Meliorism...theological essays...

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EC

MELIORISM

BY

Preface

Meliorism teaches that there is throughout nature a tendency toward improvement. When applied to mankind it represents that conception of life which is marked by a gradual growing better. This term has been adopted as the title of this book for three reasons :

(1) Because these chapters were first written as the articles of a small periodical leaflet called "The Meliorist."

(2) Because Meliorism is in a measure a synonym for evolution, which, I have no doubt, is,in the main,the correct conception of what we are wont to call the "Creation."

(3) Because the present great progressive theological movement, in the furtherance of which this book is an effort, is in the direction of progress toward a higher, a better and a truer conception of God and the universe.

The author has tried to present his arguments and ideas upon the questions discussed in this book in such a manner as to be plain and intelligible alike to all. He does not pretend to have advanced a single new discovery along the lines he has pursued, but hopes that he has gathered together and arranged the arguments and discussions presented in such a form as to .convince the reader of the reasonableness of the position taken upon the various matters herein presented.

It is his opinion, that there are thousands of people all over the country who are not and cannot in the nature of things be satisfied with the conception of God and of nature presented to the~ world in orthodox Christianity. It is hoped, that those who are seeking for a more systematic and definite conception of God and nature, will find herein many ideas and suggestions that will assist them in building for themselves more consistent and better conceptions of these great subjects.

J. A. F.

Sedan, Kansas, April 3, 1914

Chapter I Progress In Theological And Religious Thought

For many years, it has seemed that our education, our civilization and our morality have all outgrown our theology. I have read the history of philosophy and works on metaphysics, have studied and watched the progress and development of our knowledge through the natural sciences, and then have considered the teachings of the Church — the teachings that people get from our ministers generally throughout the country. When I compare the results I am surprised and confounded. I would that all these things might agree. Our notions of God and nature, our metaphysical theories and our natural sciences should agree ; but alas, they do not!

Upon further investigation, I find that the great leaders in the religious and theological world do not believe and teach many of the things that our common people are taught to believe. To illustrate :

Rev. John H. Dietrich, pastor of St. Mark's Memorial Reform Church of Pittsburg,Pa., on June 6, 1911, in an interview regarding the charge of heresy lodged against him said :

"I do not claim to be orthodox, in fact, I have no desire to be, for it represents a system of thought based on ignorance and superstition. There is no question about the difference between the orthodox theory of the world and my theory. They believe in a system of things which starts in the fall of man, with an atonement wrought out by a dying God midway and an eternal hell at the end. I believe there never was a fall of man : that from the beginning he has risen ; that the atonement is not wrought out by a dying God but by every man coming into harmony with the laws of the universe which are the laws of God ; and if men will do their part the kingdom of God lies ahead instead of an endless hell."

On the 4th day of April, 1911, in an interview, Rev. Luther Freeman, formerly pastor of the Independence Boulevard Methodist church, Kansas City, Mo., and then the President of Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa, said :

1 'I did say the Bible was not inspired in the sense that its authors had had any direct revelation from God to write what they did. There is nothing particularly new in the views I expressed. I have been preaching them many years in Kansas City and elsewhere. I said we should learn to read the Bible correctly and to reject those parts that do not conform to what the world is learning to accept as the true conception of God, the loving father.

"God certainly never commanded his prophets to write that slavery is good, that war is good and that the other bloody and cruel teachings to be found in some of the books of the Bible are to be accepted to day as his precepts. I said we must read the book of Job, for instance, as a drama, as the work of a great philosopher and poet and not as the word of God. The author of the Lamentations was no more inspired by God than was Shakespeare, but that is no reason why we should throw Job out of our libraries."

"Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christianism, Buddhism, Mahometanism, are the necessary and structural action of the human mind." — Emerson's Representative Man.

"Under all this running sea of circumstances, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the original abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole." — Emerson's Essay on Compensation.

"We are none of us born with a belief in God, but we are all born with a tendency to believe what we are told." — Inge in Psychology of Faith.

"Rationalism tries to find a place for God in the picture of the world. But God, whose center is everywhere and his circumference nowhere, cannot be fitted into a diagram.

He is rather the canvass on which the picture is painted, or the frame in which it is set." — id.

