SCIENCE tells us that the law of growth is embodied in the phrase, "the
struggle for life and the survival of the fittest." As we look beneath
the surface in any department of human endeavor, analyze things a
little carefully, we discover that this contest is going on. We know
that it is not confined to the lower forms of life or the order of the
inanimate world. It is a universal law. We are not always conscious of
it; but, when we do think and study, we discover it as an unescapable
fact.
In the religious world, for example, between the different thoughts and
theories which are held among men as solutions of the problems of life
we find this contest going on. Here, again, it is not always noticed;
but in the mind of any man who thinks, who reads, who reflects, this
process is apparent. This view is considered, another view mentioned by
somebody else is set over against it, and the claims of the two
theories are brought up for judgment. And so there goes on perpetually
this debate. Now and again it comes to the surface, and attracts
popular attention. We have been in the midst of an experience of this
kind for the last two or three weeks here in New York City.
But the thing I want you to note is -- and that is the great lesson I
have in mind this morning that all of this superficial discussion of
one point or another is only an indication of a larger, deeper contest.
When, for example, men are debating as to the infallibility or
inerrancy of the Old Testament, as to the story of the creation as told
in Genesis, as to the nature and work of Jesus, as to the future
destiny of the race, when they are discussing any one of these
particular problems, they are dealing with matters that are really
superficial. Underneath these there is a larger problem; and to this
problem and its probable issues I wish to call your attention this
morning.
There are two great world theories, complete each in itself, both of
them thinkable, mutually exclusive, one of which only can be true, and
one of which must finally become dominant in the educated and free
thought of the world. These two theories I wish to place face to face
before you this morning, call your attention to some of their special
features and note the claims they have on our acceptance.
Before doing this, however, I wish you to note that there are
indications of a dual tendency on the part of the human mind which has
not been manifested in the development of these two theories alone, but
which has had illustrations in other directions and in other times.
In the early traditions of Greece and Rome you find two tendencies on
the part of the mind of man. There was, first, an old-time tradition
which placed the Golden Age of humanity away back in the past. The
people dreamed of a time when Saturn, the father of gods and men, lived
on the earth, and governed directly his children and his people. In
that happy time there was no disease, no pain, no poverty. There were
no class distinctions. There were no wars. The evil of the world was
unknown. That was the Golden Age which a certain set of thinkers then
placed far back in the past. They told how that age was succeeded by a
bronze age, a poorer condition of affairs, how the gods left the earth,
and ill contentions and evils of every kind began to afflict the world.
This was succeeded by the age of brass, that by the age of iron; and so
the poor old world was supposed to be getting worse and worse, lower
and lower, from one epoch of time to another.
But also among these same people there were another set of traditions,
illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the story of Prometheus.
According to this the first age of humanity was its worst and poorest
and lowest age. The people lived in abject poverty and misery. They
were even neglected on the part of the gods, who did not seem to care
for them, but treated them with contempt. Prometheus is represented as
pitying their evil estate, caring more for them than the gods did; and
so he steals the celestial fire, and comes down to the world and
presents it to men, and so helps them to begin civilization, a period
of prosperity and progress. For this he is punished by the gods.
The point I wish you to note is that even among the Greeks and the
Romans there were two types of mind, one of which placed the Golden Age
in the past, and the other of which placed it in the future as the goal
of man's endeavor and growth.
A precisely similar thing we find in the Old Testament, so that these
two types of mind appear among the Hebrews. In one of these we find
again the Golden Age, the perfect condition of things, placed at the
beginning. There was a garden, and man and woman were perfect in it.
There was no labor, no toil, no pain, no sorrow, no fear, no trouble of
any kind. But that was followed by sin, evil, entering the world, by
their being driven out; and so the world has again been going from bad
to worse, as the ages have passed by.
On the other hand, among the Hebrews, as illustrated in the writings of
the great prophets, the master minds of the Hebrew race, there is the
opposite belief manifested. There is no fall of man, no perfect
condition of things, no Golden Age at the beginning, in the prophets.
There is none in the teaching of Jesus. Rather do they look forward
with kindling eye and beating heart to some grander thing that is to
be.
Here is this dual tradition, then, in the world, in different parts of
the world, this dual way of looking at the problem of life.
Now I wish to place before you the two great contrasted theories of the
universe. In presenting that which has been dominant for the last two
or three thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, speaking roughly, I am
quite well aware that I shall have to seem to tell you what you
perfectly well know, what I have said on other occasions; but it is
necessary for me to run over it, and I will do so as briefly as I can,
setting it before you in outline as a whole, so that you may see it in
contrast with the other theory which I shall then endeavor to set forth
also as a whole.
