THE

Religion of Evolution,

M. J. SAVAGE,

AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIANITY THE SCIENCE OF MANHOOD."

BOSTON:
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & COMPANY.

1876.

Copyright, 1876,
BY LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO.

Franklin Press: Rand, Avery, & Co.

BOSTON.

TO

THE CHURCH OF THE UNITY;

WILLING TO BEAR THE PAIN OF THOUGHT, BRAVE ENOUGH

TO HEAR WHAT IS NEW, AND HAVING FAITH

THAT GOD WILL LEAD THE FREE

AND THE EARNEST TO

HIMSELF,

THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

In some form the theory of evolution is now
accepted by nearly all the leading scientific and phil-
osophic students of the world. It is rapidly giving
its own shape to the thought of civilization. Science,
art, human life, religion, and reform are becoming its
disciples ; and their tendencies in the near future
must be largely determined by it.

Workers in many departments of thought have
already reshaped their teachings into accordance with
its principles; but so far as I know, in this country,
no book has been devoted to a discussion of its effect
upon religion.

This volume makes no claim to completion. It is
only an essay in answer to the question, " If evolu-
tion is true, what have we left in the way of reli-
gion ? " Some scientists affirm, and some frightened
religionists exclaim, that evolution is essentially athe-
istic and irreligious; and that, if it is true, we have

6                                      PREFACE.

left no religion at all. The writer believes that it is
the business of both science and religion to seek first
and always for the truth ; for the truth only leads to
God. He further believes that it is waste of time to
seek to reconcile assumed truths. Truths are already
at one, and need no reconciliation. Find and apply
truth, then: the result is God's.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

I.   Science and Religion                                               11i

II.   Theory of the World                                             31

III.    The God of Evolution                                             49

IV.    The Man of Evolution                                               73
V.   The Devil; or, The Nature of Evil                        93

VI.   The Evolution of Conscience                                  112

VII.   Love in Law                                                               131

VIII.    Prayer                                                                        150

IX.   Bibles and the Bible                                                170

X.   The Doctrine of Atonement                                    194

XL   Christianity and Evolution                                     215

XII.   Immortality                                                               234

" Prove all things: hold fast that which is good."

Paul.

" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster"

Tennyson.

The truth-seeker is the only God-seeker.

The curse of both religion and science, in all ages, has been the thought
that there was somewhere an ultimate, — a place to stop. Here we are,
finite minds in the midst of infinity. And, for the finite that is moving
toward infinity, there is nowhere a place to anchor, but only the privilege
and the opportunity of endless exploration.

Beneath all the various, wide-spread, and disconnected labors, discoveries,
and experiments of the great body of scientific workers, there is the common
belief that all scientific truth is one; that the universe is all of one piece;
that distant truths are only different parts of one divine pattern that runs all
through the whole visible garment of God. This scientific faith is grander
than any that the religious world has yet attained. But we must come to
this. Religious truth is one, as God is one. Go forth, then, ye religious
explorers, and seek only for truth; knowing that all truth-seekers are
brothers, and must come to hand-clasping and looks of recognition by and
by!                                                                                                  S.

" I apprehend that there is but one way of putting an end to our
present dissensions; and that is, not the triumph of any existing system over
all others, but the acquisition of something better than the best we now
have."                                                                                Channing.

" It is popularly said abroad, that you have no antiquities in America.
If you talk about the trumpery of three or four thousand years of history,
it is true. But in the large sense, as referring to times before man made
his momentary appearance, America is the place to study the antiquities of
the globe. The reality of the enormous amount of material here has far sur-
passed my anticipation. I have studied the collection gathered by Prof.
Marsh of New Haven. There is none like it in Europe, not only in extent
of time covered, but by reason of its bearing on the problem of evolution.
Whereas, before this collection was made, evolution was a matter of specu-
lative reasoning, it is now a matter of fact and history as much as the
monuments of Egypt. In that collection are the facts of the succession of
forms, and the history of their evolution. All that now remains to be asked
is how, and that is a subordinate question." — Prof. Huxley, before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, August, 1876,

