IT is very common for people to identify their special type of religion
or their theological opinions with religion itself, and feel that those
who do not agree with them are in the rue sense not religious. Not only
this. It is perhaps quite less common for them to identify their
particular type of religion with the fundamental ideas of morality, and
think that the people who do not agree with them are undermining the
moral stability of the world. For example, those who question the
absolute authority of the Catholic Church are looked upon the
authorities of that Church as the enemies, not only of religion, but as
the enemies of society, the enemies of humanity, as doing what they can
to shake the very foundations of he social order. You will find a great
many Protestant theologians who seem to hold the opinion that, if you
dare to question the authenticity or authority of some particular nook
in the Bible, you are not only an enemy of religion, but you are an
enemy of morality. You are doing what you can to disturb the stability
of the world.
But, if we look at the matter with a little care, we shall see that we
ought to turn it quite around, look at it from another point of view.
Though every Bible, every particle of religious literature, every hymn,
every prayer on the face of the earth, were blotted out of existence
to-day, religion would not be touched. Religious books did not create
religion, did not make man a religious being. It is the religious
nature of man that made the Bibles, that uttered itself in prayers,
that created the rituals, that sung the hymns and chanted the anthems.
It is man, a religious being, who makes religious institutions, who
creates all the external aspects and appearances of the religious life.
And the same is true precisely in regard to moral precepts. If the Ten
Commandments were blotted out of the memory of man, if every single
ethical teaching of Jesus should perish, if the high and fine moral
precepts of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and all the great teachers of
the pagan world should cease to exist, if there were not a printed
moral precept on earth, morality would not be touched. It is not these
that have created morality. It is the natural moral nature of man that
has written all the commandments, whether they have come to us by the
hand of Moses or of Gautama or Mohammed or Confucius or Seneca, or no
matter who the medium may have been.
Man is a moral being, naturally, essentially, eternally, and this is a
moral universe, inherently, necessarily, eternally; and, though all the
external expression of moral thought and feeling should be lost, the
human race would simply reproduce them again.
It is sometimes well for us to get down to the bed-rock in our
thinking, and find how natural and necessary the great foundations are.
The Hindu priests used to tell their followers that the earth, which
was flat, rested on certain pillars, which rested again on some other
foundation beneath them, and so on until thought was weary in trying to
trace that upon which the earth was supposed to find its stability. And
they also told their followers that, if they did not bring offerings,
if they did not pay the special respect which was due to the gods, if
they were not obedient to heir teachings, these pillars would give way,
and the earth would be precipitated into the abyss.
But we have found, as a result of our modern study of he universe, that
the earth needs no pillars on which to rest; but it swings freely in
its orbit, as the old verse that used to read in my schoolboy days
says, "Hangs on nothing in the air," part of the universal system of
things, stable in its eternal sound and motion, kept and cared for by
the power that lever sleeps and never is weary. So, by studying into
the foundations of the moral nature of man, we have discovered a last
that it needs no artificial props or supports, but that morality is
inherent, natural and eternal.
I shall not raise the question, which is rather curious than practical,
as to whether there are any beginnings of moral feeling in the animal
world below man. For our purpose this morning it is enough to note that
the minute that man appears conscience appears, and that conscience is
an act which springs out of social relations. In other words, when the
first man rose to the ability to look into the face of his fellow and
think of the other man as another self, like himself in feelings, in
possibilities of pleasure or pain, when this first man was able
imaginatively to put himself in: he place of this other, then morality
as a practical fact was Dorn.
We may imagine, for the purpose of illustration, this man saying: Here
is another being who appears to be like myself. He is capable of
suffering pain, as I am. He does not like pain any better than I do.
Therefore, I have no right to make him suffer that which I do not wish
to suffer myself. This other man is capable of pleasure. He desires
certain things, similar things to those which I desire. If I do not
wish him to take these things away from me, I have no right to take
them away from him.
I do not mean that this was thought out in this clear way, but that,
when there was the first dim perception of this other self, with
similar feelings, similar possibilities, similar pleasures, similar
pains, then there became a conscience, because there was a
consciousness of this similarity of nature. Morality, then, is born as
a social fact.
