In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of October 15, 1860, M. Renan wrote a
remarkable article on the "Future of Religion in Modern Society." This
paper of course dealt largely with questions that were interesting at
that time, but it also contains very acute observations on the whole
subject, which are of universal concern. His conclusions are that
neither Judaism nor Romanism nor the established forms of Protestantism
will constitute the coming faith, which must be spiritual (that is, free
of space and time), undogmatical, and enfranchised. "The religious
question," he says, "finds its solution in liberty.... The liberal
principle pre-eminently is that man has a soul, that he is to be reached
only through the soul, that nothing is of value save as it effects a
change in the soul. An inflexible justice, granting with inexorable
firmness liberty to all, even to those who, were they masters, would
refuse it to their adversaries, is the only issue that reason discovers
for the grave problems raised in our time." This essay, along with that
of Emile de Laveleye of Liege in Belgium, on the "Religious Future of
Civilized Communities," written in 1876, sums up the whole question. It
only remains to apply their principles to America.
Many dread the prevalence of Roman Catholicism. I confess I never could
share in that apprehension. For if there is anything certain it is the
unchangeableness of the lines of division that separate the three great
regions of the earth, each having its own faith. There is the Greek
Church, which rules in Asia; the Latin Church, which is confined to the
Latin races, and is strongest in Southern Italy, where the people are
most ignorant and supine; and the Protestant Church, which prevails in
Northern Europe among the Germanic nations. As Renan says:
Nothing will come of the mutual struggle of the three Christian
families; their equilibrium is as well assured as that of the three
great races which share between them the world; their separation
will secure the future against the excessive predominance of a
single religious power, just as the division of Europe must forever
prevent the return of that _orbis romanus_, that closed circle,
which allowed no possible escape from the tyranny that unity has
engendered.
Moreover, the Roman Catholic faith is essentially _Italian_, and as
such can have no permanent influence in Germany, England, or America.
The great popes of the Middle Ages, whose genius raised the papacy to
power and splendor, were Italians. Italy, until a few years ago, was
isolated; not a great political power, as it is now, among other powers
of Europe, nor drawn by political affiliations into the schemes of other
dominions. Besides, the Catholic Church had the advantages of the
Italian genius for organization, command, wisdom in practical affairs.
Then, too, it had the immense benefit of the old Roman treasures of art,
which gave a glory to the system. These considerations alone would make
it impossible that Romanism, in its foreign form, should ever become the
religion of the United States. There may be another kind of
ecclesiasticism, but without the ancient authority; an ecclesiasticism
which stands for pomp, ornament, display, beauty, but not for anything
more. There is evidence that every form of religion here is disposed to
take on elements of decoration,--architecture, music, stained glass,
drapery, pictures, and monuments; but this is only a sign of increasing
wealth, not of increasing subjection.
In addition to all this, the _genius_ of the American people is
strongly against anything like submission to authority. The love of
liberty is exceedingly powerful. It is claimed that Romanism is not
committed to any form of government, that it is as favorable to
republican institutions as to monarchical; but this is not the opinion
of Renan, who was born and trained in the church, and who is therefore
entitled to speak with knowledge; nor is it the opinion of other
scholars, Martineau for instance, who says in his article on the "Battle
of the Churches" (_Westminster Review_, January, 1851):
We are convinced it cannot occupy the scope which English
traditions and English usage have secured; that every step it may
make is an encroachment upon wholesome liberty; that it is innocent
only where it is insignificant, and where it is ascendant will
neither part with power nor use it well, and that it must needs
raise to the highest pitch the common vice of tyranny and
democracy,--the relentless crushing of minorities.
But whether this charge of absolutism be just or not, Romanism has been
so long associated as a polity with monarchical governments that it has
contracted a habit of domineering, and the people can never be persuaded
that the papacy is democratic in its constitution.
