RELIGION.
Ours is the most religious country on the face of the earth. There are
more churches to the square mile of city and village area than any other
part of the world, not excepting the grand old city of Rome. They may
not be all of the same denomination, but their attendants worship the
same God. They may quarrel a great deal about points of faith, but on
essentials they are, if not exactly one, so closely related that there
is room for any amount of hope. About baptism and regeneration and
sanctification and adoption and perhaps damnation they may differ
frightfully; but all of them base their belief upon the Apostles’ Creed,
and look for their spiritual inspiration to the law of the Old and New
Testament, preferably that of the four gospels.
Religion is a life, whatever else it may or may not be. No person who
makes any pretence of being religious declines to admit that his creed
is the basis of the life which he would like to lead, whether or not he
may succeed in making his practice conform to his principles.
That religion consists in proper life with a view to a life to come, or
at least that it is so regarded, is proved by the custom which becomes
more and more prevalent of judging men and women according to their
religious professions.
There was a time when, if a man assented to a given form of faith, his
life might be almost anything he pleased; and some of the most active
“Defenders of the Faith,” as they styled themselves, whether they were
Catholics, Protestants, Trinitarians or Unitarians, have been found
among men who would nowadays not be considered fit to introduce into
respectable society. The time when such things were has departed, and
shows not the faintest sign of ever returning again. To-day a man’s
religious profession is regarded as an assertion by himself of what he
would have his life, and what he proposes that his life shall be judged
by.
A cheering sign of the earnestness and sincerity of religion in modern
times is that there is very little proselyting now. People who smile
cheerfully at one another during six days of the week, do not glare and
frown at one another on Sunday, as they used to do when meeting on their
ways to their respective churches, and from the manners of members of
different denominations meeting in business or polite society, no one
could imagine or discern to what particular creed any one of those
people subscribed. The Methodist, the Baptist, the Catholic, the
Episcopalian, meet each other cheerily in business and in society, their
families intermarry, they have business relations with each other, and
no one in indorsing or cashing a business man’s note ever thinks of
asking to what particular church he may belong.
In a number of country towns this fraternal feeling has been largely
stimulated and strengthened by what are called “union meetings,” in
which all the members of all the congregations in the town unite at
appointed dates in general services of prayer and worship. Occasionally
the pastor of some church in the vicinity may object to taking part in
such services, but pastors in congregations are frequently like
Congressmen and the people--the followers are ahead of the leader. Only
a little while ago a Catholic priest of high repute in his own
denomination, and held in high esteem by the entire community in which
he was known, ascended the platform at a western camp-meeting, in which
denominations differing from his own had united, and made a most earnest
undenominational and spiritual address to the entire audience before
him.
Revival meetings, however they may be laughed at by the more refined and
fastidious of church people, have had the effect in late years of
attracting a great many thousands of people toward religious life. The
most noted of these were conducted, as every one knows, by Messrs.
Moody and Sankey, two men who were never regularly ordained as clergymen
by any authority whatever--they are simple laymen and undenominational
workers. Yet these men never went to any city or town to begin their
peculiar system of work until all, or nearly all, the pastors of
churches had united in calling them and had promised to assist to the
best of their ability. No effort was made by these men to make converts
for any denomination whatever. Their sole purpose was to cause men and
women to change their manner of life from that of the ordinary every-day
selfishness of the unregenerate man and to compel him to recognize an
over-ruling Providence who should also be the guide of his daily life in
every respect. Mr. Moody, however “shaky” he may have been according to
any theological test, was earnest and sincere enough to say to all the
clerical fraternity of any town in which he worked, that he came only to
sow seed and that it was the business of others to reap the harvest, and
that he cared not into whose flock the lambs were led, so long as they
were rescued from the wilderness. The Moody and Sankey movement is open
to a great deal of criticism, and probably no one has regarded it with
more jealous eye than newspaper editors, yet the editorial fraternity
throughout the country has been compelled to admit that the agitation
begun by these men had a marked influence for good on whatever community
it was exerted.
