University of Virginia Library BR121 B246 1927 ALD W ATM X DOO U hat can a man believe? By Bru iii Lbé | U0re my Ne : ei ae pe om we ere Ne os os) oS ey LR ~~.PAA a es qemraseLes. a ee) s t cf i. "1 2 — sie ae ne or 9 ee cee! ee te em el ermarenieesat—— ~istea es ars een rs ne zs ois es i OS # 4 ree a oe I ee - S so| At ae Pe eel a a SO ae a)wep ere os Ss ees) ee se: eens tS LS et = ey et s ee Ff ) 4 Vint py Se a pe Ware oe. ~~ pp eg a Wats ai 7 Ne aE ne AN SSS ad ak a Res a a aD ey ad Res ST WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? Pee em Reet ne een fnt En canta es "7 ft lf } a i | i ne ere Sa ay ee ee on ee Ree Ne paren ae Oo net acl ee es alee’ * ~ Pac mem eo Tad 4 ee a a syBOLL htop espe spas 2 = Se ot pn A pret a eee oe es er tare pee 2 AST Lie we By BRUCE BARTON ee NE AN NOBODY KNOWS Deserves a place in every office, in every factory, in every home. It is a study of Jesus, not in stained glass nor in pic- tures, but as a very present help—Jesus, the companion. It is a plea for the business of Jesus, His methods to be your methods—His policy yours. It rings with sincerity. —Chicago Daily News. ue a OO) HoOonpaoy KNOWS Written in the same fresh, enthusiastic and absorbing manner as The Man No- body Knows. —Review of Reviews. A sweeping wind of a book. A warm, cleansing sunlight of a book. A forward-looking book, original and elec- trifying. —Washington Star.WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? By BRUCE BARTON AUTHOR OF The Man Nobody Knows The Book Nobody Knows THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS INDIANAPOLIS ae POSES ae oe he a. ~o re Sa Seas ee Es REE ig a a 8 te a ns meee at ES nes Sees are >, ra. eee ae aan tetas os emer e rr ez St Pd wee ag i | i ae ox: a ea SCENTS arene a P aa em LR eats On an OS Coren es hn ae oan en cae be et . im Rare Sa Sree AE Ta eS ts eee RE a aes see ae f : ( aa 5 an ae RASS ETE TS ar Pe - aR an ee 6a oa ent! > Aa a le SS s an ne o a sy .Ct aad oe re i s aie peed Oe Py A phages a rae LiteCON EE NaS CHAPTER PAGE I II Ill IV V VI SHoutp RELicion Br ABOLISHED? . . ie Has tHe CuurcH Dont More Harm i a ie io Tuan Goon? ee el eee Wuicu Is THE Best RELIGION? Wuart Few Simprte Tuines Can a Man ~caet) Roe sek he oeune BELIEVE? Tue Cuurcu Nosnopy Knows Tue Macic Tuat Moves Mountains . 227 co rar a nan a: ee pg yw Sey PAPO oe Sa kod my ee SS oes es Set Ss Sy ea eee ae Son a, Se bed ee ene ee —— — Se ee ROT. he 14 4 oe erat ae ere ae a , ; i ay d A “A | ee ees ee he cs ot eee a ee ae orn e oe <=mame aoe ap oe rr Ae ty wide A 7 > eet ae pe ~* me Cree Fee as oO ae a Pe pee SAL ie ca ee tat a i 4 fc hw=a" oe ames ener aaa APPLES ee ad aa aa eee yo at Sas se eee etree SOND eee! a PEI ESS oe en nee ae ar waa wa ened: 2 WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? ee ae EE | & i t a | Sy 5 I EER kn gee al re NE ene ee a oe a ona ar eon eer oS phe som i f My ry v« re far minnnne an ~~ i he a) ms ” SAAR LrWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? CHAPTER I SHOULD RELIGION BE ABOLISHED? Tue ship l’Orient carried a distinguished company of men upon an exciting errand that summer evening in 1798. ‘The youth of twenty- eight, who had flamed across the sky of Europe like a comet, was on his way to greater glories. “Europe is nothing but a mole hill,” he ex- claimed. “It is only in the Orient that there have been great empires and great revolutions, there where six hundred million people live.” So he was headed for Egypt to found an Oriental empire, and he was taking with him as helpers the best engineers and scientists of France. On this evening he sat relaxed but interested, while the savants talked about religion. They said that while Egypt’s religion had made its history, the religion itself was only myth and humbug. This was-true-of-all-religions, Dur- 13 Serargae poe oy oa" Pima RG a oe ae — — eas AION ee tad a pe Ree OR ey oy ea Fem ei onay Sash RTS a es Sera ah re i} t? By aS Hi tq yas vy a: cons — = ena Oe at ee a a Re ae eanas = eat ee eS Pereer Fl ee FM ett Nall LO Sa ane ee a = ~~ ee et. ~ ne RRS ISS TTS and Ne ee Oe ee a OY career rear ee 2.7.5 WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? ing certain phases in human development they had their uses, but the time for them had long since passed. ‘There was no God, and men had now reached a point where they could dare to say it. Thus they argued, these scientists in whom the spirit of atheistic revolt was so strong, as it was rampant in all France at that hour. And Napoleon leaned back and smiled and listened. Finally he rose to leave them, and as he did so he lifted his hand and pointed to the stars that shone brilliantly through the deep black sky. “Very ingenious, Messieurs,”’ he said, “but who made all that?’ Here is another story, also about a warrior, Captain Martin Scott, that famous crack-shot of our southwestern frontier. “T was once buffalo hunting in Arkansas,” said the doughty captain. “I was on a strong, well trained horse, pursuing a bull, when we arrived at a rent or crack in the prairie, so wide that it was necessary for the animals to leap it. The bull went over first, and I, on the horse, following it close, rose on my stirrups, craning a little that I might perceive the width of the rent. At that moment the bull turned round to charge; the horse perceiving it, and knowing his work, immediately wheeled also. This sudden change of motion threw me off my saddle, and I 14RELIGION ABOLISHED? remained hanging by the side of the horse, with my leg over his neck. There I was, hanging on only by my leg, with my head downwards below the horse’s belly. The bull rushed on to the charge, ranging up to the flank of the horse on the side where I was dangling, and the horse was so encumbered by my weight in that awkward position that each moment the bull gained upon him. “At last my strength failed me; I felt that I could hold on but a few seconds longer; the head of the bull was close to me, and the steam from his nostrils blew into my face. I gave myself up for lost; all the prayer I could possibly call to mind at the time was the first two lines of a hymn I used to repeat as a child: ‘Lord, now I lay me down to sleep’; and that I repeated two or three times, when, fortunately, the horse wheeled short round, evaded the bull, and leaped the gap. The jolt of the leap, after nearly drop- ping me into the gap, threw me up so high I gained the neck of the horse, and eventually my saddle. I then thought of my rifle and found that I had held it grasped in my hand during the whole time. I wheeled my horse and resumed the chase, and in a minute the bull was dead at my horse’s feet.” It is a long jump from Napoleon to Captain Scott; what have two such dissimilar characters in common? Why link together two anecdotes so seemingly unrelated? 15 it Ge! i ae + a, yan eee re ts es XS epee ee Ss aS ee J j ns - alte ee N SESE Peet Fmd ame a Ss yee ee re one RD FRILL OIY as Sree oJ 7) See eee names SMZCILOOES eT a ne ae eet riteemces nt. th menace a ~~ < a a~ _— 4 ra Se at . aw pee Fon aes —s rae a ER re ny at ena ea ew os se Se NOUN Ee PSTN beeen eS tat om <——o~<— WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? Both stories are illustrations of the same curious fact. In every human being, whether emperor or cowboy, prince or pauper, philos- opher or slave, there is a mysterious something which he neither ‘understands nor controls. It may lié dormant for so long as to be almost forgotten; it may be so repressed that the man supposes it is dead. But one night he is alone in the desert under the starry sky; one day he stands with bowed head and damp eyes beside an open grave; or there comes an hour when he clings with desperate in- stinct to the wet rail of a storm-tossed boat, and suddenly out of the forgotten depths of his being this mysterious something leaps forth. It over- reaches habit; it pushes aside reason, and with a voice that will not be denied it cries out its questionings and its prayer. “Now I lay me down to sleep!” What a prayer for a man like Scott, whose feet are fast in the stirrups, who hangs in double danger from the horns of a bull and the hoofs of his own horse, expecting within five seconds to be gored or trampled to death! Could any words be more ludicrous? Yet the form of the words is negligi- ble. The significant fact, the amazing fact, is that such a man in such a situation prays, and the prayer he prays is the first he ever learned. 16RELIGION ABOLISHED? A physician of foreign birth, whose practise was on the lower East Side of New York, told me that almost everybody prays before he dies, and that no matter how long he has lived in America, or how well he may know the English language, he prays in the language to which he was born. Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross did so. Whether He could speak Greek we do not know; some of the men who stood near the Cross used that language and so could not understand Him when He eried: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” But Mary, the mother, under- stood; it was their native Aramaic, the language of her little boy. In one of his cleverest essays Maeterlinck considers the number of classifications and gen- eralizations which a dog must make in early life, as, for instance, to decide whom he should admit through the door as a friend and at whom to dash out in the dark. He says that the dog does not spend much time in looking up at the sky; one glance is enough to show him that there is nothing he can dig out of that. But the earth may be dug into, and interesting objects found therein. Man also digs in the earth and finds not only rabbits and woodchucks, but potatoes and oil and iron and gold. And he must dig or he can not 17 ro it ies" 7 4¢ tf a A Sy se reg ara a eae aad ete lees Rar etter ET tn SS ~e a pn eS Recto yon Gos mmm rane aaee wt aeo] rs oy a < ~~ re re : Bm A Pe rs SOE TS et — de Se TE oe os * Rete Grit ete ttm mann ied er) ——— ee ae er ee ph ee 4 Scere weiner ici om ~ bey NT Nee ee oe Oe ee Ne Of ee eee WHAT CAN.A MAN BELIEVE? live. But man has not been content, as has the dog, with a single upward glance. Delving away with aching arms, pushing himself relent- lessly in the battle for existence, wherein all the forces of the universe seem to be his foes, he has continued to glance up. However absurdly, he has made himself believe that he is more than the beasts; that behind the riddle of the stars there is an answer; beyond the storm and sun, a Power, and that the Power can perhaps be bribed or persuaded to treat him as a friend. Uncontent to live and lust and die, he has fashioned himself religion. How was it that he came to do this? Of what stuff is religion made? Has it been to man a help or a hindrance in his upward struggle? And whether a help or a hindrance, if it be merely the child of his own imagining, has he not now be- come strong enough to discard its assurance and walk courageously alone? “If we go back to the beginning,” Holbach wrote, “we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weak- ness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom respects and tyranny sup- ports them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.” 18RELIGION ABOLISHED? This is one of those broad assertions which philosophic rebels like to utter but which, in poor theologians, they are quick to condemn. Whether fear and weakness created the gods no man can say, for no man now living was present when the gods were created, and all the records are long since gone. The German scholar, Heinrich Schmidt, assuming for the purpose of illustration that the first human beings were on this planet two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, tried to illustrate with a clock face the long period of unrecorded as against the brief period of recorded history. If the residence of the human race on earth be represented by the twelve hours from midnight to noon, and men began a few minutes after midnight to split bone in order to get the marrow out, or to chip flints for arrows, then they had a long time to work in the dark before they began to write down their progress. Measured on this clock face all recorded history, including the building of the Pyramids and much that went before, occurred in the last half-hour; and the events about which we have positive knowledge belong to the past five minutes. We know that when the curtain of history is first lifted every race and tribe is revealed in possession of some sort of religion, but as to how or where primitive man began the first crude 19 PERS DELS — mo: oe ane Sa ae 4 Ae $) a) if "Ve ne A Fy Ln a Py ects CS he eee ee a ae Pet a eee era a Sy na eS SS ce ee i meeta ed er or re rot —— st Dae at pe ee ioaet ~~ S a ee Be: ie a Cnr Se oe ee Ee os =" hy hte phe 9h er ee _— a £ ee ew .. ot - one ee re Semen eee eee oem ~ ms WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? creation of his faith the scientists can only con- jecture. They imagine that his dreams may have had something to do with it. Or perhaps his shadow suggested another self, a kind of ex- istence that was not solid and material. At least he saw things happening about him when no one was in sight to make them happen. The wind blew; what made it blow? Water flowed from under solid rock; what caused it to spring forth? There was thunder and lighting and rain and hail, and above all there was the sun. What made the thunder, the lightning, the rain, the dark and the life-giving sun? Primitive man wondered, and gradually he began to make the great discovery of personality. He himself did the things he wanted done, and he supposed that the objects about him were also alive and did as they chose. He assumed that a spirit lived in the spring, and a god rode in the storm, and that the sun was the greatest of all the gods. As for the wind, the very word “spirit” means just that. So, in the beginning, there were presumably as many gods as there were things to be explained, both good and bad. There must have been a god for the east wind and for the west wind, a god for the sunshine and a god for the rain, a god not only for joy and pain but for each of the many Joys and pains, the good luck and the sorrows. 20 ART RUVERT PETS ETRE RT STORET Taber shear ar ore LPPESERT RT GED EDTA EOE EL OES) rf } ae | ’ -_n. ED Loran) ae! ia : eae 0 Tee eee phat din oe ath ’ 3RELIGION ABOLISHED? Primitive man made another discovery: he found out that he could do things without being where the things he did were done. That is, he could throw a stone and knock over a rabbit twenty yards away. He could shoot an arrow and kill a deer. Presumably his gods also could hurl stones or thunder-bolts and shoot arrows and accomplish results at a distance. His gods were never very far away; the heavens in those “days were not high, but he was conscious of them, and the crude beginnings of gratitude were born in him when the gods seemed to be on his side. Coming through the long desert and finding suddenly a cool spring, he thanked his gods for the refreshment; feeling the cold raw blasts give way before the conquering power of the sun, he humbled himself and prayed. He began to have some better qualities, that primitive beast-like man. But he had his terrible side as well. He butchered his enemy without mercy and drank the blood. He lived long before Harvey’s dis- covery of the circulation, but when he slit a throat the blood spurted, and to him that spurt- ing was a manifestation of life in the blood. He came to believe that blood was precious, sacred. It was his habit to divide with his gods whatever good things he gained; he thought the gods liked 21 a Hi! a AY Sera re rere * [ee 5 a a aes Mare yo SEER Thine sw ke SSE: SONS yee ea Sse Sh a Si PCALSESS RSET A aT ae Se te ad Sar eet atts er) ioe renee re nsite Ue” hip ah ne I Salle Pe) ar ont ar 31 Kem in, te oe ot et oe ee sya eee ot = ene re aaa re ran are ae Se a ss Patan Sat Sa Lh Se WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? the flavor and smoke of cooking meat and that above all they liked blood. So bloody sacrifice entered into religions. Thus we have our imaginary picture of prim- itive man in his two aspects: the beginnings in him of gratitude and affection, and the equally strong beginnings of cruelty, of superstition born of fear. But somehow in the process of his development a strange thing occurred. There entered into that rude heart from some- where a consciousness of what we call sin. He had committed some evil act and got away with it unrebuked—some particularly atrocious murder, some more than usually violent rape, some triumph within him of brute passion where his feeble reason taught him better—and this act left him not happy but depressed. This was an extraordinary experience, for not in all the history of the brute creation had it occurred be- fore. The Book of Genesis records it allegori- cally with the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. What the real experience was, or whether there was any one experience or only a slow accretion of many, we may leave to the philosophers and theologians to inquire. But the fact is unmistakable. In some great hour for the human race, primitive man felt struggling 22 Te ee eT ee Tee Lee Tere Ce Lei e Dal Ee EaEe LeRELIGION ABOLISHED? through his hatred and his lust a faint protest from a dawning conscience; he was ashamed, and trembled and hid himself from the gods. That experience in the old theology has been labeled the “fall of man,” but if it was a fall it was a fall forward. The man had become like God, know- ing good and evil. It was the first great upward step. The first blood sacrifices, as we have con- jectured, may have been a generous desire to share with the gods. Men liked meat, and the gods were nourished by the fragrant odor of it and the gratitude of the worshiper. But with the dawning of the sense of sin sacrifice took on a different aspect. Sacrifice was for sin and a means of forgiveness. It took a good while to work out the theory concretely, but little by little the generosity of the free-will offering became merged in the semi-penal form of sin-offering. And there was more and more occasion for blood, which had, let us admit, a certain harsh educational value. Men learned, however cruelly, that sin was expensive and destructive; it cost life. Obviously, however, this system of sacrifices for sin had one sad result. It became a means of placating or bribing the gods. Sin was not always a breach of the moral law; it was any- 23 et pare a aa f a | a tg + Ai at “if fay i ee Foner ny erga Ws SEES SS as bP ab ae SEES aa (Sag a oy ~ Sa ery » og OA bee Ee ts “978 wee main ot ea es OAS papers en ot a nore nt} es ' itt ie: a a4 a ma+ are > A ee » Pay a ae a. ee ST rs rs Soa tS a Pe ———— | Pr ee re Oe ie at ot od a Pe ee, ns 9 ee ees eS rr ai wee = ARC TLRS Se ON NN pea yo ne ees eee he bee ania ae Se ee w Sn ae ipa ~~ ~aeep ete SS eS oh a ~ inte eS a ~ mn WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? no one of these men made it up. These great underlying truths are older than any of the men whose names have attached to them; they are the cumulative conscience of the race, and had their beginnings on the day when the first man sinned and trembled, and did not know why. “Just a minute,” somebody exclaims. “Let us get you straight on this. Do you believe that God created conscience in men and has slowly but steadily, through the ages, enlightened it? Or do you believe that men’s conscience created the idea of God and has slowly, through the ages, recreated Him in more worthy image, as con- science has developed and knowledge grown?” If the gentleman who raises this question will continue with us through this book, he will dis- cover later an attempt at an answer. Mean- while, let us assume for the purposes of this chapter that it makes no difference. If you believe that there is a God who created men and women, starting them off as naked, clawless and hornless beings, compelled to fight for existence against the lion, the bear and the rattlesnake, then the God of such beings had to be content with very meager beginnings in the matter of religion. And it was no more debasing to His nature to be worshiped by crude and even cruel rites than it is debasing to Him to put a 26RELIGION ABOLISHED? drop of His being into the bulb sunk into the slime that is later to blossom as a water-lily. He was working with very rough material in those first days, working on a long-time program which could not go too fast. If, on the other hand, you believe that men fashioned gods in their own image and, as their minds and hearts improved, have made their gods constantly better, you are also welcome, in this chapter, to hold to that view. Historically, the result is the same. Relig- ion has moved forward from lower to higher planes. The prophets of each succeeding epoch have uttered the moral requirements in nobler language, proclaiming always that what they uttered was the voice of God. The Jehovah of Joshua who commanded the Israelites to slay their enemies, sparing none, not even the women and children, was in moral grandeur far below the level of the Jehovah of Jonah who refused to destroy the city of Nineveh “wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot dis- cern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much ecattle.”” And Jonah’s God, in turn, rises to no such height as the Father of Jesus who could “so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Step by step through the ages religion has or mf SS Tom ge We Ne nd 5 Ss St Sr ~WERhaa Skee See ULES eE LE ne FAS paerapaersy ee an tanh Cnn one thd SATS LS OS a Se RNS ata ley ead eet ES A AE enon! = 7 x iy mas ‘a t ae | ay Ht at cn- pom a Laie i ~ — TRL. ahs at _* tae de ee eT Pa x ae oe ee Ne ee == “RAT PP tid eet eat hw aa ss ose = ed ot eet oe he Sal Aa?e ra WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? grown finer in its conception of God and its statement of the moral law. Even the most critical of skeptics will hardly deny that, with all its wickedness and cruelties, it has been a lifting force, a ladder for the upward climb. But the toughest part of the climb is over. We have achieved civilization, and it looks reason- ably secure. We are full-grown men at last and need no myths; let us face the facts. The facts in the case against religion are threefold. In the first place, science has banished many of the mysteries that were so long inscrutable. We know that the thunder is not God’s voice, nor the lightning the agency of His wrath, for Franklin captured the lightning with a string attached to a kite and bottled it, and we have learned to make it jump to light our homes at the touch of a botton, or travel the tread-mill of a motor to do our family washing. I stood one day on the top of a little adobe hut, looking down into the courtyard where the Hopi Indians were carrying on the solemn ritual of their snake dance, probably the oldest religious ceremony on this continent and one that has never yet been tainted with commercial- ism. Four thousand people, Indians and whites, made up the colorful audience that had driven 28RELIGION ABOLISHED? miles across the open desert to wait all afternoon in the hot sun. In stately rhythm the men of the Snake Tribe danced around the stone that is supposed to cover the opening to the lower regions, carrying their rattlesnakes clutched in their teeth, And when the ceremony was finished the boys of the tribe gathered the snakes into their hands and ran swiftly to the four corners of the compass to release them in order that they might scatter across the desert and bring back the rain. It was all very impressive, and even the most cynical tourist who had made the journey in his high powered car was silent and a little serious. But most impressive of all to me were not the Indian men with their venomous reptiles, but the squaws who, having seen the dance many times, did not press forward into the crowd but stood with their naked papooses on the tops of the houses farther back. Their eyes were turned away from the ceremony, in the other direction. Silently they searched the heavens for the sign of a cloud which would promise rain. Faith- fully, wordlessly, they waited, as how many millions of women have waited through the ages, to know whether their men would succeed in persuading the gods to be good. It is said that the Hopi snake dance has 29 ? Ve i ee aes eC! a bees bs ad oat nl oe a) on et gay ee —s ae RRS TELA ~~ ios Se oe et Sn Se a a ae ie hia IR a Pep cee nl Neh oh oat e-a toes y a’ c i TT eT ornate # ; iy [Ce RIE i ge ; — — 7% * <> 7 En ee net ie. are a ee ~ew ~ Fao eee, ce ite —— et ww _—— er ae aera <<. ——_ =o ms WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? never failed to bring the rains, and on the front page of the Kansas City Star I read, as the train carried me East, that there had been a deluge on the Hopi reservation on the day following the dance which I, myself, had seen. ‘The report was doubtless true. If it was we know, or at least we think we know, that the dance had nothing to do with it; that “atmospheric con- ditions” responding to “natural laws” brought the rain in their own good time. This much our science has told us, and we look at the Hopis with a curious interest and are thankful that the rain held off until we got back to Flagstaff. For our freedom from such “superstition’’ we are complacently grateful. Science furnishes no evidence that God interrupts the reign of natural laws in response to human petition. On the contrary, there is disconcerting ev- idence that natural laws have neither respect for human rights nor any sense of moral values. Sir Richard Burton, who made the famous tours into Arabian lands and gave us so rich a body of Oriental literature, visited a tribe who in- quired eagerly if he knew where Allah could be found. “Why do you want to know?” he asked. “If we could find him we would spear him on the spot,” they answered. “It is he who has 30RELIGION ABOLISHED? been burning up our pastures, and giving us no rain, and killing our cattle and our wives.” Similarly, the great thinker John Stuart Mill exclaimed: “In sober truth all the things which men are imprisoned or hanged for doing to each other are nature’s every day performance.” The earthquake at Lisbon in 1755 shook the faith of even the most devout thinkers of that time. Here were thirty thousand people, crowded into their churches on All Saints’ Day, making their humble supplications to a sup- posedly loving God, when suddenly, and without warning, the churches were hurled down upon their helpless heads, burying them in the ruins. Voltaire, learning that the French clergy were explaining the disaster as a punishment for the sins of the people of Lisbon, could not withhold his wrath and broke out with devastating lines: “T am a puny part of the great whole. Yes; but all animals condemned to live, All sentient things, born by the same stern law, Suffer like me, and like me also die. The vulture fastens on his timid prey, And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs: All’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while An eagle tears the vulture into shreds; The eagle is transfixed by shafts of man; The man, prone in the dust of battlefields, Mingling his blood with dying fellow men, ol ee eee ee een a i Wa + a ee bed a hs NN SY EE a ae ROLY NA vs re — eR tk See Ra —_— oo ae — a ys eT oY er tee} ae eee ans Soeccne arse tear Daa wen Sen See eet eee TONY eee an WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “T looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity, and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” A discouraging confession from one who had all the things that the rest of us are trying so hard to obtain. Is this what waits at the top of the ladder? Is this to be the last chapter in human life when every want is satisfied: tears and drunkenness because there are no more worlds to conquer; vanity of vanities, vexation of the spirit? ~A time of great advance in power, of . . . wealth and prosperity,” said Seelye, “is com- monly a time of decline in religious feeling.” We are on the threshold of such a time, a period when more people will have larger pros- perity than ever before. It is conceivable, even, that all of us might get everything we want. As Alexander did . .. and this other, older king, se je det Lae han eo Teeer eee)a oA a he aaa a Raat at a ay ee at Bare CHAPTER II a HAS THE CHURCH DONE MORE HARM THAN Goop? Sy a Let us present the facts against the church in the strongest possible terms. History furnishes plenty of material. The scene is the desert, the home of camels and sheiks, of green oases and brown veiled women; the birthplace of more than one religion. The Korashites and the Ghatafananti have joined in an expedition to finish off Mohammed. On their way to Medina, where the prophet is entrenched behind a ditch and moat (novelties in desert warfare), they induce a Jewish tribe, the Beni Koraida, to enlist. The prophet of Allah has enemies inside the ditch as well as out; the Jews of Medina are re- lated to the Beni Koraida and are likely to attack him in the rear. Panic-stricken, he suggests to his captains that they bribe the Ghatafananti to separate peace by offering them a third of the date harvest of Medina. The suggestion is hardly made before a chief of tremendous 43 Se eo eas aes Eph NS on ~ ian ee ee eat tatty seat dd Pa aaa a ai af vr} PearseNS A ~ oo = eee a er’ Atel ae ot —) — Fare aaa ss wr ms eee ee wr RT ee eS re ——— Fae a ee a ESF ita ae a - rm 2S 2 Mas Patan ta del abs _ WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? fatness struggles to his feet. It is Sad b. Mu’adh, leader of the Awsites. “Do you propose this by the command of Allah, or is it an idea of your own?” he demands. The prophet is never off his guard. “If it had been a command of Allah I should never have asked your advice,” he replies. “I see you pressed by your enemies on every side, and I seek to break their confederacy.” “O prophet of God!” rejoins Sa’d, “when we were fellow-idolaters with these people of Ghatafan they got none of our dates without paying for them; and shall we give them up gratuitously now that we are of the true faith and led by thee? No, by Allah! if they want our dates they must win them by their swords!” Heartened by this stout speech, the followers of the prophet prepare to stand firm, while he himself sends spies to sow dissension in the ranks of his enemies, a form of diplomacy at which he excels. So successful is the effort that the allied tribes are shortly quarreling vigorously and when, a day or two later, a storm comes to blow down their tents, put out their fires and drench them to the skin, a rumor spreads that Moham- med has raised the storm by enchantment. This is too much. Grumbling and cursing, the foes break their camp and hurry back to their homes. 