The old religions and science are at war. With pitiless consistency
science directs its attack upon their vulnerable positions. The
conception of inexorable law subverts the testimony of miracles; the
fond belief in truths divinely revealed fails to withstand the searching
analysis of historical criticism; the battle of science is yet far from
being won, but from our standpoint the issue cannot appear doubtful. It
behooves us therefore to inquire into the moral bearings of the general
result thus far achieved and to review what we have lost and won.
Shall we succeed thereby in allaying the sense of alarm that is wont
to agitate the timid heart when it beholds so much that it confidently
believed a part of the everlasting verities of life, sink back into the
gulf of uncertainty and doubt?
We are standing at the portals of a new age, and new conceptions have
arisen of the purpose which we are here to accomplish and of the means
of help we can command in the attempt to realize our destiny. These
new conceptions we call The New Ideal. It is the purpose of our present
discourse to compare some salient features of the old and new.
The old and new Ideals agree in looking to an Infinite beyond the
borders of experience, for it is in the nature of the ideal to lift us
above the merely real. They differ in the direction in which they
seek their object, and the bias which they consequently give to men's
thoughts and actions. Theology, perceiving the inability of reason to
solve the problems of the beginning and the end, yet unable to
restrain a desire to know what is really unknowable, has impressed the
imagination into its service, and drawn a picture of the transcendental
world, conforming indeed to the analogies of man's terrestrial
existence, but on this account all the more adapted to answer the wishes
of the masses of mankind. Enough for them that they feel the need of
believing the picture true. We of the New School are, if possible,
even more profoundly convinced of the limitations of human reason. We
cheerfully accord to the religious conceptions of the past a poetic
value; they are poetry, often of the sublimest kind; but we cannot
deceive ourselves as to the noble weakness of the heart to which they
owe their origin; we cannot forget that in their case alas the wish
has been father to the thought. To us the mystery is still mystery--the
veiled arcana are not revealed, the riddle is unread. But we are not
therefore filled with terror or dismay. In the moral nature of man we
discover a divine element. In the voice of conscience we hear the voice
of the present divinity within us, and we learn to regard this mortal
state of ours as a channel through which the currents of Eternity ebb
and flow ceaselessly. The divine nature is not far off, nor beyond the
sea; in our own hearts on our own lips!
But let us seek to scrutinize the distinctive features of the old and
new more closely. The old ideal was supernatural in character, it taught
man to regard his life on earth as a brief, temporary transit, himself
an exile from the Kingdom on high. The concerns of the present world
were in consequence deemed of secondary importance, and the eye dwelt
with anxious preference on the dim chances of the hereafter. Where the
hope of immortality has been prominently put forward by any religion,
the effect has thus but too often proved disastrous to the progress and
security of society. It is well-known by what painful penances the monks
of the Middle Ages sought release from the trammels of the flesh,
how they affected to despise the ties of domestic affection, how they
retarded the advancement of knowledge, how the passions which they
sought in vain to suppress often recoiled upon them with fearful
retribution, and gave rise to disorders which seriously undermined
public virtue.
But not only has supernaturalism tended indirectly to weaken the springs
of virtue, it has called into being an order of men whose very existence
is a standing menace to the freedom of intellect and the rights of
conscience. The distance between the Creator and his creatures is so
great, that the intervention of some third party is deemed necessary
to mediate between the finite and the Infinite. The priest steps in to
perform this office, and his influence is great in proportion to the
value of the services which he is supposed to render. Furthermore it
is believed that the personal deity requires the performance of certain
actions in his honor, and what these actions are is again left to the
priest to determine. In this manner the ceremonial part of religion
grows up, and acquires a degree of importance fatal to the moral life.
The duties toward God transcend the duties toward man, and but too often
usurp their place.
The Bible likens the relations of man to God to those of a child to its
father. It is true supernaturalism has often proved a valuable stay to
those already morally strong, and it were absurd to deny that under its
fostering care many of the noblest qualities that distinguish the filial
relation have been developed in the lives of religious men. It is from
no lack of appreciation on our part that we have dwelt on the evils
rather than the blessings it has brought. But in acknowledging that we
have really lost the sense of protection, the childlike trust which lend
such rare beauty to the character of many ancient models of piety, we
deemed it important to point to the shades that darken the picture
of the * supernatural religions, its lights are made the theme of a
thousand discourses week after week, and are hardly in any danger of
being speedily forgotten.
From the back-ground of the old Ideal stands out in bold relief the new.
