In 1888 I became acquainted with the work of the Ethical Movement, which
was then establishing a branch in Philadelphia. The platform of the
movement appealed to me strongly, because it was completely divorced
from the supernatural. It emphasized the deed, and ignored the creed; or
rather, it believed in the creed of the deed. I invited the leaders of
this movement to address my society, and to explain to us in detail the
philosophy of Ethical Culture. All five of the lecturers of the Ethical
Societies in America successively occupied my platform in St. George's
hall, and I in return occupied their platforms in New York, Chicago,
St. Louis and Philadelphia. This interchange of platforms resulted in
my accepting a call from the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and
three years later from the Chicago Society, which latter I served as its
lecturer for five years.
The founder of the Ethical Societies was Dr. Felix Adler, the son of a
Jewish Rabbi, who was expected to succeed his father as the spiritual
head of the fashionable and wealthy Fifth Avenue synagogue in New York
City. But all the other members of the fraternity of lecturers were
either ex-ministers of the Christian church, like myself, or had, at one
time, studied for the Christian ministry. In the beginning, the movement
was consistently and fearlessly Rationalistic. Adler had a lecture
on Atheism in which he boldly exposed the weakness of the theistic
position. This lecture was printed and widely circulated. The other
lecturers also openly antagonized the God idea as robbing the idea
of the Good of the attention and love of man. The churches feared the
Ethical Movement in those days, and denounced it as an irreligious
institution.
But soon there appeared a change in the leader and founder of the
movement, and gradually also in the majority of his colleagues. The
lecture on Atheism was withdrawn from circulation, and Dr. Adler began
delivering addresses on immortality, and exalting the character of
Christ in the fashion of Unitarianism. All lectures in criticism of the
fundamentals of Orthodoxy were as much as prohibited. Orthodox leaders
were invited to preach from the platform of the Ethical Societies,
and it became the ambition of an Ethical lecturer to deliver only such
lectures as no church-goer would object to hear. I do not mean that
Orthodox doctrines were promulgated by the Ethical lecturers, but
nothing was to be said against them, if nothing could be said in
their favor. The aim of the Movement was now defined to be solely
the improvement of the morals of its members and of the public, and
therefore, like the church, it began to fight "sin," studiously ignoring
the debasing superstitions and the bondage of dogma which not only had
bankrupted, both mentally and morally, whole nations, but which had
also withered the greatest civilization the world had ever seen, and
surrendered humanity to the keeping of "the dark ages" for a thousand
years. This change in the program of the Ethical Societies greatly
pleased the Orthodox world, and all fear of menace or danger to its
theological interests from that direction was dissipated. Catholic and
Protestant clergymen vied with each other in expressions of admiration
for the work of the Ethical Societies, and all praised the tact which
the leaders of the movement displayed in refraining from criticisms
of the churches and their doctrines, to protest against the degrading
effects of which, was the very object for which the Ethical Societies
were organized in the first place. Thus it will be seen how completely
the Movement came to abandon its original program. The Sunday lectures
of the leaders of the Movement became, in time, so "harmless" that
preachers recommended them to their flock, while the Ethical lecturers
in return publicly declared that it was not necessary for a Trinitarian,
a Papist or a Jew to leave his church before he could be admitted to
membership in an Ethical Society. The Ethical Societies, in fact,
did not encourage people to break away from their ecclesiastical
connections, but indirectly, at least, advised them to support the new
movement without withdrawing their support from the churches to which
they belonged.
I cannot imagine that any one seriously believed that a devout
Christian, or an Orthodox Jew, would join an Ethical Society for
purposes of edification in morals. To do so would be equivalent to an
admission that one's divinely appointed church was not satisfying one's
highest needs, and to feel that way toward one's own church is to cease
to believe in it. Only those then who had parted with the past, with
its crushing and hampering freight of dogmas, would think of joining
an organization that started as an "Atheistic," or at least, a
non-religious society. But the invitation to join the Ethical Societies
without leaving their own churches had the effect of drawing the new
movement into closer relations with the religious bodies, which in our
opinion has greatly handicapped the Ethical lecturers, and impaired
their leadership in the world of thought. It is not my intention to
bring a charge of deliberate surrender to the churches against the
leaders of the Ethical Movement. It will be difficult to find anywhere a
finer body of men than the lecturers of the different Ethical Societies
in America. But they swerved from the path they had started to follow,
and sacrificed a magnificent career to become an annex to the church.
Not only the history of the Movement, but also the literature which it
now puts forth, lends confirmatory evidence to the criticism I have made
against a cause to which I once gave my heart.
