I cannot better convey my thought than by recounting the essence of two sermons that I heard some years ago from eminent preachers in different American cities; the first was on the death of Charles Darwin. After a very ornate service, the minister dwelt enthusiastically on the merits of Darwin as a philosopher, described his system, and declared that his own belief in the Deity of Christ, was confirmed in large measure by Darwin's theory of the Selection of the Fittest. The statement was startling at first, for the two doctrines seemed to point in opposite directions, but the speaker probably meant that the Christ expressed all the potentialities of human nature; that he was the Fittest; not a miracle, not an exception to humanity, but the perfection of man; in other words, a divine person. The other sermon turned on the murder of Sisera (Judges iv, 18), as contrasted with a statement in the first epistle of John (iv, 8), "God is love." The rector spoke of the assassination of Sisera in terms of extreme abhorrence; called it treacherous, cruel, base, and then said: "See what progress the human mind has made from this period to that when John was written." The common impression is that the human mind had nothing to do with it, it being the divine mind that was alone in question. But what the preacher meant was evidently this, – either that the divine mind dropped thoughts into the human mind as fast as they could be appreciated, or that the human mind, imperfect in development, apprehended all that it could of the perfect mind. Whichever case we assume, the integrity of the divine mind is secured, and at the same time the growth of the human.
At this point, the conception of the Broad Churchman's idea of the inspiration of the Scripture must be dwelt upon, for the doctrine is very remarkable, and throws a flood of light upon his whole conception of the aim and purpose of Christianity. According to the common notion, the Bible is literally the word of God, and men have nothing to do but to submit themselves to its authority. They must suppress all natural desires, all dictates of their moral sense, to this supreme standard of truth and rectitude. According to this notion, the whole of man, as a thoroughly corrupted being, is subject, in obedience to this law. The second theory, adopted by the American Broad Churchman, holds that the Bible contains the word of God; and this implies that there may be a part of the Bible that is not the word of God, and opens the way to an indefinite amount of criticism, speculation, and doubt. The English Broad Churchman holds, as I understand it, the common doctrine, but with this immense difference. That whereas, according to the common notion, the Bible is the word of God, he maintains that the whole object of the Bible is to educate and uplift man. The word is a minister to human needs. Through it, God is trying in various ways, by history, biography, tale, and song, to warn, persuade, teach, inspire the human soul. Sometimes he can do nothing but startle, shame, provoke; and the very things we find fault with may be designed for moral education. The Bible, itself, encourages this idea. Does not Paul preach reconciliation? Does not John speak of God as love? God hardened the heart of Pharaoh in order that he might show that He was stronger than Pharaoh. Jacob was not altogether a lovely character, but the Lord wrestled with him and lamed him, thus showing his own disapproval of the patriarch's temper. David was a seducer, adulterer, and murderer, but he repented, was ashamed, was sorrowful, and this repentance made him a man after God's own heart. It was not that God approved of his conduct, but that he wanted to make us disapprove of it. In like manner Luther based his faith on the Bible, because it convicted him of sin, and drove him to seek refuge for himself in Christ. The Church as an organization has always this one purpose in view – to minister to the soul of man. The "Articles" fairly throbbed with this conception. The outrage committed by the "Evangelicals," men who insist upon everlasting punishment and talk of doom, consists in their overlooking this divine purpose towards humanity.
The doctrines of the Church – the Deity of Christ, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension – bear this testimony, and are inexplicable without it. But these doctrines simply convey one thought. The Christ must be God, otherwise he could not exemplify the perfect love; he must be Incarnate, otherwise he could not mingle with men. His Resurrection teaches his absolute triumph over death; his Ascension is a pledge of his union with God and his perpetual intercourse with God's children.
The two rites, Baptism and Communion, give the same idea. Baptism imports a recognition of the duty to lead a Christian life; and Communion imports a wish, on the part of all who partake of it, to enter into the privilege of a perfect harmony with Christ. None of these points are reached by criticism, or any array of texts, though passages may be cited in confirmation of them. But the proof is derived from experience, from the felt need of enlightenment and inspiration, from prayer and the yearning after eternal life. No doubt it is taken for granted that neither the Bible nor the Church expresses the whole word of God. The word is as large as the divine love, and this is infinite. The complete word of God includes all nature, all history, and all life.
It will be understood that the Broad Church notion is only a theory and rests entirely on its reasonableness. It is simply a modification of Episcopalianism, and none but an Episcopalian would be likely to adopt it. Its interest for us consists in its human character, in its earnestness for social reform, in its passionate desire to make conscience and justice and freedom of the Spirit supreme in all human affairs. It is essentially an ethical system with an ecclesiastical addition and a heavenly purpose.
