"Church Unification" has long been the dream of many
earnest souls, who regret to see the various denominations
wasting energy warring upon each other that should be
brought to bear on the legions of Lucifer; but even the most
sanguine must admit there is little prospect of their dreams
becoming more tangible--at least for some ages yet. The
bloody chasm which Luther and his co-laborers opened will
not be bridged during the lifetime of the present generation,
and human wisdom is not competent to formulate a
"creed," to devise a "doctrine," upon which the Protestant
world will consent to unite. The present tendency is not
toward church unification, but greater and more sharply
defined division. Instead of dogmatic controversy
dying away it is becoming more general; "heterodoxy" is
being hunted with a keener zest than for years, and
doctrinal disputation has become well-nigh as virulent as
the polemics of partisan politics.
In the meantime a majority of mankind in highly civilized
countries remain away from church--take no thought of the
future or seek truth in science rather than revelation.
Dogmatism is the fruitful mother of Doubt. By assuming to
know too much of God's great plan; by demanding too
abject obedience to his fiats; by attempting to stifle honest
inquiry and seal the lips of living scholars with the dicta of
dead scholastics, by standing ever ready to brand as
blasphemers all who presume to question or dare to differ,
the church has driven millions of Godfearing men into
passive indifference or overt opposition, and the number is
rapidly increasing. The church does not realize how
stupendous this army really is. Not every man who regards
the church as but a pretender proclaims that fact on the
housetops. It is not "good policy," and policy is the
distinguishing characteristic of this day and age. Church
people are very sensitive to criticism of their creed (perhaps
the mother of a malformed or vicious child could tell why),
and most men have loved ones or patrons who are trying to
find a little comfort among the husks of an iron-bound
orthodoxy. If any devout dogmatizer really desires to learn
how general is this attitude of nonreceptivity of the orthodox
religion, let him assume the role of a scoffer; then he will
hear the truth from men's lips; for while the doubter may
yield passive assent to the prevalent orthodoxy, the earnest
believer is not apt to enact the role of Peter without
compulsion. Instead of conquering the world, the church is
rapidly losing what it has hitherto gained. True, it still
retains a semblance of vigor and prosperity; but, like many
a great political structure, its brilliancy is born of
decay. It is no longer the dominating factor in social life,
the heart and soul of civilization, but an annex--increasing
in magnificence as wealth increases and mankind can
afford to expend more for ostentation and fashionable
diversion.
It is noticeable that the less attention the minister pays to
creeds, the less dogmatism he indulges in, the more
popular he becomes with the people, the more eagerly they
flock to hear him. The world does not care to listen to
prosy lectures on foreordination and the terrors of Tartarus,
because its reason rejects such cruel creeds; it takes little
interest in the question whether Christ was dipped or
sprinkled by the gentleman in the camel's-hair cutaway,
because it cannot, for the life of it, see that it makes any
difference; it does not want to be worried with jejune
speculations anent the Trinity, because it considers one
God quite sufficient if it can but find him; does not want to
hear much about the miracles, because it considers it a
matter of absolute indifference whether they are true or not.
But just the same, the great world is heart-hungry for real
knowledge of the All-Father, eager to embrace any faith
that does no violence to its reason, to grasp at any tangible
thread of hope of a happy life with loved ones beyond the
tomb's dark portals.
Prof. James T. Bixby, in a powerful plea for truth-seekers,
quoted approvingly the words of an eminent ecclesiastic of
the church of England who characterized the present age
as "preeminently the age of doubt." Another writer says
that Europe is turning in despair toward Nirvana. The
almost unprecedented success of Hartman's "Philosophy of
the Unconscious"--which is little more or less that
Buddhism--gives a strong color of truth to the startling
assertion. While Europe is sending missionaries to the
Ganges, India is planting the black pessimism of
Gautama on the Rhine and the Seine! Nineteen
centuries of dogmatizing, to end in an "age of doubt" and a
cry for the oblivion of Nirvana! Clearly there is something
wrong, for doubt and a desire for annihilation is not the
normal condition of the human mind. A belief in God, that
the universe is the result of design, is inherent in man. It is
not a belief that must be implanted and tenderly nursed; it
is one that manifests itself in the lowest form of savage life
of which we have cognizance--one that is well-nigh
impossible to crush out--and complementing this belief, in
most instances, is the hope of immortality. No cataclysm of
crime into which man can plunge is able to eradicate his
belief that he is the creature of a supernatural power and
intelligence. The tendency of scientific research is to
strengthen it by making more manifest the wondrous works
of God. It is doubtful if the belief in man's divine origin was
ever entirely obliterated from any human mind--if there ever
was or will be an "atheist." Many men believe themselves
such; but if they will carefully examine their position, they
will usually find that they have been carried to this extreme
by a powerful revulsion from incredible dogmatism, and that
they can only maintain it by a continual and unnatural
effort--by a persistent outrage upon that very intelligence of
which they boast. The moment they cease to act on the
defensive they begin to drift back under the divine spell; to
pay homage, conscious or unconscious, to the All-Father.
Those who deny the inspiration of the Bible are, for the
most part, but doubting Thomases who ask to see the nail-
prints in the hands of their risen Lord; who are disposed to
question him, not because they are irreligious, but because
they want the Truth, and they know for a verity that it is the
truth.