That the publications of the Ethical Society as well as the Sunday
lectures of the leaders, show decidedly reactionary tendencies, it
will not be difficult to prove. They do this, first, by maintaining
a significant silence on questions the free discussion of which would
offend the churches, and in the second place, by indirectly endeavoring
to bolster up, by new interpretations, the discredited dogmas of the
popular religions. Either of these charges, if true, will be enough
to prove that the Ethical Movement has not remained faithful to its
original intentions.
It is not a secret that the lecturers of the Ethical Societies no
longer publicly condemn the false teaching of the churches. These false
teachings, in our opinion, form an essential part of both Christianity
and Judaism, which have to be exposed and attacked vigorously and
without compromise, if morality is ever to make any permanent progress
in the world. It should be as impossible to reconcile Ethical Culture
with the churches, as it is to reconcile theology with science, and
yet, that is precisely what the Ethical lecturers think they Have
accomplished. I have only to quote from authoritative Christian sources
to show how prejudicial to the interests of morality is the teaching of
the churches. For an Ethical Movement systematically to ignore the evil
which the churches do by sacrificing reason to dogma is in the nature of
treason to its own principles. The whole trend of Christian teaching is
that Ethics is secondary. How can the Ethical Societies afford to ignore
so fundamental an untruth? Both the established and the non-conformist
churches explicitly and officially declare and teach that, "They also
are to be accursed that presume to say, that every man shall be saved by
the Law, or the sect that he professeth, so that he be diligent to
frame his life according to that Law, and the Light of Nature. For Holy
Scripture doth set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men
must be saved." * Clearly, then, for the churches it is not ethics, but
faith in Jesus, a disputed personage at the very best, which represents
the highest interests of the race.
* Eighteenth Article of the Church of England.
That the same unethical doctrine forms the basis of the Reformed
churches will be seen from the following:
"Much less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved, _be
they ever so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of
nature_; and to ascertain and maintain that they can is very _pernicious
and to be detested_." *
The same indifference, if not contempt for morality is shown by the
leading exponents of Christianity. When I was a lad of about fifteen,
one of the books placed in my hand, and which I was made to
regard almost as inspired as the Bible, was, _Paleys Evidences of
Christianity_. Speaking on the scope of the Christian religion, in the
second part of his book, he writes: "Moral precepts or examples, or
illustrations of moral precepts, may be _occasionally_ given, and be
highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose of the
mission." The meaning is clear: Christ did not come to make men moral,
he came to save those who shall believe in him. And this is also the
teaching of leaders like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon
and General Booth. The burden of Luther's message was that "Christ had
come to abolish the Moral Law." The liberty which Luther proclaimed
assured the believer that even the decalogue shall not be brought
into account against him, "nor its violation be allowed to disturb the
conscience of the Christian." ** In the same spirit, Spurgeon cried in
his London Tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, for nearly half a century:
"Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty
minutes to do it in." And this doctrine that faith in Christ can in one
instant make a man who has led a life of crime and corruption, one of
God's saints, Spurgeon and his fellow-clergymen learned from Christ
himself, who opened the gates of paradise to the malefactor on the
cross, and in one minute wiped out all his past. This example from the
gospels shows that, the preachers and the creeds in giving to morality a
secondary place, are not misrepresenting the teachings of Christ. What
need has a religion which can change men miraculously,--and which makes
faith the sole condition of salvation,--for Ethical Culture?
* Westminster Catechism.
** Moehler's Works, quoted by Cotter Morison, Service of
Man, page 51.
What is true of Christianity is equally true of its parent, Judaism. The
full stress of the Old Testament is on the necessity of the Ceremonial
and not the Moral Law. While the Jews were not only permitted, but were
ordered to break every Ethical commandment in the decalogue, to commit
theft, murder, massacre, and acts of oppression and brigandage,--every
departure from the ritual of Israel was visited by immediate and
clamorous punishment. Both Judaism and Christianity make their special
objective, not character, but the creed. How, then, can a movement the
motto of which is "The deed, not the creed," maintain so profound a
silence, or refrain even from calling attention to the positive hurt
which the old religions do to the cause of righteousness? What is the
defense of Ethical Culture against this charge?
If it be answered that, the churches no longer take their creeds or
bibles, seriously, notwithstanding their official professions, then the
Ethical lecturers should, instead of silently endorsing the hypocrisy
which professes one thing and believes another, thunder against it
with all their might. This should be done not from motives of hatred or
combativeness, but in the spirit of faithfulness to the best interests
of man. It is error, and not its victims, against which the Rationalist
directs his straight and sounding blows. It was Paine's kindly advice
in the French convention to kill the king and spare the man. It is the
desire of Reason to destroy false teachings and to help enlighten the
teacher.