It is the reverse of supernatural; if it takes pride in anything, it is
in marking a return to nature. Trammels of the flesh, contamination of the
body? There is nothing it tells us in itself contaminating. The body is
not alien to the mind, it is the seed plot from which mind flowers out
in every part. Regard the form of man, observe the quick play of the
features, the expressive smile, the speaking glance, every attitude,
every gesture full of meaning, the whole body irradiated as it were,
with the indwelling intelligence. And so the passions too which we are
wont to associate with our corporeal nature are but the rough material
from which the artist soul behind them fashions its immortal types of
beauty and of holiness. There is a graceless innuendo in the term nature,
as of something hard, gross, material. In truth, nature is the subtlest,
most ethereal presence of which we catch a gleam only at rare intervals,
the reflex of a hidden light that glimmers through the facts and motions
of the world. Take the nature of water for instance. Is it in the
hydrogen, in the oxygen, in the single atom? Not there, yet there!
somewhere hovering, imponderous, elusive. It comes nighest to the senses
when the atoms act and react upon each other, in the flow of mighty
rivers, in the leap of cataracts, in the turmoil of the sea. Or the
nature of the tree; is it in the roots, in the trunk, in the spreading
branches, the leafy crown? Perhaps in the fruit more than elsewhere the
hidden being of the tree comes forth into external reality, and opens
to the eye and touch. In action and fruition the deeper nature appears.
Thus in the outward world, and thus in man. Our soul-life, too, is a
flowing stream, whose power is not in any part but in the ceaseless,
changeful motion of the whole, that forms a strong spiritual current on
which our thoughts and sentiments move like swimmers toward an infinite
sea. And like a tree are we, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the
spreading branches of imagination, the fibrous roots of the lower
instincts, that bind us to the earth. But the moral life is the fruit we
bear; in it our true nature is revealed; in it we see the purpose of
our being fulfilled. So when we speak of a return to nature, it is this
higher nature to which we refer, whose origin we know not, but whose
workings we feel, and know them by the token of the sweet satisfaction
they afford us to be the crown and glory of our lives. The old Ideal
emphasizes the Eternal that is without us; the new the Eternal that is
within ourselves. The old styles us exiles from the kingdom of truth;
the new summons us to be the banner-bearers of truth; the old points to
a heaven beyond the earth, the new tells us that our earth too is a part
of the heaven, a light-world, among endless worlds of light.
If secondly we consider the means of support at our disposal in
the pursuit of the ideal, we find prayer in universal use among the
adherents of the old. Prayer in the sense of supplication, has been
defined as "a request made to the Deity as if he were a man." And truly
the language of prayer often tallies with this description. "Let me
succeed in this undertaking," prays the Indian, "that I may slay my
enemy and bring home the tokens of victory to my dear family, in order
that they may rejoice together. Have pity on me and protect my life,
and I will bring thee an offering." Some such inducement as the last is
frequently coupled with the petition, "Here is an offering for you, O
God! Look kindly towards this family, let it prosper and increase, and
let us all be in good health." "Let me come upon my enemies speedily,
let me find them sleeping and not awake, and let me slay a good many of
them." "I pray for cattle, I pray for corn, I ask also for children, in
order that this village may have a large population, and that your name
may never come to an end, for of old we have lived by your favor, let us
continue to receive it. Remember that the increase of our produce is the
increase of your worship, and that its diminution must be the diminution
of your rites." Among the Hindoos the efficacy ascribed to prayer was
such that the gods themselves were deemed powerless to resist it, and
the mystic invocations of the priests exerted a fateful influence on the
destinies of the world. The ancient and modern literature of the Hebrews
likewise testifies to their faith in prayer, and Christianity has
herein followed if not outstripped their example. In case of drought
the following prayer is offered in many of our churches: "Send us, we
beseech thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rain and showers that
we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort and to thy honor."
In case of storms: "We humbly beseech thee to restrain these immoderate
rains, wherewith for our sins thou hast afflicted us, and we pray thee
to send such seasonable weather that the earth may in due time yield her
increase for our benefit." In case of famine, "Increase the fruits of
the earth by thy heavenly benediction, and grant that the scarcity
and dearth which we now most justly suffer for our sins, through thy
goodness may be turned into plenty." In case of sickness, prayers are
offered for the recovery of the sufferer.
Against all these forms of petition the modern view of life emphatically
protests. It starts with the grandest of scientific generalizations,
that of the universality of nature's laws. These laws cannot be broken;
they govern the course of the planets as they revolve through space,
they appear in the slightest eddy of dust that rises on our streets. The
world is a Kosmos; to pray for a change in its arrangements is to pray
for its destruction. The rains come when they must come, and the earth
yields or withholds her crop, as a system of causes determined from
immeasurable aeons of time prescribes. Is the God to whom men pray
so poor a workman that he will change the mechanism of the Universe at
their bidding? If all that is, is his work, why then the drought is
his work, and the famine, and the sickness are his work, and they are,
because he has willed that they should be. "The gods help them that
help themselves." We are placed in a world with which we are but half
acquainted; our business is to know it thoroughly. All the history of
mankind from the beginning has been a series of tentative struggles to
acquire this precious knowledge, and we have made indeed some headway.
