Part 6 (1/2)

There was no labor, no toil, no pain, no sorrow, no fear, no trouble of any kind. But that was followed by sin, evil, entering the world, by their being driven out; and so the world has again been going from bad to worse, as the ages have pa.s.sed by.

On the other hand, among the Hebrews, as ill.u.s.trated in the writings of the great prophets, the master minds of the Hebrew race, there is the opposite belief manifested. There is no fall of man, no perfect condition of things, no Golden Age at the beginning, in the prophets.

There is none in the teaching of Jesus. Rather do they look forward with kindling eye and beating heart to some grander thing that is to be.

Here is this dual tradition, then, in the world, in different parts of the world, this dual way of looking at the problem of life.

Now I wish to place before you the two great contrasted theories of the universe. In presenting that which has been dominant for the last two or three thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, speaking roughly, I am quite well aware that I shall have to seem to tell you what you perfectly well know, what I have said on other occasions; but it is necessary for me to run over it, and I will do so as briefly as I can, setting it before you in outline as a whole, so that you may see it in contrast with the other theory which I shall then endeavor to set forth also as a whole.

According to that theory of the world, then, which lies at the foundation, the old-time and still generally accepted theory of Christendom, the world was created in the year 4004 B.C. It was created in a week's time. This was the general teaching until thinkers were compelled to accept another theory by the advances of modern investigation. The world was created inside of a week. G.o.d got through, p.r.o.nounced it good, and rested. Then in a short period of time we do not know how long evil entered this world which G.o.d had p.r.o.nounced perfect. Satan, a real being, the leader of the hosts of the fallen angels, the traditional enemy of G.o.d, who had fought him even in his own heaven and been cast out, invades this fair earth. He seduces our first parents, gets them to commit a sin against G.o.d which makes them his enemies, turns them into rebels against his just and holy government. The world, then, is fallen. Now from that day to this the one effort on the part of G.o.d, according to this theory, has been to deliver the world from this lost condition. Jonathan Edwards, for example, published a book called ”The History of Redemption.” He conceived the entire history of the world under that t.i.tle, because the history of the world, according to this theory, has been the history of the effort of G.o.d to deliver man from the effects of the fall.

Now let us note the story as it proceeds a little further. The world exists for I think I have a date here which may interest you 1,656 years, G.o.d meantime doing everything he could, by sending angels and special messengers and teaching the people; and he had accomplished so little that the world was in such a condition that he was compelled to drown it. So came the flood. After that, he chooses one family, one little family and the descendants of that family, one little people, and bends all his energies to the education and training of that people,-- a small people inhabiting a country on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea just about as large as the State of Ma.s.sachusetts.

For more than two thousand years he devotes himself to the training of this people. How does he succeed here? He sends his messengers again, his angels, his prophets, one after another. He inspires a certain number of men to write a book to deliver his will to the people, fallen into such condition that they are incapable of discovering the truth for themselves. But, after all his efforts, they are so far from the truth that, when the second person of the Trinity appears, they have nothing to do with him except to put him to death. After that, G.o.d sends the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to organize his Church, spread his truth, convert men, bring them into the Church, and so fit them to be saved. And, after two thousand years of that kind of effort, what is the result? They tell us that not more than a third part of the inhabitants of the world have heard anything about it, that the majority of those who have heard about it reject it. Mr. Moody told us last year that in this country, which we love to think of as the most favored and highly civilized and intelligent country in the world, out of seventy millions of inhabitants, not more than thirty millions ever see the inside of any kind of church. I do not vouch for the accuracy of the statistics. I wish to impress upon you the result of this theory of this six thousand years of endeavor on the part of G.o.d to bring his own children to a knowledge of his own truth. The upshot of it is that the few, the minority, will be saved, and the great majority eternally lost.

Now here is one world theory, one scheme of world history which I wish you to hold clearly and as definitely as possible in your minds, while I place alongside of it another theory.

According to this other, G.o.d did not suddenly create the world in a week or in a hundred thousand years. It is a story of continuous and eternal creation. As Jesus said, with fine and n.o.ble insight, ”My father worketh hitherto.” He did not recognize that G.o.d was resting on any day or through any period of time.

The world, then, has always been in process of creation. The same forces at work in accordance with substantially the same laws. The world has been millions of years in this process; and the process all around us, if we choose to open our eyes and note it, is still going on with all its wonder and divinity. And we know, as we study the heavens above us, or around us rather, with our telescopes, that there are worlds and systems of worlds in process of creation on every hand. We are permitted to look into the divine workshop and observe the divine method.