To go a little deeper, and in order to trace the natural and historical
growth of the moral ideal, let me say that morality in its deepest and
truest sense is born of the fact of sex, because it is right in there
that we find the root and the germ of permanent social relations. And I
wish you to note another very significant fact. You hear people talking
about selfishness and unselfishness, as though they were direct
contraries, mutually exclusive of each other, as though, in order to
make a selfish man unselfish, you must completely reverse his nature,
so to speak. I do not think this is true at all. Unselfishness
naturally and necessarily springs out of selfishness, and, in the
deepest sense of the word, is not at all contradictory to that.
For example: A man falls in love with a woman. This, on one side of it,
is as selfish as anything you can possibly conceive. But do you not see
by what subtle and divine chemistry the selfishness is straightway
transformed, lifted up, glorified, and becomes unselfishness? The very
love that he professes for her makes it necessary for his own happiness
that she should be happy, so that, in seeking for his own selfish
gratification, he is devoting himself unselfishly to the happiness of
somebody else.
And, when a child is born, do you not see, again, how the two
selfishnesses, the father's and the mother's, selfishly, if you please,
brooding over and loving the child, at once go out of themselves,
consecrating time and care and thought and love, and even health or
life itself, if need be, for the welfare of the child?
Right in there, then, out of this fact of sex and in the becoming of
the family, are born love and sympathy, and tenderness and mutual care,
all those things which are the highest and finest constituent elements
of the noblest developments of the moral nature of men.
Imagination plays a large part in the development of morality; for you
must be able to put yourself imaginatively in the place of another
before you can feel for that other, and in that way recognize the
rights of that other and be ready to grant these rights to that other.
So we find that morality at first is a narrow thing: it is confined
perhaps to the little family, the father, the mother, the child, bound
together by these ties of kinship, of love, of sympathy, devoting
themselves to each other; but they may look upon some other family as
their natural enemies, and feel no necessity whatever to apply these
same principles of love and tenderness and care beyond the limits of
their own little circle.
So you find, as you study the growth of the moral nature of man, that
it is confined at first to the family, then to the patriarchal family,
then the tribe; but the fiction of kinship is still kept up, and, while
the member of the primeval tribe feels he has no right to rob or murder
within the limits of his tribe, he has no compunction whatever about
robbing or murdering or injuring the members of some other tribe. So
the moral principle in its practical working is limited to the range of
the sympathy of the tribe, which does not go beyond the tribal limits.
We see how that principle works still in the world, from the beginning
clear up to the highest reaches which we have as yet attained.
Take the next step, and find a city like ancient Athens. Still,
perhaps, the fiction of kinship is maintained. All the citizens of
Athens are regarded as members of the same great tribe or family. But
even in the time of Plato, whom we are accustomed to look upon as one
of the great teachers of the world, there was no thought of any moral
obligation to anybody who lived in Sparta, lived in any other city of
Greece, and less was there any thought of moral obligation as touching
or taking in the outside barbarian. So when the city grew into a
nation, and we came to a point where the world substantially stands
to-day, do you not see that practically the same principle holds, that,
while we recognize in some abstract sort of fashion that we ought to do
justice and be kind to people beyond our own limits, yet all our
political economy, all our national ideas, are accustomed to emphasize
the fact that we must be just and righteous to our own people, but that
aggression, injustice of almost any kind, is venial in our treatment of
the inhabitants of another country? And it may even flame up into the
fire of a wordy patriotism in certain conditions; and love of country
may mean hatred and injustice towards the inhabitants of another
country, or particularly towards the people of another race.
Let me give you a practical illustration of it. What are the relations
in which we stand to-day towards Spain? I have unbounded admiration for
the patience, on the whole, for the justice, the sense of right, which
characterize the American people. I doubt if there is another nation on
the face of the earth to-day that would have gone through the last two
or three years of our experience, and maintained such an attitude of
impartiality, of faithfulness, of justice, of right. And yet, if we
examine ourselves, we shall find that it is immensely difficult for us
to put ourselves in the place of a Spaniard, to look at the Cuban
question from his point of view, to try to be fair, to be just to him.
