Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890
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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.
XVII.
CONFESSIONS
The course of spiritual advance is traced with difficulty and hesitation. It is the most obscure phase of the general problem of progress, which is almost insoluble. There are so many currents and counter-currents; so many tributaries; so many swift torrents and still bays; so many times the stream seems moving in the opposite direction – it is not surprising if some have concluded that there was no progress at all, that we only moved in a circle, went over the same ground again and again, and even marched backwards; what some counted gain others counted loss. A keen examination suggests that on the whole advance has been made, allowance being conceded for many a turn and variation.
The law of evolution may be considered established, but the method of evolution is hidden. The law of hereditary descent may be admitted, and yet the lines of hereditary descent are by no means obvious. Tendencies may even run in parallel lines, may aid each other, may confuse each other, may neutralize each other, may go very far or lie close at hand, and in any individual instance it is almost impossible to find how they work.
In my own case the inferences of temperament followed each other. During the first fifty years of my life I was mainly under the influence of my father's temperament. I sang, wrote hymns and poems, sent pieces to the papers, was sanguine, inclined to take a happy view of all experiences; but at the same time I was conscious of another train of thought which struggled fitfully with the first, acquiring more and more power until at last it gained the ascendency, and I found myself more inclined to conservatism, as it is called, to a grave, sober, serious regard for existing institutions and modes of opinion. It is said that this might have been the effect of years, inasmuch as after middle life one is very apt to experience a change of sentiment. But in my own case time will hardly explain the phenomenon, for long before I came to middle age I was aware of this less hopeful tendency in my constitution. It was my mother's influence succeeding my father's. And though it never entirely prevailed, I can see how it may have shadowed my visions of the future. And it makes me somewhat distrustful of the entire sanity of my criticism. I am afraid of not being hopeful enough.
I have sometimes suspected myself of a too critical disposition, a propensity to discover defects in men and opinion, to look at the dark side of systems that were repudiated; and in the effort to correct the aberrations of a literal estimate I may have gone too far in the opposite direction, rendering more than justice to antagonistic doctrines. But this, if it was an error, was certainly not an error to be ashamed of. For say what we will, the partial man is not the whole man, nor is cold perception true perception. There must be sympathy in every act of judgment, as Dr. Diman wisely wrote ("The Theistic Argument," p. 32): "In the pursuit of the highest truth not one faculty but all faculties need to be enlisted." Every system, however formal or dogmatical it may have become, had in the beginning its spiritual aspect; it was piously, if not humanely, meant; and in order to be rightly comprehended, should be surveyed from the inside. The most repulsive doctrine has something to urge in its favor, and it is the duty of the true rationalist to find out what it may be.
If the inclination to take a common-sense view of opinions was derived from my mother's side, a strong democratic bent was primarily due to her. My grandfather was a poor boy who earned his fortune by the simple qualities of industry, integrity, perseverance, independence, faithfulness, honesty, – virtues which he bequeathed to his children. These inherited dispositions were encouraged by the social influences of the public school, which, in spite of its laborious method of imparting a knowledge of Latin and Greek, threw the lads together, thus breaking down artificial distinctions; and also by my experience at Harvard College, where scholarship was associated with mere manhood, and was cultivated by youth of all conditions. The anti-slavery agitation was a practical instructor in humanity, indicating as it did the widest sympathy of race. An assumption of the essential identity of all sorts of mind was a cardinal principle of transcendentalism, while my later experiences confirmed these early tendencies. My societies in Jersey City and New York were popular in their composition. The "Free Religious Association" was based on universal sentiments. The clerical profession was, in my day, broadly human, so that aristocratic proclivities had small hope of prevailing. In fact, the lessons which I learned from R. W. Emerson and Wendell Phillips sank deeply in, and became clearer as years went on.
One can hardly say that learning is retrogressive when one thinks of Dr. Döllinger, of Germany; Ernest Renan, of France; Benjamin Jowett, Arthur P. Stanley, James Martineau, of England; but erudition must, as a rule, be conservative; for it associates the mind directly with the past, binds one down to facts of history, and lays great stress on the testimony of evidence. It still is true that abundance of luggage is a sign that one is far from home. And they who can move quickly with all this weight upon them must have extraordinary genius.