4AMORE HARM THAN GOOD? Within the walls of Medina is great rejoic- ing. ‘The prophet is tempted to be satisfied with his victory, but the angel of Allah upbraids him. He must not rest until vengeance has been visited upon the Beni Koraida. So the faithful surround this Jewish tribe in its fortified city and presently compel a surrender. The Beni Koraida implore the intercession of their ancient friends the Awsites, and the prophet agrees to leave their fate to the decision of the chief of the Awsites, our fat friend Sa’d. Joyously the Beni Koraida come forth, sure that the judgment will be merciful. But Sa’d is hot and sweaty and suffering from a spear thrust in his side. “Will ye then,” he inquires of his tribesmen, “bind yourselves by the covenant of God that whatsoever I decide ye will accept?” They agree. “Then this is my judgment,” he shouts. “The men shall be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoils divided among the faithful.” A torrent of protest is silenced by the prophet. “Truly the judgment of Sa’d is the judg- ment of God,” he cries. That night trenches are dug, and the next morning six or seven hundred men march out, 45 nee Dap en tN LAS aa fons oe ae ear i mas es me an. fae cn ey Ht ta) re | ra [yh Rae EE ee od Na AL 2 os ET it ae oa ee eae deen See Gas NS OS ei ee nr i ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? seat themselves on the edge, and are beheaded and tumbled, one after another, into the long deep grave. The victors look on with gibes and sneers, the Prophet of God in the front rank. After a time he tires of the spectacle and goes back to his harem which the expedition has en- riched by a beautiful young Jewess. A few days later he emerges to pronounce a final bene- diction over the body of the fat Saad whose wound, reopened in the excitement of his judg- ment, bled him to death. “OQ Lord, verily Sa’d hath labored in thy service,” the prophet prays. “He hath believed in thy Prophet, and hath fulfilled his covenant. Wherefore do thou, O Lord, receive his spirit with the best reception wherewith thou receivest a departing soul!” Undoubtedly, the priests of the Beni Koraida, waiting at the edge of the ditch for the sword to reach them, had uttered similar prayers. Their souls were wafted up to Heaven only a few days before the soul of Sa’d. We now step forward nine hundred years. The scene is Rome, not in the days of the Cesars but at the time when the church is supreme. It is a day of solemn thanksgiving and devout religious worship in the comparatively recent year of our Lord, 1572. By special order of the 46MORE HARM THAN GOOD? ad ae ne -8 “3 Pope, Gregory XIII, a Te Deum is being sung. What inspiring event calls forth this historic hymn of praise? Nothing less than the murder of twenty thou- sand Christians by brutal butchery. For centuries fighting had gone on between the Catholics and Protestants of France, with shameful cruelties on both sides. As far back as 1208, Simon de Montfort had organized a group of knights who pledged themselves to subdue their heretical fellow countrymen. All peaceful attempts having failed to persuade the wanderers to return to the one true fold, Simon took the city of Beziers and proceeded to slaughter all of its fifteen thousand inhabitants regardless of age, sex or creed. “How shall we know the heretics from the faithful?’ he had previously inquired of Milon, the Papal Legate, who had been sent by Inno- cent III to preach the crusade. To which the personal representative of the Holy Father had answered: “Kill them all. God will be able to recognize His own.” This, as we have said, was in 1208. Three hundred years had passed, and the wiser heads in France realized that the incessant warfare was impoverishing the country. At the feast of St. Germain in 1570 a peace was consummated 47 Sl pare eS SE as SR sy ee — SS eo ey = . PRISER LS SS payee a 3) ett hens — ae al Pa = nd i ee nee SILL, eS ? A a part bei kt A eae eft ew Jes et em act Sarn —~— eta de owe * er + anlan wy = —— Fe car Pe Sa een | oat Fs ee nd wes FAITE eS re OTE Tome ey eee ae ee — WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? in token of which the king’s sister was to be given in marriage to Henry of Navarre. Leaders of both parties were invited to Paris in celebration of the nuptials. The city was filled with Protestants, long shut out but now rejoicing m the new era of peace and tolerance. It was too good an opportunity to be lost, so thought Catherine de Medici, the Queen Mother, and her fanatical advisers. eS ate ae er ee ee a ee ee ee Se el ae be yO rey Noe ate se ee Be oe, nt AR pao -b-Bed eens. - ORCI av ree Seem Sah ae =e: ee ee eer er ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? racked them and flayed them and tore out their tongues with red-hot pincers. Of two of them who were being burned the chronicles report: “They lived long and cried with all their hearts to God; it was pitiable to hear them.” But no word of pity or comfort came from Martin Luther. They were outside the pale. They had dared to attempt a different position in society, which was a crime second only to the greatest crime of all—daring to believe dif- ferently about their God. We pass by England. The stories of hang- ings and burnings and plunderings there are familiar enough to us all. Let us stop for a moment on our own fair shores, land of the free and home of the brave. Here surely we shall find no record of cruelties for righteousness’ sake; this continent, settled by those who had fled from religious persecution abroad, must al- ways have held out a tolerant welcome to worshipers of any faith. Let us see. In the days when everybody in Boston was a good church-member, and the preachers ruled the town almost as thoroughly as John Calvin had ruled Geneva, there was an active-minded lady named Anne Hutchinson, a devout wor- shiper in the congregation of Rev. John Cotton. It was her partiality for Dr. Cotton’s preaching 52MORE HARM THAN GOOD? which had caused her to leave her comfortable home in England for our wilderness shores, and this same enthusiasm was the beginning of her troubles. So eager was she to extract the last drop of benefit from the Sunday morning discourse that she formed a group of women who met weekly in her home and listened to her own repetition of it. The times were dreary. There was no enter- tamment for faithful wives in the dour town of Boston. Surely this weekly gathering, the first woman’s club in the land, would seem to have been praiseworthy and free from any blame. But not so. As her meetings increased in popularity Mistress Anne grew bolder, em- broidering the pure doctrine of the preacher with some ideas of her own. Pious ideas. Amazingly harmless ideas, as seen from this distance. But the field of ideas was reserved for the clergy, and none must trespass on it. Only a little time passed before Mistress Anne was brought up short, “convented,” as the record has it, “for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country.” One of the charges against her was so heinous that even her adored pastor left her side and joined himself to her accusers. She had dared to express a doubt as to whether the same body 53 Se ae yon een ah ow me) eee roars ES Ta ong Sacco ay Sn es OOO EEE EY Se —— ~—n FO aha ns A a ben at aN RFRA Se SUIKODEN era a oan k Penet aa a i a — ne = hee ee aera: - ree 7 at sate ey UR ease ete = a 7 ns ee ar be ae eo bee Se ae a «oe ce re a eS oe vel al ee be Sa et aah i nee wie Oe eee Dl a Pe he ee pert es Pig ANT ep 4-20, eer a a ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? which is consigned to the grave would rise, un- changed, at the resurrection. Such heresy was intolerable. If there was doubt as to the identity of bodies in the resurrection, what horrid com- plications would not arise! Said her pastor solemnly: “You can not then evade the argument pressed on you by our brother Buckle and others, that filthy sin of com- munity women, and all other promiscuous com: ing together of men and women without distinction or relation of marriage... . Though I have not heard, neither do I think, you have been unfaithful to your husband in his marriage covenant,” he added grudgingly, “yet that will follow upon it.” The sentence which was pronounced on Mrs. Hutchinson has come down to us. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the name of the church, I do not only pronounce you worthy to be cast out, but I do cast you out! and in the name of Christ I do deliver you up to Satan that you may learn no more to blaspheme, and to seduce and to lie; And I do account you from this time forth to be a Heathen and a Publican, and so to be held of all the Brethren and Sisters of this congregation and of others; therefore I command you in the name of Jesus Christ and of His church, as a leper to withdraw yourself out of this congregation,” o4MORE HARM THAN GOOD? The climate was bleak. The woods were full of Indians and wild animals. Mrs. Hutchinson was pregnant. She went forth from the town and with her went that splendid little rebel who insisted on making every fight her own, Mary Dyer, also pregnant. Both women promptly miscarried, which was interpreted by the pious as an evidence of their guilt. Anne Hutchinson’s sentence might have been even more severe but she was strongly connected in the colony. No such connections operated to spare Mary Dyer, who for twenty years was a thorn in the flesh of the authorities. The colony having enacted horrible laws against the Quak- ers, Mary determined to test them, having as helpers two Englishmen, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson. The three were con- demned to death, and the men were hanged on Boston Common before Mary’s eyes. She her- self climbed the ladder to the scaffold, the halter was put around her neck, and her eyes covered with a handkerchief furnished by the Rev. Mr. Wilson who had jeered at her two predecessors. At that moment a messenger burst theatrically through the crowd with the cry: “Stop, for she is reprieved.” It was the intention to scare her so thor- oughly that she would refrain from agitation in 55 ee ~~ Sah ry pee yo eo ~~ e aia yea nao a ee panan 8 Ne Sororaa Ss er nl ae a Ba he ae — Soe ante tee RE aes ee nee ae entes ya i ~ s et Sees a” DF a ar * a a ee Se pre Se aha “ a ed ata ee SS ion ela ae WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? the future, but Mary was not that kind. After a few months of recuperation she was busy again, and this time there was no reprieve. ‘The same “Priest Wilson” was on hand to make her last moments more unhappy. She never flinched. Pert and unrepentant to the last, she was hung up “as a flag for others to take example by,” as one of her judges cynically expressed it. Hung up on Boston Common by those who, having fought for the right to worship God according to their own fashion, were unwilling that any should worship Him otherwise. “It is the Shame and Reproach of New {ngland,’ said William Coddington, once treasurer of the Massachusetts Colony and later governor of Rhode Island, “that those that were persecuted in England and bore their testimonies against Bishops and Ceremonies should in New {ngland put to death four of the servants of the ever living God, banish upon pain of death, cut off ears, fine, whip and imprison, for keeping their consciences pure to God. . . .” But he adds: “The Magistrates were priest ridden .. . they (the preachers) would have Accommoda- tions for Lands, and the Best Houses built for them; now were they grown warm in their Ac- commodations; now was the iron bed, like that of the Tyrant made use of, to cut all according to it shorter or longer. . , 56MORE HARM THAN GOOD? At The Hague is a museum filled with in- struments of torture that freeze your blood. If all hell were to sit up for a night devising ways in which to wring the utmost possible pain from human flesh, it is difficult to imagine that any- thing could be added. Every organ of the body, and of the bodies of both sexes, has received its due measure of attention. There is nothing left for cruelty to devisexy; You turn your eyes away in horror, and then tht thought flashes into your mind: “These are the fruits of faith. All these playthings of the fiends were invented amid prayer and fasting. Invented that Christians might correct one another regarding doctrines of which Jesus of Nazareth never heard.” If the crimes against men’s bodies have been horrible, the outrage of their minds by the church has been even more costly. Persecution destroyed its thousands or ten thousands, but ignorance kept the whole world dark for centuries. And the church was the friend and protector of ignorance. Strange that it should have been so. Extraordinary that a faith which begins with the words “let there be light,’’ whose great Prophet saidS4#N came that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abun- dantly”—that such a church should have stood like rock against every.effort of the human mind o7 = SE tay ee pte eee ~ roy es & Pad ma A FT = el se ampere wane ete ew oo SSA OR SAL ET, pp hath Rats A pus et ia a a na ; f Dace aT ~ yt eR OO ee ee ete f NS halenaiane vs Poot he eens ee Ce ey ee ed eek ee ie “Na SS ew se an na Oa pe patti en 7S ow atin, ner na El Latah nine -3 2s, ene ee ON Se ae mw ee xe WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE! to live more fully. By what weird perversion did this come to pass? ~\Vhat were the be- ginnings of the “conflict between science and theology” that darkened the lives of so many fine men and held the world back for centuries? In the beginnings of the race there was neither science nor priesthood. No division of labor had taken place. Every man was his own blacksmith, tailor, arrow-maker, physician and priest. Tribes integrated for protection. When jt was discovered one day that a particular mem- ber of the tribe was more skilful than the others in chipping flint, somebody conceived the idea that the whole tribe would fight more effectively if this one member were left behind to make arrows, his product being more accurate and deadly. So he was relieved from fighting but, having contributed his skill, he still shared equally in the spoils. From such rude beginnings came thé slow emergence of/the crafts. The smith, forger of swords and plow-shares, was a mighty man in all tribes, and his descendants still dominate the telephone directory. The butcher, baker and candle-stick maker, all stepped out after thou- sands of years and with them, or after them—it is all conjecture, of course—came a man who was recognized as a specialist in the spiritual and 58MORE HARM THAN GOOD? esthetic_sphere. Perhaps he was a singing dervish and worker of enchantments, who looked wisely at the stars or the entrails of a bird and foretold the future. Probably in his beginnings he was even more primitive. But he emerged along with the craftsmen, and from the earliest days of recorded history in Egypt we find him in the dual capacity of bres and physician, the custodian of-both sciente and religion. Between them in those days there was no conflict. T hey were one. rey ae oe , This condition of peace and amity continued for perhaps five thousand years. But about the sixth century B. C. things began to shape them- selves for a change. Thales of Miletus, who lived from 640 to 546 B. C., went down to Egypt and brought back the rudiments of astronomy and mathematics. He found them in the Egyptian temples, comfortably established as part of the religion; but as Greece was already well supplied with religions he left the Egyptian faith behind and took only the Egyptian sciences. It was the first rift. A little later, in Ionia, and apparently as a result of his influence, it began to be taught that the universe was governed by fixed laws. That was a new and revolutionary thought—the idea that men might find out im- portant facts through observation, and not o9 Sete ea ft a 1 ( i +e ah i } a " ai iW F a hy a Hy | Aa 3 f | Ht Se ee ae nar coo hy MS ar oe RS a =r - 2 SR ar ree, [nae a ae a. a te tt UCEVERAES SESS sas per on a Ne Scar a ae SENN a ee ae 4 pieces eet ET ae Se ane On _ ei) -= Ae po aap nr er ea — ~ a — =~ WS ~~ 9 ee ee ann Ro ees oe eal Se ee ~. WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? merely through the cultivation of the gods. From that time forward the story began to be a sad one. The priests felt their precincts en- croached upon. Proudly and angrily they maintained their claim to intellectual monopoly. Their stubborn resistance delayed the process of enlightenment but could not prevent it. Slowly, bit by bit, men learned, and inevitably some of the things they learned contradicted directly the things which the priests had divined. The long battle was on. A very able and very righteous man was in large measure responsible for crystallizing the conflict. He lived a thousand years afterward, and the church still holds him in high respect under the title of St. Augustine. Much that he wrote was fine and tolerant and inspiring, and his life was a sincere attempt to conform to the teachings of Jesus, as he interpreted them. Yet in one single sentence he probably did as much damage as any man has ever done with a stroke of the pen. -—~ “Nothing is to be accepted,” he wrote, “save on the authority of Holy Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of human understanding.” That dictum is the charter of priestly usurpa- tion. It made the centuries in which the Chris- 60MORE HARM THAN GOOD? tian Church controlled the civilized world the “dark ages.” It burned Bruno at the stake; it put the church in the mortifying position of being compelled to accept, in each new genera- tion, the truths for which it had persecuted de- voted men in the preceding generation. It still is dominant in the minds of large numbers and, only a few months ago in Dayton, Tennessee, it produced the trial of a young teacher named Scopes. Without burdening our rapid survey by too much detail, let us glance for a moment at the unhappy consequences of the idea that God had revealed Himself only in times past, as against the much more inspiring faith that His revela- tion is continuous. The Bible is authority for the scientific infor- mation that four angels will descend from Heaven and stand upon the four corners of the earth; that Joshua made the sun to stand still; that the waters are let down upon the earth by God and His angels through the “windows of Heaven,” and that “It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth . . . that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in.” Proceeding upon this information, the Egyptian monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the 61 ee tae i} Fg a RR ee a alata’ Se a rene ee nee > a3 SE arts eee Tas oe ee a Ay nD ara RR ‘ 4 i i ea eee bie hepn es Oe Cet rn SSE EG Sw oi att as Rae OF ie ah Pa = ie ere Le Saas WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? sixth century worked out a definite plan of the universe, describing it as a vast box divided into two compartments, the one above the other. In the lower compartment were men; above were God and His angels whose business it was to arrange the stars, and push the sun and moon back and forth across the heavens. A huge mountain at one end concealed the sun during the night. “We say therefore with Isaiah that the heaven embracing the universe is a vault,” Cos- mas concluded, “with Job, that it is joined to the earth, and with Moses that the length of the earth is greater than its breadth.” He adds that angels and prophets agreed in this definition, and that God, at the last judgment, would send to hell all who questioned it. This plain and simple system of astronomy was elaborated upon by the devout of suc- ceeding centuries, but not changed in any important detail. All attacks upon it were de- nounced as atheistic. The constantly recurring suggestion that the earth might be round instead of flat was determinedly resented. St. Gregory Nazianzen showed conclusively that men could never sail beyond Gibraltar, and the pious Lactantius demanded: “Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose 62MORE HARM THAN GOOD? footsteps are higher than their heads? . . . that the crops and trees grow downward . . . that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the earth? . . . I am at a loss what to say of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend one vain thing by another.” To which the great Augustine added his powerful authority, pointing out that there can not be men on the other side of the globe, since “Seripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam”; since the Psalms, echoed by St. Paul, say of the preachers of the Gospel that “‘their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world,” and since we know that these preachers did not go to the other antipodes it is certain, said the Saint, that there can be no antipodes. They who question this statement of geographical fact “give the lie direct to King David and to St. Paul and there- fore to the Holy Ghost.” Even in spite of such awful warnings the in- quiring spirit of humanity would not be downed. In the early sixteenth century a simple, plain-speaking professor on the borders of Poland conceived and announced that the sun and planets did not revolve about the earth but that the earth revolved about the sun. His 63 ied > RET adn Pes hap Ri. ADE Re Fl ad i me Sees = Since <4 eee = F / A ri i ‘i i ’ 5 ae ae ee tn ta ae ey nr SR pape at ee Ie cepa ence nt ee et a SE neat YS awn ee Leds Pe oe em a Sd es x IEF Ses ee > as arate hy NLRree ~ ” as Ct ne re) — aon ney, ty o ose ra aE ee ee ae = ae ee el as a 3 ~ Serva “Eo De renee ae i, ernie 98 os eee oe ee ~ eae ins: Se ee “I po a a A as AE Bape pret Se neing i ee See x _— ~~ ~ 5 WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? name was Nicholas Copernicus. He did not make the announcement very loudly. Indeed, so sure was he of the wrath and persecution of the church that he withdrew from his professor- ship in Rome and kept his great thought to himself and a few trusted associates for thirty years. Finally, knowing that he was close to the end of his days, he dedicated his great work, Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, to the Pope and entrusted it to a printer. The printer, terror-stricken, brought it out with an apologetic and groveling preface. A copy was carried to the home of Copernicus on May 24, 1543, but the scholar was on his death bed. A few hours later he had passed beyond the reach of those who would have persecuted him and perhaps have taken his life. He had feared that even the grave might not be strong enough to shield his body and so he directed that his tombstone should make no mention of his scientific achieve- ments, but have graven on it merely this pitiful prayer: “I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favour which Thou didst show to the thief on the cross.” For years the truth lay buried in the minds of 64MORE HARM THAN GOOD? men too timid to utter it, but finally there arose one brave enough-to-speak éven within the hear- ing of the Pope. Giordano Bruno is one of the strange and fascinating characters of history. He was hunted from land to land, trapped in Venice, imprisoned for six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned alive and his ashes scattered to the winds. Surely this would be the end of heresy. No man would any more dare to suggest that the world was round and moved about the sun. Yet ten years later Galileo spoke. His an- Houncement was a dramatic fulfilment of prophecy. Years before, Copernicus had been confronted with the objection: “If your doc- trines were true, Venus would show phases like the moon.” ‘To which the devout old hero had replied: “You are right; I know not what to say; but God is good and will in time find an answer to this objection.” Galileo’s discovery was God’s answer. His rude little telescope had revealed the phases of Venus. The roar of abuse which this discovery pro- voked was made more bitter by Galileo’s subse- quent discovery of the mountains and valleys of the moon, and his deduction that the moon shines by the reflected light of the sun. ‘The impiety of this statement is easily proved by the 65 pay Gal Bis! _un A 4) i He a + ae, as hal | ey | et Ser ap pe sey ee - la a EON a se ~~ Se ba 25 Rea tctaaents te eet oe eae Ft gral A a en eek ~~“ nae ae~ one — ee) ee a TT Sees or a ~ a a rf ves er pt ny tn Na — ose 9 Oe aad oe, oe — rear e-ty* ae anaes Oa oe ES Ce Lk ee a iP F eee ene ne a4 A) a, rey te 144 y Pas WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? verse in Genesis which describes the moon as “a great light.” As the implications of Galileo’s findings be- came more clearly understood, the whole theo- logical world rocked with vituperation and abuse. If the earth were not the center of the universe, as theology claimed, but only one of many planets, then these others must be inhab- ited, since God makes nothing in vain. .“Such a thought,” said one of the faithful, “would upset the whole basis.of theology. If the earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it, as the Christian doctrine teaches. . . . If there be other planets how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace their origin to Noah’s ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?” Hot and bitter was the warfare: Galileo on one side, alone, and against him all the organized power of the church. In 1616 he was sum- moned before the Inquisition at Rome, where the theologians examined him, pondered his doc- trines for a month, and then gave forth their verdict. “The first proposition, that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is 66MORE HARM THAN GOOD? foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture,” and “‘the second proposition, that the earth is not the center, but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith.” Threatened with the dungeons of the In- quisition, Galileo agreed to conform, and for years neither published nor taught. But when a new Pope, came to the throne, Urban VIII, a cultured man with greater promise of intelli- gence, he took courage and began to profess his faith again. Alas, Urban was no more open- minded than his predecessor. MHaled again before the Inquisition and threatened with tor- ture, Galileo was compelled to sign that bitter recantation which has come down through the ages. “TI, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my ha ds, abjure, curse and detest the error and the heiesy of the movement of ‘the-earth.” Seventy years old he was, and his recantation spared his life. But it did not gain his freedom nor liberate him from abuse. To the end of his 67 i > a amare et Pain eR TT Stata ene Hi i; 7h if 1 1 tt a) a i ee al ey ey ye Se ray J Sa rs = re ay Sn a ea TATA oe —— } aed =. at ee re eS oS Se et oeee ane no ee as oe re = es Dey aT ne x nt API ee el e-' ~ WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? days he was confined and annoyed until, blind, wasted and pitiful, he-passed away.” Even then the persecution did not céase. His petition that he be buried in his family tomb, was denied. His friends wished to erect a monument over him, but their desire was thwarted by the Pope. “Tt would be an eyil example for the world,” said the Holy Father, “if such honors were ren- dered to a man who had been brought before the Roman Inquisition for an opinion so false and erroneous; who had communicated it to so many others and who had given so great a scandal to Christendom.” Alone, apart from his family, he was cast into an ignoble grave, and not for a hundred years did the hostility of the theologians relent suffi- ciently to allow his remains to be removed to a worthy tomb and a monument erected over them. The persecutors of Copernicus and Galileo, the burners of Bruno, were Catholics, for the Catholic Church was in power. But let no one assume that Protestants were more tolerant or that, given the authority, they would have acted otherwise. Said Luther: “People gave ear to an upstart astrologer (Copernicus) who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firma- 68MORE HARM THAN GOOD? ment, the sun and the moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy ; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua com- manded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.” To which Melancthon, the mildest of the reformers, added eight proofs that “the earth can be nowhere if not in the center of the universe,” and suggested that such teachings as those of Copernicus merited the severest penalties. For hundred of years the world was held back because theologians contended that God had put ‘all He knew into one single old bé0k and would never send fresh revelations to men. Even the purest Christian characters, Isaac New- ton, Pascal, Locke, Milton, were denounced as “atheists” and “infidels.” And Descartes, whose proofs of the existence of God have been a powerful influence on millions of modern minds, would have been tortured to death by the Protestants of Holland if they could have laid their hands on him, and was thwarted through- out his life by the Catholics of France and denied decent honors after his death. The story of the struggle would be humor- ous if it were not so tragi¢. Always science was just a step ahead. Always the church was in the sad necessity of having to admit what it had just denounced, with its infallible authority, as 69 os j ' : i ate ~~ a Seer ee i tee Be nme s a ee LEE ELE reer a at Ne nae Pa La Og NY 4 as ee a a a wns SARE ap a eNotes pe —— eer Te mene Sona =" SS ae atl i ade Pd ao o < es Ee a Ts oe PZST TUB eh i Pe 7 St all - re) ~ ars — Fee abet | wz rs nt ee a mais a Pn ~ rn a ee yr Gal ome - ah. ~ = = = = — — nea re Di en as em woh ey ay an = ve aa te er a ae ee ee ret * S - a Many Oe eer ear ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? untrue, Carefully worked out theological proofs were hardly arrived at before something hap- pened to unsettle them. Thus Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and one of the most learned Hebrew scholars of his time, after a painful searching of the Scriptures announced that “heaven and earth, center and..circumfer- ence, were created all together, in the same instant. and clouds full of water,” and that “this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. C., at nine o’clock in the morning.” A great discovery indeed. Yet less than two centuries later the spades of explorers in Egypt revealed the fact that a very cultivated people, enjoying most of the coniforts of modern civiliza- tion, were dwelling peacefully upon the shores of the Nile many decades before Doctor Light- foot’s date of creation. In so brief a survey as this we can not go further with the age-long controversy. ‘Those who would follow it in detail will enjoy the History of the Warfare of Science with The- ology by Dr. Andrew D. White, a great treatise from which we, like other subsequent writers on the subject, have made liberal borrowings. Enough has been written here to show the broad 70MORE HARM THAN GOOD? outlines of the long and losing battle. Fearing change, terror-stricken lest some new discovery might rock the ancient structures, organized religion in all countries has denied and threat- ened, and tortured and slain. With so bad a record, is it entitled to. survive? Are the services rendered great enough to overbalance this awful debit? Is any institution which has shown itself so unadaptable, so lacking in appreciation of the expanding life of the intellect, fitted to be useful in this modern, pulsing world? T’o these questions five honest answers can be made. a aa An a ie goa ee a NE er —— IEE Saabs eye TNA Say a ea oan eres eae SERS Seine eres nn eee i First of all, when the Roman government went.down before the Goths and Vandals there was one agency of civilization, and only one, which was strong enough to survive. That one was the Christian Church. Whatever of art and scholarship, whatever of idealism and faith, lived through those recurring catastrophes was saved by the care and sacrifice of priests and monks and nuns. If the church was responsible for darkening the-Middle Ages by. suppressing the full glow of scientific progress, it is equally true that the little spark of learning from which scien- tists were later to relight their larger torches was preserved not in laboratories or libraries, for there were none, but in the-cells of monasteries. 