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THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS
OF RELIGION
An Introduction to Real Eeligion
Not for Beginners but
for Beginners again

BY

THOMAS K. SLICER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1898

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY THOMAS R. SLICER
ALL RIGHTS EESBBVED

5Ab

( (

" For all time the difference must be infinite between the par
tisan of beliefs and the man whose heart is set npou Reality."
James Maktineau.
" He at least believed in sonl — was very sure of God ! "
Robert Browning.

PEEFACE
This volume has been published in answer to
the wish of persons to whom its contents were
spoken. The chapters were preached in the course
of my work as the minister of the Church of AR
Souls, and were reported as spoken. As a result
of this method, there is a certain directness of
appeal which is foreign to the demand of a care
fully elaborated style ; but the addresses have been
left in the form in which they were given in ex
temporaneous discourse, in the hope that whatever
the diction may lose in finish might be compen
sated by those qualities which appear when a man,
in earnest concerning the real experiences of life,
reads the pages of his mind in direct speech with
his feUows.
There is nothing more manifest to me, brought
in intimate contact with the activities of modern
life, than that the answers given by traditional
religion do not satisfy a time more marked by
honest doubt and strenuous endeavor. The de
mand is urgent that religion shall give some ac-

VI PEEFACE
count of itself which may leave it in possession of
the field of attention, on which dogmatic theology
and mediaeval usages find it difficult to maintain a
footing among thoughtful men.
There is an evident desire upon the part of
many teachers of religion to meet this demand ;
but the answer is often reluctant, compeRed and
characterized by expediency. This is due to the
obUgation felt to yield as little as possible, and to
break with the past only by so much as may not
be avoided. We get belated statements of reli
gious teachers who have been dragged up to some
partial agreement with modern thought, and have
given a grudging approval to that deliverance
which Science has achieved for Theology : for this
is reaRy the fact, that Eeligion has been compeRed
again and again to accept the facts of the universe
from the hand of the priests of the Natural Sci
ences, and thus to find EeRgion's best friend
where it used to be thought there lurked only her
foes. This reluctance to yield assent to the facts as
they appear has happily many notable exceptions
in this later time, and yet there must always
appear a difference between the utterance of a
teacher who is allowed to speak within limits of

PEEFACE vii
Creed and Articles of Religion, and the teacher
whose people expect of him an utterance unhin
dered by any considerations of personal safety or
traditional obligations.
The ministers of congregations in the Unitarian
denomination are singularly weR placed to speak
the thing which seems to them true and useful.
The pure Congregational polity which is main
tained among the Unitarian churches fixes the
minister's responsibUity as due only to the church
which he serves, which furnishes at once his secu
rity and his freedom. He is required to utter
freely that which he reverently believes, and he
speaks to people who reserve to themselves the
right to do their own thinking. As a result of
this advantageous position and freer movement
within larger limits, such a minister comes into
constant communication with many persons who
have lost all faith in ineffectual phrases, which,
whatever they may have meant to those who used
them first, cannot be made to mean much to this
newer time.
These sincere believers in ReaRty sometimes
accuse themselves of haAring abandoned religion,
because they cannot join in the concert of expres
sion which Creeds and " Confessions of Faith "

VlU PEEFACE
require. Some of them have even imagined them
selves without faith in God, when their very faith
in goodness has driven them from the worship of a
God who, if he is as he is often described in cer
tain of the churches, is certainly not good. These
are the people described in the title-page of this
book as " not Beginners, but Beginners again."
They are earnestly " out in search of a Religion ; "
but having given up a life preserver that would
not float, they are shy of losing their right to strike
out for themselves by tying up to a new set of
supports ; they would rather swim, and if need be
sink, than clamber aboard a craft which shows by
the wheezing of its hard-worked pumps that it is
kept afloat only by great labor. Many of these
sincere and earnest souls do themselves great in
justice. They are not irreligious, but in their
honest protest have just begun to be essentially
reUgious; they are uncertain of their feRowship,
and many of them belong to the " church of the
isolated " who weR might have a closer communion
with kindred spirits.
This little volume is sent out primarRy for such
as these ; and although the author does not imagine
that he has met aR their difficulties, he dares hope
that he may have indicated a method of inquiry, a

PEEFACE IX
process of thought, by which some of these dif
ficulties may be somewhat reduced. He has found
the things here set forth not only inteRectuaRy
reasonable, but also spirituaRy efficient ; and as he
belongs to the ministry of the common life, he
sends these pages out for plain people to read, in
the hope that they may suggest a way of looking
at the great ReaRties that may constitute some
smaR contribution to the constructive process
which is the very service Religion should render
to Life. The CHtTECH of All Souls,
New York City, November 10, 1898.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAQE
I. The Nature and Uses of Religion ... 1
II. The Natural Uses of Religion ... 20
III. The Affirmation of God. I . . . .40
IV. The Affirmation of God. II . . . . 56
V. The Affirmation concerning Man ... 79
VI. The Affirmation of the Dignity of Human
Nature  96
Vil. The Affirmation of God and Man : Personal
Religion  114
Vin. The Affirmation concerning Prater . . 133
IX. The Affirmation conobbning Jesus Christ. I 149
X. The Affirmation concerning Jesus Christ. II 167
XI. The Affirmation concerning the Church . 186
XII. The True Imitation of Christ . . . 201
Xin. The Perpetual Incaenation .... 219
XIV. The Growth of a Soul  233
XV. Grace and Truth  249
XVI. The Eternal Life  262

THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF
RELIGION

THE NATURE AND USES OF EELIGION
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the know
ledge of the Son of God, nnto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fullness of Christ. — Ephesians iv. 13.
Two questions are frequently asked: What is
the nature of religion ? What is the use of reli
gion ? It is easy to imagine that one who is not
of the Christian religion, and has never heard of
it, plunged suddenly into the associations of a
Christian land, would ask. What is the nature of
this religion, since its evidences are the controver
sies of theologians and the battle of the churches ?
and yet devout individuals seem to lead noble
lives and promote great benefactions, in spite of
this strange and confusing struggle of institutions
caRed religious. Is there a Christianity common
to aR ? Has it a common nature ? But the ques
tion is larger than this. All religion is to be in-

2 TBE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
terrogated with the same question and to the same
end, for it is true that what may be claimed for
a single religion may be claimed also for religion
at large ; and since Buddhism contains stiR the
largest proportion of the human family professing
a religion, and since the devotees of , Brahmanism,
the faith of Zoroaster and of Mohammed, together
with other Oriental faiths, make up the major por
tion of the world's population, it is weR to ask
in terms more general than even Christianity can
demand. What is the nature of religion ?
But when an assertion has been made in terms
philosophicaRy satisfactory to the speculative intel
lect, stiR recognizing that often non-Christian peo
ple, touched by Christianity, have been depressed,
have often declined in moral rectitude, have ac
quired vices, and recognizing that the great reli
gions of the far East have not produced a morality
equal to the elevation of their creeds nor the inten
sity of their faith, the practical man will ask not
only. What is the nature of religion ? but, What
are the uses of religion ?
Now we have come to that place in our living,
in this last part of the century nearly closed, when
aR serious men admit that every institution, every
phase of development which cannot justify itself,
must give way to its successor, which shaR take up
the task in which the other has failed. This is not

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 3
less true of religion as a phase of human develop
ment than of every other phase of development
caRed human. But this is to be said : That as it
is incumbent upon every institution and phase of
human thought to justify itself, so also every such
institution or phase of human thought must hold
its tenure till it is disproved, — must claim the in
tegrity of its mortgage upon human attention until
it is satisfied. It must realize that its justification
waits not simply at the hands of philosophy, but
waits also at the hands of practical life. It must
be not only inteRectuaRy reasonable, but spirit
uaRy effectual.
ReRgion has passed through phases of flower
ing and fading, of energy and faRure, of growth
and decay. We speak of religion as though it
were one and the same for all time and all ages ;
whereas five quite different and distinct periods
can be marked, and their subdivisions are multi
form, in which religion passed from stage to stage
of development. The growth of religion appears
in these five different divisions as, first, the
effort of the consciously dependent creature to
shield itself from the wrath of the higher powers,
when there was no good God anywhere ; when in
all the hierarchy of heaven benignity was un
known; when it was simply a question of the
weak defending himself against the overshadowing

4 TBE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
strong, — the helpless mortal protecting himself
against the gods. Hence tribute was brought,
• offerings were made, — offerings which included
the blood of children as the price of immunity at
the hands of the supernatural powers.
While the smoke of sacrifices was dense on Zion,
sacrifices to Jehovah, whom the Jews had learned
to separate from the Pantheon of tribal deities,
down yonder in the vaRey of Hinnom, under the
shadow of Mount Zion, the idol Moloch had been
heated to a white heat, and the father had taken
out of the hands of the mother the year-old child,
and laid it upon the extended arms of the image
burning hot, and all the company with trumpet and
drum sounded the din that would cover the cries
of the child and the waRing of the mother and
the moans of the father. Mount Zion was run
ning with blood for the sake of this fear of Jeho
vah ; and the valley of Hinnom was fiRed with the
shriR noise and din which would cover the natural
instincts of the human heart. Both had arisen
from the same instinct, for the first stage of wor
ship always is the protection of the worshiper
against the gods.
The second stage is the effort to single out from
among the gods the good God, and make terms
with him, in order that safe relations may be es
tablished, — an aRiance with the strongest power

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 5
against the weaker powers. Even in the earliest
development of the mythology of Greek and Ro
man, in the history of religion this fact appears
again and again. The good power and the strong
power become coincident, and the smaller and
weaker gods stand away when the great, good God
has his favorites in view. This is reHgion, but it
is not reRglon's best.
Then appears the effort to rise out of conscious
sin, — the rise of a moral ideal that has been asso
ciated with the thought of God, the effort to pro
pitiate the good God, because the worshiper is not
like the good God whom he worships. So sacri
fices are offered; asceticism has its vogue, — the
view of life that it is a discipline, that it is a pro
bation, that it is a hard, rigorous thing to serve
God. AR this comes in the third stage, in. which
the worshiper would make terms with the good
God. The worshiper is not only feeble, but he
is not clean ; and so the vision of the supernatural
grows more and more a contrasted condition to
his mind. Out of this grows the reproach which
Yaweh addressed to his people : " As the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts." Now comes the fourth stage in the liberation of
the human soul, in which the worshiper seeks to

6 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
be like the being worshiped. Out of this comes
all the celestial effort to familiarize the heaven
with the ways of earth, and to familiarize the peo
ple of the earth with the citizens of heaven ; and
the books of religion are fiRed with this fresh
stage of religious advance.
When religion comes to its best, — as it has not
yet, except in individual souls, not yet except in
choice, selected spirits who have been able to Rft
themselves into the atmosphere of the divine, —
that last stage of religious development shall ap
pear when there is communion between the crea
ture and the creator. The axiom in science, that
there is but one energy, and aR forces are modes
of its manifestation, is illustrated in the history of
religion. There is but one ultimate reality, and
aR religions are modes of its manifestation. We
get thus the common distinctions of natural reli
gion, psychological religion, theological religion,
and theosophical religion. The multiform phases
appear to us in every survey of the history of reli
gion. These are its speculative differences. We
deal now with the practical aspects of the subject.
The first difficulty in describing the nature of
religion arises from confusing it with its accidents.
No set of opinions can constitute a religion. No
dealings with theological speculation can constitute
a religion ; no set of institutions can be more than

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 7
the result of selection by temperament, perpetuated
by usage, or perhaps sanctified by the struggles of
the human soul. No psahn book or hymn book of
religious writers, even the great psalms of Israel,
which, composed through five hundred years, came
to be the poetry of religion in Israel, can be more
than an incident of religion ; they are not religion's
self. It is but a nation seeking, praying, weep
ing, confessing its sins. AR after ages may adopt
them for their own, but the motive lies deeper than
the effect.
No, there must be a definition larger than any
accident of religion can furnish. It is for this
reason that when we hear from any source the
statement that this or that is the Christian Church,
or this or that is the one true religion, the human
soul revolts against it ; and the soul is capable and
logical exactly in the ratio of its repugnance to
such a statement.
Religion is larger than aR reUgions put together,
and must not be confused with any of Its accidents.
Its priesthood : they are the servants of an ideal,
or they are partners in a contract. Its sacred
books : they did not make the soul ; the soul made
the sacred books. And so no Bible can be more
than the revelation of our nature, of the conscious
ness of God felt originaRy by one people, per
haps borrowed by another race from the original

8 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
sources, as we borrowed our Bible from the He
brews and then spurned the giver, — persecuting
the race to whom God spoke, in our zeal for the
very word we should otherwise never have known.
No Bible can be the sum total of religion ; it is
only religion expressing itself, and living on, be
cause it cannot be killed. This is the first step
toward knowing religion, — that it shall be taken
in the abstract, known as a reality ; taken up out
of all its religious associations, valued beyond all
its incidents, as a jewel is a jewel whether set or
lying in the hand. It is worth as much, except for
the little gold that was in the setting, which may
be replaced, as every institution may be replaced,
provided the reality for which it stands abides.
Why should we ask at this time, What are the
uses of religion ? WeR, first of aR, because it has
levied tribute upon the human race, and must give
an account of itself. No one is wise who goes on
paying to a great institution without requiring an
audit from time to time of what has been done
with his contributions of life, of labor, and of
thought. The cost has been immense, the invest
ment prodigious. It is only rational to inquire
whether it has declared a dividend, has justified the
outlay, has produced results equal to its promise.
The libraries of the world are filled with volumes
to prove religion true ; it is desirable that an equal

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 9
outlay of learning be made to show that it is
useful. What are the uses of religion ? From this also
there must be a reinforcement of such a question :
We stand chagrined at the vision of our civRization
in the midst of the great cities., We talk about our
submerged tenth, when it is more likely to be three
to five tenths. And who are they who infest the
slums of a great city, who crowd its tenement houses,
who decay and fester in the very heart of the city
in which they live ? They are the people who for
anywhere from five hundred to a thousand years
have been the products of Christian civilization.
Is it not fitting that serious people ask what is
the use of religion, when the one social problem is
to defend themselves against the less weR-to-do?
For instance, every man, woman, and child in the
State of New York has, during the last year, paid
three dollars a head for the defective and delin
quent classes in the State ; and with the exception
of here and there a Turk or a Chinaman or a Jap
anese (rare exceptions), and in almost no instance
a Jew, they are people who have slipped through
the hands of the Church. They are the standing
indictment against so-caRed evangelical religion ;
they are the people who have been too hard to hold,
to be kept up to the level of the barbarism in which
we live. They or their parents have lapsed into

10 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
a paganism greater than that of current religion.
They have not even the interest in religion which
attaches to a mythology which has lost both its
poetry and its persuasiveness.
Not only is it so, but religion has laid its levy
upon the lives of a great class who are not, in the
common sense, producers of wealth, nor laborers for
the common good in any appreciable way that can
be counted upon the ledgers of trade. There are
thousands of men who do nothing else but talk
about religion : great orders of men and women
who are devoted to a religion, to the denial of
family life. The mass of church architecture repre
sents the investment of millions upon miRions of
wealth. The whole nation is studded thick with
industries for the making of religion, and the turn
ing out of priests for religion.
Is it not natural that a serious people should
now and then turn to each other and ask whether
the outlay is justified by the result ? or whether we
are engaged in an expensive experiment, waiting
patiently until the Time-Spirit, or some other less
deliberate invader, shall do away with the thing, as
not having justified itself ? If the nature of reli
gion be sure and the use of religion be manifest,
it should be made readily to appear, in answer to
such an inquiry.
There is one consideration of the use of reRgion

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 11
and its nature that we may count as having no part
in this discussion. Religion has no use as a police
arrangement for the restraining of vice. Churches
have such a use, priesthoods have such a use, or
ders of men and women have such a use, institu
tions that are meant to peddle smaR moralities
have such a use. There are police arrangements
in the name of religion that have their use, but
religion in itself has no police function whatever.
We are often confronted with the statement that
the moment a man loses hold of what he has been
accustomed to consider his religion, he lapses into
a kind of barbarism and loosens the ties of his
morality. Certainly he does, unless he has been
larger than his religion, and has simply sloughed
his sheR. If he has done that, then he is perfectly
competent to supply a spine in place of the sheR
that protected him. It is the order of nature that
when the Crustacea discard their shell they grow a
backbone, and that process is going on day by day.
But for the most of those who seem to have retro
graded, in the passing away of their traditional
reRgion, what has happened? Nothing has hap
pened — if they are less moral than they were —
except that the external pressure has been taken
from them, and they have yielded to their natural
tendency. It is a part of the vain conceit of man
that regeneration can be procured by external

12 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
pressure. The man is no more immoral than he
was before — he was always immoral ; he always
thought lightly of the sanctities of life ; he was
always ready to let down the barriers of his good
behavior. He was not, when he thought himself
religious, quite the same man in Europe that he
was in New York. He was not quite the same
man at home that he was in business. He never
was moral. Nothing has happened to him except
that the external supports of this jelly-fish have
been removed, and he slumped down into an indis
tinguishable mass. His integrity fails because his
props have been removed. It is no answer to the
protest against the police regulations of religion to
gay that hell and the adoration of the devil are
necessary to the good behavior of the children of
God. We come to the real uses of religion. Let us
analyze Paul's summary of the uses of religion.
" The f uR grown man," says Paul. The business
of the universe, so far as we know it on our earth,
is the making of men. " TiR we all come in
the imity of the faith," That simply means coor
dination of faculty to a common centre and end.
"Unto the knowledge of the Son of God," the
relationship which the human creature has discov
ered of his kinship with the Eternal. "Unto a
fuR grown man, unto the measure of the stature

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 13
of the fuRness of the Christ." Here it is not
Jesus who is named, but the Christ, the title by
which Jesus was known because " the anointing "
of the Eternal was upon him. This, then, is the
first use of religion. It is a function of man's
nature and must have way.
The little creature that we call a child, that has
curiously found its way in the dark from that great
sea that rolls all around the world, through stages
that mark the evolution of the creatures lower than
man, step by step in its nine months' imprisonment,
comes at last to look out upon the world. The
windows of the eyes have the curtains drawn ; it
seems to us to note nothing. There comes a day
when you go and look into the eyes of the little
child, and "somebody has come to the windows
and is looking out." It is the dawn of conscious
ness, and at last the child knows that it is different
from the world. It did not know that it was not
the waR yonder, nor the candle here, till then ; and
there has arisen in it that strange power to observe.
The mother says, " It takes notice." Let her take
notice that a human soul has arrived.
This is the last term in the ascending series;
this is the dawn of the moral sense. After a while,
by slow degrees and endless comparisons of this
and that, the psychic nature of the child shaR come
to be conscious of itself, when it shaR not think

14 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
simply as the dog thinks, that it is dinner time ; as
the chRd thinks, that it is dinner time ; but it shaR
come to think about its thought, and wonder what
relation dinner time has to what it has to do in
play and study later on. And so it has the power,
after a whRe, to turn itself inside out, and see the
inner textures of its mind.
And later on it comes not only to think about
its thought, but the boy begins to feel that he
knows now whether his thought ought to have been
thought at aR. That is a vast advance. The
mother and father were the conscience of the child,
as they ought to be. The child has no conscience
to begin with, aside from its inherited tendencies,
until the experience of life has endowed it with
an instructed moral sense. The experience of life,
acting on the susceptibility of the child's nature,
turns to the power of conscience. And after a
while the boy says : What was imposed from with
out I shaR assume from within ; and what was
obligation from the heads of the house to the child
they love is a genuine service from the child to the
father and mother whom it loves. That is the
rise of conscious responsibRity in which the whole
plane of activity has been shifted from the mind
of the parent to the mind of the child. Now
gather the forces of nature, thus far plastic, to
become in their turn creative.

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 15
Then comes that curious change in the body of
the child, that period in which the little boy passes
into a youth, and the Httle girl into a maiden ; the
curious changes, changes in the brain and corre
sponding changes in the body, by which adolescence
begins, and the child, by the tests of all psycho
logical phenomena, passes from being an egotist
and becomes an altruist, and in the midst of the
love of self dawns upon his mind the love of the
other. That is the point at which religion should
begin, say our great teachers as to the normal
child. Religion is thus declared to be a function
of the human creature.
Natural religion has its counterfeits, but counter
feits show that there is good money in circulation.
The soul's growth in religion may be retarded by
a paralysis of fear ; it may be Rving still in its
primary stages. Its credulity is the twin of its
reason, and both die when that ligament is cut.
They must grow together, until credulity becomes
loyal faith and reason is instinct with reverence.
Its asceticism later on is the protest of religion
against the dissipation of life's powers in the use
of life's possessions.
In this natural sense skepticism is holy. Skep
ticism is but the soul's declaration of independence
and right of inquiry and the desire to know. I
sailed, says the soul, upon a ship of which I was

16 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
not commander ; and I worked the rigging and
did the errands that were shouted to me by the
captain and mate and boatswain. But now I sail
my own craft by my own chart and my own com
pass, and I must know, says the skeptic, whether
these things are so or not.
Agnosticism, against which men cry out — some
in condemnation, and others in despair that it
has come to them — is a phase of religion if it be
genuine ; for the soul in its inquiry finds that it
has not exhausted the universe by discovery ; that
there are many things it does not, cannot know ;
many things that it must inquire for long, with
patient inquiry. A sincere agnostic is the disciple
of the Holy Spirit.
By all these tests religion is a function of the
human soul. ShaR we teach a child to stand in
the gymnasium and present the chest and fiR its
lungs to the very last cell of their structure, and
shall we leave whole ranges of its nature unpro
vided by aliment or unexercised by their proper
function ? It is absurd to say that you wiR not
force your child to religion; the problem is not
how shaR it get religion, for the fact is that it
cannot get away from it. It is the stain which
saturates all its tissues ; it is in the blood in its
veins; it is in the smaR and intimate particles
which belong to its brain ; and to say that it shaU

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 17
be left to g^ow up undeveloped is like saying that
your child may learn everything, but it shall not
know its mother tongue ; it may know every arti
ficial accompRshment, but its nature must be denied
its scope.
In this aspect all religion is extended in its
range. Literature, art, progress, and patriotism
are aspects of religion. Where a man gives his
best, and bestows himself utterly ; where he con
verts his best into the coin that is current for the
uses of his life, there he worships ; there belongs
the best endeavor of his soul.
Now mark how the Church, which is only an
attendant upon religion, distorts history when it
claims art as its product. If you take up any
Catholic writer of Italy or of France, you find him
claiming that the Renaissance with its marvelous
art products was the child of the Church. Every
student of history, who studies for the sake of his
tory, and not for the sake of the Church, knows
this is not true. The Church produced the Me-
dicis as truly as it produced Savonarola. But the
Turk drove the Greek learning before him out of
the East into Italy; and the refinements of life
came to the Italian, whose nature was ready for
their sowing, and he produced the harvest of art.
The Church conserved it ; held the interests laid
at its door. The Church was foster-mother of aR

18 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
this ; but art belongs to the aesthetic of human
nature. Religion appears in art in Italy because
art has been born in the atmosphere of worship ;
but worship is the reverence natural to man seek
ing an object worthy of its adoration, and coming
at last to see in all beauty and goodness the ap
proximation to its ideal.
So of patriotism. Coordinated Germany, which
is now the Fatherland, and united Italy, which is
now the pride of her sons, stand in strong contrast
to the dismembered condition preceding the union
in these lands. The hot breath of devotion kindled
the flames of patriotism, so that kings laid down
their crowns for the sake of country, and became
subjects for the sake of united Germany and an
Italy at one. It was a kind of religion where the
flag became a holy banner, and the patriots became
the seed of the future nation.
What I have been urging is that religion is
more than all religions ; that it is not to be con
fused with any of its accidents ; that it is not to
be identified with its institutions ; that reRgion in
its essence is the passionate devotion to the will of
God, which realizes its aspirations in worship and
its obligations in obedience to law. It has its root
in human nature, its flower in human emotions, its
fruit in human conduct. Its end is the regenera^
tion of society, in which the full-grown man shall

THE NATUEE AND USES OF EELIGION 19
appear as the normal product, — the man suffering
no atrophy on the religious side of his nature while
developing the basilar instincts of life. So that
salvation with him, as a normal man, shall appear
at last, not as a remote, heavenly state, long de
layed, but as moral health. " He shaR be a fuR-
grown man according to the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ."

II
THE NATURAL USES OF RELIGION
In the preceding chapter I tried to show that
the perplexities of an observing mind would give
rise to the question. What is the nature of reli
gion, since its habits seem to conflict ? What is
the nature of religion, since instead of " the unity
of faith," and " the knowledge of the Son of God
coming to a full-grown man," to build up the body
of the Christ, tribal competition seems to be the
thing we have, so far ? The cost of it in life, in
money, in exemption from taxes, in unproductive
classes, is in our own land immense. The multi
form aspects of a privileged cult give rise to the
question. What are the uses of religion ?
The statement was also made that a universal
denial of religion was no answer. To shake the
head in negation and turn away is to cast your
own shadow on your own path ; and no man is
much instructed by the proportions of his own
outline cast on his own path, in place of the radi
ance which should shine there.
Attention was also asked to the fact that the

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 21
majority of the human race hold a religion which
is the very antipodes of Christianity. Buddhism
is the abnegation of personality. Christianity in
deed speaks of the same law of sacrifice, but it is
the great renunciation of self for a greater being
to take its place. Buddhism and Brahmanism
have the great truth that the earth-born man loses
his earthliness in the spiritualization of being, by
the cessation of desire. But religion only gives
nature its true development when it is seen to be
a natural function and coextensive with all the in
terests in life. All these things are part of the
natural question. What are the uses and what is
the nature of reRgion?
Now, consider the natural uses of religion. We
will put to one side, without any consideration
whatever, those uses of religion which may be
caRed mere matters of convention. To buRd a
great church, to elaborate a ritual, to educate a
priesthood, to crystallize and create a body of di
vinity, to permit the teaching of religion as theory
— these are but the evidences of religion; they
are not itself.
Let us recur to the statement which summed up
the course of thought in the preceding chapter.
Observe, then, that religion is a passionate devo
tion to the will of God. In this sense religion Is
more than aR reRglons put together. Religion is

22 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
a passionate devotion to the will of God, which
realizes its aspirations in worship, which finds its
expression in obedience to law, which has its root
in human nature, Its flower in human emotions, its
fruit in human conduct, which takes for its task
no smaller thing than the regeneration of society,
and seeks to achieve this end by the moral health
of the individual soul. If this were remembered,
it would be scarcely necessary for further elabora
tion ; but it is easily forgotten.
I ask you to bear In mind, therefore, that the
point of view assumes that the natural use of reli
gion first appears in that it Is a contribution of
nature's self. It is not imparted to man ; it is
not imported for man ; it is not " imputed " to
man ; It is not inserted from the outside.
The alkali desert lies blistering under the sun.
The Irrigating canal is dug through Its expanse,
and tiny canals run off to right and left. The
junction of great streams far away may happily
supply the water for the irrigation of the desert,
and when its surface is afloat everything under the
surface knows it, just as every little creek and bay
knows when the tide Is In. So the fertRIty, not
absent but suppressed in this great American
desert, simply waits for the downfall from on high.
We are kindled from on high, but the fuel Is
ours. We are fructified from on high, but the

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 23
faith which is individual Is a fructifier also ; the
soul is susceptible to the divine approach. God is
the author of our nature ; it cannot be alien to
its creator ; It must be able to know God.
In the order of evolution the last term In an as
cending series receives the emphasis. Is the last
term the physical nature of man ? So far as we
know,, he has reached his normal development : he
could not be bettered by an arm, or a leg, or an
eye in the middle of his forehead. Nature shows
what she has done In the making of man by mak
ing It Impossible for him to grow another member,
a new organ. Is his mental equipment the last
term ? The dog and the horse think, just as you
and I think ; but so far as we know, they do not
think about their thought. They have not the
power to turn themselves inside out and see
whether their thought ought to have been thought
at aR ; nor can they distinguish between the worth
and the power of a motive ; for it is not enough to
feel the forces of a current, — we must be able to
measure its precipitation, and note the direction
of Its course. So in motives, not simply the im
pression on the mind, but the reason for the
stroke. The worth of the motive and the force of
the motive belong to man's discrimination; and
this Is only saying that In the ascending series the
human soul is the last term.

24 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
If nothing else could be achieved with the stu
dents of this subject but to make them under
stand that reRgion Is not a thing to be got, because
it Is that which you cannot get rid of, then much
would have been achieved. For it is not a ques
tion whether man shaR worship, but what he shall
worship; and If he cannot have an Imperative
ideal that commands him, he will have an Idol to
suit himself, and set it on the counter of his place
of business and say his prayers there, and recite
his ritual from his cash-book and ledger. He will
worship ; he wIR have a choice of Idols. The
Romans and the Greeks did well to turn their
backs upon the hideous idolatry of the Orient and
make their Idols beautiful, since idolatry or ideal
ism Is sure to appear as worship.
It is our nature to be religious. So much Is
this true that I think I am not dealing In excessive
terms when I say that the man who is his best
self Is most religious In this large sense. It is
not a question whether he wiR or wIR not, but
whether he wiR nobly, sublimely, or not. You
say he has turned pagan ? WeR, then, he has his
religion by a retrogressive process; that is aR.
You say that he has not developed upon his reli
gious side ? Then he Is a dwarf. You say he has
religion In excess? Why, then he is a freak.
These are extremes. The man who denies his

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 25
reRgious nature is stunted. The man who runs to
emotion only is not normal. The proportioned)^
human creature has to reckon with religion as
part of his equipment, and he can no more put It
aside without substituting some less worthy thing
in Its place than he can eliminate any other func
tion of his nature and remain a man. This Is a
thing which Is not believed; but it must be be
lieved if the Church is to mean anything for mod
ern life, and if Christianity is to return to the
beauty of Its great original.
Said Jesus of Nazareth, that master of the art
of Rving, that teacher par exceRence, that soul
radiant with the light of heaven, " What man
of you that is a father, if his son ask for bread
wIR give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, wIR he
give him a serpent ? If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how
much more shaR your father which is in heaven
give good gifts to them that ask him ? " He
seemed to be standing again on the mount above
Nazareth and looking out to the Mediterranean
beyond Carmel. His horizon was wider than the
pent-up minds of his time. As the world was
greater, so God was greater than the human father,
but not different. In aR his building was no " air-
castle ; " it was not a " New Jerusalem let down "
from God in heaven to rest upon earth ; nay, it

26 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
was a world of spirit with foundations laid In the
very soil under his feet. It was built from the
ground up. We get back to that, or we get no
where In the study of religion. The natural uses
of religion thus assert themselves.
Every effort at philanthropy, every eleemosynary
impulse, every unselfish desire, in this age, which
is simply a marvel of benevolence, means simply
that we have come to understand that you cannot
veneer a human mind with theology so long as Its
stomach Is cleaving to its backbone. Religion
must begin at the bottom In the gross facts of hu
man need, and build up in this world. There is
" another world," but it is this one made over into
beauty and power. We are liable to run to an
ethical substitute for religion, which wIR itself be
a want of proportion as much as the other ; for
religion is the guarantee of ethics, and ethics Is
the resultant of religion. So I emphasize this con
tribution of the human soul to the work of religion,
out of itself. There Is no part of human nature
which can be spared in the process.
This view encounters two classes of objectors,
— one, the theological class, who say, " Why, my
good man, you are talking about natural religion,
and do not understand that there is a difference
between natural and revealed religion." No, I
do not understand that. That used to be said by

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 27
people who did not understand that God could not
be outside his world. But so soon as God was
seen moving inside his world, so that he Is the soul
of the atom as the soul of the man, from that mo
ment until now there is no nature that is not shone
through from on high, and there is no divinity
that is not natural. This is the change which has
come, — that when we say nature, it runs clean
through to the centre. The old definition of nat
ural and revealed reHgion has its latest contribu
tion in literature by Mr. Balfour. In his " Foun
dations of Belief " he left the paths he knows, to
make a contribution out of his pseudo-science and
mingled cynicism to the distinction between nat
ural and revealed religion. It was as unsatisfac
tory as his reply to a question addressed to the
Government, which he did not wish to answer —
he is a master of language unpenetrated by frank
ness, — and It was as inoperative as all things must
be that divide God's world in half. The moment
you enter the field of dualism in your effort to
understand the world, you have Introduced confu
sion. I must repeat to you the axiom so often stated,
that the fundamental word in science is the axiom
also In religion ! There is but one energy, and all
forces are modes of its manifestation. So, nat
urally, we escape the old dilemma of religion for

28 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
purposes of restraint. Take your choice ; it is per
fectly open to you. Nobody is compelled to be
educated in religion any more than In anything
else. Take your choice between a religion that is
meant to restrain human nature and a religion that
Is meant to develop human nature ; and one will
constitute a strait-jacket which is never used for
weR people, and the other wIR constitute an in
spiration, of which one would think the world would
be eager to avail itself. You cannot regenerate
anything by external pressure : you must find new
Rfe by new Inspiration. Not only is reRgion not
something to be achieved from without, or Im
ported, or imparted, or imputed to the human soul,
but it must be grown from within ; so that if we
would find God, man must stiR look within.
Not only is this true, but the second natural use
of religion is that it adds zest to life. People for
the most part are just trying to hold on, just trying
to hold on and keep alive. A great number of
people In our large cities hardly know where the
next meal is to come from. That Is the pity of It !
Of the remainder, which includes the workers,
there Is a vast number of whom, if the worker, the
bread-winner, were to fall sick for two weeks it
would make the difference between comparative
comfort and absolute penury. There are many
little children who are working under age, because

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 29
their parents have had to lie about them to get
them employment; and their employers are mer
cenary enough to do their business by employing
feeble help at low wages. It Is aR a part of one
terrible tragedy, that is never played out, and
without any pause between the acts, — the great
tragedy of the world trying not to die.
Now, in God's name, is there anything which
will help It? Yes. I admit with perf^t readi
ness that there must be in our civIRzatlon what
Is caRed by the working mass of men " a leisure
class." By that I do not mean the people who are
idle. There ought to be no place under heaven
where a man could loaf, refusing to bear his share
of Rfe's activity. I do not mean the people who
are " walled up in dreams," slothful until they are
desiccated in their moral fibre and apathetic in
their moral energy. I mean the class of producers
who are caRed " the leisure class " because their
hands are not hard, because they work with the
brush or the pen, or in some of the great avenues
of life in the world, as in the great corporate modes
of doing business, — the great world of actors,
the artists, the writers, the whole mass of people
that constitute what are called the leisure or privi
leged class, or the class of the aesthetic, or brain-
workers, If you please, so called because It is not
understood what their work is. They are neces-

30 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
sary, and to aRow them to exist there must be " the
hewers of wood and drawers of water," who do the
work these people are helpless to do. What is
the result? ShaR we stand aside and see them
work ? We are not interested In seeing the wheels
go round. We do not stand In a kind of Idle
ecstasy and say. What a privilege it is that so many
may do what they like, while somebody must do
what he* must. By virtue of the fact that there
are those who work for the man who does what
they would be doing, that they cannot refuse to do
this; by virtue of the privilege of choosing our
work, while so many must do what is commanded,
we should devote ourselves to their amelioration ;
and this is the present duty, — to add such zest to
life that there shall be something to spare to the
men who are simply holding on. Their veins are
scant of life ; if your veins are full, there ought to
be some process of transfusion possible by which
their Infirmity should live by your fuR-blooded
strength. And it is so. All people who understand reli
gion as adding zest to life put their lives Into the
world ; they do not simply put the world into their
Rves. There is no relation between a ship and a
barnacle. The only thing to do with the ship after
the voyage Is to bring her into the dry dock and
scrape the bottom, and leave these parasites of the

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 31
sea on dry land, where they will die. AR non-
producers for the common weal are simply stuck
on to the world's progress, — carried, dragged
about. The use of religion is to raise permanently the
moral tone, which means the tone of enjoyment of
the whole working world. You say this is caRed
" socialism ; " It is sometimes so caRed by people
who call evil names to excuse an evil temper. I
had never dreamed it was socialism; but a new
impulse brought Into the body of the organism we
caR society has to be labeled first, to be under
stood afterward. That Is the pity of our want of
Intelligence, the fact that we are not in the habit
of thinking ; that we keep our minds and go and
look at them occasionaRy, instead of making them
the equipment of our every-day performance. No,
the business of religion is to add zest to life, and
to permanently raise the moral tone of society, so
that It shaR not be subject to its periodical slump
ing into the slough of its own despondency.
Now If a human creature thinks he is religious,
and his worship Is a burden, and his duty a task,
and his divine attractions mere cords by which he
Is held from breaking away ; and his love of God
is a kind of feeble emotion substituted for an ab
ject fear of God, let him understand that whatever
his pretension may be, he does not know what the