It is immensely difficult, I say, for us to look at one of these
international questions from the point of view of another race,
cherishing other religious and social ideas, having another style of
government.
And there is another illustration of it that has recently occurred here
in our country, which is sadder still to me. Only a little while ago a
postmaster in the South was shot by a mob. The mob surrounds his house,
murders him and his child, wounds other members of the family, burns
down his home; and why? Under no impulse whatever except that of pure
and simple race prejudice, the utter inability of a white man to put
himself in the position of a black to such an extent as to recognize,
plead for, or defend his inherent rights as a man.
I am not casting any aspersion on the South in what I am saying, none
whatever. Were the conditions reversed, perhaps we should be no better.
It is not a practical problem with us. If there were two or three times
as many colored men in the State of New York as there are white men,
then we might understand the question. Let us not mentally cast any
stones at the people across the line. I point it out simply as
illustrating the difficulty that we have in recognizing the rights, the
moral rights, of people beyond the limits of that sympathy to which we
have been accustomed and for a long period trained.
I believe the day will come when we shall be as jealous of the right of
a man as we are now of the right of an American. We are not yet. There
have been foregleams and prophecies of it in the past. Long ago a Latin
writer said, I am a man, and whatever is human is not foreign to me.
But think what a lone and isolated utterance that has been for hundreds
of years. Jesus taught us to pray, not my Father, but our Father, and
we do pray it every day in the-year; but how many are the people in any
of the churches that dream of living it? A hundred years ago that
heretic, who is still looked upon as the bugaboo of all that is fine
and good, Thomas Paine, wrote, "The world is my country, and to do good
is my religion," a sentence so fine that it has been carved on the base
of the statue of William Lloyd Garrison on Commonwealth Avenue in
Boston, as being a fitting symbol of his own philanthropic life.
How many of us have risen to the idea of making these grand sentiments
the ruling principles of our lives? But along the lines of moral growth
it is to come. The day will be when, as I said, we shall feel as keenly
whatever touches the right of any man as to-day we feel that which
touches the right of one of our own people; and the moral growth of the
world will reach beyond that. I love to dream of a day when men will no
longer forget the inherent rights of any inhabitant of the air or of
the waters or of the woods or any of the domesticated animals that we
have come to associate with our lives.
We feel towards them to-day as in the old days a man felt towards
another man who was his slave, that he had a right to abuse, to
maltreat, even to kill, if he pleased. We have not yet become civilized
enough, so that we feel it incumbent upon us to recognize the fact that
animals can suffer pain, that animals can enjoy the air or the
sunshine, and that they have a right to each when they do not trespass
upon the larger rights of humanity. I was something of a boy when it
first came over me that it was not as amusing to animals to be shot and
killed as it was to me to shoot and kill them. From the time I was able
to lift a gun I had always carried one; but I soon learned that for me
there was no pleasure in taking needlessly the life of anything that
lived. We are only partially civilized as yet in the treatment of our
domesticated animals. How many people think of the torture of the curb
bit, of the check, of neglect in the case of cold, of thirst, of
hunger? How many people, I say, civilized and in our best society, are
careful yet as to the comfort, the rights, of those that serve them in
these humble capacities?
The time will come when our moral sympathetic sense shall widen its
boundaries even farther yet, and shall take in the trees and the
shrubs, the waters, the hills, all the natural and beautiful features
of the world. I believe that by and by it will be regarded as immoral,
as unmanly, to deface, to mar, that which God has made so glorious and
so beautiful. As soon as man develops, then, his power of sympathy, so
that it can take the world in its arms, so soon he will have grown to
the stature of the Divine in the unfolding of his moral nature.
I wish now to raise the question, for a moment, as to what is to be our
guide in regard to moral facts and moral actions. I was trained, and
perhaps most of you were, to believe that I was unquestioningly to
follow my conscience, that whatever conscience told me to do was
necessarily right. The conscience has been spoken of as though it were
a sort of little deity set to rule man's nature, this little kingdom of
thought and feeling and action. But conscience is nothing of the kind.
