love, God gave Himself to bring what all His messengers had failed
to convey. Clothed in that very flesh which once by sin had died,
Christ stood in personal relations to mankind, His hand in theirs,
His eyes to their eyes, His mouth to their mouth; and lo! beneath
His personal contact there began to glow again the warmth of
pristine life which once had burned in Eden, when God and man held
free and undiverted commerce. And then Christ filled up full with
all its spiritual meaning that final action of the Syrian prophet
which had seemed to be so simple and so natural. For, ere He left
the arena where He had proved Himself to be the Conqueror of death,
Christ called forth the Church which He had formed, and He bade
it tend the life which He had reimplanted in the hearts of men,
accompanying the mighty commission with a plenary promise of abiding
power: "Shepherd my sheep; feed my lambs: lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world." Uniformity of action in every
position, mechanical exactness in every class of work, whether you
evangelize under frozen climes or torrid zones, whether you preach
to polished Eastern intellects or instruct the degraded savage, is
neither to be expected nor yet to be desired. The religion that
becomes mechanical always stops itself. But within the lines of her
commission the Church of God is bound to show in practise that she
can touch all hearts, enlist all sympathies, influence all lives,
gather up into her ample bosom all whom the Master loves; just
as a mother folds to her heart the entire members of her family,
irrespective of their diversity of tastes, habits, and mode of life,
nay, even in spite of their failings, and often of their sins,
and beneath the loving sympathy of that loving embrace all know
instinctively that they have each their own peculiar place within
the many mansions of the widely loving heart.
We are living in an age of development. Within old bottles it is
certain new wine is beginning to ferment, and elemental forces
gather for the strife. Life implies assimilation; assimilation means
union of powers, or new energies rising out of such combinations. In
early days the Church of Christ assimilated the life, the teachings,
the powers around her, casting out the false, ennobling the true;
and she became the living force to which the history of the world
bears testimony. And what does all this teach us? Even that as a
mother adapts herself to the varying characters displayed by her
children in her wise government of the family, so must the Church of
England in all her work take up her son into her bosom, teaching the
good and enforcing the true, yet adapting her methods to win wisely,
to win surely, to establish a lasting yet a spiritual dominion.
Here there is a real danger, one all the more real because
speciously veiled from our sight; philanthropy is busy around us--so
much so that now it is almost a reproach not to be the instigator of
half a dozen schemes for the elevation of this class or that people,
or of some other country. But is not this far too often accompanied
by a revolt from all dogmatic truth? Are not many of these schemes
simply social and not religious, and, therefore, at best, temporary
rather than eternal in their aims, since they are founded upon man,
and not upon God?
Religious feeling, I fear, is dying. The past acquirements of man
are ever laughed to scorn by the succeeding generation. These are
not to be the standard to which all is to be referred. Utilitarian
principles and emotional subjectivity seem now to go hand in hand;
and the old formula, "Thus saith the Lord," is to be a formula no
more amid the forces of the world; religious feeling, I say, I fear,
is ebbing away, and with it goes infallibly all real missionary
enterprise. These are inseparably linked. If it be true, as it is,
that the spiritual life of a nation, a parish, or an individual
be in danger of languishing unto death unless there be in it some
manifestation of missionary zeal, so also is it true that unless
there be some more powerful lever at work than mere desire for
social reformation, unless God be the end and the object of life,
then no one will continue to spread God's teaching, or to carry far
and wide the good news of the Son of man.
The first human mother came from out of the side of Adam at the
call of God; our great spiritual mother came from the side of
Christ our Lord. Oh, my brethren, we have so much to thank God for;
so much that bids us now take courage, so much that ennobles our
aims and helps to strengthen our objects. From all parts of the
world, wherever the energy of Englishmen has penetrated, there now
is coming the cry in gathering tones, "Take up thy son." Hearts
are asking for the priceless boon of the gospel to be preached
to them. Heathen tribes are looking wistfully across the waste
of intervening waters, and rich England, rich in her transmitted
treasure of dogmatic truth and revealed faith, rich in her dower of
sons as well as in her possession of silver and gold, is giving as
yet an insufficient answer, and has not as yet fully embraced her
son. How long shall there be this suspense, as that of early dawn
ere the sunshine fills the twilight? Let there be but more true
love and warmth in the mother's heart, let there be, that is, a
revival of spiritual life at home, and once more shall it be said,
"Great was the company of preachers," as in the iron-clad armor of
chastity, temperance, and righteousness, men go forth to work and
win for Christ. Have ye each made this yet sufficiently a matter
of prayer, of self-denial, of deep, faithful trusting all to God?
