Part 17 (1/2)

Lyell published a book on the antiquity of man in 1863. It was twenty- five years before all the scientific men of the world were ready to give up the idea that man had been on the earth more than six or eight thousand years.

So we find that it is not theologians only; it is scientists, too, that find it difficult to accept new ideas. I know scientific men among my personal friends who are simply incapable of being hospitable to an idea that would compel them to reconstruct a theory that they have already accepted. Why are not all educated men Unitarians? Why do not scientific men accept demonstrated truth when it is first demonstrated as truth? It puts them to too much trouble. It touches their pride.

They do not like to feel that they have thrown away half their lives following an hypothesis that is not capable of being substantiated.

Then, in the third place, there are men, and educated men as the world goes, who deliberately decline to study new truth; and they are men in the scientific field and in the religious field. They purposely refuse to look at anything which would tend to disturb their present accepted belief. In my boyhood I used to hear Dr. John O. Fiske, a famous preacher in Maine. He told a friend of mine, in his old age, that he simply refused to read any book that would tend to disturb his beliefs.

Professor William G. T. Shedd, one of the most distinguished theologians of this country, a leading Presbyterian divine, published so I am not slandering him by saying it a statement that he did not consider any book written since the seventeenth century worth his reading. And yet we have a new world since the seventeenth century, a new revelation of G.o.d and of man. To follow the teaching of the seventeenth century would be to go wrong in almost every conceivable direction. What is the use of paying any attention to the theological or religious opinions of a man who avows an att.i.tude like that?

Faraday, to come now to a scientific ill.u.s.tration, so that you will not think I am too hard on theologians, Faraday belonged to one of the most orthodox sects in England; and he used to say deliberately that he kept his religion and his science apart. He says, ”When I go into my closet, I lock the door of my laboratory; and, when I go into my laboratory, I lock the door of my closet.” He did very wisely to keep them apart; for, if they had got together, there would certainly have been an explosion.

Another scientific ill.u.s.tration is Aga.s.siz. Aga.s.siz unconsciously wrought out and developed some of the most wondrous and beautiful proofs of evolution that the world has ever known; and yet he fought evolution to the last day of his life, simply because he had accepted the other theory. And he got it into his head that there was something about evolution that tended to injure religion and degrade man, not a rational objection, not a scientific objection, but a feeling, a prejudice.

There is another cla.s.s of people that I must refer to. Inst.i.tutions and organizations come into being, created, in the first place, as the embodiment and expression of new and grand truths; and after a Arile their momentum becomes such that the persons who are connected with them cannot control their movements, and these persons become victims of the organizations and inst.i.tutions to which they belong. So, when a new truth appears, the old organization rolls on like a Juggernaut car, and crushes the life, so far as it is possible, out of everything in its way. Take, for example, and note what a power it is and what an unconscious bribe it is to those who belong to it, the great Anglican Church. A man's ambitions, if he has learning, power, ability, tell him that there is the Archbishopric of Canterbury ahead of him as a possibility. His hopes, the chances of promotion and power, are with the inst.i.tution. And, then, it is such a tremendous social influence.

It is no wonder, then, that men who are not over-strong, who have not the stuff in them out of which heroes are made, should cling to the inst.i.tution and remain loyal to it, even while they are false to the truth that used to animate it and for which alone any inst.i.tution ought to exist.

Let me give you another ill.u.s.tration. Edward Temple, late Bishop of London, and who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a priest of the established Church come to him and make a confession of holding certain beliefs which he knew were heretical. The archbishop said to him frankly: As Edward Temple, I believe them, I am in sympathy with your views. As the head of the English Church, I must be opposed to them; and the opinions which you hold cannot be tolerated. That is what the influence of a great organization may come to.

Let me give you another concrete ill.u.s.tration. Here is our American Bible Society, which publishes and circulates millions of Bibles all over the world. It is obliged, as at present organized, to print and distribute the King James version of the Bible; but there is not a scholar or a minister connected with the organization anywhere who does not know at least, since the revision at any rate that in many important respects the King James version is not an accurate translation of the original, even if that is conceded to be infallible.

So that this organization stands to-day in the position of being obliged to circulate all over the world for G.o.d's truth any number of teachings that are simply blunders of the translator, of the copyist, or interpolated pa.s.sages that have come down from the past.