The Religion of Evolution.

i.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

The phrase, " the conflict between religion and science,"
has become a very common one in newspaper, in maga-
zine, in public address, and in sermon; and it represents
the observed fact that there is a grand division running
through, the thinking minds of civilization, on one side of
which stand the advocates of religion, and on the other
the advocates of science. Not, by any means, that there
are no religious men on the scientific side, and no scien-
tific men on the religious side, but that this division does
represent a real and general fact, and that these two sides
stand in a certain antagonism to each other. But yet,
strange as it may seem, I suppose it to be still true that
there is not a scientific man living who would claim that
a real truth of science can by any possibility come into
conflict with a real truth of religion; and there is not a
religious man living but would confess that it was simply
an impossibility that a real religious truth should stand in
antagonism to a real scientific truth. But the antagonism
of the attitude still remains, because it is true that on

12                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

both sides there are large bodies of men that are very
much more concerned in establishing their positions than
they are in finding out what is the truth. It seems to
me a very strange thing that any man should be willing
to hold such an attitude as this, either on the side of
science or religion. There is no possibility of its being
for the permanent interest of any man that he should be
able to establish himself in a falsehood; for though he
may build him a house as wide as the earth, and as high
as the heavens, if its foundation be in the sand, the floods
of the eternal movements of the divine forces will some
time undermine and sweep it away. There can, then, be
no interest in any man's holding to a position that is not
true; so that one might suppose that the chief anxiety of
men would be, not to prove that they were right, but to
find out whether they were right. And yet I have met
men among my own personal friends, who would tell me
candidly, and with their whole hearts, that so dear to
them had become the positions that they had inherited,
even if they were false, they did not wish to find it out;
they did not wish to be disturbed; they did not wish
to be compelled to re-adjust their thinking to any new
truths: for it is one of the inevitable facts of the world
that a new truth is an " unsettler " everywhere. It comes
in to disturb and to shake old institutions, and to demand
of men that they do not build forever their house in the
place where their fathers builded, but that they regard it
simply as a tent, to be folded and taken with them on a
forward march towards something which is higher and
grander and broader in the way of truth.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION,                      13

This fact to which I have alluded — that there is this
antagonism between men on account of their being
anxious to establish their own positions rather than to
find out truth— I suppose to be true in a larger degree
of the defenders of religion than it is of those that stand
on the side of science; and I conceive that there is a
very natural and, in one sense, a satisfactory reason for it.
You cannot make any scientific man feel anxious about
any supposed scientific truth on the ground that its truth
or falsity will endanger the welfare of his soul, either in
this world or in any other world. But when a man has
inherited some religious belief that is intertwined with all
the sacred associations of the past, with the present
affections of the soul, and with all the dearest and
grandest hopes of the future, it seems to him, when you
touch it, that you are unsettling the universe, that you are
sweeping away from him every thing that is dear, every
thing on which he has been accustomed to rely. You
take away the anchor of his soul; you cut the cable which
bound him to any sure hope and abiding-place, and he is
set adrift to float, nobody knows where.

I say, then, that it is natural to a person who has had
a training like this that he should be jealous of the in-
coming of something that claims to be scientific truth,
that conflicts with what he has been taught to regard as
religious truth.

Now, in order that we may understand something of
the principles of this conflict that has been going on since
the dawn of civilization, and in the midst of which we are

14                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

still engaged, — in order that we may understand some-
thing of the methods of it, and that we may be able to
forecast with some degree of probability the outcome of
the battle of the present hour, it will be needful for us to
go back, and glance for a moment at a few of the fields
that have been fought over and won in the past.