My brothers, in the kingdom and patience of our God already clarion
notes are sounding out around us, and signs are but repeating notes
of warning. Messages of deep importance seem to tremble in the air,
forces to be gathering for some greater conflict than has been ever
known before. Community of work is producing unity in thought; hands
are clasping now that have been kept asunder far too long. The earth
is being girdled gradually with spiritual fortresses, whence is
flashed on and ever on the golden light till Christ shall come again
and claim His bride. Can we then wonder at all forms of opposition
meeting us? But gathering gradually is the mighty family which in
the day of revelation shall call God their Father. Some time will
the fellow soldiers know one another; some day shall the long muster
roll be called. Then will the Captain of our salvation gather all
His children round Him. Is it long to wait, hard to fight, difficult
to keep up the spirit during the discouragements that beset all
missionary life? Do they wear too dark a hue at times? Lo, the words
of Revelation are now finding echo in the pages of science, and in
unison these voices blend. Beneath us even now this solid orb begins
to know fatigue and to slacken in its course. Remarkable words
lately written are these: "Even now as the earth circles on in her
appointed orbit, the northern ice-cap slowly thickens, and the time
gradually approaches when its glaciers will flow again, and austral
seas, sweeping northward, bury the seeds of present civilization
under ocean wastes, as it may be they now bury what once was as
high a civilization as our own. And beyond these periods science
discovers a dead earth, an exhausted sun, a time when, clashing
together, the solar system shall resolve itself into a gaseous form,
again to begin immeasurable mutations." What Revelation has loudly
declared, that science is now at length beginning to understand.
From both, I say, the voices call; they blend into a trumpet warning
mellowed with unutterable pathos: "Work while it is day; take up thy
son."
SPALDING
EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGION
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
John Lancaster Spalding, Roman Catholic bishop and author, was
born in Lebanon, Kentucky, in 1840. He was educated at Mount St.
Mary's College, and at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Ordained
a priest in 1863, he was six years later chosen as secretary and
chancellor of the diocese of Louisville. In 1877 he was appointed
to similar offices in the diocese of Peoria. He is a typical modern
bishop, of the Cardinal Manning type, and the activity which he
displayed in recent social and educational movements was recognized
by his appointment to serve on the President's commission to
investigate strikes, in 1902. The trend of his literary work may
be seen in his volumes on "Education and the Higher Life" (1890);
"Socialism and Labor" (1902); "Religion, Agnosticism and Education"
(1902).
SPALDING
Born in 1840
EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGION[3]
[3] Reprinted by permission of Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co., from
Bishop Spalding's "Religion, Agnosticism and Education."
_It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing;
the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are
life._--John vi., 63.
The greatest service we can do a human being is to give him a right
education, physical, intellectual, moral and religious. If it is
our duty to do good to all; as far as in us lies, it is our duty
to labor for the education of all, that no child of God may live
with an enfeebled body, or a darkened mind, or a callous heart,
or a perverted conscience. Since it is our duty to educate, it is
our duty to give the best education; and, first of all, to give
the best education to woman; for she, as mother, is the aboriginal
God-appointed educator. What hope is there of genuine progress, in
the religious life especially, if we leave her uneducated? Where
woman is ignorant, man is coarse and sensual; where her religion is
but a superstition, he is skeptical and irreverent.
If we are to have a race of enlightened, noble and brave men, we
must give to woman the best education it is possible for her to
receive. She has the same right as man to become all that she may
be, to know whatever may be known, to do whatever is fair and just
and good. In souls there is no sex. If we leave half the race in
ignorance, how shall we hope to lift the other half into the light
of truth and love? Let woman's mental power increase, let her
influence grow, and more and more she will stand by the side of man
as a helper in all his struggles to make the will of God prevail.
From the time the virgin mother held the infant Savior in her arms
to this hour, woman has been the great lover of Christ and the
unwearying helper of His little ones; and the more we strengthen
and illumine her, the more we add to her sublime faith and devotion
the power of knowledge and culture, the more efficaciously will she
work to purify life, to make justice, temperance, chastity, and
love prevail. She is more unselfish, more capable of enthusiasm for
spiritual ends, she has more sympathy with what is beautiful, noble
and godlike than man; and the more her knowledge increases, the more
shall she become a heavenly force to spread God's kingdom on earth.
Doubtless our failure to win the hearts of all men is due in no
slight degree to our indifference to the education of woman.
