while Rousseau closes his immortal eulogy by saying, "Socrates died like
a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God!"
Here is an argument for Christianity to which I pray you to address
yourself. As you do not believe in miracles, and are ready to explain
everything by natural causes, I beg you to tell us how came it to pass
that a Hebrew peasant, born among the hills of Judea, had a wisdom above
that of Socrates or Plato, of Confucius or Buddha? This is the greatest
of miracles, that such a Being has lived and died on the earth.
Since this is the chief argument for Religion, does it not become
one who undertakes to destroy it to set himself first to this central
position, instead of wasting his time on mere outposts? When you next
address one of the great audiences that hang upon your words, is it
unfair to ask that you lay aside such familiar topics as Miracles or
Ghosts, or a reply to Talmage, and tell us what you think of Jesus
Christ; whether you look upon Him as an impostor, or merely as a
dreamer--a mild and harmless enthusiast; or are you ready to acknowledge
that He is entitled to rank among the great teachers of mankind?
But if you are compelled to admit the greatness of Christ, you take your
revenge on the Apostles, whom you do not hesitate to say that you "don't
think much of." In fact, you set them down in a most peremptory way
as "a poor lot." It did seem rather an unpromising "lot," that of
a boat-load of fishermen, from which to choose the apostles of a
religion--almost as unpromising as it was to take a rail-splitter to be
the head of a nation in the greatest crisis of its history! But perhaps
in both cases there was a wisdom higher than ours, that chose better
than we. It might puzzle even you to give a better definition of
religion than this of the Apostle James: "Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows
in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world," or
to find among those sages of antiquity, with whose writings you are
familiar, a more complete and perfect delineation of that which is
the essence of all goodness and virtue, than Paul's description of the
charity which "suffereth long and is kind;" or to find in the sayings of
Confucius or of Buddha anything more sublime than this aphorism of John:
"God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in
him."
And here you must allow me to make a remark, which is not intended as a
personal retort, but simply in the interest of that truth which we both
profess to seek, and to count worth more than victory. Your language is
too sweeping to indicate the careful thinker, who measures his words
and weighs them in a balance. Your lectures remind me of the pictures of
Gustave Dore, who preferred to paint on a large canvas, with figures as
gigantesque as those of Michael Angelo in his Last Judgment. The effect
is very powerful, but if he had softened his colors a little,--if there
were a few delicate touches, a mingling of light and shade, as when
twilight is stealing over the earth,--the landscape would be more true
to nature. So, believe me, your words would be more weighty if they were
not so strong. But whenever you touch upon religion you seem to lose
control of yourself, and a vindictive feeling takes possession of
you, which causes you to see things so distorted from their natural
appearance that you cannot help running into the broadest caricature.
You swing your sentences as the woodman swings his axe. Of course, this
"slashing" style is very effective before a popular audience, which does
not care for nice distinctions, or for evidence that has to be sifted
and weighed; but wants opinions off hand, and likes to have its
prejudices and hatreds echoed back in a ringing voice. This carries
the crowd, but does not convince the philosophic mind. The truth-seeker
cannot cut a road through the forest with sturdy blows; he has a hidden
path to trace, and must pick his way with slow and cautious step to find
that which is more precious than gold.
But if it were possible for you to sweep away the "evidences of
Christianity," you have not swept away Christianity itself; it still
lives, not only in tradition, but in the hearts of the people, entwined
with all that is sweetest in their domestic life, from which it must
be torn out with unsparing hand before it can be exterminated. To
begin with, you turn your back upon history. All that men have done and
suffered for the sake of religion was folly. The Pilgrims, who crossed
the sea to find freedom to worship God in the forests of the New World,
were miserable fanatics. There is no more place in the world for heroes
and martyrs. He who sacrifices his life for a faith, or an idea, is
a fool. The only practical wisdom is to have a sharp eye to the main
chance. If you keep on in this work of demolition, you will soon destroy
all our ideals. Family life withers under the cold sneer--half pity and
half scorn--with which you look down on household worship. Take from
our American firesides such scenes as that pictured in the _Cotter's
Saturday Night_, and you have taken from them their most sacred hours
and their tenderest memories.
