that except in those transitory and morbid conditions which we have
come to describe as _fin de siècle_ moods, it is never long content to
interpret experience in terms of universal bankruptcy. On the contrary,
it insists that the problem of philosophy must be in the future, as it
has been in the past, the shedding of light on the meaning of life. It
is a problem which philosophy has often answered with mere phrases,
which have brought no meaning or comfort to the troubled heart of man,
and it is not surprising that since the climax of this hollow formalism
was reached in Hegel, there has been a natural distrust of philosophy.
And what is it in this speculative philosophy which creates this
distrust? It is its attempt to regard the universe as self-explanatory.
Here, even at the present time, is one of the fundamental propositions
of most philosophizing, against which no argument may be permitted.
It seems an essential assumption of philosophy; since if other ways
of explanation of the universe were superadded, philosophy as an
independent science would seem to be superfluous. Is it certain,
however, that the subordination of philosophy thus apprehended would
be, after all, a great misfortune? What the human mind is concerned
about is not the perpetuation of philosophy as a science, but the
discovery of some meaning in life itself, its destiny, its past and
its future; and one is quite justified in losing interest in any
science which does not in the end contribute to the interpretation and
amelioration of human life. We have a right to demand of philosophy
that she contribute to this end, and that she shall speak also with
some degree of simplicity of language, dismissing the attempt to
satisfy with empty and unintelligible phrases the hunger of the soul
for fundamental truth.
And yet, from the time of Plato to that of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and
Nietzsche, the making of phrases has been the special business of
philosophy. It has created a language of its own, which separates it
as by an impenetrable hedge from the region of men’s common talk; and
when one translates such language into the familiar speech of his own
time, where words have a definite meaning, it is as though he withdrew
from a veiled goddess the disguise which gave her all her power and
dignity. The fact is that abstract philosophy has never explained to
any satisfaction either the existence or the development of the world;
still less has philosophy brought into unity these two conceptions,
and interpreted them through a single cause. On the contrary, the
history of philosophy has been a history of words, conveying no real
interpretation, and it would seem as if in the thousands of years of
philosophic speculation either some interpretation should have been
attained or that there should at last be heard the confession that
philosophy can throw no further light on these fundamental facts.
Here, it would seem, we should reach the end of philosophy, and should
assume that the first cause of things is unknowable.
Philosophy, however, has seldom consented to this confession of
impotence. On the contrary, it has repeatedly reverted to some absolute
assumption of an adequate cause which lies behind the possibility of
proof. Sometimes it is the assumption of a vital Substance, one and
unchangeable; sometimes it is the assumption of an infinite concourse
of atoms. Yet such conceptions are in the highest degree elusive, and
force us to inquire whence such substance, be it simple or infinitely
divided, comes, how it becomes quickened with life, and how it imparts
the life it has. The transition from such mere movements of atoms to
phenomena of feeling or thought or will, makes a leap in nature which
no man has in the remotest degree proposed to explain. On the contrary,
instead of bridging such a chasm the most famous inquirers simply
record the melancholy confession: “Ignoramus, ignorabimus.”
Sometimes, again, philosophy has taught, with many and large words,
that the meaning of the world resides in an opposition between Being
and Not-being. This is no new doctrine and it is at least intelligent
and intelligible. Yet what we really need to know concerns Being
alone. It is the world that lies before our eyes that interests us. How
has this world come to be, we ask, or is it perhaps a mere illusion,
the mirage of our own thought, with no reality but that which our own
minds assign, as people in their despair have sometimes believed it to
be? As for Non-existence, what rational interest has this for us? Is
it even an intelligible conception? Does it not rather set before us a
contradiction which we may conceive, but can never verify, and which
has for life itself no significance at all?
Still other philosophers invite us to turn from the outward world whose
final cause thus eludes us, and to consider our own self-conscious
nature, the Ego, concerning which no one can doubt and which no
philosophy is needed to prove. Yet no sooner does this poor Ego issue
from its own self-consciousness and, as it were, take a step into the
outward world, as though to interpret through itself the meaning of
life, than it becomes aware that some further and external cause is
necessary to explain even the Ego to itself.
Finally, philosophy, in its search for the meaning of life, bows to
the authority of natural science and proposes to interpret experience
through some doctrine of development, or evolution, or heredity,
or natural selection. All that exists, it announces, comes of some
primitive protoplasm, or even of some single primitive cell. Yet
still there presses the ancient question how such cells may have been
made and how there has been imparted to them their infinite capacity
for life and growth. It is the question which the keen and practical
Napoleon asked as he stood a century ago under the mystery of the
stars in Egypt. Turning to the scholar Monge, he said: “Qui a fait
tout cela?” To such a question neither abstract philosophy nor natural
science has as yet given and, so far as we can judge, will ever give
any answer.
