The American Church and the Spirit of Human
Brotherhood.
[=Division of Labor=]
As the century draws toward its end, and men make careful survey of the
work it has wrought in the many and varied fields of human activity,
it is natural that each observer should take a special interest in the
department which constitutes his specialty. The statesman studies the
social and political phenomena and forces of the age. The scientist,
the educator, the manufacturer, the financier, the merchant, find in
their respective spheres problems to be taken in hand and carefully
investigated, that the experience of the past may become wisdom for the
future. While this division of labor may tend to develop one-sidedness
in the individual, it provides ample material for the true student
of history, who, by collecting the data furnished by these various
investigators, may make wide and wise generalizations, and thus
contribute to a more complete study of human nature and human history.
The increase of general interest among special observers and students
will ensure in due time co-operation, increased intelligence, and
enthusiasm in the promotion of the highest civilization.
As the procession of the years which form the most wonderful century
of human history closes its solemn march, those who look on time as
deriving its chief worth from its relations to eternity, and who
estimate civilization as it bears upon the immortal character of man,
will of necessity judge a century by its religious quality and results,
asking: What place has religion held, what work has it wrought, what
errors have weakened it, what are the tendencies which now dominate it,
what are the opportunities which open before it?
[=American Type of Christianity=]
The American type of Christianity is in advance of all other Christian
types, since it grows among and permeates political and social ideas
and institutions which give it larger and fuller opportunities than
it has ever before known, opportunities to develop humanity on all
sides and in all relations. The American Church is made up of all
individuals, classes, societies, and agencies which bear the Christian
name or hold the Christian thought. It is not a "State Church." It is
not a "union Church"--constituted by the formal unification of diverse
sects or denominations. It embraces all believers (and in a sense
all citizens) without visible consolidation; it favors all without
legislative interference; it gives freedom to all without partiality or
discrimination.
[=Distinguishing Feature of American Life=]
The distinguishing feature of American life--which makes what we call
"freedom" mean more and promise more than does the civil, political,
and religious freedom of any other land, and which therefore gives
a distinctive character to the American Church--is that the liberty
of the individual has large and unhampered opportunity for growth
and action. Individual liberty here is actual liberty; unhindered by
governmental provisions for privileged classes, who, by the accident
of birth, leap into place and prerogative without merit of their own,
and whose unearned advantage is detrimental to the well-being of the
multitude. It is liberty which carries with it opportunity,--the
liberty of the lowest in the nation to reach the rank of the highest;
of the poorest to become the richest; of the most ignorant to become
the most learned; of the most despised to become the most honored;
the liberty of every man to know all that he can know, to be all that
he can be, and do all that he pleases to do, so long as he does not
interfere with the right of any other man to know all that he can
know, to be all that he can be, and to do all that he pleases to do.
It is the liberty among brothers, who, with all the prerogatives of
individuality, need not forget the brotherhood of man, and who have
every inducement not merely to guarantee to each other this regal right
of full personal development, but who easily learn how to render mutual
aid--every man helping every other man to know all that he can know, be
all that he can be, and to do all that he pleases to do.
This, then, is the ideal of American civilization: A nation of equals,
who are brothers. This is the doctrine of the closing American century;
the root of the goodly tree that covers such ample area with its
fruitful and bending branches; the vine which the right hand of the
Lord our God hath planted; this the lesson running along the bars and
shining out of the stars of our national flag. It is necessary that the
race experiment with this great idea of freedom and fraternity. It is
an idea that sounds well in rhyme and song, but it must stand the test
of practice as well; and is it capable of this? May this large Gospel
of the Christ be realized by a nation, and this nation become in spirit
and fact a church? This is the glorious thought running through the
civilization of our century, and this we believe to be the purpose of
the God of nations.
The distinctive feature of the nineteenth century in America is the
struggle for the recognition of these two noble ideas: The freedom of
the individual and the brotherhood of the race. And this thought is
thoroughly religious. It is pre-eminently Christian. It was taught,
enforced, and illustrated by the Nazarene. It is asserting itself in
our civilization. The work is now going on. It has not gone far, but it
is bound to go on to the blessed end. The leaven is working every day.
We are in the midst of the great experiment.