According to that theory of the world, then, which lies at the
foundation, the old-time and still generally accepted theory of
Christendom, the world was created in the year 4004 B.C. It was created
in a week's time. This was the general teaching until thinkers were
compelled to accept another theory by the advances of modern
investigation. The world was created inside of a week. God got through,
pronounced it good, and rested. Then in a short period of time we do
not know how long evil entered this world which God had pronounced
perfect. Satan, a real being, the leader of the hosts of the fallen
angels, the traditional enemy of God, who had fought him even in his
own heaven and been cast out, invades this fair earth. He seduces our
first parents, gets them to commit a sin against God which makes them
his enemies, turns them into rebels against his just and holy
government. The world, then, is fallen. Now from that day to this the
one effort on the part of God, according to this theory, has been to
deliver the world from this lost condition. Jonathan Edwards, for
example, published a book called "The History of Redemption." He
conceived the entire history of the world under that title, because the
history of the world, according to this theory, has been the history of
the effort of God to deliver man from the effects of the fall.
Now let us note the story as it proceeds a little further. The world
exists for I think I have a date here which may interest you 1,656
years, God meantime doing everything he could, by sending angels and
special messengers and teaching the people; and he had accomplished so
little that the world was in such a condition that he was compelled to
drown it. So came the flood. After that, he chooses one family, one
little family and the descendants of that family, one little people,
and bends all his energies to the education and training of that
people,-- a small people inhabiting a country on the eastern coast of
the Mediterranean Sea just about as large as the State of
Massachusetts.
For more than two thousand years he devotes himself to the training of
this people. How does he succeed here? He sends his messengers again,
his angels, his prophets, one after another. He inspires a certain
number of men to write a book to deliver his will to the people, fallen
into such condition that they are incapable of discovering the truth
for themselves. But, after all his efforts, they are so far from the
truth that, when the second person of the Trinity appears, they have
nothing to do with him except to put him to death. After that, God
sends the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to organize his
Church, spread his truth, convert men, bring them into the Church, and
so fit them to be saved. And, after two thousand years of that kind of
effort, what is the result? They tell us that not more than a third
part of the inhabitants of the world have heard anything about it, that
the majority of those who have heard about it reject it. Mr. Moody told
us last year that in this country, which we love to think of as the
most favored and highly civilized and intelligent country in the world,
out of seventy millions of inhabitants, not more than thirty millions
ever see the inside of any kind of church. I do not vouch for the
accuracy of the statistics. I wish to impress upon you the result of
this theory of this six thousand years of endeavor on the part of God
to bring his own children to a knowledge of his own truth. The upshot
of it is that the few, the minority, will be saved, and the great
majority eternally lost.
Now here is one world theory, one scheme of world history which I wish
you to hold clearly and as definitely as possible in your minds, while
I place alongside of it another theory.
According to this other, God did not suddenly create the world in a
week or in a hundred thousand years. It is a story of continuous and
eternal creation. As Jesus said, with fine and noble insight, "My
father worketh hitherto." He did not recognize that God was resting on
any day or through any period of time.
The world, then, has always been in process of creation. The same
forces at work in accordance with substantially the same laws. The
world has been millions of years in this process; and the process all
around us, if we choose to open our eyes and note it, is still going on
with all its wonder and divinity. And we know, as we study the heavens
above us, or around us rather, with our telescopes, that there are
worlds and systems of worlds in process of creation on every hand. We
are permitted to look into the divine workshop and observe the divine
method.
The world, then, is always in process of creation. This is the first
point in the new theory. It follows, of course, from this that we are
to hold the story of the antiquity of the earth, the earth millions of
years old, instead of six thousand or ten thousand.
And then, in the third place, it tells us the story of the antiquity of
the human race.
All scholars, for example, as bearing on this I will give you just this
one illustration, know that there was a civilization in Egypt, wide-
spread, highly developed, with nobody knows how many ages of growth
behind it, there was this civilization in Egypt before the world was
created according to the popular chronology that has been generally
received until within a few years.
We know that man has been on the earth hundreds of thousands of years.
This is the next point in that story.
In the next place, they tell us a wondrous tale of the origin and
nature of man, tracing his natural development from lower forms of
life. When I say "natural," I do not wish you to think for one moment
that I leave out the divinity; for, according to this story of the
world which I am hinting and outlining now, God is infinitely nearer,
more wonderfully in contact with us, than he ever was in the old.
Natural, then, but divine at every step, so that we are seeing God face
to face, if we but think of it, and are feeling his touch every moment
of our lives.
