her skirts with the cruel business of the subjugation of the Philippine Islands. Every government in the world presently felt the stir of the new and threatening force that our boasted naval power was taking on. The barbarities of the two Balkan wars went beyond the power of words to describe. Meanwhile no great cause had ever been more feebly and half-heartedly supported than the cause of humanity versus the war system. In time of peace good people were not interested; when their own nation went to war, most of them found reason to excuse it, perhaps to call it " holy " ; this was no time to denounce war as wicked. But when would it ever be wicked, in another nation, when you could never condemn it in your own nation? Thus the current religion stood in no way prepared in any land to put its veto upon war. Moreover, the governmental authorities generally depended upon the churches and synagogues to give the aid and comfort to any belligerent course upon which their nation had once decided. Ancient Rome hardly expected more of its priests and vestals ! In what way was this complacent attitude of the leaders of our current religion different from that of the priests and the Pharisees of ancient Jerusalem?

Men say that the horrors of the Great War might have been prevented if the nations had been sufficiently prepared with armaments against it. A vital, honest, and humane religion, if our so-called Christendom had possessed it, would have prepared us against the war and forbidden it. The fact is that we were preparing for it, but did not know that it was coming. For war is only an external thing, the symptom of a disease deeper down at the heart of society. Our arraignment of the current religion is that it had not studied its own special subject; namely, our common human nature ; that it had developed no effective human sympathy; that while it made a pious outcry against " sin " in general, it did not recognize its own obvious faults and had no remedy for them. The world was proud and arrogant; was the church without pride? The world was full of divisive castes; had the church become democratic? The world was quick to anger; had the church learned what forgiveness is ? The world was selfish; were the current religion and its teachers conspicuous for disinterestedness? The world was quarreling; was the church notable for the friendly good will of its members? What permanent difference did it make in any one's behavior, or in his inner character, when he had "got religion"? What actual effect had this current religion with its diverse types of worship, of creeds, of services and ceremonies, and its conventional ethics, to make a man honest, friendly, true-hearted, reverent, earnest, lovable, a good comrade, a noble citizen, a lover of men? The most fatal judgment of the popular religion is the answer which it has to make to this practical question. The war, with its revelations of what a savage civilized man can be at his worst, is only an accident compared with that selfishness within the churches out of which war springs.

Another symptom of social disease lay in the colossal drink bills of all the so-called Christian nations. How could we call the United States a civilized nation when it spent over a billion dollars a year for alcohol? We have supported this parlous condition almost up to the present date. But this is a case, you say, where the current religion already rightly cries, " Victory! " Without quite disparaging the claim we note how superficial the conquest of evil is, when it rests only on force and legality. Suppose we have taken away from men the opportunity to degrade themselves with drink. How far, by this compulsory process, have we reached and won over and lifted the essential manhood of our fellows? If we could only believe that the marvelous wave of prohibitory zeal which has swept over the world represented the sympathy and all-round humanity of those who vote so cheaply to impose their will upon the unwilling minority ! Is it the work of a vital and inward religion to club men into temperate habits? For surely no reformation of custum or habit lasts long, unless it enters the fiber of a man's religion and carries his good will.

The helpless attitude of the leaders of the current religion toward the immense social and economic problems of our age is not the least searching test of the quality of their religion. With notable exceptions, which indeed hardly belong under the name of the popular religion, this attitude has been notoriously unsympathetic, and especially in the wealthier and better educated communities. To the great cities and the universities came the cry of immense submerged populations — the cry for justice, for democracy, for humanity. The answer given, unless indifference is any answer, has been most often in terms of fear, of suspicion, of race prejudice, of selfishness on guard against a less enlightened selfishness, of unfaith in God or man, in the zealous threat of public force in behalf of property rights. A new kind of heresy has been unearthed under the name of " socialism " ; namely, the too ardent interest of occasional preachers in proclaiming a doctrine of industrial democracy. The modern preacher might play with the creeds on the easy terms of saying the pious formula, " the Lord Jesus Christ," but let him take care not to preach too persuasively upon the startling implications of the Golden Rule ! The church of America is said to be free. How far is it using its freedom to " do justice " and teach humanity? What large influence did it ever exert for any unpopular cause? Quite lately men have gone to prison for conscience' sake and in behalf of the freedom of religious teaching; did any free church boldly assert the rights on which, in former times, its own existence depended? Here again we find the essence of Pharisaism — fair professions and empty performance.