71 ee a te it te ¥ 4, a a ‘Le ha | Hy aE iSS _ ern > pyre tee ORS RTET TEs eS Po SNe ree Ps = FAA Me ~ tp Piet reat WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? The church did more than merely survive. It laid its restraining hand on the savage victors and rescued some salvage for the future. Yes, and even more. It conquered the conquerors; it taught them to worship. Was the work of re- generation superficial? Were the conyerts still pagan under the skin? Do we even now preserve in Christian ceremonial some things of heathen origin? Unquestionably. The church suffered as well as gained by its victory. But it did conquer. It did turn the tide. The sweeping floods of barbarism that threat- ened to wipe out all the progress won by centuries of civilized effort were brought under control. Destructive energy was directed into constructive channels. The church.alone stood firm when all else tottered. It saved enough of civilization so that the structure could be rebuilt. We need to remember, in the second place, that history touches only the high spots. It shows us kings and princes, popes and cardinals, ambassadors and generals: their ambitions, in- trigues, selfishness and cruelties, and from these allows us to deduce the rest. It does not show us what went on beneath the surface. Far down below these troubled heights there were peaceful valleys of common life. Here, and not upon the unlovely peaks, was the real life of the age. If 72 Morya egeaueaMORE HARM THAN GOOD? SSE - TT NS en a ea ae a religion meant only intolerance and_ bigotry above, it had a different significance below. To the masses it was faith, and encouragement, and egomfort, and hope for eternal life. The Book of Judges in the Old Testament eorresponds, in a sense, to the chapters of history which deal with the “dark ages.” It is an “in- between” book, bridging the gap from civilized Kgypt to the later period of renaissance under David and Solomon, It is filled with ignorance and cruelty, Again and again it apologizes for the horrible deeds recorded, reminding the reader that “there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” You think as you read that it must have been an altogether depraved and hopeless era, as if life could not possibly have been worth the struggle and terror which it cost. But again only the peaks are revealed. Following the Book of Judges comes the Book of Ruth, which begins with this significant sentence: “Now it came to pass in the days when the Judges ruled,” What came to pass? What good things could possibly come to pass in such evil days? Read the answer in the four short chapters that follow. They make one of the sweetest stories in the world. IZ fart by beh ey SSUES > or Ss nee ee eri En ee a i a FRA Sree Fath olan Ease RE ” ep SEAN ane ae i rt rt iY i td an 7a td ai ai ae, 2 7 aR ne aaa pene enee oe aes age em ee For “it came to pass in the days when the 73 Cn 8 ae re) 5 my a am apd. PO aaa a - Pe ad2 td = ~ a Ane ’ S —S ———— a a ee — = Lae Ea RE NN ed : — pm ae aes Peer ag poe ere Se Sar a ee oe we Ll ke BL Sees a WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? judges ruled” that Elimelech was taking good care of his wife and two boys. It came to pass in the terrible days when the judges ruled that those two boys were growing up and marrying good girls and establishing happy homes. It came to pass in the bloody days when the judges ruled that Ruth was standing loyally by her mother-in-law, saying: “Intreat me not to leave thee, . . . for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” It came to pass in those awful days that a prosperous man, Boaz, was watching the women who gleaned in his fields, not to betray but to protect them, and he saw Ruth and admired her and married her, and she became the mother of a fine household, and an ancestress of Jesus of Nazareth. A rather nice set of circumstances to have taken place in those fearful days when the judges ruled. So.in the ages which priesthood helped to make dark there was loyalty and kindliness and simple faith in the humbler ranks of life. And there was genius higher up also, which had its inspiration in the church. There was Fra Angelico, who prayed always before he began a 74MORE HARM THAN GOOD? picture. To be sure, his angels were flat-chested and emaciated, but he broke away resolutely from the unearthly ugliness of Byzantine tradi- tion, and the faces of his angels were the faces of pretty women, and their clothes were the best that ‘could be bought in the shops of Florence. There was Fra Lippo Lippi, who brought art back to nature, still keeping it religious. And there was, most splendid of the characters of the Middle Ages, perhaps the finest spirit that has lived since the days in Palestine—Francis, the Saint of Assisi. The world can afford to be very forgiving toward a faith, and an institution, that can pro- duce a Francis. Born to wealth, the son of a prosperous merchant and a noble lady, he passed his youth as was expected of a high-bred young- ster. He tasted all the pleasures, sinned all the sins, and was a ringleader in revelry. At twenty he was taken prisoner of war and lan- guished for a year behind the bars. The experience left its mark upon a constitution which, never strong, was continually neglected and wore out at the too early age of forty-four. But it left an imprint on his spirit also. He came back into the world with a new idea. \Pleasure for itself-was.a fraud; man was made for Sdime- thing higher than deviltry. The years were 75 i A 9 oe a eects et SR ae So oa creas eae ere yee a — a ~ Emad ara aCe Mie ty ee a) tates SELES aa = > ONS Pots oe SE a a oe —— 2 RR cht nea nen ms cine Fo Es ae ms. TIRE nme = ae = < eh Poe Ts ete a a a a >wr pw emo aie Wp ah VN oe ah he Samer meee) may age | =~ = ied yee al see eee eet eS WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? meant to be put to noble purposes. One alone had shown how they might be invested best. Francis determined to reproduce in his own life, so far as possible, the life of Jesus. He turned his back on luxury and “married his Lady Poverty.” He set up a rigid discipline over his body. If there was any task which he hated to do, it was his rule to do that thing at once. Lover of comfort and beauty though he was, he mate himself the friend of lepers and the outcast. His clothes were the simplest; his food was crusts begged from door to door. All this was splendid, and men and women rallied to his standard, finding to their surprise that in forgetting themselves they were gen- uinely more happy than when their days had been entirely selfish. But the most splendid part of it all was that Francis caught the spirit of Jesus in its entirety. ‘Too many of the pious of all ages have been gloomy folk. Jesus was above alla happy man. He loved the crowd. He en: joyed weddings and frequented feasts. Little children flocked to Him, and sick people im- mediately felt better when He entered the room. Francis shared this joy to the full. He “loved everybody and everything—men in the fields women in their homes, the little children whe flocked to him, the animals who ran to him, the 76 ) RO LRERES ESASMORE HARM THAN GOOD? birds to whom he preached, the very worms which he picked up from the dust that they might not be crushed.” Men called him “the troubadour of God,” and it was easy to know his followers, for they sang as they walked and danced with joy. I read recently the letter of a former mis- sionary to China who related his debate with a cultured Chinese official. He presented as ably as he could the superior claims of Christianity, and the Chinaman listened with polite attention, When the missionary had finished, the Chinaman arose and took down a book from the shelves and handed it to the missionary. “How strange it is,” he said, “that your great prophet Jesus should, in all the centuries, have made but one convert.” He pointed to the book. and the missionary, looking down at it, saw that it was a biography of St. Francis. Every age has had its quota of St. Francises. I saw one once, a benign, kindly old gentleman named John G, Paton. He spoke to a church full of people, and his talk was much more modest, more self-effacing than his hearers could have wished. They plied him with questions afterward, trying to induce him to give more details of his extraordinary experience, for they knew the larger outlines of the story, 77 id a en a i Ss a ea pores a yy aaa) SSS OS Set at ee So ny Se ~~ oes Pe AS = Pare pa er hap anaes ae ae 5 a SN ete Taree AY i 7. ane Beton. ee SS ae A Oe 1 SE a ee i ne ee ean eae po beSP Sn nh get wy Ste ee pn te Se eens ee ee | ne ed oD ol ye eA . Pt a le Se Sarr SP —— ee myer aan Oey tet Pl Serer ie a ae ) SC EEEE ad at ey SL eS —4=ee ewe ms RE re Pa 7 “tne Pe A IS > Se noe fe ee - ener a ae ao ag Poy erase 7 pete Taras ees onsSoft TEI hn ee ee 7 aananprrerrs nner ¥ el SS —> m4 wes a Ps ant oa a ee x Fa melee oe Nn Fe ae tt eee aeisceie te we es ee ea Ee ee ~ _— Sista Mets ISN a om h RATT WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? their roots—almost all of them—in the church. This is the fourth thing which must be set down to its credit. At the very tip of Cape Cod rises a con- spicuous monument erected both to commemo- rate a notable event and to serve as a guide for vessels bound for the ports of Boston or New York. The event was the signing of the May- flower Compact. The Pilgrims had not expected to need any such compact. They carried to this new continent a charter from the Crown author- izing them to found a colony in “the northern parts of Virginia,’ which meant New Jersey. But the Mayflower had been driven from her course by winter gales and was too much weak- ened to undertake the further voyage. ‘They must land near where they were, as they did a few days later at Plymouth; and, since they be- lieved that their charter was valueless in this part of the country, something had to be provided in its place. Already discontent had shown itself on the little boat. Some of the passengers were hired servants who began to say that, since the charter was void, they were no longer compelled to work their passage or be obedient to orders, Some sort of government must be established, and at once. The Pilgrims learned all this on Friday 80MORE HARM THAN GOOD? night, November 10, 1620, Old Style, or No- vember 20, New Style. On Saturday morning they assembled every man on the Mayflower, except two or three who died a few days later and may be presumed to have been too sick to attend. Forty-one men, the minister and the magistrate, the freeman and the indentured servant, and every one signed. the Compact. Their authority was stated to be “by these presents,’ which means by their free voice and equal vote. Under that simple Compact they organized their little army, legislated as to the ownership of shares in the red cow when she arrived, estab- lished limits within which roofs should not be made of thatch and thus imperil other buildings, settled small disagreements, and, when a murder was committed by one of their own number, sum- moned a jury, gave the culprit a fair trial, and sentenced him to be hanged by the neck until dead. Thus seriously did they later regard their act in creating a government. And the whole thing was done in a few hours. Between Friday night and Saturday noon, there in the cabin of the Mayflower, the machinery was set up and put in operation. Where had they learned the science of state- craft? Who had taught them to carry an ems 81 Are = i Lo eS a ptt eh F poe ne nt at od sed — SS Ses CSS aad ans —— es ere ee im mt =s"s"s +e A STS Spe arto rr) , ri i} ? 1 i er are mer = a SS more + a Re anna er ee ne) nO AO a ene aren ag L/ 1, Pi ae mee ce enictaty NE ra ae Seen aoT a a tere eee Pea a ee DF a et “a SS Sag ee eat Rees er ST Ne ae og en tee ee eee eee ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? pire in their brains and bring it forth full-fledged at a moment’s notice? Theodore Roosevelt, in laying the corner- stone of the Pilgrim Monument, expressed amazement at the feat and asked the questions without being able to answer them. William Howard Taft, in dedicating the monument three years later, showed in his speech that he had given the Compact much more careful study than his predecessor, but he also expressed the same amazement. But on each occasion there was a second speaker: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge at the corner-stone laying, and President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard at the dedication. These two men gently corrected the failure of the two Presidents to understand. They answered the question: “Where and how did the Pilgrims learn to create a ready-made 92 democracy ? Said Doctor Eliot: “Although the signing of the Compact was a sudden act, caused by the refusal of the captain of the Mayflower on the day before to take his vessel through the danger- ous shoals which lie off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, and so to bring it to the Hud- son River, where the English charter obtained by the Pilgrims before leaving Leyden author- 82MORE HARM THAN GOOD? ized them to establish their colony, it was an act which their whole experience of their church in England and in Holland, and the essence of the doctrines taught by their pastor and elders, naturally led up to.” He went on to quote a paragraph from the teaching of the Pilgrim minister, Reverend John Robinson, and said: *The whole doctrine and method of cooper- ative good will can not be better~stated to- day.. . . Everything that is good in modern socialismas:contained in that single sentence,.and nothing of the bad or foolish.” In other words, our American democratic institutions which we cherish with so much pride came not from statesmen or business executives but from church conferences and prayer meet- ings, from the long continued practise of the Pilgrims in choosing their own pastors, fixing their own conditions of membership, and manag- ing generally their own church affairs. Our higher education.came to us from the same source. Stop for a moment before the gates of Harvard and read the inscription copied from a quaint old document called ‘New England’s First Fruits’: “After God had carried us safe to New Eng- Jand, and wee had bilded our houses, provided 83 ee ered te tates oe a a = “~ ~ zea = cs Bi tt pe ah Pile bs PH Ser, ~ Rt eS aD ae A reat arg Se be eee [nae mat oe a Ease ey Ses es a ~~e7 rene ant a a po aOR ae Ba aos ee ~ — DOGS Ss ana wt aoh 8 ea ie i ae tle A By f ae aoe 2 78t ee odore < - Atte i eietaiel mayer ers oe ter? Pe ars ye Sew a8 ent Sea a _— Moe a eee i ee Sa a aes oe ee oe aE oe A a er eee ee ae Se WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? necessaries for our livli-hood, rear’d convenient places for Gods worship, and settled the civill government; one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” A few ministers coming together, and each of them giving a few books—this was how Har- vard College began. Education in America did not start..with some millionaire donating a stadium; it started with a sincere hope that learning and religious leadership might be pre- served. ‘The charter said that Harvard was founded to promote “the advancement of all good literature, arts and sciences,’ and the “‘edu- ‘ation of English and Indian youth in knowl- edge and godliness.” The five great historic New England colleges for men—Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth; the three historic schools for women—Mount Holyoke, Wellesley and Smith—all grew out of the same impulse. And so did the colleges that went with the westward march of civilization toward the Pacific Coast. If democracy and modern education are the gifts of the church, so also are hospitals for the sick and insane, and all the multitude of agencies 84MORE HARM THAN GOOD? for social service in which our civilization has so much pride. ,“And, as ye go,” said Jesus of Nazareth, “preach, saying, The kingdom of Heaven is &tehand:~ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received ; freely give.” His message was a twofold gospel—good news for the body*as well as the soul... For a long time the healing portion of the command was considerably neglected. But some centuries before the crusades certain rich and pious merchants of Amalfi were distressed because many people who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land trusted the Lord for everything, including even the common-sense necessities which they ought to have provided for them- selves, and so suffered from poverty and sick- ness. ‘These Christian merchants determined to establish a hospital and hotel at Jerusalem for poor sick pilgrims. The twin institutions were dedicated to St. John the Almoner, and later to St. John the Baptist, patron saint of the Knights of St. John. With the coming of the crusades these insti- tutions, and the Order which supported them, became one of the most famous of Christian institutions. The Knights were not content to heal wounds, to be sure; they sallied forth to in- flict a few on the Saracens—but this is no part of our present story. The point is that the first 85 Fa oS i ~ ee — Paton A Se ae ee ra Set oe oe as SSS sy LAA ~~“ es eee esta na ea eit at ae DRS en ines cen te yt mw = ~~~ nen re ee 1 mye a on i in I = a See en ate we es ih Li Po A Dt Tene ~~ a Rie A ES REN Nr te Sie ee ci, Tay EN A pee cash in Hn an . een ES7 me” «<3 ri) - -_ ata ie parol A repre tat 4 a > .e~ Lae - tS Pat oe ee as WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? people in all the world who ever took it into their heads to establish special care for the sick and unfortunate were Christian men, inspired by the teaching of Him who said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Later on in this little book we shall have something to say of the other great religions and how each of them has discovered a magnificent part of the same big truth. We shall ask the question: Which, of all these various faiths, is the best? And we shall find much to be said in favor of the teachings of the gentle Buddha, of the serene Confucius, and even of the vigorous Mohammed. But we shall not find a record of the followers of any of these religions going forth on to battle-fields at the risk of their lives to ease the pain of friends and foes alike. Only Chris- tianity rises to that height. The American Red Cross is not ostensibly a religious organization. But who was Clara Barton, its founder? I saw her in our home when I was a lad, a quiet and forceful little woman, a distant relative of mine. She made no parade of her religion and hardly admitted that she had a creed. But she had one. And the symbol of the organization which she founded was and is the Cross. So there are these four honest things to be 86MORE HARM THAN GOOD? said on the side of the church, as against the record of bigotry and selfishness with which too many of its official pages are indelibly stained: (1) It alone stood firm through vandal in- vasions ard” salvaged enough to _ provide foundations for a new civilization; (2) through all the ages it has been faith and kindliness and the hope of immortality to the submerged millions; (3) through all the ages it has inspired the finest characters, the sweetest spirits; (4) it gave us our democracy, our higher education, and the tender impulses on which physicians and legislators and social workers have erected their works for the suffering and the poor. To these four counts we add a final fifth. The church is the one institution in the modern world»whose.sole business is to create in men dissatisfaction’ with their own characters, their achievements and ideals. It is not strange, when you think of it, that more people do not go to church. The amazing thing is that anybody goes. What is it that they go for? 'To be told that they are sinful. T’o be asked to give money for poor and sick and un- fortunate people whom they have never seen, and who have no claim of blood relationship upon them. To be sent away dissatisfied with all that they are or have done in comparison 87 Are ae —— na ad a ma dad a Seis STROM meal “ee Se Se oe Ras Rete Sa Sadat re 8 s i ih a 4 i rt oe — $ mee SR ee ee ae a Ne et - sacewsey te ar Pe = +or eee alle Z er Ses ~ ia rae Bios tata, mer cise od rer PUR ONS ~ to er a eee a ee retry ocere as Saalerioge teers hy in ue wae eS 5 “x pee ek oe eke Se Fane eee or en re ho ot — yp i, i i iu ~ WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? with what Jesus .was and did. The wonder, I say, is not that more do not attend but that any human beings at all should voluntarily submit themselves, Sunday after Sunday, to the_re- minder that they can and should do better than they have done. This ceaseless insistence that humanity is ‘apable of better things; this unrelenting chal- lenge to higher thinking, nobler action, more unselfish living—this makes the church a great constructive power, whatever its follies of over- organization, its pettiness of creed. It lives in one sense from hand to mouth. It prays day by day for its daily bread, and feeds every Sun- day out of the contribution box. It has only so much as is cheerfully given to it. Yet it has assets, even financial ones, greater than Standard Oil or United States Steel or any other commercial enterprise. Its missions, its hos- pitals, its colleges bring no revenue, but are, on the contrary, a daily source of huge expense, Yet they live by faith and grow as the church discovers in each new generation a certain com- pany of unselfish folks who respond to its call to sacrifice. Such an institution, in spite of mistakes and shortcomings, will not die; and could not, at any cost, be spared. It may change, I believe, very 88MORE HARM THAN GOOD? radically from its present type and character- istics. (In a later chapter we shall have some- thing to say about the possible forms which those changes may take. But it will be much easier for liberal-minded men to graft new life on to the old institution than to discard it. Indeed, it can not be discarded. 'Those who believe it can be speak with singularly little knowledge of history or of the deep cravings of the human heart. The hymn writer was a better historian and a sounder psychologist : “Oh, where are kings and empires now Of old that went and came? But Lord, thy church is praying yet, A thousand years the same,” 89 Spates ens eee — .. cake = Ce ye ee eed ae tae sl a pe on a, aed ae a 2 pat ra PD ae oe 7 gettin aN Sa Sy Saale SS ee reat ot OE a te Ba ns Fa a reo pith etait tat ee oe a er oe De SO aie get i i i i SR ne a are : es ee ed} Le Seoo re pe een a se ee .. er ee re Ne SE i - —s ae CARS ee TE 7 are) + of a soa er area Spe een ae ays eee Pe CHAPTER III WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION! THE twelve hundred years between 600 B. C. and 600 A. D. seem to have been the most propitious for starting religions. In that com- paratively brief period four faiths were founded—Buddhism, Confucianism, Chris- tianity and Mohammedanism—which enroll several hundred million members of the human race. ‘They were launched into the world by four great personalities. What was the life of each of these leaders? What did he teach? Wherein did his teaching differ from that of the others? And which of the four taught best? BUDDHA There was uncertainty as to the date and place of Buddha’s birth until 1895, when an English archeologist discovered a pillar erected by the Emperor Asoka, that splendid prince whom H. G. Wells regards as one of the six 90WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? greatest men who ever lived. This discovery fixed the date at about 560 B. C., and the place as near Kapilavastu, whose ruins lie in the wilderness beyond the British borders of North India. The little brown boy, whose coming brought so much happiness to a very wealthy father and mother, was named Siddhartha Gautama, but his subsequent title of Buddha, “the enlightened,” has displaced his own name in much the same way that the title Christ has dis- placed the name of Jesus. Many years later a vast body of tradition gathered around Gautama, and this has been added to through the centuries until it is difficult to find the truth. It was said that his mother had been impregnated by the light.of-a star; and that earthquakes marked his entry into the world, and miracles of healing. Gentle rains fell in seasons that according to the calendar should have been dry; flowers bloomed in abundance where sum- mer heat should have withered all plant life, and the normal course of events was generally upset. His rajah father, ambitious to have his son succeed to the family estates, was disturbed by the thirty-two portents that accompanied the birth and, fearing that the lad would be a monk, sought by every inducement to make him a permanent part of the life to which he had been 91 ers: ae oo Se ee a bata oe See os Sas ee ae ess me oats Se a aces a OES a eS ik —s a eine yore mm ee erate re a . ete ap tb oaee i} i Y ; Ot cena ae ean ti a ST oe pay eee Fg wi eo 4 ate Finl a as ee eS Rew eae re ss = en yee eo a i =Poe eee tat ye earl sn . " arin Ts ie ae? as ST os > ee ae _ eS Pee Se 2 rey ~~ = ~~ ie eT eee ee Pe ee _ TRESS IE WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? born. The boy grew strong; he was preeminent in athletic contests, as well as in his studies. One of the stories of his youth may be legendary but it is so much in harmony with his later character that it deserves preservation. His cousin shot a swan, which fell among the roses in the garden. Gautama rescued the bird and pulled the arrow from the wound. He had never known pain; to learn its nature he pricked his own wrist with the arrow and felt the sting and saw the flowing blood, and his heart went out toward all suffering of man and beast. Thén and there he dedicated himself, in an early and pre-enlightened fashion, to the relief.of pain. The story says that his cousin demanded the bird, but Gautama refused to give it up. Where- upon they submitted the question to the wise men of the district, and one aged man, who had never been seen among them before, announced that if the power to destroy life might be as- sumed to give the cousin a right to the swan, much more did the power and will to save life confer the ownership on him who had preserved it. When the other wise men looked around to see who it was that had spoken they could not discover the prophet, but a snake glided away. Thus the gods sometimes disappeared when they had performed their mission. 92| ’ So See x Soa os os sf WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? on = a SS ra Ss ¥ STII It was Gautama’s skill in archery that won the willing heart of the Princess: Yasédhara, to whom he was married at the age of nineteen. The father provided three luxurious palaces, one for each of the three Indian seasons, and there would seem to have been nothing for the young people to desire. Yet Gautama was not happy. Passing along the road one day, he saw four appalling sights—a decrepit old man, a man loathsomely sick, a corpse and a monk. The last was in some respects the most terrible of all, a religious ascetic intent only on achieving his own salvation through self-discipline and utterly un- disturbed by the sorrows of the world. Gautama became distressed at the thought that he, and all mankind, were destined to the miseries of sick- ness, old age and death, and that the current philosophies were powerless to give peace, He made his decision. Slipping away at night from his beautiful wife and his new-born child, he renounced his throne and fortune, and fled on his white horse Kantaka, accompanied by a single servant. The prince of evil, Mara, sought to restrain him, but he was proof: against temptation. On the farther side of a stream he dismissed his servant, sent back his horse, and went forth in beggar’s clothes to find a solution of life’s enigma. aa =o REEL EE ESS ple FDIS A Seen a. cs AD Ty ANE SOLS se mews aa ie Meena 1 H i} ¥ ve an pee: pe es ie aerate Secis> ae a peeenerrs — cane eee nee ee Rap ee 93 ens =| 6 oa a er gore’ a ? pak rs zeCd me oa len ree Ae a ~ se re tt a ee a. Pg ae eS ar Sa fo oe ar ar a a ge weer ee eee Se Pe ED Ae See ort er ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? It is said there were sixty-two schools in India at that time, most of them teaching the attainment of holiness by asceticism. Gautama went to Alara Kalama, whose fame was wide. “Thus vowed to homelessness and seeking the highest, even the way of peace, I went where the ascetic Alara Kalama dwelt and thus addressed him, ‘Friend Kalama, I would lead the life of a recluse as your pupil and follower.’ And very swiftly I learned, O disciples, what he had to teach.” What he learned was the “eight stages of meditation’—self-mortification raised to the n-th degree. He gave it a thorough trial. “Like wasted withered reeds became all my @ limbs, like a camel’s hoof my hip, like a wavy rope my backbone, and as in a ruined house the roof-tree rafters show all aslope, so sloping showed my ribs because of the extremity of fast- ing. As in a deep well the watery gleam far below is scarcely to be seen, so in my eye-sockets the gleam of my eye-balls far sunken well nigh disappeared, and as a severed gourd becomes rotten and shrunken when left out in the sun and uncooked, so hollow and shrunken became the skin of my head. When I touched the surface of my belly my hand touched the backbone, and as I stroked my flesh, the hair, rotten at the roots, came away in my hands.” 94RENEE, +e" baa a ld WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? ‘SN aan ~ Hundreds of others who were seeking the pure life could have duplicated all these particulars, and some of them professed to find peace, but not Gautama. He later characterized asceticism as “the realm of nothingness.” Self- denial he still believed to be the way of enlighten- ment.but not self-torture. This was his famous “middle way” between self-indulgence and self- immolation. It was what many counted a heresy, but it insured his success, od naa fo Sar as es SUNS SELES REESE a RN en ae At the end of the sixth year of searching he sat for six days under the Bo tree, and in that week there came to him the bliss of emancipation. Another week he spent under a goatherd’s banyan tree. There he was asked to define the true characteristics of a Brahman, which reminds us that Buddhism did not begin” as” an in- dependent religion, but was a sect of BYahman- ism as Christianity inthe beginning-was a sect of Judaism.» The now enlightened Gautama re- plied that the Brahman should be free from pride; free from impurity, should be self-reliant and wise, having fulfilled the requirements of holiness, tat an OO Repel thi nea: er SS i in Bt a y i A a sean i 4 HH i mI a i. eet eeetct rs a ane rere ERR See ee Pe I eran oe nae os" A third week was passed under the Muchalinda tree, where Muchalinda, the serpent king, came forth and spread his hood as a canopy to protect Gautama from the sun and rain. 95 ee Ae Fn ce: _— Se eee pal | eS ( ee id Ae egSS ae wee ee rp aa eee = a eee Prep e-T~ bot bea eae A erent nn ee emma Na Re . ee ays Oa ee ee Ste ae ee A Pe Ret Me Ne ene WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? The final week was under the Rajayatana tree. and here two merchants came bringing honey and rice cakes. The food was presented ‘n four bowls of stone by the four divinities that guard the four quarters of the earth. Gautama ate gladly. His long struggle was at an end. He was enlightened. The title Buddha had belonged to many men before his time, as the title Messiah or Christ had belonged to all the Davidic kings and others, including Saul. With his “enlightenment, ” Gautama became a Buddha. While other Buddhas are expected, and the greatest of all is yet to come, he stood and yet stands so far above all others as almost to monopolize the title. Like Christianity, Buddhism has its sacred books; its gospel is based on the Four Noble Truths which came while he sat cross-legged under the Bo tree: All existence involves suffering. Suffering is caused_by desire. The path to a cessation of suffering is the eightfold path of right living. Suffering will cease when desire ceases. These Four Noble Truths were elaborated in this fashion: The suffering to which all existence is sub- 96WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? ject is fourfold. Suffering attends birth, decay, disease, death. Suffering may be defined in four ways: The*presence of objects we hate is suffering. The absence of things we love is suffering. Not.to obtain what we desire is suffering. The clinging to existence is suffering. The eightfold path to cessation of suffering is by right belief, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right occupation, right endeavor, right memory, right meditation... The perfect condition is Nirvana, in which desire. is.totally extinct. While one lives the goal is to approach as nearly as possible to a condition free from desire. All this is a far cry from the doctrine of self- mortification. Buddha did not teach self-torture as the means to a holy life, but distinctly revolted from it. He had tried that in his six years of struggle, and his success was like the effort to tie knots in the air. For a time he considered whether it was worth while to waste these truths on an unap- preciative world. There was little in them to attract the heedless. Even self-torture has an element of delight in the degree to which one may comfort his soul at the expense of the suffering of his body, and perhaps the added joy 97 ae een et Sone ae mere Sete pe al ee Te Ss = re ay om LA Os SU RSEORORSSS a aa Fee, a i Ra ET on ee ars papaya pana ae Nn Ts te nan ae Pa te nae ye b) ; i ut ast oa if a I i che Wa) P a PT Pan ae a ay ar ee mean Nas Noe SX ay Loa oe ee c= at)aa ees D ted = 7 3 onl AS A a Om = 7 ~ es ¥ Pa ee ie taal 20h oe ow WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? of being admired as a holy man; but the quiet life of subdued desire has little appeal to any sense of the heroic. So Buddha did not rush out to spread his doctrine. But the two merchants who brought him food after his four weeks under the trees became his first lay converts, and others followed. Gradually he moved farther out into the suffering world, carrying his message of the elimination of pain by the elimination of desire, a doctrine which necessarily forbids the infliction of pain on others. New disciples came until there were hun- dreds who wore the yellow robe and followed him in a fellowship of free democracy. He even permitted, after a threefold refusal, an order of women disciples. “Their admission means that the Good Law shall not endure for a thousand years but only for five hundred,” he said. “For as when the mildew falls on a field the rice is doomed, so when women leave the household life and join an Order, that Order will not long endure. Yet as water is held by a strong dyke, so I have estab- lished a barrier of regulations which are not to be transgressed.” He held out no promise of ease or comfort. The disciples slept on the ground with no cover but the yellow robe. He could have said, and 98WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? ee ane reas did say in effect: “If any man will come after me, let him take up the cross.” Lepers and maimed men were not admitted to his fellowship, nor yet slaves or confirmed criminals, but every other class came, from nobles to mendicants. Often they quarreled and made trouble, but however much they disagreed among themselves their loyalty to him never wavered. In time rich estates were given, and he and his followers walked in cool groves, which he dearly loved, but they maintained their simple living. He himself went forth at every dawn to beg his food for the day, and more and more the common people, to say nothing of kings and courtesans, counted it an honor to bestow bread upon him. What he gave his followers was hardly a religion. He taught them almost nothing about God, prayer, forgiveness, or a future*life. His was a way of holiness through. self-denial, as opposed to self-torture’on the one hand and self- indulgence on the other. Later, his disciples wrought this simple teaching into an intricate system of metaphysics and dogma which took on new forms as the religion spread. China was the first mission field. About 61 A. D., while the books of the New Testament were being’ written and nine years before Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, the Chinese 99 ee SS Ps mae S Sateen 3 yo > “a ES aoe. ae SPER tates ry Sata mo te men me rea, Poe taps eon how es Se ent i F i | i + it % ae oer a Sy a ne et ee a ee ma er ae lags Me PP ee ae or es Sale Pe a ee en etal ae i iF 2cs a eM tras bas Set ees merase) bess is A See Oe ae ear WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? Emperor Ming-ti had a dream in consequence of which he sent to India and imported Buddhist priests. Six years were spent in the translation of Buddhist books into Chinese, and the new religion was taking root in China just about the time the siege of Jerusalem was scattering Christians as missionaries all over Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt. In this new environment a religion without gods or worship could not satisfy, so the worship of Buddha himself, al- ready begun in India, was transported and made rapid headway. Six hundred years later Japan imported Buddhism. Colossal statues of Buddha were erected, and two of them still stand. The goddess of mercy, Kwannon, is often in the same temple, and there is a collection of minor gods sufficient for all the real or imaginary needs of the Japanese mind. There is prayer also, and pro- vision for its mechanical continuity through prayer-wheels run by air or water power. And the doctrine and ritual are bewilderingly in- volved. This intricacy of idol worship would scan- dalize Buddha, who never proclaimed himself an object of adoration and indeed taught very little about worship in any form. ‘The earlier and simpler narratives show him very clearly for just 100— Too et Crepe ear lu SRK WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? fers what he was—a friendly, compassionate, but very human man. “The Blessed One was troubled with wind on his stomach. “Now when the Blessed One had eaten food prepared by Kunda, the worker in metal, there fell upon him a dire sickness, the disease of dys- entery; and a sharp pain came upon him, even unto death.” Laas J agg Ee ENS SEVERE EEE SSS Pee “<9 alle ye bee ba Baty a EE sO a) ~~ ad SR teen He made no pretense. He never claimed to have attained perfection, and freely acknowl- edged four weaknesses, one of which was too much love of wine. He asked nothing of life except peace through self-forgetfulness.and_kind- liness to others. He might have been a king. He might have molded his followers into an army and conquered vast territories. All this power and wealth and luxury he renounced to set an example of unselfish goodness. Said he to his first sixty disciples: Es an ine Seed pet tines aa i ‘es ‘B' te} i iy \e f eres Ps ms ee See ee eee ro pte Fe! ee, “Go ye now out of compassion for the world, for the welfare of gods and men. Let not two of you go the same way. Preach the doctrine which is glorious. Proclaim a consummate, per- fect and pure life of holiness.” ae a at ee a See eae er eT They were obedient to his command. But their successors carried a very different message. 101 Soe ey = ie oe ce Sale poe seeee ree te EN ae NE Se Ped Aeon at An’ eS ed od ad oor per ERS ee ee nd a ae a dearer aan WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? They proclaimed Buddha a god, and erected an institution which, with its wealth and ritual and forms, is as far from his character and ideals as darkness is from light. But it lives and grows and serves, after its fashion, to represent re- ligion to some hundreds of millions of human souls, CONFUCIUS The real name of Confucius was his family name, Kung. He was called Kung the Master, Kung Fu Tze. That combination of syllables was too difficult for European tongues, and so it was Latinized into the form with which we are familiar. The great teacher was born in Shan- tung in 551 B. C., and died there in 478, and his grave is one of the sacred shrines of China. What we know about him is contained in twenty small books called the Analects, record- ing conversations with his disciples, and certain other descriptive and biographical matter. There is some material also in another book, Doctrine of the Mean. His father, Shuh-liang Heih, a military offi- cer, was seventy years old at the time of his birth and had ten children, but Confucius, the young- est, was the only able-bodied son. His birth, as embellished by later admirers, was accompanied 102WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? by divine portents. Genii announced to Yen Ching-tsai, his mother, the approaching hour of her deliverance, and fairies attended the cradle. He appears to haye been reared in poverty and to have been self-educated. We are told that he played at the arrangement of vessels and at postures of ceremony, which would seem to show an innate love of ritual. He was an earnest stu- dent of history. At the age of fifteen he “bent his mind to learning,” and at nineteen he was married. The marriage appears not to have been a happy one. There is a tradition that he divorced his wife; we know for certain that he reproved his son in later years for mourning her death. The relations between Confucius and this only son were not intimate. When the boy be- came one of his father’s students his fellow disciples were eager to know whether he was learning more than the rest of them. “Have you heard any lessons from your father in addition to those he has taught us?” one of them asked. “No,” replied the boy. “He was standing alone when I passed with hasty steps through the court below, and he asked me: ‘Have you read the Odes?’ On my replying, ‘Not yet,’ he said to me: ‘If you do not learn the Odes you 103 Se ante oe are SSS eae PP a es a eT ng ees ~~ Fa oo ay egy SE ea har oy a * 7 SIR NI at ton eel nae pal om ontcr IL FN a aoe te at etme aN! ad . a tg Ee ten rn Ne pee cet ane a a ee ee ae Se ee pet Any ean 5 a A A Ketn ae =a rs ee ee ree SSE ~~ a ee eae Nee ~ USL ITN ne om mes har ms eat oe — =» i er er er a eens WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? will not be fit to converse with.’ Another day in the same place and the same way he asked me: ‘Have you read the Rules of Propriety?’ On my replying, ‘Not yet,’ he said: ‘If you do not read the Rules of Propriety your character can not be established.’ ” The enthusiastic fellow pupil exclaimed: “I asked one thing and you have told me three. I now know about the Odes, and I have learned about the Rules of Propriety, and I have learned that the Superior Man maintains a distant re- serve towards his son.” We are not informed concerning the reason for this reserve, and it is difficult to reconcile with Confucius’ own theory of parental behavior. For he held that if a son did not honor his father the father was probably as much to blame for it as the son. At one time when he was in an offi- cial position under Duke ‘Ting of Loo, a father brought a charge of unfilial conduct against his own boy. Confucius caused them both to be imprisoned for three months. He was about to release them when he was asked why he did not put the son to death instead, and he replied: “The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.” He held a similar theory with regard to the 104WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? State. Human nature, he said, was inherently good. If the State did not produce good citizens, it reaped the harvest of its own bad sowing. “Let the government be good and the people will be good.” The native state of Confucius, Loo by name, was in North China, on the Yellow River, and is included in the present province of Shantung. There he grew to manhood and mainly spent his life. About the time of his marriage he obtained a small government post, first as keeper of stores of grain and later as guardian of the public fields and lands. But he did not hold these positions long. At the age of twenty-two he was released from official responsibility and became a teacher. He received all pupils who came to him, no matter how small the tuition price which they were able to bring. He who came with “a bun- dle of dried fish,” the cheapest of all national products, was welcomed as heartily as the stu- dent who brought an adequate fee. But he had little patience with those who were not in earnest. “I do not open the truth to one who is not eager for knowledge. Nor do I help one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject, and the lis- tener can not from that unfold the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.” 105 Se ae iene ~ Fa a a et le oS oe ae =z - ee Lee Ne Sap om. Ed Sg 5° Ss OS —— a a Path 5 Eat Be oe = Das ene as Neely Se 1 OR ete Dy ——e oa ei 3 a a 4 | i at wc = rier a Tt ge ne ate as Ore ER ee eS es ae) Seen. cnn a 4 oman a pes i on eet as Ameera as, pernpa ee oars aBakadebnj—ieg. ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? He taught a well rounded curriculum, his three principal subjects being history, poetry and literature. After these came four others, proprieties, government, natural science and music. He had pride in those pupils who dis- played virtuous, oratorical, administrative or literary abilities, but he avoided feats of strength, prodigies, disorder and the supernatural. Confucius was devoted to the founders of the Chow dynasty. In a spirit of great reverence he visited the royal capital and returned, not dis- illusioned by what he saw of political power, but rather strengthened in his veneration for the government. But it was not so with his respect for Lao Tze, the founder of Taoism, whom he visited on this same journey. Lao Tze was about fifty years older than Confucius, and promulgated a soft, sweet gospel that offered no cure for the problems of the world. He was a pacifist, withdrawing himself from evils which he could not prevent and toward which he could assume only an attitude of imperturbable meekness. Confucius went to see this venerable man who, according to the ‘Taoist traditions, read to the ardent young teacher a lofty lecture, the bur- den of which was advice to cease meddling with matters which were beyond his control. It was 106WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? characteristic of Confucius that he did not reply, but the advice of Lao Tze was lost on him. He was a practical man; Lao Tze was a dealer in sweetness and light. So the two eminent teachers parted and never met again, and the two systems developed side by side and neither gave much aid or comfort to the other. It was a part of the method of Confucius not to answer back. "A sage will not enter a tottering state nor dwell in a disorganized one. Where right prin- ciples of government prevail, he shows himself, but when they are prostituted he conceals him- self. ~The ancients were guarded in their speech. Like them we should avoid loquacity. Many words invite many defeats. Avoid entering many businesses, for many businesses create many difficulties.” These were not original precepts with him, but when he saw them in an inscription on the back of a statue with a triple clasp upon the mouth of the man, he applauded it. “Observe this, my children. These words are true, and commend themselves to our rea- > son. 107 Ce aes iss =~ i #}} i 4 i a $a a ee i fi. b RS i inate a Se ee eae ee ee ee Ss a at - al ee eee! mts Lp ia NT Sei = Stn Sessa: . SEE er gS ON Sgr St a ay rT SAY SS 359 ws --s-<: was ot "omenet eS —— NS ee Se IE Fa min RO aN tg oN RRR. WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? The Duke of Tse had been a patron of the teacher and offered him a pension. Confucius could have used the money to good advantage but he refused the gift. He said to his disciples: “A superior man will only receive reward for services which he has done. I have given advice to the Duke of T’se, and he has not obeyed it; yet now he would bestow on me this gratuity. He is very far from understanding me.” This incident shows his high superiority to bribes or perquisites. He maintained, even in poverty, a resolute independence. He was de- termined to be what he talked so much about, a “superior man.” For thirty years, from the time he was twenty-one till he was fifty-one, he was a suc- cessful teacher, with a large and reverent band of students. In 500 B. C., he was appointed magistrate and then promoted to be assistant superintendent of public works, and later, a min- ister of justice. ‘These were high positions and enabled him to test out his theories with success. But jealousy and intrigue unseated him, and in less than five years he was out of office. Then for thirteen years, from 496 to 483 B. C., he was a wandering teacher, but in the latter year he settled down in his native province, completed 108 EO Leeeea nara aeWHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? his literary work, and in 479 B. C., at the age of seventy-two, he died. He left only one original composition, Spring and Autumn, which is said to have had large influence in the reform of the province of Loo. He died disappointed, and seemed to himself to have been unsuccessful. In his last years he meditated: “The great mountain must crumble! The strong beam must break! The wise man must wither away like a plant! There is not one in the empire that will make me his master! My time has come to die!” So it had come, but the whole nation rose up to make him its spiritual master. There was religion in China before the days of Confucius, but he took little account of it. In some parts of his teachings he implies a belief in deity, as when he says: “The great God has conferred even on inferior people a moral sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably right.” But other of his teachings seem almost to deny the supernatural. He dis- couraged prayer and did not enjoin any sort of religious observance. He was always modest regarding his own character and attainments, acknowledging four shortcomings, like Buddha, one of which was too much fondness for wine, 109 so a ee Sean Seta cap la Al ee LR en mr Sot 3 SURO EEE ee arc a bbe > ete eS a i Pata a ete ert Se telael ere te ce vt ~ pce ms we eh we Bein AAO SAAT eas Soa aa pnt aaa et Se aA AIRDRIE Se SR nw ee Mane ee a eRe A roe narod RS ane I rT - sor z> NS arate, sane mentee NP acs Og FN ee eer ON WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “The Master said: ‘In letters I am perhaps equal to other men. But the character of the ‘arrying out in his conduct what > 39 superior man, he professes, is what I have not yet attained to. If he fell short of his own ideal, however, he had four great points of strength to which his disciples testified: “There were four things from which the Master was entirely free. He had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary premeditations, no obstinacy, no egotism.” He taught the characteristics of the superior man. The ordinary man is partisan and not catholic; the superior man is catholic and not partisan. The superior man does not set him- self for or against a given course, but what is right he will do. The superior man is not anxious in the fear of poverty, but is anxious lest he fail to learn the truth. “In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of them all can be em- braced in one sentence, ‘Have no depraved thoughts.’ ” He taught the brotherhood of mankind. ‘Within the four seas all men are brothers.” He taught the “silver rule,’ which is negative as 110WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? contrasted with the Golden Rule of Jesus, say- ing, “What you would not have another do to you, do not do to him,” but is-a noble precept none the less. He taught the value of the family and human nature’s unrealized capacities for self-improvement. But his interest was in fitting men for better citizenship, not in the founding of a faith. It would have amazed him tc be told that millions would one day render him worship. Yet for at least twelve hundred years in the temple of Confucius in Pekin the emperor has twice a year offered sacrifice. Twice a year in fifteen hundred and sixty temples similar observances have been carried on for more than a millennium. Less elaborate ceremonies take place twice every month, and no less than sixty-two thousand six hundred and six animals are said to be slaughtered annually in these sacrifices. “China has produced no other figure who has been so intensely admired. The result of the centuries of devotion paid to him is that the character of the people has been more nearly the creation of this one great teacher than is the case with the people of any other single country in the history of the world.” So says a modern scholar, but the gentle old philosopher himself never dreamed of bil mf See oe A a a eat a a a I CEVEEEE ES PERN Sai SSSA NES ea > ba pe ere ennme a i 4 4 aa a ray By hs ; lake ~~ Sonor SARA a me ea el See NT pe ame Be a eee fe ye eae ent ereaphe, Ae ae ape WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE! such immortality. He walked humbly, bemoan- ing the fact that no one would listen, and regarding his life as a failure; he died worn out and discouraged, MOHAMMED There is a legend that a Persian prince once taunted an Arab, saying that his people were inferior to every other race. The Arab de- manded, in reply, what nation could be put before the Arabs for strength, beauty, piety, courage, munificence, wisdom, fidelity, pride or hospitality. They only, of the neighbors of the Persians, had maintained their independence. Their fortresses were the backs of their horses. Their beds were the earth. Their roof was the sky. Other nations had need to entrench them- selves behind walls of stone and brick, but the Arab trusted in his sword and his courage. Other nations were able to trace their pedigree but a few generations; the Arabs could trace theirs back to Adam, the father of the human race. The Arab was so liberal he would slaughter his camel, his sole wealth, to give a meal to a stranger. No other nation had so elaborate a literature, such noble poetry. Theirs were the finest horses, the most beautiful and 112WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? most chaste women. No distance was too great for their camels. So sacred was their word that a sign or a look was a binding convenant. So hospitable were they that a guest was protected at the risk of the life of his host. To the Arabs belonged splendid raiment; theirs were moun- tains filled with gold and silver and gems. Other nations obeyed kings, but they paid no tribute to a central government; every man among them was fit to be a king. This catalogue of fine qualities is subject to some discount, yet it sets forth the elements of national vitality in which the Arab takes justi- fiable pride. From such a _ proud race Mohammed and his religion sprang. He was born in August 570, a few days after his father’s death. His mother died when he was six years old, so that we can not be certain that he ever learned to read and write, though it seems probable that he did. ‘There is, to be sure, a tradition that he wrote the Koran on the breastbones of sheep and as fast as they. were filled with words threw them into a chest. The various passages are badly enough arranged to give some substance to the story, but the truth seems to be that the book was really composed and assembled by his followers, and an untidy job they made of it. 113 = aaron mglah rt — Se og eet RAS dame ~y ree = Seis tore att oy ie ~s a | nner a Rae iat te hoa Ree as te) a aes Ae on ie ac Pk ; yt i * oe ee teh oe eae ln Renate tee reas Pate ed BIE. eee al ee See a ey pe a Peed ieS aes ee poe rs WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? Mohammed’s boyhood, like that of the other great religious teachers, is largely hidden from us. We are told that he accompanied his Uncle Zubair on a campaign, carrying arrows for the battle. If this be so, the experience seems to have been of considerable value to him later when he had to engage in fighting on his own account. Somewhere he learned that military success should be followed up promptly, before the de- feated foe has opportunity to recover its organi- zation and regain its fighting spirit. And that in battle there is no profit in giving the enemy advantage through a mistaken sense of gener- osity. These lessons he practised faithfully in his after life. As manager of a caravan from Mecca to Bostra and back in 594 A. D., he showed some of the qualities essential to success. He took good care of his horses and camels; he had his men under control; he defended his camp against robbers; he was able to dispose of his loads ad- vantageously in Bostra and purchase other car- goes for resale in Mecca. He returned to his home with a profit and increased confidence. Mohammed was no beauty but he was worth looking at, and his employer, a woman named Khadidjah, a few years older than himself, looked him over thoughtfully. He was of mid- 114WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? dle height, with black hair, a thick beard, and big, rather clumsy hands and feet. His eyes, which were tinged with red, were large. He was stolidly built, a broad-shouldered man who could be depended upon. He had ability to discern an opportunity and initiative to take advantage of it. Khadidjah decided that he would make a good third husband, and so she married him. Backed by her money, he rose to be a merchant of no mean rank. He continued to travel and trade, his journeys taking him to Syria and Palestine, where he mingled not only with Jews but also with Christians, but for the next ten years we have little record of him. When he was almost thirty-five he settled a dispute among three sheiks as to how the historic black stone should be replaced in the reconstruc- tion of the Kaaba. The respect with which his decision was received led him to consider his power as a possible teacher of religion. When he was forty he gave his mind to contemplation, and if he were indeed subject to epileptic fits, as has so often been charged, this may have had a share in his supposedly supernatural ex- periences. It was in the cave of Hira that he received his call to be a prophet of the one God. He informed his wife of his call, and she believed it 115 Se ee eadeie 5 } { i ? ; Rah I Re Tem (tate te Steere ERA wnt er rg SS Pa De me he a by oy cS an ten oe aes ay ban os Sa tee Wee an Penh a eet ta rons as > nr teee son wm eg 9 rind ~e pepe es set Sort ae - PL Ai AE a en emg ee ee TOT, pine sa As SX ne Poem pate genre > - ae pe Diane eet »~ _ ™ i i et FSSten enw roe myher miner» areas Stn a Ane eee eer tar ee ee ae WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? to be authentic. Mark this down to Moham- med’s credit. If he was self-deceived he was at least sincere enough to make his wife his first convert. She of all people should have known his true spirit. There followed a period of mental depression which has its parallel in the temptations of Jesus and in the heart-searchings of Buddha. But after a time this depression passed, and other revelations followed. His next two converts were Ali and Zeid, his adopted children. Followed others, until in the sixth year of his prophetic career persecution had begun and some of his followers had fled. On September 2, 622, Mohammed himself fled from Mecca, accompanied by a single companion. After hiding for a time in a cave he came to Medina, where a new epoch in his career begins. The faithful rightly start their calendar with the date of his flight, or Hegira, known in literature as A. H., the year A. D. 622. During Khadidjah’s lifetime Mohammed had no other wife, but within three months after her death he took two wives and thereafter in- creased the number until he had ten wives and two concubines, a total of thirteen, counting Khadidjah. Khadidjah was the mother of his two sons and four daughters, but neither by her nor any of his other wives did he leave an adult 116WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? son. His acknowledged descendants, dis- tinguished since 773 A. H. by their green turbans, trace descent from Fatima, daughter of Khadidjah. As Moslems agree in accepting the date of the Hegira as that which divides the life of Mohammed, so modern commentators, seeking a key to the puzzling tangle of his moral char- acter, have been inclined to go back to the death of Khadidjah as that which changed the peace- able shepherd, camel driver, merchant and teach- ing prophet into a conquering reformer. What we know is that after he left Mecca he adopted very harsh means for the conversion of those who did not believe. As his following grew, he joined armed attack and plunder with the progress of his cause. One-fifth of all the loot went to him, and in the rest his followers shared alike. His was a simple doctrine. He denounced infanticide, he opposed strong drink, and he taught the unity-of God. The sixfold pledge of Akabah gives his system of morality: “We will not worship any_but.the-one God. We will not steal. Neither will we commit adultery. We will not kill our children. We will not slander in any wise. Nor will we disobey the prophet in anything that is right.” The doctrine likewise was sixfold: 117 mere ee eet aye! RN ca ome ee a ee er ca deste rp PEARED eS ee area Sete ner > ce ~~ age ee SESS Pr Sh 5 po eer Co as by eR i i Soe Ste ee POE SS na ee eee i Ets a aera ee ae ps we = ie nt =et 5 Bares adn, er isis ee oo WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “Belief in one God; in his Angels; in his Prophets; in the Holy Books, of which the chief and only indispensable one is the Koran; in the Day of Judgment; and in a fatalistic Predesti- nation both of good and evil, so that no man can either hasten or delay his death; ‘God wills it’ and therefore it is.” Mohammed encouraged rather than forbade polygamy, but limited a man’s wives to four, except in his own case. He justified divorce if a man thereby might secure more congenial wives. At one time he tolerated temporary marriage for the convenience of his soldiers in the field, but this did not prove a permanently desirable arrangement and there were usually women captives enough to make it unnecessary. His conversion was by the sword, and he showed no quarter. He made forays on the neighboring tribes; he made war on Jewish cities; he attacked Christians. And he was suecessful. ‘There were, indeed, some revolts. Three of his followers set up rival systems, and he fought them. They were not completely subdued at the time of his death but they went under eventually. He brooked no opposition. Here is a description of him by Kamal ud Din ud Damiri (A. D. 1849-1405) : “Mohammed is the most favored of mankind, 118WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? the most honored of all the apostles, the prophet of mercy, the head and commander of the faith- ful, the bearer of the banner of praise, the inter- cessor, the holder of high position, the possessor of the River of Paradise, under whose banner the sons of Adam will be on the day of judgment. He is the best of the prophets, and his nation is the best of nations. His companions are the most excellent of mankind, after the prophets, and his creed is the noblest on earth. He per- formed manifest miracles, and possessed great qualities. He was perfect in intellect, and was of noble origin. He had an absolutely graceful form, complete generosity, perfect bravery, excessive humility, useful knowledge, power of performing high actions, perfect fear of God and sublime piety. He was the most eloquent and the most perfect of manhood in every variety of perfection, and the most distant of men from meanness and vices.” We might doubt his humility, but we have this testimony of Ayesha, his favorite wife: “The prophet when at home used to serve his own household; he used to pick the vermin from his cloak and patch it, mend his own shoes, and serve himself. He used to give fodder to his camel, sweep the house, tie the camel by the fore- leg, eat with the female slave, kneed dough with her, and carry his own purchases from the market,” 119 balan eee vs. BS Aw ean emma is te 5) ae Ree eT en TION ne ne mn a AO a ae oes ae sae ee oo aed a Soa ——— Naan a Se Soe — ADDS a ON Se aad ata a 5 setatts 7 pt TT aoseas TESS prea Ra neat te yo Es ae 2 Ln ne ae ee oa PaWHAT CAN A MAN.BELIEVE? His tastes were very human. He greatly disliked yellow or decayed teeth and made the use of the tooth-pick almost an article of his religion. He could not endure rank odors; even onion or garlic was offensive to him. His love for his little girl wife, Ayesha, whom he took at seven and married at ten and who was till death his favorite, becoming an important factor in Moslem politics after his death, shows him at his best. She could do almost anything with him, but she never replaced his loyal memory of Khadidjah. “Do you not love me more than you loved Khadidjah,” she asked him once, “for she was old and unattractive and I am young and beauti- ful?” The question was a mistake. He answered with mighty emphasis: “Nay, by Allah! For she it was who first believed in me!” The prophet was very fond of children, and often stopped to pat their cheeks as he met them on the street. One of his boys died on his breast in the smoky house of his nurse, the blacksmith’s wife. He never cursed. His worst malediction was: ““May his forehead be darkened with mud!” When asked to curse some one, he replied: “I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy 120WHICH IS THE BEST RELIGION? to mankind.” Once, while he was engaged in a religious conversation with an influential citizen of Mecca, a blind man drew near and asked him the way of light and peace. Mohammed turned away. He never ceased to regret this act. The surah in the Koran which tells of this incident is called “He frowned” (Syed, 118). He re- proached himself that he should have continued his conversation with the rich when he might have blessed the poor. He slept little, being in this respect like Napoleon, but his extra waking hours were spent in meditation and worship, for which the pres- sure of the day left him little time. Yet his devotions were regular, and he never sat down to a meal without a blessing or rose without thanksgiving. Stern as a warrior, and pushing his victories till they became massacres, there are yet attributed to_him countless deeds of mercy. He was proud of the fact that when he clasped a hand he was never the first to withdraw his palm. He visited often with the sick and when- ever he met a funeral procession he turned and followed it to the grave. In 631 he issued his famous command that after four years the Moslems would be absolved from every league and covenant with idolators. That was the warning of unrestricted warfare 121 apa ae ee ao ne ae a m8 Sa aS eT ee a ae ee _ SEN Le be eae [a Toe ad SAAN LLU EEE EEE ee TT ate ta a ne ane > an ee) a Pe ea hat Daehn Be ~~ ate eer Terre et Ee ree May [ aen ed aT pe Ne w 7 a er eat ase a es Pe le tater on eer eee. : i oe mn Se rear rer ns Ae i “ff WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? The little window, where the sun Came peeping in at morn. “T remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now ’tis little joy To know I’m farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy.” To be sure, the God of boyhood was not an altogether comfortable companion. He was stern and busy with bookkeeping. Yet He could be relied upon in an emergency. When a little boy had been good for several days in succession it was possible, by timely prayer, to induce Him to take notice and give real help. That boys should really love Him was almost impossible, however much the Sunday-school teachers might urge it. But the fear of Him was much less dreadful than it had been a few generations be- fore. Says Harvey J. O'Higgins in his interesting chapter on Julia Ward Howe: “The training [in her home] was narrow and cloistered and Puritanic to a point that is now almost incredible. Her mother died at the age of twenty-seven, having borne seven children of 140WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? whom Julia was the eldest living, then five and a half years old. Her mother was ‘almost literally prayed to death,’ and after her mother’s death the father’s ‘views of religious duty be- ‘ame more stringent’ than ever. He read family prayers night and morning. With him Sunday observance began, Puritanically, on Saturday evening. ‘The early days of my youth,’ she wrote in her Reminiscences, ‘were passed in the seclusion not only of home life, but of a home most carefully and jealously guarded from all that might be represented in the orthodox trinity of evil, the world, the flesh and the devil.’ She was allowed no playmates outside the family connection, and their play was inside play. “At the age of eight she wrote to a young cousin ill from some childish ailment: ‘I hear with regret that you are sick, and it is necessary as ever that you should trust in God; love him, dear Henry, and you will see Death approaching with joy.’ At twelve she dedicated a manuscript volume of poems to her father, warning him not to ‘expect to find in these juvenile productions the delicacy and grace which pervades the writ- ings of that dear parent who is now in glory.’ And the titles of the poems included ‘All things shall pass away,’ ‘We return no more,’ ‘To an infant’s departing spirit,’ “My Heavenly Home,’ etc. At fifteen she composed a verse called ‘Vain Regrets’ with the subtitle “Written on looking over a diary kept while I was under serious im- pressions’; and a stanza reads: 141 Paes a —— pores eee ra = a ee Sena Sa NEY eke ANN — te eRe IR Se a Se — Ud ; 3 | i] a i re tM ae % t ae f ie ip) re ‘t it SE eae Pea os ey ee ee ei ee ~S mS. Sone a) nn = en die Di ee a! ae — = oy cs a a. ee ee xe a)ee ats PS eS ee rey — re a a a St tn aE a bg are Ne ae ies arr) me rm Arwen WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “‘Oh! Happy days, gone, never to return At which fond memory will ever burn, Oh! Joyous hours, with peace and gladness blest, When hope and joy dwelt in this careworn breast.’ ” One would have to think quite a while in order to compose a stanza more foreign to the mind of the modern Christian child. Something must be allowed, of course, for the widely dif- ferent view-point of that generation, remote from us only a hundred years in time but many centuries remote in its approach to the method and subject-matter of religious instruction. Something must be allowed also for the person- ality of little Julia Ward Howe. Her over-developed religiosity seems as abnormal to us as some of the sophistication of our children in quite different directions would have seemed to her and her parents. But when all allowances have been made, this stanza and the other poetry in her juvenile book constitute a rather terrible indictment of that-type—of—Christianity which was taught to her. Why should a God-fearing little girl ever--have caught up those pious phrases from the lips of older people and made ’ them her own? Of what use is faith in-a loving Father if its effect is to cause sixteen-year-old youngsters to 142WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? have “careworn breasts”? How could any one imagine that Jesus, the friendliest person who ever lived, whose first miracle was performed to make a happy social party happier, who was followed everywhere by laughing groups of boys and girls, should demand solemn introspection and dyspeptic forebodings as the evidence of belief? By what strange perversion did the laughter and sunshine of His personality become debased into gloom and fear? Surely, these are questions which constitute one of the mysteries of the world. In your own childhood, gentle reader, reli- gious thinking had considerably improved. Yet there are many people now living who, if they were to make a written inventory of their earliest religious impressions would probably produce a record something like this: The earth is a testing ground suspended mid- way between Heaven and Hell. It was thrown together rather impulsively by God in six days. He is an old man with white whiskers, and very vain, since He insists that the principal duty of men and women is to render Him unceasing praise. He placed in the Garden of Eden a most attractive tree as a deliberate temptation to Adam and Eve and, having all knowledge, He was well aware that they would succumb. 143 ancine Ret oe ee TER ae ied ee ae DEA SEER beret ie er err e SSS . ys SRE ae v7 od iar Di N ara ty Irene ms ete [a WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? When they did, He turned them out of the Garden, sentenced them to labor, pain and sorrow, and condemned their descendants forever. Some generations later, when the human race showed no evidences of perfection, He lost His temper again, repented that He had ever created it, and destroyed practically all hfe, animal and human, by a world-wide flood. Only Noah and his family were saved, and we are their descendants. Since the flood the race has been neither better nor worse than before, and practically all of its members were damned until a little over nineteen hundred years ago. At that time Jesus, His only Son, persuaded God to let Him come to earth and die for the human race. By this sacrifice God permitted His wrath to be appeased toward whatever small fraction of humanity should thereafter believe in Jesus and confess His name. Sunday is God’s day, and there must be no pleasure of any sort-from~ morning” to~mght. Religion consists of going to church on Sunday, saying one’s prayers at night, and abstaining from wine, women, song and profanity. Hell is a place of eternal torment somewhere under the earth. Heaven is a city beyond the skies, where the streets are paved with gold, and the sole 144WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? occupation of the inhabitants is playing on harps and telling God how kind and wonderful He is. Many are called but few are chosen and, while one may hope for salvation through a rigid sti- fling of pleasure and a continuous observance of religious rites, still the chances are against suc- cess, and death is a moment of horrible fear. .. . Overdrawn as this statement may be in parts, it will call up corroborative memories in the minds of many middle-aged readers. The rigid creed with which they started life began to crumble under the influence of high school and college. Astronomy assaulted it. They learned with some dismay that the world is not the center of the universe, supremely important, but merely one tiny speck in a vast collection of worlds. Is it then the only world inhabited by intelligent beings? Would God build so great a universe a hotel of a million and let so much go to waste rooms in which only one was tenanted? It does not sound reasonable. But if there are other worlds, inhabited by beings like ourselves or better, must not these inhabitants also be chil- dren of God? And, if so, had Jesus descended upon these other worlds to die, repeating in- definitely the tragic drama of His earthly experience / Biology and history delivered other blows. 145 Siete ee penkrearaest P= sk4 Se SE I, man SS he ad a a Pea EN ee Ee a SONS EE SRST as Bar aan > a) Sea one ee maa yom ape eed hy he TES Pet ST RESETS lan Hy iRo Nee = v3 WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? They showed no record of Adam and Eve, beings created perfect and fallen by sin to a lower plane. On the contrary, they pictured a slow, painful struggle upward, a “survival of the fittest” —progress achieved by bitter epochs of selection but resulting always in something better. If their records were true; if there had been no fall through Adam, then what became of the frightful wrath of the Creator and the appeasing atonement of the Son The process of disillusionment was bewilder- ing. Millions of earnest, sincere people were shaken, and knew not what to believe. ‘They echoed the protest of the historian Froude, who said: “If medicine had been regulated three hun- dred years ago by Act of Parliament; if there had been Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and every practitioner had been compelled under pains and penalties to compound his drugs by the prescriptions of Henry the Eighth’s phy- sician, Doctor Butts, it is easy to conjecture in what state of health the people of this country would at present be found.” Medicine has constantly progressed by re- jecting the old truth for the new; science rejects and moves forward; business refuses to regard precedent as binding or even, in many instances, instructive. To many modern-minded folk, ac- 146vaeer ian Sara WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? ne ay. —< customed to almost daily revisions of their thinking in every other department of life, it seemed that religion alone was unprogressive, still clinging stubbornly to the “faith once de- livered to the saints.” From this old fixed faith their progressive intelligence turned away, and great groups of them assumed that there was nothing to be set up in its place. So it happened that religion, which if it be true should be as natural a part of human experience as eating or talking or moving, dropped out of the daily thinking of many upright and kindly people. Josh Billings years ago uttered the warning that the man who can not talk with you five minutes without speaking about his soul “will bear the closest kind of watching.” Most of us share that prejudice. We shy off from notoriously religious folk, and are unspokenly suspicious of those who have no redeeming vices. If a newspaper sends us a questionnaire asking, “Do you believe in God?” we write a weak “yes” in lead pencil and mail it back anon- ymously. But men may live for years together in business or social relationships without dis- covering the slightest evidence of each other’s religious views. Everything else, including subjects that once were kept behind the veil, we discuss with quite 147 AAS I See Seer — my Rn Sama se — > a. oor es a am eT ~ ere Seton St SS ienera Ce mand SS ps SO OR ee a ae i ae rh bp a See eta [Ah ti re NS ml et ele OPE NE eS a a a ho ON i Pa II Sr me} a een at en ea oer, — ee as ed ane i a |Sa er ae mm rt rae eS WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? appalling frankness. We chatter about the theater for hours, but about the eternal drama, or tragedy, of man’s creation, preservation and ultimate fate, never a word. We see our friends off for California and follow them enviously in our imaginations and conversations; we see our friends off on the Great Journey and come away with bent heads and sealed lips, not quite daring to say boldly, “I believe.” It may almost be said that to talk about religion is no longer good form. ‘That snobbish lady, Convention, whose nod is stronger than a constitutional amendment, has pronounced the subject old-fashioned. Even some preachers go about as if their success depended on having men forget that they are preachers. They organize clubs, attend ball games, and are good fellows generally, but their entrance into a group of men brings no consciousness that a prophet has entered, in whom are the words of eternal life. A great conspiracy of silence! Yet secretly, furtively, deep down, there is hardly a thinking man who does not cling to some remnant of belief; even an Ingersoll at his brother’s grave cries out: ‘From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word: but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” 148WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? In these pages it is our purpose to take relig- ion out of the hush-hush category. We contend that the present situation is cowardly and ab- surd. Ejther faith is something or it is nothing. If it be nothing; if, because of the newer revelations of science, there be left no foundation for belief which an intelligent man can accept and build on, then the quicker we admit that fact and have done with it the greater our self-re- spect. If we are only animals, created out of the dust tor no purpose and doomed to destruction, let us say so frankly, dismiss hope from our thoughts, and go forward as courageously as we can. “We are but fellow travellers Along life’s dusty way; If any man can play the pipes, In God’s name, let him play.” If, however, there be a real solid basis, how- ever simple, for religious faith, then we add greatly to our own courage and that of our comrades if we examine it, accept it, and treat it as a frank and normal part of human expe- rience. The middle ground of half-ashamed silence is unworthy. As long as we occupy it we are like locomotives on dead center, without movement of our own and useless as movers of others. 149 = oS i ~s9" 5-6 nn eae ~~ sonre Aare ~~ ET) A gen QE Se STS SBT if RN hn ye (SS a Ra ae ame oS ms ato Y an re Se ae —T eee eee oS eae Sr a ~ 2 oes 7 . en err es oa Nee Spy Pas FINES at te >a a ee arse crt as lee es — ad ees . oe = eae — ted en pe: a Foe moe -~le ee ea os oe ee head WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? Theology begins with creeds, and most of the creeds are old and were written by men whose knowledge of the world was very limited. Any high-school boy could pass a better examination in geography than St. Augustine; even a college sophomore knows more than the popes of a century ago. Spiritually these ancients were giants who towered high and believed, at least, that they talked with God. But in this present chapter we dismiss both them and their creeds; we are not going to be guided to Heaven by men who supposed that the earth was flat. Nor will we submit to theology’s demand that we start by a great act of faith. Theology always starts that way. “I believe in God, the Father AI- mighty,” it says, and insists that all men repeat this tremendous assumption. We will not be commanded. It is not our business habit to begin our thinking with what is farthest off and most difficult to prove. We start with what we know. That is the way business is built up. It is the way scientific knowledge grows. If engineers were given the task of surveying a small inland lake, they would either drag their chains along the shore or wait until the water was frozen and measure the margin on the ice, setting up their compass at each angle and mak- 150WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? ing an accurate plat. But if the job were much bigger, say a survey of Chesapeake Bay, for ex- ample, a different method would have to be pur- sued. In such a case they would select a level stretch of shore for a base line, and the distance between the two terminal points would be meas- ured again and again to secure the greatest pos- sible accuracy. From each end of that base a line would be sighted to a conspicuous point on the opposite shore, and the angles carefully measured. With one side and two angles known, the other angle and the other two sides of the triangle could be determined by mathematics. There then would be three base lines, two of them extending across the bay, and these could be used for other meas- urements. It might be that the whole of Chesa- peake Bay could be thus surveyed and only one base line actually measured with the chain. But that line would be one that could actually be walked over and its length determined to a microscopic fraction of an inch. Any error in that first measurement would repeat itself and perhaps multiply itself in all the subsequent computations. The base line must be at this end. By a similar process astronomers measure the distance to the stars. At six o’clock in the evening observation may be taken upon the 151 one ss a a Sey IE pt Et el ee Sotebtts Ss 5 os tapes Sy ee en Se = ~~ os See as ps Twat Ned a ba, Be ta an tected ee i Hi ; eer et ee ws apschesaaes — — a Rn a ne te Cd hen Ag in eerretee a a A in wan a ett te oe BS Tae C=as e ee Feeswele: ake = 1, ra et aR pe ie err res tye | a a or ms ar oars aha VN. a WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? moon, or one of the planets in the solar system. At six o’clock in the morning the earth will have turned half-way around, and the observer may take a second observation with two angles and a base line of eight thousand miles, being the diameter of the earth. In six months the earth will have traveled half-way around its orbit, giving a base line of one hundred and eighty-six million miles, and with that very respectable distances may be computed. But no astronomer begins by assuming the distance from the North Star to the Pleiades and endeavoring therefrom to compute the earth’s diameter or its distance from the moon. He begins with what can be measured and weighed and known. Theology begins with God, the unknowable; science begins at this end. Curiously enough Jesus began at this end also. As Harry Emerson Fosdick has pointed out in a recent book, it was not the teaching of Jesus about God which got Him into trouble with the authorities. The Pharisees believed in God devoutly. He might have gone on forever saying that God is loving, that He sends rain on the just and on the unjust, and so forth, without exciting the least opposition. It was-His_teach- ing about man that stirred up the vested inter- ests. When He said that the prodigal son was entitled to as much of the fatted calf as the home- 152WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? staying, holier-than-thou brother; when He held up a Samaritan as being more truly religious than a priest; when He said that harlots and publicans would go into the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of the self-seeking, greedy and oppressive (but very pious) Pharisees—these were the spee¢hes for which they crucified Him. And His teaching was this: If you love your brother you love God. If you say you love God and hate your brother you are a liar. In other words, the way to know God is not to think too much about Him, certainly not to argue about Him, but to know and love your brother. If you give anybody a cup of cold water you are giving it to God. If you forgive your enemies you are acting like God. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, you can get some idea of the way in which God, who is not evil nor limited by human weakness, is going to give good gifts to you. “If you would see his monument,” says the epitaph of the great architect, Sir Christopher Wren, in the wall of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “look about you.” So Jesus said: “Ifyou would see God look about you. He_is.in/ your brother, your sister, your parents, your business associ- ates.’ The creed of Jesus, if He had a creed, began at this end. Beginning then: at this end, what is the 153 a ey sy ey ee at Sinead pond nape — Sy at ee ae ee SS ~~ Ne Sty en. rere oes es BS ~~ Fs Ss = ae ae Sgr ear eE ES peels Ry Aap R nnn’ oa ay re 4 i i i amen Se er CA aaa Se gegen ew” ee + meAO mee ; eens ee a ee Sa ote BS See TS Rese ae ee ASTI WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? simplest, most certain thing that we can write down? It is this: I. I believe in myself. Some philosophers have not accepted even that. They have been full of tortuous subtleties to prove that no man really knows whether he is or isn’t; that all outward things exist merely as mental images, and that you and I are only figments of our own imaginations. In this book we consign such philosophers—not the real ones, but the imitations—to the ash ean. For five thousand years, more or less, they have been sitting in tight rooms, consuming their own carbon dioxide, and the net result of it all, so far as the average man is concerned, is nothing but haze and-confusion. { know that Iam. The most important dis- covery I ever made was that when I got my toe into my mouth it was not quite the same as when I got a corner of the blanket of my crib into my mouth. I discovered that my toe was the limit, in that direction, of the thing I was beginning to think of as me. When I got my toe into my mouth, my mouth gave a feeling of satisfaction and so did the toe. With the blanket it was different. There was a great division in the universe; there was Me, and the things outside Me. A little later I made a second discovery. If I 154WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? cried hard enough my mother would come to me, but the moon and the ceiling would not. So there was another division in the universe: the things I could influence by crying for them, and the things that would not be moved by my tears. In other words, the things ike me—my mother, my father, my sisters and brothers, and other folks—and the things unlike me—walls, ceil- ings, suns, moons, trees. To both those kinds of things I sustained certain relations, as I very arly learned; for example, it made a difference whether I fell out of bed into my mother’s arms or whether I fell out on to the floor. There were three ways in which I assured myself of myself. The first was my knowledge that when a pin stuck into me I was much less happy than when I had had my dinner and was almost asleep. ‘That is to say, I knew the differ- ence between pleasure and pain; I could feel. The next was when I knew what I wanted and tried to get it in the only way I had mastered, by crying for it. That is to say, I had the power of will. Last of all, I began to think. I have kept at all three of these processes more or less ever since. And no philosopher can talk me out of the first article of my creed. I know that I am. 2. Iknow that I am intelligent. This is the second article. I can plan as well as think. I can lay out a 155 Ta oye een eh ee To cI Cres ee) Eee Pe a re ie vasa at Ages EN SO EE RACES Fane TS =! ss ) . Sg ES _ oa A OATES ery Fs) FI he i i 7 if i th Eeena ee eee oe Te ~ re rae as, WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? program covering a week, a month, a year, five years, and go through with it, foreseeing difficul- ties and making provision for the unexpected. Given a certain result, I can reason back to the causes; and vice versa, being provided with the elements of a problem, I can formulate them into an answer. I know that my intelligence (and by me I mean; of course, mankind) is the highest and most powerful thing in the naturab-universe. Nature is subject to it, for I can harness the winds and the water-falls, remove mountains and cause rivers to turn back on their courses. All animals are subject to it, for I can outthink and outplan them. They have a wide range of emotions; they fear, hate, love, sorrow, perhaps they dream. But I alone stand erect, looking back as well as forward, capitalizing experience, predicating the future on my memory of the past, seeing for myself, in imagination, a more favorable set of circumstances and proceeding by my own will to make my dreams come true. I have intelligence. 