So men in every direction become persuaded that they must be loyal to the organization. I know cases where a minister in conversation with a friend has said: So long as I remain a member of this Church, I have got a great inst.i.tution back of me, and I can accomplish so much socially and in every way on account of it. I know I do not believe half of the creed, but any number of other ministers are in the same box. And so they stay true to the organization, while truth to the truth is sacrificed.

One other influence that keeps so many of these old ideas alive or prolongs their existence beyond the natural term is right in here. Any number of men, educated, strong, prominent men, give their countenance and influence to the support of old-time religious organizations because they believe that somehow or other they are serviceable as a police force in the world, they keep people quiet, they help preserve social order. I have had people over and over again say that they believed it would be a great calamity to disturb the Roman Catholic Church, because it keeps so many people quiet. Do you know, friends, I regard this as the worst infidelity that I know of on the face of the earth. It is doubt of G.o.d, his ability to lead and manage his world without cheating it. It is doubt of truth, as to whether it is safe for anybody except very wise people, like a few of us! It is doubt of humanity, its capacity to find the truth, and believe in it and live on it. Do you believe that G.o.d has made this universe so that it is healthier for the ma.s.ses to live on a lie than it is for them to live on the truth? Is that your confidence in G.o.d? Is that the kind of G.o.d you wors.h.i.+p? It is not the kind I wors.h.i.+p. There is no danger of the ignorant ma.s.ses of the world getting wise too fast, judging by the experience of the past up to the present time. There is only one thing that is safe; and that is truth. Do you know what the trouble was at the time of the French Revolution? It was not that the people began to reason and think, and lost their faith, as so frequently said by superficial historians: it was that they waked up at last to the idea that the aristocracy and the priesthood had not only been fleecing them financially and keeping them down socially, but had been fooling them religiously, until at last they broke away, having no confidence left in G.o.d or priest or educated people or n.o.bility or anything. No wonder they made havoc. If you want to make a river dangerous, dam it up, keep the waters back, until by and by the pressure from the hills and the mountains becomes so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities, leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as G.o.d meant them to; and they will be safe.

So let the world learn,-- learn gradually, and adapt itself to new truth as it learns, and there will be an even and orderly march of human progress. The danger is in our setting ourselves up as being wiser than G.o.d, wiser than the universe, and doling out to the mult.i.tude the little fragments of truth that we think are fitted for their digestion. The impertinence of it, and the impiety of it!

I must not stop to deal with other reasons which lie in my mind this morning. You can think along other channels for yourselves. I have simply wished to suggest that, in the kind of world we are living in, you may not be sure, at any particular age in history, that a set of ideas is going to be accepted by the mult.i.tude merely because they are true; and, because they are not accepted at once, you are not, therefore, to come to the conclusion that they are not true. There never has been a time in the history of the world when the truth was not in the minority. Go back to the time of Jesus: do you not remember how the people asked whether any of the scribes or the Pharisees believed on him? They were ready to accept him if they could go with the crowd; but it never occurred to them to raise the question as to whether it was their duty to go with him while he was alone, as to whether two or three might not represent some higher conception of G.o.d, some forward step on the part of humanity. Consider for just a moment, let it be in literature, in art, in government, in ethics, anywhere, find out where the crowd is, and you will find where the truth is not.

Disraeli made a very profound remark when he said that a popular opinion was always the opinion which was about to pa.s.s away. By the time a notion gets accepted by the crowd, the deeper students are seeing some higher and finer truth towards which they are reaching.

The pioneers are always in the minority. The vanguard of an army is never so large as the main body that comes along behind after the way has been laid out for it.

”Then to side with Truth is n.o.ble when we share her wretched crust.”

That is Lowell's suggestion, in that famous poem of his. If we care for truth, we shall not wait until it becomes popular. The truth in any direction to-day, if we had the judgment of the world, would be voted down. Christianity would be voted down among the religions; Protestantism would be voted down in Christianity; and the highest and finest thinkers in the Protestant churches would be voted down by the majority of the members.

Do not be disturbed, then, or troubled, because you have not the crowd and the shouting accompanying you on your onward march; and remember that there must be something of heroism in this consecration to truth.