Religion held a universal sway over the mind of man
before science was even born; for religion is as old as
the instincts of hope and fear in the human soul, and has
bound itself up with these hopes and fears; so that this
conflict has not simply arisen under Christianity: it is
older than Christianity. I say this because some scien-
tific men speak as though Christianity, and no other
religion, was the grand obstacle that had stood in the
way of scientific progress. It is not because Christianity
is any different in this respect from any other religion in
the world, but simply because Christianity happens to be
the religion of a civilization where this conflict has been
going on. But the conflict began before Christianity was
born. The old Greeks supposed that the sun, in his
grand march across the heavens from the east to the
west, was a god driving his flaming chariot; and they
worshipped this god with incense and with temples and
with offerings ; so that his ritual was widespread all over
the ancient world. When, then, some thoughtful philoso-
pher came forward first, and, as the result of his study,
dared to broach the heresy that the sun was no god, after
all, but only a ball of flaming fire, he was unsettling the
foundations of the religion which was dear to the popular

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                     15

heart; and the people resented it, and fought against it
with just as bitter a feeling of opposition as that which
actuates the hearts of the theological defenders of what
they claim to be essential religion at the present day.

But the first great battle between the advocates of
science and the advocates of religion was that concerning
the geography of the world, — the question as to whether
it was round, or whether it was a flat surface. It seems
strange and incomprehensible to us, to-day that it could
possibly make any difference to the advocates of religion
whether the world was round or flat; and yet one of the
bitterest contests of the world raged over this question for
ages. And so high did the feeling run, and so bitter was
the opposition on the part of the priests of the Catholic
Church (and the ministers of the Protestant Church, as
well, — for they were linked together hand in hand in
fighting that battle), that one of the priests of the middle
ages went so far as to say that the Church could better
endure having the existence of God called in question, or
the immortality of the soul, or the religious nature of man,
than that it should listen to the damnable heresy that the
world was a globe, and not a flat surface. And Luther
and Melanchthon, those grand lights of the Reformation,
went quite as far in their opposition to this new science as
the priests of the Catholic Church. And what were their
arguments ? Why, such as these : That the Bible spoke
everywhere of " the face of the earth," and said nothing
about any other side but the face. Again: that, if there
were any antipodes living on the other side of the world,

16                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

then the character and government of God were im-
peached, because he had made no provision for their
salvation. And again : the command had been given to
the apostles to go into all the world, and to preach the
gospel to every creature; and since the apostles had
never visited any nations at the antipodes, therefore there
were no such nations. These were their arguments, —
arguments brought from a superficial understanding of the
biblical use of language. And they went so far as to
construct their theory of the world after the precise pat-
tern of the Jewish tabernacle in the wilderness, saying
that that was the divine copy of the universe; and that,
as the tabernacle was twice as long as it was wide, and
had just such and such proportions, therefore the universe
was in just this same shape, — an oblong square; and
that the world was supported by pillars, as the tabernacle
was supported by pillars ; and they invented some sort of
a grand mountain at one end of this oblong square, be-
hind which the sun was pulled at night when it was dark.
So far did they carry this battle over the question as to
whether the world was round or flat. And one thing
which seems very remarkable to us who are accustomed
to go to Nature and interrogate her, when we wish to get
an answer, is, that it never seemed to occur to these men
to find out whether the world was round by travelling
over it, by sailing around it, by measuring an arc of its
surface to see whether it was curved or not. It never
seemed to occur to them to go to the natural phenomenon
itself, and ask it the question. Instead of that, they went

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                      17

to certain old books, that they regarded as sacred, to find
out what somebody who lived thousands of years before
had thought about it. This, then, is an indication of the
battle that was fought over the question of geography.