The Church, in virtue of its divine institution, has the supreme and
absolute right to teach Christian truth and thereby to influence
all education. To her alone Christ gave the commission to teach
whatsoever He had revealed and commanded; and none who believe that
He speaks the words of the eternal Father may refuse to hearken to
the voice of His historic Church uttering the things that appertain
to religion and salvation. Christ did not send His apostles to teach
all knowledge, but to teach His religion; to teach the worship of
God in spirit and in truth, in lowliness of mind and purity of
heart, as men who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In all that
concerns the religious life the Church has the office of Christ,
represents Him and speaks with His authority; and to enable her
to do this with infallible certainty, the Holy Ghost was sent and
abides with her. But Christ did not teach literature, philosophy,
history, or science; and consequently He did not establish His
Church to teach these things. He founded a Church, not an academy.
_Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum._
He left natural knowledge where he found it; left it to grow by
accretion and development, through the activity of special minds
and races, with the process of the ages. He bade His apostles teach
whatsoever things He had commanded them--the doctrines of salvation
and the principles of Christian living. These things He came to
reveal; these He lived and died to plant in the minds and hearts of
men as seeds of immortal life. God doubtless might have made known
from the beginning all the truths of science; but this was not part
of the divine economy. For thousands of years the race was left to
make its way amid the darkness of universal ignorance; and when
here and there a ray of light fell from some mind of genius, it
seemed quickly to be extinguished amid the general obscurity. The
philosophy and the science of Plato and Aristotle had been in the
world for three centuries when Christ came, but He made no allusion
whatever to them. He neither praised nor blamed these great masters
of all who know. Those whom He denounced were not the teachers of
wisdom, but the formalists, who, holding rigidly to the letter of
the law, and adding observance to observance and rule to rule, had
lost the spirit of religion, had apostatized from the infinite love,
which is God.
Christ came to bring immortal faith and hope and love to man. He
uttered no word which might lead us to suppose that He considered
literature or philosophy or history or science as an obstacle to the
worship of God in spirit and in truth. He denounces greed and lust
and indifference and heartlessness; but He does not warn against
the desire to know, the desire to upbuild one's being on every
side, to become more and more like unto God in power, in wisdom,
in goodness, and in beauty. He lays the stress of His example and
teaching upon religion, upon eternal things. He tells us that we can
not serve God and Mammon, but He does not say that faith and reason
conflict. We are human because God is present in the soul; we have
reason because the divine light shines within us--the light which
enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. There can be no
real contradiction between God and His universe, between nature and
the supernatural, between faith and knowledge. On the contrary, the
universe is the manifestation of God's wisdom, goodness and power.
Nature and the supernatural both come from Him; and in wider and
deeper knowledge, we shall find a foundation for a mightier and more
spiritual faith in the eternal Father and His divine Son. Truth can
not contradict truth; for truth is true because it is enrooted in
God, who is absolute truth and at one with Himself. Things are what
they are, and God has given us reason, that we may see them as they
are. The false can never be proven to be true, and the Author of
truth can not teach error or give grace to believe error. All truth
is orthodox, whether it come to us through revelation, reaffirmed by
the voice of the Church, or whether it come in the form of certain
and scientific knowledge. Both the Church and the men of science
must accept the validity of reason, and must therefore hold that
reason can not contradict itself. Knowledge and faith both do God's
work, both help to build man's being into ever-increasing likeness
to Him. Let us not emphasize the opposition between the temporal and
the eternal. God is even here, and even now we are immortal; and
whatever helps us to do His will by serving more effectively our
fellow men, is sacred and of priceless worth. The giving of a cup of
water in the right spirit is divine service; and so is the patient
research which leads to a knowledge of the causes of suffering and
disease, and thereby enables us to shut out pestilence or to make
uninhabitable regions wholesome.
How infinitely difficult it is to preach the gospel effectively to
those who live in ignorance and poverty as in the shadow of the
darkness of death! All who have striven and who strive to educate
the whole people, to bring opportunity of a freer and more human
life to all, have been and are, whether intentionally or not,
workers in the cause of Christ for the salvation of men.
With what misgiving Catholics and Protestants regarded scientific
astronomy when it first began to gain acceptance! And yet what has
it done but make known to us a universe infinitely more wonderful
and sublime than men had ever dreamed of? So it is with all
advancing knowledge. In widening our view of God's work, it gives
us a more exalted conception of His absolute perfection; and at the
same time it puts into our hands more efficient means of working
for the good of man. A truly catholic spirit deems nothing that
may be of service to man foreign to the will of God, as revealed
in Christ. We hold fast to the principle of authority; and at the
same time we believe that man's mind is free, and that he has the
right to inquire into and learn whatever may be investigated and
known. If the Church is to live and prosper in the modern world,
Catholics must have not only freedom to learn, but also freedom to
teach. The spirit is not a mechanism, and when it is made subject to
mechanical rules and methods it loses self-activity, becomes dwarfed
and formal, and little by little sinks into impotence. A servile
mind can never know the truth which liberates. Christ did not found
His Church to solve philosophic, scientific, or historic problems.