Such a movement would have been utterly impossible fifty years ago,
perhaps twenty-five years ago. To attempt to lead men to God without
outlining a road which traversed a great many other roads said to lead
in the same direction would have united against the leader all the
churches in the vicinity.
There are no fights between denominations now-a-days. A church may fight
within its own borders as furiously as a gang of worried dogs, but for
the occupants of several different pulpits in any given town or in any
portion of a great city to call each other bad names and intimate that
the followers of any one but the speaker would find themselves after
death in a most uncomfortable and irremediable condition of soul and
body is no longer the case. The principal feeling now excited by large
success in any particular congregation is one of emulation. If one
church holds a successful mission or revival meeting or series of
special efforts, and succeeds in persuading a number of people to enroll
themselves formally among any band of persons professing to be
Christians, the only competitive result that can be seen or heard of is
an effort of the neighboring churches to go and do likewise.
Why, it is no longer necessary for churches to be built solely by those
who are members of the congregation which is endeavoring to erect the
edifice. A subscription for the building fund of a church of any
denomination is passed around among people of all faiths and no faith,
and money is subscribed as freely and as unreservedly as if the effort
was being made simply for the relief of some individual in
embarrassment. It has come to be considered in the United States that a
church, no matter of what denomination, is a good thing to have in the
neighborhood, and the more churches the better. Any man of public spirit
or Christian feeling who has any money to spare can be depended upon to
subscribe to the erection of a church of any denomination, the Mormon
church always excepted.
All this is immensely encouraging to men who regard religion as the
greatest moral influence of life, as well as a promise of things less
seen yet more important in which the majority of people believe more or
less blindly. The change has come about through the different pulpit
method that has come in vogue within a very few years. Men have learned
to look upon religion of any kind as infinitely preferable to no
religion at all. No man who keeps his eyes open has failed to see
changes, such as can be accounted for by no other theory, as to the
possibilities of human nature, suddenly and quietly achieved through the
practice of religious life as indicated by some particular creed. So
far as changes in the lives of individuals are concerned, creed seems to
make very little difference. Within the lines of all denominations men
can be found who, according to every rule and precedent of human nature,
should be dishonest, indolent, vile, and brutal, yet who have suddenly
become respectable and in all things visible entirely decent. Any
attempts to break down religion, as such, are stoutly combated by the
entire intelligent portion of the community, barring the few dilettanti
who are not certain about anything, and least of all about whatever will
make themselves amenable to the moral law. Colonel Bob Ingersoll can
draw a large crowd in a large city, but never in his life has he had as
large an audience as can be found any Sunday in any one of twenty
churches in the city of New York, and were he to enter some of our
smaller towns he would find himself with the same proportion of hearers.
Most religious people who think--and most of them do think--have periods
of doubt on a great many topics which in the earlier portion of their
new life seemed to them essentials. Nevertheless they have learned by
experience not to change their faith, much less to abandon it, because
of some things which they do not understand. Since religion has become a
life instead of a mere belief, all men who sincerely practice it have
learned that there is a great unknown of human experience beyond which
their own lives cannot reach except at certain times and under certain
influences, and to abandon what they doubt would mean to them to also
forego the fruits of what they already know and believe.
There is not the slightest fear that the United States will become an
irreligious nation. Some church pews may be empty, some men may go very
seldom to service, or confession, but that most men think and feel the
influence of religion upon the young and upon the family circle is too
well known and established to admit of any doubt. The heads of families
who are most careless about their own personal lives are often most
earnest in urging upon their families all the ministrations of whatever
churches they may chance to attend. It matters no longer from what
denomination is selected the clergyman who shall ask grace at a large
public dinner, or open a solemn public gathering with prayer, or as to
what may be the creed of the spiritual teacher who may be asked to take
part in deliberations upon grave moral interests of the community.
All this is immensely encouraging, and promises lasting good to the
nation.