Half of the consciences of the world to-day are all wrong.
Let me hint by way of illustration what I mean: Calvin was just as
conscientious in burning Servetus as Servetus was in pursuing that
course of action which led him to the stake. One of them was wrong in
following his conscience, then. You take it to-day: some people will
tell you there is a certain day in the week that you must observe as
sacred. Your conscience tells you there is another day in the week that
you must observe as sacred. Can both be right? Many of the greatest
tragedies of the world have come about through these controversies and
confusions of conscience. The Quaker in old Boston went at the cart's
tail, in disgrace, because he followed his conscience; and the Puritan
put him there because he followed his conscience. Were both of them
right? The inquisitor in Spain put to death hundreds and thousands of
people conscientiously; and the hundreds and thousands of people
conscientiously went to their deaths.
What is conscience, then? Conscience is not a moral guide. It is simply
that monitor within that reiterates to us forever and forever and
forever, Do right. But conscience does not tell us what is right. We
must decide those questions as a matter of calm study and judgment in
the light of human experience. It is the judgment that should tell us
whether a thing is right or wrong. And how shall we know whether it is
right or wrong? Simply by the consequences. That which helps, that
which lifts man up, that which adds to the happiness and the well-being
of the world, as the result of human experience, is right. That which
hurts, that which injures men and women, that which takes away from
their welfare and happiness, that is wrong. All these things, as we
shall see before I get through, are inherent in the nature of things,
not created by statute, not the result of the moral teaching of
anybody.
This leads me to extend this idea a little farther, and to raise the
question as to what is the standard by which you are to judge moral
action. If you will think it out with a little care, you will find that
the standard of all moral action may be summed up in the one word
"life." Life, first, as continuance; second, to use a philosophical
term, content, that which it includes. Life, this is the standard of
right and wrong.
To illustrate, take me physically, leave out of account all the rest of
my nature now for a moment, and consider me as an animal. From the
point of view of my body, that which conduces to length of life, to
fullness, to completion, to enjoyment of life, is right, the only
right, from this physical point of view. That which threatens my life,
that which takes away my sum of strength, injures my health, takes away
from my possibility of enjoyment, that, from a physical point of view,
is wrong; and there can be no other right or wrong from the point of
view of the body.
But I am not simply body. So this principle must be modified. Come up
to the fact that I am an intellectual being. In order to develop myself
intellectually, I may have to forego things that would be pleasant on
the bodily plane. I sacrifice the lower for the higher; and that which
would be right on the physical plane becomes relatively wrong now,
because it interferes with something that is higher and more important.
Rise one step to man as an affectional being. If you wish to develop
him to the finest and highest here, you may not only be obliged under
certain conditions to sacrifice the body, but you may be obliged to
sacrifice his intellectual development. In order that he may be the
best up here, he must put the others sometimes, relatively, under his
feet. So, again, that which would be right on the physical plane or the
intellectual plane becomes relatively wrong, if it interferes with that
which is higher still.
And so, if you recognize man as a spiritual being, a child of God, then
you say it is right, if need be, to put all these other things under
his feet, in order that he may attain the highest and best that he is
capable of here. But you see it is life all the way, it is the physical
life or it is the mental life or it is the affectional life or it is
the spiritual life; and that which is necessary for the cultivation and
development of these different grades of life becomes on those grades
right, and that which threatens or injures one or either of these
grades becomes, so far as that grade is concerned, wrong.
Life, then, continuance, fullness, joy, use, this is the standard of
right and wrong; a standard which no book ever set up, which no book
can ever overthrow; a standard which is inherent, natural, necessary, a
part of the very nature of things.
I wish now for a moment I must of course do it briefly to consider the
relation of religion to this natural morality. And perhaps you will
hardly be ready some of you, at any rate for the statement which I
propose to make, that sometimes, in order to be grandly moral, a man
must be irreligious. I mean, of course, from the point of view of the
conventional religion of his time, he must be ready to be regarded as
irreligious. In the earliest development of the religious and moral
life of a tribe, very likely, the two went hand in hand, side by side;
for the dead chief now worshipped as god would be looked upon as in
favor of those customs or practices which the tribe had come to regard
as right. But religion perhaps you will know by this time, if you have
thought of it carefully is the most conservative thing in the world.