32 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
word religion means ; he does not understand the
natural uses of religion.
Religion is meant to make duty a delight ; and
worship a natural gravitation, a celestial attrac
tion; and the love of God simply the subRmest
aspect of aR the pure motives of life. And the
gentle amenities which make our homes a sanc
tuary are but transferred to God's universe when
we are at home with him.
Again, the natural use of religion appears in
that It provides a philosophy of life. I have simply
spoken now of the natural functions that shall
have their legitimate way, so that life is bourgeoned
out and made round, rich, and full, capable of its
own delights as the normal man, " the full-grown
man," mark you, " according to the measure of the
stature of the fullness of God's Christ." More
than and beyond the natural functions, the deRghts,
duties, and zest, comes the philosophy of life.
Most of us drift from point to point. We have
neither chart nor compass. We have a kind of
feeling that somebody is at the helm who under
stands the sea and will steer us right ; and for the
most part we are passengers. Now and then we
are caught by some eddy of the great sea, or tangled
in some growth of its shaRower waters. Now and
then a storm sets in which makes our timbers
creak, and sends us scudding before the wind,

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 33
wondering whether we shaR be shipwrecked. Now
and then a rough surf sounds hoarsely upon the
shore, and we wonder if the helmsman understands
how near the breakers are. AR these things come
to us ; but as for the most of us, we are indiffer
ent, we are part of the equipment. We are being
carried — "personaRy conducted" — through life.
Church, priest, the infalRble statute-book, the
creed, somebody we believe in, — these are the
separate attractions, the multifold substitutes for
the centre of gravity which should be In every
Individual soul.
Why should I lend my life to the guidance
of a priest, or to direction by a church, or to the
seduction of a tradition, or to anything most an
cient? Why, in other words, should I have aR
my interests in to-day, and all my guarantees in
two thousand years ago? I ask you If that is
reasonable? That is the reason men do business
on one plane, and serve God — or pretend to — on
quite another. No, I say with all deliberation, that
If the philosophy of life has taught you that your
best Interests lie in pushing hard on the scheme
which Is making you rich or happy, or building up
a fortune for your family, — if the philosophy of
life has taught you that, then in God's name de
vote yourself to it, and do not leave It to give any
time to a mere shell of religion, a tradition which

34 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
must be Inoperative and vain. Let us have the
whole man somewhere, and leave him there to work
out his philosophy of life. I have always Rked
that word of John Burroughs about Emerson,
" Where he was at aR, he was altogether." That
is the picture of a man for whom, there had been
achieved a philosophy of life.
This is the natural use of religion : the knowing
of God, however blindly, means that ; the offering of
prayers, however crudely, means that. The study of
ancient scripture, however imperfectly, means that.
The congregations go Sunday after Sunday, for what
we call " divine service." If It Is divine, it also
means that. It Is the building up in every human
creature of a phRosophy of life that shaR lead him
to say, I do not know what shaR happen to me in
aR the years to come ; but I think, before God, I
know how I shall behave when it happens ! That
is worth while. The hopelessness of living through
the stress and storm of it may come over him, and
he may be as helpless as a human creature with
whom the swirl of the tide has played like a toy ;
but when he lands he will land upright. It may
be that the force of the adverse current wIR for a
little turn him away from the steadiness of his pur
pose, and a kind of personal delirium run through
aR the emotions of his Rfe ; but when he comes to
himself you shall see he has been holding on with

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 35
his face set toward God aR the while. The first
ray of sunlight out of his great distress shaR shine
like a smile, because he knows that It Is the mes
sage of mind to mind.
It is a shame for a man to come to middle Rfe
and not know what he thinks or feels, or why he
thinks it, or how he feels it, to have no philosophy
or plan of life. That Is the reason that when you
send your boys to coRege or into business you go
into your room and pray God that they may hold
on to one or two things, — just one or two, — just
enough to keep them steady ; and then you say. If
they be true and clean, then I do not care much
what else happens to them ; If they shaR come out
clean and true. Given those great uprights, you
can build a beautiful temple out of any human
life. But most of all, the natural use of religion is to
regenerate life. The old view of regeneration has
been, that it was to bring man out of his low
estate of sin against God unto the estate of adop
tion with God, his Father. Who ever adopted his
own child? We never were anybody's else but
God's. He made us and cannot get rid of us
after that. We may think It was a mistake, but
it was his mistake, not ours. We did not ask to
come. We are here, and the Eternal has us on his
hands. Why should we talk about being adopted

36 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
into the family of God ? The great creative vital
ity is certainly not unconscious, that it should
simply turn out human spawn. Nay, I think the
Eternal weR knows what he is about when he
makes a human soul. I think he knows that he
is preparing something that shaR come into his
own image ; and regeneration In that aspect is
simply transforming the brute into a man, evolving
out of the brute the human. We are not human
yet I I saw a blue hawk set his wings from the
edge of the woods, and never change the slant of
his imperial propensity, his great impulsion, tlR
he landed upon his prey ; and I said, I think I
know people who unscrupulously transact the busi
ness of civilization, who would be glad to have him
In their firm. Why ? Because the survival of the
hawk In us keeps us from being quite human. The
beasts of prey sharpen their nails. You can go
through the woods and find an old tree on which
every lynx and catamount and bear In the whole
section has sharpened his naRs, scored from as
high a point as they can reach. There they stood
and clawed in the middle of the night to get their
nails sharp for the business of life, as they under
stood it. Human creatures cut their naRs. That
Is the difference ; and the difference is summed up
in the word " human." We are not here for raven,
but we are here for help ; and in the helping of the

THE NATUEAL USES OF EELIGION 37
world. If the nails are too sharp they hinder. You
have no right to help and draw blood at the same
time. So the business of religion is to bring us up from
the lower level and make us human. There is not
anything else but the moral condition which marks
the word " human " as its own. The ability to
build a house does not make us human. We are
not as clever as the beaver or the oriole. They
build houses which wRl keep out the water and will
serve their purpose. We build a house which is a
care to us until we die. The moral conditions all
go with the word " human," and the regeneration
of man by the natural uses of religion comes in the
humanizing of our nature. Are we not sometimes
ashamed to speak of the brutes, when we remember
that there is not a vice among them ? Not a single
vice among them ! No creature we call a brute
ever voluntarRy intoxicated itself, or prostituted
itself for hire. Those are human qualities, so
caRed. They are the excess of free-will choosing
its own task and finding it unfit, and having to
undo its doing to the point of repentance which
nearly klRs. We are not human yet ! And the
business of religion is to humanize : to make that
which is unmoral in the brute, and Is immoral in
the man, forbidden to him because his business is
to bring the full-grown man into being ; to build

38 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
up the " fuR-grown man according to the measure
of the stature of the fullness of the Christ."
When I come to discuss the great affirmations
of religion concerning Jesus Christ, I shall have
something to say of what that "measure of the
stature of the f uRness of Christ " means ; but for
the present, let us say it is not to be so great as
Christ, — that is not the teaching of this great
text, — but to " come to a full-grown man ; " that
is, to be all that there Is of energy and life-stuff in
you to make. It may be very little, but it should
be fuR grown. It Is a great pity for the world to
administer an opiate to any human creature that
should keep it a child forever. FuR-grown men
according to the measure of the stature of Christ's
work and being ? Not at all. I am not bound to
fiR any great place, but I am bound to fiR the
place I am In. It is the proportion that Is there
implied, not the magnitude which we are invited
to assume : " the measure of the stature of the
fuRness of the Christ."
In other words, the natural uses of religion are
to reconceive and produce and buRd and maintain
in the world, by processes natural, by added zest,
by a sublime philosophy of life, by regeneration
from below upward, — to build, maintain, and per
fect all that each is capable of.
" He hath given to some to be evangelists, and

THE NATURAL USES OF EELIGION 39
some preachers, and some teachers ; but God hath
set every member in the body as It hath pleased
him ; and the body is to be helped by that which
every joint supplies, according to the due working
of their several parts, to build up the body of
Christ, tiR we aR come In the unity of the faith,
and the knowledge of the Son of God (the filial
relations that are divine), to the full-grown man
according to the measure of the stature of the fuR
ness of the Christ."

Ill
THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD

He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. — Hebrews xi. 6.
This is the affirmation of God ; not the affirma
tion by God, not an affirmation concerning God :
we affirm the things fundamental ; we make af
firmation about the things incidental. It would be
natural to say the affirmation about the Bible, or
about inspiration, or about Jesus of Nazareth ; but
when we come to the very constitution of things,
and deal with what is at once rudimentary, pri
mary, and final in the thought of religion, we speak
of the affirmation of God.
Do not Imagine for a moment that the subject is
difficult. If the proposition that we had set be
fore our minds were to prove God, rather than to
declare how he must be and why, — if it were to
demonstrate Infinity by our limited faculty, the
task would not be difficult, — it would be impossi
ble ; for the nature of God and his Being remain

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 41
sealed to human reason, as do the nature and being
of all things highest and final. We approach
them and perceive them ; we speak to them and
get an answer, but we do not define them nor com
pass them ; for though we ourselves are sharers of
the Infinite, we are infinite under finite conditions,
and can only speak of so much as our own bounda
ries Inclose. If I were to sum up in two proposi
tions the substance of what is to be said upon this
subject, I should but repeat the text Introducing
this subject as containing these two propositions
which are fundamental to the whole subject : " He
that cometh to God must believe that he is " im
plies that in man there is a tendency Godward,
and that to make that tendency effective it must
pass from a natural tendency to a voluntary pro
gression, to a deRberate purpose; and that the
conviction that " he Is " is the corollary of the in
stinct that he ought to be. Or if the three as
pects in which God must be presented, as the
substance of religion, as the end of our faith, as
the goal of our desire, were to be stated, I should
hope to show that the affirmation of God in reli
gion would find God first necessary, next real,
and third personal ; that is, he would be necessary
by virtue of the nature which seeks to apprehend
him, not by virtue of any nature of his own. But
that he would be necessary, in the second place.

42 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
— not as a figment of the mind is a necessary
trick of the mind, or as an attitude of the mind Is
a necessary habit of the mind, — but that he
would be necessary as real, and be the reality cor
respondent to jthis necessary apprehension. That
Is, every appetite has its gratification and every
instinct Its crown, and nothing of the earth which
looks upward looks into vacancy. And, finaRy,
I should try to show that he Is not only ne
cessary and real, but personaRy real. This wRl
lead inevitably to a nice distinction between what
is individual and what Is personal. And if any
person thus addressed says that the metaphysical
has no place in practical reRgion, then such an
one must live in a vacuum ; for as truly as you
may eliminate the atmosphere and not the ether,
so truly you may eliminate the metaphysical dis
cussion, but you cannot eliminate the metaphysical
conditions. So we may as well be " at home "
with ourselves, and therefore we come to this great
theme, however mystical, with the feeling that
there must be something in it for ourselves, be
cause there is so much in it of our very life and
being. Let us take Into consideration this fact, that
what is called Irreligion is often on the way to re
ligion ; for it is not so much irreligion as it is dis
content with the prescription which has not brought

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 43
health, although the Individual knows he is not
well. He knows he is infected, if not with an in
curable malady, at least by an unquenchable curi
osity ; and therefore when the answer, which does
not answer. Is repeated often enough, naturaRy
the mind turns elsewhere, sometimes to introspec
tion, sometimes to speculation; sometimes closes
the eyes and calls itself agnostic. It is debarred
from but one field, namely, philosophic atheism :
for In this age philosophic atheism is impossible.
Philosophic atheism would be the deliberate philo
sophical conclusions of a man who had thought his
way out to nothing. The end of sane philosophy
cannot be denial of aR satisfaction in thought, for
thought is creative; it makes being, it does not
deny being. Practical atheism Is easily acquired,
because It Is the abandoning of all thought, and
the steeping of the moral nature In the stagnant
pools of sense. For instance, the man is practi
cally an atheist who lives as though God were not.
The man is practicaRy an atheist who lives as
though this life were for him the end of all things.
The man Is practicaRy an atheist who puts second
ary causes for first causes and dwells in secondary
reasons as though they were ultimate. A man is
steeped in materialism, not by proving that mat
ter is the mother of all that is, but by showing
that he himself Is living in those functions of his

44 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
nature which are derived from matter. For you
are tied up to one of two propositions, if you have
entered the philosophic field. One alternative is,
that there are two contending forces in the uni
verse, one matter, the other spirit, or what corre
sponds to each ; that they are In constant conflict ;
that they are in unrelenting opposition ; that their
battle is never done; that they are thrown, first
the one and then the other, to rise and at it again
In a constant conflict, of good and evil, of light and
darkness. If you say that this dualistic scheme
solves the universe to you. It shows that you have
taken the earth in hemispheres, and not as a whole.
Then you should be no Copernican in your thought,
and should go back to the ancient world, a level
plane with the heavens turned over it like a bowl,
easily penetrated from above by spirits celestial,
and easily penetrated from below by spirits not
celestial, the theatre of that contention never va
cant. And the logical conclusion of this scheme,
if it were true, would be, that since there is no
controRIng order in the world, there Is no God.
That Is one alternative. The other alternative is
that which modern science proclaims over and over
again : that the universe Is one and not two ; that
there is one energy, and all forces are modes of
its manifestation ; that which is once present in
the universe Is always there; however it may

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 45
change its form it never disappears ; that the
Conservation of Energy and the Correlation of
Forces are the two great articles of the scientific
faith. This is the contrast to the other proposi
tion that there are two contending forces in the
universe, as God and the devil, as flesh and spirit,
as light and darkness. These forces are very weR
provided for, because, being named and placed,
they may be dismissed. We juggle with these,
but we no longer take them seriously.
The result of this has been that having satisfied
himself that God and the devil are in constant con
flict, having found it impossible to believe in the
diabolical intruders, man has easily escaped obliga
tions to the other, the ever present Divine. In such
a scheme, when the devil is dead to any thinking
man's mind, God is at least moribund to his mind
also ; he is on the way to die ; he has never been
to him " the living God." To the better instructed
man, whose affirmation of God Is a conscious real
ity, consciously present to the soul, there is con
veyed in the axiom I have just stated a necessity
of thought ; namely, either matter Is a " mode of
motion of spirit," or spirit Is sublimated matter.
From whichever end of this statement you move
there Is no division of substance nor separation of
attributes. Of course there are objections to this,
but they are objections that arise from the field,

46 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
not of Its ImpossIblRty, but from the field of its
experience. There are those who say It Is fanati
cism, or It is spiritualism; for he may use the
labels of philosophy who is not a philosopher.
Now, the unquestioned fact Is this, that you
cannot think of God or affirm God without observ
ing one of these three conditions : God Is neces
sary ; if so, he Is real ; and if he be real, then he
is personal. That is the line of this contention.
•~ Observe, then, how the instinct for God appears
to make God necessary. Religion begins in fear
and ends in love. Fear and Love are its anti
podes. Religion begins In the feeling upon the
part of the dependent creature that he is depend
ent, and he is afraid of that on which he depends.
So far as he knows, this overshadowing power is
a foe to his happiness. He knows he may come
Into communication with It, but he cannot control
It. That Is the pale and trembling beginning of
religion. It takes all the forms of the lower grades
of reRgious expression, — tribal, primitive, idola
trous, and superstitious ; so that the shivering vic
tim of his own desire for God stands and seeks by
supplication or sacrifice to protect himself from the
being whom he cannot escape. God Is necessary
to him by virtue of the fact that he cannot account
for the world, however immature his thought of
it, without supposing a power of which he is not

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 47
independent, but on which he must essentially de
pend. The hunter of some wRd tribe is out upon
the chase and brings the deer home upon his shoul
ders. His rude weapon has slain It, and the mark
of the arrow, lance, or knife is upon its body where
he has reached a vital point. He throws it upon
the floor of his rude hut; as he straightens his
back from its burden, he hears in the hut a moan
ing sound. When his eyes are accustomed a little
to the darkness, he discovers that the moaning
sound he has heard through the semi-twilight comes
from the form of the woman living with him, whom
he has taken by the customs of his tribe to be his
mate, and who has borne him children. He sees
that this woman Is crouching and crooning in
agony over a chRd ; the child does not stir. There
has never been a death in the hut of this savage ;
he does not know what it Is. He knows what a
dead deer is, for he has klRed it. Now he turns
his little one over and no sign of a blow is seen, —
no sign that violence has been done to It. He
lifts its tiny eyelids, and the eyes do not answer
his. He feels its hand, and it is colder than the
creature on the floor of the hut. Something has
happened which he has not done, and which he
could not prevent. He questions the woman with
eager ferocity to know what she has done. She
has done nothing but weep ; she has done nothing

48 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
but moan over her child, and she does not know
what has happened to it, so primitive they are.
There is a difference between the dead chRd and
the dead creature, whose weight has been lifted off
the hunter's shoulders, and in that mystery between
the dead child and the dead deer lies the first
adumbration of the soul's necessity for God. He
needs God to account for life and love and sorrow.
This may not be the beginning of religion, but it
is a chapter in the beginning : a sorrow which I
cannot solve ; a problem which I cannot answer ;
a question which comes to me and leaves me dumb :
it is the sense of a loss I cannot bear ; and the less
to be borne that I cannot understand it. So the
primitive man cries out for God ; for something to
offer God, to protect those left to him. He builds
his altar and lays his sacrifice and wearies the hea
vens with his prayers, because the Unseen has laid
its power upon him, and he is in the grasp of the
Invisible. When he " endures as seeing him who
is invisible," the progress of religion has reached a
stage far in advance. Religion thus begins In fear,
and it runs the whole gamut from lowest to high
est. It runs the whole gamut of human experience
until it ends in the souls of the holy ones who
have escaped from themselves and their fears to
God and his love; they have passed that great
span of which the two piers are the fear which

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 49
seeks to protect itself against God, and the love
which seeks to lose itself in God. The history of
religion Is the effort to build a bridge between
these two widely separated supports.
— But in either aspect God Is necessary. Not only
so, but God Is necessary because he is of the nature
of Cause. A singular thing has come over the his
tory of human thought. It was held to be a great
discovery when Paley introduced to the world in
his Natural Theology the argument from design.
" Paley's watch " is an ancient timepiece, and has
done duty long In the world of argument. It was
very cleverly constructed, but It did not account
for things. To say that the watch, picked up by
some one who has never seen it, gives evidence of
design, leaves the question common to childhood
unanswered, " Who made God ? " Every writer of
modern science finds It upon his hands to search
out a design which would account for the being of
things. This is the solution presented to us now
In the vindication of Cause in nature. We have
long known that we could not think of anything
out of space or time ; but no more can we think
of the uncaused than we can think of that which
is out of space or out of time. Follow back the
beginnings which you know, and still there is a
gulf stretching between the thing we know as
having a cause sufficient for its coming into being

50 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
and the dim beginnings for which no cause is as
signed. For every discovery there is the persist
ent question. How did It come? Who made It?
Whence was it derived ? Who brought It hither ?
-The demand for cause Is also of the data of our
thinking as much as space and time. And be
cause man is so constituted that he cannot argue
beyond the intervention of space and time as data
of his thinking, so is his mind constituted that
he cannot conceive of the uncaused ; and the de
mand for an origin, for cause, for the beginning of
things, for that which gave breath as weR as the
recognition of that which Is born, — this also be
longs to the ground plan of his thinking, and only
the affirmation of God as Cause affords a worthy
solution of his inquiry. Therefore religion makes
the great affirmation of God, and does not seek to
prove God, but declares God, as metaphysics
declares space and time.
Now why should I say that aR things are under
the reign of law and omit the human mind as
among the " aR things " ? That is the curious
lapse which our philosophy suffers. We talk of
the reign of law as though law were anything in
itself. Law is in Itself nothing. The law of the
statute-book is not there by original creation : it
Is the summary of civilization's conclusions how
best to achieve justice, — not exact justice, for the

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 51
law does not seek exact justice ; when it is at its
best it seeks to achieve equal justice. But this
conclusion, this body of law, such a wonderful doc
ument, for instance, as the written Constitution of
the United States, the manifold variations of all
legal procedure and aR legal expression, are but
the summary of civilization seeking to express this
necessity which underlies aR law, viz., that every
man shall have a space around him in which to
grow without being crowded by the next man, —
without being hindered of growth by another man's
interest. It declares he shall not be like an acorn
planted in a flower pot, but like an acorn planted
in an acre lot, so that his branches may spread and
his leaf not wither, and his great crest witness the
growing centuries. This is the aim of the law, —
to make men grow. So in all matters physical the
mechanism of the universe immensely interests us.
We understand perfectly the recurrences of the
seasons now, and the farmer plants by virtue not
of some revelation, but by virtue of the fact that
Nature has behaved thus so many times under such
conditions, that he knows how she would behave
under such conditions another time. He is a
scientific farmer who remembers. He is a nomad
who wanders from one patch of green to another
to feed his flocks. The nomad leads his flock to
pasture; the enlightened man brings the pasture

52 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
to his flock. He remembers, and keeps the con
tract into which Nature enters with the Man of
Laws. Now why should this element of design, this
confession of law, which is the regular habit of
things generalized into a statement, obtain in the
things we can handle, and not be recognized in the
field of mind ? Years ago Oliver WendeR Holmes
wrote an essay upon mechanism in thought and
morals, and it tremendously disturbed those who
thought that mind was something other than mate
rial ; and also marvelously reinforced those who
thought that matter was something other than
mind. And it gave point to that rather quaint
and clever turn of phrase, in answer to the ques
tion, " What is matter, and what is mind ? " When
asked, " What is mind ? " it is replied " No matter ; "
and when asked, " What is matter ? " the answer
Is " Never mind." No matter, and never mind.
This was thought to be a reply equivalent to a
general denial of aR solution of the Issue between
mind and matter. But is it an answer? Who
shall say how much his thought Res in the circula
tion as It feeds the fibre of his brain ? Who shaR
say what convolution in the gray matter in man's
brain makes the difference between remembering
and forgetting ? Who shall say what Is web and
what is woof in our close woven life ? And who

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 53
shaR say what is mind and what is tissue ? The
mystery can be solved only by allowing that the
field of mind Is as legitimate a field of law as
matter, and that the laws of mind are also actual
witnesses to the necessity for cause, as the laws of
matter are witnesses to the effect. So when I
find the idea of cause as dominant, as impossible
of removal, as the idea of time and space, it leads
me as a legitimate coroRary to declare that the
affirmation of God as cause is necessary.
A man looking about him perceives powers that
are not his own. They must come from some
whither ; they must come for some end. For in
stance, he cannot hear as the dog hears, nor see as
the Insect sees. The shrlR piping of the tiny musi
cians which have found their life in the early
spring is too fine for his ear, — the vibrations are
too many to the second, — he cannot hear their
sound, yet the orchestra plays on. He perceives
new powers developing even in human nature. A
man has not grown a new organ, but he has some
how found new stops in the organ already his own.
I suppose that it Is scarcely in the realm of Improb-
abRity that telepathy and thought-transference are
among the normal powers of human nature; that
there are perfectly legitimate and avouched In
stances of clairvoyance, whether normal or not, is
not open to question. Whereupon man at once

54 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
seeks to generaRze the results of his observation,
and properly, if he do not make his catalogue too
early. If he do not start his programme with too
much detail. He at once generalizes, that into
some centre, like a great dynamo, aR these wires
lead back; that something hears better than the
dog, and something sees clearer than the hawk;
that something Is more perfectly poised than the
albatross, with its many hours of floating without
so much, as it would seem, the movement of a
wing; that somewhere aR effects have their gan
glionic centre in sufficient Cause. Where organic
life ends chemlc affinity begins ; and somewhere
within aR attractions the master power of life
abides. Man feels that aR things which are, and
are greater than the powers he has, make for him
necessary the affirmation of the sum of them and
the source of them. He can conceive of their
being gathered up for one final catastrophe, but
he cannot conceive of the catastrophe without the
consent of their original source of existence. Such
a consent to such a seeming catastrophe would be
equivalent to the affirmation of a new birth, since
Infinite Cause must mean endless life.
I am persuaded that we are on the way to a
great constructive faith, in which God shall be
more real than ever, in which God shaR be more
personal than any anthropomorphic deity ever was ;

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 55
and that the man who has left off worship because
his idol has faRen from Its pedestal, may worship
with a loftier worship and a nearer sense of divine
communion ; his discontent with his idols shaR be
lost In the larger peace of God. I think we are on
the way to such a constructive faith, and that the
man who caRs himself an agnostic has perhaps
done himself a great injustice on the one hand and
a great service on the other : an Injustice because
he has assumed that his state of mind was final ; a
great service in that he has been willing to be rid
of all superstition, to unload the theological junk
which has accumulated in his mind, to clean house
and burn up the things which are of no use. And
now with mind emancipated and Interest revived
he may say, with Emerson, " We must so trust the
order of nature as to believe that whatever ques
tion the universe prompts us to ask, the universe
can answer."

IV
THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD
II
In the previous treatment of this subject atten
tion was directed to two of the grounds on which
the affirmation of God Is necessary. One is that
the idea of cause belongs to the data of our think
ing, and can no more be separated from the mind
as a datum of thought than the ideas of space and
time ; and this is the recent discovery, that the in
quiry of the child, "Who made God?" Is the
chRd's tribute to the data of the mind Itself, viz.,
of cause as necessary to thought.
Further attention was asked to the fact that
man, being conscious of the effect in himself, seeks
for Its cause in a Reality conscious like himself.
The old phrase that the stream can rise no higher
than the level of Its source Is supplemented by the
discovery that the source must be of the same
character as the stream ; that is, If in man is
power, in the author of his power must be omni
potence; If In man is self-consciousness, in the
author of his consciousness must be aR-conscious-
ness ; If in man Is the sense of moral rectitude,

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 57
SO that he "knows his noble from his ignoble
hours," then in the author of his being must be
the centre of absolute Integrity ; and the moral
order of the world Is but the reflection of the
ordered life of that Moral Cause, whose " insuffi
cient name is God." Also, life must be some
where before It Is In us, and all the attributes
which we call human point to the humanities of
God. That was no idle phrase which arose in the
earlier history of Unitarianism : " We believe in
the divinity of man and in the humanity of God ! "
It was not an effort at clever phrase-making ; it
was the statement of a universal truth.
Also there was some slight statement in the
preceding chapter that the powers discovered by
man in nature Indicate a luminous margin of reality
beyond the powers he holds. The beast sees what
man does not see ; the Insect hears what man does
not hear; and the multiform manifestations of
function in the world leave us prevented for all
time from using the phrase "dead matter." So
that the phrase of Emerson acquires new signifi
cance when he says : " I meet my friend with the
same sincerity with which one chemic atom meets
another ! "
These are in brief a restatement of the lines
of that chapter which treated the first condition of
the affirmation of God. The three conditions are

68 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
that the affirmation of God declares that God is
necessary, that God is real, and that God is per
sonal. On these three conditions this whole dis
cussion depends.
We are accustomed to say that the argument
from design in nature points us to the designer be
hind nature ; but in doing that there is possibly a
curious want of logic in our thinking, and we have
left out of the design the laws of mind. We can
understand the articulation of joints; we admire
the clever device by which the divisions of the
spinal column are gathered each to each, and the
inclosing substance which guards the effect of any
blow reaching the great vital cord that runs down
through all and is the avenue of aR the music of
the mind. But if you could take the cap off the
man's skuR, uncover his brain, and be given Instru
ments of as exact precision as might be for a man's
discernment and power of calculation, you would
see in the working of the nerve fibre which consti
tutes the matter of his brain, in both Its kinds, the
building up and the unbuilding of tissue, and you
might say that you know the brain of man, know
ing so much. When you have said that, you have
confessed that you know almost nothing of the
man ; for the brain is not the mind. The man
himself, standing Intact and in perfect health, does
not know that tissue is being demolished ; he is not

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 59
aware that he Is constantly upon the verge of dis
solution, and rescued from it by the upbuRding of
the tissues of his life. He is aware of quite another
thing : that emotion is the avenue of delight and
pain. He is not even aware that beyond the nerve
tissue is the nerve influence that nobody can discern
and of which no picture can be made. He is aware
rather that his mind is in healthy working order ;
that he is able to think clearly ; that he is able to
distinguish between thought and thought, and to say
whether the thought ought to have been thought at
aR ; to understand the worth of motive, and to dis
tinguish, by the correspondence of his physical con
ditions, the working of his brain, the welfare of his
body, the consciousness of self from the conscious
ness of the servants of his selfhood, — the man
within the man. This self-consciousness of his life
is a new world. So that that strange conclusion
which in the scientific world first alienated men
from God registered merely the preponderance
upon their thought of the physical universe, a mere
trick which material magnitude played imagination.
What happened when God, who was enthroned
somewhere in a little cabinet world, had to move
from this small world of the olden time? The smaR
man-fashioned being was enlarged to fiR the new
and larger universe of modern things. God must
not only be the centre, but he must be the circum-

60 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
ference of his world, or else he is not God. It is
a trite phrase that " when half gods go the gods
arrive." This anthropomorphic being, the " mag
nified non-natural man," enthroned in the heaven,
external to the operations of nature, moving the
worlds as one would move the levers of a machine,
has achieved an infinite extension in space, and,
renewing his life by the new chapters of time, has
become more potent, as the conflicts of the physical
universe passed into the rhythmic motions of the
life of God. We lost our standard of measures
and thought that God had died, whereas a new
meaning had been given to the phrase Eternal
Life. When we say there are so many pounds and
ounces of pure metal to the ton of quartz, we ex
press a perfectly clear thought; so long as we
have a standard of measures we are perfectly com
fortable. We say with perfect composure that it is
ninety million miles from this earth to the sun ; or
so many miRions of miles from this star to that In
the sidereal heavens, as to require years for the
passage of a ray of light between them. Light
travels at so many miles to the second within the
starry spaces. The standard of measures holds,
and we are quite comfortable. But when for miles
we substitute celestial diameters, when for years we
measure by millenniums, when for the definite we

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 61
substitute not simply the indefinite but the infinite,
then our standard of measure fails us, and In our
confusion we think that something has happened to
the universe ; but the change In our thought of
nature pursues its undisturbed way until we are
ready to recognize the immanence of God, central
to every atom as to every soul and every sphere.
This gives point to George Macdonald's poetic com
mentary upon the text in which God declares, " I
will cast thy sins behind my back I " " It Is true for
giveness," says Macdonald, " for behind the back of
God is nowhere." Because God Is so great, men
who were not wIRIng to think to an ultimate conclu
sion declared that God had never been. But un
consciously the very alternative which was presented
to their minds verified the necessity for God ; for
while they had expressed their deliberate convic
tion that the world moved itself and the Internal
mechanism was self-evolved, and that the world
was too great for God, they made their declaration
that they were agnostic in thinking ; they did not
know ; they could not know ; — their logical instinct,
reacting from their Illogical reasoning, substituted
something else for God. The necessity remained
to make the affirmation of God, by a change of
terms. We heard such phrases as this : " The stream of
tendency," instead of God; forgetting that the

62 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
stream of tendency must have a source and end
and banks, or It is not a stream of tendency at
aR; it Is an unmeasured lagoon If it have no
banks ; it is not a stream if It does not start, pro
ceed, and lose itself in the sea's expanse. The
phrase was poetic but defective. Some such phrase
as this, with all the fascination of a new statement,
was put instead of God. Matthew Arnold ap
peared with his " eternal not - ourselves, which
makes for righteousness." But the failure of the
phrase, clever as It was. Is in this : if " other than
ourselves" it cannot work for righteousness; for
in the sum of things must every fraction of the
sum be found. There Is no possibility in the uni
verse of isolating, relegating to loneliness, any
part of the universe of which the central word is
Unity. Not only must every fragment be found
In the sum that is the whole, but every fragment
must be found of the same kind in the sum that Is
the whole. This is the unimpeached bond of reli
gion ; that righteousness in God can mean no
other than righteousness in man, else we have an
alien universe contending with God. And that is
what the conclusion of the more ancient theology
was. It set up its world which cannot be a uni
verse, in which God never can reign, in which con
tending forces are never at peace; that region
dividing the mind straight through Its centre, dis-

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 63
locating and separating the flesh .that is the temple
of the Holy Ghost from spirit, which is the priest
In the temple of the Holy Ghost ; which separates
light and darkness as though they were not twin ;
which separates God and the devil as though they
could ever hold a disputed sovereignty, or achieve
on either hand a conquest, one against the other.
For however the devil might be overcome. It would
not become God's world unless the devR were con
verted ; he must cease to be a devil ; he must be
come good, not simply cease to be, in order that
God might rule ; for if in the mind of any shiver
ing, superstitious worshiper abode stiR the shadow
of this dIaboRcal presence, calling men to fear In
stead of love, God's reign would be so far Imper
iled. All dualism is the failure of philosophic
courage ; It is the denial of the universe. So that
in declaring for the being of God as necessary to
man, we declare for the same word that in the
physical universe has come to be axiomatic and
Imperative ; that word is unity, and only the real
can have entirety and unity. And so we come
to the fine statement of Dr. Martineau : " For all
time the difference must be infinite between the
partisan of beliefs and the man whose heart is set
upon reaRty."
We make the affirmation of God, maintaining
that the substitution of a phrase for a fact neither

64 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
makes the fact non-existent nor the phrase suf
ficient. " Stream of tendency," " Eternal not-our-
selves which makes for righteousness," " reign of
law," " order of the world," — whatever you please,
— these are not only happy phrases for unhappy
men, but they prove the instinct for God as neces
sary to human thought by the very effort to sub
stitute them for the ancient fact. It is not that
men desire there shaR be no God ; they have lost
their standard of measures and are worshiping at
the shrine of a phrase. It is a troubled sea, this
life of ours ; we cannot save ourselves by Inflated
phrases from its threatened shipwreck.
We are thus brought to the statement of the
reality which the affirmation of God Implies. The
Instinct for worship is a true instinct. It is the
sense for God which appears through the whole
range of worshipers, from the creature low in the
scale of being, whose stick or stock or stone is the
sign to him of something which by the power of
the Invisible he feels, to St. Francis d' Assisi, or
any saint more modern and more practical. If
this instinct, ranging from the shivering savage to
the Lord-Christ, who prays in the silence of the
night and the stillness of the mountains, were only
the figment of the fancy of the worshiper, it would
stlR be real. An instinct Is as much to be ac
counted for and to be reckoned with as any other

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 65
phenomenon of human life. The solidarity of the
race appears in its basilar instincts as weR as In its
relentless ideals. Whether, because of fear or love
or any emotion whatever, men shaR pray and seek
and search and adore, stiR the admiration and love
of the highest, as weR as the fear, aversion, and
disgust of the lowest souls, proclaim the instinct
as native to the mind, and to be foRowed wherever
it shaR lead. The universality of an instinct is as
much a tribute to reality as though it were the
declaration of a fact, material and palpable.
This Is the thing which we forget: we forget
that the multiform scriptures of the world, running
through aR the range of their epic simplicity,
showing where " the great gods " helped the vic
tory on, to the Beatitudes, which showed where the
good God helped a human spirit on, are but the
expression of the human mind seeking Its source
and its inspiration. We forget that aR poetry, aR
the ideal side of Rfe, is a tribute to the same end.
We forget that aR art belongs not to the hand
which toils, but to the mind which thinks and
dreams. So that we are perfectly ready to say our
life Is made up In part of what we do, and in part
of what we dream. This ideal side of life is a
vindication of the reaRty which lies behind our
life. The ideal seeks to realize itself because the
ultimate reality presses upon it. What do we

66 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
mean by reality? It is difficult to teR, for we
deal with the phenomena of reality and not with
Itself. We have never seen reality ; we have never
touched it; It is entered by no gateway of the
senses; and yet it haunts us with its persistent
presence ; it dominates our thinking ; and when we
have reached our best, it crowns us with a con
scious beatitude. It Res below our thinking. Why ?
It is the soil out of which our thoughts have grown.
It is the chemic mother of all the chemistries ! It is
the mother stuff of which all things are born and
grow. It is the '¦'¦somewhat that is behind the
somethings." It is constantly said that we can only know the
world in terms of consciousness. In a certain
sense that is quite true. Let us examine the state
ment. To some persons that is an argument for
the mind of man as a final reality. I should say
that the mind of man as a reality must seek its
source also in some universal mind, else it must
be by some curious conspiracy among the minds
of men that they move by the same lines to the
same end, caRing no hard thing soft, and no black
thing white, no bitter thing sweet. Such a course
would be so abnormal that it is reckoned a moral
idiocy, and might weR be called a "sin against
the Holy Ghost." It cannot be less than mental
wreck to have so confused the quality of things.