"For as we have often said, the assumption of the inspiration of the text (of the gospels) has been shattered, definitely and irretrievably shattered. Out in the wilderness we must now blaze out a path amid the thorns of criticism. But this is gain. Criticism is better than dogmatism, as manhood is better than childhood. — Foster's Finality of the Christian Religion.

"The four gospels, which are our main sources for the evangelical history, are neither biographies nor strictly memorabilia, but are books for the purpose of evangelization and edification. They use their material much as the popular preacher retells the Parable of the Prodigal Son, imaginatively reconstructing it, supplying all sorts of embellishments, and adapting it to the practical end in view, unmindful to a degree of fidelity to the literal story." — id.

"At all events, however, so far as the modern man is concerned, he can no longer believe in miracles." — id.

"The Book of Zechariah, which Jews, as well as Christians, give as authority for the description of the last Judgment, refers merely to municipal plan for- municipal improvements laid out by the Maccabes. The poetic and fanciful language of scriptural scribes has been misinterpreted." — Prof. Paul Haupt of Johns Hopkins University, address Apr, 21, 1913, before American Philosophical Assn., at Philadelphia, Pa.

"The affections and emotions are eminently the court of appeal in matters of real religion, which is an affair of the heart ; but they are not, I submit, the court in which to weigh the allegations regarding the credibility of physical facts. These must be judged by the dry light of the intellect alone, appeals to the affections being reserved for cases where moral elevation, and not historic convictions, is the aim." — Tyndall in Fragments of Science.

"Whatever revolution takes place will not prevent us attaching ourselves in religion to the grand, intellectual and moral line at the head of which shines the name of Jesus. In this sense we are Christians, even when we separate ourselves on almost all points from the Christian tradition which has preceded us.*' — Renan's Life of Jesus.

"There is a time in the past beyond which our memory does not reach. Moreover we have reason to believe, that there will be a time when the chain of conscious states will be broken forever. This consummation is called death. In short, the subjective world is transient ; it grows by degrees, its existence is very precarious ; it nickers like a candle in the wind and will disappear again." — Garus's Soul of Man.

"But man dieth and is laid low: Yes, man giveth up the ghost and where is he : As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wasteth and drieth ; so man lieth down and raiseth not : till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be roused out of their sleep." — -Job.

"I will not attempt to say how far it is desirable that persons who are perfectly satisfied with a creed which they have never examined should (as it were) pull up the roots of their own faith to see how deep they go. I merely want to point out that the occurence of certain emotional experiences, though undoubtedly they may constitute part of the data of a religious argument, cannot be held to constitute in and by themselves sufficient evidence for the truth of the intellectual theory connected with them in the mind of the person to whom they occur." — Rashdall in Philosophy and Religion.

"We are beginning to see that even personality, in any human sense of the term, would not honor Deity, but would deny his infinitude and mar his perfection." — Henry M. Simmons in New Tables of Stone.

"Innumerable are those who have given their lives for a cause they thought sacred. Xenophon told how an unnamed Armenian urged forgiveness for the king who had condemned him to death, — much as Jesus did for the murderers. Human godlikeness did not have to wait for Christianity. Even so orthodox a man as Father Taylor, when asked if any other human being had ever been as good as Jesus, is said to have replied, 'Millions.* All who love, show the inmost essence of divinity, if 'God is love'.*' — id.

Yet, there seems to be a tendency among religious leaders to tolerate and even encourage people in holding to teachings that the best intellects of out civilization have discarded.

There seems to be a feeling prevalent among the church leaders that the people are not ready for the change from traditional fiction to proven facts ; that it is not safe to turn them loose to live a life for the life's sake — with no incentive to do right beyond the fact that it is right.

The great thinkers in the various Christian churches no longer believe in the personal man-form of God, the Deity of Jesus, his resurrection from the dead, and various other theological beliefs taught in the Bible. However, many of these leading thinkers are very cautious. They actually deceive the people into believing that they hold to the old time orthodox beliefs, yet at the same tim e and almost in the same breath they tell those who "read between the lines" that these old beliefs are not true. A striking illustration of this sort of deception is found in the Outlook of August 17th, 1912, in an article written by Dr. Lyman Abbott, entitled "My Confession of Faith." In this article the Doctor says :

"It might be sufficient to answer categorically : Yes, I do believe in a personal God ; in the divinity of Jesus Christ ; in his resurrection ; in the miracles ; in the inspiration of the Bible. But such categorical reply would be understood in different ways by different readers. I therefore avoid the categorical reply, and set forth here my Christian faith, as far as possible, in non-theological terms."