Naturally, it is the last thing that people are willing to change. This
reluctance grows out of their reverence, grows out of their worshipful
nature, grows out of their fear that they may be wrong.
But now let me illustrate what I mean. Religion, standing still in this
way, has become an institution, a set of beliefs, of rites and
ceremonies, which do not change. The moral experience of the people
goes right on; and so it sometimes comes to pass that the moral ideal
has outgrown the religious ideal of the community. And now, as a
practical illustration to illume the whole point, let us go back to
ancient Athens for a moment at the time of Socrates. Here we are
confronted with the curious fact that Socrates, who has been regarded
from that day to this as the most grandly moral man of his time, the
one man who taught the highest and noblest human ideals, is put to
death as an irreligious man. The popular religion of the time cast him
out, and put the hemlock to his lips; and at the same time his teaching
in regard to righteousness and truth was unspeakably ahead of the
popular religion of his day.
Let us come to the modern Athens for a moment, to the time of Theodore
Parker in Boston. We are confronted here, again, with this strange
fact. There was not a church in Boston that could abide him, not even
the Unitarian churches; and in the prayer-meetings of the day they were
beseeching God to take him out of the world, because they thought he
was such a force for evil. And at the same time Theodore Parker stood
for the very highest, tenderest, truest moral ideal of his age.
There was no man walking the earth at that time who so grandly voiced
the real law of God as did Theodore Parker. And yet he was outcast by
the popular religious sentiment of his time.
This, then, is what I mean when I say that we ought to be careful, and
study and think in forming our religious ideals, and see that we do not
identify our own unwillingness to think with the eternal and changeless
law of God. This is what I have meant in some of the strictures which I
have uttered during the last year upon some of the theological creeds
of the time. The people have grown to be better than their creeds, but
they have not yet developed the courage to make those creeds utter the
highest and finest things which they think and feel. This is what I
have meant when I have said that the character of God as outlined in
many of these creeds is away behind and below the noblest and finest
and sweetest ideals of what we regard as fitting even to humanity
to-day.
Religion, then, may be ahead of the moral ideal or it may be behind it.
The particular type of religion I mean, of course, which is being held
at any particular time in the history of the world. But the moral ideal
of necessity goes on, keeping step with the social experience of the
race.
I must touch briefly now just one other point of practical importance
that we need to guard, in order to be tender and true in our dealings
with our fellow-men. You will find, if you look over the face of
society, that there are two kinds of morality, frequently quite
inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the poorer of the two kinds
is held in higher esteem than the better. I mean there is conventional
morality, and there is real morality.
As a hint of illustration: An American woman goes to Turkey to-day; and
she is shocked by the customs of the women and their style of dress. It
seems to her that no woman can possibly be moral who, although she
covers her head, can appear on the street with feet and ankles bare.
But this same Turkish woman is shocked beyond the possibility of
utterance to know that in Europe and America women carefully cover
their feet, but expose their faces and their shoulders. It seems
terrible to her, and she cannot understand how a European or American
woman can have any regard for the principles of delicacy and morality.
Do you not see how, in both cases here, it is purely a matter of
convention? No real question of morality is touched in either case. I
speak of this to prepare you to note how conscience can be as troubled
over things which are purely conventional as it can over things which
are downright and real. Let me use another illustration, going a little
deeper in the matter. Here is a man, for example, who is terribly
shocked because his neighbor takes a drive with his family on Sunday
afternoon. It seems to him an outrage on all the principles of public
and social morality; and he is eager to get up a society to abolish
such customs, that seem to him to threaten the prosperity of all that
is good in the world. But this same man, perhaps, has been trained in a
way of conducting his business that, while legal, is not strictly fair.
This man may be hard and cruel towards his employees. He may cherish
bitter hatreds towards his rivals. In his heart he may be transgressing
the law of vital ethics, while fighting with all the power of his
nature for that which does not touch any real question of right or
wrong at all.