Americans are very suspicious, too, of any interference on the part of
the government. If a system demands an army, a palace, lands, it must
pay for them out of its own private means. A generation or more ago it
was possible for an administration to give for a merely nominal sum, in
the very heart of a large city, great estates to one denomination. This
is possible no longer. Every sect must vindicate itself, and stand on
its own feet; this alone would make it impossible for a church so poor
as the Catholic to establish itself in this country on any terms of
supremacy.
The desire for change which is inherent in the American mind must also
prove fatal in the end to any claim of absolute stability. Protestantism
is therefore better for Americans than Romanism is, because it is more
portable, more various, more accommodating to popular tastes and
inclinations.
There is no disposition to undervalue the work of the Catholic Church.
Its great saints, its heroic martyrs, its stupendous missions, its
enormous philanthropy, its influence in educating and controlling masses
of people, cannot be exaggerated; and still it is destined to wield an
immense influence as a spiritual power over the human race; but it never
again can be the absolute system it once was. However it may commend
itself to certain classes in our population, it must always be simply
one department in the universal church.
But it will be said that the Catholic Church may _accommodate_ itself to
republican institutions. M. Renan doubts whether any radical change can
be made. He says:
Catholicism, persuaded that it works for the truth, will always
endeavor to enlist the state in its defence or its spread....
Catholicism is, in fact, the believer's country, far more than is
the land of his birth. The stronger a religion is, the more
effective it is in this way.... More and more have Catholics been
brought to think that they derive life and salvation from Rome. It
is especially worth remarking that the new Catholic conquests
exhibit the most sensitiveness on this point. The old provincial
Catholic, whose faith belonged to the soil, has less need of the
Pope, and is much less alarmed at the storms that menace him, than
the new Catholics, who are coming fresh to Catholicism, and regard
the Pope, after the new system, as the author and defender of their
faith.... Catholicism has been seduced into becoming a religion
essentially political. The Pope becomes the actual sovereign of the
church.
But supposing that such an alteration is possible, that the church can
abase its pretensions to supremacy over all other sects, that Romanism
simply melts into our society,--in this case, the papacy, as usually
understood, becomes simply a form of church government like
Presbyterianism or Congregationalism or Episcopacy; Catholicism becomes
a purely spiritual faith, and, as such, is not only harmless but
beneficent.
The religion, therefore, of America cannot be ecclesiastical; neither
can it be dogmatic. I was on the point of saying _theological_; but
there is a great difference between theological and dogmatical.
Dogmatism is theology raised to power. Theology there always must be;
some account of the Supreme Power in the world; some report of the
contents of the Divine Mind. The present indifference to theology is
hardly a good sign, unless it be an indifference to theology as usually
regarded--that is, to the old systems of theology. The future religion,
for this reason, cannot be Protestantism. For Protestantism is
essentially dogmatical. It claims superiority to Romanism on the one
hand and to infidelity on the other. Furthermore, it is identified with
the Bible. Now, modern scientific criticism has so riddled the Bible,
that it no longer can serve as a foundation. And this foundation being
taken away, Protestantism must lose its corner-stone, and rest entirely
on a rational basis. Likewise, Protestantism encourages sectarianism. It
exists, in fact, only in numerous parties, each jealous of the rest and
seeking to build up its own establishment without regard to the
well-being of opposing bodies. There is a dream of unity amid all this
diversity. But such unity can be gained only by the sacrifice of the
very peculiarity of division, and the admission of certain things which
all have in common; and such a reconciliation, besides the tyranny it
engenders, cannot be desired, as it would be fatal to all activity.
Sectarianism itself, apart from the "hatred, malice, and
uncharitableness" which accompany it, may not of necessity be an evil;
but sectarianism as it exists now is an evil of very great moment, and
yet, without something of this alienation between sects Protestantism
would decline.
Is Unitarianism then to be the coming religion? I cannot think so.
Unitarianism is but a form of Protestantism; the most attenuated form.
It is committed to the Bible; held to it indeed by a very fine thread,
but still held to it. No doubt it has gained greatly in the last years.