The next great conflict was over the position of the
earth in the solar system, — as to whether the earth was
the centre, or the sun was the centre. And here, again,
instead of looking to find out whether their theory was
true, instead of prosecuting the study of astronomy,
instead of opening their eyes, they seemed to think that
to dare to scrutinize the works of God was impiety and
heresy; and so science was fought against with every
weapon, not only of the civil power in the way of persecu-
tion, but with the most opprobrious epithets and with
social ostracism. And here, again, the arguments are very
strange that they bring. Luther laughed at and ridiculed
the foolish scientific men of his day who said that the sun
was the centre of the solar system, and that the earth
revolved about it, and clinched his argument by saying
that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
earth; and therefore it could not possibly be that the
earth moved around the sun, instead of the sun moving
around the earth. And then,' when Galileo invented his
telescope, so that he could see the moons of Jupiter,
instead of looking through his telescope, and finding out
whether he really did see the moons, they charged him
with being in league with Satan, and said, that, through
Satan's help, he had invented an instrument which created
the heavenly bodies which he claimed to see. And here,

18                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

again, with these old ideas inherited from the past, they
fought against finding out what were the real facts in the
realm of nature concerning the way in which God had
constituted this wondrous universe of ours.

The next battle that I shall speak of (I dwell on these
very lightly, simply by way of illustration) is one that you
are familiar with yourselves, that has been fought out in
the lifetime of almost every one that has attained to the
age of twenty-five years, — the battle over the antiquity of
the earth and of man. The battle started in the new dis-
coveries of geology. Here, again, the same old weapons
were used in the fight against this new, grand, and higher
truth. When sea-shells and the fossil bones of fishes
were discovered upon the sides, and near the summits, of
high mountains, instead of believing what geology taught,
— that the mountains had themselves been under the sea,
and had afterwards been raised by the natural action of
the forces of the earth, — they claimed that the presence
of these things must be explained upon the theory that
the flood had carried them there, and had left them behind
when it had passed away: or they claimed that these
were false creations of Satan, made as an imitation of,
and a parody upon, the works of God: or they claimed
that they were the first attempts of God in the way of
creation; that he had to try several times before he
succeeded, and that these were the remnants of his
failures; that he had thought out better ways afterwards,
and created the existing specimens of life on the face of
the earth after newer and finer patterns. And at that

SCIENCE AND RELIGION                    19

time the grand obstacle to the reception of the new and
magnificent truths that geology taught was simply the old
interpretation of Genesis.* Because Archbishop Usher
had ciphered it out that the world was only six thousand
years old, therefore geology could not be true; and
because of the institution of the sabbath, based on the
supposition that God worked six days, was then tired,
so that he wanted to rest on the seventh, and therefore set
apart that day, — this was again used as a conclusive argu-
ment against the facts that could be seen by simply looking
at them. But this battle is at last fought out and ended;
and the antiquity of the world, and the antiquity of man,
reaching back, not six thousand years, nor ten thousand,
nor twenty thousand, but possibly, in the case of humanity
itself, a hundred thousand, certainly in the case of the
world thousands of thousands, if not thousands of
millions, — this question is at last absolutely settled for
the mind of every man who is at all familiar with the
facts that go to prove it.

And then there is one battle more that I will glance at,
—one which is raging very furiously at the present time,
represented on one side by men like Herbert Spencer,
Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, the German Haeckel, and on
the other by the leading men of the theological world;
and this battle is nothing more nor less than concerning
the methods of creation, and what was the origin of life
upon the globe, and by what process living creatures have
developed from the first simple beginnings in the primeval
oceans up to the grandest manifestations of the intellect

20                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

of humanity. This is the battle in the midst of which we
are living to-day. I shall say nothing in regard to the
merits of it at this time, because it does not come in as
a necessary part of my subject.

But now let us look for a moment, and see what are
some of the principal results of these battles between reli-
gion and science. And, in the first place, I should think
it would be a very discouraging fact for those who are
so afraid of science, that, in every single one of the grand
conflicts of the past, the advocates of the popular religion
of the time have been beaten out and out; so that to-day
there is not a remnant left of them. There has not been
a well-thought-out and well-arranged contest between the
advocates of science and the advocates of religion in the
history of the past, in which the advocates of science have
riot been completely and permanently triumphant. What
is the next result ? The next result is, that religion, so far
from receiving any detriment On account of the overthrow
of those that have assumed to be her champions, has
grown grander and more magnificent every time. Re-
ligion, in other words, has been helped, advanced, uplifted,
magnified, and made grander by the conquests of science.
And how? Not that certain definite forms of religion,
certain theories of theology, certain sectarian claims, have
not been injured; for these have been overthrown, and
ground to powder. But these are not religion : these
are simply the false and mistaken theories of men.
These have been trodden down in the track of the
advancing thought of humanity; but religion has been