The effect upon the prosperity of the Ethical Societies, both in America
and Europe, of this policy of silence, has been really disastrous. Like
Unitarianism, the Ethical Movement has drifted into the sheltered harbor
where it hugs the wharves made fast by posts and ropes. Both these
movements started out for the sea, but not a vessel flying their flags
can now be encountered at any distance from the coast. Thirty years ago
there were four Ethical Societies in America; there are now these same
four and no more, and three of them are without any lecturers.
But not only by their silence on the injurious teachings of both Judaism
and Christianity, which strike at the very foundations of moral health,
but also by their attempts, incredible as it may seem, to discredit
science and to seek in metaphysics, or in a sort of attenuated theology,
the origins and sanctions of Ethics, the Ethical lecturers have given to
decaying dogmas the support they owed to Rationalism.
In a contribution by Dr. Adler, head of the fellowship, on one of the
fundamentals of the Movement, we see full traces of this deplorable
effort to divorce Ethics from science, and wed her to theology.
In discussing "The Religion of Duty," the professor, instead of
explaining duty in the terms of science, tries to make of it a deeper
mystery even than the thrice veiled dogmas of the churches. "Duty,"
he says, "becomes religion when we recognize that it is not a law or a
command that has a merely sensible origin, or can be explained in
terms of sensible experience, that we can get to the bottom of it and
thoroughly penetrate it with our understanding, or see fully the use of
it. * * * It is then that we come to realize that in the moral command
there is something awful." The language is not very clear--perhaps
because the thought is not very clear--but we believe its meaning is
that, a moral command is awful because we cannot understand it. Prof.
Adler seems to make of duty a new kind of a god. The qualities and
attributes of the deity he bodily transfers to his successor--_Duty_.
Accordingly, Duty becomes just as mysterious and awful as God, and
we can no more get at the "bottom" of Duty than we can understand
the Deity. Duty no more than the Deity can be "expressed in terms of
sensible experience," hence it is inexplicable; and the only way we
can feel "the majesty and inexplicable augustness of it," says the
professor, "is to draw back the curtains and see," and then "we shall
find that out of this relation we suddenly get religion." I fear we get
it a little too suddenly. Such rapid transformations suggest a _deus ex
machina_.
There is serious danger of making a fetish out of the word duty. The
thinking world has abandoned theism because of the impossibility of
explaining in terms of sensible experience, the existence of a personal
infinite; but now Prof. Adler wishes to surround his new deity, Duty,
with the same "clouds and darkness" which have so long hung about the
ancient divinities.
In what sense is it a compliment to the moral law to say that it cannot
be "explained in terms of sensible experience"? What is gained by
putting a dead wall or "curtains" between the intelligence of man and
his conscience? Why sneer at the scientific explanation of the
origin and growth of the moral sense by calling it "narrow, secular,
materialistic and paltry," as Prof. Adler does in this lecture--when no
better explanation is offered than a mere rhetorical recommendation "to
draw back the curtains and see the majesty and inexplicable augustness
of it"? What are these curtains? Who put them there to hide such
"augustness"? If the scientific explanation of the origin of the moral
sense is a "flat failure," quoting from the professor again, what is
_his_ explanation? We are really grieved to see so influential a public
leader taking sides against science, the only dependable teacher we
have, notwithstanding its many limitations.
Again, in his criticism of the evolutionary view, the professor says:
"As against the scientific evolutionary view, I plead for what I would
call the moral evolutionary view, which asserts that the moral law is a
law of our nature, and in so far, the universal nature. * * * We leave
the issues to work themselves out; we leave them to mightier powers than
we, whose ways we wot not of." Here surely is theology--cap, cassock and
all.
But what is the difference between the scientific evolutionary view and
the moral evolutionary view? If the scientific view is not in accord
with the known facts, then it is not scientific. But if it is in harmony
with the facts, what do we gain by rejecting it in preference to the
"moral evolutionary view"? If on the other hand the "moral evolutionary
view" is not scientific, what is its value?
According to the generally admitted scientific explanation, morality is
just as much the result of evolution as is music or language. Morality
is the slow product of the accumulated experience of humanity. But that
does not seem to be Prof. Adler's theory. "There is," he says, "a voice
that speaks in us out of the ultimate reality of things." But if this
voice is not the inherited instincts of the race, what is it? If it is
a ready-made, or made to order voice, or a voice not made at all--but,
well, an unfathomable something commanding us in tones of the
categorical imperative--who placed it there? God, or chance? If
conscience, in straight words, is a natural product in the same sense
that the brain or the human hand is, then there is no good reason for
throwing a mystic veil over this one faculty or sense, or in decorating
it with fallacy trimmings and jingling bells in order to make it look
exceptionally awful and august. Just as the foolish overpraise of Jesus
has nearly ruined him as a living force in the life of the world today,
so there is danger of making an idol or a mummy out of morality by
taking away all its beautiful naturalness.