After reading this short paragraph, the average person who does not study the thoughts that the skillful writer puts between the lines would say that Dr. Abbott believes in a personal God, in the Divinity of Jesus, in his resurrection from the dead as taught in the Bible, in the miracles as related in the Bible and in the Bible itself, as being the work of specially inspired writers, who wrote as the Almighty gave them utterance. But the fact is, that Dr. Abbot does not believe any of these things in the sense in which the common laymen believe them. He does not believe that God, the Great Creator of the Universe, is a being in the shape and form of a man, who has his throne in some particular place in the Universe, and from that high abode controls and governs the Universe as an ordinary superintendent would control a factory or a business house. He does not believe anything of that sort. In the same article he uses this language :

"The Latin notion of a human Jupiter, renamed Jehovah, made to dwell in some bright particular star, and holding telephonic communication with the spheres by means of invisible wires, which sometimes fail to work, dies, and the old Hebrew conception of a divinity which inhabiteth eternity and yet dwells in the heart of the contrite and the humble, takes its place."

Here he specifically says, that the notion of a human Jupiter, renamed Jehovah, dies. In other words, a human form of God dies and the old Hebrew conception of a divinity which inhabiteth eternity, and yet dwells in the heart of man, is a true conception of God. He does not believe in a personal God at all then ; for a personal being can not dwell in the heart of another being, except in a figurative sense. But the Doctor was evidently not using figurative language ; for he was trying to describe to his reader the dwelling-place or habitation of God.

Again he says in the same article: "That God is in nature, filling it with himself, as the spirit fills the body with its presence, so that all nature's forces are but expressions of the divine will, and all nature's laws but habits of divine action — this is the doctrine of the Fatherhood."

Nothing could say more emphatically that God is not a person in human form, but is the great creative force whicht pervades all nature and which fills the universe.

As to his belief in the divinity of Christ, he says : "That God is in human experience, guiding, illuminating, inspiring, making all willing souls sons of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ — this is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit."

In this quotation he plainly suggests that Jesus Christ was no more a son of God than any "willing soul" might be. That God may guide and inspire any human being, thus exalting him to the same sonship as he did Jesus.

In regard to the Bible he says: "The Bible is unique and incomparable in literature, because it is the history of the revelation of God in human experience, beginning with the declaration that God made man in his own image, bringing, out in law, history, drama, poetry, prophecy, that divine image more clearly, until it reaches its consummation in the portrait of Him who was the express image of God's Person and the brightness of his glory."

What does this clause mean? What is the ' 'Revelation of God in human experience?" Our Bible is supposed to be about nineteen centuries old, the Old Testament part much older. The real meaning of this quotation is this : That the Bible protrays God as human experience nineteen centuries ago and prior thereto in its crude and primitive state, had in its imagination looked upon God.

In regard to the miracles, after having suggested that he believes in miracles, he says: " I do not believe that the laws of nature have ever been violated, for this would be to believe that God who dwells in nature and animates it, has violated the law of his own being," which is to say, that he does not believe in miracles at all, that he believes the laws of nature have never been broken or violated. He goes on to say that the "Geology of the region of the Dead Sea remains a perpetual monument to attest and interpret the story of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain." In this, he would suggest that the Bible story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is true, and in the same breath suggests that it was a natural phenomenon. This cannot be possible, because the Bible tells us that these cities were destroyed by personal act of God, because of wickedness of the people, and not by a phenomenon of nature in the form of a volcanic eruption, or an earthquake. If the laws of nature were not violated in miracles, then Jesus did not turn water into wine, did not cast devils out of human beings, and a hundred other things claimed in the Bible to have transpired as miracles. Dr. Abbott does not believe these things ever transpired.

Such an article as this, it seems to me, is unsatisfactory and misleading. What we need for the common people today is plain English which states in terms that a layman can understand, what our beliefs are and what the best evidence we can find tends to prove in regard to these matters, rather than indefinite expressions which are susceptable of conflicting interpretations.