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                     21

made grander. Just think of it for a moment! The God
of that little universe which was patterned after the Jewish
tabernacle was simply a gigantic and non-natural man.
He was simply the autocrat of a little kingdom not so
large in the conception of the world, at that time, as the
United States is to-day; simply a sovereign ruler, who
could make the mountains tremble with his footstep, the
rumbling of the thunder being the roll of his chariot-
wheels, or the threatening tones of his voice, while the
lightning was the gleam of his sword, or the flash of his
eye. Think of a God like that!—not grander than the
Olympian Jupiter. And now words and time both fail
me to do more than ask you to think of the infinite
enlargement of the conception of God that has come
from the revelations of science, — the world a magnifi-
cent globe, though the smallest of all the worlds with
which we are familiar, yet sweeping around the sun
in its wondrous orbit; and this system, mighty and
grand as it is, one of the very least with which we
are acquainted, and the universe made up of a countless
number of unspeakably grand systems and galaxies that
stretch off and off and off, until we know not whether
this material universe of ours be not itself absolutely
infinite and unbounded. Think of the difference in the
human conception of the God that resides at the centre,
who is the life and force and power and beauty and glory
of a universe like this. And this is the object of our
religion, that the advance of science has given us, — an
advance right in the teeth of the defenders of religion,

22                  THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

and made at the cost of overthrowing and trampling
down that which the religious advocates of the time
regarded as essential to the very existence of religion
itself. This is an indication, an illustration, of how science
has exalted our conception of God, of the universe, of
the nature of man and the grandeur of human destiny;
so that religion has been an unspeakable gainer by being
defeated in its conflicts with science. And yet there has
resulted one incidental evil, — an evil not growing out
of the fact that religion was defeated; for it would have
been the worst possible thing for humanity if religion
had gained in this contest with the science of old: but
this incidental evil has followed from the simple fact that
religionists put themselves in the way of the advance of
truth concerning God and his universe. And how has
the evil been wrought ? It has been wrought in this
way : Scientific men have come to look upon the church
and theology as simply superstitions, outworn obstructions
in the pathway of the progress of discovery. And they
have been justified in regarding those who have put them-
selves forth prominently as the advocates of religion as
obstructionists in the way of the advance of truth; for
every single time that there has been made a proposal to
enlarge the kingdom of definite knowledge, there has
been the same old tiresome outcry of " Science falsely
so called! " and the opposition of religion, on the ground
that they were driving God out of his universe. Why,
when Newton discovered the law of gravitation, that
which all ministers now for a hundred years have been

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                        23

speaking about as one of the grandest illustrations of
the power and greatness of God, — when Newton first
made that discovery, he was branded as an atheist and
an infidel by the Church, because, as they said, he had
taken the universe out of God's hands, and had given
it into the keeping of a law. And so every time that
there is a new law discovered, the same old cry is raised,
until to-day the crowning objection that is urged against
the law of evolution is, that it is driving God clear
out of his universe; as though a law were any thing
more than simply a name for a method of divine work-
ing. And the broader you make the law, the more com-
prehensive and sweeping, the longer its reach, only the
more grand and magnificent become the thought, and
the conception of a God who is able thus to weave a
network of law that shall cover the universe, and reach
through all time.