3. ‘Thus far there is nothing in my creed which even the most critical modern man would not accept. A bank president would okeh it; a chartered accountant would certify it; an income tax collector would, perhaps re- 156WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? luctantly, say that it is all right. Comes now the only step which requires imagination. Comes now an act of faith. Because I have intelligence, there must be Intelligence behind the universe. Let us venture to repeat that. Because I have intelligence there must be Intelligence behind the universe. Why? Because otherwise the universe has created some- thing greater than itself, for it has created me; and the assumption that the lesser can produce the greater, that something can come out of nothing, does violence to my common sense. I ‘an not conceive or accept.it. In other words, because I am, I believe God is. It has been said that no astronomer can be an atheist; that no man who spends his nights looking through a telescope, who sees the mar- velous balance and rhythm of the planets and the stars, who learns that even the comets, those seemingly lawless and irresponsible members of the firmament, perform according to a schedule so that their reappearances can be predicted ac- curately years in advance; that no man who delves into the mysteries of this ordered and law- abiding universe can convince himself that its performance is merely a matter of chance. The deeper his researches the more profound his faith! 157 x4 Pn ~e oosan easel Spi a py nee nee a oe ent oe poe APR ot A RN TL me eee a eye a ag ER es —_— i in = En eee one od re } > J Gi a i i ~ oer 5 pees > he Pee rs peated a Se ae ed a —pee a Fe oar and peers nt = i eT ae etal on ob oe ~ ar “_ a Se oe pale eh pare gs FA va at ee ee parma aes ay WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? There was a gentleman named Paley whose name has come down to us in connection with a famous argument about a watch. Sum- marized rather freely, the good Doctor’s argu- ment was something like this: “In crossing a heath one day I strike my toe against a watch. I pick it up and note that it consists of a compli- cated arrangement of wheels, springs, jewels, and balances, all neatly combined in a case and covered with a crystal. On closer examination I discover that every tiny piece of its intricate mechanism is performing according to a definite schedule, and each part is so related to the others that the hands are moved about the dial accord- ing to a dependable and unvarying routine. Having never seen a watch made, I conclude that this watch had no maker; that out of the bowels of the earth came iron and gold, and the elements of glass; that they refined themselves, fashioned themselves into springs and wheels and crystal, assembled themselves into this case, wound themselves up and started to tick. I show you the watch and tell you my story,” said Paley, “and you tell me Iama fool. You say that my story violates your reason; that the existence of the watch is positive evidence of the pre-existence of a watch-maker. “And yet,” he continues, after many pages— 158WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? and we are still paraphrasing freely “and yet I show you a far more tremendous mechanism, a watch whose parts are planets and stars, sus- pended in limitless space, moving in unvarying orbits, each perfectly adjusted to all the others and so cunningly contrived that tides are made to rise and fall, seasons to rotate, crops to appear in summer, and snow to cover the earth in win- ter as a preparation for further crops—I show you all this, and you say: ‘It is a mystery be- yond our understanding. It must have hap- pened. There is no evidence of an Intelligence; no proof of a Plan.” Paley’s watch is not cited so frequently as it used to be. The statement that “no astronomer ‘an be an atheist” is an argument and not a proof, yet I find it convincing in those months which I spend in the country where one can look up and see the stars. In the city where I make my own stars by touching a button, where I control heat and cold by the turn of a valve and order my existence by the touch of a toe on the throttle of a car or a scratch on the bottom of a check—in the city and the winter the stars do not speak so loudly. I fall back then upon my own self-knowl- edge. Isay: Since no one can prove either that there is a God or that there is not, each one of us 159 ere eT ee Ne sas 4 i : ee ee ne int cht tT: Rw te ae bn Se SO ee a te be at SESE: ornare - soere' mk ae A, I re ae = Sn cry es eae os ee Se a ee Co eS os Ses ded = ora" ey ner ones me rE wt. Sn " Cre Cn in ne ae EN sd a ae ee Say gop a ae a i a IG at tema hh bors per >. piper ae es = amet ee eo ee: PZeS a a ~ ret v7 Bsn age Soe aay in, myname Seer ee eS WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? utterly cast aside any thought of our own pleas- ure in our consuming desire for our daughters and sons; we even, under splendid need, “lay down our lives for our friends.” This is the kind of people we are when we are at our best. Surely, God is no worse. With such a God there must, it seems to me, be some sort of life beyond the grave. I believe this, not beeause*I particularly crave it; some- times, indeed, when I am thoroughly tired out, it seems as if an eternity of rest would be more desirable than an eternity of life: But when I am at the top of my game, then it is that I have the craving to go on and so do you. So does everybody. And to my way of thinking im- mortality of some sort is a necessary complement to the existence and nature of God. For why was the universe set going in the first place? ‘To what end is all the struggle and suffering and self-sacrifice? ‘To produce a nobler race, a finer character? And for what? To blot it all out in the end? Where is the justice in such a plan? Would you, if you were God, create in man the conviction that life is signifi- cant, that there is an eternal difference between right and wrong, that love and self-sacrifice and devotion and loyalty are important—would you make them feel all this, and act in accordance 162WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? with it, often to their own hurt, and then laugh at them in the end? You woulf not. I can not picture Heaven..|My former ideas are all unsatisfying, and I have no new ideas ta fill their place. I have ceased to try to picture it. But there must be some place hereafter where life goes on, where injustices are righted and inequalities evened up, where those who have been thwarted and disappointed and cheated are given a fairer field and a better chance. This world as we know it can not be the whole answer, for it does not square with intelligence. And Intelligence is God. The fact that I can not construct in my imagination a hereafter which is anything less than eternal boredom does not worry me a par- ticle. Every day I am made to realize anew that what I call my mind is a very elementary organ, and that already science has leaped into mys- teries which are completely beyond its grasp. I turn the knob of my radio, and music comes to me out of the air. I do not understand it; I never shall. I read in the paper a speech by a man named Kinstein who says that there is no such thing as time or space. It merely makes my poor brain stagger, yet I know that to abler brains than mine it means something, though even they admit that they have only begun to begin to 163 Sa pT he i Ae K i | Pes] i | 1 Hi (a i H i i i y ie i + a ee Pat wd pat maine SS ae a ad Pa Sra ea cee eet OPO Ne yo ea “a noe aaa me EN = Le PTE wan ~~" Se ah teal a aS ate mi asad ———- Ss Sy A cee aS) ie aaWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? understand. I comfort myself with the remark of William James, who said: “T firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience ex- tant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries. ‘They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things.” That makes sound sense to me. A God with imagination enough to create oceans, and solar systems and sexes, and seasons and poets, and mountains and mothers and martyrs—such a God can be trusted to make the hereafter just and satisfying and full of interest. I think about it very little, but I shed few tears at funerals. I leave it all to Him. This seems to me a minimum creed, a few stones laid solid on which a man may rest his feet. It leaves much to be explained. A great scientist remarked that whatever one may believe about the future of God, no man of feeling can 164WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? forgive His past; by which he meant the bloody path of suffering which we call “evolution.” Why should a loving God have chosen such a cruel process by which to bring creation up to higher levels? Why the heartless struggle for existence; the slaughter of millions for the sur- vival of one? Why does all life prey upon itself, the larger devouring the lesser, and being de- voured in turn? Why suffering? Why pain? Why the blasting of hopes, the striking down of righteousness by ill health and trials undeserved ? Why do the wicked flourish like the green bay tree? What substantial basis is there for the faith of a man “Who trusts that God is love indeed, And love creation’s final law; Though nature, red in tooth and claw, With ravin shrieks against the creed.” Where in all the horrible destructiveness of nature does one look for evidence of design and proof of love? To these questions my simple creed gives no clear answer. Nor does it deal at all with those theological doctrines around which most of the etreat battles of Christian history have been waged. In a later chapter we shall have some- thing to say about Jesus, and the church, and 165 pei [iE ESEGEE PEDO Pe ed J Sa go ak oe es ss . Fad "Ein ie! a es oe er ae ee eet ree oe apa ee: ere aw | a ee Fo cae ae area Re .. a ee ee) — nae mt wots eo = _ 6 oS eee aa “4 ae ee La ee an Soe ae yee ee I re v ee —— ee _ ae NE A ea Sf ole, yar miei Ne re eb g ST a barat A Pee VA os rena WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? of the forms in which the faith of the future may conteivably express itself. But for the present we rest upon these few fundamentals: We believe.in ourselves. We know that we are intel- ligent, therefore we believe that there is Intelli- gence behind the universe, for to assume that the universe could produce something greater than itself does violence to our common sense. We believe that this Intelligence is good, be- cause we ourselves are good. We know that it plans because we plan; we are content to trust in its planning and to assume that somehow, behind the seeming cruelties and inconsistencies, there is a purpose to which all things are clear. Two things are worth saying in conclusion. The first is that the old-time “conflict between science and religion” is dead. As a matter of fact, there never was any conflict between science and religion, only between science and theology. Theology is to religion what botany is to flowers. One may love roses and know nothing of botany; one may have faith and know nothing of creeds. Modern religion is scientifi¢in its attitude of eager searching, in its prayer: “Oh, God, give us more and more*truthsfor we know that Thy revelation of Thyself was not com- pleted and closed in the distant past but con- tinues and will always continue.” And modern 166WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? science is religious in its frank confession that beyond its farthest reaches there is the vast Unknowable, and its humble confession that each day’s knowledge needs revising in the light of each new sun. “How little we know about the ultimate nature of things is strikingly shown by the changes in our conceptions which have come within the past thirty years,” said that great physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, in Collier’s Weekly some months ago. “When I started my graduate work in 1893 we were very sure that the physical foundations of the world were built with some seventy unchangeable, indestructible elements. “Also we made a sharp distinction between matter-physics and ether-physics. We believed in the conservation of energy, the conservation of mass, and the conservation of momentum, and we knew exactly how, with the aid of these principles, the universe managed to keep going. But we are much less certain about this now than we were then. “In 1895 the X-ray came in as an absolutely new phenomenon, and then came radio-activity, which has shown us that ‘the elements’ are not at all ultimate things, that atoms are continually undergoing change, and are not indestructible. It appears now that the electro-magnetic laws no longer hold in the interaction of electrons within atoms. Einstein has concluded that mass 167 meters = ae iin F eo 4 es 8 Ree a SS ete et eer = —— a ee ae Oar) ae SS a a ae — Sens ee ee te ro a. Cis ne nae a ip Span vl ate aoenreeetite yee oy a Me eee —= py ae AWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? and energy are interchangeable terms and we all now agree that the former distinctions between material, electrical and ethereal phenomena must be discarded. . . . “We firmly believed for many years that the sun was merely a white-hot body gradually cool- ing off. Now we know that if it were merely that it would have cooled off long ago, and we are searching for the source of its continuous supply of heat and are inclined to the belief that it is due to some form of sub-atomic change. Our discoveries in this realm are as revolutionary as were those of Copernicus but no one thinks of them as anti-religious. “The impossibility of real science and real religion ever conflicting becomes evident when one examines the purpose of science and the pur- pose of religion. ‘The purpose of science is to develop without prejudice or preconception of any kind a knowledge of the facts, the laws and the processes of nature. The even more im- portant task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. “Many of our great scientists have actually been men of profound religious convictions and life. Lord Kelvin’s estimate of the age of the earth at around a hundred million years did not seem to him or to the church to be in conflict with the first chapters of Genesis. He said: “ “I believe that the more thoroughly science 1s studied the further does it take us from any- thing comparable to atheism.’ And again: ‘If 168WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the founda- tion of all religion. You will find it not antagonistic but helpful to religion.’ “Take other great scientific leaders—Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk- Maxwell, Louis Pasteur, All these men were not only religious men but they were also faithful members of their communions. For the most important thing in the world is a belief in moral and spiritual values—a belief that there is a significance and a meaning to existence—a belief that we are going somewhere! These men could scarcely have been so great had they been lacking in this belief. “And it is because of this belief that men are willing to work and to die for causes. Men and women prefer to die rather than to live in the consciousness of having played the coward, of having failed to play their part worthily in the ereat scheme of things. It is true that not all men are like that, but I am optimist enough to think that most men are. Why? Simply be- ‘azuse most men believe that there is a world scheme, that they are a part of it, that their deaths are going to contribute to its develop- ment; in short, because most men believe in God.” When the greatest minds in modern science hold such belief, how silly it is for any man to fear that his intelligence is belittled by the act of 169 om ee a genre er ee rr SSS SN, S aa —S - nanpednd-s-ae pe Set al a ne Se St ae es ~y Ses ys rs Se hs SS Se eet a SS ee th et —— OSES Pa po Al Rae = aan ries Ne asta te. ee ERT ne ea a ne et 6 a ee eT vt Se eS ees es at aWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? faith. Not big minds but little minds are cynical. Those who think that science has destroyed reli- gion get their science from the Sunday supplements. The great scientists exercise their souls by wonder, fill their spiritual lungs with the atmosphere of awe, and make their new dis- coveries on their knees. This is the first thing worth remembering. And the second is akin to it, and is this: the ablest men in all walks of modern life are men of faith. Most of them have much more faith than they themselves realize. Ask them if they are religious, and they may hesitate to answer yes. Seek to talk to them about religion, and they may draw into their shells. They think that they have no creed, yet hardly one of them would deny the simple, common-sense argument set down in this chapter. And it is a creed; it is religious. They are great human beings, these modern business men. So determinéd™to~stand straight that they lean over backward; so eager to state no more than the truth that they often stop at much less. There was one of their sort in the life of Jesus, a captain in the Roman army, a successful administrator and a rich man. He sent to Jesus and asked for the healing of his servant. The disciples and other Jewish friends 170WHAT FEW SIMPLE THINGS? in Capernaum carried the message apologet- ically. ‘They said in effect: “This man is a pagan, Lord. He is a kind and generous man, a contributor to our churches and we wish you would do something for him if you can. But, of course, he is lacking in faith.” That was the man’s own estimate of himself, as well. He would have called himself a good citizen, a supporter of all worthy causes, but reli- gious? No. Yet of that man Jesus said: “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel.” The men who are building great businesses, who are laying large plans which they know can not be fulfilled in their own lifetimes, who are planting this year the seeds that will not ripen for a generation, who are giving freely of them- selves for every helpful project—these are the men who sometimes say: “Of course, I am not religious”; who maybe feel uncomfortable if religion is brought into the talk. Yet their whole lives are tremendous experiments in faith, and deep down inside them are voices that will not be stilled. It was men like them, and not priests or professional philanthropists, whose compan- ionship Jesus chose. It was to one of them that He remarked: “I have found nowhere such faith.” The plea of this book is for a frank recogni- 171 Se eis ta tae nae been i ‘ Tah = pt Fiat pl PO Pe © = Fp la ey Se Smt WH VEEES \ aia Se Sree ae aes pea PONALESNO eo Ee a ra Coa ear ne os a Ses ohhWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? tion of the truth that the faith which begets great achievement and the faith which worships are both of the same spirit; that religion is as natural Fa Pw ras and normal a part of human experience as birth and growth and hope and love. We say it is time to take religion out of the hush-hush class; to recognize frankly and normally that every worth-while enterprise is an act of faith, that “Phere is no unbelief ; Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod And waits to see it push away the clod, He trusts in God.”et 3 rs eae ee SSeS herent ~< CHAPTER V oe ~~ es THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS Se ~~ Sond oe Two literary productions have recently ap- peared in which preachers have leading parts. One is Abie’s Irish Rose, a drama condemned by the critics but supported more liberally by the public than any play ever produced. The other is Elmer Gantry, a novel by Sinclair Lewis, condemned by the critics and by a large majority of readers yet selling more copies than any novel of the year. In the play a young man, who is a Jew, and a girl, who is an Irish Catholic, are married by a Methodist preacher. The preacher does not ap- pear on the stage, but a Jewish rabbi and a Catholic priest are shown; and these men, being neither ultra-holy nor blessed with supernatural ability, are sensible men, each loyal to his own faith and tolerant of the faith of others, each interested in helping to restrain bigotry and in making life better for everybody. The book presents as its principal character 173 I i 2-5: papery een ae tet a renee Se ia manne! - a: i 14 ! F i ? ; ; eet ARAN eee a be a 3 see ee — - Sa ar eae Ne by ne a ere ees game ee Tie od z= Tey, oooh eds Co Cece eaesos Ss A Ne a ce aes —) WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? a loud-mouthed, ignorant exhorter, drunken, loose in his relations with women, adept in the practise of church polities, vulgar and insincere. Borne on the high wave of his own physical vitality, and propelled by his own strong lungs, he rises triumphant over moral disasters that would have sunk other men, and passes out of our sight as the popular pastor of a big city church. This book, advertised in advance by the publishers as ‘Lewis’ great preacher novel,” in- vites the inference that Rev. Elmer Gantry is a representative pastor, typical of the thousands of clergymen who are the responsible leaders of American church life to-day. It happens that I know a good deal about ministers. ‘They came to my boyhood home in considerable numbers. Perhaps I have seen more than my share of..the seamy_ side of ministerial life. Preachers who were_ having trouble with their churches camé“to consult my father. Preachers out of a job came to ask his help—and there are few men more forlorn than a preacher out of a job. Often these men stayed for meals with us and talked over their troubles at the table. WNone of them was a great man. Many of them reminded me of the old saying of Governor Ford of Illinois, who remarked that while nearly all the early preachers of that state 174THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS were without higher education, they, neverthe- less, ignorant as they were, had no difficulty in finding congregations still more ignorant. As one of his official duties my father was for many years chairman of a body that had to do with ministerial standing. It was his duty to investigate irregularities of ordination, fraud- ulent certificates of licensure, and the records of men who had split churches in one denomination and were trying to slip across the line into the ranks of another. Cases of ministerial immoral- ity came before him, and more than once he had the sad task of unfrocking a bad preacher. I heard him one day address a group of young men who were just being commissioned for the ministry. He said in effect: “By what this council is about to do to you it is vastly increasing your power for harm. Yesterday, as laymen, you might have com- mitted any possible sin and been sent to jail for it, and not much attention would have been paid to you. But to-morrow any one of you can get his name on to the front pages of every paper in the United States. Not many of you have ability or piety enough to achieve high distine- tion, or to bring the church great honor, but the least conspicuous of you for ability can bring the whole church into shame.” 175 pa ae re ae ea Nene ne aw day Reb ery i a HG 1 at | ih 1 a Pa Bl mat} a | iG a ay hy ; PASS et rare re ie —— - NR 5 pa Ri EAS ASL EEE EES Ser RRS ee hs ~ ae soe ee pmeres Peery nd Ne — — pn a a marian iat are more than themselves. I knew quite intimately the details of one 176THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS ministerial budget and of how many young peo- ple it sent through college, and how many destitute families it held together, and how many thousands—literally thousands—of times it gave help in critical hours of human distress. I once thumbed through the check-book of a preacher’s wife, noting from the stubs where her little in- come had gone. No one could have finished it dry eyed. The first important magazine assignment ever given to me was to write a series of articles exposing Billy Sunday. I was young and full of crusader enthusiasm. It was in the days when a man could most easily make a magazine rep- utation by muck-raking, and I started out with the full intention of becoming a national figure overnight. The editor who commissioned me was aman of sincere purpose. He believed thor- oughly that Billy Sunday was out only for the money and that the quicker he was exposed the less harm he would do to the church. Our plan was to make an intensive study of three towns: one where he had been three years previously, one where he had been two years previously, and one where his visit was just a year old. We expected to find that his converts had all back- slidden, that the churches were worse off than before he came, and that there wasno permanent V77 ere ii i d ye a , Sees oe Se eo ee ees SS Sa tree aN ee ey cin tess eT ISOALESE Fa a > = a —“~s sara STE wooo TAT EIN PET&«, a b): is ty 125 R i 7 ae re hea ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? record of his campaign except the sore spot in the town’s pocketbook. In this spirit I set out. And what I discovered amazed me. In each town, two of which were cities of between thirty and forty thousand people and the third was a country village, I took the list of his converts and checked it up against the church membership rolls. I found, of course, that many converts had slipped away, but in every church a large pro- portion of the strongest members were men who had come in under his influence. I talked to the merchants, and they told me that during the meetings and afterward people walked up to the counter and paid bills which were so old that they had long since been written off the books. The president of the chamber of commerce, in the town Billy had visited three years before me, summed up the general opinion. “I am not a member of any church,” he said. “I never attend. But I'll tell you one thing. If it was proposed now to bring Billy Sunday to this town, and if we knew as much about the results of his work in advance as we know now, and if the churches wouldn’t raise the necessary funds to bring him, I could raise the money in half a day from men who never go to church. He took eleven thousand dollars out of here, but 178srs a THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS a a circus comes here and takes out that amount in one day and leaves nothing. He left a different moral atmosphere.” Rather apologetically I went back to the edi- tor and told him that, while there were lots of things in Billy’s work to criticize ADORE DD pw dn mS ES ~~~ and we did criticize them—we should have to write.a.very different series of articles than we had intended. I believe that a similar investigation into the work of nine preachers out of ten, anywhere in the United States, would yield similar results. It would show instances of pettiness and failure, to be sure, but it would reveal an amount of self- sacrifice and kindliness and sincere struggle to be worthy such as no one can possibly imagine HAE EL EE EES: Se ae Oo ae Bar SOS a ~~ a eos Cae nt es St ae EEE DOT IAL ,— aa Blted _ SIS ar eS hte ren oeSSS IIS ee ee ieee ae Wigiwieee tae WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? That God should summarily wind it up when it has solved none of its problems, achieved no conceivable objective, would be a sad confession either that He had no definite purpose in begin- ning it or that the purpose has failed completely. The millennium is a long way off. Most Christians now believe that. But the attitude of the first Christians toward business reflected itself down through the ages and still influences the point of view of many sermons. Business is a necessary function, the sermons grudgingly admit; the race must be fed and clothed and housed. But the processes of busi- ness are selfish and the only objective money gain. What men do in their factories and offices during the week is necessarily compromising. On Sunday they must go to church to be spir- itually cleansed and disinfected in-order that they may go back again into the germ-laden air of their work. Was this the attitude of.Jesus? Not as I understand it. He drewno line between service and religious service. 