The annual circulation of its tracts has risen in twenty-five or thirty
years from fifteen thousand to three hundred thousand copies. A quarter
of a century ago there was but one Unitarian church on the Pacific
coast, now there are eighteen. A generation since it had, in the whole
region from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, only fourteen
churches, now there are ninety; and in the same period, sixty-three new
societies have come into being in the New England and Middle States.
Still, as compared with the great sects, it is very small, and never can
be their rival. And this because, however interesting and precious it
may be to some people, it lacks, and must ever lack, owing to its
critical character, the elements of a great religion, the passionateness
that charms the people, and the moral enthusiasm that catches up the few
men of genius. The period of "pale negations" is past; but in proportion
as the system becomes positive it tends more and more towards the
principle that animates the ethical societies, namely, its supreme
devotion to the moral law. Thus it stands at the beginning, not at the
end, of the line of advance, and has all the work of building up to do,
before it can grow in general influence.
No, the religion of the future in America must be of the spirit; not
merely as being independent of form and dogma, but as cherishing a great
hope for the soul, and a great aspiration after perfection. No doubt
every spirit must have a form of some kind, but it need not be a fixed,
established, dominant imposition. M. Renan touched the matter exactly
when commenting on the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria:
"Woman, the hour is coming and now is, when men shall worship neither on
this mountain nor at Jerusalem, but when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Renan says:
When the Christ pronounced this word, he became really a Son of
God, and for the first time spoke the word upon which eternal
religion shall repose. He founded the worship without date, without
country, which shall endure to the end of time. He created a heaven
of pure souls, where one finds what one asks in vain for on the
earth, the perfect nobleness of the children of God, absolute
purity, total abstraction from the impurities of the world, the
liberty which has its complete amplitude only in the world of
thought.... The love of God conceived as the type of all
perfection, the love of man, charity, his whole doctrine is reduced
to this; nothing can be less theological, less sacerdotal, nothing
more philosophical, more profound, or more simple.
The coming religion must also be humane and social. Intellectual it must
certainly be, but it must, too, be emotional and adoring. There are
three implications in it--a spiritual nature in man, a living power in
the universe, an eternal life of progress and attainment, and these are
assured only by reason.
The coming religion, we may add, must be Christian in name, because
Christianity as an ideal faith has worked itself into our common life.
It is the soul of our laws, of our customs, of our institutions. All
assume its authority; all respect its sanction. The great thinkers of
the world conspire in thinking so. Thus Goethe says:
Let intellectual culture progress; let natural science extend our
knowledge; let the human mind grow; it will never outstrip the
grandeur of Christianity, nor its moral culture.
Strauss, in his essay on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,"
declares that humanity never will be without religion; and Laveleye
says:
It is Christianity which has shed abroad in the world the idea of
fellowship, from which issue the aspirations after equality which
threaten the actual social order; it is also the influence of
Christianity which arrests the explosion of this subversive force,
and its principles, better comprised and better applied, will bring
back by degrees peace in society.
Ours is a scientific age. There is a general demand for knowledge, a
desire for demonstrated truth. Many will believe nothing that they
cannot see with their eyes. In this sense, and in this sense alone, it
is true that facts count for nothing in the domain of religion. But
there are facts of the inner world that are quite as important as any
facts in the outer world,--facts of the imagination; facts of love;
facts of faith. Nothing is truer than that we are saved by hope. Science
has enlarged the world; has beautified it; has made it look orderly,
harmonious, poetic; but the realm of the known is very small indeed as
compared with the realm of the unknown, and the more we discover, the
more we find that there is to discover. The realm of the inner world is
immensely large; and thousands of years must elapse before we discover
its contents, if we ever do. The language of James Martineau is as true
to-day as it was when the words were spoken, more than fifty years ago:
Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with
religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except
such as, from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend
our comprehension.... The station which the soul occupies when its
devout affections are awakened, is always this; on the twilight
between immeasurable darkness and refreshing light; on the confines
between the seen and the unseen; where a little is discerned and an
infinitude concealed; where a few distinct conceptions stand in
confessed inadequacy, as symbols of ineffable realities.... And if
this be true, the sense of what we do not know is as essential to
our religion as the impression of what we do know: the thought of
the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind with
the perception of the clear and true: the little knowledge we have
must be clung to as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all
our positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the
surface of the infinite deep.