An indifference to dogma is also characteristic of a speculative reformer; and I cannot recollect the time when I cared much for doctrinal differences. All questions were to me open questions. I had doubts about everything, and never suffered acute pain from such doubts. The influence of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, were always exposed to misgivings. Everything active was interesting to me, whether it looked toward "radicalism" or not. This was an advantage, not merely because it saved me from suffering, but because it enabled me to face all emergencies.
But some one will say: Does not the love of truth count for anything? Yes, undoubtedly it does. But lovers of truth do not by any means belong to the same school, or look for light from the same quarter; some are Romanists, some Protestants; some have no religion at all. Lovers of truth are found in all denominations, from Calvinist to Unitarian, from Christian to Buddhist. Truth exists for us in layers. There are truths of the letter and truths of the spirit; there is truth to fact, and truth to fancy; there is truth to the individual soul, and truth to the public conscience; there is truth to the heart, to the moral sense, to the spiritual intuition: but it will not do to charge lack of truthfulness upon anybody simply because he does not hold the same opinion with ourselves. M. Renan somewhere says that in order to judge a system one must have been in it as a disciple, and outside of it as a critic. But then only a very extraordinary person can do this. As a disciple he must be earnest, intelligent, devoted; as a critic he must be without prejudice, without animosity, and without guile. Thus the point of view must of necessity be individual. There can be no general or absolute standard of judgment. One thing only is certain: the fact of spiritual progress; but what constitutes this progress nobody can tell. Since 1822 till now the change in Unitarianism has been immense, and it has consisted in the gradual supremacy of reason over tradition, but it has been almost too sudden and too swift. Progress had better be slow, in order that it may be sure. One step at a time, for the reason that only one step at a time can be taken safely. We must not jump at conclusions. There must be unbounded catholicity of thought, but it must not be made up of indifference, concession, and idle compliance.
Experience has taught me many things – this among others, that there is no final criterion of truth, not criticism, or "science," or philosophy, or liberty. There is no question any more of "destructive" and "constructive." The Supreme Power is always constructive, and the Supreme Power is sure at last to prevail. There is an old Greek fable, that Apollo once challenged Jupiter to shoot. The sun-god shot an arrow to the very confines of the earth; then Jupiter, at one stride, reached the limits of creation, and said, "Where shall I shoot?" We are not Jupiters; we are not Apollos; but we can take our stand and shoot our arrows a little way into the dark. The utmost we can do is to be steadfast in our own places; be faithful to our own calling; draw our own shaft to the head. Father Hecker said a brave thing to me when, on declining my request that he would speak before the Free Religious Association, he took the ground that in a few weeks Catholicism would enter Boston in triumph. I honored the Broad Churchman, who said to me once that he always preached Christ as an historical person, and wished he had a church big enough to hold all humanity; and I admired the Presbyterian clergyman who commended the sincerity of Dr. Briggs, whom some regarded as a heretic. Fidelity to one's own word and gift is the one thing needful here.
Whether it be the tendency of modern thought, or whether it be not, to abandon the Christian religion and cast discredit on every kind of faith held by the churches and professors throughout the world, cannot, in this generation, be decided. In any event, we shall not be left desolate. For nature will remain, with its unfathomable resources of use and beauty. The mind will remain, with its infinite faculties of reason and imagination. The heart will remain, with its insatiable affections and desires. Conscience will remain, with its sense of duty. The sentiments of awe, wonder, admiration, worship, will not expire. The reconstructive powers will still be active, and every creative quality will continue in full operation. Knowledge, literature, art, will live and flourish in new manifestations; and no original capacity will lie unemployed.
We should have learned by this time that nothing dies before its hour has come; that processes of recuperation keep even pace with processes of decay; that forms alone perish while principles endure; that living things become more mighty and glorious as they throw off encumbrances; that strength always in the end accompanies simplicity.
The idea of God has passed through several phases, and each new phase has been a gain. The deity who was an individual has become a person; the attributes of personality, as commonly understood, have disappeared, so that pantheism has succeeded to a mechanical theism; God has become a name for our most exalted feelings, so that instead of saying "God is Spirit," some read "Spirit is God"; yet the ancient reverence more than persists, is on the increase. And if the course of disintegration of the old clumsy conception should go on, there need be no apprehension that loving veneration will decline.