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 67
The fact that these qualities abide naturally in
aR minds would indicate that though we know
things In terms of mind alone, there Is a certain
implied conspiracy between the ends of the earth
to think the same thing In the same terms. It
does not matter how low the grade of civilization
may be, when it comes to the consciousness of
things as they are, It is the same in all substantial
ways. How little we know! Here is a bit of oak,
forming the slab of the table before me. We say
It is hard, it is smooth, it resists touch, it has a
certain Rne running through It, showing that It is
sawed in the quarter and not along the Rne of the
grain. What have we said ? Nothing but what I
can see and feel or have learned by experience to
be the fact. But what holds it together? What
kept It two hundred years seeking the sun ? Why
Is It that it does not disappear from my eye or
vanish from my touch? No human being knows.
The man who says that its permanence is due to
the attraction of cohesion in the particles has used
an abstract phrase for a declaration of ignorance.
Nobody knows why it does not disappear ; and yet
from the slab of oak that Res before me to the con
stancy of a faithful life, something is at bottom
the source and priority of It aR. What holds
things together ? Nobody knows ; but they have

68 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
a common ground in somewhat that for them, at
least, is the ultimate reality. We deal. Indeed,
with the phemonena, with the show of things, with
the apparition of things ; but where nothing is,
nothing could appear.
I take a man down to the East River whose hands
are hard with labor, who Is discontented with the
social order, who wants an eight-hour day, and
ought to have it if the laws of trade allow and the
margin of his industry can be transmuted into
leisure. I take him aboard the ferry-boat crossing
under the great bridge, and he turns to me and
says : "Look at my hands ; I am a worker in metals.
Look at my eyes ; they are blurred with the heat
of the furnace. Look at my back, bent before
age comes, with the labor of my days. There is
nothing which makes capital but labor." That
is his constant claim. And I ask him to sit down,
that we may calculate this matter carefuRy. If
he is a metal worker, I ask him how many pounds
of strain a cubic inch of Iron wIR stand under
certain given conditions. I ask him to figure up
what the strain on the cables is ; what the tension
and slack amount to; what is the difference be
tween cold and heat in their effect upon the metal
of which the bridge is composed. And when It is
done, he has given me what never hardened any
hand nor bent any back except In study, nor

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 69
blurred any eye, except by the burning of the
lamp at midnight ; and he has stated In terms of
pure mathematics what he contended for In terms
of avoirdupois. More than that, I have to re
mind him that in the engineer's head which devised
the great bridge the whole structure hung up com
plete before ever a pound of wire that went Into
it was forged or drawn. It was a dream-bridge,
a thought-span. In the engineer's mind. It was
pure mind once, a creation of the ideal, and out
of it was born dull matter. The ultimate reality
was thought, was apprehension, was InteRectual
discernment, and the marrying of conclusion to
conclusion in the mind before ever one strand was
twisted on another. And yet they say It Is labor
only that makes the world. No. It is thought
that makes the world, and it Is the agreement
among thinkers who have never seen each other,
by the study of phenomena, — the agreement among
them that constitutes the commonwealth of the
mind. It Is like a group of musicians brought to
gether from different countries, speaking different
languages, before whom Is placed the score of some
composition with which they are familiar. They
cannot speak to each other. The Hungarian does
not know the Frenchman, and the Frenchman
does not know the Englishman; and so there
might be as many nationaRtles represented as con-

70 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
stitute the whole number of performers. The
score Is laid on the music-stand, the violin and
ceRo are in their places, and the wind instruments
In theirs ; and the leader, who does not know one
by name, or speak the language of any of them,
lifts his baton, and they strike together the initial
chord of the great symphony. They understand
the common language, which is music. It is the
universal language which aR men living in that
realm of the ideal can speak to each other, in
articulate but eloquent ; powerful to move the soul
through the emotions and unite men separated by
nationality and alien to each other. So, there
seems to me to underlie the root of aR things, to
be central to all things as the heart of reality, that
for which we have no better name as yet than
God. Let us now weigh the difficulty that lies in the
.term " personal." I have said that God is neces
sary, that God is real, and that God is personal.
The word " person " has been dragged out of its
meaning, puRed up by the roots. OriginaRy it
simply meant the mask put on by the actor as he
spoke his part. The part he played was changed ;
he changed his mask. That was his " personality."
That is the original meaning of the word " person."
It was carried over into the controversies of theol
ogy, and In the third century applied to God. There

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 71
It appeared as the modal trinity of Sabellius. It
appeared again In the writings of Horace Bush-
nell ; and now once more in the speculations of the
newer Andover School of thought. It attempts
to say that God, who is One in being, has many
modes of being, appears now under one aspect and
now under another, as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, — three acts of a drama requiring three
masks, — and that God is thus apprehended by
men under the beneficent masks he wears, as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But for purposes
of theology and church contention, by a process
which I need not define as not germane to the sub
ject, the mask got to be the actor, and the part
played became the original being playing the part,
the personality came to be the individual; and
God, who was never dismembered in his being,
but Is the ultimate unity of all being, had to wait
while we amplified the stupidity of our definition
of " God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost," had to wait until the church had
reestablished its idolatry; for it means no more
than the reflection of the old polytheism in the
new form. Having established " the blessed Trin
ity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost, three persons in one God," they in
troduced the canonized saints and the mother of
God, and aR the hierarchy of heaven to satisfy

72 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
the instinct for the half gods who went when the
gods appeared. It means no more than a return
to the abandoned instinct to canonize, divinize,
deify, the precious remainder of the past. So that
when I said to a man, of clear mind in other
things, a minister of religion, "Where is God
when you are praying to his Son ? " this man, set
to teach men, to demonstrate the grounds of reli
gion, to be a teacher of great truths, said, " When
I am praying to Christ, God is diffused." A dif
fused God may be a mist in the mind, but he can
never be a person to the heart.
What do we mean, then, by personality f We
do not mean Individuality, isolated and lonely
forms, set up and set apart. Personality Is the
background against which individuality rests. It
is a fundamental axiom that we can only make
progress in science by " a perception of difference
against a background of similarity." Given the
fundamental ground of being, the individual placed
against it shows for what he is. We make an
advance in science by perceiving difference against
a background of unity. Now in human life the
background is personality; the difference Res In
the individual. I go into the street, and I am run
upon by a team, which throws me down and breaks
an arm. I am not hurt in my proper person at
aR. I am hurt as an Individual. I am an Indl-

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD 73
vldual now with a broken arm ; but I am the same
person I was before, — exactly the same. I come
to my friend, a man for whom I have felt for years
love "passing the love of women," and through
some misunderstanding or some failure of mine,
or some mistake of mine or his, he turns his back
upon me and goes his way, and as though we had
never loved each other. I am not hurt as an indi
vidual; I am hurt In my proper person ; I am hurt
as a human soul ; I am hurt In that which binds
me to everybody else ; I am hurt in the conscious
ness by the race of the holy communion which lies
between faithful hearts. My personality has been
Invaded. My Individuality is lonelier than it was
before. I am an Individual, but I am shorn of
my power as a person, for his love has perished,
and the light has gone out, the tide of my happi
ness has ebbed, and all the ooze of the shore is
lying festering in the sun.
I stand at the door of a hospital, and I say some
body has been hurt, as they are taking him in.
Three days afterward I stand there, and they are
carrying this man — no, this sheR of the man —
out, and I say they are carrying some body out of
the hospital for burial. Between that which went
in, with which I had a share of consciousness and
sympathy, in that he was a breathing something I
belonged to, and that which they carried out to

74 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
put into the ground, with which I had no relation
ship (It was not bone of my bone, it was not flesh
of my flesh, I did not know what It was at aR;
crippled or deformed, or what it might have been,
I had no interest In It whatever), there exists a
conscious difference. The difference lies in the
claim that personality makes in the name of suf
fering. It is the underlying consciousness that we
belong to the great background of life, against
which the individual life shows clear; and that
constitutes personality.
I saw a man go up the pole of an electric wire.
He went up vital and tense, and with every mus
cle strained as he climbed, a splendid figure of
easy motion ! But he laid hold of the wire with
his plyers, from which the insulation was worn off,
and a slight shock came, and he seized a wire with
the other hand, thus making a perfect circuit, and
dropped over the arm of the pole as limp as a rag.
He was dead. You say life had gone out. It may
be Imagination, It may be fancy ; but between the
thing they lowered down with a rope — a bundle,
limp and inert — and the man who climbed up to
his work, there is the difference between a thing
and a person. I did not care whether he was blond'
or dark ; I did not know his nationality ; I did not
know whether he had a family or was alone ; I did
not know any of the details; but he went up a

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 75
man, and came down flesh and bones. He was not
a person any longer.
Now, then, when we speak of the personality of
God, when we speak of the Being that encases our
being, it is not logical nor sound to say that we
cannot believe that he Is a man. He Is not a
man, but he is human plus all that Is besides. Be
cause we have taken the little god, who used to be,
from the throne he used to occupy, and bade him
fiR the world he has made; because we have
done that, and can no longer think of him as en
throned outside the universe, but central to every
atom of it, — we say good-by to the person of
God, misunderstanding the word, misapplying its
meaning. Think for a moment. I have the power of
thought. It was not brought to me, let down from
heaven by a cord and given into my keeping as a
treasure. No, I think because the universe is a
conscious mind, — I think so at least, — I think it
is a conscious mind. I love as you do, and no one
of us all can tell why. When love reaches Its
highest exponent in the love, for instance, which
comes to you when the child says, " Do you love
me?" and you say, "Yes," and the child says,
"Why?" You cannot teR. You do not know.
It is not enough to say, " Because you are my chRd."
That would be enough for the tigress to convey to

76 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
her cub as she Rcks its smooth head and turns It
over with her paw that It may reach her teats, —
that would be enough for the tigress. It is n't
enough for the woman to say, " Because you are
my chRd." That is not enough; for the sacra
ments of the heart are without definition, and the
finest things In our nature are not to be explained.
The only thing that I know or that satisfies me Is
that they belong to the sum of being whose name
is God ; and that when John In the Epistle said,
" God is Love," he made the statement to which
every heart responds and which every nestling
child can know. It knows love before it has ever
heard a word about love.
I caR to mind that ancient word of one of the
prophets of the Old Testament, saying, " God
shall rejoice over thee, he shall joy over thee with
singing, he will rest In his love ; " and I think I
hear the throbbing of my mother's heart and see
the Rght in her kindling eyes, as born from the
motherhood in God. This Is what we mean by
personality. All our lines lead up, and there is no
point in all the line at which a different thing is
joined on. It is of the same substance, — the thing
that is personal In me and that which is personal
in the source from which I am ; for every fragment
must be In the whole, and it must be of the same
kind as the whole. The sum of things Is not a

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD 77
kaleidoscopic accident ; It Is the life of the many
in the sphere of the One.
But what shaR be said to the man to whom
nothing that I have said appeals, to whom God
seems not necessary nor real nor personal ? I can
not disabuse his mind of the old misjudged phrase
of personality. He reads the words, " the Father
hood of God," and they mean simply creation.
But if God be not the father of every emotion and
every function of the life that unites aR things, —
if he Is not the father In this large sense, then he
is no father at aR ; he is only a smaR manufacturer,
engaged in a retaR line of the world's business. I
wish I might speak to such a man about what he
ought to do with his " working-theory " of creation.
In all your life, if you say that God is not neces
sary nor real nor personal. If you have moved to
legitimate ends by working faithfully, so far as
you knew the cause of life, you have determined
courses by simply depending upon the law of
probability ; and if God be not proved to you, —
as I doubt very much whether to any man he can
be conclusively proved by intellectual processes, —
then remember, since we call ourselves evolution
ists, the evolutionary hypothesis has never been
proved ; it Is an argument from probabiRty, mar
shaling innumerable facts to its support, but yet
far from being an axiom of a determined process.

78 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
The scientific world secures a working hypothesis,
and scientists walk out on It as men buRd a rail
road line upon wide-spreading branches, over a
bog, — they walk out on it, and their safety lies In
keeping going. The moment they rest or wait,
they begin to sink under the superimposed burden
of Rfe ; but the working hypothesis they f oRow to
its end. By a curious provision, the moment it
ceases to be useful, by some conspiracy of mind,
by minds far separated but stIR In the communion
of being, another platform of working hypothesis
concerning the universe is formed, and thought
moves to new discoveries.
And this is the way life goes on from stage to
stage, in which the thing which seems to us prob
able Is used until we realize that it is necessary and
real, with the curious result, mark you, that In the
very moment of Its increasing necessity and reality,
we have gained a fresh hold upon the Integrity
of thought and the value of Rfe to an enlarged
Personality.

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING MAN
I shall be satisfied, vhen I awake, with thy likeness. — PsaJms
xrii. 15.
Te shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. —
Matthew v. 48.
In the previous addresses the phrase was used,
" The Affirmation of God." This is the Affirma
tion concerning Man ; for when one deals with an
ultimate reality, he affirms the Reality itself ; but
when he deals with an obvious part of that ulti
mate reality, the truth appears in one or another
aspect; therefore he affirms concerning it that
which he believes.
There are two ways of regarding human life.
First, the common way is to regard It as a tempo
rary probation preparing for a final state. This
defines the method of human life as probation
ary. A second way is to regard human life as
constituting a present condition, upon which must
be focused our whole attention. This is a simple
existence without motive, without meaning, without
outcome. The vessel is under fuR steam, but it is

80 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
not going to any destination. It has a complete
cargo, but no market. Such a life is aimless, near
sighted, and without great hopes for great souls.
The first view of human life, in which It is
thought of as preliminary to something more worth
while, a probationary trial leading up to a final
state, has two defects. However you may analyze
and judge of the probation, there is no way in
which you can find out anything about what it
shall be. You may be very wise as to the state
of trial, and find It an estate of which you have no
ownership, nor even a very long lease ; but what
It will end In, or how It wiR take final form, or
what will succeed it, there can be no certain know
ledge ; a great hope there may be, an argument or
probability there may be, a pronounced conviction
there may be, and upon these luminous standpoints
we may place ourselves for our view ; but it might
be counted an axiom to say that no man can know
that of which he has not had experience! The
only way to know about the to-morrow of death is
to die, and nature seems to have provided that the
man who finds out shall not tell what he has found
out. So that to regard human life as merely a pre
face to a book, the contents of which no man can
know, is not only not to write the book, but to
raise false hopes in the preface. Therefore, to

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN 81
regard human life as merely preliminary is to take
all the verve and go and power out of it. That is
the reason why the treatment of religion as dealing
with man in a state of preparation for something
which he has guessed about, but cannot know, has
simply cArlscerated it of aR Its contents, and made
It a great show of unreality. So that strong men
have turned from religion because the plane of
their Interest and the plane of their activity must
coincide ; and to have the plane of your activity
now and the plane of your interest to-morrow la
to dismember human life of Its chief elements of
power ; the mind protests against such dismember
ment. The view of human life as leading up to
something else, for the sake of which it Is, has
failed of interest for the average mind; for the
Church, in the name of religion, has Insisted upon
a declaration upon the part of its believers concern
ing that which it could not prove, and in behalf
of that for which it had no assured claim. The
result is that the great body of Christendom has
played at religion, and has included many Chris
tians so uncertain of the meaning of religion that
the activities of secular life have shamed the leth
argy of religion.
Men understand what business is, and what
home life is, and what social life Is ; but they real
ize that business has its own end in Itself, that

82 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
home life has Its own amenities within its own
circle, and that social Rfe Is an organism, — not
simply an acted part at which men play for a
while for some other end, which presently shall be
divulged. So that men have passed to the other
alternative of regarding human life as simply con
stituting a state now present, upon which aR atten
tion Is to be fixed, and have magnified Its value
without exalting its motive.
This also has its dangers, — dangers as manifest
as the other, and more deadly ; for the reason that
the other did provoke the ideal, while this immures
us in materialism. The other did teach us poetry
and Invite us to religion ; this which regards life
as a mere existence refuses a fit fruition, a supreme
development, to the being for whom the ages have
labored, and whose ancestry runs back beyond
recorded time, to conditions primeval and almost
chaotic. It repudiates any reasons for this flower
of all the past, — this creature which has In It the
contributions of aR the generations that have gone
before. Such an attitude toward life says. In effect,
that aR you have to do Is to get a living, and that
is the whole duty of man. Mere existence ! Mere
existence ! I submit to you that If the other view
of life, as probation, is vague, this Is grotesque.
To simply keep myself alive, holding on by both
hands because I am afraid to let go, boasting of

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN 83
my "holdings" as other than a mere temporary
support in the swirl of the sea of life ; to simply
move up against myself a multitude of things which
cannot penetrate the skin, which cannot enter me
at any point, which can never become myself, and
then to declare that since they cannot become my
self I wiR go out of myself Into them, — this Is to
degrade the soul by compeRing It to keep a mere
Inventory for the senses. The things that my
hands can touch, the things that my eyes can see,
the things that my ears can hear, — in other words,
the whole of life which has come through the
avenues of the senses, can never be the sum of
being. Life in such an aspect Is not worth while ;
it is a grotesque anti-climax of the struggle of the
ages to produce a thing which simply hangs on to
existence. God did not make an ordered world.
If this be the end. AR that the struggle of the
past has to show Is an accumulation of what Is not
the man, but into which the man himself has evap
orated. I submit to any man of affairs. If that is
the solution of human life. If that be true, then
the temples of worship which in every city Invite
the sky, and the ministry of religion that in every
tongue under heaven is working out Its visions of
Eternal Verity, and all the blood of the martyrs,
even the blood shed by one church bleeding for
another's power upon it, — aR this, it seems to me

84 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
as I look at it, is so great a waste and expenditure
as to constitute in its prodigality the most atrocious
tragedy the world has ever seen, — If that be all !
So that we may turn, I think, from the contem
plation of the future as the end of existence, and
also from the present as the end of existence, and
inquire what is this being who invites and yearns
for the future, who with the splendid athletic of the
body and the mind subdues the present ? What is
he, and who Is he, and what does he mean ?
Is there any affirmation of religion concerning
man ? I have before caRed your attention to an
axiom in modern thought which I must repeat,
because It Is germane to this subject, and without
it the subject is not clear. I have asked you to
remember, as we pass from the lower to the higher,
from less to more, that In an ascending series the
last term receives the emphasis of our thought.
When In the ascending series caRed animal, the
animal raised himself and stood erect, so that his
centre of gravity feR safely between his two feet;
when his jaw shortened up to give room for the
dome over his brain, so that he RteraRy sacrificed
his teeth to his ideas ; when his head was no longer
built out from front to back, but built up from
base to top; when he began to speak the secret
that nature had told him, to tell, each to the other,
the thing he had found out, — first in the most

THE AFFIRMATION CONCEENING MAN 85
fundamental way, mere indications of thought, and
then in a language in which the spendid deliver
ances of the Hebrew prophets, the fathers of God's
Christ, might have expressed the truths of the
spiritual realm, — when all this occurred, the final
term was human.
So much has this last term in the ascending
series taken the emphasis that we are caRed to re
member that our poor brothers going on aR-fours
demand a humane consideration, which being neg
lected, we are caRed inhuman.
" Human " is the last word In the ascending
series called animal But mark you, in the ascend
ing series caRed human there is also a last term.
What is it to be human ? Surely not simply the
details that I have mentioned ; not the erect pos
ture, the growing dome over the brain, the clearer
vision, the interpretation of thought, — none of
these Is the last term in the ascending series called
human ; rather is the moral sense the last term.
And in view of the fact that in its last analysis all
material things can be resolved into thought, so is
It true of all human things which mark advancing
civilization, — growth of arts, development of aR
that is worth while in life; in its last analysis
the word to which we come back Is not simply
" thought," but " ethics," " morals," " motive."

86 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
So that you cannot say willf uRy and finally, " I
have been moral to-day, to-morrow I wRl be Im
moral," just as a child in your own household gets
up some morning and says, " I have been good so
many days ; I propose to be to-day just as bad as
I know how." Every boy has had that experience.
There Is many a young man who remembers the
day when he made up his mind, from the time his
feet touched the floor in the morning, that he
would see just how mischievous and exasperating
he could be. Did he cease to be the boy of the
house because of that? Did he cease to have
relations to the human life that bore and bred
him because of that ? Do you not remember the
evening of that day when, having set the whole
household by the ears, and having spent the day
as unprofitably as it was possible for a boy to
spend it, you went to your bed and tried to say
your evening prayer, and felt that the heaven had
had a screen drawn between you and It, so that
your prayer feR back upon your little benighted
mind ; and then you lay down and cried yourself
to sleep, because " nobody loved you " ?
Now, just as that is true, so in the human life
of us who are grown-up boys and girls there is no
day in which we can successfully say, " Yesterday
I was moral ; to-day I wIR be unmoral." No, the
matter ends not In a reversion to an unmoral

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN ^ 87
condition, but to an immoral condition. In other
words, we are doomed to be moral, and cannot
help ourselves. We are simply that product In
the chain of growth, that term In the ascending
series, which leaves the moral sense on top ; and
because it is on top, it refuses to reverse the order
of nature and be thought of as though it were not.
What are our sorrows ? The only sorrow that
hurts so you cannot mend it grows out of moral
conditions. Time teaches you to be patient about
your loneliness. The memories of the past signify
the loves of life that are no more within the touch
of daily communion. But when you are hurt by
some ingratitude that Is atrocious, or you have
been seared by an anger that you did not deserve,
or love's tide, as it ebbed, left the shore of life
bare, — when that happens, the hurt is moral; and
it is hurt for which death alone knows the cure.
What is it that makes us despair of those we
love ? It is not that they are not bright in mind
or strong In body. It is not that they are not
able to pursue legitimate vocations in life. What
is it that Is the task of the love that sits watching
beside the beds of the little children long Into the
night, until the sacrament of life is spread, when
God, the great Mother, and our human mothers
partake together ! As the old Jewish rabbi said,
" God could not be everywhere, so he made mo-

88 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
thers!" What Is the secret of it? It Is the
moral solicitude that having given birth, that
having given suck, that having held the baby in
her arms, having taught It to stand alone, that It
should finaRy understand that life is come of age,
that this is a moral universe to which It addresses
Itself, and life a purely moral existence, — that Is
the great solicitude. Our sorrows are moral, our
solicitudes are moral, our delights are moral.
What is a home ? Is it a kennel or a den ? Is
It a place where children are born into the world,
and where, by a civil contract, a man and a woman
live together? That is not a home. Judging by
that standard, there are primitive savage tribes that
build homes, and yet know no morality as we under
stand the term. No people who live together in a
home can fail to be weary of each other sooner or
later, unless they meet In something higher than
either of them. In other words, some supreme in
terest, some dominating ideal, some Imperative
aRurement, some divine attraction, — something
must hover about them, standing before them as
the " pIRar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire
by night," until they join hands to follow it, and
do not count the journey long. That is the moral
rescue from the staleness of life, which makes and
preserves the home.
So the affirmation of religion concerning man

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN 89
declares that he Is moral, and cannot be other
wise ; and the only thing for him to do is to trans
mute his morality into transcendent spirituality.
Now for a moment upon this point. To match
duties together is an arduous task, and life joined
at the edges is easily ripped asunder. All living
things grow from the centre. The conception of
all the universe as a living whole grows continu
ally upon our modern thought. The view more
and more prevails that the soul of man, his spir
itual nature, Is the culminating glory and beauty
of the creative energy, — that this is the great
last term in which the ascending series of life
expresses Itself.
We ought not to be wRling to recede through
aR the tortuous path of philosophic study through
the centuries that have brought us to this great
conception of God as immanent in his world, as
the soul of our soul, the life of Rfe. Creation
must furnish us such a last term as shaR make the
series complete.
This is the declaration concerning man : that
what was animal has become moral, and what Is
moral must become spiritual. And why? That
was a bold flight of the psalmist, " I shall be
satisfied, when I awake in thy likeness ; " for no
lower end is worthy of the great power of man's
nature, — no lower end than the divine likeness.

90 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
How can men and women dare to caR them
selves by the name of Jesus Christ, and profess
the leadership of the Son of man, unless they are
going to accept his Interpretation of life, corrobo
rated by their own consciousness, that " man has
a body, but is a spirit " ? Hear the Son of man
quote from the Old Testament, " Be ye holy, for
I, the Lord your God, am holy," and then hear
him comment upon that : " Be ye therefore per
fect, as your Father in heaven Is perfect." Does
that mean we are to be as perfect as God ? Such
a question Implies knowledge of neither exegesis
nor the athletic of the spirit. That would be im
possible. How shall a part be the whole? And how
shall a fragment be the sum? Every fragment
is part of the whole, and is a like part of the whole,
else It is foreign and alien to the sum of being.
The statement is very simple, very natural, abso
lutely normal, and inviting to the desires of him
who would live his highest life. Said Jesus:
With aR your freedom you are conditioned. It is
the infinite in the terms of the finite ; you are to
be as sphered and rounded In your measure of life
as the perfect One is in his infinity, without limit.
" Account me ' a drop in the ocean seeking another
drop,' or, Godward, striving to keep so true a sphe
ricity as to receive the due ray from every point of
the concave heaven." That Is the meaning of Jesus

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN 91
in the words of Emerson, his apostle. The round
ing of human life, in human measure, is to be like
the perfection of God, in the measure that is his
own. Why, then, shaR I doubt his leadership
whose life Is called the perfect human life ? But
If I am not intent upon the spiritual life, I have
repudiated his leadership. It is mere jugglery to
use the name of Jesus, and at the same time deny
his principles of action.
Time was when the whole endeavor of life was
to save one's soul. You cannot save your soul.
If you are ever saved, your soul will save you. It
is not a question whether we shall live forever ; it
is a question whether, in the sight of God and
man, it is worth while to save such a thing as that ;
whether we are fit to live forever. It is not a ques
tion of finding heaven, but of being heavenly : the
rounding of character, the flowering of every fac
ulty In our nature.
" There are some natures so constituted that they
are doomed to deep feeling and high thinking, and
the only rescue for them is in deeper feeling and
higher thinking." This Is the reason that natures
not so robust grow weary of the struggle to know
God, to know his wIR and do their duty; and
being weary, at length supinely recRne upon some
authority that is baseless as a cloud. They cannot
thus be saved. That in them worth saving they

92 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
have denied and repressed. They cannot be saved
by another ; they must be saved first from them
selves. The sea-bird lies upon the air with widespread
wings, which being folded, he falls like a stone.
The human soul which has learned its flight must
forever wing its way, or else in quiet intervals find
Its rest and nest and home. But for a human soul
to say, I am tired of trying to be good, of seeking
God, of bracing myself against the inevitable in
life, and I wRl ask a priest or a creed or a church
or a tradition to lend me a pillow on which to rest
my aching head, — weR, let us not be impatient
with such weariness, but the rest must not be for
long. After a little while, waking, the wings must
be used again. There is no permanent rescue for
the struggling soul but to struggle through.
Do you remember In your childhood, — If you
were brought up on Pilgrim's Progress, — how
sorry you were for Christian and his feRow when
they dropped into the Slough of Despond ? How
we stood in Imagination and watched them waRow,
and how sad it was to see them climb out soiled
and draggled and unclean. But the saddest thing
was that one climbed out upon the side from
which he feR In ; but the other climbed out upon
the side toward the Celestial City. And that made
aR the difference In our sympathy, and our hearts

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING MAN 93
went on with the bedraggled Christian and refused
to stay with the faint-heart who had climbed out
on the side where he fell in.
If the integrity of life is difficult to maintain,
remember that nature has ordained that every
struggle shall help to quicken the soul, harden the
fibre, strengthen the muscle, and cleanse the blood ;
and that the only way of salvation is to be like
him of Nazareth, who was " the best example of the
saved man." Why ? For the simplest of all rea
sons : that he Is the best example in history, so far
as we have any record, of one who lived his life
whoRy in the consciousness of the soul with God.
This is our destiny. Mark you, how It turns out.
I began by saying that about the future no man
knows. There are those who boast they hold the
keys of the future ; he who wants to use the keys
must prove that they fit the lock. Keys many
there are, but the human mind is so constituted
that only one key wIR unlock mysteries for It.
The human mind is built upon the combination
plan; and you have to know the combination.
This is taught only in the school of experience.
No man knows what the future holds beyond
death ; but we aR have had the experience again
and again which points the way. A man had lived
his life sordidly, narrowly, grubbing, grasping ;
the dust of his own endeavor was in his mouth as he

94 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
lay panting at the last ; and he slipped out of life
and they buried him. He had never done his kind
a good turn ; he had lived in his animal passions
until his mind was carnal ; the judgment had been
pronounced upon him, implied In the most fright
ful sentence In the New Testament : " The carnal
mind is enmity against God, for It Is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can be ! " In
other words, his ideals had descended to gross
levels, his thought had been hardened into flesh ;
and the affections of his childhood had been extin
guished In the sweat of his sordid work. He died ;
that is aR. No man could say why he should ever
live again. We go back to the New Testament
and try to console ourselves about such a life as
that; we hunt through our thought of him with
closest scrutiny, through his life also to see if there
is not something moral, spiritual, something on
which we can hang a hope that he deserved to live
forever. FinaRy, we give him up. And if any
body would speak his thought he would say. Here
Is a man who Is as good a man under ground as he
was on top of It. Nobody would dispute it. What
is the use of Indulging in the conviction that gives
to him " a blessed ImmortaRty " ? What had he to
bring It out of ? What shall he say when he shaR
be caRed before the judgment seat of God ? His
lost Rfe-opportunlty is the judgment seat of God.

THE AFFIRMATION CONCEENING MAN 95
And here is another. We stand by the casket
which contains the shell of an emancipated spirit ;
a beautiful old man or woman, so gracious and
tender one might almost sun himseK where the
dead is ; it makes one almost in love with death.
This is one who never knew discouragements though
utter helplessness came ; who never knew limitation
though fastened to the chair of torture for years,
and In whose presence it was only necessary to go,
to see that the- flesh had grown transparent that the
spirit might shine through. I never saw her or one
of her kind that I did not think of the pillar at St.
Mark's in Venice : you have but to hold a light
behind it to know It is alabaster, — you see the
light shine through. Let aR the unbelieving of
earth gather round that casket and tell me such an
one is dead, and I would not believe it. There was
nothing in this life to Indicate finality, but every
thing to indicate graduation to a larger and sweeter
and holier sphere. There are those who die for
whose life we can make no argument ; and there are
those who die for whose death we can find no reason.
They are as eternaRy alive as the others are hope
lessly dead. To God we turn and say, under such
an Inspiration, This is the great affirmation of reli
gion concerning man : that he, who began brute,
shaR end spirit; at last God has "breathed into
man " that which has made him " a Rving soul."

