So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in
the great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal
which they do not forsee, and from which they would shrink in
dismay: the Church of the future, the Church redeemed by the
spirit of Brotherhood, the Church which we Socialists will join.
They call us materialists, and say that we think about nothing
but the belly--and that is true, in a way; because we are the
representatives of a starving class, which thinks about its belly
precisely as does any individual who is ravening with hunger. But
give us what that arrant materialist, James, the brother of
Jesus, calls "those things which are needful to the body," and
then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have souls;
whereas at present we are led to despise the very word
"spiritual", which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and
poseurs.
We have children, whom we love, and whose future is precious to
us. We would be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and
self-control, of dignity and grace. It would make us happy if
there were in the world institutions conducted by men and women
of consecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true
morality to the young. But it must be a morality of freedom, not
of slavery; a morality founded upon reason, not upon
superstition. The men who teach it must be men who know what
truth is, and the passionate loyalty which the search for truth
inspiries. They cannot be the pitiful shufflers and compromisers
we see in the churches today, the Jowetts who say they used to
believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Rather than
trust our children to such shameless cynics, we will make shift
to train them ourselves--we amateurs, not knowing much about
children, and absorbed in the desperate struggle against
organized wrong.
It is a statement which many revolutionists would resent, yet it
is a fact nevertheless, that we need a new religion, need it just
as badly as any of the rest of our pitifully groping race. That
we need it is proven by the rivalries and quarrels in our
midst--the schisms which waste the greater part of our
activities, and which are often the result of personal jealousies
and petty vanities. To lift men above such weakness, to make them
really brothers in a great muse--that is the work of "personal
religion" in the true and vital sense of the words.
We pioneers and propagandists may not live to see the birth of
the new Church of Humanity; but our children will see it, and the
dream of it is in our hearts; our poets have sung of it with
fervor and conviction. Read these lines from "The Desire of
Nations," by Edwin Markham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer
who is at hand:
And when he comes into the world gone wrong,
He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
To every heart he will its own dream be:
One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
"Baldur the Beautiful has come again!"
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:
"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!"
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice:
"Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!"
And social architects who build the State,
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,
Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.
And glad quick cries will go from man to man:
"Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan,
The King who loved the lilies, He has come!"