Part 10 (1/2)

So that the life of the world, from that day to this, has been the growth, the gradual increase, and the gradual conquest of good over that which was in existence before.

There is no fall of man, then, there is no conscious and purposeful rebellion against G.o.d to be accounted for, there is no need of any devil to explain the facts. He is only an enc.u.mbrance, only in the way, only makes it difficult and practically impossible to solve our problem.

The old story was that, after the rebellion, pain and death and all evil came into the human world; and the natural world was blighted.

Thorns and briers and thistles sprang up on every hand; and animals which before had been peaceful began to fight and destroy each other.

We all know this to be a childish myth, and pagan. The actual history of the world has been something entirely other than that.

Now I do not wish that you should suppose that I minimize evil, that I make light of sin, that I do not properly estimate the cruelties and the wrongs that have devastated the world. I need only suggest to you that you look in this direction and that to see how hideous all these evils may be; how bitter, how cruel, is the fruit of wrong thoughts and of wrong actions. Look at a man, for example, divine in the possibilities of his being, but through vice, through drink, through habits of one kind and another, corrupted until it is an insult to a brute to call him brutal. We do not deny all this. Notice the cruelties of men towards each other, the jealousies, the envies, the strifes, the warfares. How one cla.s.s looks down upon and treats with contempt another that is a little lower! How masters have used their slaves; how tyrants like Nero and Caligula have made themselves hideous spectacles of what is possible to humanity, on a stage that is world-wide and illuminated by the flash-lights of history!

I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I belittle, that I underestimate these evils, only we do not need anything other than the scientific and historic facts of the world in order to account for them. What is sin, as science looks at it and treats it? Not something consciously and purposely developed, not something originating in a rebellion in some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce pa.s.sions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life, glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on; when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and looking towards G.o.d as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?

The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means ”atonement,” healing the division, whatever its nature or kind, bringing man into one-ness with G.o.d and men into one-ness with each other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and G.o.d apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk about, when men shall perfectly love G.o.d, and when they shall love each other as themselves.

What is it that keeps man from G.o.d? First, it seems to me, it is ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with G.o.d is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high, sweet, n.o.ble thoughts of G.o.d, some knowledge of the laws of G.o.d as embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.

In the next place, he needs such a picture of G.o.d as shall; make him seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart love that which seems hateful. The picture of G.o.d, as he has been outlined to the world in the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception of the divine. Make G.o.d the ideal of all that is n.o.ble and sweet and lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him as a flower is toward the sun.

Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which is akin to G.o.d, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.

Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. G.o.d does not need to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious relations.h.i.+p with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to G.o.d is concerned.

Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated, separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce pa.s.sions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life, glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on; when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and looking towards G.o.d as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?

The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means ”atonement,” healing the division, whatever its nature or kind, bringing man into one-ness with G.o.d and men into one- ness with each other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and G.o.d apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk about, when men shall perfectly love G.o.d, and when they shall love each other as themselves.

What is it that keeps man from G.o.d? First, it seems to me, it is ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with G.o.d is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high, sweet, n.o.ble thoughts of G.o.d, some knowledge of the laws of G.o.d as embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.

In the next place, he needs such a picture of G.o.d as shall: make him seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart: love that which seems hateful. The picture of G.o.d, as he has been outlined to the world in the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception of the divine. Make G.o.d the ideal of all that is n.o.ble and sweet and lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him as a flower is toward the sun.

Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which is akin to G.o.d, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.

Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. G.o.d does not need to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious relations.h.i.+p with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to G.o.d is concerned.

Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated, separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of civilization means to bring men together, to work out an atonement between nation and nation, religion and religion, family and family, man and man.

Here, again, as in the case of G.o.d, the first thing that needs to be overcome is ignorance. Look back no further than our late war. I think every careful student of that tremendous conflict is ready to say to-day that, if the North and South had been acquainted with each other, known each other as they know each other now, the war would have been impossible. We need to know other men. As you go back, you find curious traditions ill.u.s.trating this ignorance of different nations and different peoples of each other. Plato, for example, taught it as a virtue that the Athenians should hate all other peoples except the Greeks and all other Greek cities except Athens; and they spoke of the outside nations that did not speak Greek as barbarians, people who could not talk, people who, when they essayed to speak, said, ”Ba, ba,”

misusing words and expressions. They had traditions of men who carried their heads under their arms, who had only one eye, which was in the middle of their forehead, all sorts of monstrosities in human shape, antagonistic to the rest of mankind.

Even in modern times those ignorances, misconceptions, and prejudices are far from being outgrown. Lord Nelson counted it as a virtue in an Englishman that he should hate a Frenchman as he did the devil. How many people are there to- day who look with an unprejudiced eye upon a foreigner?

The things, then, that keep nations apart are ignorance. Then there is the lack of sympathy. You will find people walking side by side here in our streets, people in the same family, who find it impossible to understand each other.

They cannot put themselves in the place of another; they cannot comprehend something which is a little different from what they are accustomed to hear; not only cannot they understand it, they cannot lovingly or patiently look at it. Think of the things that have kept people apart in physical and mental and spiritual realms, the rivers, the mountain chains, the oceans; differences of religion, differences of language, differences of civilization; different ethical ideas, until people of the world have sat looking at each other with faces of fear and antagonism instead of with the dawning in their eyes of love and brotherhood.

Now what the world needs is something to atone, to bridge over these differences, to bring men into sympathetic and loving acquaintance with each other. I wish to note two or three things that have wrought very largely and effectively in this direction. Does it ever occur to you that commerce is something besides a means for the acc.u.mulation of wealth? Commerce has played one of the largest parts in the history of this world in atoning the differences, the antagonisms, between nation and nation and man and man. It has taught the world that there is a community of interests, and that, instead of fighting each other, they are mutually blessed and helped by coworking, co-operating, exchanging with each other.

So the inventors, the discoverers, have helped to bring about this sense of human brotherhood, this community of human interests. How much, for example, was wrought when the electric wire was placed under the seas, and, instead of allowing weeks and weeks for a misunderstanding to grow and for ill-feeling to ferment between England and this country, puts us in such quick relations that a misapprehension could be corrected in an hour. All these things have helped bring the world together, are engaged in this magnificent religious service of atonement, of making nations one, making humanity one, a family.