VI
THE AFFIRMATION OF THE DIGNITY OF
HUMAN NATURE
Say not thou, I will hide myself from the Lord ; and who from
above will be mindful of me ? I shall not be thought of among
so many people ; for what am I in the immeasurable creation ?
— The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, called Ecclesiasticus,
xvi. 17.
In asserting the dignity of human nature, do not
imagine that I am to make a disclaimer concerning
the FaR of Man. That Chaldean legend, discred
ited in aR scientific minds and among thoughtful
men, is maintained only by those who desire to
spread some doctrine of atonement or justification
which has been built upon the faR of man from
original righteousness. We affirm the dignity of
man as against a more threatening danger, — the
danger which arises from InteRectual reaction In a
period in which the rise of a new universe before
the thought of man dwarfs man's conception of
himself. There is this danger attending every
InteRectual reaction, — the danger of mistaking a
new half truth for a truth which is whole. We
dwell In a period of splendid naturalism ; we are

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 97
in danger of forgetting that human nature has not
only claims of Its own, but confers Its majesty upon
the very scene that sets it forth.
The tendency to endow nature with personality
and to talk reverently of the laws of nature, as
though they were self-operative, comes to us when
ever we review the progress of scientific discovery.
The man fifty years old is almost stunned by the
thought of how immensely the universe has widened
to our search In his day. Upon any such sur
vey we seem to be walking through a new world
of wonders, — a buried world uncovered, a lost
world discovered ; and we are apt to stand breath
less and dispirited and humbled before the vast
array of facts, figures, and forces thus marshaled
to our view.
The natural explanation of the unscientific reader
of such a statement of the magnitude of nature
is. How insignificant is man ! What am I in the
immeasurable creation?
In comparison with such vast reaches of space,
palpitating with worlds, what is our little earth,
with Its pigmy Inhabitants, and what claim has
man upon a moment's audience when the heavens
are declaring the glory of God and the firmament
showing his handiwork? What claim to con
sideration can man advance in the midst of the
seventy-five mlRIon worlds of which the astronomer

98 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
knows, — in the presence of the square of seventy-
five mIRIon worlds which are as likely to be be
yond our farthest sight or fancy ?
I do not doubt that some such sentiment as this
has been uttered again and again by those who
perhaps for the first time were furnished with a
survey of the collected labor of fifty years of scien
tific research by Lubbock or Huxley. Such an
explanation Is perfectly natural. I confess that It
often requires a distinct effort to prevent the un
nerving of spiritual effort by the overwhelming and
overawing presence of material Immensity ; and
yet I believe most confidently that such a view Is
as unreasonable as It Is involuntary, and as un
necessary as it is discouraging, as I hope to show.
The problem before us is this : Given a human
creature, a fit representative of his kind, let him
be set in the blaze of aR we know of the material
universe ; let its fuR light be coRected upon him,
then what Is the result ? Is man eclipsed, or is he
transfigured ? No complete solution can be given
here, but the method of its solution can be indi
cated. Whence comes this sense of the insignificance
of man, this question coming down from the de
spondent spirit of the Hebrew singer, " What Is
man that thou art mindful of him ? or the son of
man that thou visitest him ? " We may answer : —

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 99
It is the impression made upon the Imagination
by the Idea of immensity. The reverential sense
which such phrases as " eternity," " the infinite,"
" the IRImltable," awaken is only the fancy fold
ing its wings as not daring so bold a flight. So
when it Is declared that the earth Is only one of
seventy-five mRRon worlds, It seems but a speck
floating in space, and man is dwarfed to microsco
pic proportions. But does not this same sense of
depression come upon one at other times with which
science has nothing to do? When I stood upon
the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains at sun
rise, the same sense of submission to the immense
and of my own Insignificance in its presence was
upon me ; but upon the peak the mountain range
was seen to be barrier upon barrier ; range after
range stretching for seventy miles on each side, —
a mighty sea whose waves were frozen stone, and
beyond was the blue of the plains. From ocean
to ocean I knew there was nothing to break the
breath of the seas. I stood there weary with climb
ing through the night, and the small cony that
uttered its shrill cry among the rocks seemed no
more Insignificant than man, in the presence of
this sea of color and sweep of the wings of the
wind. And yet the human creatures standing
there on Gray's Peak in the sunrise, by the very
fact that they were standing there, added a feature

100 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
to the landscape without which it would have lost
much of its meaning.
The same sense In less degree comes upon one
when passing through the prairies of Iowa and
Kansas in the summer. The flying engine with
its train full of human creatures speeds away for
miles, scarcely a break in the waving corn ; as far
as the eye can reach on either hand is the green
sea of growing harvest, miles long, miles wide.
The sense of the teeming principles of Rfe in the
soil, the effort to calculate the growth before the
eyes, the thought of the heaps of yellow grain
which a few months later shaR fiR car after car
and hurry forward as though the cry of famine
were in the land, — all these stagger the Imagina
tion and bring to us a sense of feebleness and in
significance ; and yet every blade set In Its place
and every ear ripening on the stalk have small
meaning aside from the defense of these very
human lives, which seem so frail.
The IRustratlons are on every hand. The Idea
of immensity overwhelms the imagination. We
calculate thousands, ten thousands, hundred thou
sands, millions, and then we pause. We have lost
the sense of Individuality. Is It money ? we say.
How much is that per day? Is it men? we say.
How are they related to distribution over the earth's
surface ? Is It grain ? we say, How much Is that

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 101
per acre ? Is it worlds ? we ask*. How are they re
lated to our earth In size ? And the answer comes,
The earth Is a dot upon the map of the heavens.
Immensity has taken our largest standard of mea
sure and dropped it into the ocean of vastness, and
It seems irrecoverably lost. This Is a trick that
the fancy plays the reason, and has absolutely
nothing to do with any real estimation of values.
It is because this overwhelming immensity has
its best Rlustration In astromomy that we find in
the presence of this science our repudiation of our
own dignity and the grandeur of human nature.
If the condition Inhered in any essential nature of
things. It would appear equaRy in the world above
and the world below man. The reasoning that
formerly declared man to be the centre of the
universe and the earth its special feature is in dan
ger of changing Its ground without improving Its
logic, by declaring the outlying worlds everything
and man nothing. Since advancing this view, I
have had my attention directed to a statement of
Professor Cooke, one of the great chemists and
mineralogists in our country. He says concern
ing man's place in nature : " Since the time when
man's dwelling-place was looked at as the centre
of a creation which was solely subservient to his
wants, there has been a reaction to the opposite
extreme, and we have heard much of the utter

102 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
insignificance of the earth In a universe among
whose Immensities all human belongings are but
as a drop In the ocean. When, now, however, we
learn from Sir William Thompson that the drop
of water in our comparison is Itself a universe, con
sisting of units so smaR that, were the drop mag
nified to the size of the earth, these units would
not exceed in magnitude a cricket-baR ; and when
on studying chemistry we stRl further learn that
these units are not single masses but systems of
atoms, we may leave the IRusions of the imagination
from the one side to correct those from the other ;
and all wIR teach us the great lesson that man's
place in nature is not to be estimated by relations
of magnitude, but by the intelligence which makes
the whole creation his own." This strikes the very
centre of the matter, and emphasizes the plea that
when in magnitude, immensity, vastness, we lose
our standard of measure, let us see to it that we
do not lose our equilibrium of self-respect and
sense of real worth by assuming a new standard
which has never been and can never be a test of
worth. I must point you to another condition of right
judgment to which reference has been already
made ; viz., the world below man is as marvelous
as the world above man. LiteraRy there Is no
above and below, but relatively we use the terms

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 103
as pointing in the direction In which we should
look. Let us bear in mind, then, the world which
the microscope reveals as weR as that which the
telescope discloses ; and let us not forget that It is
from this world that we get our surest Intelligence.
Astronomy is eloquent to us by what it indicates,
chaRenging our imagination; but biology, miner
alogy, chemistry, and all those sciences which have
the laboratory for their field, the crucible, scalpel,
and microscope for their instruments of search,
which reveal the things beneath our feet and
around our path, chaRenge, not our imagination,
but our search and wonder by virtue of the dif
ferent emotions which they excite, leaving us less de
spairing of our kind. For Instance, when under the
microscope we see the tiny sheRs of a microscopic
creature, each well defined, — the vacated home
of a Rfe which preceded our advent into the world,
perhaps preceded the advent of man on this planet,
— we do not say, "How insignificant is man!"
each of these tiny shells is as full of the idea of
design as any blazing sun In the heavens. It is as
interesting a study to the speciaRsts ; and if the
nebular hypothesis be the explanation of the crea
tion of the worlds, there is no star in the steRar
firmament, and no star central to any system, that
Is so far advanced in the order of development as
this minute sheR and Its unknown tenant': that

104 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
lodger who has moved out was higher in the scale
of existence than our sun ; to man he is related.
He Is on this side of that gulf, not yet bridged,
which divides the organic from the inorganic, and
by virtue of that very fact this tiny creation
gathers Importance and meaning. He has to share
with man the word " life."
Let me speak just here of that fundamental law
of Inquiry that things that are like must be com
pared together. You cannot settle astronomical
problems by demonstrations in anatomy, any more
than you can measure the problem of sound money
and a solvent treasury by a foot-rule. We must
never lose sight of the axiom. Values must be told
off in units of their own kind. If this be true,
then must appear the latent sophistry Involved In
the discouragement of a human spirit in the pre
sence of the material universe. One can under
stand pessimism in the presence of social disorder
and Injustice ; one can understand nihilism In re
lation to Russian despotism ; but for a human spirit
to say it is nothing worth because overwhelming
material forces are on every hand, majestic, awful,
and moving with incalculable speed through view
less space, — all this is to misunderstand the rela
tions of man to nature and to God.
From our childhood we have been familiar with
the saying attributed to Archimedes, " Give me a

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 105
fulcrum and I will move the earth." He meant
simply to express his confidence in the power of
the lever ; but he unwittingly stated a law of aR
leverage, physical, InteRectual, ethical. The law
is this : In plying a lever there must be a point of
contact with the thing to be moved ; but the ful
crum and the point where the power is applied
must be outside the thing to be moved. How true
this is in man's relation to the material universe.
He does not lift against his own weight. By the
very fact that he measures nature, weighs the plan
ets, calculates their distances, follows them through
all their course, and predicts their motions, they
stand related to him in some such way as he
stands related to God. He looks up to this di
vine Director and says : " Thou understandest my
thought afar off ; thou knowest my downsitting
and mine uprising." There is no miracle attrib
uted to a supernatural power that exceeds, in
Imperial right to interfere, the interferences of
man with nature. In neither case is there any
thing foreign to nature and subversive of her
course. In both is declared the same great fact :
that to handle, examine, arrange, direct, to ply
the lever, and lift matter to its appointed place,
there must be brought to bear upon it a faculty
not itself and superior to itself. Even if the the
ory of evolution be a theory based on truth (as

106 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
I see no reason to doubt, in spite of the fact that
its premises are as yet so hypothetical, and
the method of its demonstration not yet completely
inductive), if, I say, evolution be true In fact, then
man Is the flower which the mlRennlal periods
have been marshaling their forces to produce. He
sums up their Influence in himself, and by virtue
of this fact there is in him a point of contact with
all worlds, and by that point of contact attaching
himself to them, he casts his power upon the lever,
and he weighs them, measures them, submits their
fire to his spectrum, analyzes, and declares what
metals and minerals are incandescent in their fur
naces, — not In the sun alone, swinging ninety mil
lion miles away — but in Sirius also, one hundred
trlRion miles away. The figures make us dizzy ;
but that is simply want of Imagination, or the
absence of our standard of measures ; nevertheless
sodium, magnesium, iron, calcium, are tossing their
molten waves against the hardened sides of those
great retorts in God's laboratory in Sirius. The
troubled sea of fathomless fire has photographed
itself in the lines of the spectrum. More than
this, — the light cast upon the spectrum to-day left
that mighty orb, Sirius, sixteen years ago. The
student who gazes upon Sirius from the observa
tory or analyzes its composition may be no older
than the ray of light by which he sees it. Would

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 107
you get a comparison of worth more true than miles
of space or magnitudes can afford ? Then think
for a moment ! Sixteen years ago a ray of light
started from Sirius, — from the mouth of Canis
Major this ray of light shot out. It has been rush
ing down to earth ever since at the rate of one
hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second.
It carries dispatches about sodium and calcium and
iron, but knows no more of the secret which It
bears than a carrier pigeon knows of the love-let
ter tied under Its wing ; or than the engine knows
of the tears and joy compressed into the letters
in the maR car with which It rushes across the
continent. The ray of light falls upon the spec
trum, where a student with his teacher marks Its
analysis, — that is aR. But the boy whom the ray
instructs, the boy who takes the letter from imder
the wing of this carrier dove from Sirius, the boy
who reads God's message which the ray of light
brings, — this boy started sixteen years ago out of
that great unknown which lies beyond birth. The
ray of light and he started on their career together,
— one toward earth and the other toward heaven.
Now which, think you, at the end of sixteen years
has most to teR of gathered experience ? Which
carries most Impressive news from the unseen
world ? Which has affected the real forces of its
world more potently ? Let self -wiR and young love

108 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
and generous impulse, the shout of boyish laughter
and the tears of childish grief, make answer. In
the night the pat of his baby hand upon his mo
ther's cheek has left more lines unfading, as long
as human consciousness in that mother shaR endure,
than the ray of Sirius has left upon the spectrum
which this same boy is studying. Now the light of
his eyes, the tones of his voice, reveal what fires
burn in him, and what forces are hardening for
the battle of life. Surely, if the worlds hung in
one balance and the boy In the other, judged by
all real standards of value, seventy-five mlRIon
mighty spheres would kick the beam. Man is king
of his own world, and lays under tribute all outlying
worlds. Only one thing he does not and cannot
know, and that is man. The lever must find its
fulcrum outside the thing to be lifted. Man knows
the forces outside himself by virtue of some faculty
not in them. He began with the mammoth and
the cave bear ; weaker than aR, he has conquered
all. The growl of these vast brute forces was
early in his ears ; now he listens to the choiring
of the spheres. WeR may he cry triumphantly, —
" I am the child of earth and air and sea I
My lullaby by hoarse Silurian storms
Was chanted ; and through endless changing forms
Of plant and bird and beast unceasiogly
The toiling ages wrought to fashion me.
Lo, these large ancestors have left a breath

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATURE 109
Of their strong souls in mine, defying death
And change. I grow and blossom as the tree,
And ever feel deep delving earthy roots
Binding me daily to the common clay.
But with its airy impulse upward shoots
My life into the realm of light and day.
And thou, O Sea, stern mother of my soul.
Thy tempests sing in me, — thy biUows roU."
Nature is not transcendent. In vain it defies
our search. So far as man is related to its forces
he also may be known; but his humanity, that
which Is himself, that which leads him to say,
when asked if he has a soul, " No, I am a soul ! "
is beyond our search. Man is the transcendent
fact in nature. He is all that it Is, plus an un
known quantity for which no value can yet be
assigned. Do you ask how we can assert this
unknown quantity in humanity, since ijt is not
amenable to the scientific method? But it is per
fectly within the action of the scientific method,
and Is determined by the same process pursued in
nature. When strange motions were observable
in Procyon, the astronomers searched among the
stars for the cause of this disturbance, and, find
ing no visible cause, said : " Some invisible, some
burnt-out world is tugging at the burning star.
The power is there, though we cannot see it."
When Algol, a bright star in the head of Medusa,
shines two days and three hours with steady blaze,

110 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
and then in three and a half hours fades, so that
from being a star of the second magnitude It be
comes a star of the fourth magnitude, and then
In three and a half hours returns to its former
lustre, the only solution known to astronomy Is
that an opaque body has obscured its light. We
cannot see it ; but by the motions of what we do
see, we argue surely the presence which we do not
see. The motions of human life reveal forces out
of sight. We can account for them in no other
way. It is not an act of faith at aR, and experi
ence Is the result of experiment added to ex
periment. Humanity is the only mystery likely to
be left in the world. It refuses to be Interviewed
or written up. Man can teR what is going on in
suns mRlions of miles away ; but what is going on,
making or marring the soul next you as you move
through each day, you do not know. That life
may be bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh,
but for aR that, you are helpless to know more
than the sheR and husk of its being.
You must provide for these spiritual reaRties.
Science is helpless to render you any aid. Not a
single ray of light has fallen on human destiny
from that source in twenty-five hundred years.
Upon human environment much light has been
thrown, but upon human destiny none. Demo-
critus and Lucretius talked of atoms, and we are

THE AFFIRMATION OF HUMAN NATURE 111
talking of them stlR. Long ago It was known that
the protoplasmic forms seemed in their ultimate
analysis absolutely Identical. No microscope can
discover the difference ; and yet one embryonic
germ grows into a Shakespeare, and the other (so
far as we know identical with It) grows Into a
guinea-pig. One fundamental law in the scientific method
we are liable to forget : that things that are like
must be compared together, and that In which they
are unlike must be accounted for; that an im
aginary bridge cannot be flung across an actual
gulf. "Comparing spiritual things with spirit
ual "Is as much the statement of a scientific law
as that material forces can be measured in foot
pounds. Ruskin says of this very defect In our
common thought : —
" It is quite true that the tympanum of the ear
vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the
water In a ditch vibrates too ; but the ditch hears
nothing for aR that ; and my hearing is stiR to me
as blessed a mystery as ever, and the Interval
between the ditch and me quite as great. If the
trembling sound in my ears was once of the mar-
riage-beR which began my happiness, and Is now
of the passing beR which ends It, the difference
between these two sounds to me cannot be counted
by the number of concussions. There have been

112 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
some curious speculations lately as to the convey
ance of mental consciousness by 'brain-waves.'
What does it matter how it Is conveyed? The
consciousness is not a wave. It may be accom
panied here or there by any quantity of quivers
and shakes, up or down, of anything you can find
In the universe that Is shakable. What Is that
to me ? My friend Is dead, and according to mod
ern views my vibratory sorrow is not one whit
less, or less mysterious to me, than my old quiet
one." Now I have only touched the rim of this great
subject. Over against dumb nature I have set
the creature that masters it with human thought
and makes it obey the human wIR. Man knows
It, but despairs of knowing himself. He finds
himself communing with something beyond nature
to which he owns a kinship that itself seems Rke
a claim of nature. The passing years of science
leave life's mystery only more mysterious. " The
survival of the fittest " declares man its chief pro
duct, its choicest result, but cannot account for
the fact that man turns and declares that he will
cause to survive that which by aR laws of natural
selection ought not to survive ; for he protects the
weak on which nature bids him feed, he straight
ens the crooked limb which nature bids him break,
empties his veins of blood to fiR by transfusion

THE AFFIEMATION OF HUMAN NATUEE 113
the veins of a dying puny child. When Reason
is impaired and wanders from her kingdom, he
takes her hand and leads her back to her throne.
Surely, if " the survival of the fittest " is true up
to man, from that point onward either the law is
reversed or else a new factor — a moral factor, a
spiritual factor — is introduced, a power strong
enough to boast and to make its boasting good,
that the spirit of man shaR show itself fit to do
the work of the Infinite love. God creates, the
creature suffers; but man rises from communion
with God to save the creature from Its suffering.

VII
THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD AND MAN
PEBSONAL EELIGION
I AM to present to you now a subject to which
aR other subjects are but tributary : the soul's
affirmation of Its personal relationship to God.
There is a history of religion and a history of reli
gions, which Is but the coRected history of reli
gious souls, generalized by an observer, or reported
by themselves. There is a philosophy of religion,
but it Is only the laws of the soul's life brought
into some coordinated form and expression. There
is a history of the phRosophy of religions, which is
the way in which a man works from the present
through the past, and finds out the lines of demar
cation which separate one stage of thought from
another ; he builds his bridges from one to the
other, that his thought may pass In orderly proces
sion from the thought of the present to the think
ing of the past. There is not only a history of the
phRosophy of religions, but there is a philosophy of
the history of religions, which is the effort to show
how cause and effect In the reRgious field are not

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 115
other than cause and effect generalized and de
clared by the scientific method here as elsewhere.
But when we have had the philosophy of reli
gion, the history of religions, the phRosophy of the
history of religions, and the history of the philoso
phy of religions, we are but observers, spectators,
lookers-on, interested outsiders, seeing how the
soul behaves, but always the soul of another man ;
and therein lies the defect of this summary, what
ever it may be, that does not leave the observing
soiR also the participating soul. A man may go
through a Divinity School and learn aR that it has
to teach, and come out as sterile of aR spiritual
fruit, as aloof from aR spiritual inspiration, as
though he had spent his years in the most secular
place in the world, simply because he has been
living in the speculative understanding, matching
thoughts together, and untouched by the creative
breath of the spirit. It does not foRow that a
man of good intellectual development may not be
a most acceptable student of the history of reli
gions without having himself any consciousness of
God, — any hold upon the eternal verities. No
one has better introduced us to the beginnings of
the Christian faith, to the origins of Christianity,
than has Renan ; and yet when one has finished the
reading of his matchless history, beginning with
the life of Jesus and carried on through the earlier

116 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
years of the Church, one cannot help somewhat
agreeing with his dilettante estimate of himself,
when he says at the end of a long life that at
twelve years of age he had most of the convictions
that he had at the end, and that all that he had
gained were certain rheumatic pains and a know
ledge of the use of the dictionary. Of course this
is an extreme statement, yet Renan, standing out
side of the church of his native town, outside of
which he had placed himself spiritually also, and
admiring the spires of the church of his childhood,
is the romancer by moonlight as he is the romancer
In the literature of religion. The nearest approach
to worship that one comes to in the pursuit of his
thought is the adoration that he feels for his sister,
as he supports her as she dies upon the slopes of
the hills of Palestine. I quote this instance not
simply because It presents the best example of a
most acute mind in its attitude external to reli
gion, but because It is the common attitude of aR
those who do not believe that the soul has personal
commerce with that which Is the source of its life,
and that religion is more than aR religions, as
being not only inclusive of them aR, but interior
, to them aR.
It is for this reason that we repudiate as not
personal religion all methods of religious restraint,
because that can never be present as motive power

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 117
which Is present only as imprisoning force. The
thing that holds me back as restraint, imposed
from the outside, may be most needful, but It is
not personal ; it Is Imposed ; it Is a prop from the
outside ; it is a mould to shape the soul ; it is a
restriction laid upon its activities. The soul must
trust Its own faculties ; it must go upon its own
errands; it must make its own discoveries. And
aR the traditions that are held to as final; aRthe
observances that are held to as necessary ; aR the
laws that are laid on from the outside as obliga
tory ; aR the limitations that, like the bars of a
cage, leave us to beat our flight against them, —
these can never be religion. They are its acci
dents, — its accidents growing out of temperament,
training, fear of authority, of what you please, but
they are never religion ; and the protest that we
make against the religion of fear, the religion of
restraint, of hindrance or denial in the ascetic
form, is made in the Interest of the higher concep
tion of religion as personal, — the relation of man
to God. No policing of the soul can ever be a
substitute for the citizenship of the soul. The soul
has a speech of its own, which it speaks when It Is
alone ; and the atheism of reaction is the logical
outcome of the atheism of restraint. No regenera
tion has ever been achieved by external pressure.
When, therefore, the soul is liberated from re-

118 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
stralnt and finds its InteRectual emancipation, it
often happens that the man slumps down into the
bog of his lower moral nature. InteRectual free
dom he has found inconsistent with ethical exact
ness. What has happened to him ? Nothing, ex
cept that the scaffolding has been taken down from
around him, and the naked ugliness of his moral
structure appears. Nothing absolutely has oc
curred in the man except that he has learned that
the things he trusted in are no longer trustworthy ;
and since they were never himself, being taken
away, himself remains as he was. The charge
made against liberal religion that it weakens the
bonds of morality and ungirds Its loins is Its high
est conipliment ; for where It occurs, it enables the
beast to recognize its own traits ; and only a crea
ture that Is able to escape from brute conditions is
on the way to be human, to be a man. To say
that Intellectual emancipation is dangerous, there
fore, is a mistake In the genesis of the human soul ;
for intellectual emancipation is only a means to an
end, and that end is personal religion, the soul's
life with God. This brings me to say that since
religious restraint is not personal religion but im
posed religion, — imposition leading to imposture,
as its history proves, — and since the relaxing of
obligation to external restraints sometimes results
in the disorganization of all standards and the mis-

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 119
taking of all the tests of life, we hold the more to
the affirmation of the personal relation of the soul
to God.
" Though man has a body, man Is a spirit ; "
and the spiritual function of man is not only his
highest function, his normal function, but he who
is most a man is on the way to be most like God.
The natural development of the human soul Is the
genesis of personal religion.
And why must these things be so? First,
because, as I have already hinted, the history of
religion has been personal. We should be in a
curiously Illogical position were we to deny this
by saying that somehow or other we have done
what God cannot do : that we have climbed to the
outside of the universe ; that we have been able to
take our roots out of our own soil, untwining every
tendril that we have about the past ; holding our
selves more emancipated from every support than
an air plant; and that we can view the history
of the past without human sympathy, and draw a
parallel between the past and ourselves. To do
this is not Impossible to our fancy, but It Is impos
sible as a fact.
No merchant seRing things that have to do with
the Ideal — beautiful gems, marvelous works of art,
fabrics aud tissues iiitp which the very soul of the

120 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
worker has gone — ever dreams that he Is trading
upon the old conditions in which a skin was bar
tered for a meal. But however elevating his trade
may be, he knows that it roots back In primitive
barter and the effort to stave off death. He has a
margin on which he cultivates delight, unlike the
primitive man, who is simply holding on because he
is afraid to let go. God knows there are enough of
these yet whose margin of delight is so narrow no
ray most fine and subtile of any penetrating light
has ever faRen on It. They are in a hand-to-hand
fight with death. Ask them whether the age of
barter has gone by, and they will teR you In the
words of Job, — a thousand years It may be before
our age, — "Skin for skin, aR that a man hath wiR
he give for his Rfe." But In the great merchant's
trade the sweat is rubbed off the gem, and the
tears have not stained the ancient fabrics ; but
because they are ancient, they are rare ; they are
related to the past.
Now what you cannot do in trade you cannot
do in souls, for aR belong together ; what is IRus-
tratlve of one Is IRustrative of all. We cannot
separate ourselves from the reRgion of the past,
and claim that we have an Impersonal interest in
the behavior of souls in the remote ages. Six hun
dred years after the coming of Jesus the great doc
trine of the unity of God was the raRylng cry of

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 121
Arabia that sent the Arab forward with high ethi
cal enthusiasm. In the rush of battle he smote
the Infidel, crying, " ARah, 11 Allah," and in the
silence of the desert he prostrated himself alone,
saying, " Allah, cover us with thy shadow in the
day when there Is no shade but thy shadow."
No man can understand that who regards it as a
freak of human imagination. He must know what
regenerative, controlling, compelling, and inspiring
power there is in the great fact of the unity of
God. The InteRectual apprehension of this sublime
truth is no substitute for the controRIng power
which the soul finds when the Intellectual appre
hension has become a very dynamic and motive
power of the spiritual life. To believe in the unity
of God, as speculation, helps our philosophy ; but
to let one's self go into the being of God as a con
scious relationship helps all along the line. That
Is the reason that the great ethical religions stand
for the unity of God, and for no form of plural-
Ism whatever ; because one soul can have but one
supreme affection, and all things else are only sym
bols of that highest, dominant ideal of the soul;
so that aR the history of religion and the philoso
phy of religion Is personal in Its last analysis. It
was not personality alone in the leader, but that
there was an answering personality in aR those

122 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
who follow his lead; whether Jew, Christian, or
Mohammedan, the mass of human emotion and
conviction rises, to the call of some one man ; but
not that alone : it was in the fact that there was
power to answer its clarion note ; muezzin-like
against the sky, he caRs to prayer who is nearest
heaven ; but they who are in the dust bow them
selves because the caR is whither they would go,
and the inspiration of It is what they already feel.
The great personal leaders of reRgion are such
because of their Inclusive humanity, — they are
interpreters not only for man, but of men.
It is said that the phRosophy of religion points
to an aspect that is primarily social; that we
never know it as reRgion until it gathers round
centres and coRects Its power by coordinating of
known forces. What is social? What is so
ciety ? It is but the man multiplied by himself,
with this curious fact, — that however he may
enlarge his delights, multiply his opportunities,
match one process of the common ways of life
against another, when he reaches the soul's basilar
needs and Instincts, every man goes back to first
principles. No man has ever yet outrun his sor
row, haste how he would; nor any man escaped
the primal necessities of his nature, however he
may have dreamed himself exempt ; and society
more and more appears as an organism through

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 123
which the personaRty of man asserts itself, not so
much as fragrance, essence, but as the very culmi
nating power in the life of the organism. This
is the reason that reactions which come on in popu
lar thinking sweep through whole ranges of social
life. Not more than twenty years ago, material-
Ism was not only a necessity of the thinking of
many men, but had grown to be a fashion with
those who did not think ; these latter had heard
that somebody thought matter the aR-sufficient
mother found, and they proceeded to declare, out
of the vacancy of their unthinking minds, that this
is the very explanation of the world. It is safe to
say that the reaction from that materialism, which
affected great layers, strata, and masses of the
social mind, is now as far-reaching to the opposite
extreme ; and he has no claim to be considered
anybody in the social field who is not either study
ing or toying with psychology. It is the reaction
from dust to ether ; from the thing that is beneath
our feet to the thing that thus far is so much above
our heads. It would not be true that these great
reactions take place, if it were not that the history
of thought is in its essence personal, and in the
soRdarity of the race is the vindication of person
aRty, as common-wish, if not yet common-weal.
Mark you stlR further, — that the affirmation
of the personality of religion is the soul's discovery

124 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
of that which is native to Itself, and Is emphasized
by the fact that every progress in civilization has
been in its last analysis moral ; that is, human ;
that Is, personal. You have only to think for a
moment what makes the difference between refine
ment and barbarism. What constitutes the fine
adjustments of modem life? What makes the
space between the savage who eats his food raw
when he can get It — or could get It In the remote
past — and the modern men and women who cele
brate the holy communion of friendship round the
daRy meal ? What is the interval ? Every step
in it that you can mark may be registered as the
emphasis of the human as against the brutal.
Now It Is possible in this age to dine like a sav
age ; to array one's self like a barbarian ; to live in
a body made as gaudy In colors as the dress of a
red Indian, delighting in war paint and feathers ;
but nobody wRl claim that this Is civilization.
Just in the proportion in which It fails of the fine
ness of life. It repudiates Its humanity ; it asserts
its vulgarity and claims brute relationships, for
every advance in civilization Is the becoming of
men and women more and more human. I speak
of this because it emphasizes the claim of the per
sonal in the field of religion.
More than this, — all our sorrows are personal.
Now, I do not claim that the purpose of religion

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD AND MAN 125
Is summed up In the healing of our sorrows. I
do not think so. Religion is not a salve and a
solace to distress alone. It Is an Inspiration for
rugged life ; and so much is this true that, when It
is at Its best, life's strenuousness is transmuted
Into life's nobility, so deep are its Inspirations, so
high are its aspirations. But when that has been
said, I must remind you that humanity has its
sorrows, and that they are aR personal ; and they
have the right to expect that the Source of Being
has some share with them, in them. There is no
sorrow that can be dignified by the name that has
not Its boundary set by the word personal. Do
not understand me to mean that the sorrows that
are worthy of the name are selfish, — God forbid !
They are never so heart-breaking as when they
have least of self in them. Are they less personal
on that account? They are more personal, that
they have for their ingredients that bitter mixture
that we are set to drink, in which love has turned
to gaR and the sweet relationships of life deny
their validity and repudiate their sanctity. To
accept this utter self-abnegation is not less per
sonal that It is whoRy unselfish. We hold our
bowls of hemlock In our hands, the bitter draught
that may put us to sleep ; we wait the Issue of our
unbearable griefs, and then empty the goblet on
the ground, refusing to dream ourselves happy.

126 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
It is written of the man of Nazareth, that " sweet
est soul that e'er wore flesh about him," that when
they put upon a reed a sponge dipped in gall, —
the common opiate of the crucifixion, — since he
had no hand to spurn It, being nailed, he turned
his head away, and would not drink. Is not that
the type of every noble soul to whom sorrow Is so
personal It cannot afford to put It by ? It cannot
afford to be without the discipline and ministry of
life which has come not of its own seeking, and
in the order of nature and the providence of God.
Since our sorrows are personal, their solace must
be personal ; and to the crying of our hearts there
must be some answer at least as articulate as Its
own : " I will hear what God the Lord wiR speak.
How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God I
How great is the sum of them."
The claim for the personal quality in religion lies
in the fact that the field of the exercise of aR our
highest faculties is personal. Not only is this the
contact of being with Its source, but wherever the
higher faculties are operative and at work, they
take on In their last analysis the word personal
as their crown. I would have no meagre inter
pretation of personal religion. The man who has
been driven to the wall, and has set his back
against It, stands there as Luther against the final
thesis from which he could not recede, knows only

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 127
one thing in all the world is sure, and that is his
confidence in the triumph of righteousness and the
vindication of virtue. Such a man may have no
theory of life, no philosophy of religion. If you
asked him if he were religious, he would say, " No,
I do not know the meaning of the word ; " but
the beginning of religion in its finest quality is the
confidence of the soul in the integrity of the uni
verse ; -and his answer is, " Since the universe is
true, I must not be false." Yet there are people,
— whole bodies of divinity, — schools of theolo
gians and other masqueraders, playing an imagi
nary version of the facts of the soul's life, who
would say of that man that he was a " very noble
person," " a most interesting feRow ; " that " he
had borne his troubles very well ; he had a certain
integrity of nature to be sure ; " that " he had a
fixedness of purpose " and a certain " doggedness
of will." We have aR heard them speak thus,
blaspheming against the Holy Ghost. They could
not recognize the motions of the eternal spirit in
the sublimity of the spiritual nature. RecaR old
Slward now, in Shakespeare's play, when they
come to him and say that his son has faRen in
battle ; he stops them and asks, " Had he his
wounds before ? " and they say, " Aye, in his
front." " Then I could wish him no fairer death."
Many sincere souls get no further than that. Yet

128 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
let no man misunderstand this high courage, this
sublime resignation, and say that this is not the
beginning of religion, personal to the very quick
of our nature.
So is it true of all literature that Its marriage
with religion is so intimate and natural that there
can be no divorce. It is safe to say, if you were
to taie out of our English speech In Its literary
form the debt which it owes to the religious life,
we should leave the whole range of English litera
ture crossed by sterile places where once bloomed
the flowers of ideal expression of life's best and
hoRest ; and what was a garden would be a desert
with paths across Its devastated expanse of thought
showing arid and unproductive the fields where
the flowers of the spirit were wont to shed their
fragrance and show their beauty. He was right
who said that " every age of great achievement has
been an age of great faith." The same aspect of
personality appears in the world of art. I ask you
to go through a modern French salon, with its
unspeakable skill and its unmentionable subjects ;
and when you have reveled — as you have a right
to do — in beauty of line and perfection of the
reproductive sklR in art, then go and sit down
before the Sistine Madonna of Raphael, or even
stand In the presence of that mythological Last
Judgment of Michael Angelo, and see whether

THE AFFIEMATION OF GOD AND MAN 129
religion Is not essential to the ideal. But some
men go to school to the religious in art, and dete
riorate afterward to use their lessons for what Is
lower than secular. Where do you find the great
piRars that support the arches and buttress the
strength of modern architecture, — the temple fur
nished forth the plan? "Strength and beauty are
in his sanctuary ! " From the beginning men have
built their temples on God, and they are the school
of all the future ages, to show how men in that
earRer age declared " Nothing useless is, or low ! "
They counted every least thing of import and
meaning, and if asked the reason would have said,
" The gods see, — the gods see everywhere ! "
Now a single application Is this : We cannot live
on a religion that is past, however noble, without
living at second-hand. All the saints are not two
thousand years old. There are saints of yesterday,
and, please God, there shaR be saints to-day. To
live with glance averted from the field where our
works lies is to do that work ill ; and to have
one's centre of gravity in the past and one's field
of activity In the present Is to disintegrate and
dismember Rfe ; and this is the failure of popular
reRgion. It is a travesty upon religion as it is
practiced, finding its spiritual athletic in elaborate
services and symbols and every help to the aes
thetic nature. This is the indictment against it, —

130 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
that it has mistaken the dregs of the wine of life
for its cordial, and is deifying the past because it
is far enough off not to see what it was. No man
can read the Epistle to the Corinthians without
knowing that though he claims special enlight
enment for the primitive church, if he had been
in the primitive church with his present spiritual
development, however much moved he might have
been to spiritual activity, he would have been
much shocked by the social conditions ; and it Is
safe to say that the church at Corinth could not be
put down in the city of New York without becom
ing a public offense. Read the epistle; note the
sins that are enumerated there, not condoned, but
rebuked, but which were native to the time. The
primitive church had primitive development. We
need not the early church, but a church late enough
to fit our modern life, and In this century fulfill the
conditions which that early church achieved for
the age then present. We do not want the past,
except for a background, and let us have the pre
sent for activity.
There are two or three principles that I would
have you remember. The soul must have its mo
mentum to-day. It cannot get on by being wound
up to a false enthusiasm by a spiral spring fas
tened back some thousands of years. The thing
I think I think, and would teR some other man I

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD AND MAN 131
think I think, is a poor substitute for the abiding
conviction of the soul that knows the Eternal is
the Great Companion of its days.
A second principle, — you are entitled as human
souls to your own discoveries. Now if I were
looking upon a group of people, well born, weR
trained, weR bred, weR commissioned in the activi
ties of life, and they were to tell me they had
made discoveries in art, in mercantile life, in the
laws of exchange, in the science of common
things, and should recite all that they have learned
that the past has thought and the present devel
oped, — and I were to say to them, as human
souls, set in the presence of the universe that has
prompted this great question and has obliged us
to answer the question, " What have you discov
ered about the soul's life In God ? " and It should
sound as though it were spoken in an alien tongue
and unaccustomed speech, surely the fault would
not be in the question but in the hearer.
I am sure that no other discovery that has been
made has found Its true reason and motive for
being, unless the soul has discovered Itself ; that is
the mission of every human being, — to live the
life which shall every day be a voyage into the in
finite, and every night a return from a pilgrimage
rich with discoveries.
The affirmation of personal religion as it is thus

132 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
outlined is the affirmation of God and man, of
God with man. It gives us holy ones, and we caR
them saints ; it produces the wise ones, and we caR
them prophets; It sets men singing psalms, and
Scriptures come into being ; it teRs the glad news
concerning God from human lips, and the evan
gelists are brought into the world ; and upon some
souls the divine compulsion faRs, so that they can
not help themselves, and abandon themselves to
the wIR of God ; and then God's Christ is bom.
Not once, but many times a voice has said, " They
shaR call his name Immanuel — God with us ! "

VIII
THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING PRAYER
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
— James v. 16.
This statement Is quoted from the record of
the narrowest and most local of Christian begin
nings, the Jewish-Christian Church in Jerusalem,
not emancipated from Judaism, and not yet caRed
Christian. I have taken it from a context where
it was narrowly applied, viz., to the healing of
the sick by prayer and by the anointing of the
Church ; for it seemed good to me, in stating the
law for to-day, to set it over against the narrower
interpretation of the beginnings. I know per
fectly weR that with these earlier beRevers the
" effectual fervent prayer " of the righteous man
availed much for the thing that the righteous man
wanted to get, — In this case the healing of the sick
at the hands of the Church. But there is a larger
Interpretation that belongs to to-day. Since the
old interpretation more and more disappears, it
behooves us to state what is rational and possible,
lest in our revolt from the Irrational and Impossi-

134 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
ble we fall into that worst of aR superstitions,
which makes a man " the slave of his own liberty."
To be the slave of a great design, narrowly con
ceived and intensely executed, accomplishes some
what ; to be the slave of one's own Rberty accom
plishes nothing but the f eeRng of one's own pulse.
There are two words in the text that we may clear
up in the meaning. First, it is said that it Is the
righteous man whose prayer availeth much. It is
not said that It is a good man whose goodness as
goodness is recognized, but the rightened man
who is in Rne with the laws under which he makes
his experiments. The good man may be rewarded
or he may not ; but the man who keeps step always
arrives with the phalanx with which he marches.
The rightened man or the upright man, the man
of law and obedience, is the Ideal of the text. The
man who wants only what he has a right to have
is delivered from wanting what he Imperfectly
wishes he may get. There is a second word in
the text curiously rendered by the Authorized Ver
sion as " effectual fervent." The Greek phrase
really means that which works itself out as flame,
kindles, ignites, burns up. I think I can give
you what I conceive prayer in this aspect to be.
What is It to be " effectual fervent " ? Surely not
to be importunate or to be insistent, or in any
way to harry the sources of wealth untU their

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING PEAYEE 135
exhaustion Is our supply. To be "effectual fer
vent " may be IRustrated In this way : A train on
which I was a passenger stopped in southern Col
orado one day. As it stood there for an hour or
two, from some delay in traffic, a band of Ute
Indians came to visit us from a little camp they
had half a mile away on the plain. They were as
compliant as paupers are apt to be, and we were
as interested as those always are who have some
thing that another wants. To divert the general
tedium I said to a Ute Indian, " Let me have
your bow and arrow ; " and he handed It to me.
It was a very stiff bow not more than two and
one half feet long, with a thong for a string and a
rather harmless arrow to be used upon the string.
I set the arrow upon the thong and drew It with all
my might, to shoot it, as I thought, untR it should
be a fluttering feather in the air ; but it only made
a little curve and dropped just in front of me.
Then with a grunt of satisfaction the Indian him
self took the bow and drew the arrow to the head,
and with a quick release sent it, until I could just
discern against the blue sky the fluttering feather
of its hock. I was fervent, and he was "effec
tual fervent." Probably he put no more pounds
of pressure on the string than I. Some such idea
Is in the declaration, " The effectual fervent prayer
of a righteous man avaReth much I "

