Part 4 (2/2)

Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as they lie in my mind, for the att.i.tude which we hold in regard to this matter.

I do not believe in having a fixed and final statement of belief which we are not at liberty to criticise or question or change. Why? Because I love the truth, because I am anxious to find the truth, because I wish to be perfectly free to seek for the truth.

Our first reason, then, is for the sake of the truth.

Now let me present this to you under three or four minor heads. The universe is infinite, G.o.d is infinite, truth is infinite. If, then, on the background of the infinite you draw a circle, no matter how large it may be, no matter how wide its diameter, do you not see that you necessarily shut out more than you shut in? Do you not see that you limit the range of thought, set bounds to investigation, and that you pledge yourselves beforehand that the larger part of truth, of G.o.d, of the universe, you will never study, you will never investigate?

There is another point bearing on this matter. If a man pledges himself to accept and abide by a fixed and final creed, he does it either for a reason or without a reason. If he does it without a reason, then there is, of course, no reason why we should follow his example. If he has a reason, then two things: either that reason is adequate, sound, conclusive, or it is not. If it is not adequate, then we ought to study and criticise and find that out, and be free to discover some reason that is adequate. If the reason for his holding the creed is an adequate one, then, certainly, no harm can be done by investigation of it, by asking questions.

If the men who hold these old creeds and defend them can give in the court of reason a perfectly good account of themselves, if they can bring satisfactory credentials, then all our questioning, all our criticism, all our investigation, cannot possibly do the creeds any harm. It will only mean that we shall end by being convinced ourselves, and shall accept the creeds freely and rationally.

It has always seemed to me a very strange att.i.tude of mind for a man to feel perfectly convinced that a certain position is sound and true, and to be angry when anybody asks a question about it. If there are good reasons for holding it, instead of calling names, why not show us the reasons? He who is afraid to have his opinions questioned, he who is angry when you ask him for evidence, to give a reason for the position that he holds, shows that he is not at all certain of it. He admits by implication that it is weak. He shows an att.i.tude of infidelity instead of an att.i.tude of faith, of trust.

There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please; and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The att.i.tude of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it does not care to be protected from investigation.

Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they might be free to accept some grander, n.o.bler, more helpful view of truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.

If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please, but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these final conclusions, G.o.d is going to be angry with them, they are going to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them to study and come to conclusions which are ent.i.tled to the respect of thoughtful people?

I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people who have been trained in the old faith are in an att.i.tude of fear towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the danger of asking questions.

Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, to study religious questions as I would study any other matter on the face of the earth on account of being haunted by this terrible dread?

And, then, there is one other point. I must touch on these very briefly. The acceptance of these creeds on the part of those who do hold to them does not, after all, prevent the growth of modern thought.

It does hinder it, so far as they are concerned; but the point I wish to make is this, that these creeds do not answer the purpose for which they were constructed. They are supposed to be fixed and final statements of divine truth, which are not to be questioned and not to be changed.

Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the famous Congregational minister, said a few years ago that the idea of progress in theology was absurd, because the truth had once for all been given to the saints in the past, and there was no possibility of progress, because progress implied change. And yet, in spite of the effort that has been made to keep the faith of the world as it was in the past, the change is coming, the change does come every day; and it puts the people who are trying to prevent the change coming in an att.i.tude of what shall I say I do not wish to make a charge against my brethren, it puts them in a very curious att.i.tude indeed towards the truth. They must not accept a new idea if it conflicts with the old creed, however much they may be convinced it is true. If they do accept it, then what? They must either leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an att.i.tude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.

Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous att.i.tude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible: they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days, what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no, it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and twisted from its real meaning.

And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended into h.e.l.l; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of.

I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred to them at the time.

Is this quite honest? Is it wise for us to put ourselves in this att.i.tude?

I wish to speak a little further in this matter as to not preventing the coming in of modern thought, and to take one ill.u.s.tration. Look at Andover Seminary to-day. The Andover Creed was arranged for the express purpose of keeping fixed and unchangeable the belief of the Church..

Its founders declared that to be their purpose. They were going to establish the statement of belief, so that it should not be open to this modern criticism, which had resulted in the birth of Unitarianism in New England; and, in order to make perfectly certain of it, they said that the professors who came there to teach the creed must not only be sound when they were settled, but they must be re-examined every five years. This was to prevent their changing their minds during the five years and remaining on there, teaching some false doctrine while the overseers and managers were not aware of it. So every five years the professors and teachers of Andover have to reaffirm solemnly their belief in the old creed.

It is not for me to make charges against them; but it is for me to make the statement that so suspicious have the overseers and managers come to be of some of the professors in the seminary that they have been tried more than once for heresy; and everybody knows that the leading professors there to-day do not believe the creed in the sense in which it was framed.

And, to ill.u.s.trate how this is looked upon by some of the students, let me tell you this. My brother was a graduate of Andover; and not long ago he said to me that when the time came around for the professors to reaffirm their allegiance to the creed, one of the other students came into his room one day, and said, ”Savage, let's go up and see the professors perjure themselves.”

This was the att.i.tude of mind of one of the students. This is the way he looked at it. I am not responsible for his opinion; but is it quite wise, is it best for the truth, is it for the interests of religion, to have theological students in this state of mind towards their professor?

Modern thought does come into the minds of men: they cannot escape it.

What does it mean? It means simply a new, higher, grander revelation of G.o.d. Is it wise for us to put ourselves into such a position that it shall seem criminal and evil for us to accept it? If we pledge ourselves not to learn the things we can know, then we stunt ourselves intellectually. If, after we have pledged ourselves, we accept these things and remain as we are, I leave somebody else to characterize such action, action which, in my judgment, and so far as my observation goes, is not at all uncommon.

We then propose to hold ourselves free so far as a fixed and final creed is concerned, because we wish to be able to study, to find and accept the truth. There is another reason. For the sake of G.o.d, because we wish to find and come into sympathy with him, and love him and serve him, we refuse to be bound by the thoughts of the past.

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