[=Development of the American Church=]
The American Church is not a State Church. It is supported not by law,
but by love. No large subsidies corrupt it. No political complications
weaken it. Church and State serve each other best when the only bond
between them is one of individual conviction and mutual confidence. The
beginnings of the Republic were made by religious men, who organized
religious communities. They sought our shores to secure religious
liberty. Some of them may have been narrow, but they were true and
brave. Some of the fetters that bound them had been severed, but some
still remained. They had not yet conceived the idea of an emancipated
and responsible individuality. Protestants fled from the severities
of Roman rule, and Romans from the oppressions of Protestants. And it
took a long time for Protestants to become free. But the founders and
fathers of the Republic were religious and God-fearing men. They were
simply pupils ("primary pupils" at that) in the school of human rights
and human brotherhood. The lessons were long and hard. It has taken
more than a century to get half through the "first reader," and there
is ample work for the century ahead, but as a people we are coming to
see the life of the Church in the aims and order of the State, and to
learn that God is in all history, that His claims upon men extend to
all social relations, sanctifying all secular and political life, and
embracing charity, sympathy, and justice in the minutest details of
life, as well as awe, reverence and worship.
[=The Sunday-school System=]
Simultaneously with the rise of the Republic began the great
Sunday-school system, which went everywhere with the open Bible and the
living teacher, with inspiring Christian songs, attractive books for
week-day reading, juvenile pictorial papers, social gatherings, and the
stimulating power of friendly fellowship in religious life. It brought
the people together, old and young, learned and unlearned, rich and
poor. It did more to "level up" society than any other agency in the
Republic. It made the adult who taught susceptible and affectionate
childhood a better citizen. It prepared the children to be wiser,
more conscientious, and more loyal citizens in the next generation.
In the widely extended Methodist revival, and in the all-embracing
Sunday-school movement, we see the hand of God fashioning the Nation
and the Church, that they might be one in aim and spirit, and that
through them might be promoted liberty, equality, and fraternity.
[=Union Church Associations=]
The various branches or denominations of the American Church are
influenced by these ruling ideas of the century; the freedom and
unrestricted opportunity of the individual and the spirit of generous
fraternity. The old warfare between the Protestant denominations
has virtually ceased. Co-operation in religious and reformatory
effort--the Young Men's Christian Association, the Women's Christian
Temperance Union, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, the
International Lesson system, the State and International Sunday-school
Conventions, the Evangelical Alliance, the Chautauqua Assemblies,
the exchange of pulpits, the frequent union revival meetings held by
representative evangelists, the ease with which ministers pass from
one denomination to another, the warm, personal friendships between
representative leaders of the several Churches, the growth and
enrichment of non-denominational periodical literature--these are some
of the signs of the larger thought now controlling our people.
[=The Value of Religion in Politics=]
The American Church, which imposes no creed but the creed of the
Republic, which knows no lines of division--sectarian, political, or
territorial--but which seeks the well-being of the individual and the
fellowship of all true citizens, will soon wield an immense influence
in matters political. It will discuss great ethical questions; it will
carry conscientiousness and independence into political action; it
will dissipate the weak heresy that Christians are not to take part in
national affairs. In the days of Christ and the Apostles, the governing
powers, the rulers of this world, were beyond the touch and control
of the people. It was for them humbly to serve and uncomplainingly to
suffer. But now all this has been changed. The people to-day stand
where Cæsar used to stand; and to be a thoughtful, conscientious,
active, consistent politician, is to be doing God's service. The church
member who neglects political duty is guilty of sin against both God
and the neighbor. The power of the people will be felt for good when
the people begin to know and to defend the true and the good. They have
during the century expressed the purpose of the American Church on the
subject of slavery. At its declaration the shackles have fallen. They
pronounced against and destroyed the Louisiana Lottery. Through the
press, the ballot, and the authority of law, the moral force of the
nation expresses itself and the base conspirators surrender. So must it
be with the saloon, and with all political evil. If politicians carry
moral questions into the political arena, the pulpit and all other
agencies of the church must go with the question before the people,
and lead them to consider it no less from the moral than from the
political point of view.
Aside from the development of the Christian religion as distinctively
displayed in the United States, its progress in the world at large
has been great and encouraging. Particularly has the spirit of
sectarianism, strongly manifested a century ago, decreased in force and
fanaticism diminished, while the sentiment of union and brotherhood
between churches of different sects has developed to a highly
encouraging degree.