To interpret the world, then, by itself or through itself is
impossible, for there is in the world itself no final cause. If
the mind of man is the final interpreter of the world, then it
becomes itself the God it seeks, and the philosophers become the
object of a kind of worship. Here, indeed, is the outcome of much
philosophy to-day. If, however, the philosophers have any power of
observation, they soon discover one positive barrier to this excessive
self-importance. It is the humbling consciousness of limitation in
their own powers and in their own hold on life itself; the inevitable
impression, which no human praise can remove, of their own defects;
the impossibility of finding a meaning even for their own lives within
those lives themselves.
Here is the weakness of that pantheism which, from the time of
Spinoza, has so largely controlled speculative thought, and, from
the time of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Goethe, has been the prevailing
creed of cultivated people, so far as they concern themselves with
philosophy. No form of philosophy is so demoralizing in its ethical
consequences as this. It breeds contempt of moral activity; it
forfeits the right of the will to oppose what is evil and to create
what is good. Sooner or later the corollary of such a faith appears in
some form of superstition, crude but compelling,--like hypnotism or
spiritualism, or the vulgar and noisy substitutes for religion which
are now so conspicuous. Thus the cycle of philosophical speculation
fulfils itself, and returns after centuries to the same point at which
it began. The final form of truth may come to be, not the systems of
abstract philosophy or of speculative theology, which have proved so
misleading and unsatisfying, but simply a summing-up of the experience
of mankind, as it has affected human destiny through the history of
the world; and in this experience we have a philosophy better than
abstractions, and always within one’s reach.
And where do we find this philosophy which discovers the meaning of
life not through speculative reasoning but through the interpretation
of experience, and which observes in experience a spiritual power
creating and maintaining both the world and the individual? This is
the view of life which had its origin in Israel and was fulfilled in
Christianity. It cannot indeed be called in the technical sense a
philosophy, for philosophy would feel itself called upon to explain
still further that Cause which it thus reached. Theology as a positive
science meets the same fate as philosophy. It cannot prove its God,
as philosophy cannot interpret the world or human life in or through
themselves. What people call ontology, or the proofs of the being of
God, is no real science, and convinces none but him who is already
pledged. It is in the nature of God to be beyond our interpretations.
A god who could be explained would not be God, and a man who could
explain God would not be man. The legitimate aim of life is not to
see God as He is, but to see the affairs of this world and of human
life somewhat as God might see them. It is, therefore, no new thing to
question whether theology can be fairly called a science at all. On
this point, for instance, the evidence of Christ is in the negative,
and the theological speculations of Christians are, in fact, not
derived from him. They proceed, on the contrary, from the Apostle Paul,
who applied to the proving of Christianity the subtlety of theological
training which he had received under Judaism; and even in his case it
must be remembered that his teaching was directed to convince those who
had been, like him, trained in the theology of Israel.
It must not be imagined, therefore, that the final Cause of the world
which we call God, can be philosophically proved. Faith in God is first
of all a personal experience. Nothing should disguise this proposition,
though it is the stone of offence where many stumble who are seeking
an adequate meaning of life. Nothing can be done to help those who
refuse this experience. No argument can convince them. There is no
philosophical refutation of a determined atheism.
Here is an admission which must gravely affect not only our religious
and philosophical relations with others, but even our practical and
political life. Here is the fundamental difference between people
of the same nation, or condition, or time, or even family. In other
differences of opinion there may be found some common ground, but
between faith and denial there is no common ground, because we are
dealing with a question of the will and because the human will is free.
The saying of Tertullian, that the human soul is naturally Christian,
is in a literal sense quite untrue. Every man who reflects on his
responsibilities recognizes that he is not naturally Christian. He
is, at the most, only possibly Christian, as Tertullian perhaps meant
to say. He is capable of becoming Christian through the experience of
life. Atheism and Christianity are equally accessible to the nature of
man.
Faith in God, then, is a form of experience, not a form of proof. If
experience were as unfruitful as proof, then faith in God would be
nothing more than a nervous condition, and the answer of Festus--“Paul,
thou art beside thyself!”--would be the just estimate of a faith
like that of Paul. Each period of history has in fact produced many
a Festus, sedulously guarding his reason and conscience against all
that cannot be proved. Other faith, however, than that which proceeds
from experience is not expected by God from any man; while to every
man, in his own experience and in the witness of history, this faith
is abundantly offered. There is, therefore, in the refusal of faith a
confession, not merely of intellectual error, but of moral neglect; and
many a man who has surrendered his faith would be slow to confess to
others how well aware he is that the fault is his own.