"I simply think of the moral law within us," says Dr. Adler, "as a hand
laid on us. * * * I like to think of the moral law * * * as of a hand;
the face we do not see, but the hand we feel." Is not this an attempt to
make ethics as mystifying as theology? If this "hand," of which the
professor speaks, is endowed with unerring intelligence, how shall we
account for the missteps, disastrous in their consequences, which man
has taken with this "hand" laid on him?
However, this "hand" which we are told "is heavy upon our shoulders as
Atlas," is not infallible, what is its worth? Is it necessary to perplex
an audience with visions of a "hand," and "a face that belongs to the
hand which we do not see," in order to impress it with the beauty and
duty of obedience to the dictates of the enlightened and emancipated
conscience?
But this confusion is the result of the commerce of Ethical Culture
with Churchianity and Judaism, in other words, with the supernatural.
A teacher who is trying to convince both Christian and Jew that without
discarding their obsolete and obstructive dogmas they can join
the Ethical Movement, is compelled by the very exigencies of the
_mesalliance_ to tarry in the region of fog and obscurity. And this
confusion in thought, this lack of decision and clarity in one's
concepts, this metaphysical vagueness and bewildering rhetoric is the
price Orthodoxy exacts before it will bestow its smile upon a prodigal
teacher seeking to return to the fold.
We could not agree with the head of the Ethical Movement that it was
worth our while to try to win the favor of the churches, or to seek
their co-operation. In our opinion such a _rapprochement_ would only
redound to the glory of an institution that has proven itself not
only incapable of saving the world, but of positively hindering its
salvation. This indictment is not voiced in haste, or in malice, but
because it is based upon careful observation and study.
The church can never become a great moral power until it is
rationalized. In this age of enlightenment the church can not be
honest and Orthodox at the same time. We recommend this thought to the
consideration of the Ethical lecturers. And no institution can make
others honest, if it is dishonest itself. Is the church honest with
science? Is it honest with history? Is it honest with the Bible? Mark
these brave words of Huxley:
"When Sunday after Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in
righteousness, read out the statement that 'In six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is,' in innumerable
churches, they are either propagating what they may honestly know, and,
therefore, are bound to know, to be falsities; or if they use the words
in some non-natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of the
much-abused Jesuit."
How refreshing!
To the average thinker the inconsistency of advocating Ethics as the
supreme good, on the one hand, and on the other, of maintaining a
deliberate silence on the demonstrably false teaching of the church
which makes belief the greatest of all virtues, has only to be pointed
out to be comprehended. And it is Kant, the patron-saint of the American
Ethical lecturers, who set them the example of inconsistency. With a
rigour which even in a dogmatist of the theological schools would be
considered excessive, Emanuel Kant argued that so imperative was the
duty to tell the truth that, even to save one's self or another from
murder, there must be no departure from it. If you saw an assassin with
a drawn dagger running after a man or a woman, and he asked you, "which
way the fugitive ran," if you answer him at all, insists Kant, you must
tell him the truth. And yet this same philosopher encouraged openly the
Lutheran clergy of his day to go on deceiving the people with beliefs
which they themselves had discarded, on the score that _populus vult
decipi_, and that the clergy are excused by their profession for playing
a false part.
Is it then from policy or from principle that the Ethical lecturers,
starting as they did, by denouncing the supernatural as the destroyer
of character, later on came to ignore altogether the existence even
of degrading superstitions, and were content to be a moral improvement
association merely, somewhat after the pattern, as Marie-Jean Guyau
states, of a Christian Temperance Society? *
* L'Irréligion de L'Avenir.
The battle of progress is to be fought in the mind. An intellectual
awakening must precede all real and permanent moral improvement of
the world. On the tree of enlightenment alone can ripen the fruit of
righteousness and peace. And there can be no enlightenment under the
church. Even as the light of the sun can not enter a dungeon, the light
of knowledge can not penetrate the mind which it has been the aim of the
church to keep shut. The condition of the spread of knowledge as of the
sunlight is the same--freedom. Yet freedom is anathema where there is
a Revelation. A thousand Ethical Societies could not help Russia unless
she began by striking, without sparing or wavering, at the teachings of
the Greek church.
The new edifice cannot rise side by side with the old--it must rise on
the ruins of the old.
Can there be any real moral advance in a community in which the
following is accepted and taught as a divinely revealed truth: "We
are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works and deservings.
Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome
doctrine, and very full of comfort." *
* No. XI. of the Articles of the Church of England. All the
other Christian churches teach to young and old the same
doctrine.
Only by self-stultification can an Ethical Society refrain from
combating so injurious a teaching with all the earnestness and courage
at their command.
Nothing would please the priests and rabbis more than to be assured
that the efforts of the new teachers will be confined strictly to
giving moral exhortations, and that they will leave church and dogma
respectfully alone.