Shall I say that some form of theism will be the religion of America in
the future? Not the literal theism of a generation or more ago, with its
individual God, its contriving Providence, its supplicatory prayer, its
future of retribution; nor yet the theism of Theodore Parker, of an
infinite God revealed in consciousness, "the Being, infinitely powerful,
infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely loving, and infinitely
holy." It well may resemble the system described by Francis W. Newman in
his book called "Theism," published in London in 1858. In this work he
describes a religion based on conscience, without regard to any form of
professed faith, yet covering in its theory and practice the whole
region of ideal ethics. Different minds approach the problem from
different directions. Mr. F. E. Abbot ("Scientific Theism," 1885)
appeals to science; Josiah Royce printed a volume in 1885 entitled "The
Religious Aspect of Philosophy," wherein he pursues the line of
sympathetic thought; James Martineau in his "Study of Religion" (1888),
bases his system on the moral sense; but all three arrive at the same
point--a supreme mind in creation.
We must be careful not to confound Theism with Deism, for though both
are the same word--one Greek and one Latin--and mean the same thing, yet
they stand for entirely different conceptions. Deism is a purely
negative system, weighed down with denials. It is content when it has
rejected what it calls all supernatural adjuncts--miracles, revelations,
an inspired Scripture. Its face is set towards the past, not toward the
future, and it is simply what is left of the old systems of belief,
having no positive philosophy of its own. But Theism is a positive,
fresh, original faith. It gazes forward, and builds on the natural
consciousness of man, making no criticism on previous modes of belief.
It is full of hope and enthusiasm, looking towards something that is
before it, not scorning but believing. All that it needs in order to
become a popular faith is a poetical element, something imaginative,
symbolical, picturesque. The intellectual requirements it already
possesses. It is affirmative; it is universal.
Neither must this kind of theism be identified with natural religion,
unless natural religion be made to comprehend facts of the inner as well
as the outer world--facts of psychology as well as of physiology; facts
of mind as well as of body. Such a theism is not a mere reminiscence,
either, of an ancient faith; for every form of mediatorial religion,
however modified, simplified, "enlightened," as it is called, leaves
something of its temper behind it. The intellect is haunted by old modes
of truth; the heart lingers around the ancient places of reverence; the
conscience refers to some antique authority; the soul cannot pray except
in the language of a pater-noster or a psalm. A scent as of roses may
hang round the human mind; but the roses will be grown in some garden of
the East, not in ours. Such a theism as I am thinking of will be
grounded in Ethical Law. You may call it "Christian," if you will,
because the word _Christian_ expresses the highest form of the moral
sentiment, and carries a supreme authority to the human conscience; but
on the _human conscience_ it must rest. It will be a noble, pure faith,
giving a welcome to all knowledge, bright with anticipation, warm with
enthusiasm. As John Weiss has said so much better than I can what I
mean, I will quote a passage from him. It occurs in "American Religion"
(page 67):
Cannot the power which sustains, without budging from the spot, my
personal vitality, sustain and nourish the immediate conscience of
which that vitality makes me aware? I cannot hurt my health, nor
tell a lie, nor commit a fraud, nor strike my brother, nor leave
the beggar in the ditch, nor parade my superiorities, without
knowing it by direct intimation. My pains are its rebukes, my
delights its sympathies, my hopes its suggestions, my sacrifices
its impost, my heavenly longings its apology for haunting me
forever. There is a power in which I live and move and have my
being, in which I eat, drink, breathe, sleep, wake, love and hate,
marry, and protect a home. Is it incapable of sustaining all my
functions of true religion on the spot as well as these? Do I have
these without a mediator, and must I travel for the rest? When I
undertake to breathe by tradition it will be time for me to get a
sense of God in the same way.