These have been left to human research; but Catholics, if they hope
to present effectively their supernatural beliefs to an age of
civilization and culture, must not neglect the chief means by which
the mind is made strong, supple, and luminous. Our men of ability,
whether priests or laymen, must be encouraged to put to good use the
talents with which the Creator has entrusted them; and to prepare
them for this all-important work we must leave nothing undone to
provide them with schools equal to the best. If we isolate ourselves
and fall out of the highest intellectual and moral life of the world
around us, we shall fatally drift into a position of inferiority,
and lose the power to make ourselves heard and understood. If in
the early centuries of Christianity the Church was able to take to
itself what was true and good in pagan philosophy and culture; if
St. Augustine and St. Thomas of Aquino knew how to compel Plato
and Aristotle to become helpers in the cause of Christ, why should
we lose heart and imagine that the Church has lost the faculty of
assimilation? She is old, indeed, but she is also young, having
the promise of immortal life; and therefore she can never lack the
power to adapt herself to the requirements of an ever-revolving
environment.
Since Christ has made the success of His religion largely dependent
on human effort, not annuling nature by grace, but heightening
rather the play of free-will, we must know how to make use of our
best and strongest men; for an institution which can not make use of
its best and strongest men is decadent. What is there to fear? Is
it conceivable that human error shall prevail against God's truth?
Does the religion of Christ, the absolute and abiding faith, need
the defense of concealment, or of sophistical apology, or of lies?
Truth is the supreme good of the mind, as holiness is that of the
heart; and truthfulness is the foundation of righteousness. The most
certain result of the philosophic thought of the last hundred years
is that the primal cause and final end of all things is spiritual,
not mechanical or material. If only we go deep enough, we never fail
to find God and the soul. Shall we dread the results of historical
research? In the Church, as in the world, good has been mingled with
evil--the cockle with the wheat. What God has permitted to happen,
man may be permitted to know; and if we are wise, we may glean, even
from the least promising fields, fruits which shall nourish in us a
higher wisdom and a nobler courage. A righteous cause can never be
truly served either by the timid or the insincere. And what is true
of the history of the Church, is true also of the history of the
Bible. No facts connected with its composition can obscure the light
of God's word which shines forever in its pages, to illumine the
path that leads to a higher and more perfect life, and in the end to
everlasting life.
Opinion rules men, and opinion is nourished by beliefs, and beliefs
are created and sustained by ideas. If we permit ourselves to
fall out of the intellectual movement of the age, we shall lose
influence over the minds that create opinion and shape the future.
"One man of science," says von Hertling, "who works with success
in the fields of research, whose name is written on the page of
history in far-gleaming characters, and who at the same time leads
the life of a true son of the Church, outweighs whole volumes of
apologetics." The truths of salvation are doubtless infinitely more
important than the truths of science; but this natural knowledge
so attracts the attention and awakens the interest of the men of
to-day, it so transforms and improves the methods and processes
by which civilization is promoted, that it has created a new
world-view, not only in the minds of the few profound thinkers and
original investigators, but in the general public of intelligent
men and women; and if our words are to awaken a response, we must
be able to place ourselves at the standpoint of our hearers. The
theologian, the apologist, the orator must be able to say to the
children of this generation: "We see all that you see, and beyond we
see yet diviner truth." Arguments and syllogisms have little power
of persuasion. We win men by showing them the facts of life; and to
do this we must be able to look at things from many points. This
ability is precisely what the best education confers; for it renders
the mind open, luminous, fair, supple, and many sided.
To live in the mind, to strive ceaselessly to learn more of the
infinite truth, is not easy for any one. It requires a discipline,
a courage, a spirit of self-denial, which only the fewest ever
acquire; and when men of this strength and excellence devote
themselves to the elucidation and defense of the doctrines of
religion, we must honor and trust them, or they will lose heart
or turn to studies in which their labors will be appreciated. If
mistrust of our ablest minds be permitted to exist, the inevitable
result will be a lowering of the whole intellectual life of
Catholics, and as a consequence a lowering of their moral and
religious life. If we have no great masters, how shall we hope to
have eager and loving disciples? If we have no men who write vital
books--books of power, books which are literature and endure--how
shall we expect to enter along an inner line into the higher life
of the age, to quicken, purify, and exalt the hopes and thoughts
of men? Is the Bible itself written with the rigid exactness of
a mathematical treatise? Is it not rather a book of life, of
literature, full of symbols and metaphors and poetry? What book
has been so misunderstood, and misinterpreted, even by honest and
enlightened minds, even by theologians themselves?