No fall of man, then, on this theory. No invasion of this world by any
form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of
man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical
fashion for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death. We account
for it on this new theory much more naturally, rationally, more
honorably for God, more hopefully for man.
The history of the world, then, since man began has not been by any
means a history of universal progression. Evolution, however much it
may be misunderstood and misrepresented, does not mean the necessity of
progress on the part of any one person or any one people, any more, for
example, than the growth of the human body is inconsistent with the
fact that cells and composite parts of the body are in process of decay
and dissolution every hour, every moment of our lives.
Nations grow, advance, if they comply with the laws, the conditions, of
growth and advance; and, if not, they die out and disappear. And so is
it of individuals. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the
loving, lifting, leading God, humanity in the larger sense has been
advancing from the beginning of human history until to-day; and the
grade, dim glimpses of which we gain as we look out toward the future,
is still up and still on.
According to this theory of the universe, there does not need to be any
stupendous breaking in of God into his own world after any miraculous
fashion. We do not need an infallible guide in religion any more than
anywhere else, unless we are in danger of eternal loss because of an
intellectual mistake. We do not need any stupendous miracle to
reconcile God to his own world; for he has always been reconciled. We
do not need any miraculous bridging of any mythical gulf; for there
never has been any gulf. And the outcome, not as we look forward are we
haunted by fearful anticipations of darkness and evil; as we listen, we
do not ever hear the clanking of chains; as we look, we know that the
dimness that hangs over the coming time is not caused by "the smoke of
the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever." It is a story of
eternal hope for every race, for every child of man and child of God.
Here are these two theories, then, two schemes of the universe and of
human history. Which of them shall we accept?
I wish you to note now, and to note with a little care, that you cannot
rationally accept a part of one theory and a part of the other, and so
make up a patchwork to suit yourselves. Take, for example, the one
question, Is man lost or is he not? He is not half lost or sort of
lost: he is either lost or he is not lost. Which is true? If he is not
"lost," then he does not need to be "saved." He may need something
else; but he does not need that, for the two correspond and match each
other. Let us think, then, a little clearly in regard to this matter,
and remember that the outcome of the conflict between these two
theories must be the supremacy of either one or the other.
Now, before I come to any more fundamental and earnest treatment of the
subject, let me call your attention to certain things that are
happening to the old theory.
How much of that old theory is intact to-day? How much of it is held
even by those who, being scholars and thinkers, still hold their
allegiance to the old-time theology? Let us see. The story of the
sudden and finite creation of the world is completely gone. Nobody
holds that now who gives it any attention. They have stretched the six
days of the week, even those who hold the accuracy of the Genesis
account, into uncounted periods of time. So that is gone. The antiquity
of man is conceded by everybody who has a right to have and express an
opinion; that is, by everybody who has given it any study. Every
competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of
man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that
came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and
was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the
leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you
know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to-
day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend
or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. And yet, as I
have said a good many times, they go on as though nothing had happened,
although the foundation of their house has been removed. Only theories
which stand in the air can thus defy the law of gravitation.
Nobody to-day who has a right to have an opinion believes that God ever
drowned the world. That is gone. As to the question as to whether we
have an infallible book to guide us in religious matters, there are
very few scholars in any church to-day, so far as my investigations
have led, who hold any such opinion. That is gone; and the Bible, the
Old Testament, at any rate is coming to be recognized, not as
infallible revelation, but as ancient literature, immensely
interesting, full of instruction, but not as an unquestioned guide in
any department of life.
There are many among the nominally old churches who are coming to hold
a very different theory concerning Jesus, his life, his death, and the
effect of his death on the salvation of man. More reasonable ideas are
prevailing here. In every direction also there are thousands on
thousands who are becoming freed from that horrible incubus of fear as
they look out towards the future.
As you note then, point after point of this old scheme of the universe
is disappearing, being superseded by something else; until I am
astonished, as I converse with friends in the other churches, to find
how little of it is really left, how little of it men are ready, out
and out, to defend. In conversation with an Episcopal clergyman a short
time ago on theological questions, we agreed so well that I laughingly
said I saw no reason why I should not become a clergyman in the
Episcopal Church.
Now, friends, what I wish you to note is this: that there is not one
single point in this old scheme of the universe that can be reasonably
defended to-day. It is passing away from intelligent, cultivated human
thought.
And note another thing: it is a scheme which is a discredit to the
thought of God. It is unjust. It is dishonorable in its moral and
religious implications. It is pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook
for the race. It does not explain the problems of human nature and
human experience half as well as the other theory does, even if it
could be demonstrated as truth.