[=Missionary Activity=]
Outside of Christendom the influences of the religion of Christ
have been widely spread by the active and enthusiastic labors of
missionaries, who have carried the lessons of the Gospels to all
lands, and established Christianity among numerous tribes formerly in
the lowest stages of heathenism and idolatry. The success of these
devoted men has been much less among peoples possessed of a religious
faith of a higher grade, as the Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Chinese, and
perhaps the most important results of their labors everywhere have been
those of education and civilization, necessary preliminaries, in the
case of ignorant and undeveloped peoples, to a just comprehension of
the principles of Christianity and the inculcation of advanced moral
sentiments and the high standard of the Golden Rule.
[=New Religious Movements=]
The religious history of the century does not end with the relation
of the progress of Christianity. There has indeed been some degree
of reaction of heathenism upon Christian countries, particularly in
the case of Buddhism, whose doctrines have made their way into Europe
and America, and gained there a considerable body of adherents. This
infiltration from without has developed into what is known as the
Theosophical Society, which claims over 100,000 members in the United
States alone. In addition may be named various new religious outgrowths
of home origin, including the Mormons, the Spiritualists, the Christian
Scientists, and others of less prominence. Similar new sects have
arisen in Mohammedan and Hindoo countries, such as the Babists in
Persia and the Brahmo Somaj in India, these latter being distinctive
reforms on the more ancient religious creeds and practices.
[=The Religion of Fear and of Love=]
What has been said above does not show the full extent of the religious
movement within the century. There has been an active spirit of
progress within the lines of denominational religion itself, and
liberal sentiment has made a marked and promising advance. The former
insistence upon creed as the essential factor in religion has greatly
weakened in favor of its ethical element, and the supremacy of conduct
over creed is openly taught. Again, the old religion of fear is giving
way before a new religion of love. The doctrine of future punishment,
and the attempt to swell the lists of church members by insistence upon
the horrors of Hades, are rarely heard in the pulpits of to-day, the
old Hell-fire conception having become at once too preposterous and too
alien to the character of the All Wise and All Good to be any longer
entertained except by the most ignorant of pulpit orators. In truth,
the doctrines of the modern pulpit are rapidly rising towards the
level of Christ's elevated teachings, and inculcating love and human
brotherhood as the essential elements of the Christian faith.
[=The Spirit of Liberalism=]
The growing spirit of liberalism has given rise to a large body of
moralists who repudiate the idea that faith in a creed is essential to
salvation, and claim that moral conduct is the sole religious element
that is likely to influence the future destiny of mankind. Persons of
this class are specially numerous in the ranks of the scientists, whose
habit of close observation, and rigorous demand for established facts
as the basis of all theoretical views, unfit them for acceptance of
any doctrines insusceptible of rigid demonstration from the scientific
standpoint. This requirement of hard and fast evidence, appealing
directly to the senses, and discarding all reliance upon the ideal or
upon the broad consensus of ancient belief, has no doubt been carried
too far, and has yielded a narrowness of outlook which will be replaced
by broader conceptions as psychological science develops. That it
exists now, however, cannot be denied, and its adherents constitute a
very large and influential body. Yet it must be said that science and
religion, for a time widely separated, are growing together, and that
in all probability the final outcome of modern thought and research
will be an alliance between these two great forces, a religion which
science can accept and a science in full accord with religious views
and principles.
[=The Movement in Ethics=]
If we now turn aside from religion as a whole, and consider only its
ethical side, it is to find an immense advance within the nineteenth
century. The standard of right conduct may not have risen, but the
sentiment of human sympathy and of the brotherhood of mankind has very
greatly developed, and human charity and fellow feeling, a century or
two ago largely confined within the limits of a nation or a city, are
now coming to embrace all mankind.
[=Child Labour in Factories=]
There has been a great amelioration in manners and customs within the
century, a great decrease in barbarity and cruelty. A few examples will
suffice to point this out. The barbarous practices in regard to child
labor which existed in 1800 and much later have often been depicted in
lurid colors, the selfish greed of employers giving rise to a "massacre
of the innocents" as declared and even more cruel in its methods
than that of the time of Christ. Thousands of children in the days of
our grandfathers were simply tortured to death in dark and dank mines
or gloomy and unhealthy workshops, at an age when they should have
been alternating between the useful confinement of the schools and
the healthful freedom of the playgrounds and the fields. This state
of affairs happily no longer exists, and in the present condition of
public sentiment could not be reproduced. The world has grown decidedly
beyond the level of such heartless cruelty.