The Dignity of Human Nature must be our watchword; of human _nature_,
not of human _character_. For human _nature_ denotes the _capacities_ of
man, what he _ought_ to be and _shall_ be, not what he _is_. Human
character expresses only the undeveloped condition of man, and is
therefore not to be taken as a final stand. This doctrine does not
belong to a sect or a church, but to all mankind. It assumes an entirely
new conception of the basis of religious faith; it makes a new
beginning; it starts a new system; it exactly reverses the ancient order
of thought, and builds up from a completely original foundation.
The weightiest objections proceed from the undeveloped character of
man. For example, the common saying that conscience is crude, confused,
either does not exist at all, or erects inconsistent standards of right
and wrong. But if a high criterion of morality is established, as it is,
it has an educating and sustaining power. Every saint attests it; all
the bibles of the world voice it; revelation owes to it its authority.
Great souls do but raise the common level on which common souls tread;
as the discovery of the ancient pavements in the Forum at Rome opens to
ordinary feet the way that statesmen and heroes went. When I was in
Salem, a young man who was very much addicted to drink, being
remonstrated with, urged that he could not help it, that he was born so,
just as another was born to praise and pray. His appetite for ardent
spirits was just as natural to him as the preacher's appetite for
spiritual things. His argument could not be refuted, but I always
thought that in his hours of reflection, if he had any, he must have
despised himself. At all events, the outside observer would class him
with a lower order of humanity; the fixed rule of conscience being a
universal judge.
Again, the slowness of moral advance is flung in our teeth; the
stubbornness of vice and evil. But we must give time for improvement and
cultivation. All good things must wait--coal, petroleum, gas,
electricity; the fertilizing qualities of guano were known and announced
a full generation before the industrial world acted on the discovery;
now millions of dollars are made by its importation. We are so used to
thinking of the globe as round, and of men as living at the antipodes
just as we live here, that we cannot believe that once it was deemed
impossible for human creatures to live with their heads downward and
their feet upward, and to walk like flies upon a ceiling. None but
hopelessly crazy or foolish people were supposed to entertain such a
notion. So the time will come when it shall be as natural for men to do
right as to breathe; when all kinds of injustice, cruelty, and tyranny
will be instinctively abandoned. When that time does come, men will be
unable to believe that the ages ever were when men could make brutes of
themselves or brutally treat each other. An eminent divine, commenting
on a passage in Matthew, xviii., 15--"Moreover, if thy brother shall
trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between him and thee
alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he
will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the
mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he
shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect
to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a
publican,"--said: "This is equivalent to saying, 'You must begin all
over again; must start fresh from the beginning.'" This was very bad
exegesis, but it was excellent morality; even the "heathen man and the
publican" holds in his bosom all the possibilities of human nature; and
we are bound to believe that in time the like of him may be saintly.
The decline of faith in religion, the passion for material
things--money, fame, luxury,--is often cited as a proof that man is
going downward; but may not this be a simple return to honesty and a
rudimental integrity; a disposition to depend on one's self, and not on
any mediator or redeemer? Let us build then in hope and faith, for,
after all, these are the great architects. A listener to an eminent
divine once said that when he got up to speak a radiance seemed to grow
round his head; the great walls of a temple seemed to rise above him;
the audience was composed of all nations, all sorts and conditions of
men, and a choir of seraphs made the music; and yet this man spoke in a
small, low-browed hall to a scanty audience, and the hymns were badly
sung by a voluntary company. Such power has a great conviction; and when
a deep conviction like that is extended and confirmed, the visible
church will match the invisible, and shepherds will again hear the songs
of angels.