The same destructive spirit which intrudes into our domestic as well as
our religious life, would take away the beauty of our villages as well
as the sweetness of our homes. In the weary round of a week of toil,
there comes an interval of rest; the laborer lays down his burden, and
for a few hours breathes a serener air. The Sabbath morning has come:
"Sweet day I so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky."
At the appointed hour the bell rings across the valley, and sends its
echoes among the hills; and from all the roads the people come trooping
to the village church. Here they gather, old and young, rich and poor;
and as they join in the same act of worship, feel that God is the maker
of them all? Is there in our national life any influence more elevating
than this--one which tends more to bring a community together; to
promote neighborly feeling; to refine the manners of the people; to
breed true courtesy, and all that makes a Christian village different
from a cluster of Indian wigwams--a civilized community different from a
tribe of savages?
All this you would destroy: you would abolish the Sabbath, or have it
turned into a holiday; you would tear down the old church, so full of
tender associations of the living and the dead, or at least have it
"razeed," cutting off the tall spire that points upward to heaven;
and the interior you would turn into an Assembly room--a place of
entertainment, where the young people could have their merry-makings,
except perchance in the warm' Summer-time, when they could dance on the
village green! So far you would have gained your object. But would that
be a more orderly community, more refined or more truly happy?
You may think this a mere sentiment--that we care more for the
picturesque than for the true. But there is one result which is
fearfully real: the destructive creed, or no creed, which despoils
our churches and our homes, attacks society in its first principles
by taking away the support of morality. I do not believe that general
morality can be upheld without the sanctions of religion. There may
be individuals of great natural force of character, who can stand
alone--men of superior intellect and strong will. But in general human
nature is weak, and virtue is not the spontaneous growth of childish
innocence. Men do not become pure and good by instinct. Character, like
mind, has to be developed by education; and it needs all the elements
of strength which can be given it, from without as well as from within,
from the government of man and the government of God. To let go of these
restraints is a peril to public morality.
You feel strong in the strength of a robust manhood, well poised in body
and mind, and in the centre of a happy home, where loving hearts cling
to you like vines round the oak. But many to whom you speak are quite
otherwise. You address thousands of young men who have come out of
country homes, where they have been brought up in the fear of God, and
have heard the morning and evening prayer. They come into a city full of
temptations, but are restrained from evil by the thought of father and
mother, and reverence for Him who is the Father of us all--a feeling
which, though it may not have taken the form of any profession, is yet
at the bottom of their hearts, and keeps them from many a wrong and
wayward step. A young man, who is thus "guarded and defended" as by
unseen angels, some evening when he feels very lonely, is invited
to "go and hear Ingersoll," and for a couple of hours listens to your
caricatures of religion, with descriptions of the prayers and the
psalm-singing, illustrated by devout grimaces and nasal tones, which
set the house in roars of laughter, and are received with tumultuous
applause. When it is all over, and the young man finds himself again
under the flaring lamps of the city streets, he is conscious of a
change; the faith of his childhood has been rudely torn from him, and
with it "a glory has passed away from the earth;" the Bible which his
mother gave him, the morning that he came away, is "a mass of fables;"
the sentence which she wished him to hang on the wall, "Thou, God, seest
me," has lost its power, for there is no God that sees him, no moral
government, no law and no retribution. So he reasons as he walks
slowly homeward, meeting the temptations which haunt these streets at
night--temptations from which he has hitherto turned with a shudder, but
which he now meets with a diminished power of resistance. Have you done
that young man any good in taking from him what he held sacred before?
Have you not left him morally weakened? From sneering at religion, it
is but a step to sneering at morality, and then but one step more to a
vicious and profligate career. How are you going to stop this downward
tendency? When you have stripped him of former restraints, do you
leave him anything in their stead, except indeed a sense of honor,
self-respect, and self-interest?--worthy motives, no doubt, but all
too feeble to withstand the fearful temptations that assail him. Is the
chance of his resistance as good as it was before? Watch him as he goes
along that street at midnight! He passes by the places of evil resort,
of drinking and gambling--those open mouths of hell; he hears the sound
of music and dancing, and for the first time pauses to listen. How long
will it be before he will venture in?