136 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
Now the old design of prayer is held to be irra
tional. The old view was this : If you wanted
anything from God's treasury, which is always
fiRed, you must either arrange with some one who
knows where the key is, viz., the priest, or you
must devise some form of expression which is
easily interpreted by the treasurer of Goodness;
or you must petition for it untR you get what you
want. This is the old view of prayer that leads,
and has led In the history of the world, to the
formation of every liturgy and the erection of all
the orders of priesthood, and to the building for
the most part of the temples of worship, and to
the disappointment of a multitude of those who do
not get that for which they ask. This Is the view
of prayer, as supplication or petition, In which
the giving of the divine nature Is conditioned by
the asking of the insistent soul. The story which
Jesus told of the " friend at midnight," pleading
for three loaves to make good his hospitality, has
been taken to mean that we should be "Impor
tunate" with God In prayer; whereas the word
" importunity " used In the parable means shame
less impudence, occurs but once in the New Testa
ment, and wherever it Is used in classic Greek Is
used as a term of opprobrium. The whole argu
ment is that what was reluctantly granted by the
man in the parable is in striking contrast to what

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING PEAYEE 137
God freely gives ; and therefore Jesus follows the
parable by saying, " Ask and ye shall receive ;
seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be
opened unto you." It is the contrast between
God's liberality and human unwillingness. The
old view of petition and supplication is no longer
held by thoughtful people as true except where,
as In the old allegory of Jacob's wrestling with
the angel. It is the portrayal of one's struggle with
his better nature, and his better nature triumphs.
For all agony in prayer is the measure of our un-
wiRingness to do God's will, and the measure of
our insistence that we shall have our own way.
He who is at one with the thought of the Eternal
knows that prayer Is communion and not petition ;
is the dweRing in the presence of him under
whose shadow he sits and waits until the wIR of
God may be known. The old view has been put
aside in all rational minds by the two great facts
of the being of God so enlarged to our modem
thought, and the enlarging nature of man, and
that other, dependent fact, the order of the world.
In other words, Emerson's statement is now uni
versally accepted, " that prayer for selfish ends is
a theft and a meanness," and it Is matched by the
universal conviction that prayer for immediate
interference is a form of unfaith, a form of infidel
ity ; for it holds that the great through traffic of

138 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
the world is to be shunted upon a siding, whRe
my little train has the right of way. There Is
nothing to-day more wanting In faith than the
belief that the order of the world is to be disor
dered or suspended while I get what I want.
Now the question comes legitimately and potently
to our minds. If this older view of prayer as sup
plication, as petition, as personal appRcation for
personal ends, is no longer possible, Is It still true
that " the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous
man availeth much " ? It is more than ever true.
Prayer is not only legitimate and rational, but that
life Is Irrational, flippant, and superficial which
has refused a better prayer because It has lost
the prayer that Is no longer " effectual fervent "
and " availeth " nothing. I hold that prayer Is a
part of the order of the world, and Is as constant
as the order of the world ; rightly apprehended, is
as natural as the feeling of free wIR. The saying
of Emerson, "the friend and helper of aR those
who would live In the spirit," fits this case very
well : " If you choose to plant yourself on the
side of fate and say fate Is all, then we say that
part of fate is the freedom of man." I am fated
to be free. That which for ages, and potently
to-day, leads men to prostrate themselves before
the thought of personal goodness, and In prayer
to give their very lives away to God, is a part of

THE AFFIEMATION CONCERNING PRAYER 139
the law of human life and belongs to the order
of the world. We make this mistake continuaRy,
when we speak of the order of the world, that we
constantly leave out the mind of man; whereas
the laws of mind are as legitimately a ground of
study as the laws of matter ; for In the last analy
sis the things material are expressed in terms of
mind ; and It would behoove us, I should say, to
study the laws at their sources rather than in their
secondary conditions. And if the laws of matter
command us, and we bow before the reign of law,
then let the laws of mind also command us, and
let us listen to the decrees of reason expressed in
the terms of human Intelligence. The laws of
mind show that it Is the prevailing instinct that
life should seek Its source In God, — not simply
when It may end, but also that it may replenish its
power; and from the creature who bows before
stock or stone or idol, to the rapt communion of
the seer whose vision Is beyond words, worship Is
a part of the universal instinct. It is the appetite
of the soul. That instinct has a correlative In the
universe; that Is its answer. That the thing I
ask may be IR asked, may be ill conceived as my
necessity, and IR adjusted to the divine will, is
merely incidental ; but the asking, the cry of the
soul, the letting one's self go toward the Eternal,
— this is as much a law of mind as any other

140 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
appetite, basRar or ideal, that human nature fur
nishes. When the question came up in Harvard
CoRege of the releasing of young men from attend
ance upon the morning prayers, they were sur
prised that Ralph Waldo Emerson voted "No"
In the Board of Overseers; and they said, "How
is It that you, an apostle of freedom, voted to
continue the existing custom of daily attendance
upon prayers ? " And he said, " I cannot take the
responsibility of casting a single vote which might
make some young man think he was released from
the sublimest attitude a young man can take."
The attitude of worship shows the highest faculty
of the human mind at its highest task ; and he
that is freest is he that most aspires to know the
ground of life In the central Being whom we caR
God. Now let us come down to particulars. What
does it avail in the rational view of prayer as com
munion, — not as petition, not as suppRcation, not
as insistent selfishness, — what does It avail, this
prayer which is communion ? In the main, it is
a means of self-revelation. Man comes to himself
in order to bring himself to God. Think of your
busy days, and the absence in them of meditation I
Think of the hurry of that great stream of life
which in this strenuous time steeps you to your
lips. Let the women of social privileges think of

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING PEAYEE 141
that round of social enjoyment that leaves them,
In the hours that should be meant for meditation,
almost too weary for sleep, and then say whether
there is not need that every human being, in a
time so strenuous, solicitous, and cut across with
diverging and crossing lines of care, should know
himself. Does It not behoove us to come some
times to ourselves, and in the central core of our
natures take account of Rfe? For one comes to
himself, to bring himself to God. It Is the normal
way of taking stock of our powers. What do we
find ? We find whole days go by without a brood
ing hour ; for the anxieties which hold you most,
which have to do with getting a living, are not
the anxieties that bring you peace. The brooding
upon some great scheme for your own aggrandize
ment, not involving other lives and interests than
your own, is to brood upon an egg of thought out
of which no singing bird shaR come. It is to brood
upon a nest of serpent's eggs ; and however legit
imate their lives may be, they will never do more
than crawl along the dusty ways of life. Unless
it be that you have devoted life long enough and
successfuRy enough to fiR your hands with the
gifts of God, by legitimate means, to build up the
life of the world ; then, in that moment of medita
tion upon your human kind, you shall come to
yourself, and the act of bestowal shall be In the

142 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
highest sense an act of worship. One wonders
how men and women can get on so long without
knowing themselves. That they do not know each
other is to be expected ; that they sit side by side
and are strangers one to the other ; that they live
in the same house and are not able to discern the
spirits with which they come In contact, — that be
longs to the mystery of human life. But at least
I may be at home with myself. I may bring
myself under that clear light which shines from
the transfigured face of Christ, and In that un-
dimmed radiance see how poor I am ; how lacking
In resource ; how frivolous in endeavor ; how want
ing in the faith that is large and fine; how piti-
fuRy penitent for my wasted days. Thus the first
fruit of prayer is self -revelation ; it brings a man
to himself.
But more than this, prayer is a constant factor
in human experience. It is a means of education.
I ask you to recaR what has been said repeatedly
in these chapters with regard to the highest func
tion of a human creature. The highest word In
our vocabulary that means anything we can wholly
conceive of is " man." It was this that led a
Father of the third century to say, " Man first,
then God." We have manifold symbols for that
which transcends our experience, that Being,
larger than our thought ; and we are content with

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING PEAYEE 143
caRIng God the elemental ground of being. But
this is fragmentarily apprehended ; it is Imperfectly
grasped. On the other hand, the word in our lan
guage which expresses what we may whoRy know
is the word man ; and in man's evolution his high
est experience is self -consciousness ; and In this
self-consciousness he discovers more clearly his per
sonality, if this be a true catalogue of our inner life.
Then I ask you to think of the humanhood that
must be in God, if he is the original of our life.
Self-consciousness must be a dim reflection of that
conscious Spirit of which this self-consciousness
is an individual and feeble ray; and personality
In me must be my apprehension of that infinite
personality that has its fuR life in the Eternal.
It Is more than that, but it is that most surely.
Mark you, then : to say I may not pray, to say
that it Is not rational for me to bring my bur
dened heart to God, to say that In moments when
I cannot speak, — when this highest function of
the human creature has been made dumb by over
mastering trouble, — to say that in those dark
days and darker nights when the human crea
ture Is a tossed and torn soul and no more, when
desire has passed out of consideration, and aR
his concepts are vacated of their importance to
his thinking in just one culminating agony of
the troubled life, — then to say the highest in

144 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
man may not speak to the Most High, or think
of "the thoughts of God to usward," or mutely
with streaming eyes look for that of which it is
born, is to shear human nature of its most rational
exercise and highest prerogative. So I am asking
that in such a moment, whether it be of agony or
ecstasy, of common want or uncommon joy, that
my highest shall seek its source, and, since God
taught me to speak, I may speak to my, teacher.
Is it rational? I think it is the only rational;
and it gave rise to that fine saying of a German,
that " work without prayer would make us stran
gers to ourselves."
Take that little group that climbed the hlRsIde
in Galilee to find the master whom they had lost
over night. They found him in the early morning
with his face lighted by the dawn, with his eyes
shining with the light that " never was, on sea or
land." They came to find out what had become
of him. He had spent the night In the hills in
prayer. Did they ask what had become of him ?
Did they say, " Why camest thou hither ? "
" Why hast thou deserted us, thy devoted ones ? "
Nay. They looked in his face, upon which rested
still the light of the open heavens, and they said,
" Lord, teach us to pray." They knew that he
held the key of what to them was the mystery of
existence; that here was a great soul that had

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING PEAYEE 145
sounded the depths and held a measure of life they
had not compassed ; that he knew something about
the soul's rights in God which to them was stRl
a blank uncertainty. What did he do ? Did he
devise for them a prayer out of his inner Rfe ? If
you knew how difficult It is out of one's Inner life
to lead to prayer another Rfe, you would under
stand why it was that he did not say to them some
new thing out of life's depths. He repeated to
them the things they had said since they could
lisp ; for every line of that prayer is in the Jewish
prayer-book imtil to-day. Out of that tangle of
ancient words he gathered just certain simple
precepts of life and thoughts of religion, and out
of that came what we caR " the Lord's Prayer."
In the midst of these utterances he found certain
things which dealt with the soul of man and the
Fatherhood of God : the sanctity of the eternal
name and character, " HaRowed be thy name ; "
the life of God investing the world with the power
of holiness, " Thy kingdom come ; " the inexhaus
tible patience that walteth in God, " Thy wIR be
done." And then a single prayer for daRy food,
so reticent and self-contained that we marvel it
is there but in such slight form, saying, " Give
us to-day the bread that belongs to this day." It
is the picture of one who leaves the tent of his
friend at dawn, and into his hand is put a simple

146 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
loaf of common bread that he may not want untR
evening, when the house of some friend might take
him in, in a land where hospitality is a sacrament.
And so, " Bring us not into temptation, but deRver
us from evil." May the strain of life not be more
than we can bear, so that we sink not our high
ideals daily, and turn our noble Into our Ignoble
hours. It is a most reticent prayer, — a most spir
itual utterance. It teaches only to put out the
hand ; and about " getting on in life " It says not
a word. About the things that busy us it is mute ;
and only the soul speaks to the soul, as in that
phrase in the New Testament which had become
the common habit of their speech, " Surely our
feRowship is with the Father and with his son,
Jesus Christ ! "
A moment In conclusion upon this meditation.
There is in this act of prayer also, not only a means
of self-revelation and self-education, but prayer is
a means of self-consecration. Here Is the sacrar
ment of the soul In the divine presence. Here is
that prayer that comes before the search for the
Holy GraR. This Is the knight that kneels in his
armor and with his sword laid upon the altars of
reRgion. Before he goes upon a quest that none
may stay, he seeks God in ways that none may
know. Prayer is a means of self-consecration.
The highest prerogative of the human soul is to

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING PEAYEE 147
give itself away. What the youth does whose
Ideal hails him from afar, to assume life's vocation,
that he does again when that ideal in some pure
woman's love commands him to the depths of his
nature, so that chivalry enters Into his vocabulary
with a new meaning. That he does who gives him
self to any deserving task ; and so great Is this
prerogative that he may give himself whoRy away
to some ignoble task, so that he may never get
himself again. This act of worship, when it seeks
the highest and holiest In life, is the seK-consecra-
tlon of one to whom the abandoning of the soul to
God is its highest vocation and its chief function.
There Is a narrow river that winds down through
Lebanon to the Dead Sea. A tortuous course the
Jordan f oRows through Lake Merom to the Sea of
GalRee ; through the deep defiles of the valleys of
Samaria and Judea it winds on until Its sweet wa
ters pour themselves into the low basin of the Dead
Sea, and there stagnate; their sweetness is lost in
brine, and no Rfe follows their courses. What has
happened? Have aR the snows of Lebanon and
Hermon perished in the brine of the Dead Sea ?
Shall the mouth of this volcanic crater engulf the
sweetness of the Judean hlRs ? Shall this Rquid
desert be the end of so sweet a stream of waters
from the far north ? Nay. Watch it. In that
tropical atmosphere the brooding sun and the winds

148 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
from the Egyptian deserts come and lie down in
festering heat upon the surface of the sea caRed
Dead ; and a little vapor rises day by day, and
mounts and mounts, though none can see it, until
this very wind of the Egyptian deserts wafts it
northward, northward, through all the one hundred
and eighty mRes of the length of Palestine ; and
in the cool air of Lebanon It Is sifted down as
snow upon the heights of Lebanon and Hermon.
This is nature's way of purifying what is not fit.
And over the covering of these great hiRs the
spring shall come with breath that is sweeter than
the Dead Sea knows, that wind that has swept
down from the Damascus region and the heights of
Syria ; and the Spring shall melt the snow and fill
the springs of the hills, and set the rippling rivu
lets running underneath the Ice ; and the Jordan
shall fiR her banks again with recovered treasure
from the Dead Sea. Something like this happens
in a human life that gives itself to God. The
brooding of the Eternal shaR make it clean and
send it out again upon the mission fit for conse
crated spirits. From life's low places we ascend
by a celestial gravitation ; and that which we
breathed to God, and he heard, shaR be said
again, so that other men shall hear and be better ;
and in the process the returning flood shaR strike
our own banks also, and the spring and the sum
mer follow " the winter of our discontent."

IX
THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING JESUS
CHRIST

There is no relation which can be distinctly
traced between the historical Jesus and the theo
logical Christ. The theological Christ is an after
thought of man. The historical Jesus was a part
of the fore-thought of God. Of the theological
Christ we are asked to believe these five things, if
we would be counted theologicaRy sound : —
First, that he Is God.
Second, that though he is God, he is an offering
for sin to God, yet not to himself.
Third, that he is a mediator between God and
man, and therefore should receive our prayers to
pass them on to God, whom he seems at that
moment not to be.
Fourth, that the wonders attributed to him are
essential to his spiritual teaching, and must be be
lieved as though they were spiritual truth ; and
Fifth, that all that is attributed to him in the
New Testament as his sayings are his sayings, and

150 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
we must make them of equal worth, however differ
ent they may seem, even to the point of offending
our sense of what Jesus really taught.
These five things we are asked to believe con
cerning the theological Christ. They are the " five
points " of orthodoxy, — modem and mjiihologlcal.
These positions we distinctly deny, and repudiate
them in the interest of a better thought concerning
Jesiis the Christ.
First, we believe that he is divine, because we
believe that he was a man at one with God ; that
he was not the one God, but that he was at one with
God. And this is the basis of that at-one-ment
which has been garbled into being an atonement.
Second, we believe that he is a Saviour of men
In a very vital way : not by appeasing God, but by
revealing God to men ; for if he was a Saviour by
appeasing God, he would have to save God first ;
for an angry God, who needs to be appeased, has
ceased to be God In any proper sense.
Third, we believe that to pray to him would be
an act which would fiR him with horror and dis
tress; for he said, during that lifetime of which
such scant and tantalizing records have been left,
" Why call ye me good ? there is none good but
one, God ! " So that to offer him our prayers is
to postpone the soul's best right to speak to its
Father, as though It knew him.

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 151
Fourth, we believe that there were wonders which
attended upon his life, but that they were the
inevitable element in the history of a great soul ;
that they were the natural fruit from a strong
root, the natural exhibit of what the soiR may do
with human life ; that some of them are certainly
true, others of them are probably true, and that
some of the wonders attributed to him are so lack
ing In moral motive as to seem mere jugglery ; that
those which are true have their basis in character,
and their utility In their effect upon other charac
ter. He might very well heal the sick without
" cursing the fig-tree." He might very weR come
to the rescue of the distressed without setting
gravitation at naught and " walking upon the sea."
Fifth, we beReve that we do him more honor, not
when we believe all that in the Gospels it is said he
said, — which Gospels themselves are the survival
out of the Gospels which in the second century in
multiform variety were read in the churches, — we
honor him not when we beReve that aR they said
he said was of equal value, but when we believe
those words attributed to him which are like him,
and disbelieve those which are Inconsistent with
the sublimity, purity, and majesty of his superb
personaRty. These are our five negations, set over against the
five points stated by "evangelical" thought con-

152 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
cerning the theological Christ, and we make them
in the interest of reality, in the name of the histor
ical Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man " approved
of God by the mighty works which he did."
Now these positions are not taken for the sake
of denial, but because we do not want the world
to lose this master of the art of living, nor fail
of the leadership of which Jesus is capable. If he
is to lead, it must not be because we decide he is
to lead ; he Is to be the leader of modem thought
simply because he leads. These positions, thus
summarized, deal first with the statement of the
divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, because he is essen-
tiaRy human, and humanity is essentially divine.
How can you have a humanity which is worth the
saving, except by being shared by the Saviour?
It would never have occurred to us to speak meanly
of the humanity of Jesus, and supplement it by an
infusion of something not human, if we had not
been taught to think meanly of all humanity.
I suppose the history of thought has no paraRel
to the persistent power of legend, as IRustrated in
the myth concerning the " FaR of Man." It has
spread from the one account in Genesis to cover aR
the older systems of theology. And since we must
account for the Fall of Man as a fact, although we
learned it from a myth, we have begun to see how
atrociously bad in the name of religion we must

THE AFFIRMATION CONCEENING JESUS 153
make man appear, in order that we may show how
atrociously good God was to save what he had so
atrociously made. It Is an example of the issuing
of a spurious coin to pay a fictitious debt. If man
fell from the image of God, and has been in a kind
of spiritual repair-shop ever since, then It was be
cause God made a mistake, and the whole atone
ment is relegated to that makeshift by which God
seeks to justify what he so IR began. No, the
divinity of Jesus of Nazareth Res in the fact of his
essential humanity ; and we hold this, first, because
it Is consistent with the Scriptures, which are the
only source from which we can gain any knowledge
of what he was. He does not appear In the con
temporary Rterature ; he does not appear In the
history of thought or life of that period, outside
the Gospels and Epistles. This position of his
essential humanity is consistent with what all the
Gospels say of him ; except that in two single
statements, one in the preface to Matthew's Gos
pel and the other In the preface to Luke's Gospel,
there Is an attempt to justify his greatness by
making him other than human. For to say that he
was abnormaRy born Is not to make him God, but
to make him less than man ; for a birth half-human
and half-divine does not make a being either God
or man.
Athanasius was right when, in the Council of

154 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
NIcsea, as against the Arian heresy, he declared
that Jesus was " very God out of very God." He
was, according to Arius, neither God nor man, but
a God-man who was neither archangel nor human.
So it was Athanasius who really saved the church.
Do you say, therefore, that we believe the Nioene
Creed ? No ; we accept no creed as more than
attempt at definition ; but to say that he was the
" same substance " with the Father is to say what
the scientific world now says of aR life, — that
there is but one substance in the universe, but
one energy. To us this one energy is God. Atha
nasius did well to save the church from the meagre
heresy which Arius had sought to introduce. The
mongrel product of this fancy of Arius had neither
dignity nor beauty, that we " should desire him."
The Scriptures bear out the assertion of the sim
ple humanity of Jesus. Except in the passages
to which I have referred, — those single statements
set over against the whole of the great deliver
ances of Gospels and Epistles, — he is not any
where treated as other than man. And Paul,
whose utterances take precedence in point of time
of all others, whose Epistle to the Corinthians
stands first among the New Testament writings,
preceding any Gospel that was written in any form
left to us, knows nothing whatever of the " virgin-
birth," and never spoke of the " Mother of God ; "

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 155
nor to Mary, in her personality as the mother of
Jesus, does he refer in any way. To say the least,
this is passing strange, — that the earliest docu
ment assumes nothing abnormal in the central
figure of It, If that central figure were other than
human. He is everywhere caRed a man, — everywhere
treated as a man, and speaks of himself as a man.
He spoke always of himself as holding that rela
tion to God which he would have his disciples hold.
Observe that marvelous prayer in the seventeenth
chapter of John's Gospel, which if it were not
verbally recorded is so much the better, as it con
tains the consensus of a period perhaps a hundred
years away from the scene that it enshrines. In
that prayer he prays " that they may be one," he
and these simple disciples ; that they may be one,
" as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that
they may be made one in us." Is that the decla
ration of deity, or of spiritual affinity ? I think
it is the declaration of that moral coalescence which
is to make the human one with the divine. " The
things that I do shaR ye do also," says he to his
disciples, " and greater things than these, because
I go unto my Father ; be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
The central truth of the New Testament Is, first,
that man has seen In the relation of Jesus with

156 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
God the picture of the union of the human with
the Eternal; the oneness of the rapt soul which
has been caught up Into life with God ; and next,
that it was not exceptional or peculiar, for it only
showed what God could do with our common clay.
These are the two great lessons of the New Testa
ment, — the one the revelation of an unbroken
union, and the other the revelation of a universal
right. So that God, making one Christ for all
time, had failed had he not revealed also that his
Christ might be made at aR times. Not only is
this so, but Paul, teaching the church Its relation
to the mission of Jesus Christ, declared, " We then
are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did
beseech you by us ; we pray you in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God." This declaration wIR
repay study ; it is the Magna Charta of our spirit
ual liberty and authority.
How curiously the theological astigmatism reads
everything awry. Out of such a statement they
make the necessity of God's being reconciled to
man. Instead of man's reconciliation to God ; and
out of that also they elevate the mission of Jesus
as above our human commission to represent him.
Paul declares, " We then are ambassadors for
Christ, as though God did beseech you hy us; we
pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to
God." This is the great commission, and it Is based

THE AFFIRMATION CONCEENING JESUS 157
in the power of human nature to be at one with
God. Jesus of Nazareth showed the way ; he did
not afterward close it up as a " no thoroughfare "
except by the aid of miracle !
Moreover, he himself set no store by the won
ders which are made an essential part of his life.
When they said, " Show us a sign," he said, " There
shall be no sign given to this generation but the
sign of the prophet Jonah." Here also is a curious
contradiction In the text. In one Gospel it appears
thus: "For as Jonah was a sign unto the Nine-
vites, so shaR also the Son of man be to this gen
eration. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the
judgment with this generation, and shaR condemn
it ; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah ;
and behold, a greater than Jonah is here." Whilst
in another Gospel there is added : " For as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the whale's
beRy, so shaR the Son of man be three days and
three nights In the heart of the earth." What
does that difference of statement mean ? It means
a late attempt to patch on the resurrection-legend
to a Gospel statement that does not need It. The
former of these statements is doubtless the older, —
the truer of the two ; for the argument of Jesus Is
that as a preacher of righteousness Jonah won the
people of Nineveh to repentance, as he a truth-
speaker had sought to do, and his presence was the

158 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
sign that God was manifest to his people now, as
of old. The text Is complete without the paren
thesis, and the parenthesis is itself an Interpola
tion. To prove how little stress he laid upon " proofs "
from the " other world," I remind you of another
Incident. They came to him with sundry ques
tions of nice casuistry, and he told them the story
of the rich man and Lazarus, using the vernacular
of the time and Its mode of thought about the
future Rfe. They are told that "lifting up his
eyes in torment, the rich man beheld Lazarus In
Abraham's bosom," and "prayed that Lazarus
might be sent to his father's house to warn the
five brethren " of their impending fate. Abraham
is represented as looking over the gulf between
heaven and heR in this dramatic dialogue, and
makes this reply : " They have Moses and the pro
phets ; let them hear them ; for if they hear not
Moses and the prophets, neither would they be
persuaded though one rose from the dead."
We may get here the estimate Jesus himself puts
upon our argument from the resurrection of the
dead. In other words, his statement is that moral
persuasion takes precedence over any wonder in
the conviction of every mind, and that the soul
convinced of the great eternal laws will yield Itself
to them ; and being unconvinced, no portent what-

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING JESUS 159
ever would even make it lift its eyes to Heaven, or
set its feet moving upon the errands of God.
Men overlook that side-light upon the mistake
which the Church for fifteen hundred years has
made ; viz., to buRd itself upon an empty grave,
instead of building itself upon the conviction of
eternal life. That is the estimate of what we caR
the wonder-side of his life.
This also Is the position of the early Church,
both Jew and Greek. For a hundred years after
the death of Christ no one dreamed that he was
other than human. His essential humanity appears
in every line of " The Teaching of the Twelve,"
In the middle of the second century. Even the
Nicene Creed itself, the product of the Councils of
325 and of 380 a. d., teaches a subordination of
Jesus to the Father in the very statement that he
is " very God out of very God." This Is the teach
ing of subordination in the Nicene formula ; and
the curious spectacle is presented thirteen times in
a year in the English Church of people reciting
what Is caRed the Athanasian Creed, which con
demns to eternal reprobation aR of the company
who have just recited the Nicene Creed. That is
one of the anomalies of ecclesiastlcism, which is
always picturesque and not often logical. For
a hundred years after his birth no one dreamed
of any other nature in Jesus except the splendid

160 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
humanity which made him master of the hearts
of men.
In the middle of the third century, two hundred
and fifty years after Christ, Tertidlian complains
that men say that in the Trinity which he taught
he made three gods, thus diverting men from " the
older faith." It Is a curious confession that the
great mass of the people knew nothing about the
trinltarianism, which in Its crudest form TertuRIan
was teaching. But this In the middle of the third
century was the situation : that the new doctrine
of the Trinity offended the common sense of the
common people. For eight hundred years after
the birth of Christ there was no generaRy accepted
" doctrine of the atonement," which taught that
God must be appeased. I ask you to consider
these landmarks of history — these mRestones upon
the path of historical development of doctrine —
because they are essential.
Until the time of Anselm and Abelard, what was
the doctrine of the atonement? That the earth
had fallen into the power of a spirit of evil, who
had been an archangel but feR into sin ; that he
owned the earth, — that he had taken It into his
possession. This also was based upon the fall of
the angels first, and then on the faR of man. The
earth belonging to this fallen spirit, it was con
ceived that it should be redeemed from his posses-

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING JESUS 161
slon ; and so there was sent a special messenger,
who should wage war with the chief of the evil
powers, " the prince of this world," " the prince of
the power of the air." All the old views of atone
ment represent this great conflict between Christ
upon the one side and the evil spirit upon the other
in a mortal struggle, — a duel to the death for pos
session of the earth. The death of Christ is the
overthrow of his humanity, but his divinity is the
overthrow of his antagonist. It was not, however,
to redeem man from God, or to appease the wrath
of God against man ; it was rather to redeem man
from the devil, and to slay the evR power that held
him captive. And for eight hundred years that
was the ruling theory of atonement in the Chris
tian Church. The theory of the atonement now,
which turns upon the sacrifice for sin of a vica
rious offering to divine justice, dates from the time
of Anselm and Abelard ; that is, from the eleventh
century. NaturaRy, the holders of the doctrine
of the simple humanity and spiritual leadership of
Jesus are a little jealous of being the early church !
We are so " early church "as to make everything
else seem modem in contrast. It Is one of the
humorous aspects of ecclesiastical history that a
new mythology should assume to be " The Church."
It is stranger still that the mythologic claims do
not agree as to which really Is " The Church."

162 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
But what shaR we say of " the mediator " ? This
picture has so taken possession of the thought of
men that everywhere, in the older theology, in
church architecture. In the preaching of the pulpit,
in the thought of believers, the shadow of a suf
fering Saviour faRs upon the face of God as he
turns toward the praying man. It seems to me
not idolatry because it Is so loving, this adoration
of the Christ, this coming by the human to one
who was human ; it seems not idolatrous because
it is so loving. And yet the effect has been to
sacrifice, not the Son to the Father, but the Father
to the Son ; and the Fatherhood of God has passed
practicaRy into an unknown doctrine in the ortho
dox " systems of theology," until within fifty years
at least; so that when Phillips Brooks, first in
Philadelphia and then In Boston, began to preach
the great doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, going
back to the Unitarian teaching in which his youth
had been trained, aR the people in the church
which he served hailed It as a new revelation.
And yet that praying man, In the stillness of the
night, in the mountains of Judea and of Galilee,
had staked his whole mission upon the fact that he
was to reveal the Fatherhood of God to men. This
is the mediation between our ignorance and God.
So subRmely was human life lived, so perfectly
expressed, so marvelously beautiful, that one feels

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 163
human nature to be the garment of the eternal
love, — the Fatherhood of God.
The Fatherhood of God is almost a lost doctrine,
sacrificed, obscured, one had almost said annihi
lated, by the doctrine of an Intercessor needing
to come between God and man, because of God's
unwillingness to help his children by the free and
immediate gift of his love for love's sake alone.
And yet, hear Jesus tell the story of the Prodigal
Son ; turn to the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gos
pel and read It again. That stands as the picture
of how God feels about his children. Where is
the mediator in the story of the boy coming home ?
The father waits for him, and stands with longing
eyes, covering the distance with his constant gaze,
and yearns for the boy in the far country, where
famine breeds pain and want. He sees him afar,
tattered and gaunt and forlorn, and runs to him,
and falls upon his neck, and folds him to his
breast. Is there any Intercessor? Is there any
mediator? Does anybody Interfere because love
is not enough for its own coming home ? No !
The mediator stands there telling his story. That
is mediation, — to tell us what God is like with his
human children. It is not an Intercession to bring
God's wIRIngness near, but a mediation which lets
light in, so that we may look through, and see how
God appears in human life. Jesus tells the story

164 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
as one who felt God would be satisfied If he gets
us home, broken and bruised and spent, — so we
but come. This Is the great doctrine of the Eter
nal Fatherhood ; and that Is enough, without a
mediator, except to make it known.
The fear of losing Christ out of our reverence
is well set forth in these words of Charles CarroR
Everett : " It is an Interesting and important
fact, that in the deification of Jesus, and In the
modifications which the dogma of his divinity has
undergone In Its gradual relaxation, we have sim
ply a doctrinal development. The doctrine has
developed as an organism grows, and It is disinte
grating as an organism disintegrates when it has
passed its prime. Jesus has stood as this central
figure In history. He has been the object of love,
reverence, and adoration. Men have feared to let
go the idea of some special, supernatural, and su
perhuman element in his nature, lest his preemi
nence and his influence be lost, indistinguishable
among the manifold factors which enter Into our
modern life and our civilization. ... If Jesus is
to be recognized as the leader of the higher life of
the world, the recognition cannot rest upon any
theories of his office or his person. He must hold
the leadership simply because he leads."
What Is the danger of this shifting thought?
The danger that attends upon men who have put

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 165
their trust In a phrase rather than a fact. I think
the most pitiful thing that a minister has to see Is
to witness the collapse of faith in men because It
has been so strained by an Inflated theory which
has no ground in fact, and no claim upon the soul's
deep reverence.
They say to us of the Unitarian faith, " Ye have
taken away my Lord, and I know not where ye
have laid him." How often they say it ! If they
had ever had him, no one could have robbed them.
Does anybody who loves another, and who Is loved
In return, complain, when they are made more
real, that they have been stolen away ? We have
taken away the tawdry vestments of theology which
infolded Jesus, the costume in which the peasant
leader of the common life has been made to mas
querade before the ages. We have stripped it off,
and taken it away. It Is laid where the tooth of
time may weR consume It, for it was not his seam
less garment in which, as In an unbroken tryst
with truth, he went to his crucifixion. But if
there Is any test of revelation which comes with
service, If there Is any test of revelation coming
with devotion. If there is any test of revelation in
the passionate desire to know God's Christ, and to
reconceive his life among men, then we have re
stored him to the world and made him real. Such
tests we claim to have used, and in their practical
use vindicated our faith.

166 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
From that dim and distant place to which mytho
logy has driven the Jesus of history — remote and
unreal — he has been brought back tIR his feet
and ours march side by side in the dusty ways of
life, — the disciple and the master side by side, two
human souls devoted to the wIR of God.

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING JESUS
CHRIST n
Let us turn to certain passages of Scripture
giving the point of view of what may be caRed
the affirmation concerning Jesus Christ. Take
a passage from John's Gospel in the first chapter :
" The Word," — the eternal reason, the life princi
ple of aR that Is, — "the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us." Take the passage in the Acts,
second chapter, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man ap
proved of God among you by mighty works ; " and
in the tenth chapter of Acts, stiR in the words of
Simon Peter, now speaking to Cornelius and his
group, " That word ye know which was published
throughout aR Judea, beginning from Galilee,
after the baptism which John preached ; how God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit
and with power ; who went about doing good, and
healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for
God was with him." A,nd especially the Epistle
to the Hebrews, fifth chapter : " Though he were

168 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which
he suffered; and being made perfect, he became
the author of eternal salvation unto aR them that
obey him." Observe this agreement here.
The problem set every age is to discover a
method by which it may transmute the facts of
the past Into the experience of the present. It
Is not enough to say that history Is philosophy
teaching by experience. It is rather truer, I think,
than Carlyle meant. I would reverse the state
ment and say that the philosophy of life is the
transmuting of facts of history into the power of
the soul; so that what was external becomes
immanent. Even God himself, the great and stu
pendous elemental fact, has moved from a point
external to the world to every point internal to
everything; and from being a sovereign throned
somewhere, he is the immanent God enthroned
everywhere. To apply this principle to the life of
Jesus of Nazareth is to say that this marvelous
figure cast upon the screen of history eighteen
hundred years ago is ever clearer in outline, more
beautifid In expression, more potent upon the
minds of men, as he is better understood; and in
the ratio in which he has become human to the
thinking of thoughtful men and women, he has
passed from being an Imperial fact to being an
imperative ideal. Who was Jesus of Nazareth is

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 169
not so interesting as to the fourth century; but
how is he the Saviour of men grows increasingly
more Important to answer.
I have tried, In the previous " affirmation," with
such lucidity as belongs to my method, to point
out the differences between those who caR them
selves Evangelical and ourselves, who reaRy feel
that we have "good news" to teR. These points of
difference I will not rehearse. I repeat the con
clusion of Charles CarroR Everett, that if Jesus
of Nazareth is "to hold the leadership of men,
it must be because he leads." He cannot be put
in the van by decree ; he cannot be shoved to the
front by the decisions of councils ; he cannot be
made greater than the Father by any genuflection
at the mention of his name, based upon the mis
translation of a Greek text. If he leads, he must
set a space between himself and all that foRow;
and such a leadership we hold he has. We call
him " the friend and helper of aR those that would
live in the spirit ; " and whether the soul rests in
its personal relationship to Jesus of Nazareth as
the best of all our leaders, or whether it rests In
the sense of God, and this manifestation of God in
man as one more supreme flower of the unsatisfied
life of the Eternal, striving to express Itself In the
terms of human nature, still in every aspect he is
" the friend and helper of those that would live in

170 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
the spirit." But it becomes us to be very definite,
and to say what constitutes the leadership and
example of Jesus of Nazareth.
First of aR, It seems to me the identity of his
nature and our own is essential. ' Applicable here
is the utterance of Stopf ord Brooke, who, leaving
the Established Church, to take his place in Lon
don among the leaders of Unitarian thought, put
aside aR the advantages of that church, which was
willing he should say what he would, in such terms
as he could, without any interference on any point.
On this matter of the simple humanity of Jesus,
I recaR his statement that the Unitarian who be
lieves in the simple and actual humanity of Jesus
of Nazareth Is in the only state of mind that
can whoRy avail itself of what he means and is !
When I say the Identity of our nature with his, —
constituting the most essential part of his useful
ness as an exemplar for men, — I never use the
term " mere man." I should as soon say " mere
solar system," "mere Alps," mere sun in the
heavens, mere sweep of ocean from shore to shore
through tides of ten thousand miles, as to say " mere
man." What is " mere man " ? When you have
said God, and desire the next word in the vocabu
lary with which human thought seeks to clothe it
self, the next word is Man. Why, therefore, " mere
man " ? For this reason we use this diminutive.