Now let us look at the other. The other theory is magnificent in its
proportions. It is grand in its conception and in its age-long sweep
and range. It is worthy of the grandest thought of God we can frame;
and we cannot imagine any increase or heightening or deepening of that
thought which would reach beyond the limits of this conception of the
universe, magnificent in its thought of God. And, instead of being
pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook for man, it is full of hope, of
life, of inspiration, of cheer, something for which we well may break
out into songs of gladness as we contemplate.
And, then, it is true. There is not one single feature of it, or point
in it, that has not in the main been scientifically demonstrated to be
God's truth. I make this statement, and challenge the contradiction of
the world. Whatever breaks there may be in the evidence for this second
theory that I have outlined, every single scrap and particle of
evidence that there is in the universe is in its favor; and there is
not one single scrap or particle of evidence in favor of the other. As
I say, I challenge the contradiction of the scholarly world to that
statement.
It is true then. Being true, it is God's truth, God's theory of things,
the outline of human history as God has laid it down for us; and, as we
trace it, like Kepler, we may say, "O God, I think over again thy
thoughts after Thee."
Now I wish you to note one or two things concerning this a little
further. There are a great may persons who shrink from accepting new
ideas because they are haunted with the fear that in some way something
precious, something sweet, something noble, something inspiring that
they have associated with the past, is going to be lost. But think,
friends. When the Ptolemaic theory of the universe gave way to the
Copernican, not only did the Copernican have the advantage of being
true, but not one single star in heaven was put out or even dimmed its
light. All of them looked down upon us with an added magnificence and a
fresher glow, because we felt at last we were standing face to face
with the truth of things, and not with a fallible theory of man.
Do not be afraid, then, that any of the sanctities, any of the
devoutness, any of the tenderness, any of the sweet sentiments, any of
the loves, any of the charities, any of the worships of the past, are
in danger of being lost. Why, these, friends, are the summed-up result
of all the world's finest and sweetest achievement up to this hour; and
our theories are only vessels in which we carry the precious treasure.
I am interested in having you see the truth of this universe, because I
believe you will worship God more devoutly and love man more truly and
consecrate yourselves more unreservedly to the highest and noblest
ends, when you can think thoughts of God that kindle aspiration and
worship, and thoughts of men as children of God that make it grandly
worth your while to live and die for them.
Do you think there is going to be a poorer religion than there has been
in the past? I look to the time when we shall have a church as wide as
the horizon, domed by the blue, lighted by the sun, the Sun of
Righteousness, the Eternal Truth of the Father; a church in which all
men shall be recognized as brothers, of whatever sect or whatever
religion, in which all shall kneel and chant or lisp their worship
according as they are able, the worship of the one Father, cheered and
inspired by the one universal and eternal hope for man.
Do not be afraid of the truth, then, for fear something precious is
going to be lost out of human life. Evolution never gives up anything
of the past that is worth keeping. It simply carries it on, and moulds
it into ever higher and finer shapes for the service of man.
I intimated a moment ago? I wish to touch on this briefly for the sake
of clearness that man, according to this new theory, does not need to
be saved, in the theological sense, of course, I mean, because he is
not lost. He has never been far away from the Father, never been beyond
the reach of his hand, never been beyond the touch of his love and
care. What does he need? He needs to be trained, he needs to be
educated, he needs to be developed for man is just as naturally
religious as he is musical or artistic, as he is interested in problems
of government or economics, or any of the great problems that touch the
welfare of the world.
Man needs churches, then, or societies of those interested in the
higher life of the time, needs services, needs all these things that
kindle and train and develop and lift him up out of the animal into the
spiritual and divine nature which is in every one of us. So that none
of the worships, none of the religious forms of the world that are of
any value, are ever going to be cast aside or left behind.
But there is one very important point that I must deal with for just a
little while. I will be as brief as I can.
I have been very much surprised to note certain things that have come
out in the recent religious discussions. The editor of the Brooklyn
Eagle, for example, has deprecated all talk in regard to matters of
this sort, saying, in effect: What difference does it make? What is
involved that is of any importance? Why not let everybody worship and
believe as he pleases? A writer in the New York Times? I think perhaps
more than one, but one specially I have in mind has said substantially
the same thing. It does not make any difference. Let people worship as
they please, let them believe as they please, let them go their own
way. What difference does it make?
Friends, it makes no difference at all, provided there is no such thing
in the world as religious truth. If there is, it makes all difference.