'To-Him all honest work was worship, all days Sabbaths, and all houses temples. He spent far more time in market- places than in synagogues. He picked His disciples from the ranks of business. He said to the woman of Samaria? ““It makes no differ- 186THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS ence whether you worship God in the temple or in your sacred mountain, or in either place. God is a spirit to be worshiped in the spirit and daily expression of your life.” Business, in His eyes, was the machinery which God had set up for carrying on the unfinished task of creation. He denounced greed and broke up the unholy traffie between corrupt business and a corrupt church by hurling the money changers out of the tem- ple, but He made it perfectly clear that a man’s first obligation is to provide for his own and for those less fortunate than himself, and that this is 2 holy work. The salvation of the modern.world depends upon the mutual understanding, and reaction upon each other, of business and the church. Unless business.discovers and holds steadily be- fore its eyes a spiritual ideal, unless it thinks more and more in terms of human service, then the net result of its increasing efficiency and profits will be only increasing envy, covetousness and discontent. And the church, unless it learns some of the lessons that business has been forced to learn in the keenly competitive conditions under which it must exist, will not measure up to its new opportunities. What are some of the lessons which the church could learn from-business? With con- 187 we ox eas ve ae = Dad hn A. SER ST PD aS be hd a) ae LE ELE EES Paes ~~ Fat - te es Sa ae oa ee ae ; t ha re ay oe ea Pe iy Nt te ame oo Po an eea ers pre ae et eat a ~~ ff WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? siderable diffidence, because I am well aware of the dangers of the subject, yet with assurance also. for these thoughts were not born yesterday, I present five concrete suggestions. 1. In one important respect the church can learn honesty from business. Among my friends are members of the Board of Directors of the largest business of its kind in the world. When they came into control of that concern it had on its balance sheet tremendous inventories of raw materials which were carried at cost, though the current market was much lower; it had a number of plants built to man- ufacture products that had proved unprofitable or unsuitable for the line. It had certain out- standing models which never ought to have been put on the market but yet represented an invest- ment of millions. In the first year of its new management that great company wrote off from its books more than thirty-eight million dollars. The result was very small earnings for that year and no dividends for the stockholders. I asked one of the directors why it had been decided to absorb the whole loss in a single year; wouldn't it have been wiser perhaps to spread the write- off over a longer period? His answer was an emphatic, “No. We were determined to cut to the bone,” he said. 188THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS “We wanted to get all the bad news as fast as we could and clear away everything about which there could be any possible doubt. Then we knew that what was left was solid, and on that we could begin to build.” That is the habit of sound business. It is not the habit of the church. The statistics which are issued by the churches are not sincere statistics; they do not give an accurate picture. There is hardly a church membership roll anywhere that does not carry as active members a large per- centage of people who are no longer active. Some have ceased to attend; some have moved away; some have been lost from sight entirely. Yet their names continue to be carried and go to swell the misleading totals which give the annual impression that the church is gaining, or at least holding its own, when one has only to drop into a Sunday morning service to learn the contrary. I have said that in my own business we are called upon frequently to study the sales prob- lems of a manufacturer. We conduct what we call market surveys, and our first objective in such a survey is to uncover grief. We ask first: “What is the matter with this product? Why do not more people buy it? Where are the peo- ple who used to buy it and no longer do? What 189 ali ai tA Px] i i ay ith ae ee Seema Sa A a A oe ee a a ota opener ee eS aa ~ pa Pe I Sea sr a a ~ a CMRI Vee ee em ag Py fy A ee Sere ne ae > Ie Pe va ear yk a at * ee — eta RS 74 Neee Oe ae ee eee — es oe ws te arte er reo Ne ee a ae NT aT re ee, epee en Pia rt wal See — dno, ome na mn ae! ie SS oh . ee WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? is their complaint? Why did they switch to something else? What can the manufacturer do, if anything, to win them back? Is the product perhaps unsuitable to the present market? Have conditions changed since it was first marketed, and has it failed to keep pace with the change? Should it be altered? Should it perhaps be withdrawn altogether and something different substituted in its place?” The manufacturer knows without any help from us the strong points of his position. He asks us to find his troubles and propose a rem- edy. And when, after such a study, we come back to him with criticisms, complaints, signs of failure on the part of his organization, indica- tions that he has been too complacent while his competition has been more aggressive, we pre- sent the report with no sense of embarrassment. It may not make good reading, but there is no suspicion in the mind of the manufacturer that we are unfriendly. No cry is raised that we are impious, that we are attacking the sacred citadels of business. Has there ever been on the part of the church a thoroughgoing effort at a similar survey? ‘The church itself could hardly make it, for people hesitate to hurt feelings; they like to tell a pastor what he likes to hear. But an organization 190THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS trained in survey work could, and the results would be illuminating even though they were confined to only half a dozen communities. “What does every man in this town think of the church? Why is he not availing himself of its service? Why does he feel no call to contribute to it? In what way could the service of the church be modified so that it would appeal to him?” Such a study would bring out much that would be unpleasant reading. It would result in a considerable elimination of names from the membership roll; it would “cut to the bone.” But when it was finished the church, too, would know its problems and on what exactly it had to build. The famous Doctor Jameson, when he was about to set forth on his hazardous and, as it proved, unsuccessful raid, received a telegram from Cecil Rhodes. It said simply: “Read Luke 14:31.” Calling for a Bible, Doctor Jameson turned to the passage and found these words: ‘Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that com- eth against him with twenty thousand?” A_ businesslike injunction, that verse, a sturdy insistence on facing the hard facts, on getting all 191 ole Ser — men if ay a rhe iy ie i a of | ae rs Earn nd Mtn te oat md ROT IAM TAS rene SSeS a 4 a ent ee Se ee = an oo aay AS ——— eS ~~ a ae MISTWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? the bad news first. The words were spoken by Jesus. 29. Jt sounds almost shocking, yet it is true, that in some respects the church does not have as much faith as business. Few institutions are more impressive than the research laboratories of a great industrial organization. You pass through the door of such a laboratory into another world. Here are scientists, not business men. ‘There is no talk of money, no chatter of the ticker, no gossip of trades and profit or loss. No hurry and no fear. You have the feeling that these men are con- cerned with forces and events beyond the horizon of every-day life. They are the mystics of the modern world. ‘They have no master but the truth. . have in mind one such laboratory whose annual budget is upward of two million dollars a year. The two millions are provided by a very practical business organization, which exists to sell goods at a profit and pay dividends to its stockholders. 'The officers of that corporation know that at any hour of the day those scientists may appear at headquarters with some such an- nouncement as this: ‘““We have discovered a new and better process. It will mean the junking of twenty million dollars’ worth of your present 192THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS machinery.” Or, “We have found a better way to do the things that you have been doing. It will mean closing two of your factories and con- solidating a half-dozen departments, but it will put you in shape to render better service.” Or, “We are compelled to tell you that you will have to plan to withdraw one of your principal pro- ducts from the market. We have discovered something much finer to take its place.” Some such bomb shell as this may be ex- ploded in the executive offices by the scientists at any hour. Do the executives try to shield them- selves from that possibility? On the contrary, they spend two millions a year in order to provoke it. They are absolutely sure of one thing and one thing only, and that is change. They can not tell you what to-morrow’s business problems and developments will be but they can prophesy definitely that they will be different from those of yesterday and to-day. They have only one fear—that the future may spring upon them suddenly and find them unprepared. Business knows that to-morrow is going to be different; the church is too often merely afraid that it may be. There is the gulf between them. The church trembles at anything that looks like change. It sticks to the old methods, believing them sacred because they are old. It wears out 193 se at > | an 4 1 A i £74) (ith a} i s| i yy ope ee am ee” ee ‘Be ed at mn ok PEELE, * aes iat i f 2 Sar RS ee rs" pe nN Be I aWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? authority and honor. And the great forces of its organized power are exerted for what? To keep people who like wine and who consider that there is no moral wrong in drinking it from having any. To suppress Sunday games. To be very bitter and unforgiving toward the girl who yields to the impulses of hot blood. These things, which Jesus regarded as of less impor- tance, have become the law and the prophets. And the other and greater sins go usually unre- buked. It is not the purpose of this book to quarrel with creeds. In some ways they serve a very use- ful purpose. But we venture to raise the point that most creeds are more interested in speculat- ing about the nature of Jesus than they are in finding out what Jesus Himself believed. And where Christians quarrel, their quarrels are usually about matters in which He displayed no interest. To the very righteous of His own day He was not a religious man. It is interesting to wonder if He would be so regarded to-day. He knew, to be sure, that there had to be some sort of church organization, for He remarked that the gates of Hell should not prevail against His church; but I do not discover that He showed any interest in organization details. He paid 202THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS a certain amount of attention to His duties as a member of the Jewish Church and was jealous for the purity of the Temple, but He did not observe the Passover in the form that Moses pre- scribed; Moses had said that the Passover must be eaten standing, in haste, and with sandals on the feet. He ate it reclining, with bare feet, and at great leisure. He was not deliberately defy- ing the law; He simply did not care about those details. _ What did He really care for? As stated again and again in this book, He eared for people. When the rich young ruler came to Him, asking what he should do to be saved, Jesus recited the commandments that have to do with human relations, omitting all those that prescribe men’s duties to God. I imagine that very few modern Christians would have done this, and that if any one other than Jesus had done it, the list of commandments would have been considered fatally defective. He did not think He was leaving God out when He put humanity first. Jesus treated human life as normal and im- portant. He cared for men in their labor, for women in their backaches, for little children in their sorrows and joys. He believed that a wedding was a proper place for Him to be and 203 ae oe pl aEA ~ RS cata moe Sree Na meet ea i = aE Mere SEV EEPEES EEE: ~~ Lo Ba ~~ ences ENO pear ca tnee TS tas Fe at aw a aS Paes, a err eS Ne et = ey ee re NS ee ry 5 - aah nner mista ee we A pear . ar aera ne SOR WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? remain. He was willing if necessary to be criticized for the extent to which He enjoyed festivity. He treated all human life as if it had a value and as if religion was expressed in it. He cared whether men got paid for their work or not. A large proportion of His para- bles had to do with commercial transactions. One of the most generally accepted of the non- canonical sayings of Jesus, believed in by many of the early church fathers, was: “Prove your- selves tried money changers,” reliable men, and judges of sound values. He cared for mercy, not sacrifice; justice, not ritual: And He wanted men to believe that God was to be found in the shop as well as in the temple. Indeed, it may be questioned if there be a truer verse in the Book of Revelation than that in which John, viewing the Holy City, looks around in vain for a temple, because there all life is religious. Is His attitude the church’s attitude? Is its emphasis placed where He placed His? ‘These more vital are the questions which are vital than any creeds. 5. Any business is terrifically concerned if there be the slightest depreciation in the quality of the men who enter its ranks. The leading 204THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS corporations of the country send emissaries every year to the colleges to spy out the leaders and to seek to apprentice them. Money is nothing; it is so cheap that any man with an idea and cour- age can get all he wants of it. Buildings are as likely to be a liability as an asset. Patents, pro- cesses, distribution—all easy. But men, men, men! ‘There can be no permanent business success with poor men. en ODES = ee oe Sat ss ~ . Sea ca ple a wie ee a yee! —— a ~e cee Church leaders have frequently deplored the fact that the ministry no longer attracts the strongest men. A hundred years ago the best men in every college headed for the pulpit; it was the place of power. Fifty years ago some of the best men and many of the good men became preachers. For the past twenty years the record has been a declining one, both in quantity and quality. Hundreds of churches have no pastors at all, while the few outstanding men in the pul- pit are constantly engaged in declining invita- tions to move. Of the men who were in college when I was only one leader went into the min- istry. Naturally he moved straight to the top, and big city churches have been bidding for him with one another since his thirtieth year. The church must have better leaders; all its friends are in agreement on that. Why doesn’t it get them? For many reasons, probably, that 205 ba bran ts pani ie ew i 4 a ; HI H A ay a Se ent hs ee i lnc NT Ce ee ee ln ET nh 7 vos Pin + nt ee a ne ee Ne ae es Poa ee Ae SetaFein mmr maith Be eh Sy aE hs nptere VN rat WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? are beyond our present analysis, but for two rea- sons of which we can speak with definite con- viction. First, because of the archaic and absurd hurdles that are put up to keep strong men from the ministry—the traditional emphasis upon creed. A convention of ministers gathers to examine candidates, and what is the first ques- tion? Frequently it is: “Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?” This is an important part of church doctrine for many people, but was it im- portant to Jesus? The record does not say so. Did He stand at the door of Matthew’s feast and stop all comers, saying: “Just a minute. Do you believe in the Virgin Birth? If not, you may not enter.” Did he say: “Come unto me all ye that are weary and believe in the Virgin Birth and I will give you rest?” When he called Philip, that eager disciple went out immediately and hunted up his brother Nathaniel and said: “‘We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Did Jesus rebuke Philip? He did not. If the Virgin Birth were important to His mind, the disciples never mentioned it. Two of the writers of the Gospels do not refer to it; Paul, the great apostle, apparently never heard of it. Yet 206a THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS ~ pn SST NS aoa nt it occupies whole days in church conventions, dividing men into bitter factions and keeping young men out of the ranks of the ministry. What sort of questions would Jesus be likely to ask of candidates if He were examining them in such a church convocation? Speaking very reverently, it seems as if He might be interested in points like these: Saas ee ae EEE EEE mn rr ~~ RS ny ~~ Oa “Could you conduct a successful carpenter shop or fishing business? Have you demon- strated that you can make a success of any busi- ness?” He chose His first disciples from the ranks of business. ‘They had demonstrated that they could order their lives successfully. Also they understood the lives and problems, the hopes and fears and difficulties of common folks because they themselves had shared the common lot. “You are going into the business of life at the top,” He might say. “You are essaying the highest and most difficult of all human endeavor. Would it not be wise for you first to demonstrate your capacity to handle little things before reach- ing up for the greatest? ‘Do little children love you and follow you around ? “Do sick people feel better or worse when you come into the room? <= ~see at ew a RRS cen. = as Hi } : iw er er oy tm ay ~yi ae 207 es ay tt Es ean Ae Lah (= A a aed a Sn he PR rere nad i ats Somos SST —— SEPP Pe ees ee ws wa be a a eesee se" prep ea oy OL ad Sa ot + > WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? conditions almost as sad as any that a modern alarmist could paint. The Middle Ages, outwardly so dominated by the church, were spiritually barren, soiled by greed and disgraced by ignorance and intoler- ance. Even in the times of our great-grand- parents, which we are accustomed to regard as the “good old days,” the tide of religious inter- est ebbed and flowed. In the year 1800, there was only one professing Christian in the student body of Yale. So religion has always been on trial; the church always fighting a hard battle, “truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” That great thinker and prophet, Professor Rauschenbusch, once stood before a cosmopolitan audience to deliver an address on the social aspects of Christianity. He was interrupted at the very outset by a Socialist who climbed on to a chair and launched a bitter attack against the church. Professor Rauschenbusch, who was very deaf, waited patiently and, when the chairman had given him the import of the disturber’s re- marks, spoke only a single sentence of comment. “Nobody kicks a dead horse,” he said quietly, and proceeded to deliver his paper. He was right. Nobody does kick a dead horse; nobody takes the trouble to attack a man 210THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS or an institution from which life has departed. So long as vigorous and even emphatic discus- sion goes on inside the church and outside, you may be sure that the church is still very much alive. Moreover, discussion and even disagreement are inherent in the very nature of Christianity. The early church had hardly begun its existence when a serious doctrinal controversy broke out. Paul, who was not one of the original twelve, had been in far countries teaching the Gentiles, and criticisms about him drifted back to Jerusalem. He was allowing converts to join the church without insisting on certain rites which the stricter disciples held essential. A conference was called. Paul made his defense, and a toler- ant working arrangement was arrived at. In Jerusalem they would continue to teach the strict doctrine, but out in the missionary fields Paul was to be allowed such latitude as the dif- ferent conditions seemed to require. So the two factions agreed to disagree with mutual affection and respect. The Jerusalem church was presided over by James, the brother of Jesus, who seems not to have believed on Him during His lifetime but to have been somehow won over after His death and elevated, because of his relationship, to this 211 aed ap ipa anaes TEAS er —. surat aces TEE: ae. : - ay Pint Lt pan os De te I Im ee oi ae She bane tae ta nace MSPS ELT err See Tae ES SE SF eee rete. 4 aa afl oe ry me tieWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? place of authority. He lived a noble life and died, traditionally, a martyr’s death, but it is interesting to note that his part of the church, which was in Jerusalem and held rigidly to the form of the law, refusing to change or adapt, ceased to grow and soon died out, It was the churches established by Paul, the first heretic, which lived and spread and conquered the world. That fact has both significance and encourage- ment in the present situation. Significance because it shows that without change comes death. Encouragement as proving the vitality of a gospel which can take root in hostile soil and grow and spread until it overshadows even the empire itself. In a previous chapter we dealt impersonally with the history of the church, setting forth its failures and seeking to strike a balance between its sins and its services. We concluded that it deserves to survive, that, granting its critics the strongest possible case, it still remains the in- spiration of democracy, benevolence and high ideals. In this chapter, which has dealt very frankly with the shortcomings of the current situation, as a business man’s survey would re- veal them, we desire to conclude by reaffirming that conviction. The church can not and will not die. Men are, as they always have been, 212 ESLSEATS Be vtTHE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS “incurably religious.” There is in each human being what Oliver Wendell Holmes discovered in himself, a little plant called reverence that demands watering at least once a week. ‘The church has the waters of eternal life. The obli- gation of those who seek a better world is not to stand outside and criticize but to stay inside and work for more courageous thinking, a greater willingness to discard the useless, and a larger faith. A faith which believes in God enough to be very sure that even if most of the forms and ceremonies which we think of as traditional church “service” should pass out of the picture a nobler and more serviceable church will in- eyitably arise. In what form might that nobler church appear? If we-could look a hundred years into the future, what sort of church should we see? These are questions beyond any human power to answer. He who essays the role of prophet finds himself generally discredited and ridicu- lous. Yet we have not hesitated to say posi- tively that the church of the future will be very different from the church of to-day, and there is a certain obligation on us, perhaps, to indicate in broad outline what, in our imagination, might come to pass. Let us, then, for a moment cast aside all fear 213 mn et ow ee Presa eeu eT Sens i I + ee ae OE AE ne ne eS arn) Se eee nd et a a = Pree es Ss Ree a sae a oe os ae ed oe ae aes ~~" ee PATE wy Rese oe) a} } ~,woo 8 my meng deren omer o te Lee yaw cs 5 NS eS veil Nee tie WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? and allow our imagination to run riot. It is only by this process that the scientists make their great discoveries and improvements. I know one of these scientists. He is associ- ated with a great industry. They gave him one day the problem of reducing the cost of auto- mobiles by shortening the time necessary to put an automobile body through the paint shops. It required at that period thirty-five days to put the finish on a fine body, for each coat of varnish had to dry and be baked before the next coat could be applied. He said: “What we ought to look for is a finish that can be applied in an hour.” They laughed him to scorn, but he stuck to his point. “If you start out to make a ten per cent. im- provement in any situation you will make no improvement,” he insisted. “But if you start out to make a hundred per cent. improvement, or a five hundred per cent. improvement, you may achieve the ten per cent.” The result of that sort of thinking, plus an endless amount of patient research, was a new automobile finish which dries so quickly that it can not be spread on with a brush, as in the old days, but must be squirted under pressure from a hose. The problem was solved; the neck of 214THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS the bottle of automobile production, which was the paint shop, was opened, and all car owners are driving better automobiles at lower prices because of the immense reduction in costs which was thus achieved. Let us try for a moment to apply that sort of audacious thinking to the possible future of the church. There is a town, let us say, of five thousand people. It has one Catholic Church, with which we are not concerned, for it is doing the task which it was set up to do; it is holding its members and keeping their children. There are six Protestant Churches, and none of them is doing well. The pews, which once were full on Sunday, are now only one-third full, or worse. The physical condition of the buildings is not good; they need redecorating inside and out. Budgets are raised with considerable difficulty. A group of older people continue faithful, and the Sunday-schools render real service, but the generation of folk between twenty and forty-five rides in automobiles on Sunday, or plays golf or fusses around the house or reads. Judged either as intellectual food or spiritual stimulus, the sermons average low. It is not strange. No man can be inspired who faces half- empty pews. In tone the preaching is earnest, 215 ren ea ao8. i ee ee Am ae enn a oy eee a ee a oe OE LE can rat a aoe ee Ds ~~ ~~— ~~ aes RS ace on a i rey) ih a4 ie Ss ewe. Cy ee re a fad aS en hn 2 - Pa eeee eee OS a CLAS WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? but there is an unhappy undercurrent, as though the preachers themselves wonder whether it is quite worth while. Many sermons are offered on “What is the matter with the chureh?” and kindred subjects. Every year-one or another of the churches seeks by lectures or motion pictures or a brass band to put life into the evening serv- ice. These efforts are not a sustained success. Among the pastors there is considerable talk of a religious revival, a new statement of religion, a fresh interpretation that will reach out and grip the modern man and woman. ‘The revival is delayed. Meanwhile, the program of the churches is about what it always has been, a morning service at eleven o’clock, an evening service at seven, a prayer meeting on Wednes- day evening, a Sunday-school and a young people’s society. The measure of strength and influence is: How many people can we induce to attend? The pastors are tragically underpaid. Their salaries were as good as any in town a century ago, but they have not been raised, and the cost of living has soared. Things may get better in this imaginary town of ours. The belated revival may arrive. A great awakening of some sort may send the peo- ple flocking back to the pews and restore the 216THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS pulpits to their old place of leadership, all with- out any radical change of program. ‘This is one possibility and needs no elaboration. Let us face courageously the other possibility. Suppose things do not get better, but rather worse. What might happen in such a town? Well, this might happen. The pastors might gather in a secret and confidential meeting. They might say to one another: “The time has come for us to sit down frankly and face the facts. To our congregations, of course, we have had to show a bold front; we have had to hope that the great new day is Just around the corner. But if we are to make any progress we must not have any pretense among ourselves. What is the situation? “The town is more prosperous than it ever was. Its people are busy and, on the whole, happy. The standards of business are infinitely higher than they were when the church was in the saddle. No present-day business man would ever think of investing money in the slave trade or the rum trade. Yet deacons of the church were once eminent in both. Children are better fed and better cared for in every way. Health is better. Schools are better. More money is spent on the relief of sickness and old age. Life is more comfortable, more healthful and more 217 co —— i a 4 vl ; | yi i y ae i i ip ryah aii eee ‘ats Hi | 925 sa pn go oe La ae ab eS UY erste en th a A et Ee es STAUNTON! 