THE AFFIEMATION CONCERNING JESUS 171
this beRttling of human nature ; we have thought
so meanly of human nature that we could not con
ceive of it as material in which God could express
himself; and there has grown upon the habit of
our speech that extended tradition of disaster
which represents man as fallen from original inno
cence, and losing the Image of God ; while so far
from that being the fact, man can say no word
in any wise concerning God but In the terms of
our humanity. Try It ! It is more than a clever
witticism of an acute French mind when It is
charged " that God made man in his own Image,
and man has been returning the compliment ever
since by making God in his." It is not only an
acute bit of wit, it is the statement of an inevitable
necessity. How shaR a human mind phrase the
Infinite, except in such infinity as it perceives
within the terms of its own life? Would you
know God? You have to think your highest-
human. Is not this an answer to the affirmation
that Jesus was " mere man " ? A better affirma
tion to take its place seems necessary, — that his
nature was simply human. He was bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh, and once at least
God showed what he could do with our common
clay. But to say that It, was " once for all " is not
enough. For God to. have achieved that once,
and never again, is too terrible to think upon ; for

172 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
It would show, being once only, that It was a spasm
of creative power, like those other things that we
dismiss In nature by calling them either a freak or
a miracle, whRe neither explains the fact. No ;
not simply "once for aR," but for all once this
was done, and forever after must mark how high
upon the shores of time has risen the tide of
human life. It has fixed a water-line for aR the
ages, to show how great a human soul can be,
when " the human is brought Into moral coales
cence with the divine."
Immediately when one speaks of the identity of
our nature as necessary to his example for men,
there Is quoted from John's Gospel — that mystic
gospel of Alexandrian origin — the phrase, " I and
my Father are one." A little chRd, sitting on his
father's knee, and gazing up into the face he loved,
when this text was read, "I and my Father are
one," said, "Just like you and me, papa." The
clearer eye of the chRd saw what the theologic
astigmatism misses : " Their angels do always be
hold the face of my Father ; " " Except ye receive
the kingdom of God as a little chRd, ye shaR not
enter ! "
Let every man and woman wedded to a common
high purpose answer what " oneness " means. Let
the United States, Italy, and the German Father^
land, and civil struggle and revolution In all the

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 173
world, answer what " oneness " means. Japan send
ing its young men upon its errands of conquest and
vindication of national honor has developed patriot
ism as a passion, — so infused with the life of the
empire, that when a young man was ordered to
stay at home, for some duty which the war required
he should do, he took his life because he was not
permitted to advance the honor of his country upon
the battlefield; — let such as these answer what
" oneness " means.
Said Herbert Spencer : " If there were no
change in the environment but such as there were
adapting changes in that which Is environed to meet,
that were eternal life and eternal peace." Henry
Drummond, taking this for his text, quotes these
passages from John's Gospel : " The Father is
greater than I " says in effect, " That is environ
ment and the thing environed." " I and my Father
are one." " That is adapting changes In that
which is environed to meet every call upon it by
its environment." " This is eternal Rfe, that they
may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent." This is perfect cor
respondence between environment and the thing
environed, which Is eternal life and eternal peace.
No, we cannot use a Saviour unless he be our
own ; for In the sum of being, though the being were
God, every fragment must appear, and every frag-

174 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
ment must be of the same kind with the sum of
being. The statement of Frederick Henry Hedge
has been referred to, that it was Athanasius who
saved, in the fourth century, the sanity of the
Christian Church. It Is always aRowed us to pre
serve the principle, though we may deny the for
mula, substituting In Its place a better statement.
So we agree with Dr. Hedge that the statement
that the Son was of the " same substance with
the Father," not like substance, not a foreign and
resembling being, was the forecast of a great
truth. In this last part of the nineteenth century,
who that has any scientific training In the equip
ment of his mind can fail to agree with the great
Athanasian principle, — that the Son of God and
the sons of God, the sons of men, yes, the very
earth, which is no longer dead but Rving, — since
there is nothing in all the universe of which we
may say that it Is dead matter, — all these are of
" the same substance with the Father ; " and from
centre to rim of being, from core to rind of na
ture, there is no supernatural, because nature
reigns from beginning to finish, and from incep
tion to conclusion, and is of " the same substance "
that we call God. So that he was right who In
the New Testament said, " God, in Christ, had
reconciled the world unto himself." And now at
last we know what it means, that he has recon-

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 175
ciled the world whose substance is divine, because
he in essence and in the very depth of his being was
of the same substance with the Father, whose divine
world it is. So that, to my thinking, the life that
does not beat with my blood, does not think with
my thought, does not move with my pain and
thrlR with my joy, may be an interesting exhibit
of what men may Imagine could be, but it is not
human, and so does not travel our path, nor lead
our life ; and when It has become apparent in our
thinking that to say " that is not human " leaves
the choice of saying " it is God " or it is less
than human, I do not wonder — thinking meanly
of human nature as the world has for fifteen hun
dred years — that they chose to call him God whom
they coiRd not think of as human, knowing them
selves. But let us seek a higher level in our thoughts of
the historical Jesus. There was in his example
a transcendent quality which was not different,
but transcendent. Said the apostle, praying for
the Church, " That ye may know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge." The inference is im
mediately drawn that the apostle admits that this
love of Christ was different from human love.
May I remind you of an Rlustration which comes
with the summer glint of the sea ? A little child
toddling upon the shore receives the Incoming

176 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
wave, as it curls up to his feet, in the tiny pail in
which he is carrying the sea water up the beach,
to mix it with his little pile of sand. He really
has the ocean In his pail. Realize it. It is the
same. It Is only a question of quantity that causes
the little pail to reflect less deeply the color of the
sky than does the great mass of waves. It only
seems different to us because it is stIR, and unmoved
by the tide, not swept by the wind, being so Inclosed
in the tiny pail that the chRd carries up the sand.
He has the ocean in his paR as truly as though he
had It all. So we know what " passeth knowledge."
Our knowledge is true knowledge, though our
measure be smaR. It does pass knowledge, as
the ocean passes the measure of the tiny pail that
a chRd may carry ; but it is the same, from shore
to shore. It is transcendent, but not other. Said
the Eternal to the Jewish prophet, moving upon
his heart, "My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, salth the Lord."
Then one might have expected him to add, " My
thoughts are different in kind, and my ways do
march by paths you may not enter ; " but no, it
was not so. " My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord :
for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts." Greater, but not

' THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 177
other ; transcendent, but not different. " There is
nothing to make things out of but God ; " and
more and more we escape from the perplexity of
our theologic thinking by some form of monism
which more and more answers the confusions of
that pluralism In which we have tried to solve the
simple problem of the universe. See the dilemma.
If you can start with a bit of matter as big as
a blRIard ball out of which life has departed and
God is not, you have started a new universe.
Your attempt is that of the Titans, who sought to
scale the heavens and lodge themselves on terms
inimical to the supreme and central rule of God.
The freedom of man is found, not in excluding the
divine, but in yielding to Its natural claim on
man — as divine.
The transcendent quality in Jesus does not sepa
rate him from us. The Impact of his nature on
other natures is the indication that he is the exam
ple for aR men. You ask me to explain his miracles.
Explain them who will, by any method that he
may, except to say that there is " a suspension of
the law of nature." Against such an explanation
thinking men have made final protest. What Is
the law of nature ? It Is the way that things be
have under the same conditions again and again,
until we learn to expect their behavior thus and
thus ; we say it is their law so to move. To claim

178 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
for a miracle that it is a suspension of the laws of
nature is to say, in a phrase almost smitten with
humor, that nature Is capable of misbehavior ; for
a miracle which hung up nature's laws only for a
time could be paraReled only by that monstrosity,
in our thinking, concerning prayer for private good,
— that God wiR shunt the whole of his Providence
to a side track, to let our little needs go by. This
would be to answer our special pleading by secur
ing the disaster of all his worlds. No, It may do
for a Jewish rabbi to say that "on the seventh
day God did busy himself In studying the law ; "
but the nineteenth century has to say that we read
in his laws the expression of himself ; and that we
can know his law, as constant, only by the fact
that he is constant to a constant change.
Now for a moment more, — what Is the use of
Jesus Christ? The faith we have in his simple
humanity. In this transcendent quality In this match
less degree, points the way to the consideration of
that truth as taught in the New Testament itself ;
namely, that Jesus, " the Christ," is a means of sal
vation and not an end of revelation. Now It would
be quite open to our method, since we believe that
God did not go dumb eighteen hundred years ago,
and that revelation was not sealed, and that the
proof of the vitality of religion is that it makes
new scriptures which abide, — It would be quite

THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING JESUS 179
level to our thinking to say the thing which Is true
to us, whether it were in some ancient record or
not ; but happily for common confidence and for the
love of tradition and reverence for the past, the
New Testament teaches the very doctrine which
I have been enunciating. It everywhere speaks
of Jesus of Nazareth as a means to an end, not
as an end In himself. Hear him In the fourth
Gospel : " I am the way, the truth, and the life."
Now the way is a way some whither; and the
truth Is the expression of some elemental fact ; and
the life is derived from the same source of being :
" I am the way, the truth, and the life." " No
man cometh unto the Father but by me ; " and the
Fatherhood of God Is his revelation : that is his
mediation between God and our Ignorance of the
beautiful fact of God's love. Jesus is God's lens
to shine through ; our lens to look through.
A little child of my knowing climbed on the knee
of the nurse and said, " Why cannot I see God ? "
and the nurse was wiser than is their wont and
answered, " You cannot see him, dear, because he
Is too beautiful." "No man hath seen God at
any time ; but the only begotten who Is In the
bosom of the Father, he has revealed him ; " thus
he becomes the lens through which we look. He
becomes the lens through which God looks ; and
that is the mediation between our ignorance and

180 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
" dislocation from the life of God," the means of
our return to the perfect beauty of godliness
whose name is God.
So of himself, he says, " I am the door." Is a
door a place to Rve In ? No, we live in the house.
" I am the door through which, if any man wiR
enter, he shaR go In and out and find pasture." " I
am the vine," he said, " and ye are the branches ; "
but " my Father Is the husbandman." And it Is
his life at our roots ; it is he who prunes our over
growth and stimulates our sterility as branches.
And so from beginning to end of the New Testa
ment, and in the early church, Jesus becomes the
IRustratlon of that law, that element in God's
education of the race, which Is tending to that one
" far-off divine event to which the whole creation
moves." And for each of us is the daily companionship
of Jesus of Nazareth a dear and beloved friend
ship. You and I must climb to where he stands.
Is he our example ? I see him yonder upon the
high peaks of human experience ; the best exam
ple the world has ever seen of a saved man, at one
with God. I see him stand. I know there is a
path thither, else he had not been there. He was
not let down from heaven upon those peaks of
human life. He found them through the night of
struggle and the daylight of divine approval, and

THE AFFIRMATION CONCEENING JESUS 181
won the heights, to which there must be some path.
And so you and I begin our climb toward the sum
mit of his Transfiguration, cheered by his "AR
hail ! " from above, and trying for a time to forget
the walRng of the " demoniac boy " below. When
we attain that height, standing where he stands,
what shall we do? We look a moment at the
beauty of his face, and then we try to see what he
sees, and catch the secret of the transfiguration.
They said who companled with him, "Lord, it is
good to be here. Let us build three tents ; one for
thee, and one for Moses, and one for Ellas," scarce
waking from their sleep ; and he roused them from
their dreaming, and took them down from the
mount where frothing and writhing the Insane child
lay in its father's arms. The transfiguration is not
for ourselves alone, but for the sake of those that
need our light. We come down with him, having
seen what he sees and felt what he feels. This It
is to know the secret of Jesus Christ. If he is to
be the Saviour of men, he must use them in his
stead. He said, " It is expedient that I go away."
How expedient, let their easily moved faithfulness
reveal. Attached to his person. In love with his
presence, lying prone upon his strength, there was
nothing they could do remote from him, with the
clamor of the world about them, and the struggles
of their own hearts to quiet. The difference be-

182 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
tween that moment when he said, "It is expe
dient that I go away," and their later unfaltering
strength may be seen in that Pentecostal day when
they stood among clamoring skeptics, and testified
of the things of God, in the name of " Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by
mighty works."
If there were a church fuR of people who pros
trated themselves before Jesus of Nazareth as a
sublime object of adoration and then went their
own way, its minister might weR resign and refuse
to serve a people who had so misconstrued the record
of eighteen hundred years. Why? Because the
adoration of a historical presence can never be the
fulfillment of what he felt. The church is gathered
" in the name " of Christ. What is the meaning
of their presence " in his name " ? From beginning
to end of the New Testament, it Is nowhere said
that God shall do anything for Christ's sake. No,
from beginning to end it is written, thou shalt do
so and so " In my name." What does it mean ?
The ambassador at the Court of Spain by the jus
tice and the temperance of his methods vindicates
the policy of that government which accredits him
to that court. The ambassador of the United
States speaks "in our name." He is there as
though we all were there ; as though the government
which sent him were there ; as though every power

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 183
vested in it — so far as the ambassador is con
cerned — were present in his person. He is there
in the name of the United States of America.
"We then are ambassadors for Christ; we pray
you In Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God ! "
And so he says to them, " Hitherto ye have asked
nothing in my name " (he was there). " Now I go
unto the Father, and whatsoever ye shaR ask the
Father in my name, he will give it to you." I be
lieve no prayer ever prayed in his spirit was unan
swered ; and no humble believer who trod in his
footsteps ever went astray. This it Is to live " in
his name." For his " sake " is quite another mat
ter. There Is no warrant for this In Scripture, and
it ought to have no place in our minds. So I say
to you, that if you go from the place of worship to
receive in your human lives the life of Jesus of
Nazareth, I should think that you knew what It is
that made him the Saviour of men ; that you had
learned his secret ; that you had begun its realiza
tion ; that you had placed yourselves in the rela
tion to God in which he stood. We are the am
bassadors to an unbelieving age " in the name " of
Jesus Christ. And the skepticism that we dread
is not that which turns upon some theologic pro
position concerning his nature; it is that skepti
cism of the merchant and banker and broker, of
the lawyer and the man of letters and the minis-

184 THE GEEAT^ AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
ter, who says, " I cannot live my life on the terms
of Jesus Christ." Very weR, then, let that be his
denial, but never let him call himself Christian
again. If Christ is of use after all these years,
he is of use In mercantRe and in professional life,
and in the sanctuary of our homes. He is there
when you are there " In his name." " Though he
were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things
which he suffered; and being made perfect, he
became the author of eternal salvation to aR them
that obey him ! " WiR you obey his matchless
lead ? or, craven, turn to some formula about him,
and leave him mourning as he did, standing upon
ORvet and looking down upon Jerusalem : " Jeru
salem, Jerusalem, thou that klRest the prophets,
and stonest them that are sent unto thee. How
often would I have gathered thy chRdren together,
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not ! " No sentence Is fitter
to express that state of mind than that which fol
lowed, — " Your house is left unto you desolate ! "
I believe you cannot do without Jesus Christ,
but I think he is of no use to this world except as
you present him to the world.
O Life of life and light of all our seeing, house
us from our fears with thee, that we despair not
of thy grace. Bring near unto us the knowledge
of thy Son, and let the Fatherhood of God so move

THE AFFIEMATION CONCEENING JESUS 185
our hearts that we shall abandon ourselves wholly
to God in his Christ. Move upon us by thy spirit
and sanctify us by thy grace; and let no thing
seem too little a thing that is done in thy name ;
and let no thing seem too great thou dost ask of
us as disciples of thy Son.

XI
THE AFFIRMATION CONCERNING THE CHURCH
In the vision which the Seer of Patmos saw, he
looked In vain for the Church of God, as by the
training of his life he might expect to see it. In
the New Jerusalem which was let down out of
heaven from God upon Its foundations of precious
stones, the city where dwelt men of regenerated
life, he said he saw " no temple therein," for the
Lord God is the temple of It ! " The only infer
ence from this statement that it is possible to
make is that the church, as an institution. Is a
temporary provision, and that when the perfected
society comes, then institutions shaR be merged
In life, and the New Jerusalem shaR be aR holy ;
not holy here and there. It Is such feeling as
this that leads to the protest against the church In
many minds. But if they were seeking to perfect
a society which could do without the church, they
would be the last to leave it, knowing that the
law of life provides that we can grow to more only
by outgrowing what we have, and that nature
makes no provision for the abandonment of con-

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHUECH 187
dltlons until they are outgrown. To turn our back
upon a stage of progress, it is incumbent upon us
to make an experiment In a new progression ; to
find that the church has not fulfiRed Its purpose
argues the need, not of less church, but a better
church. So that to leave the church on the score
that it is temporary, as It certainly Is, as all insti
tutions are of a provisional or temporary nature,
— to turn away from the ministry of religion on
the score that the ministry of religion belongs
to an expiring class, and that when the true ideal
has arrived, then God's people " shall be all holy "
and priests of God in their own right, — to turn
away now, with such a thought, is to misconceive
the time ; for in my judgment, at least, never was
the church more needed than to-day, and never was
there a better time In which to perform the offices
of a real ministry and " cure of souls." It is a
great time to preach ; but it can only seem worth
whRe when it shall be believed by the people to
be a great time to worship. Of course the Ideal
is greater than any institution. This is what
Paul meant when he bade them cease the haggling
and contention and vulgar debate as to the real
ministry at Corinth, whether of Paul or Cephas
or Apollos. The rebuke is needed stiR, for the
church has not yet outgrown the idea that it serves
God by the lauding of men. In the midst of that

188 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
dissension Paul said : " I thank God that I baptized
none of you, save Crispus and Gains . . . and the
household of Stephanas ; for Christ sent me not
to baptize, but to preach the gospel." It was say
ing, in effect, that the propagation of an ideal
was of far greater value than the establishment
of an institution ; and yet the very crudeness of
their condition, the very vulgar, low level of their
attainment, saying then, "I am of Pauf; and I
of Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ," - —
and to-day a similar state of mind, — argues for
the restraining education which comes with estab
lished institutions and methods of immaturity.
To buttress an institution is not to use it ; " We
cannot keep the church what it was," Is the com
plaint of a helpless ecclesiasticism. No, the church
cannot be what it was, but It may be a better
thing. It is no longer the Intellectual centre of a com
munity. That community must be singularly dull
that resorts to its church for its learning. The
fact is that in every assembly, save upon two or
three lines of study, there may be found men and
women better equipped than the minister of reli
gion to whom they listen. It is an age of speciali
zation, to be sure ; but the only specialty that the
minister has the right to claim Is the specialty of
an absorbing devotion to the welfare of the men

AFFIEMATION CONCERNING THE CHURCH 189
and women committed to his care. The soul that
abandons itself to the wiR of God, as it is revealed
in the lives of the men and women committed to
his care, has vocation enough. What he may know
he ought to know ; and for the rest, let his fidelity
be the offset for that older time in which the min
ister was the learned man of the community. We
are indebted to the priesthood for the preservation
of learning. We are also Indebted to the priest
hood for the fossilized conditions of the institutions
in which learning was preserved. The fact of the
perpetuity of forms, as the end of the life which
once informed them, is no better seen anywhere in
nature than in the cloistered habit of a class in
the midst of a world not Interested in the cloister.
The church cannot be an InteRectual centre
simply, as It was ; it does not serve the learning of
the time.
The church is no longer, as aforetime, a social
necessity. It may be a social opportunity ; It may
be a social advantage ; it may be a place where In
most friendly ways people who have their affinity
In common work and a common ideal meet together
and put their shoulders to a common task, and
lay their hands reverentiaRy upon some common
duty : it may be all this, but it Is no longer a social
necessity. Civilization takes care of its social con
ditions on quite other terms. In saying this, one

190 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
does not mean to say that the church is not yet a
centre of gentle amenities and kindly Interchange.
A church where that Is not true Is not a church ;
it is not even a club, not even an exchange; It
does not reach the dignity of the friendly deck of
an ocean steamer, where you may know the person
you wIR " cut dead " on the street the next day
after you have landed. The church that Is afraid
to be friendly, and to extend the gentle amenities
of friendly intercourse, is a church of insecure
social position, — a church that Is afraid of the
history of its own past. There is no reason under
heaven why a church that Is no longer a social
necessity to anybody within Its walls may not be a
social opportunity, where the bestowal of a friend
liness that is genuine shall meet a loneliness that Is
sad. Do not for a moment think that I misunder
stand the social situation in a metropolitan church,
knowing upon what other conditions the affinities
and amenities of social life are carried on ; but the
officer of a regiment would have smaR hope of
esprit de corps In his command If every member
of every company were at least the impUed foe of
every other. The church is no longer a social ne
cessity, but it is a place where people may have the
opportunity " to do a kind thing in a beautiful way,"
which will show that they are well born, weR bred,
and well conditioned. There Is small hope of their

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHUECH 191
being good. If they find it hard to do good ; the
grace of life is a potent sign of the grace of God.
I do not need to point you to that dead condi
tion which made the church at one time a means
of state control. The world has learned, in Its
progress from centralized power to democracy, to
separate religion and the state ; the last utterance
of Admiral Ito, the great Japanese statesman, has
shown that In the far Orient the discovery has
been made that neither statesmanship nor educa
tion should be sustained and maintained by reli
gious pressure. Now what is the church, if it is
none of these things ?
The church is the measure of a common Ideal.
The law of life Is that we do not meet in each
other, but in something better than any of us.
The law of the household is the same. There is
nothing to keep a man and woman from growing
tired of each other, who simply exhaust each other's
resources of mind through a long life. They must
meet In something better than either of them,
higher than either of them ; sublimer than the
beauty of their youth; more undying than the
strength of their mutual affection ; higher than
their highest thoughts of each other, and more
sacred than the moments most crowned with sanc
tity in each other. They must meet in that third
term : whether It be a great ambition with Its ques-

192 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
tlonable conditions ; or a great enterprise with its
possibilities of failure ; or some high design to
which they dedicate themselves ; or some impera
tive ideal that leads them hand in hand by its
aRuring attraction. They must meet in something
higher, better, and different from either of them,
or they wRl faR apart. It is not given to anything
to be an end in Itself. It Is only a means to an
end ; and this the church is. The ground of its
unity Is in Its common ideal. A church may simply
be held together as a real-estate speculation, and
aR men " mark up " their lots In the neighborhood
where the church is built. It may be held to be
simply a police provision for restraint ; and every
Protestant may heave a sigh of reRef who sees that
the crowd pouring out of the doors of the Catholic
cathedral is made up partly of men. Such a timid
Protestant may say : " We are safer, because the
Roman Catholic Church is a great restraining
power in the community." Such a view misun
derstands the purpose of reRgion. It may be that
the fact remains. It may be that church is exert
ing the Influence of a street police upon Its mem
bership; but that is not its nature, that is its
accident ; and it is an accident due to the crude
ness and Immaturity of its material. It Is for this
reason that we have been bred in the conceit con
cerning the church that its profession is restrain-

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHUECH 193
ing, mollifying, controlling, the policing of a com
munity ; and when a church Is made free of that
conception. It sometimes falls apart. What has
happened to It ? It has simply proved that It is
no better than it should be ; and that the external
pressure which held it together as a police provi
sion for the regulation of life has not yet been
exchanged for the Inner inspiration that lifts life
to its great designs ; and that it still needs that
control from without. "The law was given by
Moses," said the writer of the gospel, " but grace
and truth came in Jesus Christ." And again,
" The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath
made me free from the law of sin and death."
New life by new inspiration Is the nature and
meaning of the church.
Not only so, but the church has its vocation In
its very freedom, in just measure. We are told of
our own Congregational order that we are most
loosely organized. It Is said to us, " You have no
creed." And the answer is, " Did no one ever eat
wholesome food without swearing by the recipe by
which it was cooked, or the chemical analysis that
made it wholesome ? A creed is a set of phrases
for convenient definition ; it is in no sense any
part of the church life." The objector says : " In
your Congregational order you are most loosely
organized, for you have no close, compact organi-

194 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
zation ; no rules of fine and forfeiture for infi
delity to the church. You have dismissed aR con
cern about what you wish to do and be in the life
to come. You have no sacramental obligations,
so that he may be a member of your church who
would be excluded from other churches, who has
not been baptized, or is not willing to participate
in the sacraments of the church ! " We answer
that no profession of any usage can ever take
charge of and animate the growing soul, and that
we are interested In life. All these are detaRs of
life's behavior; and so In the debate with the
church that believes In regenerative baptism, we
turn away somewhat sad that one should think
that the issue of religion should be made to turn
upon whether " the water was applied to the sub
ject," or " the subject was applied to the water."
These seem to us trivial things, resting upon tra
dition; vital in an age that produced them, but
vital no more. The student of church history can
place his finger upon the very decade In which the
departure from the custom of the past introduced
a new provision in the habit of the church. And
the student of church history learns two lessons :
to be very tolerant of another man's Insistence, and
to be very free from applying another man's insist
ence to his own methods of thought. Let him
comment upon the beauty of the high-priest's gar-

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHUECH 195
ment who will, while our eyes are fixed upon the
meek sufferer whom he condemns. We are loosely
organized indeed as a church ; as loosely as society
is organized. Society is not hooped in, bound
about, except In barbarous countries. Every new
law passed to regulate society may be either an in
dication of the legislature's fear, or a confession of
society's immaturity. Every restraint laid on from
the outside is not a sign of refinement but of crude
ness ; and to employ the obligations of religion is
to release the soul's centre and put the emphasis
upon the soul's behavior. I do not deny that there
arfe people for whom this is eminently fit, but it is
because they are not fit for higher things.
Society Is organized as every organism is, with
central Rfe and legitimate functions. I like that
definition given by a distinguished professor of
sociology, that "society is an organism In which
every cell has consciousness ; " that is, the health
of the whole depends upon the health of each Indi
vidual cell. And so the church Is not a mechani
cal device for saving your soul : it is an organism,
a normal part of society for saving by its organic
power something not yet sound ; for the church ex
ists for the community in which It lives, and never
for itself. The church that does not front outward,
therefore. Is a very poor thing. It is looking at
the reflection of its own sensations. Every church.

196 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
having placed itself on record as standing for cer
tain ideals, owes to the community that aR its
efforts shall be spent upon the betterment of that
community which has given it ground for being,
and maintains the freedom of its worship. Let
the church front outward, or else go out of exist
ence. It may be Interesting in its traditions,
splendid in its history, vital in its personality,
most kind and faithful toward its ministry; but
unless the need of the world's betterment at Its
very doors leads it to go out to a service greater
than that which occupies it within its waRs, it has
missed the meaning of its Institution and Ibst
the opportunities of its life. Do not spend so
much upon yourselves that God's kingdom shaR
go bankrupt.
This brings me to the supreme purpose of the
church, — the spiritual renewal of Its people. In
every church that I have ever seen, there was a
grave defect. I suppose it exists In every church
in the world, made up as It Is from material gath
ered from everywhere. There is too much Im
pression abroad in every church that the hour of
worship is In some sense a kind of refined per
formance. Instead of the hunger and thirst after
righteousness that lead men and women to hasten
to the altars of religion, where their thirst may
quench itself and their hunger of soul may be

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHURCH 197
satisfied, there is often a nice critical faculty,
sitting upon the narrow throne of an Insufficient
intelligence, weighing the prayers and sermons
and the choir and the other purely accidental con
ditions attendant upon worship. I believe many a
man preaches this day who wIR go out and know
that some truth did pass them overhead, and some
was trodden underfoot ; but of that he makes no
account, but only mourns the Ignominy that has
come to him, in that it was suspected by any man
or woman that the minister was playing a part, by
which the hearers were or were not IndivIduaRy
entertained. You take away from the service of
religion exactly what you bring. The docile spirit
goes away Instructed. The hungry soul goes away
satisfied. The prayerful spirit finds God, and
does not know much of anything beside. It ought
to be impossible for any minister of religion, by
any mischance or failure of his own, to spoil the
service of religion for any profoundly spiritual
nature. We take away what we bring. If we
come thinking we are fuR, we shaR go away un
satisfied, and lay the blame at some other's door.
No, the one supreme purpose of the church is
the spiritual renewal of its people. It Is neither
a performance, nor meant to be the source of mere
information. The minister does not need to say
to his people that for which they have access to

198 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
sources of Information far better upon certain lines
than he can supply. In my own line, for the IRu-
mination of my subject, and the IRustratlon of Its
theme, and the reinforcement of Its argument, cer
tain information is necessary ; but It is Incidental.
The one purpose of the church to-day, and always,
and its greatest function to sincere religion. Is
that you may get out of yourselves Into the higher
realm of the spiritual life for which you pine ; and
so far from information being its end, inspiration
is its end, and almost its sole end ; so that the man
who comes in from the contact of the week's work,
feeling that his very mouth tastes of dust, and
that he has been harried beyond endurance, and
perplexed, may shear the whole matter away,
and see how smaR the environment of his Rfe ap
pears in the presence of the great things of eter
nity ; and he shall go away, feeling that the cares,
which he calls his business, have no comparison in
Importance with his one business In life, — the
growing of a human soul. That is our business, as
a part of that progression which the world has
witnessed through the myriads of living forms and
the miRions of Its ages. The human soul Is the
last term In the ascending series, and deserves our
best endeavor that it may grow. To grow a man
is great ; to grow a woman is gracious ; but to
grow a human soul demands the energies of the
Eternal for its service and Its end.

AFFIEMATION CONCEENING THE CHUECH 199
The church, then, is needed, not as attendant
upon civilization, but as civilization's flower ; for it
gives the opportunity for such personal sacrifice,
such education of the soul to its highest tasks, as
may be worthy of most serious study and concen
tred thought. The free church has a great ideal,
which Is no less than the perfection of the Individ
ual that he may serve the perfection of the whole.
It began in the protest of Channing and his co-
laborers, — in the philosophy of individualism in
religion. It appeals now in this larger time to the
social and communal life In which the perfected
individual shall fit the plan by virtue of his per
fection. It should be reaRy a "church of aR
souls." Its open doors should be as hospitable as
the summer ; Its worship shoidd be enkindled from
on high ; its service might be reduced to any sim
plicity without losing its dignity ; and its people,
by the very fact of their presence there in the holy
hour, should be like sensitized plates waiting for
the penciled ray of the Divine to make the picture
of holiness upon their minds.
Learn to abandon yourselves to God ; to let
yourselves go upon life's tide with smaR care of
what becomes of you ; and so to gird yourselves
In every hour of worship that you shaR be strong
enough, not only for the tasks that are your own,
but strong enough also for the burdens that are

200 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
not your own. And upon that margin of lumi
nous thought, gathered from the source of eternal
Rght, you shall find room to sun yourselves when
you are weary, and to refresh yourselves in hours
of despondency. And as each week goes by with
the discouragements that come Into it, when you
have been carrying more than you think you can
weR sustain, when the very solicitudes of your
life have come out of the best part of your nature,
you shaR turn to the place of worship, as Jesus in
his discouragement remembered that place where
the heavens were opened to him, and he heard a
voice that said, "Thou art my beloved son; in
thee I am weR pleased." And so they wrote of
him that he lifted his sad face from the faces
which had made no response, and, looking out be
yond. Jordan to the place of his baptism, went
there and there abode, and reassured himself and
relnvigorated himself with the blessed remem
brances of that holy hour. So come to the church
out of life's perplexities, out of Rfe's discourage
ments, out of the strenuous days which tax your
endeavor; come to dedicate yourselves unto the
wIR of God, being sure that nothing Is of much
account but that the soul shall find itself at home
in the presence of the Eternal, who Is Its life.

XII
THE TRUE IMITATION OF CHRIST
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. — John
XV. 1.
The subject of this meditation is brought
strongly to my mind by a little book sent to me
by a friend. The book is called, " In His Steps,
or. What would Jesus Do ? " I have read it with
great care; I have read It with inspiration; I
have read It with many misgivings ; and I speak
to you upon the true imitation of Christ because I
think the statement set forth in this little volume
of Mr. Sheldon, which many of you have doubt
less read, is ineffectual though inspiring, and in
sufficient, not because it exacts too much, but be
cause it does not exact enough. The world has
been busy, at intervals, for eighteen hundred years,
trying to reproduce the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
It was so enamored of his goodness, that in the
third century after his death it could not content
itself without calling him God, by virtue of his
rapt devotion to the good as God. It lost touch
with his humanness, and ascetic denial, self-sacri
fice, and self-abnegation took the place of the large

202 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
humanness of the Son of man. And It became
the universal thought, and for the most part stiR
remains, that he is most like Christ who is least
like man. It is a wholesome thing, — this revival
of attention. In this strenuous time, to the life of
Christ, and that men should ask themselves in
their theology how they can make it Christocentric,
and in their practical life ask themselves, " What
would Jesus do ? "
The answer to this question is not so simple as
would immediately appear, for the time is not
simple. You cannot get a simple answer to a
simple question In a complex age; for, to the
modern mind, every Imitation of Christ, like every
other great achievement, is made up of three con
ditions. It is constituted of three elements : First,
the moral Impulse, next the intellectual judgment,
and third a tide of emotion. But the man who
lives in his InteRect alone starves the emotional
nature, and soon ceases to be capable of intellection
of the first class. The man who lives in his emo
tional nature alone soon loses the power of logical
statement and proportioned thought ; and In the
ratio of his emotional intensity he becomes a danger
ous element in complex civilization. The man who
lives In his ethical impulses alone will, if he be
devoid of emotion in his ethical Impulses, become a
walking " Day of Judgment ; " and if he be devoid

THE TRUE IMITATION OF CHRIST 203
of Intellection in his moral impulses, then he be
comes that most dangerous of all men, — an ear
nest soul, seeking to do the will of God, and not
much inquiring what the wIR of God is. It is for
these reasons that it seems to me that any mechan
ical adjustment to the life, supremely beautiful,
of Jesus of Nazareth fails in part of application
to this time.
I have taken a passage from the Gospel of John,
because this Gospel more truthfuRy sets forth the
imitation of Christ than any of the Synoptic Gos
pels, for the reason that it is better to know what
the church thought about that life one hundred
years remote from the time of Jesus, than it is to
have eye-witnesses report what it looked like. The
fourth Gospel is not the primitive Gospel. It is
more remote than the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew,
Mark, and Luke. It Is no doubt the outcome of a
period one hundred years later than the death of
Jesus, namely, within the first fifty years of the
second century. Is It therefore a less valuable
contribution ? No, it is therefore a more valuable
contribution. We get in the fourth Gospel the
impact of that life, after one hundred years had
gone by. In other words, we do not get, as in
tradition, what sinks to the bottom of human
thought and stays there, which is what tradition
always Is, but we get the consensus of thought.