Is it not possible to found a church in which may be
gathered the millions who cannot swallow the miracles, the
incarnation, the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and other
non-essential husks that enshroud the Christian cultus;
where that religion which exists, conscious or unconscious,
in their nature, may find room for expansion; where honest
inquiry may be prosecuted, doubts freely and fairly
discussed and perhaps dispelled; where all Truth, whether
found in the Bible or the Koran, the Law of Mana or the
Zend-Avesta, science or philosophy, may be eagerly seized
and carefully treasured? If it were possible to thus bring
together and utilize the vast amount of religious energy
which lies without the pale of all present churches,
unrecognized by the most, warred upon by the many; if it
were possible to gather all believers in God together where
they may strengthen their faith by communion and worship;
extend their knowledge by research in every field, spiritual
and material, secular and religious, what a mighty recruit
would thus be added to those powers that are working for
the world's salvation!
Let me briefly sketch such a church as I would like to be a
member of--such as I imagine millions of others who are
not, will never be members of existent communions, would
worship in with pleasure. Its chief "essential" should be
belief in God--not the God of the Jews, Mohammedans or
Christians, but the God of everything, animate and
inanimate in the whole broad universe; the God of Justice
and Wisdom, Truth and Love; the God seen in the face of
every noble woman and honest man, heard in every truth,
felt in every holy aspiration. Everyone believing in the
existence of such a God--and I doubt if any do not--should
be eligible for membership, no matter what their theories
regarding his personality, plans and powers. Truth should
be sought assiduously, and welcomed wherever
found. We should not attempt to make it fit a preconceived
theory, but to make the theory conform to it. Science
should be the handmaid of the church, philosophy its
helpful brother; but its ecumenical council, its court of last
resort, should be the religious instinct inherent in man--that
perception so fine, so subtle, that all attempts to weave it
into words to clothe it so that the eye may perceive and the
reason handle it, have signally failed; which logic has
hammered at with all her ballistae and battering-rams for
thirty centuries or more in vain; which, above all things else,
binds the human race in one great brotherhood, has
supplied the missing links in every cult, bridged its laches,
surmounted its incongruities, comprised its inexpugnable
fortress upon which the high flood-tide of worldly wisdom
beats in vain.
Its body doctrine should be Love of God, Charity for man,
Truth, Honor, Purity. In these are comprised "the whole
Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus'
Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon and
all codes, catechisms, divinities, moralities whatsoever, that
man has hitherto devised (and enforced with altar-fire and
gallows-ropes) for his social guidance." They embrace all
that is blessed and beautiful, gracious and great in every
sect, science and philosophy known to man. These are
"points of doctrine" upon which there can be no dissension;
Buddhist and Mohammedan, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and
Calvinist, philosopher and "free-thinker," will all approve.
Regarding what provision the Lord will make for us
hereafter, the plenary or partial inspiration of the Bible, the
evidential value of the miracles, the divinity of Christ, and
kindred subjects, every communicant may properly be left
free to exercise his individual judgment. To formulate a
cast-iron article of faith upon any or all these
questions would be to enter the realm of dogmatics,
to add one more voice to the ecclesiastical wrangle that is
filling the earth and heaven and hades with its unprofitable
din--to found a sect instead of a world-embracing church
devoted to the simple worship of God and the inculcation of
morals. To many a religion without a future-life annex may
appear as unfinished as a building without a roof; as
ephemeral, as unstable as one put together without nails or
mortar; but such forget that future reward and punishment
was no part of the early Hebrew cult--that the doctrine of
man's immortality is but a late and apparently a Gentile
graft; that the Buddhist religion, which has held the souls of
countless millions in thrall, teaches complete extinction of
the ego as the greatest good. Man does not embrace
religion "for what there is in it"; does not worship because
God possesses the power to reward and punish, any more
than he stands entranced by the glory of the sunrise
because the rays of the Day-god will ripen his cotton and
corn. He pays involuntary homage to the Higher Power, as
he does to men of genius who benefit him but indirectly, to
women of great beauty whom he never hopes to possess.
We may safely trust our future to the same great Power to
whom we owe the present. It is of far more importance that
we make the most possible of this life than that we have
fixed convictions anent the next. It is safe to assume that
had the great God intended we should know for a surety
what awaits us beyond Death's dark river, He would have
made it so manifest that diversity of opinion would be
impossible; that had he intended we should each and all
accept Christ as a divinity, He would have driven stronger
pegs upon which the doubting Thomases of this late day
could hang their faith; that had He intended the Bible
should stand for all time as His infallible word, it would not
have been intrusted for so many centuries to the care
of fallible men; that had He intended we should each and
all believe the miracles, He would have made better
provision for their authentication--or built our heads on a
different plan. Belief in immortality is a very comforting
doctrine--for such as hope to dodge hell-pains--and is so
general, so prone to manifest itself, where the mind of man
has not been persistently trained in an opposite direction,
that we may almost call it a religious instinct, which is but a
vulgarism for a divine and direct revelation of God;
therefore, it should not be discouraged in our new world-
church, but given every opportunity for expansion. No one
should be excluded, however, if he fail to find evidence,
within or without, to sustain the theory.
Such a church would embrace all others as the ocean-
stream of the ancients encompassed and fed every sea. It
would be the tie that would bind all in unity. It should
welcome to its pulpit all ministers of whatsoever
denomination who desire to treat the worship of God from a
nonsectarian standpoint or read a homily calculated to
strengthen the morals of mankind. Its hymns should be
songs of praise to that God who made us the greatest in
His visible creation; its prayers should be thanks for past
mercies and petitions that He will make our brightest
dreams of life eternal beyond the skies a blessed reality--
that having brought us so near His bright effulgence in-
create for Time, He will gather us to His loving bosom for
all Eternity.
Such is the church in which I hope one day to see the
whole world gathered--a church whose paeans of praise
to the great God would drown dogmatic dialecties as the
swelling notes of an organ drown the fretful complaining of
a child.