Here, then, is the first step toward the discovery of the meaning of
life. It is an act of will, a moral venture, a listening to experience.
No man can omit this initial step, and no man can teach another the
lesson which lies in his own experience. The prophets of the Old
Testament found an accurate expression for this act of will when they
described it as a “turning,” and they went on to assure their people
of the perfect inward peace and the sense of confidence which followed
from this act. “Look unto me, and be ye saved,” says Isaiah; “Incline
your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live.” From that
time to this, thousands of those who have thus changed the direction
of their wills have entered into the same sense of peace; while no man
who has thus given his will to God has ever felt himself permanently
bewildered or forsaken.
Here, also, in this free act of the will, is attained that sense of
liberty which in both the Old and New Testaments is described as
“righteousness.” It is a sense of initiative and power, as though one
were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace, but had a certain
positive companionship with God. It is what the Old Testament calls a
“covenant,” involving mutual rights and obligations. No man, however,
who accepts this relation is inclined to urge overmuch his own rights,
knowing as he well does that his part in the covenant falls ever short
and is even then made possible only through his steady confidence in
God. Grace, unearned and undeserved, he still knows that he needs;
yet behind this grace lies ever the initiative of personal “turning,”
and the free assertion of the will as the first step toward complete
redemption. To say with Paul that a man is “justified by faith,” or to
emphasize as Luther does, even more strongly, the province of grace, is
to run some risk of forgetting the constant demand for an initial step
of one’s own.
This step once taken, both the world in which one lives and one’s own
personal life get a clear and intelligible meaning. On the one hand
stands the free will of God, creating and directing the world, not
restricted by the so-called laws of nature, yet a God of order, whose
desires are not arbitrary or lawless. On the other hand is the free
will of man, with the free choice before it of obedience or refusal;--a
will, therefore, which may choose the wrong though it may not thereby
thwart the Divine purpose. The evil-doer, if impenitent, must suffer,
but his evil is converted into good. In such a philosophy what is a
wisely adjusted human life? It is a life of free obedience to the
eternal and unchangeable laws of God; a life, therefore, which attains
through self-discipline successive steps of spiritual power. Life on
other terms brings on a progressive decline of spiritual power and with
this a sense of self-condemnation. What is the happy life? It is a life
of conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense,
that is to say, of God’s companionship. And wherein is the profoundest
unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into
incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make
one’s life fruitful or effective.
If, then, we are at times tempted to fancy that all this undemonstrable
experience is unreal, or metaphysical, or purposeless, or imaginary,
it is best to deal with such returning scepticism much as we deal with
the selfish or mean thoughts which we are trying to outgrow. Let all
these hindrances to the higher life be quietly but firmly repelled.
The better world we enter is indeed entered by faith and not by sight;
but this faith grows more confident and more supporting, until it is
like an inward faculty of sight itself. To substitute for this a world
of the outward senses is to find no meaning in life which can convey
confidence and peace. It is but to embitter every noble and thoughtful
nature with restless doubts from which there is no escape.
Such was religion as it disclosed itself to the early Hebrews. Soon,
indeed, that religion was overgrown by the formalism which converted
its practical teaching into mere prohibitions or mere mechanism; but
behind these abuses of later history lay the primitive simplicity of
spiritual liberty and life. Such also was the historical beginning
of the Christian religion. The mission of Christ, like that of each
genuine reformer, was to recall men to their original consciousness
of God; and it is perhaps the greatest tragedy of history, while at
the same time the best proof of the free will of man, that the Hebrew
people, to whom Christ announced that he was expressly sent, could
not, as a whole, bring themselves to obey his call. They were held in
bondage by their accumulated formalism, as many a man has been ever
since. They could not rise to the thought of a worship which was in
spirit and in truth. Had they, with their extraordinary gifts, been
able to hear Christ’s message, they would have become the dominant
nation of the world.
And what is to be said of those Gentile peoples who listened more
willingly to the message of Christ, those “wild olive trees,” as St.
Paul calls them, which were grafted on the “broken branches”? They also
have had the same history. They also, in their own way, have become
enslaved by the same formalism; and they also must regain their liberty
through the return of individual souls to a personal experience of the
method of Christ.
Here is the evidence of the indestructible truth and the extraordinary
vitality of the Christian religion. To subdue its opponents was but a
slight achievement; for every positive truth must in the end prevail.