The world, then, is always in process of creation. This is the first point in the new theory. It follows, of course, from this that we are to hold the story of the antiquity of the earth, the earth millions of years old, instead of six thousand or ten thousand.

And then, in the third place, it tells us the story of the antiquity of the human race.

All scholars, for example, as bearing on this I will give you just this one ill.u.s.tration, know that there was a civilization in Egypt, wide- spread, highly developed, with n.o.body knows how many ages of growth behind it, there was this civilization in Egypt before the world was created according to the popular chronology that has been generally received until within a few years.

We know that man has been on the earth hundreds of thousands of years.

This is the next point in that story.

In the next place, they tell us a wondrous tale of the origin and nature of man, tracing his natural development from lower forms of life. When I say ”natural,” I do not wish you to think for one moment that I leave out the divinity; for, according to this story of the world which I am hinting and outlining now, G.o.d is infinitely nearer, more wonderfully in contact with us, than he ever was in the old.

Natural, then, but divine at every step, so that we are seeing G.o.d face to face, if we but think of it, and are feeling his touch every moment of our lives.

No fall of man, then, on this theory. No invasion of this world by any form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical fas.h.i.+on for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death. We account for it on this new theory much more naturally, rationally, more honorably for G.o.d, more hopefully for man.

The history of the world, then, since man began has not been by any means a history of universal progression. Evolution, however much it may be misunderstood and misrepresented, does not mean the necessity of progress on the part of any one person or any one people, any more, for example, than the growth of the human body is inconsistent with the fact that cells and composite parts of the body are in process of decay and dissolution every hour, every moment of our lives.

Nations grow, advance, if they comply with the laws, the conditions, of growth and advance; and, if not, they die out and disappear. And so is it of individuals. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the loving, lifting, leading G.o.d, humanity in the larger sense has been advancing from the beginning of human history until to-day; and the grade, dim glimpses of which we gain as we look out toward the future, is still up and still on.

According to this theory of the universe, there does not need to be any stupendous breaking in of G.o.d into his own world after any miraculous fas.h.i.+on. We do not need an infallible guide in religion any more than anywhere else, unless we are in danger of eternal loss because of an intellectual mistake. We do not need any stupendous miracle to reconcile G.o.d to his own world; for he has always been reconciled. We do not need any miraculous bridging of any mythical gulf; for there never has been any gulf. And the outcome, not as we look forward are we haunted by fearful antic.i.p.ations of darkness and evil; as we listen, we do not ever hear the clanking of chains; as we look, we know that the dimness that hangs over the coming time is not caused by ”the smoke of the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever.” It is a story of eternal hope for every race, for every child of man and child of G.o.d.

Here are these two theories, then, two schemes of the universe and of human history. Which of them shall we accept?

I wish you to note now, and to note with a little care, that you cannot rationally accept a part of one theory and a part of the other, and so make up a patchwork to suit yourselves. Take, for example, the one question, Is man lost or is he not? He is not half lost or sort of lost: he is either lost or he is not lost. Which is true? If he is not ”lost,” then he does not need to be ”saved.” He may need something else; but he does not need that, for the two correspond and match each other. Let us think, then, a little clearly in regard to this matter, and remember that the outcome of the conflict between these two theories must be the supremacy of either one or the other.

Now, before I come to any more fundamental and earnest treatment of the subject, let me call your attention to certain things that are happening to the old theory.

How much of that old theory is intact to-day? How much of it is held even by those who, being scholars and thinkers, still hold their allegiance to the old-time theology? Let us see. The story of the sudden and finite creation of the world is completely gone. n.o.body holds that now who gives it any attention. They have stretched the six days of the week, even those who hold the accuracy of the Genesis account, into uncounted periods of time. So that is gone. The antiquity of man is conceded by everybody who has a right to have and express an opinion; that is, by everybody who has given it any study. Every competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to- day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. And yet, as I have said a good many times, they go on as though nothing had happened, although the foundation of their house has been removed. Only theories which stand in the air can thus defy the law of gravitation.

n.o.body to-day who has a right to have an opinion believes that G.o.d ever drowned the world. That is gone. As to the question as to whether we have an infallible book to guide us in religious matters, there are very few scholars in any church to-day, so far as my investigations have led, who hold any such opinion. That is gone; and the Bible, the Old Testament, at any rate is coming to be recognized, not as infallible revelation, but as ancient literature, immensely interesting, full of instruction, but not as an unquestioned guide in any department of life.