204 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
the meaning of life, the spiritual Impact and inspi
ration of a life essentlaRy good, more valuable for
purposes of Inspiration, if not more valuable for
purposes of history, than any Synoptic Gospel ,
could furnish.
What is the statement in John's Gospel, In the
terms of a later time, of how Jesus seemed to the
early church? The figure of the vine with its
branches hung heavy with fruit Is on sarcophagi,
and In inscriptions, and on every side in the sur
vivals of the ancient church in the third and
fourth centuries. It is the favorite figure, divid
ing the ground, in its attractiveness, with the fig
ure of the shepherd and the lamb on his shoulder
or in his bosom. Now what does the figure mean ?
If there is one subject more discouraging than
another to the modern minister of religion. It is
the way in which people quote a book they do not
read. They are not familiar with the documents
which gave the Christian religion Its Magna
Charta, its right to be. What amazes the student
of the New Testament Is In what a fragmentary
way the records are used for purposes of contro
versy. A single passage, utterly innocent of any
relation to the point at Issue, is hurriedly picked
out to be used as a missile in controversy, and
flung against an antagonist. They who use the
Gospels so do not understand that a thing which

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHEIST 205
is smaR enough to be used as a missile is not large
enough to be used as a foundation stone ; and
this process of attack, in the name of Christ, by
disjointed Scriptures Is as humiliating as it is
discouraging to the student of the documents as a
whole. StiR others take here and there that which
pleases them. It was a saying of Henry Ward
Beecher's, significant for its homely sense, that
" we go through the Bible as sheep go through a
thicket, and we come out with the things sticking
to us which happen to catch us as we go through."
In other words, we use the Scriptures as a means
of self-indulgence to our prejudices and preconcep
tions. There is only one way to use the New Tes
tament ; that is, read It as you would read any
secular book. We have approached those who
doubted our position and said, " Take the Gospels
and read them as you would read any other book,"
and they have been affronted by the suggestion,
as by a sacrilege. The only process by which you
can understand the writings is the process which Is
commonly Ignored. Now if you will take the Gos
pels of the New Testament (not entering Into any
critical questions), you will find that the story of
the parable of the vine and the branches runs
through all ; viz., that the apostle is aRIed to his
master by ties he would not part ; that the servant
takes his orders from the chief of his service, and

206 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
does It gladly; that as in the branch and the
vine both are rooted in a common soil, so both
are dependent upon a common care. This Is the
teaching of Jesus, — "I am the vine, ye are the
branches, but my Father Is the husbandman." Is
the husbandman's care only for the branches ?
Nay, for the root and the vine also.
I recall when I was a little boy In a Southern
city, where we had a garden, that it always seemed
to me an act most unseemly, when I would go into
the garden and find that some one had dug around
the roots of the Black Hamburg or other vines,
and had deposited the bones and meat and scraps
which had been brought from the market or taken
from the table. It seemed to me, as a child, a
kind of sacrilege that this vine which was so lusty,
hung In the autumn with the ripe fruit of its vital
ity, should be treated to what was unsavory, un
sightly, and disgusting. I did not know then that
that which the soil presently covered, and slowly
consumed by a process of combustion which ran
through weeks and months, would in the summer
appear in the lustre of the leaf, and in the autumn
hang in the great clusters of the grape.
The man who takes Jesus of Nazareth as an end
in himself has missed the Scriptures. He is a
means to an end. This is his teaching, — "I am
the way, the truth, and the life : no man cometh

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHRIST 207
unto the Father, but by me." Now the way Is not
simply an admirable path, carefully leveled and
properly surfaced, it is a way from some where
some whither ; and its only use is to get it behind
you, in the process of traveRng over it to your
destined end. The truth is not the ultimate reality
as we hold it. It is a statement of the ultimate
reality as it appears to our intellect, or the impact
of the ultimate reality as it appeals to our nature.
The thing which is fuRy true to me is not true to
you. It will not be true to-day to some. It will
be in doubt. Very well, this is the privilege of
the discriminating mind ; but It will be the truth
to me, some other thing the truth to you, and none
of them the ultimate reality.
Jesus of Nazareth was a life divine lived among
men, but he was not that divine life itself. He
was but the vine; he was not the Eternal God.
He himself declares, in every phrase in which he
gave expression to the eternal reality, that he was
but the mouthpiece, speaking the words he had
heard ; but a life bringing the truth which had
been imparted to him. " The words that I speak
unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father
that dwelleth In me, he doeth the works." And
again, " Whatsoever I speak, therefore, even as
the Father said unto me, so I speak." And over
and over again the Gospel's emphasis of Jesus as a

208 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
means to an end, not the end itself, is the rebuke
to the current method of Christianity, which comes
to Christ, stops there, and soon forgets that It has
come. This is the sad Indictment of the imitation
of Christ to-day. We get into his companionship
and then go on about our business. That Is our
method ; that is the common method. Those who
hold that he Is the end in himself are working
by a model. There are blessed souls among them,
to whom his personal companionship is as much
a reality as the dearest love of their life, and for
them It Is an infinite inspiration ; but for them it
is not as much as It might become.
I suppose if any congregation in the city to-day
were to be asked if they would not be glad to have
the whole city of New York take up the question,
" What would Jesus do ? " and apply it to the de
tails of their every-day life, that they would imme
diately give their assent, and hope that it would
become universal. I also should say that, but only
as I would approve of the kindergarten and not
forget the coRege. For a mechanical adjustment,
however devout, is no substitute for the creative
energy. The teaching of Jesus Is explicit upon
this point. " My Father is the husbandman." All
the processes of life in him have been by the nur
ture of God, by his culture and care. That is the
meaning of the hours spent in prayer and midnight

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHEIST 209
solitude, — the struggle of spirit in which he sought
God within himself. The beatitudes are the tran
script of his personal experience. How could he
know that " Blessed are the pure in heart " except
that he had seen God? that "Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shaR be called the children
of God," If the boon of peace were not In his keep
ing, to bestow upon whom he would ? How should
he know enough of life's joy to say, " These things
I have said unto you, that my joy might remain in
you, that your joy might be full," unless it was
the transcript of his inner soul, which we in our
smaRer measure may also know ? "I am the way,
the truth, and the life," is but the expression of the
process of which the Eternal God, our Father, is
the end.
The question, " What would Jesus do ? " in the
case of the editor, the doctor, the administrator of
business, the master of mechanics, the woman with
the beautiful voice, in the story to which I refer,
on through the whole line of employments that
were possible in a single town, I say. Is not enough.
The inquiry was put by each to himself, and the
answer was made by each for himself. It is weR,
but not weR enough, to ask that question and have
a Day of Judgment, an assize of one's self, and the
caRing of one's life before the bar of judication.
It Is not weR enough. Why ? There are certain

210 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
subjects upon which you can get no information or
guidance by asking that question. How would
Jesus give his answer with respect to the emanci
pation of woman ? That was as much an unheard-of
matter then, as the discovery of America ; and yet
is there not light to be thrown upon that question ?
The light flows upon that problem, not through
any command of his, but from the contribution of a
free mind such as he held, which gave him light
to contradict the Scriptures of his own people and
say, " Ye have heard that It hath been said by them
of old time, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth : but I say unto you. That ye resist not evil ;
but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also." The question of re
taliation was the Jewish obligation. " An eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," that was the obli
gation, and honored, unhappily, in constant observ
ance in the Jewish custom. Jesus had risen above
that point ; and when they said, " Thou shalt hate
thine enemies and love thy neighbor," in the face of
that Jesus said, " I say unto you that ye shaR love
your enemies, do good to them which hate you ;
bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
despitefuRy use you ; " " He maketh his sun to rise
on the evR and on the good ; and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust." He had light to con
tradict the ancient tradition of vengeance, and he

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHRIST 211
did it. We have the right to expect for woman a
suffrage larger than any Jew of his day, than any
Greek or Roman, dreamed of. The very failing of
ancient tradition is our guide ; but it would be vain
on such a question to ask, "What would Jesus
do ? " He would be kind and considerate, gener
ous and tender and chivalrous ; but we really do
not think we could get from him any statement
about the higher education of woman or her rela
tion to the baRot.
Apply the same test to another question. In his
age, the slave was a part of the social institution.
In the year he died, the Roman Empire had thirty
mIRIon freemen and ninety mlRion slaves. From
beginning to end of the New Testament there is
not a single word about the iniquity of holding a
human being as a chattel. The one slave who ran
away, Onesimus, Paul assists, In a gentle way, in
returning to his master Philemon. It was a better
act than the Dred Scott decision ; for he sent the
slave back "a brother beloved," who had learned
what the spirit of Christ was ; but he sent him
back a slave. Now I hold that Paul's act, doing
what he thought Jesus would no doubt do, was
distinctly inferior to the act of those who conducted
the Underground Railroad before the Civil War.
When Abraham Lincoln put his name to the pro
clamation of Emancipation that made freedmen, if

212 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
not freemen, of four million human beings, he ful
fiRed the words of Jesus when he said, " Greater
things than these shall ye do, because I go unto
the Father ; " and I would rather have the enlight
enment of eighteen hundred years which made
emancipation a spiritual obligation, a moral neces
sity, than to have anybody answer for me the
question " What would Jesiis do ? " He did not
know the facts ; they were not present to his time.
Then, to direct a human life magnanimously was
the highest level of human Rfe ; but to let a soul
live its own Rfe magnificently Is our conception of
the highest level of human life.
We have aR been stirred, and rightly, by that
splendid act of heroism of Lieutenant Hobson
and his crew, who ran the Merrimac through that
dropping hail of death to her anchorage, and let
her sink. We have thought of the engineer who
stood there, in the bottom of that ship, not know
ing but that the next moment, not the torpedoes
which they had arranged to sink their own craft,
but a mine In the channel would explode from
beneath and send them aR to death; and we
should be stones and stocks not to be stirred by
such matchless heroism. If you were sending
those eight men upon that perilous undertaking
for which they had volunteered, and you were to
ask, " What would Jesus do ? " you would be con-

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHEIST 213
fronted by a most complex problem, which is not
easy of solution. You would be confronted by
the fact that, so far as any record comes to us,
Jesus had not the smallest conception of what
patriotism meant. Not one word has been left to
us that he loved his country, or would die for it ;
and why? Because to him the whole question
was Inclosed in the statement that the kingdom
of God and the kingdom of Israel were Identical ;
and he poured his nature out upon the spiritual
issues that never satisfied the patriot of his time ;
so that the question needs modification in such an
Instance as this. True, the heroism which bade
him die for the thing which he believed was the
heroism which conducted this little group to their
possible death. This is perfectly true ; but mark
you, there can be no open question between the
soul and God as to the truth of the soul's right
to be a child of God. This might seem to be an
unconsidered statement, but it is properly made,
that the question before Jesus of Nazareth, In
dying for that which he believed, and making
himself an offering upon the altar of truth, was
infinitely more simple and clear of difficulty than
was presented In the obligation which we con
fronted in the war between this country and
Spain ; when every act of heroism put forth was
made up of an InteRectual judgment, of a moral

214 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
impulse, and of an inspiration of feeling, which
carried the mind back with every statement of
it to the question whether it ought to have been
at all. Now are we helped with that question,
" What would Jesus do," in this relation ? WeR,
I think so. I think so far as the motive was clear
which led us to espouse the cause which we were
lately engaged in prosecuting. It was the same
motive that shows in the parable of the Good
Samaritan. When the Civil War was on, the
flag of the Union floated from this church. To
day, if It were decided to fling to the breeze some
emblem of our cause, I should say, with the Stars
and Stripes fling out the flag of the Red Cross for
our only justification ; for the only justification that
there can be In any human mind Is the justification
of the relief of suffering, in the name of human
ity. So far we get light from the life of Jesus as
to what Jesus would do ; but I ask you to remem
ber that the heroism of Lieutenant Hobson and
his associates might very well have been matched
upon the Spanish side by a heroism as complete In
integrity and as genuine ; and no one would have
thought of asking whether a subaltern on either
side of the service was responsible for the Interna
tional question at Issue, when he was doing the
thing which his heroic soul saw just then and there
to do. They could not both be right as to Intel-

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHEIST 215
lectual judgment, but both might be as to moral
impulse. I have quoted this Instance to bring to your
mind a point in conclusion. Would I like to do
as the minister of the church In the little town
did, in the story of which I am speaking? Would
I like to caR from this congregation all who would
from to-day promise for one year to ask them
selves, with everything they did, " What would
Jesus do ? " WeR, I think it would be a vast im
provement for every one of us, — so far as I know
my people and myself, — but I do not think it
would be enough. My issue in this matter is not
that this little book asks too much, but that it
does not ask enough. As minister of religion in
this church, I believe I am bound to call you to the
ultimate duty; viz., not the mechanical adjust
ment of your lives to a standard, but the satura
tion of your lives, the infusion of the whole being,
with the motives and spirit and Inspiration which
made that sublime Rfe possible; and until you
attain that, you have not done enough. If you
are hoarding your wealth for your own good and
your own pleasure, it would not be enough to ask
you, "What would Jesvi,s do?" What he would
do would be to say to yo,u, as to the young man who
was rich and had no piagnanlmlty, "Go seR aR

216 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
that thou hast, and come and foRow me." I would
not dare say that to you ; not because one would
be afraid to say It, but I would not dare to pau
perize the community to that extent, and have
you give away what God has given you to use as
stewards of his estate; for as between hoarding it
for your own gratification and squandering it
with lavish indiscretion, there is not much to
choose. I would rather say to you, as stewards
of God's gifts, to whom he has given wealth.
You are not to rest day nor night as its owner,
but hold yourselves to unremitting industry as its
trustee ; and see to it that with every day's pas
sage, not that somebody who had not should have,
— as the result of what you had given, — but that
some human life or lives were made possible, in
the readjustment of It to the activities and forces
of life. Filling empty hands by emptying yours,
you have done absolutely nothing, except that
there has been a transfer of quick assets. You
have simply realized bn your property, and got
rid of your money. Has that accomplished any
thing? Why, it has saved you the trouble of
thinking what you should do with your money.
But one hour spent In the serious, earnest, agoniz
ing effort to find out what God wants you to do
with his gifts, to build up the kingdom of heaven
In the world, would mean more than the emptying

THE TEUE IMITATION OF CHEIST 217
of your bank account into somebody's emptiness.
That is not enough. There is a higher mission.
In going through the art gaReries of Europe, I
remember one place in Antwerp where I saw an
old man copying the Descent from the Cross. I
asked him, "How many times have you copied
it ? " and he said, " One hundred and fifty." It
made one ache to think of it ; absolutely wearied
to think that this man should have spent aR the
active years of his life — an old man now — trans
ferring to his canvas this masterful exhibit of
what was in the painter originally a creative act.
Was he an artist ? No. He was a copyist. He
could have done this with compasses and rule, and
a nice trick of color. Could he have painted the
original picture? Nobody ever supposed that
possible to him. Now you go out Into the field,
where some soul in love with nature has caught
the secret of nature's beauty, and has translated
it into terms of color and form, by passing it
through the alembic of the artist's mind. That is
the creative act. President Eliot Is quite right
when he says that " there are just two classes of
people in the world, — one the imitators and the
other the creators ; and that when one passes
from the class of Imitators to belong to the class
of creators, so far that human soul has achieved
education."

218 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
Mere adjustment to life, however beautiful. Is not
so good as living your own life, upon the terms of
its inspiration, after your own fashion. You have
got to reproduce the life of Christ as John Smith,
or Thomas Brown, or any other name by which you
are known. To try to reproduce the Nazarene of
nineteen hundred years ago simply dislocates you
from the life of your time ; but to bring yourself
into the same divine relationship to God which he
held, which he taught ; to centre your lives in that
life which was his centre, — this It Is which consti
tutes the relation of the branches to the true vine,
having the same soil and the same husbandman's
care. I would like to be Rke Jesus of Nazareth ;
but I would rather know God as he knew God, —
and be myself. I should not be so beautiful in
character ; but the fruit which came of that devel
opment would have in it the principles of life.
You cannot tie fruit artlficiaRy on a branch and
make It look like the real thing. " I am the true
vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every
branch In me that beareth not fruit he taketh
away : and every branch which beareth fruit, he
cleanseth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now ye are clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. . . .
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much
fruit ; so shall ye be my disciples."

XIII
THE PERPETUAL INCARNATION
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see the heaven
opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the
Son of man. — John i. 51.
This Is the closing chapter of that artless con
versation which in the first chapter of John's Gos
pel is represented as taking place between Jesus
and Nathanael, — a man who thought nothing good
could come out of a mean village. He is brought
into the presence of a citizen of that village, who
was to become a citizen of the world, and asks,
" Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? "
standing before the best Rfe which God has given
to the world. He Inquires how his identity could
have been known to this Nazarene, and the answer
is, "Before that Philip called thee, when thou
wast under the fig tree, I saw thee." Probably
when Jesus was passing by, he beheld him in a
moment of quiet prayer. There is no sign of the
miraculous here. Whereupon, with an enthusiasm
which is contagious, but illogical, he declares,
" Thou art the Son of God, the King of Israel,"

220 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
evidently construing in the terms of the miraculous
what Jesus probably meant in terms of the per
fectly natural. To this Jesus answers. Thou art
set wondering because I saw thee under the fig
tree ; — " thou shalt see greater things than these."
It was an acute saying of Amiel that " it Is the
historical task of Christianity to assume with every
succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be
forever spiritualizing more and more her under
standing of Christ." " Son of man " cannot mean
in this year of grace, 1898, what it meant In that
year in which it was spoken, as recorded in the
New Testament. " Son of man " meant then
ninety million slaves, and thirty mIRIon freedmen
and freemen, in the empire of Rome. " Son of
man " was too undescrlptlve a term to mean what
it means now. The child of humanity to-day has
a different conception and a greater breadth than
the child of humanity then. So that we take the
term " Son of man " to represent what may be in
a general way said to be the " ideal humanity."
What do we mean by the term " ideal human
ity " ? We mean the enlargement of what is pro-
pheticaRy human to become Ideally human, and a
process of growth upward to pass into moral coa
lescence with the divine. We are not completely
human until our earthliness has become spiritual
ized ; for the spiritual Is the flower of the earthly.

THE PEEPETUAL INCAENATION 221
" Ye shaR see the heavens opened, and the an
gels of God ascending and descending upon the
Son of man." There is no longer any heaven lo
cally, but a little way remote above our ken. We
know, for instance, that the atmosphere is forty
miles thick ; that it is so many mRes to the radi
ance which falls upon our night from the moon.
We know that it is ninety million miles to the
radiance which lights this day and kindles the
fires of summer. We know also that the old con
ception of a firmament, stretched between the
upper heights of an Olympus and the lower walks
of human life, has disappeared, has passed away,
and the heaven which opens its windows to let
down the rain and the angels, as the time serves,
is not what we mean by the heaven of our upward
look and our enlarged experience. This heaven
means a place which Is fit to be thought of when
God is thought of. Heaven to us Is what my old
friend meant when, his eyes weary with age, he
gazed whither his beloved had gone, and said, " God
must have some beautiful place for her, since she
would not fit any other." So that heaven, like
humanity, means an ideal conception rather than
a more or less remote relationship to things local.
When the term " Son of man " is used as a me
dium between heaven and earth, what can that mean
in our conception, except that in an ideal humanity

222 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
full-grown, until its feet shall walk the earth, while
its lips Invite the revelation of the divine to touch
them, which shall make them speak divine things
out of the heaven of God, — that this humanity
Is the natural means by which things that are
celestial shaR interpret themselves to the things
terrestrial. I ask you if this is not the absolutely
logical as weR as the poetic interpretation of the
text. " Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of
man." Manifestly there is meant in this singular
statement to be a connection of thought between
the ancient story of Jacob's ladder and this man,
Nathanael, of whom Jesus had said, "He Is an
Israelite, even a true son of Jacob, Indeed." It is
a little play, — either a literary turn in the mind
of the editor of these stories, or a little play of
pleasant thought in the mind of the speaker, —
that the man of whom he had said, " He Is an Isra
elite, in whom is no guile," should be told that
that ancient ideal of Jacob, beholding the angels
ascending to God, and descending, was the ideal
which was in the near future, and should behold
the span from earth to heaven measured by the
Son of man. Nathanael had said, " Thou art the
Son of God." Jesus said, " I am the Son of man."
The terms. Son of God and Son of man were

THE PERPETUAL INCARNATION 228
both used for Messianic distinction, meaning sim
ply relationship upon the one side to aR things
divine, and on the other side to things entirely
human. The terms are used interchangeably
throughout the New Testament. In the Old Tes
tament you will find the Messianic title Is Son
of God, and then Son of man ; and an unpoetic
age has crystallized these into terms of doctrinal
distinction, whereas they are terms of a perfectly
natural relationship. Son of God is the filial
relationship toward the divine. Son of man is
the filial relationship toward the humanity which
he shares. We have thus an enlarged meaning.
How can one see the heavens opened, and the
angels of God ascending and descending upon the
Son of man ?
The answer to this appears in a single question.
How shaR you know anything, most supreme and
beautiful, except In the terms of your humanity ?
What other standard have you? What other
standard can you acquire, except to interpret God
by your best human? You may say, I can ima
gine something I have never seen ; but your imagi
nation wRl be the contact of things which you have
seen and known. For this is at once our riches
and our poverty, that we cannot know anything
except from our experience. It Is our poverty if
we be poor in experience; it Is our riches If we

224 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
be rich in experience : and that is just the dif
ference between one man's revelation concerning
divine things and another man's. One man speaks
the commonplace because he is commonplace ; the
other man speaks the things divine because the
secret of the Lord Is with him. Humanity is in
structed, not by logical processes, but by the secret
ministry of the soul's growth ; and the Son of
man becomes the representative, the medium by
which heaven may be known to earth, and earth
make strides farther heavenward, in an enlarged
humanity which is the perfect revelation of the
divine, as we conceive it.
But you will say. If you are thus to take Jesus
of Nazareth out of the place where he stood,
fronting Nathanael and his brother there in Gali
lee, and you are to make of him, not a personal
presence but an Infinite ideal, what Is left to us ?
I wIR ask you a question. The artist takes a
block of Carrara marble, without speck or flaw
or blemish in It. Out of his soul he carves that
which Is in the marble, and was in himself first, —
some vision of beauty, some overmastering but
never quite grasped ideal, some haunting and pro
phetic sense of that " which never was on sea or
land," but only In the human soul. In this mar
ble he makes his soul appear. He did It once,
and then It was taken away out of his gaze, —

THE PEEPETUAL INCAENATION 225
removed by some one who loved it even more than
himself, and who felt that he must have it as the
ideal which he had vainly pursued, but had never
realized as the artist did. It is gone as a personal
presence ; it is present as an infinite ideal. What
is left to the artist ? Everything is left. The
artist and his genius, the creative mind which
covets the beautiful only to realize It ; the skillful
hand which carves the thing he sees, that others
may see the thing he Is, — these are left, and the
quarry is left. And where this block once stood,
and then was taken away, aR things which have
been still are for him. The stone, the soul, the
skill, the ideal, the beauty, and the world are left ;
and he may do what he wiR while life lasts and
genius serves and the quarry is unexhausted.
That is the answer to those who ask what is left,
when you say that Son of man means more than
Jesus of Nazareth. It means his humanity become
progressive and universal. When you say it Is
not a personal presence simply, but an infinite
Ideal, and you are asked what is left, answer that
the material in which God wrought to make the
Christ is left, and God is left, and the haunting
ideals of the human soul are left, and the persist
ent impressions which come from the divine Into
the human are left, — aR Is left. So it may be
true that you shaR see the heaven opened, and

226 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
the angels, his messengers who is God, ascending
and descending upon this larger human good.
Let us see how it may be that the prophecy of
this text may become the fulfillment of our expe
rience. Let us assume that we have discovered
these things : that heaven is nearer than it used to
be, that heaven is easier opened than it used to be,
that the angels are Infinite Ideals, and their errands
are not occasional but constant, and the test of aR
their activity Is the eagerness of our expectancy.
They come when they are looked for, and when
humanity is large enough for them to step without
perR from Its shoulder to its heart, to Its knees,
to Its feet, — for the whole gulf to be spanned by
this Ideal Son of man. These things we think we
have discovered in the text. Let us see how they
may be realized.
In the first place, we are dependent upon some
common ground of reRgion. What may it be?
If our humanity is to be ideal. If this is to be the
Interpreter of God to man, some common ground
of religion must exist. Now it cannot be a service
of religion, though worship be common. It Is
commonly conceived In the different terms which
fit each man. One worshiper wants all the tides
of the spirit run through a liturgical pipe-line,
and another wants the tides of the spirit to wash
what shores they wIR, ebb when they must, and

THE PEEPETUAL INCAENATION 227
flood when they can. Between the Quaker and
the ritualist the demand Is curiously diverse, and
logicaRy so, and temperament supervenes where
reason cannot hold Its sway. There was no truer
word spoken than that of Fronde, — " Logic is no
match for superstition, and one great emotion must
be expeRed by another." Thus it is impossible
for worship to be of one kind and serve aR men ;
so that cannot be the common ground of religion.
That from which it springs Is common, but not
that which appears as springing from this root.
Can any statement of doctrine be the ground of
religion? There is no common doctrine, no uni
formity in religion. Nature repudiates uniformity ;
and the human soul in its best expression declares
that there may be unity, but never uniformity.
The possibility of diversity is the possibility of
beauty In thought and mind. No common doc
trine can be the ground of religion. If our hu
manity is to interpret God, and if God shall send
his messengers to us, ascending and descending
upon the Ideal humanity, then there must be some
common ground, and I think we can find It only
in the realization of divine affection. Love is
common ! It Is never absent, from brute to God,
except where humanity has grown lower than the
brute. The wRd creature, in her delight that she has

228 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
her cubs, licking their heads and turning them
over softly with her paw, knows what the clinging
humanhood knows, when good women lift their
babies to God, saying. Behold what thou hast
made L Human love, divine affection, may be the
ground of religion. This Is the reason that God
in the last analysis is caRed love, and man in his
reRgious thought Is urged by love to the realiza
tion of his religious life. The common ground of
religion Is divine affection. This teaching, of the
New Testament is the essential message of Jesus
Christ. In a preceding chapter I have tried to set forth
the " True Imitation of Christ." I suppose I did
not succeed. No man yet has succeeded with so
large a theme; but let us consider how the mo
ment the heart warms with fires which are pure,
the moment the mind opens to the summer that
seems celestial, the moment that human relations
pass from being personal to being ideal, the mo
ment my friend becomes to me not simply a per
sonal presence, but an embodied Ideal, so soon the
heavens are open, and the angels of God begin to
descend upon the humanity new-awakened in the
soul. Let us do this first : let us love all things
that are lovable, in order that we may love all
unlovely things. And in the first estate we shall
worship, and in the next estate we shaR serve,

THE PEEPETUAL INCARNATION 229
which is the essential condition of our relationship
to this ideal humanity, as represented in Christ
and in those who seek to live his life. Human
life must pass into service. The future in a world
administered and buRt up thus by love that Is
eager to serve is simply an expansion of the pre
sent when It Is fit to be expanded.
If you were in the place of the minister of
religion, you would find the vast mass of people
working toward a remote condition for which they
hope, forgetting the immediate condition in which
they stand. These are expectant souls who know
not what they expect, and whose expectancy is
their one delight. The only way in which they
adjust themselves to the present is by imagining a
future for which they have no experience as yet.
This is the common experience of the human soul
which looks for a future blessedness and refuses to
realize a present grace. This is the common ob
servation of the minister of religion, because it is
the experience of those with whom he has to deal.
Now you never may have any heaven opened to
which you do not hold the key. You may never
shut up hell until your hand is strong enough to
snuff out its fires. You may never enter Into any
heaven which has not entered into you. You can
not escape any hell which has not already been
cast out of you. It becomes us, then, to be so

230 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
good as to be caRed human by any one who may
look upon our life. That does not seem to demand
much, but in my conception it demands aR there
is to be demanded. To be said to be human is to
guarantee a future which only humanity Is fit for.
I speak of this because we have known men and
women aR their lifetime in bondage from fear of
death. What can death do? Well, when the
autumn comes, the leaves that sift down from the
branches of the trees have been shoved off by
the possible growth of the next season, and the blos
soming May gives way to a less ideal aspect of the
orchard, — its aspect of fruit which has no further
use for the petals of the blossom. What can death
do ? We have not lived in our bodies, so we may
dismiss them. There was a fine philosophy in Em
erson's reply to the MiRerite, the Second Advent-
ist, who met him and inquired, " Do you know, sir,
that the world is to come to an end ? " He said,
" I had not heard it ; but I think I can get on very
well without It." It is a fine philosophy that in
the creature grown entirely human, death Is not
the Introduction to the future, but the dismissal of
hindering disabilities that are in the present. So
runs my dream ; and I find myself saying with
Jean Paul, again and again, " When we die we
shall lose our sleep, but we shaR not lose our
dreams."

THE PEEPETUAL INCAENATION 231
In this parable of the New Testament, the ancient
record states the Incentive for modern life. " Ver
ily, verily, I say unto you. Hereafter ye shall see the
heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the Son of man." The one
business we have In hand Is to grow the human ;
to make it not an ideal In thought, but an ideal
actualized and realized in life. And the terrible
thing about sin Is not simply that it offends God,
not simply that it postpones our personal perfec
tion, not simply that it must have Its retribution
somewhere, somehow, since goodness and gladness
are married together, and not gladness and any
form of evil whatever, — not only are these the
things which make sin terrible, but the dreadful
fact about sin is that it lowers our humanness, and
makes us unfit to hear what God has to say. There
is no open vision when the eye is immersed In mat
ter. Materialism is the death of the Ideal. And
so whether sin come by a too great absorption in
things which you cannot transmute into yourself, —
as you cannot transmute any material thing what
ever, — whether sin come in this material absorp
tion, or in some hot passion, or in some abiding and
insatiable lust, or in some persistent temper which
breaks over the bounds of its own tides and lacer
ates Its own shores, wearing away bit by bit the
level of Its own peace of mind, — however it may

232 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
come, the dreadful thing which confronts us In sin
is this : " He that sinneth wrongeth his own soul."
The ancient word is as new as If It were uttered
yesterday. Sin dwarfs our growth. It hinders our
peace, it lowers the levels of our Rfe, it makes the
difference between earth and heaven so great that
an angel has no means of coming, nor can wing its
way so far. This is the gulf fixed between earth
and heaven, when men refuse the destiny their very
humanity provides.

XIV
THE GROWTH OF A SOUL
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsufEering, gentle
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance : against such there
is no law. — Galatians v. 22, 23.
Theee is a singular IRustratlon in this Epistle
to the Galatians, in the chapter from which the
text is taken, of how there had dawned upon the
mind of the writer the conviction that all good is
natural, all evil artificial. It is quite the reverse
to our common apprehension. We say, " It is
human to err." We err because we are not quite
rational, nor have a fuR range of experience. Per
haps we shaR always err, because we shaR always
be in pursuit of an imperative ideal which, however
it owns us, has not always the power to control us.
The fact is, that is not natural which is evil, but
that which is good; and the evil is a chock put
under the wheel, an embargo laid upon its progress,
and a hindrance laid in its path. This appears in
the Epistle to which I call your attention, in the
statement of the apostlS that the works of the flesh
are these ; and then he enumerates a horrid cat-

234 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
alogue of our reversion from the human good, our
reversion to the brute conditions. It Is a curious
fact in life, already pointed out, that the powers
the brute holds legitimately, as a part of the dy
namic force of his nature, are never perverted ; he
has no vices. The moment we return to his level
and seek to do as he does, we become not unmoral
but immoral, and are not brutal even, because we
are no longer natural. The apostle says the works
of the flesh, the artificial building up of the things
we vainly desire, are these ; but the fruit of the
Spirit, — the things which grow upon the Spirit
naturaRy, which come out of the source of its life,
— the fruit of the Spirit is — and then he enumer
ates the procession of virtues, " love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek
ness, temperance."
Good is a part of nature's plan ; evil is man's
vindication of his right to destroy himself. Good
is normal ; evil is abnormal. Good is natural ;
evil is artificial. There are two views of the grace
of life, — the fruit which grows upon a human
creature as the produce of his experience. One
attributes all the power to God, and holds that man
is only acted upon ; the other attributes all the
power to man, and holds that he Is capable of
everything in his own right. The first presents
the fruits of the Spirit as though they were roses

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL 235
tied upon a conjurer's bush to look as though they
grew there, having been affixed from the out
side and being no natural product of the plant
Itself. The second makes us produce all our vir
tues in a vacuum, like those things which have been
preserved by exhausting their atmosphere, and
kept because they have no contact with their nat
ural environment. Neither of these views is true.
You cannot paint your picture and leave out the
sky. You cannot say that your soil wRl produce
everything without any marriage of it to the hea
ven, which is the copartnership in this contract.
So that to say that the grace of life is the product
of man without God, or to say that the grace of
life is the gift of God without man. Is simply to try
to do what has always proved an error, — work a
half truth as though it were a whole truth. Many
errors of history have come from that mistake.
Now the fact is that the susceptibility Is ours,
and the potency Is God's. We are the sensitized
plates and the light Is his. The soil is ours, capa
ble of all fertility ; but the downfall from on high
is his, capable of awakening all fertlRty. And
the fruit of the Spirit may be found in that which
works as though It worked alone, and trusts as
though it had none to help but God ; puts its
endeavor into its whole business as though aR
things were expected of It without assistance, and

236 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
looks for divine guidance and aid as though it had
no potentiality of its own. And when nature comes
to this union of the human with the divine, It dis
covers that the human is divinely inspired, and the '
divine is humanly perceived. That Is the genesis >
of religion In a human soul, — it recognizes its
divine relationships and translates them Into the
terms of human life.
Take the statement of the text, that the fruit
of the Spirit is " love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."
Is this a catalogue of virtues put like broken bits
of glass Into the kaleidoscope we call human life,
which being turned presents a new figure at every
revolution ? I think not ; for in an ordered universe
its supreme expression must be an ordered life, —
the ordered life which in human modes shaR express
the thought of God, who orders the universe. So
in these virtues, graceful and gracious as they
are, Instinct with strength and moving along the
Hues of steady assurance of life's beauty and
power, we have not here a simple catalogue of
virtues at haphazard. We have an ascending
series, which represents the growth of a soul ; and
It Is in this aspect of it that I ask you to study
these magic words which open the chambers of
life's benevolence and power.
Within the soul which has an ordered life, the

THE GEOWTH OF A SOUL 237
soul In process of growth, is the fruit of the
Spirit first. In love. This also is contrary to the
perverted Christianity that assumes Christianity,
personal religion, to begin in the conviction of sin.
There is no conviction of sin operative to the re
generation of life that has not been shot through
and through with the sense of divine affection.
He who repents because his sin is inconvenient,
or hazardous, or liable to retributive outcome has
not repented, he has only been scared; and the
ratio of his deliverance will be the exact propor
tion in which his fright is transformed into an
affection for the good, and he hates his sin be
cause it is unlike the source of goodness, the Love
whose name is God. So true is this, that almost
every theory of the atonement has broken down in
these last years, except the theory which teaches
that the death of Christ is an argument to the
affection of the sinner, who is ashamed to have
cost so pure a nature so great a sorrow. And we
are won to the imitation of Christ in the terms of
human affection.
The first fruit of the Spirit Is love. Mark you,
not the first sign of life; for the root trembles
beneath the soil and the thrill is life. The stem
of the plant takes up the sap, and it is the life-
current which ascends. The leaves grow green In
the opening spring, which is a sign of life. The

238 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
flower Is produced in the beauty and color which
belong to its genus, which are life's emotion break
ing out into song of color and perfume. But the
fruit which lies behind the flower; the fruit of
which the blossom Is the prophecy ; the fruit for
which the root exists, the stem ascends, the leaf is
formed, the blossom blushes with the sense that
something Is to be born of It, — the fruit which
comes first from the soul is some form of divine
affection. This is the first test of all religions which we
may examine. If they deal first in terror, they do
not deal first with God. If they deal first In sim
ple obligation, they may deal thus strenuously with
law, but they have not learned what is the inspi
ration of law; viz., the passion for life. AR laws
are but Rmitations laid upon Rfe lest its passion
exceed Its bound, or lest another life shaR crowd it
beyond its power of growth ; so that love is the
beginning of the fruit of the Spirit ; and we may
go through the churches of a city and weed out
from them the perversions of essential religion
by this simple test, — Does It make the beholder
and him who experiences its power love the high
est In any sense ? That is the test of real reRgion
In its very beginning. We are won upward, we
are wooed upward, we are invited upward ; we are
warmed from the winter of our natures, and behold

THE GEOWTH OF A SOUL 239
the summer of our life brings its prophecy of fruit,
for it has discovered the secret of love.
What is the next step ? It Is joy. Joy is the
tide, and peace Is the sea. And the tide ebbs and
flows, but the sea is always there. Joy is the
blossom, and peace is the root. The blossom falls
because it Is the time of fruit. All the laughing
spring grows sombre again, relieved only by the
waves of green which from the tiny first intima
tions of life have meRowed to the deep olives of
the woods. But the root stiR bravely holds the
stem, and tells the secret of soil and air and rain
and God unto the peaceful powers of the plant.
So said Jesus : " I have told you these things
that my joy might be in you, and that your joy
might be fuR." But he said later, " Peace I leave
with you, my peace I give unto you. . . . Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
Much confusion about what religion is Res in
this failure to distinguish between joy and peace.
I shall be joyful if It is my nature to sing. AR
peace lies In the fibre of our souls, and is the res
cue of us when joy is impossible. We descend
from the heights where we have had wide vision,
and in the quiet places recover ourselves, and the
spring song passes into the hush of summer. The
song of the bird to its mate on the nest Is over,
because they are so very busy, now that the nest