And now let us stop for a moment, after reviewing
these contests, and let us dare to look this thing called
science in the face. What is science ? Why should reli-
gious men be afraid of it ? That they are afraid, and
that even liberal men and women are afraid of it, I have
found out by personal conversation with some of my own
parishioners and friends. And there is a sort of uneasy
feeling on the part of many, that when a minister says
" science" in the pulpit, he has somehow temporarily
dropped his real vocation ; that he has left the work of
preaching God's truth, and is talking about man's theories
and ideas; that he is really trenching on the ground of

24                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

secularism, doing work appropriate for Monday, but not
for Sunday. Let us, then, I say, for a moment look this
matter of science in the face, and see if we can find out
what it is. Science is nothing more nor less than the
arranged, organized, definite, verifiable knowledge of the
world. It is nothing more fearful than that. We know,
for example, that a stream of water cannot possibly rise
higher than its fountain. Having established that as a law
of the movement of water, we have established so much as
being a part of science. Again : we know, as another ex-
ample that certain chemical elements brought together in
solution will arrange themselves, under certain conditions,
into a crystal of a certain form ; that they will do it every
time. There, again, is simply another fact of science. We
know now, since the battle is fought out and won, that the
earth turns around on its own axis once in twenty-four
hours, and that it revolves around the sun. These, again,
are simple facts of science. That is, any thing concerning
man; concerning human society; concerning the earth;
concerning the animals that inhabit the earth, the grasses,
the herbs, the flowers that spring out of its soil; concern-
ing the clouds that sweep through the air; concerning the
atmosphere itself; concerning the sun and the stars, —
any thing that we know and can prove about any of these
things is science. It is real science when it can be veri-
fied, and when it is not somebody's guess or supposition.
Now, there are a great many things that are simply
believed, a great many theories that are called hypothe-
ses. They are assumed as the working implements of

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                        25

science. They are not science until they are established.
Things that are proved, and that can be proved again, are
science. And here is one grand advantage that scientific
truth has over any other, — that which is true in science
is true everywhere, and it is true always. I do not accept
it on the basis of a man's dream who lived five thousand
years ago; I do not accept it because somebody comes to
me, and says that he talked with an angel, and the angel
told him so; I do not accept it because some man says,
" I was inspired to write such and such things, and this
was one of the things that I was told to write;" I do not
accept it on testimony from anybody. It is a truth of
the living, working God, right before my eyes to-day;
and I can prove it now, and I can prove it to-morrow,
just as well as it was proved yesterday; so that there is
no possible chance for contradiction or conflict as to
whether it is true or not. That is the one grand thing
that is claimed in favor of the methods and facts of
science.

And now, is this science sacred, or is it secular ? There
is no possible way by which I can absolutely settle it that
every part of the Bible was inspired by God. There is
no possible way by which I can find out how much of the
Pentateuch Moses wrote, or whether he was inspired to
write that which he did write, or whether he wrote it out
of his own human wisdom. There is no possible way, I
say, by which I can establish questions like these. And
yet these things by many, by the multitudes of Christen-
dom to-day, are held out before us as the things that

26                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

are peculiarly and especially sacred; and our reverence
is demanded for them. But whether I know any thing
else in the world, if there be a God at all, I know that he
is the author, the life, the force, the beauty, the glory, of
this universe that he has made. And when I look upon
some little flower bursting through the sod, I am look-
ing directly into the secrets of God's beauty and God's
taste. And when I look into the eyes of my friend, and
when I see the self-sacrifice, the self-denial, the love that
is prompted by his heart, I am looking at a fact of sci-
ence, something that I can recognize and prove as a part
of human nature; and I am at the same time looking
into the divine mystery of the love and the self-sacrifice
of God. When I look at the stars coursing their ways
through the blue deeps of heaven, I am, as Kepler
said of old, "thinking over after him again God's own
thoughts." And so, anywhere where God has been, or
where God is now (for he is now where he ever has been),
wherever God is, I look upon his very footstep, and I can
put my finger into his own finger-prints ; and I can see
God's life in the growth and progress of nature about
me ; I can feel the divine pulsations in the air, and in the
life of my body; I am living in the midst of the only
temple that God himself has consecrated, and that I can
be absolutely sure is a representation of God's own work.
Whether there are mistakes about any thing else or not,
this is certain. Here, then, in nature, — in sun and star,
and sky and cloud, and ocean and earth, and grass and
flowers and trees, and human nature, — I am looking

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.                        27

directly into a revelation of God; and if I can read it, I
can read the very thoughts and processes and methods
of the divine working and development.