Let us take this "Don't care" and "No matter" theory for a moment, and
in the light of it consider a few of the grandest lives of the world.
If it makes no difference what a man believes in religion or how he
worships or what he tries to do, how does it happen that we Unitarians,
for example, glorify Theodore Parker, and count him a great moral and
intellectual hero? Why should he have made himself so unpopular as to
be cast out even of the Unitarian fellowship? Was he contending for
nothing? Was he a fool? was he making himself uncomfortable over
imaginary distinctions? Perhaps; but, then, why are we foolish enough
to honor him?
Why is it that we glorify Channing, who at an earlier period was cast
out of the best religious society of the world for what he believed to
be a great principle? Why is it to-day that we lift John Wesley on such
a lofty pedestal of admiration? He left the Church of England, or was
cast out of it, went among the poor, preached a great religious reform,
led a magnificent crusade, teaching a higher and grander spiritual
religion, a religion of heart, of life, of character, against the mere
formalism of the Church of his time. Was he contending about airy
nothings without local habitation or a name? If so, why are we so
foolish as to admire him?
Go back further to Martin Luther, putting himself in danger of his
life, standing against banded Europe, and saying, "Here I stand: God
help me, I can do no otherwise!" What is the use? What did he do it
for? If it made no difference whether a man worshipped God
intelligently or according to the things Luther thought all wrong, what
was the difference? What was he contending about, and why does the
world bow down to him with reverence and honor?
Why are we fools enough to honor the men who were burned at Oxford? Why
do we honor to-day the line of saints and martyrs? Why do we look upon
Savonarola with such admiration?
To go back still farther, why was it that the early Christians were
ready to suffer torture, to be racked, to be persecuted, to be thrown
into kettles of boiling oil, to be cast to the wild beasts in the
arena? Were they contending for nothing at all? If it makes no
difference, why were they casting themselves away in this Quixotic and
foolish fashion and, if there was nothing involved, how is it that
these names shine as stars in the religious firmament of the world's
worship?
Go to the time of Jesus himself. A young Nazarene, he leaves his home
in Nazareth, joins the fortunes of John the Baptist. After John the
Baptist had been fool enough to get his head cut off contending for his
theory, Jesus takes up his work, dares to speak against the temple,
dares to challenge the righteousness of the most righteous men of their
time, dares at last to stand so firmly that he is taken out one
afternoon and hung upon a tree on the hill beyond the walls of the
city, the one supreme piece of folly in the history of the world from
the "Does not make any difference" point of view.
Is there any truth involved? Does it touch the living or the welfare of
the world? If not, why, then, are these looked upon as the grandest
figures since the world began? Are all men fools for admiring them,
except these wiseacres who stand for the theory that it makes no
difference and who ought not to admire them at all?
Suppose you apply the principle in other departments of life. We had a
tremendous issue in this city and country last fall over the financial
question. Would it have made any difference which side won? If it was
just as well one way as the other, why not let the people who clamored
for silver have silver, those who wanted greenbacks have greenbacks,
and those who desired gold have gold? What was the use of troubling
about it? We thought there were principles involved.
Take it in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory,
the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward
Bellamy's "Looking Backward"; a hundred advancers of these different
schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of
civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take
it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories
embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia prevail, or these here in
the United States which we are so foolish as to laud and pride
ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting
billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great
human contests about nothing at all?
Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of God or he is not.
Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and
curse of God, or he did not. God has sent angels, breaking into his
natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible
book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has
authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came
down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified,
dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.
These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what
we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal
death, and God has provided only one way for his escape and salvation,
then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know
it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race
is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain
prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it
or not?
And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart
and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man,
whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible
incubus of dread and fear?
Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence,
their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for
humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right
thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be
guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote
ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste,
the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration
poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards
things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need
to be done!
These are the questions involved in discussions as to what God is and
has done and is going to do with his world.
The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is
to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors
and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at
the disposal of God for the service of our fellows.
O star of truth down-shining, Through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask
but 'neath your guidance My pathway may appear. However long the
journey, How hard soe'er it be, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on,
I'll follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance Can never lead astray,
However ancient custom May tread some other way. E'en if through untrod
desert Or over trackless sea, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll
follow thee. The bleeding feet of martyr Thy toilsome road have trod;
But fires of human passion May lead the way to God. Then, though my feet
should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary,
Lead on, I'll follow thee. Though loving friends forsake me Or plead
with me in tears, Though angry foes may threaten To shake my soul with
fears, Still to my high allegiance I must not faithless be, Through life
or death, forever Lead on, I'll follow thee.