We began by defending ourselves against the attacks of wild beasts; we
tilled the soil; we invented tools, we formed communities, we moderated
the friction of social intercourse; we discovered the talisman of
science, and the Aladdin's lamp of art. In the treatment of disease also
a great advance has been made. When the Mayflower reached the American
continent, she found a bleak and barren shore, full only of graves. A
great epidemic had swept over the Indian tribes, and the natives fell
like dead flies before the scourge. They had charms and prayers; these
did not help them. We have accomplished a little; we are bound to aim
at more. Why then call in the supernatural? It will not come, though we
call never so loudly. The vain attempt does but keep us from that which
is more needful, active exertion and strenuous efforts at self-help.
But we are told that our success is poor at best, and that in the vast
majority of cases, all our exertions avail nothing: moreover it is said
that man is too frail and feeble a creature to depend upon himself alone
in times of trial, and that prayer, whether it be answered or not, is
valuable as a means of consolation that soothes and stills the heart. It
is but too true that our achievements fall far short of our desires. Let
those that do not, cannot pray, seek support in the sympathies of
their kind, and where self-help fails, mutual help will offer them an
inexhaustible source of strength and comfort. As for that species of
prayer which is not addressed to a personal God at all, but claims to
be an aspiration, an outpouring of the spirit, we do fail to see how it
deserves the name of prayer in any sense. The use of the vocative,
and of the pronoun thou is certainly calculated to mislead, and the
appearance of inconsistency is hardly avoidable.
Lastly, the old Ideal was stationary, retrospective; it placed its
paradise at the beginning of human history. In the far off past it
beheld our best and loftiest hopes anticipated and realized. Then the
full significance of life had been reached; then the oracles had spoken
loudly and clearly whose faint echoes now float like memories of
half forgotten melodies to our ear; then the imperishable truths were
revealed in those olden, golden days. Not so, says the new Ideal. Rude
and wretched were the beginnings of mankind on earth, poor the mind, and
void the heart. Far from being exemplary, the ideas of right and wrong
entertained by our earliest progenitors were infinitely below our
own. Not indeed, that the substance of the moral sentiment has ever
perceptibly changed. The inherent principle of right remains the same,
but it assumes higher forms and is applied on a wider scale as the race
advances. Thus the commandment not to kill a being like ourselves was
recognized from the first, but in the earliest times, only members of
the same family were esteemed beings like ourselves; to kill a neighbor
was not wrong. The family widened into the clan, the clan into the
people, and all the nations are now embraced in the common bond of
humanity. Thus step by step the life of the clansman, the fellow citizen
and at last of every human being came to be regarded as sacred. From a
common centre morality has developed _outward in concentric circles_.
In different ages also different virtues predominated. Patriotism was
esteemed highest in the Roman world; self-sacrifice and chastity in the
first Christian communities. But whatever had thus been gained was not
thereafter lost. Each age added its own to the stock of virtue; each
contributed its share to swell the treasure of mankind. The struggle for
existence that raged fiercely on the lower levels of culture, loses its
harsher aspects as we advance upon the path of civilization. The methods
of force by which the unfit were eliminated are gradually falling into
disrepute, if not into disuse. At last the good will survive because
of its own persuasive excellency. The conflict will become one of ideas
merely, an emulous peaceful contest for the prize of truth.
That the manners of the modern world have indeed become ameliorated, our
own brief experience as a society serves to illustrate. A few centuries
ago, such an enterprise as ours would never have been attempted, or if
undertaken, would have been speedily crushed by the arm of authority or
the weight of prejudice. We will not say that bigotry is dead; the fires
of persecution still slumber beneath their ashes, and now and then start
up into pretty bonfires to amuse the idle crowd; but the time has
gone by when they could mount on funeral pyres--they can kindle
conflagrations no more.
The new Ideal is progressive. Whatever we have achieved, it tells us
there are larger achievements yet beyond. As we rise in the scale of
moral worth, the eye becomes clearer and wider of vision. We see in
remote ages a race of men freer and stronger because of our toils, and
that is our dearest hope and our sweetest recompense that they shall
reap what we have sown.
The old and the new Ideals will struggle for the mastery; that which is
stronger will conquer as of old, in the struggle for existence. But the
new hope fills us with trust and gladness that that which is true will
be strong.