2 ne" aa —— i ! f- ee at TN Re oe ve i TT Ce ate ah ets ee = ad enw eee - = eae hy NR eT i on Ae ceeWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? munity casts its spiritual burdens upon their shoulders, and they bear them gladly. On Sunday the pastor conducts three short services in the morning, beginning at six o’clock, and three in the late afternoon and evening. One may go at any time, and having bowed his head and knelt and listened to the organ and the prayers, may pass out into the sunshine and re- joice in the day. On rare occasions, such as Christmas and Easter, he preaches, and his ser- mons are masterpieces—the fruit of his whole experience of living and reading and thought. As such they are eagerly sought by the com- munity. But his primary function is to be pastor and priest. People come to him in the sanctity of his study with their troubles, their worries, and their sins; and when he says to them: “Your Father has forgiven you, go and sin no more,” they know that he knows. At the time of the noonday meal and at supper time, he stands at his altar and, through the magic of the radio and of “television,” he stands also in every home and lifts to Heaven the community's thanks. Throughout the town there is happiness and cheer and hope because he passes by. Once a year there is a town meeting, and he makes a report. A curious sort of church re- port itis. It says nothing of attendance at meet- 224Sa =< a THE CHURCH NOBODY KNOWS — oes ot ings, of amounts collected, of numbers added to the church. For the town is the church and the church is the town, and all, being children of the Father, are born into the fold. No, the report speaks of quite other matters: of the improve- ments in the community health and the lowered infant mortality. Of the betterments in the schools; of the steady employment in the offices and factories; of the gifts that the town has made to less fortunate people in other places and lands; of the good record that the town’s boys and girls are making in the cities; of the moral courage of some who have undergone difficulties with cheerfulness; of the fine hope with which others have passed beyond the pale. Of every- thing which indicates that life is better, happier, more~.courageous, more Godlike in_ the community; everything which indicates that He who came that men might have life more abun- dantly is realizing the object for which He came. This is the sort of report the pastor makes. And when he has finished, he blesses them all, and there is a moment’s silence. Then the buzz of happy voices, and the music of children’s laughter. ees SEES ee le ae AAMC ELE EE SS a eS ~s, wees Sa Renee en ‘> rf ‘? i} By i 44 4 ‘ 3 y i] ST a ett are oe et ne J Is this an impossible picture? I do not think so. Certainly no one can say that it is “uns 225 ens ae et ee - oe En Ses eae ea — a Bs ee rySe ot ng grea yee mas re f, K Pi Ae 1 rae ey Te eS aoa aerator aT WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? scriptural.” Jesus asked: “When the Son of man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?” He did not ask: “Shall He find a morning serv- ice at eleven o'clock, an evening service at seven, a mid-week prayer meeting and a young people’s society?” But “shall He find faith?” He shall! |CHAPTER VI THE MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS SOME upper classmen assembled one night in a college hall to listen to two speakers. A bishop of distinguished service and_ great spiritual power was one of them, and a public lecturer, widely advertised as a professional agnostic, was the other. The plan was for each man to present his own philosophy of life. The audience, while not large, was very earnest, and obviously looked for a spirited debate. The bishop spoke first. Gray-haired now, and a trifle bent, the old man had started his service in the foreign mis- sionary field, and more than once in his youth had risked his life for the faith. On his return to this country he had held influential pastorates in many cities, becoming the friend and confidant of men of every sort. He knew all that there is to know of human hopes and fears, sufferings and joys, achievements and tragedies. Yet his fine face was ruddy and untroubled as the face of a little child: No one who looked at him could 227, Soe art Paar cen ea 4 i i eee iy 3 a ‘a ay — Jno. ~ Wh roe v= ee ee De ayes EOI << Sy A a Stowe te eat Sree Sa eeaeh indo Saal ee ee nd ae SS ate ~ poy oe eS SRS ee Se a ~o"-¥ pat MKT ent am ONS Ree er ve Rel PE a) aWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? doubt that he had, in truth, “cast his burdens upon the Lord.” His tone was deep and sympathetic. “Nothing that is worth while in life can be proved,” he said. “Men speak of depending on science, but science itself depends upon faith. It assumes that ‘every effect must have an adequate cause’—a tremendous assumption which no one can prove. It assumes that the world which each man builds up inside his mind corresponds to the outside world of reality, that the universe which ry 40) ta ote Le eR 4 d Ae ae you see is the same universe which I see— another great act of faith. All scientific discoy- eries have been made by men who believed more than their eyes could see or their fingers handle. ‘He who does not look beyond the fact,’ said Darwin, ‘will hardly see the fact,’ by which he meant that the eyes of the imagination—of faith—must first see what may be before the eyes of the flesh can see what is. “I can not prove to you that there is any purpose behind the universe. It may be that the whole thing is a mere happening, a jest of cir- cumstances; that we and all who have been before us or are to come after us are no more significant than the flies that live their whole existence in a single hour, or the bubbles that appear on the surface of the stream and break 228MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS and reappear. I can not prove to you that this is not so. But, my friends, no man can prove to you that it 2s so. ‘The existence of Reason behind the universe, or its non-existence, are both be- yond the power of finite minds to establish. Since, therefore, the choice is free between the two alternatives, I choose to accept the positive faith. For that faith gives significance to my life and to the lives of all men. It clothes me with conviction. It invests me with the right to go for- ward with firm step and head erect, as one who shall not perish. In place of worry and fear, it sets up hope and courage. It is the pathway to power.” When he had finished the other speaker rose very slowly and looked down into the eager faces of those young men. He stood silent for what seemed a very long time, searching their eyes. “I am going to surprise you, my young friends,” he said at last. “Perhaps in a sense I shall disappoint you. I am an agnostic. Some of you have come here in the expectation that the Bishop and I should vigorously disagree. You had expected that I should call the great skep- tics of history-to-my aid, and marshal the argu- ments which seem to prove thatman_is a creature of the moment,.bound for oblivion in death. I confess that this was my purpose when I came. 229 ee er abu i 4 i ca ay: i a3) on a nad SS ERS ee Pees eure oe ee ee (at wee en exe} bobew, Er SSSR AS EN SLABS _ PA ig 4 tad ad ~~ ae Soe ~~ 2 Soe Sr ee et p Lippe a meetin =~ teeth dP IP at wee xa he ane ane - I~ ne ass os iWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “But I have changed that purpose. I am going to say only one thing to you young gentle- men. It is this: If you can believe the things that our friend the Bishop has been saying, then, in God’s name, believe them! ‘The texture of my mind is such that I myself can not go farther than to say I do not know. If you can go farther, if you can have a positive faith, then with all my heart I congratulate you. I would give anything in the world if I could. For what the Bishop has claimed for his faith is true. Skepticism has no vitality; the motive power of progress is faith.” He sat down, and after a few minutes of rather embarrassed silence the meeting dis- banded. ‘The students were surprised, but the Bishop much more so. \_He had expected a con: test. Instead of which he had listened to a testi- mony far more moving than his own, the almost tragic confession of one whose honest intellect would not let him go a step beyond the things which can be seen and heard and felt, but who looked with hungry yearning into the richer lives of those who can believe and do... There are probably more honest-minded men in the world to-day than ever before in history. More men whose “word is as good as their bond,” who hate hypocrisy, who take a personal 230 Pod oer ft aS seth irene On ft pe i CPS eS eS are iH 3 en a ye abe Se? — —) eT Yt eee vel sient PIE Ee Nh aeMAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS delight i in being square when nobody is watch- ing. The very thought that they might profit, either in this world or in a possible other w orld, through professing to believe more than they really do believe, revolts them. They will play out the hand that Fate has dealt, asking no favors. If there shall prove to be something beyond the grave they will stand fir mly on their records; if there be nothing, they face that pos- sibility without fear. For such men principally this book has been written. It has attempted honestly to present both sides. It has established the intelligent man’s right to believe. In a situation where the evidence on both sides is equal, no one need feel that he violates his intellectual integrity if he chooses the positive rather than the negative side. To this point the preceding chapters have brought us. One last thought remains to be added. It is this; Not only has an intelligent man a right to believe, he is cheating himself if he does not exercise that right, Cheating himself in many ways, the first of which, perhaps the least important, is in his own business. As a matter of fact, no man can stay in busi- hess except through some measure of faith. It is impossible even to discuss business without 231 oe,” corm ot Bi i i v ao See SSS PR Be ee Sh al koa pate tal Se a SSCS ~ ae SSP en eee pata Seer seer etc nata! apt ee A -_ ete eet te pega Rai eee Rep i I A ms aea a ia) mS Pe PI he ee P Ay: Ri tke et ap Fo EN ye WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? using that word again and again. You hear men say: “The whole modern commercial structure ‘5 built on a foundation of credit.” And what is the word credit; where does it come from? Credo: I believe. Business is good or bad, the statisticians point out, according to the degree of confidence. What is confidence? Whence comes the word? Con-fides: with faith. “Such and such a concern is weak,” men say, “because its personnel lacks fidelity.” Fidelity: fidelis, faithful. I talked one day with a man who has seen a great many successful businesses from the in- side. “You have a good opportunity for com- paring men,” I said. “What about these big business leaders? Wherein do they differ from others? What is the principal requisite for a man who wants to get into business for him- self?” Without a moment’s hesitation he answered: “Courage to jump off the dock.” He saw thatthe answer was not what I had expected and so he amplified it. “That may sound strange to you,” he said, “but I believe it is true. The man who can muster enough faith in a business to risk his whole future on it, to jump off the dock and sink or swim with that one proposition, he may drown, very many do 232MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS drown, but if he wins he wins big. Educated brains can be bought fairly cheap in business; muscle is a glut on the market; even energy and a certain amount of initiative can be put on the pay-roll. But real courage is rare. Hence it is the most highly rewarded quality in business life. Every big business was conceived by some one as a tremendous act of faith, and the bigger the men the bigger their belief must have been in order to lift them up to where they are.” Look about you anywhere and you find that statement verified. I once asked Henry Ford to tell me about his father, and he answered that the old gentleman had been a good citizen but timid. “He thought I made a great mistake when I left my twenty-five dollar a week job as engineer at the electric light plant,” Mr. Ford said. “He warned me that young men ought not to take such long chances. Later, when we began to build our factory, he was thoroughly scared. ‘Henry, youre too late,’ he exclaimed. “By the time you get this plant finished everybody in the United States who can afford an automobile will have bought one.’ ”’ It was in the year of the big deflation that this talk of mine with Mr. Ford took place. Rumors were flying thick and fast. It was said 233 PECESECIEL AN, eget SSS Pt ates Te ie bale pa a poy a oe a fh OE eS ST Ps ly Weds pe 5 — a a a ee a Sa rs aaa ae Sao epepeete ents a ple aoe Se a ee es a i rh ‘e ; Se . AM ne ae “ ~~ Se th ey ee meee os ney = ieee <——Y is 4 PS a ve iy ae Ris te ee VT WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? that Ford himself was practically bankrupt; at any moment the Wall Street banks would step in and take him over. I mentioned these stories to him. “There are some people in this country who are a good deal worried about business,” I said, “and about your business.” He smiled. “What do they think? That business is go- ing to crawl into its hole and pull the hole in after it?” “Something like that.” “No. No,” he said, shaking his head. “Busi- ness is only the mechanism for supplying human wants, and the wants keep right on getting bigger and bigger. Look what we’ve done in our business in the past ten years. We've put the United States on wheels. Do you suppose that people are ever going to be content to walk again? Don’t you suppose that all the other people in the world are just as eager to be on wheels too? No, business won’t stop. As fast as you get a want supplied a bigger want rises up to take its place.” “But about your own business,” I said. “Suppose you were to go broke, would it worry you very much?” “I think it might be interesting,” he laughed. 234MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS “It would be like having two lifetimes rolled into one. And I know what I’d do; at least I know the kind of thing I’d do. Id find some- thing that lots of people have to have and I’d figure out some way to make it better and sell it cheaper than it’s ever been made and sold before. And Id have another fortune before I die. “Money isn’t important,” he added. “I can’t spend much on myself. Nobody can. A suit of clothes; a house; a car—not much that money can buy. There are only two things in the world that are really important—work and faith.” There you have the philosophy on which one of the two largest fortunes in the United States has been built. Here is a glimpse into the mind of the man who built the other. It is printed in the memoirs of the late J. I. C. Clark, who was for many years intimately associated with Stand- ard Oil. One day on the golf course Mr. Clark lured Mr. Rockefeller into reminiscence and finally asked him point-blank about his own private for- tune. What was the secret of it? Why had he amassed so much more wealth than his associ- ates? 235 “. ae ~reren if i a | AS ay) iH: eet ea a4. Er eree en SSeS Ne doa nn aes pn an Min SSE Ps —3 a aseray ef Sa 5 ~ mE sy ——? . tere a aWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? “He flashed a quick glance at me, his eyes closing to piercing points under a clouded brow,” Mr. Clark wrote. “AIl his armor was on in an instant. He gazed long into my eyes and gradually his eyes widened and a look I had never seen upon his face illuminated it as he said with intense conviction ‘Faith!’ “Faith in oil?’ I said, echoing his tone. “ “Faith in the future of oil,’ he amplified. ‘I first had it. I have never wavered in it. I still have it as firm as ever. “Henry Rogers, he never sold a share; John D. Archbold, he was always ready to buy. Back in the eighties I wanted to build a house in New York, and he bought one thousand shares from me at seventy-five dollars! KE. T. Bedford, when Ohio Lima Oil came in and outstunk all who tried to refine it, kept on buying until we thought he was crazy, building tanks until he had $24,- 000,000 locked up in it. “Some genius,” he would say, “will refine the sulphur out of it, and then ” And a genius did, and the profit was colossal. Oil for Kurope, oil for Asia, oil for Africa and Australia. Faith! Andrews, the man whose skill first made success possible, had early lost faith—and sold out—to John D.” pepe as te tnt ee ney a re er Mal Andee Boal rer = { i a 4 Bi L What would have happened to history if John D. or Henry Ford had sat on the throne of Philip II of Spain? It was Philip, you remem- ber, who determined to teach England a good lesson and so outfitted the Spanish Armada, the 236= et Serer cee seat MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS ees tay Se ie rsresar most powerful fleet ever gathered together up to that time. England was scared and properly so, for every advantage was on the Spanish side. Every advantage except one. The English had Drake, who knew his business and believed. The Spaniards had the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who thus addressed the king: 35 bag he ES See Chale as PORTE My health is bad and from my small ence of the water I know that I am always seasick. . . . The expedition is on such a scale and the object is of such high importance that the person at the head of it ought to understand navigation and sea fighting and I know nothing of either. . . . The Adelantado of Castile would do better than I. The Lord would help him, for he is a good Christian and has fought in naval battles. If you send me, depend upon it, I shall have a bad account to render of my trust.” ex peri- eum a a SOLES SS s SATII ss | i Ry Ny no SE ee aad Ee ad ee He set sail expecting to fail, and he did. He had plenty of capital, plenty of men, plenty of everything but Faith. In that same panic year when I held my con- versation with Mr. Ford, I attended a convention of shoe salesmen in New York City. It was the gloomiest meeting imaginable. From every state in the Union these men had come home with stories of over-stocked shelves, cancelled 237 a ae eS oe Ro we ep i es meget eo aoe tg ee TOT ES or ee ena ne — St a nteeeelWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE! orders and curt refusals to buy. They were com- pletely whipped. The morning session adjourned, and after a good luncheon the sales manager announced that he would like to interrupt the regular pro- gram by taking the men for a short motor ride. He loaded them into taxis and, driving down Fifth Avenue, turned into a side-street and stopped before a vacant lot. There the men were invited to get out on to the sidewalk and, won- dering and grumbling, they obeyed. “T have brought you down here,” the sales manager said, “to show you this vacant lot.” One man in the rear gave forth a hoarse chuckle, and the rest looked uncertainly at one another, waiting for the joke. ‘“Doesn’t it strike you as strange,” he con- tinued, “that right here in the very center of the richest city in the world, where land is worth thousands of dollars a foot, this fine big piece of land should be unused? ‘There is a story here, and I shall tell it to you. “Exactly a hundred years ago a farmer died in his farm-house which stood a few feet from where we are standing now. He left a solemn injunction in his will. His heirs might do as they pleased with the rest of his estate, but this one little section of the farm, this vacant lot, must 238MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS remain forever without a building as a perpetual resting place for the bones of his wife. That, gentlemen, was just one hundred years ago, and last week the highest court of this state set aside that provision in the old man’s will as being in- compatible with the public interest. This vacant lot is shortly to be built upon. “But consider for a moment the drama of it. He lived on a farm, that old man, far from the city limits. He assumed that it would be a farm always. But a few years pass, a century, less than the lifetime of three average men, and the island that was only a collection of farms be- comes a city of six million people. The land that could be bought for a few dollars an acre is worth thousands of dollars a foot. Where there were chicken coops and pastures there are sky- scrapers towering forty stories into the sky. And all in a hundred years. “You are going back to your different terri- tories,” the sales manager continued, “back to the merchants who act as though the United States were bankrupt, as though business will never recover, as though the people of the coun- try will never again need any more shoes or clothes or houses or automobiles. And I want you to carry with you a mental photograph of this vacant lot. I want you to tell those mer- 239 ea SODAS pe oes om ake ats ae Ree ee ae re pass pee = Boos teehee ates de SERS ee es) a ee a at —F Sis aca een te te a mene eee RT ea nee as i Fh Hi Bi “A an) 4 i a ie ~— avs i eke a fa a) = ~ ae ry » Jape eeWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? chants about it. I want you to say to them: ‘We are living in a country that was only farms a hundred years ago and is now the richest coun- try in the world. And it has only started. Noth- ing can stop it; nothing can prevent an active, intelligent man from prospering in it except his own lack of vision. Nothing except the same short-sightedness which made this old farmer believe that, because his land had always been a farm, it would continue to be always. That sort of thinking will keep any man poor. But no man can fail to make progress if, in spite of the little ups and downs of business, he keeps his faith in the United States.” For a common, every-day business man it was a pretty good little oration. It is the creed of the men who have built big things. They do not buy bonds; they buy common stocks in order to share in the growth of the country. They have their set-backs, their periods of retrench- ment, sometimes periods when their enthusiasm leads them too far and punishes them with a fall. But through thick and thin they stick to their faith that the country must go forward; and in that faith they win. It goes without saying that they have a vital faith in themselves as well. ‘The man who lacks that is in a sad way indeed. 240MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS Some years ago a crumpled and dejected citi- zen came to my office, and slumped down into a chair. I knew him by name. He had been for several years the sales manager of a small but profitable company in the Middle West, and had established some reputation as a writer of effec- tive sales literature. In broken sentences, heavy with despair, he proceeded to tell his story. His salary in the little town where he lived had been small but it was sufficient to give him a place in the community. His only child was grown, and he and his wife had assumed that they were securely settled for life. One day there came to him a persuasive individual of the promoter type, offering him the unheard-of sum of fifteen thou- sand dollars a year to move to New York. Our friend was staggered by the offer and quite un- willing to believe that he could ever earn so much; but the promoter prevailed upon him finally and, with much misgivings, he resigned his job, sold his home, and made the move. For six months everything went smoothly. He had a nice office and the title of vice-presi- dent; he was beginning to believe that his dream was really true when suddenly the concern blew up and the promoter-president vanished. Our man was completely dazed. Never in his whole business experience had he been separated one 241 ——— ae ia —s Secale SET ~ i i: i ee Hi ai) bt pene mee ee a a ee Under this new lease of self-respect and a new birth of faith, August obtained a position as secretary of a sporadic mine. The organization had little capital and did not last long. August saw it peter out. But he began experimenting with the waste rock that lay in the ore. He got a blow-pipe and 245 NE [SION anne a ee ee | a a am aa - ~ SN Ny a m= ee ae ig eeWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? a crucible and worked half secretly on something no one understood. One day he called together his employers and a few others and showed them three letters. One was from Denver, one from Washington, and one from Heidelberg. All three agreed that he had found a deposit rich in something of real value and that it would be profitable provided it did not cost too much to get it out. That point was already settled; August had found the way to extract it. A new company was organized, with August Bender as secretary. It took over a number of shut-down plants, and the stock began paying dividends from the start. August Bender is dead, but he died respected and he died decently. His widow is still living and, while not rich, has abundant provision for her needs in the stock he left her in the company. His son has his father’s place as secretary, and besides his salary owns a good block of stock. The company flourishes, and so does the town. They are building a new church in that town just now, and the company of which we are speaking is making a liberal donation toward it. “We can afford it,” said the manager of the company. “If the preacher back there twenty- five years ago had not had faith in God and 246MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS August Bender the railroad company would have pulled up its sidetracks, and this town would have moved off the map.” It would be easy to multiply such stories. Every business man knows some of the same sort; every preacher has seen them in his own experience. They merely pile up the proof of what we have been saying. A man can lose everything—his fortune, his standing in the com- munity, even his own self-respect—and still win his way back to success, provided only that one single human being still has faith in him. Faith in business, faith in the country, faith in one’s self, faith in other people—this is the power that moves the world. And why is it un- reasonable to believe that this power, which is so much stronger than any other, is merely a frag- ment of the Great Power which operates the universe? One of the most tragic incidents in history was the return of Jesus to His home town. He had slipped away from the carpenter shop some months earlier to begin His public work, and marvelous stories of His success had drifted back. He had healed sick people in Capernaum. He had fed hungry people. He had raised the dead. He had preached to great crowds. He had held His own in public debate with the 247 > Pa OS Se ee | a Nae — 7 aime ee S a aherkasats Steet 3 aN Sra — er arses = Sane POTS TREATS By “A a OS Sear SS nl ad MPT a et ES ts ee a hs ae ae — ee a — Seeman ane a Ss Pak a an Serct 2 Se ee Pee es Sed aed ne See el — ae eS ee coh Ne Sy ae - - et wee eSWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? church, does it not still merit the united effort of honest men to help it work out its more effective future? Remember if you will the Dark Ages, with their corruption, ignorance and supersti- tion. But remember also a noble hymnology; an ascendant art; a glorious architecture; a ritual impressive and adapted to all the manifold needs of life; the church present at the cradle with baptism; present at puberty with confirma- tion; present at the wedding and establishment of the new home; present at the grave. Every momentous occasion dignified and lifted by its blessing and belief. Remember the fall of Rome when govern- ment went, art went, everything went except the church. It conquered the barbarian conquerors, and, standing firm, kept civilization from the scrap heap. Remember Columbus planting in America the Cross, sign of a Catholic Church, Remember Jesuit missionaries exploring these unknown lands and giving to our rivers Indian names in French mispronunciation. Heroic men, eager to save human souls; teaching the savages—so the Rev. John Williams says in the Redeemed Captive—to baptize babies before scalping them. Crude men but strong, thrust forward by faith and leaving imprints because of the power of their belief. 250 § | fi re vi } rf 4 5 ft a Spey Y cE oe eirs ens Se De ama MAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS And then remember the thousands of churches to-day, few of them led by great men Sut all served by earnest men and all, however faintly, holding up the torch of order and organ- ization, and a sense of decency and righteous- ness. Holding fast to their faith in the eternal importance of human life and its continuance beyond the grave. Expressing that faith often in very ghastly funeral services, yet expressing it none the less. Saying to men: “This earthly life which you know now is only an inter- mediate stage in a threefold life. Every one of you has lived before, and for ten lunar months possessed a life continuous with that which you now possess. It was not possible for you then to know anything about this present phase of life; it would be strange if now you were allowed to know very much about the life that is to be. But once already you have passed through darkness and pain and emerged into a bright new world. So shall you emerge again. Believe and you shall live.” Does not this record and this faith confer power and dignity on human life? Is not the church, as the one channel through which faith has been steadily transmitted, worthy of a de- termined effort for its strengthening and better- 251 A ad ae a wae es SSL ES + Sey he ~eN SORTS . pam 7 Lao a oa ~ Sapa AREAS S Hi b ee f > J bi eee RRNA Sp ITN TT a eer Oe ah ne ees Se pe et ee ne ee XS ns ST “ ree me wy mah _ — ee ecWHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE? ment on the part of all? It has seemed so to me, and out of that conviction has come this little book. The book began with an anecdote and with another it ends. The great fire of 1666 destroyed the central part of London and laid a large number of its churches in ruins. It completely gutted the old St. Paul’s and made necessary the building of the present noble cathedral. This was the op- portunity for Sir Christopher Wren, to whom London owes very much for what is finest in its architecture and especially in the character of its central churches. He received for his compen- sation a salary less than that of the American unskilled worker, but as his epitaph truly says, his work was “not for his own but for the public good,” and will keep bright his fame forever. One morning he passed among the work- men, most of whom did not know him, and of three different men engaged in the same kind of work he asked the same question: “What are you doing?” From the first he received the answer: “I am cutting this stone.” From the second the answer was: “I am earning three shillings and six pence a day.” But the third man straightened up, squared his shoulders, and holding his mallet in one hand and chisel in the other, proudly replied: “I am helping Si 252 pares ey ee J B a. niaMAGIC THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS Christopher Wren to build this great cathe- dral.” These are the three ways of looking at life: 1. I am just cutting this stone. 2. Iam only earning a living. 3. Iam doing a small part of a great work. I have not seen the Architect and I do not alto- gether understand the plan. But I believe there is a plan, so I work with good spirit in which is no fear. THE END Sia oe ~y r aon ee. —- eS ESE PICS Sha bain te a ad hm a ncaa eS See eeCar ere "ae -—~" ee a a a aE naa see es F ay f a t ‘ , My ‘ 4 i ah: fay es Pm? 4] ~~ a - es ee re aed ie Sa aa iano eS ee oes ane a UN ne Se ca ea a aes Cay eed: ——— een aore og a i ] d ot a.See BS se a ah oe Ss zk ea eee! ~~ : a | a tes Peratuce ees a ene One a eos ee . dan & nT teeee er nt ae ha Ladecenee At = Pp eter ae eS SANT SS ie! os eS ne any Ee ee ey eS By pane yt te NE oA eee PI : BR & a EH oe : bi i} * ; 4 i * rad we en Re Da cnet ~.cs ly eas pe ran oy eK ; ? a ) U ‘k : H rT { a! ott a3. * an ~ in es Ren et Sak sok eat ae a Sree ee ee jana ae ee - ns eePLEASE RETURN TO ALDERMAN LIBRARY DUE DUE 7 ? ‘ A j x ae a ee ; ( ape i. =en el Tost erro = yt & ~ © © © ea i 7 ~ ao a Thee = ee ee as i ES ee a SS SOS S- H 4 i a | "4 it Ht a i ‘ | hw ss are SUE ey wt = M= NN. MANCHESTER, NS INDIANA 46962) si eee err eee pe ed