I wish to quote to you, as bearing on this truth, a wonderfully fine word which I have just come across in a recent number of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, the word of the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He says, ”One with G.o.d may be a majority; but crucifixion and the f.a.got may antedate the counting of the votes.” But, if it means crucifixion and the f.a.got, and we claim to be followers of the Nazarene and worthy of him, even for that we shall not shrink. It is our business simply to raise the question, and try to answer it or ourselves, Which way must I go to follow the truth? And that way I must tread, whether it means life or death, whatever the consequences; for the truth-seeker is the only G.o.d-seeker.

WHERE IS THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH?

As you are aware, there are certain churches that have taken the name of Evangelical, thereby, of course, putting forth the claim that in some special or peculiar way they have the gospel in keeping. For ”Evangel” is the word translated ”gospel,” ”Evangelist” is a ”preacher of the gospel,” ”Evangelical” is the appropriate name for the church whose ministers preach the gospel. And the word ”gospel,” as you know, translated, means good news. It is the proclamation of hope, of something that the world has been groping in darkness for, a message that should lift the burden off the human heart, make men stronger to endure, fill them with cheer in the midst of life's difficulties and dangers, and give them a trust with which to walk out into the darkness that lies at the end.

A certain section, I say, of the Christian Church has appropriated this name; and by common consent it has been conceded to it. And as usage makes language, and the dictionaries only record the results of popular usage, why, of course, we must confess that this use of words is right.

Right in that sense, I say. But I wish to go back of this popular usage this morning, and raise the question as to whether these churches that claim the t.i.tle are the ones to whom it peculiarly or exclusively belongs. I wish to put forward the claim that we, though the idea is entirely against popular thought, are really the ones who are preaching the gospel of G.o.d, and that the liberals of the world come nearer today to proclaiming the actual original gospel of Jesus the Christ than do any other body of Christians in the world. I wish to do this, not in any spirit of antagonism, but simply by way of clear definition, and that we may understand where we are, and may unfalteringly and trustingly and loyally and hopefully go on to do the highest work that was ever committed to human hands.

At the outset, though it will necessitate my saying certain things which I have said to you before, I must outline briefly that body of doctrine which goes by the name of ”Evangelical.” I will not go back two or three hundred years to include in it such dogmas as Foreordination, Election, the d.a.m.nation of non-Elect or non-Baptized Infants, though these doctrines still remain in the creeds. I will take what must be considered the simpler and fairer course of confining myself to setting forth those beliefs which are generally accepted, and which are made a part of the creed of the so-called ”Evangelical Alliance” that is, an organization including representatives of all the great so-called Evangelical Churches. These beliefs, in brief, are that G.o.d created the world perfect in the first place, but that in a very short time it was invaded by the evil powers, and mankind rebelled against the Creator, and became the subjects of the devil as the G.o.d of this world. Then man, by thus rebelling against G.o.d, lost his intellectual power to discern truth, became mentally unable to discover spiritual truth, to find the divine way in which he ought to walk; and that he became morally incapable, so that, even when the truth was presented to him, he felt an aversion towards it, and was disinclined to accept it. The next point is this being the condition of things that G.o.d began to reveal himself to the world, first, by angel messengers, by prophets, by inspired men, and that then at last, through certain chosen mediums, he wrote a book telling men the truth about their condition, about his feeling towards them, about what they ought to do, and the destiny involved in the kind of life they should live here.

After the world had been in existence about four thousand years, according to this teaching, and very little headway had been made even among the chosen people, the few that had been selected from the great outside and wandering nations, G.o.d himself comes down to earth, by means of a woman specially prepared to be his mother he is born without a human father. He lives, he suffers, he dies. This, after one theory or another, I need not go into them, to make it possible for G.o.d to forgive, and to enable him to save those who should accept the terms which he should offer.

Then, after his withdrawal from the earth, his Church is organized under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Its mission is to proclaim the gospel among all nations. That proclamation has gone on; but after two thousand years not a third of the world has heard the gospel, not a third of the people who walk the planet knows anything about the book that has been written. But they still stumble along in darkness, wors.h.i.+pping anything except the one only and true G.o.d. So that this effort up to the present time would strike us, if we judged it as a human device, as being a sad and lamentable failure.