240 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
is fuR, with the feeding of the gaping mouths,
which after a whRe shaR have their spring and
early summer song ; — these little creatures as yet
unfeathered, and incapable of anything except to
excite solicitude and care upon the part of those
that minister to them. The rippling music of the
woods is over, but the maternity of the woods has
begun. So our joy subsides to its quietness, and
the tide turns back and is lost In the sea.
" Love," " joy," " peace," " longsuffering," 9,nd
" gentleness " go together. There Is nothing re
generative In suffering. Suffering Is a sign of
many a thing that is not of nature. Sometimes
of nature taking advantage of our unprepared-
ness, but the old doctrine that we are cleansed
and regenerated by what we suffer, — the doctrine
upon which the Catholic faith is buRt, for instance,
and which has intruded Itself into many forms of
Protestantism, — that there Is something regenera
tive in simple anguish, we cannot hold. We are
asked at once what we shall do with those who
out of manifold pain have come to peace; those
who have ascended through the ravines of great
torture to the heights of great conquest ? What
shall we do with them ? Let God do with them
still the thing he hath done with them already ;
for the hands which ministered to them were his,
not the hands of suffering. There is nothing

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL 241
regenerative In pain. Pain is an ignominy and
a distress ; and no wholesome mind ever suffers a
pang in the body which it does not feel like apolo
gizing for, as though It were something abnormal,
and not to be tolerated, least of aR coddled and
nursed. I know some people who think, or seem
to think, that they are noticeable in the divine
mind just In the ratio In which they have suffered ;
and that because they had peculiar sorrows they
must be peculiarly present to the thought of Hea
ven. This is a form of self-pity, and there is no
form of self-pity which belongs to the fruit of the
Spirit. Longsuffering means the power to hold our ideals
in spite of our pain. It should be part of the root-
conviction of our Rfe that, though we cannot teR
what may come to us, we have a right to believe
that we shall behave weR under it. We do not
know what shall befaR us ; but we have the right
to know how we shaR bear ourselves when it be-
faRs. And the experience of our life leads us to
this confidence, that we shaR be able to suffer long
If need be, when the power which endures Is as
of one who " sees the invisible."
And " gentleness " is the speech of suffering
which gasps to recover its breath from pain, and
speaks not words out of pain, but out of peace.
You and I have known people in our lives to

242 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
whom we have gone simply to sun ourselves in
their presence, and they were sufferers. It was
not their suffering which made them like im
prisoned sunshine, needing only to be ignited by
another presence to have it glow there in their
room : it was the deep, abiding confidence of the
soul ; the power of the spirit to maintain its rights
under the presence of conditions which were not
of the spirit, and that went to its windows in its
prison when the light was falRng, that it might
see the last rays of departing day, and utter Its
prayer for peace, and in the memory to welcome
the coming dawn and utter its praise for light.
This is to be " longsuffering " with " gentleness."
" Goodness " stands next In this ascending series.
The nun In her cloister Is the embodiment of
gentleness. The Sister of Charity in the slums is
the embodiment of goodness. The one prays in
her cloistered seclusion, and grows intimate with
God ; the other prays, and goes out Into the shad
ows to see whether God has forgotten anybody;
and she foRows the path where pain has left Its
trail, and goes into places where no human crea
ture should live, and there the goodness, which Is
gentleness grown meRow and ripe, achieves a com
fort which no prayer alone can ever achieve.
Curiously enough, "faithfulness" stands here.
This is the quality in the soul of which faith Is

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL 243
the Inspiration. Here again we come in conflict
with the commonly received opinions of religion.
We are told that we must " have faith." Things
are to be " received on faith ; " and Faith becomes
the watchword which is written over the door of
entrance into the religious life. It does not belong
there. Usually what belongs there is Love and
Trust. Love which kindles toward the good, and
trust which is sure that the good means weR by it.
That Is a very different thing from faith. Only
the maturer soul can have faith in the sense of
this text. You see it stands far along in this
procession of the fruits of the Spirit, — " faithful
ness." WeR, it is the soul's loyalty to an end,
even if it seems to be evR. It Is the power which
In a human soul would not have one single process
of nature reversed or turned aside for its benefit.
It declines to be selected for any gift of God
which aR may not in some sort share ; or declines
to be selected for any gift of God unless with the
gift comes the large permission to be the almoner
of God and the trustee of the divine grace.
I like the phrase of Thomas Wedgwood in writ
ing Coleridge to petition him to receive an annuity
from himself and his brother, which he thought
Coleridge's pride would decline. He wrote : " My
brother and I have a certain superfluity of riches,
and we have long ago determined that we are not

244 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
proprietors but trustees ; " and then he followed
with the request that Coleridge In his age and
sickness would let him send this annuity from his
brother and himself, during the years which re
mained. This Is the watchword of faithfulness:
I am not the proprietor but the steward of the
gifts of God. ShaR I not do what I wIR with
mine own? is a natural retort. But if we and
what we have belong to God, whose own are we
and It ? And when I am looking out for number
one, I am not faithful unless I begin with God,
who is number one in the series we caR life. He
is the original, and end as weR, of the whole pro
cess of the creation. Faithfulness would raise it
self by the rim of that wheel which crushes It, and
look Into the face of the charioteer to see If It be
some angel of the order of the world. Faithfulness
is faith in operation. It is a mode of motion of
the soul's abiding confidence. It does not belong
at the beginning of the reRgious life, but Is the
fruit of a later time.
What shall be said of " meekness," the next of
these virtues, and the last but one ? Is meekness
a certain inaptitude to take one's own part ? No.
I am put in trust of my own powers as you are^
and of my own decisions, and of aR which concerns
my Rfe. I am bound to regard all these things as
having a sanctity which calls upon me for their

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL 245
utmost defense. It is not meekness which refuses
to be brave. It Is cowardice, masquerading in the
cast-off costume of some mediaeval virtue. The
meekness of the mendicant in the Middle Age, and
in Asia, stiR Is the meekness of the saint. In this
country we caR him a tramp and set him to work.
The mendicant who lives from hand to mouth on
the bounty of another we can never put Into the
calendar of saints. His voluntary abandonment
of life's activities does not make him meek; It
makes him mean. But there is an attitude of the
soul In which meekness dweRs, that stands before
God and Is humble ; that stands before human life
and is moved by moral passion ; the greater that
It feels it is all unworthy to do the part which it
hungers to do. It stands before life's mystery and
commits itself to God, who knows the end from
the beginning. This is the meek man who " shaR
inherit the earth," says Jesus ; for he is the only
man fit to have it.
What is the culminating fruit of the Spirit,
then ? It is " temperance." Let me rehearse this
ascending series : " Love, joy, peace, longsuffer
ing, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness,
temperance." Is temperance the abstinence from
certain things to eat and drink ? Men do that for
the sake of their Jlvers and digestion who have
no thought of the fruit of the Spirit whatever.

246 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
Men do it also from an abiding prejudice against
life as being meant to have a good time in, and so
become victims of their own superstition and the
libel which they have pronounced against the good
God, the source of our joy. No, temperance is not
that thing. It includes that from worthy motive,
but does not include sumptuary laws as an effort
of expediency. Neither can the tax list, the record
of our expediency, be the roll from which we read
the virtues of the soul. Temperance Is a larger
thing than that.
I stood in the arsenal at Venice once, and an
old saRor, who had charge of the weapons there,
handed me a great two-handed sword, and bade me
set its point on the floor and bend It double. I
bent it a little way, having a care for the swords of
Venice. I had forgotten in what Saracenic wars
it might have been wielded, or in what struggle of
Doge against Invader it might have borne its part.
I saw that its edge was unduRed and its brightness
unimpaired, and I handed it back and said, " How
very nice ! " And very justly the old sailor was
disgusted with me, and he set It upon the floor and
bent it like a whip until the point and hilt came
together, and then it sprang back again in perfect
erectness and unabated strength. It was a piece
of Damascus steel of perfect temper, in which
every particle was so married to every other par-

THE GEOWTH OF A SOUL 247
tide of steel, so shoulder to shoulder the atoms of
the metal stood, so pressed together on every side,
that when they were bent as a whole, they bent as
the line of a phalanx might bend In the wheel of
Its manoeuvre, when every soldier feels the touch
of his fellow and the line Is curved together that
it may on every side present Its bristling front to
the foe. This is the example of temperance in the
soul. The absolute temper, absolute poise of na
ture, absolute self-possession in a man in whom the
fruit of the Spirit appears In temperance, may no
tify him that he Is weR along toward that salvation
which is moral health and power. God shaR surely
want him for some great work in this world's life.
There Is no possibility of doing good work in this
world without a capacity for fanaticism ; and there
is no possibility of doing good work unless that
fanaticism is under perfect control. God help the
man who is capable only of generating steam, and
has neither governor, nor safety valve, nor work
on which to turn it. He will be In evidence by
the sounding of his whistle, but he wIR not be In
evidence in the work of the world.
The problem In life Is a tempered-nature that
shaR do its work all the way round, and shaR order
its emotions to foRow the guidance of its reason,
and shaR order its reason not to hold Itself too
stiffly before the appeals of its emotions. Is it

248 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
any wonder that the concluding statement of this
text is that for those in whom the fruit of the
Spirit appears, — the series which is here re
hearsed, — that " against these there is no law " ?
Are they liberated from the law ? No. They are
those who make the law they formulate nature's
ideal, — the people who are the standards of what
the world may become. Only the transgressor
fears the law. Obedient men and women live
day after day In absolute ignorance that there is
any law in the land. What do commandments
and ordinances and statutes mean to them ? What
do the constitutional provisions mean for them?
They are In love with the law, and not conscious
of Its pressure because they are not transgressors.
But in many places there are those who tremble
lest some breach of the law shaR point them out ;
they are living on the narrow verge of an uncer
tain morality, in an effort to escape our human
duties and the keeping of our human trusts. For
those in whom love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gen
tleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temper
ance abide, " against these there Is no law." Their
Rves shaR become the text-books from which the
law Is read ; and they shaR remain as epistles of
God written by the hand of his spirit, under no
ordinances and statutes, but in the subRme beati
tude of the growing soul.

XV
GRACE AND TRUTH i
The law was given through Hoses, but grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ. — John i. 17.
This Is saying, In effect, that with the advent of
this supremely beautiful life, pressure from with
out, obligation imposed from without, exactions
hard to meet, and service reluctantly rendered are
to pass Into that higher expression by which
" grace and truth " are the apotheosis and trans
figuration of law and obligation. That which
was imposed is now to Inspire ; that which was
enforced Is now to constrain, to win, to woo, and
to invite ; and the law-giver is to be lost In the
life-maker. The text is a fit motto by which to indicate that
different view of this holy day which Inspires our
1 This chapter, and that upon " The Eternal Life," have been
added by the request of certain hearers who felt that some aid
had come to them in understanding the subjects which give sig
nificance to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. They may be found
useful in showing how Historic Continuity is consistent with the
Poetic Interpretation of Religion ; and how the modem believer
in the new truth is still not separated from the truth of Christian
ity — in its simplest expression.

250 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
thought, as contrasted with the sombre and fune
real character that elsewhere Is given to the day.
Good Friday Is not good for weeping only, — It is
good for apprehension of what that tragedy meant
and procured, which gave to the church the cele
bration of this day. Not in the beginning, indeed,
not near the beginning, indeed, but after many
centuries, the day of the Crucifixion — as nearly
as they could determine the date — has rallied the
believers and disciples of Jesus Christ, standing
In imagination about his cross, to discover them
selves to themselves. If this has a different pur
pose in our minds, it is well to state It on such a
day ; for " grace and truth " would not have come,
if the tragedy of Calvary had left us no higher
office than to mourn.
There are three things we may do with Jesus
Christ : We may believe something about him ;
we may believe him ; and we may believe In him.
If we believe something about him, the relation
is made external to him altogether. He has no
claim upon us and we have no claim upon him.
He is a single figure in the great historic drama,
and the tragedy but heightens its Interest ; and
we faR easily into the habit of expecting the un
real, abnormal, and unusual in connection with his
name. If we believe him, then among the words
attributed to him we are apt to select those that

GRACE AND TRUTH 251
"come nearest to our thought of life ; and because
he speaks them we foRow his command, and range
ourselves as his disciples ; and we foRow the sim
ple retinue from Pilate's judgment haR to the
little eminence outside the city where they stood
and saw him die ; and we remember his words as
the words of the dying, and keep them sacred in
our thought. But if that is aR, then our memory
wIR be the holy sacristan to preserve such sacred
things ; and life has much to do that is not memory,
and many obligations in which memory has but a
smaR share In prompting and in performance. But
if we " believe in him," then according to his own
word we are coming into the domain of the Eter
nal Life. And since upon Easter Sunday we shall
celebrate the festival of immortality, and declare
our affirmation concerning the Eternal Life, it
would seem that while he hangs upon the cross in
the crisis of his dying, we should range ourselves
somewhere within the reach of the Eternal Life
for which he stood. A belief about him Is fatuous
for any real performance of life at its utmost. To
believe him Is simply not to know about a duty if
he had not said some word about it ; but to believe
in him is to shift our lives at once to the plane
of his life, and to feel upon us as much of the obli
gation of the incarnation of the eternal reason in
the flesh as though we had been born of his mother,

252 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
and brought up in the shop where he worked.
" To reconceive the Christ," then, is the business
of those that believe in him, — to make the law of
his Rfe our law, not the law of his lips simply ;
to make the processes of our life dominated by
his spirit not simply coincident with the details of
his life ; and so to readjust ourselves to life, that
where the converging rays of the spiritual power
focused and gave us Christ, they shaR focus again
and give us the apprehension of what it Is to re
produce his life. To believe in him Is to catch his
secret and teR It again ; is to relate ourselves to
the sources of his inspiration as he was related to
them ; and from God, out of whose life he flowed
unto men, whose life he lived, to feel within the
banks of our common life the f uR flood of such a
life as his. This Is to believe in him. Said the
apostle, "The life that I now live in the flesh I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself for me." The inference Is Inev
itable that we may give again to the world such a
life as his.
Certain characteristics of his thought and life
belong to this hour. The first Is concerning the
simpRcity of his life and thought. He had no
great problems to settle for himself ; therefore for
aR that heard him his word was simpRcity itself.
He had no debate with himself, therefore there

GRACE AND TRUTH 253
was no obscurity in his teaching. His simplicity
was the simplicity of elemental principles, a final
statement of the law of life that needed no com
mentary; so that when we read the beatitudes,
we feel that we are reading a transcript of his
common life. When he says, " Blessed are the
peace-makers, for they shall be caRed the chil
dren of God," we can Imagine that in Nazareth
town he made aR lives nearer to each other by
his life lived among them, and from the pages of
his own beautiful spirit read or said the beatitude
I have just uttered. When he said, " Blessed are
the pure In heart, for they shaR see God," it is
his vision that he is teRing us, — a vision that ap
peared between him and his work, which appeared
between him and the horizon when his work was
done, — a vision ever present to the clear eye and
the pure heart. Through the whole ministry of
his life, its simplicity is its marvel. He did not
present any metaphysical abstractions ; he did not
open any profound psychological problems. If he
had presented them, the world would have forgot
ten it long ago. When he says to you and me,
within a day of his grave, " He that is not for me
is against me ; he that gathereth not with me scat-
tereth," — when he says with regard to his Father's
thought oi the world, " He maketh his sun to rise
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain upon

254 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
the just and upon the unjust," we discover in the
first utterance the perfect demarcation between
the Ideal that Is noble and the ignoble ; and In the
second, the ground of nobiRty and generosity In
God. So through the whole ministry of his life
and teaching, it is crystaRIne in clearness, utterly
simple in its expression, entirely easy of apprehen
sion. The doing of It Is another thing; but no
man yet has failed to Uve the life of Christ because
of any confusion in his mind as to his understand
ing of its meaning. He may have failed in con
sistency, or fidelity, or zeal to foRow in his steps,
but never from not knowing whither the path led,
or at what point was its beginning. There is no
confusion there. We juggle with our moral sense.
We balance the probabilities of enjoyment against
the probabilities of sacrifice. We poise ourselves
in unstable equilibrium, as we try to determine
whither our lives shaR tend, but we never charge
our confusion upon the simplicity of his life and
thought. The Infirmity Is In our wIR, not In our
understanding. More than this, I ask you to consider the
splendid courage of this man of Nazareth. I
think the reason that we are never satisfied with
the pictures of the " Ecce Homo " as he has been
portrayed is that he lacks robustness, he faRs of
manhood vigor and purpose in the conception.

GRACE AND TRUTH 255
And quite naturally it is so. He who is painted
by an ascetic will be an ascetic ; and If religion
consists in the repression of natural force, then the
master of our religion wIR be represented as a
being repressed and ineffectual. But that Is not
the conception which the Gospels give us. Take
the way in which, knowing what was before him,
he entered the waters of baptism, and asked his
cousin John to put upon his head the anointing
waters of a great conviction, and turned from that
moment to feel that the heavens were open to him,
and that the voice of God was in beautiful accord
with the voice of his own spirit. So In the scenes
of temptation figuring the three great temptations
of our common life, — the temptation that comes
with getting a living ; the temptation that brings
presumption ; and the temptation that comes with
the lust for power, — he turned them aside as one
to whom a letter had been brought with wrong
address, and held himself aloof and above the
temptations of that hour. No wonder it is written,
to complete the beautiful legend, that when the
"tempter departed, angels came and ministered
unto him." This absolute courage was the normal
attitude of his life. Take the scene from those
last hours of his Ignominious trial. Take those
hours in which the Roman judge seems dwarfed by
the splendid simplicity of this human prisoner that

256 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF RELIGION
has been brought before him. Take those hours
in which the palace seems tawdry, and the ridicule
and mockery make our cheeks flush with the shame
we feel that upon his stalwart shoulders should
be flung the purple cloak of ridicule. Take that
scene in which the Roman judge asks, " Art thou
a king then ? " With his hands tied fast and stRl
holding the reed thrust into them by the mocking
soldiery of Rome, he lifts himself until his stature
seems greater than the Roman upon his judgment
seat, and says, " Thou hast said it ; to this end
was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."
And the reed that does not quiver in his hands,
and the crown of thorns that draws blood from his
brow, seem at once the crown of dignity and the
sceptre of power. It Is the testimony of a royal
soul to its great prerogative, to make its end a
tribute to its fidelity. He might have escaped
who would not. He might have denied who only
knew the truth. He might have yielded. But
his life was so plaited in with the Rfe of the truth
eternal that to unravel it would seem to disinte
grate the whole texture of eternal truth ; and he
goes where we perforce must foRow such splendid
leadership, — his sublime courage compeRing ours,
and rebuking the cowardice with which our life
sometimes shames us.

GRACE AND TEUTH 257
Now let us turn to a last thought concerning his
life, — the crystalline joy of it. We speak of him
as " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,"
using from the Old Testament what we suppose to
be a Messianic prophecy. To the Jewish thought
In the Old Testament there was no " suffering
Messiah." It is not commonly said, because it is
not commonly known, that for a period reaching
two hundred and fifty years into our era, no Jew
ever quoted the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah as ap
plicable to the Messiah whom he expected. Never
was it thought of in any Jewish mind as the
Messianic prophecy, and the New Testament testi
mony is to the joyousness of Christ. And why
not ? Shall he be at one with God and find no
joy ? As weR say that a great orchestra may be
at concert pitch and have no harmony. As well
say that every responding string was not liquid
music, as the bow or hand touched it, as to say
that one who declared, "I and my Father are
one," was not drinking from the fountain from
which flows aR the joy of the world, — the full
deep draught of his perpetual peace and brimming
delight. We foRow him weeping who never
wept for himself. AR the sad funereal belongings
of his last days, in which men and women spend
themselves in pity for the Christ, are sadly in
contrast to that life which was so free from any

258 THE GREAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
self-pity. It had no morbid self -consciousness ; It
had God-consciousness, which engulfed aR else. It
had no morbid introspection, no curious inquiry
into Its own states, no uncertainty as to the per
manence of Its processes and the subRme end to
which they were bound. In that joy which made
children flock to him to be blessed, and women
f oRow upon his path that they might minister to
him, the victorious tone of his life from the begin
ning was the compulsion of aR those who came
within the influence of his ministry.
If this seem to you fanciful, and you would
rather have a broken Christ, a bruised reed, a
pitiful and suppliant being, who was not able to
bear himseK magnificently In the midst of the
stress and turmoil and crisis of his days, — If you
would rather have such an one as this, what wIR
you do with this passage, — " These things have I
said unto you that my joy might remain In you,
that your joy might be fuR " ? So the sea might
say to aR the hoRows in the rocks up-shore, as its
tide roRs and laps their edges, and then pours into
their little basins and fiRs them full, saying, "I
come, the great sea with its rising tide, that my life
may be in you and your Rttle seas may be fuR."
" These things have I said unto you that my joy
might be in you, and that your joy might be fuR."
" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto

GEACE AND TEUTH 259
you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
What will you do with this saying from the Epistle
to the Hebrews, — " Because thou hast loved right
eousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even
thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of glad
ness above thy feRows " ? No, they were to know
a joy that summer's heat shaR not cause to dry
up, nor winter freeze within Its banks. They were
to know the sublime, far-reaching, jubilant, and
victorious consciousness of life. We can find no
better example of it in the world's history than
this man of Nazareth, who I think sang at his
work and prayed when work was done, and sat
upon the hlRtop looking out upon the blue Medi
terranean Sea beyond Carmel, and felt the sea lie
cradled in the hand of God, and his own life sway
ing with the swaying thought of God concerning
the eternal verities that were his own.
So I bring you this message for Good Friday,
the day of sorrows : that you are to adjust your
selves to this gift, which is not a Rfe only in the
remembrance, but a life for to-day. If it had not
been real, it had not lasted. If it- had not been
worth whRe, it had been forgotten. If It had not
been for us, we should not have gathered here at
the mention of this service, putting ourselves in
relation to its great Ideals. I conceive the one

260 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
business of life to be this, — to find out what secret
there was in his life that may be ours.. For God
to have done this only once would be the tragedy
of life ; but for God to have done it once that all
men might repeat Its lesson forever is the very
thought of the constant Rfe that makes the spring
come with its blossoms, and the summer with Its
fruit. It is another instance of the splendid way
in which the Eternal does beautiful things In this
world, when out of our common clay, with the
experiences of our common life open to his view,
there was moulded a life so beautiful, so compel
ling, that the world has refused ever to believe that
it was snuffed out like a candle, never to be re
lighted. And the persistent Easter anthem is the
testimony, not to a vacant grave, because a man
came out of it, but to the vacant graves forever,
into which no man shaR ever go. Said the apostle,
" He was made not after the law of a carnal com
mandment." In Genesis Is the command, "Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
This is the law of "the carnal commandment."
" He was made not after the law of the carnal
commandment, but according to the power of an
indissoluble life : " Rfe so compact you cannot
separate it into its fragments ; life so perfect you
cannot take from it without marring the symmetry
of the whole life ; so consistent that we believe it

GEACE AND TEUTH 261
is to-day a fit inspiration for lives now and here, —
" the indissoluble life." Our bjisiness is to find at
what springs he drank ; what Rfe flooded in him ;
what high courage was his own; what secret of
simplicity he held ; what splendid courage moved
him ; and then say : Since thy life was aR too
short, was broken off in the midst, and snapped by
the pressure of cruel hands, beloved, we wRl turn
from thy cross, not weeping, but expectant, and go
our ways to make up that which remains of the
life of Jesus Christ in this our day. Then, in
deed, the old law of obRgation wIR have relaxed
its hold, while with freer movement and lighter
step we foRow "the grace and truth of Jesus
Christ."

XVI
THE ETERNAL LIFE
I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me shall never die. — John sd. 25, 26.
We would be clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed
up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing
is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. —
2 Cor. V. 4, 5.
This is the affirmation of Eternal Life, first In
the person of the Rving Christ, and then in the
loving conviction of the hearts subdued to his rule.
If you were standing on the seashore and aR the
ugly ooze and disflgurement of low tide were before
you, the shallows evaporating in the sun, a stretch
of sand showing where the tiny things had crawled
back not to be left in-shore when the sea went out,
you would find It repeRent to see the dregs and
remnants of the sea. You would come up-shore
and look into the hoRows of the rocks, and little
panting things would be swimming round their
little seas, wondering where the ocean had gone
to which they belonged, and which belonged to
them. But presently, as the hours go by, by the
persuasion of the heavens the sea begins to move

THE ETEENAL LIFE 263
like a heart not at rest, — rising and f aRing and
pulsating with new life and purpose, and climbing
in tiny waves succeeded by larger waves, moving
with restlessness as one who knows a secret that he
fain would teR. Little by Rttle the sand grows
wet again, and the sediment and deposit of the sea
are covered over. And if it be that a tiny stream
pours Itself through upon a bed of rushes which
grow alongside, that have been shaking their bayo
nets against each other like a tired army which
sways in Its sleep, they would now Rft themselves
and stand erect, as If to say, " Behold, the day Is
breaking and the call to battle is at hand, and the
host must watch and wait the coming of the sea ! "
And then the tiny things up-shore would have new
life come into their panting gRls ; and their little
basins would be flooded over their rims by the
brimming wave from the great basin of which
theirs is but the miniature; and It would only
mean that the tide was out, but the tide Is now in ;
yet the difference is that between death and life.
If, some months ago, you- had looked Into the
faces of these little chRdren, upon whose heads I
laid my hand in baptism, speaking the name of the
child-lover who said, " Their angels do always be
hold the face of my Father," — if you had looked
into their eyes, they would have seemed to you like
curtained windows, even while they were awake, so

264 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
surprised to find themselves here, and not under
standing the apparition of the world ; with a blank
look of uncertain focus reaching for things as far
away as the moon, and reaching out for dangers so
neai? that they would hurt them. But to-day, as I
looked into their faces, there was fulfiRed the fine
expression of one who says, " I looked into the
window, and somebody had come to the window and
was looking out." It is the rise of consciousness
in a new human soul ; and the plastic creation
takes meaning to itself, and life in the chRd brims,
and the tide of life is in. It shall never know
another ebb, for nothing human ever dies.
It was with some such thought as this that in the
vernal equinoxes, in cold regions where the spring
was late, they made a festival of the coining of the
flowers. The brown earth rippled into green ; the
hidden roots peered out as who would say, Where
is the bright world, and where our resurrection ?
and spear and stalk and leaf and flower prophesied
the fruit that should be, untR It would seem as
though PIppa's song was the song of the spring : —
" The year 's at the spring,
The day 's at the mom ;
Morning 's at seven.
The hiU-side 'a dew-pearled ;
The lark 's on the wing.
The snail 's on the thorn.
God 's in his heaven ;
All 's right with the world 1 "

THE ETEENAL LIFE 265
The church did well to make the coming of new
life its testimony that life Is always new ; that it
is never stale, forgotten, or spent. It was in this
sense that the fuR-sphered being, the example in
history of a " perfectly saved man," Jesus of Naz
areth, sound In his core, sane In his method, direct
In his thinking, simple In his aspirations, of un
abated courage and confident of God, said, " I am
the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shaR he live." Not
a resurrection procured by vacating a grave ; not
a resurrection by a decree which shaR precede a
general judgment. How tame, how almost mean
ingless, these theological dogmas seem which the
church has tacked together as phrases to stimulate
the religious imagination ! How beautiful beyond
other dreams the legends of the resurrection, which
though discordant In their elements lose harmony
not altogether ! They are the expression of the
consciousness of Eternal Life, first in the man of
Nazareth, and then in those who would do his wIR.
So the apostle, hearing across a generation the
utterance, " I am the resurrection, and the life : he
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shaR
he live," taking from his nature its incrusted tra
ditions, bursting the bonds of his confining unbe-
Ref, told the church at Corinth this story of the
resurrection : " We would be clothed upon, that

266 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
mortality might be swaRowed up of life ; " that is,
the susceptlblRty to death might be swallowed up
by the capacity for life. The tide is in, said he,
and aR the shore is covered where death was. Life
has come, said he, and all the winter has been ban
ished by the spring. The consciousness of God
has awakened, said he, and the eyes that were
curtained are lifted up, and " somebody has come
to the window and Is looking out." This is the
affirmation of the constancy of life.
I caR attention to two or three vital points in
Rfe's study of what Rfe is. I do not doubt that
by some method not preserved to us, according to
some law not yet divined by us, the apostles who
loved Jesus knew that he was as much aRve, after
he had seemed to die, as before death took him.
What their evidence was does not appear, and can
never be our own, for we have not evidence, but
testimony. We are remote from the fact by more
than eighteen centuries, and have to take the record
and harmonize it as we can. But when you have
said this; when you have placed In the keeping
of the poetry of religion that beautiful story and
legend of his appearing to them in the breaking of
the bread, — so that the thing he did upon the sea
shore with the many hungry, and did at Bethany
with the little group of Lazarus and Martha and
Mary, they saw him do again, and by the accus-

THE ETEENAL LIFE 267
tomed interpreted the new, and by the habits of his
life conveyed to their hearts the assurance of his
life's continuance, — when you have relegated aR
these things to the poetry of religion, there remains
beyond aR question, despite all doubt, and better
than any evidence the past can furnish, the abiding
fact that the church, called by his title the Chris
tian Church, was not built upon an empty grave,
but was built upon the conviction, not that one
came out of the grave, but that forever It may be
believed that no man ever would go into the grave.
This is the church's affirmation of Eternal Life.
" You may bury me," said Socrates, " if you can
catch me ; but when you have buried my body, do
not say that you have buried Socrates." It was
a better though not quite so acute a phrase in
which it was said, "We would be clothed upon,
that mortality might be swaRowed up of life.
Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame
thing is God, who also hath given unto us the
earnest of the Spirit."
In many a church to-day an effort wiR be made
to tell the story of the resurrection and to have it
beReved. What a waste It is of the spiritual inter
pretations of life not to teR that greater story of
the soul's Eternal Life and have It lived ; for how
much I believe depends upon how much of the
spiritual life I know. The thing the ear shall take

268 THE GEEAT AFFIRMATIONS OF EELIGION
and treasure bears no comparison with the thing
that the heart demands and must have. Whatever
the evidence was on which they fed their faith in
the perpetuity of life, in the deathlessness of the
Christ, in the constancy of life, — " ever constant
to a constant change," — whatever the evidence
may have been. It must be true of all men, to have
been true of him ; else it is a curious incident and
not a fact of human experience. As I said to you
about the incarnation, so I say to you about this
marvelous poetic acclaim of the early church that
" he has risen : " that to have done this " once for
all " would be terrible ; but to have done it for all
once is a comfort perpetual ; for we lay our claim
upon the life of Jesus of Nazareth as bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh ; and whatever passed
upon him we shaR know in the measure of our
likeness to him.
I ask you to consider another principle for a
moment. It Is this : that when we are asked to
believe in death, we refuse to believe In death. I
do not know what death Is. I know that It Is a
name which our Ignorance has applied to something
we do not understand. I am conscious that I live.
Let him prove who can that I shall die. We argue
from our present state, and not from some man's
inquiry, what that state shall become. Conscious
ness is the consciousness of life, full, pulsating.

THE ETEENAL LIFE 269
delicious, so that he must be ill indeed who will
relax his fingers upon Rfe's spring and let it go.
Consciousness is life. The burden of proof that It
shall end rests on the man who is in love with
death. For me, for you, it is life that we beReve
in ; aR else Is its incident and nothing more. Why
should you be kept in bondage by fear of death ?
— in fear of that which you do not understand,
because you cannot have any knowledge of that of
which you have had no experience. God has or
dained this world after a beautiful fashion. What
wonder that Emerson said, " What I have seen of
God's work in this world leads me to trust for that
I have not seen; and whatever the great Provi
dence has in reserve for us, it must be something
beautiful and In the grand style of his work." No
wonder he was so assured. Let me call to mind
the things you do not understand, and then say
whether you will give them up.
Does any man know what love is, except In Its
compeRing mystery and regenerating presence in
this life ? Can he define It ? Who can measure
it ? Will you sound Its depths and say that it is
thus and thus ? Nay. The only time he measures
it is when Its ebb has come, and all the shore lies
dead. For the rest he simply loves, — he simply
loves ! It is the full tide on which the sentiment
of his youth came home like a full-freighted ship.

270 THE GEEAT AFFIEMATIONS OF RELIGION
It Is the tide on which his ebbing life shall go down
the shore again, it may be, and he shall look Into
the face of the woman who loves him, and say as
Bunsen said to his beloved, " In thy face have I
seen the Eternal." Do you know any better what
life Is than what love is ?
Do you know what sleep is ? You lay down last
night in perfect confidence that you should see to
day. You were not afraid to sleep, neither because
you might not wake, nor because you might have
horrid dreams. You committed yourself to the
keeping of that which you did not understand and
cannot define. A little matter of more or less
blood In the brain, perhaps? Does that explain
what happens in the hours of unconsciousness ? and
what happens when without a voice the light kisses
us awake and we come back to life again ?
An ancient thought was that the soul left the
body and came back to it again. Every Jew of
Jesus' day thanked God, on the opening of eyes In
the morning, that his soul had come back to him.
That does not explain. I believe that when the
hour comes, we may lay us down to die with as
perfect a confidence that the sleep is but for a time
as that with which last night we committed our
selves to the unknown ministry of sleep to wake
renewed. Nature gives us no warrant to add to
our vocabulary the word " death." Nature does not

THE ETERNAL LIFE 271
know the word " death." Did you say the tree had
died? Ask the chemical constituents of the tree,
— if you are able to question them, — what should
become of them. Yesterday, as you sat In the
sharp evening air before your grate and saw the
blaze of the cannel-coal burning there, did you not
say to yourself. This is imprisoned sunshine that
the tree drank In, and now It Is liberated after aR
these ages, here at home ? It is a pretty conceit ;
and it is most true. The tree died above the earth
to Rve In the ground and reproduce its long experi
ence of two hundred years or more, of bathing sun
shine and toughening fibre, and you laid it aside,
and however dark the day might be, you had the
stored-up sunshine of a primeval world at your dis
posal. Nature does not know the word " death."
Two words she knows, — " change " and " continu
ance," and is " constant to a constant change ; " and
I cannot beReve that the highest In me shaR serve
no further end ; for there is not a fibre of my
bone, nor an element in my tissue, nor a chemic
constituent of what we falsely caR dead matter In
the world, but is so precious to the great heart of
nature as to be forever hers. The two great laws
of constant nature are the conservation of energy,
and the correlation of forces. That which is once
present is always present, and, whatever change
may come upon Its method, no change comes upon

272 THE GREAT AFFIEMATIONS OF EELIGION
its Identity. That is the message of science to the
church ; that is the contribution made by those
who believe in the deathlessness of matter. I say,
let us put our lives — body and soul, consciousness
and hopes, and all that goes to make up the sum of
self — back into that great reservoir of the living
and the constant, and trust God " to keep that
which has been committed to his hands." ShaR
the bone serve the soR ? Shall blood poured out
serve the nation ? ShaR patriotism kindle to great
achievement ? And aR that I have said to God in
the days that were dark, and aR that I have sung
to God when the days were bright, has it vanished
Into nothingness ? Nay, never think It. It cannot
be true.
" We would be clothed upon, that mortality might
be swaRowed up of life." The business of this
day and hour, and every day and hour to foRow, is
to live the larger life ; so that little by little, and
more and more, there shaR pass upon us that subtile
change in which the carnal shaR be transfigured by
the spiritual ; in which the mighty gusts of even
our basRar passions shaR be led up to new uses.
As common air can be transformed into music
when the instrument Is fit, so from the ground of
our nature, where we begin, we ascend by slow de
grees to the higher levels, where mortality shall be
swallowed up of life. Jean Paul said, " When we

THE ETEENAL LIFE 273
die I think we shaR lose our sleep, but we shall not
lose our dreams." Let us see to it that life's fitful
sleep is so penetrated by dreams of larger life to
come that when we wake we shall say, " I am satis
fied, for I awake in thy likeness."

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