Its real conflict has been with the forces of accumulated opinion, of
superfluous learning, of sickly fancies among its friends, and with
the intellectual slavery to which these influences have led. Through
these obstructions the light and power of genuine Christianity have
broken like sunshine through a mist; and with such Christianity have
appeared in history the political liberty on which the permanence of
civilization rests, the philosophical truth which solves the problems
of human life, and the present comfort for the human heart, beyond the
power of misfortune to disturb.
We reach, then, a philosophy of life which is not speculative or
fanciful, but rests on the facts of history. This is “the way,
the truth, and the life.” Better is it for one if he finds this
“way” without too many companions or professional guides, for many
a religious teaching, designed to show the way, has repelled young
lives from following it. As one follows the way, he gains, first of
all, courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. He goes still
further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its
mystery, is not lived in vain. He pushes on, and the way issues into
health, not only of the soul but even of the body; for bodily health
is more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition on
bodily health; and modern medicine can never restore and assure health
to the body if it limit its problem to physical relief alone. Nor is
even this the end of the “way” of Christ. It leads not only to personal
health, but to social health as well; not by continually inciting the
masses to some social programme, but by strengthening the individuals
of which the masses are made. Here alone is positive social redemption;
while the hopes that turn to other ways of social reform are for the
most part deceptive dreams.
Finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows it, and is
willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into the region
of spiritual peace. No other way of life permits this comprehensive
sense of peace and assurance. Apart from it we have but the unremitting
and bitter struggle for existence, the enforcement of national
self-seeking, the temporary victory of the strong, the hell of the weak
and the poor; yet, at the same time, no peace even for the strong, who
have their little day of power, but live in daily fear that this power
will fail and leave them at the mercy of the wolves, their neighbors.
Meantime, on every page of the world’s history, and in the experience
of daily life, God writes the opposite teaching, that out of the midst
of evil issues at last the mastery of the good; and that, in modern
as in ancient time, the meek both inherit and control the earth.
History is not a record of despotic control like that of a Roman Cæsar,
effective and intelligent, but necessarily involving a progressive
degeneration of his subjects; it is a story of progressive amelioration
in moral standards and achievements; and this fact of moral progress is
the most convincing proof of the being of God.
Thus it happens that to one who loves liberty and who reads history,
the logic of thought leads to faith in God. Without such faith it
is difficult to believe in human progress through freedom, or to
view the movement of the modern world with hope. Without such faith
the popular agitations of the time are disquieting and alarming,
and the only refuge of the spirit is in submission to some human
authority either of Church or of State. Without such faith it would
be increasingly impossible to maintain a democratic republic like
Switzerland in the midst of the autocratic monarchies of Europe. With
profound truthfulness the Swiss Parliament at Aarau opened its session
with these simple words: “Our help is in the Lord our God, who hath
made heaven and earth.” And, finally, without political liberty there
would be but a brief survival of religious liberty itself, and it
too would be supplanted by a condition of servitude. A State-Church
is a self-contradictory expression. State and Church alike need
self-government for self-development. A free Church and a free State
are not only most representative of Christianity, but are beyond
doubt the forms of Christian citizenship which are to survive. Not
compulsion, nor any form of authority, will in the end dominate the
world, but freedom, in all its forms and its effects. The end of social
evolution is to be the free obedience of men and nations to the moral
order of the world.
And yet, we must repeat, the secret of true progress is not to be
found in an achievement of philosophy, or a process of thought; but
in a historical process, a living experience. To each man’s will is
offered the choice of this way which leads to personal recognition
of the truth and personal experience of happiness. To each nation
the same choice is presented. No philosophy or religion has real
significance which does not lead this way. No man can rightly call it
mere misfortune, or confess his unbelief with sentimental regret, when
he misses the way and forfeits his peace of mind. His pessimism is not,
as he fondly thinks, a mark of distinction; it is, on the contrary, as
a rule, an evidence of moral defect or weakness, and should stir in him
a positive moral scorn.
What is it, then, which makes one unable to find the way of Jesus? It
is, for the most part, either unwillingness to make a serious effort to
find it, or disinclination to accept the consequences of the choice.
To take up with some philosophical novelty, involving no demand upon
the will; to surrender oneself to the pleasures of life; to attach
oneself, with superficial and unreflecting devotion, to some form of
Church or sect;--how much easier is any one of these refuges of the
mind than serious meditation on the great problems of life and the
growth of a personal conviction! And yet, how unmistakable have been
the joy, and the strength to live and to die, and the peace of mind and
sense of right adjustment to the Universe, which those have found who
have followed with patience the way I have described! In the testimony
of such souls there is complete accord. Consciously or unconsciously,
every heart desires the satisfactions which this way of life can give,
and without these satisfactions of the spirit no other possessions or
pleasures can insure spiritual peace.