[=Prevention of Cruelty to Animals=]
The development of sympathy has not confined itself to a redress of
the wrongs of children, but has made itself manifest in attention to
the wrongs of workmen as a whole, factory inspection having put an end
to many unhealthful and oppressive conditions formerly prevailing, and
saved thousands of workmen from being poisoned in the midst of their
daily labors. And not only human beings, but dumb animals, have been
reached by the awakened sympathy of modern communities. A century ago
the noble and patient horse was frequently treated with the utmost
brutality, without a hand or a voice being raised in its defence. This
barbarity was accepted as a part of the established and necessary order
of things, and dismissed with a shrug or perhaps without a thought.
To-day, in the more enlightened nations, this state of things has
ceased to exist. Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals
keep a close watch upon the brutally inclined, and have almost put
an end to cruel practices which formerly prevailed without a word of
protest, domestic animals being now protected as carefully as human
beings.
[=Prison Reform=]
In no direction did the lack of kindly sentiment of a century ago show
itself more decisively than in prison management. We do not mean to say
that philanthropy did not then exist, but that it was far from being
the active sentiment it has become to-day, and was largely without
effect upon legislators; the condition alike of convicted criminals,
of debtors, and of those held for trial being in many cases almost
indescribably horrible. The first effective movement towards prison
reform was made by John Howard, in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, but public sentiment was so dulled towards the condition of
prisoners that the horrors painted out by him were in great measure
permitted to continue. The legislators of England could not be awakened
to any active interest in the inmates of the gaols.
[=Prison Life a Century ago=]
When Elizabeth Fry made her first visit to the female department of
Newgate, the city prison of London, in 1813, she found a state of
affairs whose horrors, words are weak to convey. The women inmates
"were limited to two wards and two yards, an area of about one hundred
and ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which some three hundred
women with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and
misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence
of an old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as
a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags;
some desperate from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in
language, still more recklessly depraved in their habits and behavior.
Everything was filthy beyond description. The smell of the place was
quite disgusting."
The condition of affairs on the men's side, unless they were able to
pay for better accommodations, was similar to that here described.
Their treatment, indeed, depended largely on the amount of money they
could pay the jail officials and they were fleeced without mercy. The
practice of fettering them was so common that nearly every one wore
irons, even the untried being often laden with fetters, while their
limbs were chafed into sores by the weight of these useless instruments
of torture.
The report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, at as
late a date as 1818, shows the existence of an almost incredible
state of things in English prisons. Many of the gaols were in the
most deplorable condition, and crowded far beyond their powers of
accommodation. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or
spent it in gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded
into the narrowest quarters conceivable. Twenty men were forced to
sleep in a space twenty feet long by six wide--accomplishing this
seemingly impossible feat by "sleeping edgeways." In the morning the
stench and heat were something terrible; "the smell on first opening
the door was enough to knock down a horse." The jail hospitals were
filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with
closed windows, where a boy lay ill with fever, three other prisoners,
at first perfectly healthy, were found lodged. It is no wonder that
the deadly jail fever raged as an epidemic in such pest holes, and
even communicated itself to the judges before whom these wretches were
brought for trial.
[=Improvement in Prison Life=]
We have by no means told all the horrors of prison life at that period,
but will desist from giving any more of its painful details. It need
scarcely be said that an utterly different state of affairs now exists
in all civilized lands, prisoners being treated as human beings instead
of wild beasts; and so warm is the feeling of public sympathy with the
wretched that any of the horrors here depicted would raise a universal
cry of deprecation in the land. Kindness is now the rule in dealing
with criminals of all grades, and every effort is made to supply them
with employment, and to attend to the requirements of comfort and
cleanliness. Prisons are rapidly developing into schools for reform,
and with remarkable success where systems of this kind have been fully
developed.