The institutions of religion may appear to hold firm sway; their great buildings and endowments cost more money than ever; their aggregate income looks very impressive in the census ; their large membership includes plenty of honored names; for thoroughly popular enterprises such as financing war charities there is notable alacrity; the walls stand, but the foundations none the less are being undermined. Many a time as one frequents the services of the popular religion, whether in some big city temple or in a little country chapel, the fatal question arises : Is not this a respectable survival of an earlier time? How often one is impressed by the scanty attendance, the listlessness, the lack of the sense of " a message " from the pulpit, the disparity between the numbers who go to church and those who are riding in motor cars or reading the Sunday newspapers in their arm-chairs at home ! Now and then a Billy Sunday draws a host about him — a labored and melancholy spectacle — a tour de force to galvanize a sleeping people into activity. The obvious practical question, urged by the pressure of economic necessity, returns upon the thoughtful questioner: How useful is this current religion to modern society? What can it do, and what does it, to mend the spiritual health of mankind? How great a loss, if any, should we suffer if we proclaimed a moratorium of a generation or two for these time-honored institutions? I have in mind two independent studies of the church, one by a highly respected Doctor of Divinity, touching a group of different denominations, including his own, in the town of his summer residence; the other by an experienced educator, reviewing the history of his own old Puritan church for two centuries. In each case the result of the study was negative. The institution had failed to demonstrate a usefulness to warrant its cost !

I wish to speak in no tone of pessimism. I inquire; I do not profess to make up a balance sheet, or to measure all the fine shades of value to which any kind of religion, however effete or unspiritual, may lay claim. By and large, I believe that the arraignment against the current religion holds; it is not a vital and aggressive, religion; it is not readily known by its fruits ; it does not succeed in giving its members any sense of peace, joy, security, added power. Many will frankly tell you that they have never consciously enjoyed an " experience of religion," in the sense that one speaks of an experience of parenthood or friendship. They have no strong and hearty bond with their fellow religionists such as men once had in the buoyant birth-period of their religion; they do not know what the Presence of God, as a grand consciousness of infinite rest and fellowship, means; they are not sure even that God is; they are rarely so sure of God or that this is God's world, as to dare to do right, when the right is not the custom of their social group, or when the right is somewhat costly and threatens to be unprofitable. They almost never find themselves established in a resolute purpose by the known support of their brothers in the church. All this is the mark of an historic or decadent religion; it has fallen out of connection with the sources of life.

A vital church ought to stand in relation with the thought of its age. It begins to die if ever its prevailing thought is antiquated and conventional. The current religion is out of gear with the thought of our times. A great clue, necessary to understand the marvelous processes of history or to construct a working philosophy, is at hand to-day in the idea of evolution. Evolution is not merely in the outer world; it is essentially spiritual. Religion itself is the growth and product of the stirrings, inquiries, experiences, and aspirations of many ages. But the popular religion still carries its medieval creeds and dogmas, offers the lip worship of an unmeaning recital of obsolete sentences — the Apostles' Creed and undevotional Hebrew psalms. It professes still to hold a theology by virtue of ancient authority,

IO A RELIGION FOR THE NEW DAY

as if there were no vast parable in the outer world, open at last to science, full of gleams of helpful suggestiveness as to the inner meanings of life. The current religion is still moored to the false science of the Ptolemaic astronomy and a preposterous rendering of the first chapter of Genesis. Leaders of its churches who know better are fearful of breaking the unity of the church by thought-provoking discussion. Their own souls thus suffer atrophy. Meanwhile scores of rival sects already break the unity of the only real church that ever was or can be; namely, the men of truth and good will, the helpers and lovers, the believers and doers, the real poets, sons and daughters of God. Yes! The current religion is far behind all the best and most active thinking of our age. And millions of people are trying hopelessly to live and do business in one world and conduct worship in another and unreal world; they are trying to stay out of the universe !