I want to do all in my power to dispel error and ignorance, but I would not sweep away one evil only to have it replaced with something worse.

When we come to understand that our Bible is fallible and is the work of men, will we give up in despair and refuse to read the message of God that is written wherever we may look in the universe; or will we seek the larger and more consistent revelations of God throughout nature? When we realize that we must give up our deity-conception of Jesus, will we discard him altogether ; or will we still recognize in him that great leader, whose short but active life set on foot the greatest religious movement the world has ever known? When we find that the little god, which we have created in the image of man, cannot be the great Creator and Preserver of all things, will we in our rashness say "There is no God ;"or will our minds be turned to greater and more consistent conceptions of that infinite Cause of system, order and design in all things?

I believe and confidently expect that, as the people let go of these erroneous theological notions, the majority of them will lay hold of the higher and more consistent conceptions of God and his relations to the rest of the universe. Yet, whether they will do this or not, depends upon certain conditions:

In the first place, if the people let go of their old beliefs intelligently and because they have investigated and find them to be erroneous, the result will be good ; for every one who takes the pains to think about these great questions enough to reason to the conclusion that the old beliefs are wrong, will be impressed with a broader view and a higher conception of what must necessarily enter into the makeup of true theology. But if people let go of the old beliefs negatively, passively and because of indifference to the whole matter, then the result will be bad ; for such persons will not take the pains to lay hold upon something better. As a rule, they will be pessimistic and lose hope, and the change will be for the worse.

However, there is a safeguard against the tendency to bad results from teaching the people the faults of their old theological beliefs and pointing them to the new. It is a matter of history, that we are slow to change our theological beliefs, whether right or wrong. These beliefs have usually grown up with us from childhood and become second nature with us. They are the result of childhood associations and environment. This tendency not to want to give up our old beliefs creates in us a spirit of antagonism and, where it does so, we begin at once to think and to study the problems involved. If we change at all, we usually do so after due consideration. If we decide we are wrong, we are then on the lookout for something better. This puts us in the best possible position to accept something better when it is presented to us. One is sometimes impatient with those who are slow to accept new theories and new lines of thought, but this is as it should be.

I have unbounded faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and I cannot believe it is possible, that our orthodox Christian theology, which is but the ancient Jewish mythology, supplemented by the traditions and imaginations of an unlearned and superstitious people of two thousand years ago, which is contrary to and disproven by all the science and philosophy of our present enlightened civilization, and which is shut off from all hope or possibility of change or revision by its being considered a direct revelation from God, is the proper guide for the religious and moral betterment of our generation. On the contrary, I believe it is possible for us, aided by the already great and ever increasing knowledge of facts and conditions, and the power and ability we have developed in the course of the educational advancement of our age, to arrive at a more accurate and consistent conception of the universe and of God.

Chapter II Intolerance

There has always been a great lack of tolerance among religious peoples of dogmatic views on matters of theology. Early Christian intolerance left behind a trail of blood, torture and death. History is full of the recitals of persecutions on account of differences in theological beliefs. Not only was this so in former times, when good, honest and religious men and women were crucified and burned at the stake or sent to the rack of torture because of their difference of faith from the prevailing theological creeds and dogma, but today in modern, civilized, Christian America, the feeling among the various sects or divisions of the Christian church alone as against one another is often most bitter. It is not uncommon to see the lines of preference, favoritism and even ostracism in social and business affairs drawn between members of the different Christian churches.

This intolerance is much more vehement when directed toward those who are not affiliated with the church. It makes no difference what one's character, for honesty, upright life and good citizenship is, if he dares to have and express an opinion or belief different from the prevailing orthodoxy, he is at once a dangerous man, and undesirable citizen, a person to be shunned and despised as an enemy of mankind. Is not this the same spirit which burned people at the stake in olden times? Is not this the same spirit which put Jesus upon the cross ? If the Bible account is true, Jesus was crucified because he had views different from the prevailing theological orthodoxy and dared to express those views publicly. There exist in the breasts of orthodox Christians today feelings of contempt and hatred for the very names of Voltaire, Hume, Paine, Ingersoll,