[=Capital Punishment in 1800=]
The laws of a century ago were barbarous almost beyond conception at
the present day. Capital punishment, now confined to murderers, was
then inflicted for some twenty-five separate crimes, including forgery,
coining, sheep or horse stealing, burglary, cutting and maiming,
rick-burning, robbery, arson, etc. There were, in fact some two hundred
capital crimes on the statute books, but most of these had grown
obsolete. Yet such a minor offence as stealing in a dwelling house
was a crime punishable by hanging, and men were occasionally executed
on the gallows for a small theft that would now subject them to only
a few months of imprisonment. It was not until after 1830 that an
amelioration in these severe laws began, and with such effect that the
number of persons sentenced to death in England decreased from 458 in
1837 to fifty-six in 1839. After 1841 the death penalty was inflicted
only for murder, though seven other crimes remained capital by law
until 1861.
[=Public Executions=]
The practice of public executions was another barbarous feature of the
code, and the scenes around the gallows at Tyburn, on the occasion of
the execution of any criminal of note, were so disgraceful that it
seems incredible that they could exist in any civilized land. Other
relics of the dark ages were the public exhibition of the bodies of
the executed, and hanging in chains on a gibbet, a practice in vogue
until 1832. In one case mentioned, at that late date, "a sort of fair
was held, gaming tables were set up, and cards were played under the
gibbet, to the disturbance of the public peace and the annoyance of all
decent people."
It will suffice to say here that this state of affairs has been
reformed out of existence. Executions, restricted solely to murderers,
now take place wholly in private, and so great is the public desire to
prevent suffering to the condemned that the first electrical execution
in New York raised a cry of horror when it was announced that life
did not cease within the few seconds expected, but that the power of
sensation continued for perhaps a minute. In truth, in this instance,
there was something of a hyper-sensibility manifested, but one of a
kind creditable to human nature.
[=The Spirit of Sympathy=]
The development of the spirit of sympathy with the poor and suffering
is by no means confined to the instances stated, but has gained an
extraordinary extension. The rapid progress of railroad and steamship
communication, the enormous increase in travel, and the bringing of
the ends of the earth together by means of the telegraph wire have
made of all mankind one great family, and the instinct of charity and
benevolence reaches to the most remote quarters of the globe. Notable
results of this feeling, of recent date, have been the efforts to
ameliorate the suffering in India during the late famine, the war
instigated by sympathy in Cuba, the earnest efforts to supply food to
the starving in Porto Rico, and the fervent feeling aroused in favor of
the unjustly punished Dreyfus.
[=The Growth of Charity=]
In regard to charity at home, the instances of it are voluminous beyond
our power to record. Hospitals, asylums, institutions of benevolence
of the most varied character, have been everywhere instituted, alike
in Europe and America, mainly through public donations, and there
is no form of want or suffering which is not met by some attempt at
alleviation. Homes for the afflicted of every kind are rising in
all directions; charity is organized and active to a degree never
before seen; the bettering of the condition of the poor by improved
residences, methods of recreation and instruction, and other acts
of aid and kindness is actively going on, and in a hundred ways
benevolence is striving to lift man from want and degradation into
comfort and advanced conditions.
What is known as altruism, the sentiment of fellow feeling, is, in
part, coming to be one of the active conditions of the age, and is
among the most promising signs of the times. Selfishness, indeed, is
abundantly prevalent still, yet altruistic feeling is rapidly on the
increase, and gifts for benevolent purposes of all kinds are becoming
remarkably abundant. Hundreds of instances might be named, but we shall
confine ourselves to one, Andrew Carnegie's wise and kindly devotion of
the income of his great fortune to the founding of public libraries,
than which nothing could serve better to bring man into a condition of
mind which will prevent him from becoming a willing object of charity.
[=An Advanced Spirit of Benevolence=]
Certainly the Golden Rule is bearing fruit in these later days, and men
are widely doing unto others as they would wish to be done by. The old,
narrow idea of patriotism is being replaced by a growing sentiment of
the brotherhood of all mankind, and altruism is making its way upward
through the dense mass of selfism which has so long dominated the
world. It is still only in its pioneer stage, but the indications of
its growth are encouraging, and we may look forward with hope to a day
in which it will become the leading influence in the social world, and
selfishness lose its long and strong hold upon the heart of man.
[Illustration: JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
HENRY EDWARD MANNING
LEARNED CARDINALS]
[Illustration: HENRY DRUMMOND.
REV. JOHN WATSON (IAN MACLAREN).
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.
FREDERICK W. FARRAR.
WRITERS OF RELIGIOUS CLASSICS.]