With such dangers in his path, it is a grave responsibility to loosen
the restraints which hold such a young man to virtue. These gibes
and sneers which you utter so lightly, may have a sad echo in a lost
character and a wretched life. Many a young man has been thus taunted
until he has pushed off from the shore, under the idea of gaining his
"liberty," and ventured into the rapids, only to be carried down the
stream, and left a wreck in the whirlpool below.
You tell me that your object is to drive fear out of the world. That
is a noble ambition; if you succeed, you will be indeed a deliverer. Of
course you mean only irrational fears. You would not have men throw
off the fear of violating the laws of nature; for that would lead to
incalculable misery. You aim only at the terrors born of ignorance and
superstition. But how are you going to get rid of these? You trust to
the progress of science, which has dispelled so many fears arising from
physical phenomena, by showing that calamities ascribed to spiritual
agencies are explained by natural causes. But science can only go a
certain way, beyond which we come into the sphere of the unknown, where
all is dark as before. How can you relieve the fears of others--indeed
how can you rid yourself of fear, believing as you do that there is no
Power above which can help you in any extremity; that you are the sport
of accident, and may be dashed in pieces by the blind agency of nature?
If I believed this, I should feel that I was in the grasp of some
terrible machinery which was crushing me to atoms, with no possibility
of escape.
Not so does Religion leave man here on the earth, helpless and
hopeless--in abject terror, as he is in utter darkness as to
his fate--but opening the heaven above him, it discovers a Great
Intelligence, compassing all things, seeing the end from the beginning,
and ordering our little lives so that even the trials that we bear, as
they call out the finer elements of character, conduce to our future
happiness. God is our Father. We look up into His face with childlike
confidence, and find that "His service is perfect freedom." "Love casts
out fear." That, I beg to assure you, is the way, and the only way,
by which man can be delivered from those fears by which he is all his
lifetime subject to bondage.
In your attacks upon Religion you do violence to your own manliness.
Knowing you as I do, I feel sure that you do not realize where your
blows fall, or whom they wound, or you would not use your weapons so
freely. The faiths of men are as sacred as the most delicate manly or
womanly sentiments of love and honor. They are dear as the beloved
faces that have passed from our sight. I should think myself wanting in
respect to the memory of my father and mother if I could speak lightly
of the faith in which they lived and died. Surely this must be mere
thoughtlessness, for I cannot believe that you find pleasure in giving
pain. I have not forgotten the gentle hand that was laid upon your
shoulder, and the gentle voice which said, "Uncle Robert wouldn't hurt
a fly." And yet you bruise the tenderest sensibilities, and trample down
what is most cherished by millions of sisters and daughters and mothers,
little heeding that you are sporting with "human creatures' lives."
You are waging a hopeless war--a war in which you are certain only of
defeat. The Christian Religion began to be nearly two thousand years
before you and I were born, and it will live two thousand years after we
are dead. Why is it that it lives on and on, while nations and kingdoms
perish? Is not this "the survival of the fittest?" Contend against
it with all your wit and eloquence, you will fail, as all have failed
before you. You cannot fight against the instincts of humanity. It is as
natural for men to look up to a Higher Power as it is to look up to the
stars. Tell them that there is no God! You might as well tell them that
there is no Sun in heaven, even while on that central light and heat all
life on earth depends.
I do not presume to, think that I have convinced you, or changed your
opinion; but it is always right to appeal to a man's "sober second
thought"--to that better judgment that comes with increasing knowledge
and advancing years; and I will not give up hope that you will yet see
things more clearly, and recognize the mistake you have made in not
distinguishing Religion from Superstition--two things as far apart as
"the hither from the utmost pole." Superstition is the greatest enemy
of Religion. It is the nightmare of the mind, filling it with all
imaginable terrors--a black cloud which broods over half the world.
Against this you may well invoke the light of science to scatter its
darkness. Whoever helps to sweep it away, is a benefactor of his race.
But when this is done, and the moral atmosphere is made pure and sweet,
then you as well as we may be conscious of a new Presence coming into
the hushed and vacant air, as Religion, daughter of the skies, descends
to earth to bring peace and good will to men.
Henry M. Field.