Or take a woman who, while shocked at the transgression of some social
custom in which she has been trained from her childhood, or, for
example, has come to think that a certain way of observing Lent, on
which we have just entered, is absolutely necessary to the safety of
religion and morals both, is yet quite willing, and without a qualm of
conscience, on the slightest hint of a suspicion, to tear into tatters
the character of one of her neighbors or friends, does not hesitate to
slander, perhaps is unjust or cruel to the servants that make the house
comfortable and beautiful for her; in other words, transgressing the
real laws of right and wrong, she is shocked and troubled over the
transgression on the part of others of some purely conventional
statute, the keeping or breach of which has no real bearing on the
welfare of the world.
A good many of our social judgments are like the case of the old lady
pardon me, if it should make you smile, but it illustrates the case who
criticised with a great deal of severity a neighbor and friend who wore
feathers on her bonnet. Somebody said to her, But the ribbons on your
bonnet are quite as expensive as the feathers that you criticise. "Yes,"
she said, "I know they are; but you have got to draw the line
somewhere, and I choose to draw it at feathers." So you find a great
many people on every hand in society who are choosing to draw these
lines purely artificial, purely conventional in regard to matters of
supposed right or wrong, while they are not as careful to look down
deeply into the essential principles of that which is inherently right
or wrong.
And now at the end I wish to suggest what is a theme large enough for a
sermon by itself, and say that these laws of righteousness are so
inherent that they are self-executed; and by no possibility did any
soul from the beginning of the world ever escape the adequate result of
his wrong-doing. The old Hebrews, as manifested in the Book of Job, the
Psalms, and all through the Old Testament, taught the idea, which was
common at that time in the world, that the favor of God was to be
judged by the external prosperity of men and women. The Old Testament
promises long life and wealth and all sorts of good things to the
people who do right; and I find on every hand in the modern world
people who have inherited this way of looking at things. I have heard
people say: I have tried to do right, and I am not prosperous. I wonder
why I am treated so? I have heard women say, I have tried to be a good
mother: why is my child taken away from me? As though there was any
sort of relation between the two facts. I hear people say, Don't talk
to me about the justice of God, when here is a man, who has been
dishonest all his life long, who has prospered, and become rich and
lives in a fine house, drives his horses, and owns a yacht. As if there
was any sort of connection between the two, as though a man merely
because he had a fine house and owned a yacht was escaping the
punishment of his unjust and selfish life.
Remember, friends, look a little below the surface. There is no
possibility of escape. I break some law of my body; do I escape the
result? I break some law of my mind; do I escape the result? I break
some law of my affectional nature; is nothing to happen? I break a law
of my spiritual nature; does nothing take place as the result of it?
You might as well say that the law of gravity can be suspended, that a
man can fling himself over the edge of a precipice, and come to no
harm. The precipice over the edge of which you fling yourself may be a
physical one, may be a mental one, an affectional one, a spiritual one;
but the moral gravity of the universe is never mocked, and the man who
breaks any of God's laws never goes free. He may discover that he has
broken it, be sorry for it, begin to keep it again, and recover
himself; but the consequences are sure, inevitable, eternal.
You look at a man who is externally prospering, and because of this you
say he is not suffering the result of the evil he has done. Go back
with me to Homer's Odyssey at the time when Ulysses and his companions
fell into the hands of the sorceress, and his companions were turned
into swine. Would you go and look at these swine, and say they are not
suffering anything? See how comfortable they are. See with what gusto
they eat the food that is cast into their troughs. See how happy they
are as swine. They are not suffering anything Is it nothing to become
swinish, merely because you have your beautiful pen to live in? Is a
not suffering the result of his moral wrong when he debases and
degrades and deteriorates his own nature, and becomes less a man,
because he is surrounded with all that is glorious and beautiful that
art can supply? Look within whatever department of nature where the law
has been disobeyed, and there forever and forever read the result, the
inevitable law, that the soul that sinneth, in so far as it sinneth, it
shall die.