There is certainly a great difference between the Broad Church in America and the Broad Church in England; there are no Thirty-Nine Articles in this country; there is no National Church. The Broad Churchman here is still a Churchman, but the system is much more elastic and much more intellectual. The Church is to him also a divine institution, but not a final establishment; and it becomes divine by virtue of its helpfulness in imparting the divine life and its power of human service. The sacraments have become symbols, venerable from their antiquity, but more venerable from their use. The Broad Churchman is an orthodox believer, but he accepts only the simplest creeds, and he interprets them in accordance with the rational principles of thought, and with his fundamental conception of Christianity, holding not to the written letter, but to the real meaning of the Confession. This meaning is, he maintains, easily reconcilable with the idea that all revelation is made to a living mind, – whether that of a race or an individual, – and that the Bible is merely the record of it. No book, in his estimation, can be inspired. This, coupled with a belief in the unlimited progress of the natural conscience, brings the system within the category of modern arrangements.
The idea that man is developed into the divine life, not converted to it, seems to be the heart of the system. The writings of F. D. Maurice are full of it. He said that he did not know what the Broad Church was, and disclaimed any position in it; yet he is its reputed father, and certainly held its cardinal doctrine. This was the soul of his teaching; this dictated his likes and his dislikes; this animated his dissent from the Evangelicals on the one hand and the Rationalists on the other; this made him cling to the "Articles"; this made him love the Church. I cannot better convey my notion of the Broad Churchman's credence than by quoting some passages from Maurice:
I think that the ground-work of this thought and this humanity is laid bare in the Thirty-nine Articles; that for that ground-work [namely, the living God, the living Word] all our different schools are trying to produce feeble and crumbling substitutes; that we must recur to it if we would pass the narrow dimensions of Calvinism, Anglicanism, Romanism; if we would learn what a message we have for Jews, Mahometans, Brahmins, Buddhists, for all the nations of the earth, as well as our poor people at home.
I cannot doubt that this belief [the confession of a God, who was, and is, and is to come] is latent in every man now; that we are all living, moving, having our being in this God, and that He does reveal Himself to His creatures gradually, before He is revealed in His fulness of glory.
I do perceive that if I have any work in the world, it is to bear witness of this name [the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost], not as expressing certain relations, however profound, in the divine nature, but as the underground of all fellowship among men and angels, as that which will at last bind all into one, satisfying all the craving of the reason as well as of the heart, meeting the desires and intuitions that are scattered through all the religions of the world.
The Church must either fulfil its witness of the redemption for mankind or be cut off. And I cannot help thinking that a time is at hand when we shall awaken to this conviction, and when we shall perceive that what we call our individual salvation means nothing, and that our faith in it becomes untenable when we separate it from the salvation which Christ wrought out for the world by His incarnation and sacrifice, resurrection and ascension.
He has been pleased to reveal to me in His Son the brightness of His glory, His absolute love. On that point I have a right to be certain; he who says I have not, rejects the Bible and disbelieves the incarnation of the Lord. I will not give up an inch of this ground; it is a matter of life and death.
By baptism we claim the position which Christ has claimed for all mankind… More and more I am led to ask myself what a Gospel to mankind must be, whether it must not have some other ground than the fall of Adam and the sinful nature of man… No doctrine can be so at variance as this, with the notion that it is a Gospel which men have need of, and in their inmost hearts are craving for.
Why is not this system sufficient? Simply because the claim that Christ is God, does not seem made out to severely critical minds. Such as these must hold even the Broad Church to be a mythology, beautiful and innocent, but still a mythology. The word "mythology" implies no disparagement. A mythology is simply the poetical form of an idea, and takes its character from the nature of the ideas it represents. The pagan mythology is on this account very different from the Christian, and a mythology that has universal love as its basis may well be called innocent and beautiful. To the doctrine of trinity, philosophically considered, even Unitarian scholars make no objection. What they cannot accept is the deity of Jesus as an historical person. The Christ is not, in their opinion, an historical person, but a doctrine, not identical with the man of the New Testament. The Divine Being has never, in their estimation, appeared on earth. They only who can put aside criticism, can suppress it, can regard it but as one of many manifestations of mind, can fix their eyes on a church for society at large and not for individuals, will be likely to accept it, and they will on the ground that it is altogether human, a church for mankind.