Have not certain groups, however, the Unitarians and other liberals, succeeded in making their thought in religion tally with the thought of schools and colleges? A few have tried to use their minds, but this is not enough in the realm of religion. Religion must carry the whole man along and not only the mind. The most correct thought about religion by itself would only be a new orthodoxy. Religion wants to be adapted to life. As we wish to show later, the implications of a genuine and vital religion are so immense and far-reaching that no man has any idea of them simply by his intellectual under-

THE DEFEAT OF THE CURRENT RELIGION II

standing of a few definitions, never adequate to define the reality. What if the liberal, like others, merely repeats the great principles by rote? He is proud to have sloughed off the confusing doctrines of the popular creed. But who knows that the obscure dogma in the despised creed does not contain the hint of a living truth?

The fact is that people are members of liberal churches, as they are of other churches, largely by reason of social affinity and heredity. What liberal church ever started with a purpose to find truth or, grander yet, to lead a new enterprise to bring u the Kingdom of God " to the modern world? For the most part and excepting individual efforts, liberal churches are very like other forms of the current religion. The same may be said of Judaism with its orthodox and liberal wing. Never have any of these groups actively set out to express and incarnate the soul of religion. The same survival of timidity, both intellectual and moral, the same distrust of putting their professions into practice in this actual world, the fatal doubt whether their religion will work, the human instinct to herd along with other men and escape unpopularity or responsibility, has appeared with like results on both sides of the vague line supposed to distinguish the vast orthodox hosts from the various liberal movements. Little ventured, little gained. Little outgo, little income. The liberals have not taken their religion very seriously, and they have therefore shown small persuasive power to gather the people. Moreover, we have lived to see them, at one of the greatest issues of religious history, generally taking up the same war cry as that of the current religion, preaching the old-world method of violence, thinking to cast out evil by doing evil, invoking the name of Jesus to provoke warriors to fight, deriding " peacemakers " and casting them out of their churches — a perfectly natural course, easy to understand, for those who had learned only to respect the great words of religion, without understanding their costly implications!

Meanwhile, the world has suddenly developed a new science, new sources of almost infinite power, a new system of industry, world-wide complications of business and commerce, new problems difficult enough to swamp the mind that tries to imagine their outcome; the world just begins to wake up to the need of a real and practical religion, of such a religion as has never yet been largely known and practiced, of a religion adequate to fit such a crisis as this, and it finds itself with a current religion as helpless to meet its needs as if we were to try to use the old Mayflower for ocean travel. The world needed " preparedness," but not in steel or gold, in food and drink, in new chemical secrets, in enlarged forces of destruction. It wanted and must have a religion humane enough to match its great science, a religion rational enough to ally itself with its science, but, far more important, a religion vital enough to give a higher motive power than fear or warlike discipline or greed of gain or the hysteria of an inflated patriotism could ever give, for the counsels and conduct of mankind.

Have I arraigned the popular religion too severely or done it injustice ? I was brought up in it ; I know it from the roots upward; I am aware of the values that it once carried; I would say nothing to break it down, if I did not see what ought to supersede it; I would not willingly hurt any one's feelings who loves it. We might bear with it in further patience, if it would only be humble and face the truth, and tell the truth. But its worst fault is that it fosters pride and egotism; it asks men to " humble themselves " and confess their sins, but it does not confess its own sins. /It had its chance to lead men to new reaches of conduct, but it preferred to follow like a slave in chains at the heels of the warriors, the bankers, and the politicians. I leave the question, " Has the world any use for the current religion? " with a negative answer. It has failed and been defeated. It is not good enough to repair. There is no land under the sun where an honest man would not suffer shame to undertake to profess it. ' What ! " men would say. " The religion that was responsible for the Great War ! " The world cries out in its need for something more sturdy and brave, more reverent, friendly and humane.