Huxley and Darwin. Why? Simply because there were some things about the Christian theology that they did not believe and they were honest enough to say so publicly, and not because they were not honest, not because they were criminals, not because they were uncharitable, not because they were not good neighbors, good fathers, good husbands or good citizens. The majority, if not all of these men accepted and lived the fundamental principles of the Christian religion. They all believed in the religion of "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them," of "Go thy way; from henceforth sin no more," of "Bless and curse not," of "By their fruits ye shall know them." But they did not believe in the fundamentals of Christian theology; they did not believe in the immalculate conception of Jesus, they did not believe that a being could be half man and half God, they did not believe that one being can justly pay the penalty for another's crimes, they did not believe in the theory of the atonement, they did not believe that Jesus died for the sins of the world any more than did thousands of others who all through the ages have preferred death to dishonesty.

The spirit of intolerance which of old persecuted, crucified and burned people at the stake is the same spirit of intolerance, which today looks with suspicion and scorn upon all who refuse to accept the unreasonable articles of faith of dogmatic Christian- theology.

The majority of us know little of the truth, and no man knows all the truth. The word "faith" itself is an apology for ignorance of the truth. We would not talk of "faith in God," "faith in Jesus Christ," and "faith in immortality," if we knew the truth in regard to these subjects. After all, what assurance have we that our faith is correct that and the other fellow's is incorrect. The very fact that it is a faith is enough to brand it with a degree of uncertainty. Who knows the facts about God — whether he is in the shape and form of a man, or is simply the organizing and sustaining force at the center of the universe, as suggested in the beautiful lines from Emerson?

"O my brother, God exists. There is a soul at the center of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe."

Some of the great students of history and theology are now trying to prove that there never was on earth such a person as Jesus, and one is surprised at the amount and plausibility of evidence produced in support of this contention. In view of the fact, that human frailty and imperfection have had to do with every supposed verbal communication of the Divine will to man, that almost nineteen centuries have passed since any such supposed communication has been reported, why should our notions on these matters be considered anything more than beliefs or "faiths"? Is it a sin for a man to have his own honest beliefs about these theological subjects, even though they may be wrong? It is one of the fundamental principles upon which our American government was founded that every man should have the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. In other words, every man should have the liberty to have his own theological views, and to work out in his own way his relationship with God, and to assume toward God in his worship, whatever attitude and relationship his conscience should dictate as the proper worship toward the Great Architect who created, governs and sustains the universe.

Man's conduct toward his fellowman is the proper subject of our criticism, and to a certain extent, is even a matter of legal regulation. There are certain fundamentals of religious conduct which we all accept and which even our laws recognize and require between man and man. So long as man lives up to the full measure of our present Christian civilization in respect to those acts of honesty, charity and morality, which make him a good citizen and a good neighbor, why should he be regarded as unworthy of friendship, respect and confidence, because his notions and beliefs upon questions of theology and metaphysics differ from ours?

Emerson says : "The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of Heaven on himself in striving to shut out others." If we never concede that we might possibly be wrong, we never put ourselves in a condition to find out whether or not we are wrong ; we say in advance that we are not expecting anything better ; we refuse to listen to anything different from our preconceived notions. Dogmatic Christian theology is today just where it was nineteen centuries ago. We today know a thousand times more about plant life, animal life, the geological condition of the earth and the astronomical condition of the universe, than was known nineteen hundred years ago. To the man who is willing to consider this additional knowledge, the universe with its workings means infinitely more than it did to the primitive Christian ; yet the dogmatic conceptions of God are just as small, just as childish, just as primitive as when it was believed that He made the sun stand still, in order to permit a general to win a battle, or that he killed or caused to be killed all the "first-born" of an entire nation, because a monarch refused to permit the children of Israel to leave his country.

Let us grant to others the same right that we claim for ourselves to consider these matters in our own best way, and decide them by our own best judgment. Let us not be angry with those who do not arrive at the same conclusions that we have reached. Let us not feel that our notions of God and the universe should control the world. Let us believe that there are other theories and faiths that may be right and ours may possibly be wrong. Let us hope for a theology truer to nature than the one which we advocate, and finally, let us lay aside the prejudice we have toward other faiths, and consider any man a benefactor to humanity who will conscientiously think on these matters and give to the world the honest conclusion which he reaches after such'careful*consideration.