The last phase in the development of the moral sentiment is represented by the "Ethical Societies." It is natural that the origin of these should be Jewish, for the Jews are unencumbered by the mysteries of the Christian theology; their genius is for social organization, and the moral element is very large in their religion. It is natural, too, that the system should be purer here than in England. Some of the members of the "Cambridge Ethical Society" are members of the Church of England, and have to be warned not to set themselves needlessly in opposition to the work of the Christian churches. The "Edinburgh Ethical Club" is mainly a debating society. In America it is usual to have a lecturer, and stated services on Sunday. But these services are very simple, nay, even bare; there is no prayer, and no scripture, no architecture or art or poetry; but there is an intense earnestness, nay, enthusiasm, for social reform. There are kindergartens for the poor children of the streets, there are classes for the untaught, libraries for the workingmen, plans for better lodging and employment for the families of artisans. There is no fixed doctrine in regard to the origin of the moral sentiments, lest any should be alienated; the object being to combine all who have at heart the moral interests of mankind. The peculiarity of these societies is not so much that they lay emphasis on the moral as distinct from the spiritual interests, or aim to break down the dividing line between Religion and Ethics, as it is that they rest upon conscience as the supreme authority, that they assume its practical function, build upon it as the one and only thing absolutely known. There is no pretence of following, even at a distance, the charities of the old churches with their vast funds, their immense organizations, their heaps of tracts, their legions of missionaries, all employed in calling unbelievers into the fold. The object is to elevate all mankind by appealing to their moral instincts, on the ground of their inherent ability to rise in the scale of being.
To make their position clear let me quote the words of the founder of these societies, contained in an article entitled "The Freedom of Ethical Fellowship," in the first number of the International Journal of Ethics:
It is the aim of the Ethical Societies to extend the area of moral co-operation so as to include a part, at least, of the inner moral life; to unite men of divers opinions and beliefs in the common endeavor to explore the field of duty; to gain clearer perceptions of right and wrong; to study with thoroughgoing zeal the practical problems of social, political, and individual ethics, and to embody the new insight in manners and institutions…
It would be a wrong and a hindrance to the further extension of truth to raise above our opinions the superstructure of a social institution. For institutions in their nature are conservative; they dare not, without imperilling their stability, permit a too frequent inspection or alteration of their foundations… The subject part of mankind, in most places, might, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men's minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish. It is to this "candle of the Lord set up in men's minds" that we look for illumination. It is in the light which it sheds that we would read the problems of conduct and teach others to read them. We appeal directly to the conscience of the present age, and of the civilized portion of mankind. There remains as a residue a common deposit of moral truth, a common stock of moral judgments, which we may call the common conscience. It is upon this common conscience that we build… The contents of the common conscience we would clarify and classify, to the end that they may become the conscious possession of all classes; and in order to enrich and enlarge the conscience, the method we would follow is to begin with cases in which the moral judgment is already clear, the moral rule already accepted; and to show that the same rule, the same judgment, applies to other cases, which, because of their greater complexity, are less transparent to the mental eye…
And here it may be appropriate to introduce a few reflections on the relations of moral practice to ethical theory in religious belief. To many it will appear that the logic of our position must lead us to underestimate the value of philosophical and religious doctrines in connection with morality, and that, having excluded this from our basis of fellowship, we shall inevitably drift into a crude empiricism. I may be permitted to say that precisely the opposite is at least our aim, and that among the objects we propose to ourselves, none are dearer than the advancement of ethical theory and the upbuilding of religious conviction. The Ethical Society is a society of persons who are bent on being taught clearer perceptions of right and wrong, and being shown how to improve conduct. At least, let us hasten to add, the ideal of the society is that of a body of men who shall have this bent. Is it vain to hope that there will in time arise those who will render them the service they require…
It is safe to say that every step forward in religion was due to a quickening of the moral impulses; that moral progress is the condition of religious progress; that the good life is the soil out of which the religious life grows. The truths of religion are chiefly two, – that there is a reality other than that of the senses, and that the ultimate reality in things is, in a sense transcending our comprehension, akin to the moral nature of men. But how shall we acquaint ourselves with this super-sensible? The ladder of science does not reach so far. And the utmost stretch of the speculative reason cannot attain to more than the abstract postulate of an infinite, which, however, is void of the essential attributes of divinity. Only the testimony of the moral life can support a vital conviction of this sort…
The Ethical Society is friendly to genuine religion anywhere and everywhere, because it vitalizes religious doctrines by pouring into them the contents of spiritual meaning… A new moral earnestness must precede the rise of larger religious ideals; for the new religious synthesis which many long for, will not be a fabrication, but a growth. It will not steal upon us as a thief in the night, or burst upon us as lightning from the sky, but will come in time as a result of the gradual, moral evolution of modern society, as the expression of higher moral aspirations, and a response to deeper moral needs.
In his famous essay on "Worship," Emerson says:
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shawm or psaltery or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry.
Is this the church that Emerson predicted? It looks like it. Already we seem to hear the shawms and sackbuts. Already there are desires after a more rich and melodious administration.
The last number of the International Journal of Ethics contains two articles: one on "The Inner Life in Relation to Morality," the other on "The Ethics of Doubt," which suggest a transcendental ground for moral beliefs; and they who dissent from this position surround action with an ideal solemnity. At all events it is something to see, even at a distance, a city that hath foundations.
XVI.
THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF AMERICA
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 Liège 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.