This, then, is science, that men dare call irreligious;
that men dare decry in the name of human traditions, and
human systems, and human dreams, and human follies, and
human superstitions. If there be any one thing that is
the sacred book and teaching and life and outcome and
revelation of God's own heart and God's own power, it is
that which is called science.

And now, in just a word, what is religion ? and why
need religion be afraid of science ? and what ought to
be the real relation existing between science and religion ?
Religion, — I am going to give you a very short definition;
and yet, if you will think about it as long as you will, I do
not believe you can find any thing that reaches beyond its
limits,—religion simply means the relationship, as to right
or wrong, in which man stands to his God and to his fel-
low-man. This is the whole sum and substance of reli-
gion. It covers and includes it all.

Now, then, what can science do for this religion ? Sci-
ence has been doing for hundreds of years one of the
greatest services possible. It has been destroying the
superstitions, the crudities, the falsehoods, the misconcep-
tions of men concerning religion. For example, the doc-
trines of astrology, of demoniacal possession, of witchcraft,
the doctrine of the material resurrection of the body, of a
material hell just under the surface of the ground, and
many others that were once considered central and essen-

28                  THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

tial parts of religion, — these things which were only hurts
and damages, barnacles on the ship that hindered its
sailing, — these things science has stripped off, and thrown
away, and utterly destroyed.

I do not wonder that men have cried out against sci-
ence because it has done these things; for if once a man
identifies his own thought with the very central life and
thought of the universe, of course, when you touch him,
he thinks the throne of God is giving way. But science
has reconstructed religious thought: that is one thing that
it has done for it. Another thing I have already enlarged
upon. It has heightened infinitely the objects of religion,
giving us a grander God, a nobler humanity, a more
magnificent universe as the theatre for human action.
Another thing: if I am to understand definitely what is
right and what is wrong, if, in other words, I am to be
intelligently moral, if I am to educate my conscience
after the true pattern, I must learn definitely what are
the facts concerning human nature, concerning its origin,
concerning its history, concerning its relationships. I
must study out these, and definitely settle them ; and in
that way alone can I be sure that I am living a truly
moral life. For example, as illustrating what I mean : the
larger part of the religion of the past has been simply
ritual. It has been said, " You must obey the priest, you
must go to church, you must pay tithes, you must partake
of the sacraments, you must do this thing, you must do
that thing." Now we believe, and, in the light of science,
it is perfectly clear to us, that none of these things have

SCIENCE AND RELIGION                        29

any essential relation whatever to religion; and a man
may be religious, and disregard every one of them, and a
man may do every one of them, and a thousand more,
and be utterly and through and through irreligious.

Science, then, is definitely settling for us what is right
and what is wrong, by observing the facts in regard to
human nature.

And, then, one thing more, science is gradually giving
to religion its methods,— its method of study and of proof.
Why is it that intelligent and thoughtful men to-day are
disputing so largely the great central questions, as they
are claimed to be, of religion ? It is one of the strange
things of the world, if the claims of the Church are true,
that thoughtful, intelligent, earnest, religious men all over
the world are disregarding them. Why, no man thinks
of disregarding the law of gravitation, because he knows

*

he would be a fool to do it. Whether he disregards it or
not, it is a grand fact of the universe, and, if he comes in
its way, it will crush him. No man disregards the laws
of fire, because he knows that fire is a fact of the uni-
verse that it will not do to disregard. No man questions
as to whether the earth moves around the sun, because it
can be proved that it moves around the sun. But the
reason that religion is so disputed, that it is so bandied
about, that it is so fought against, is, that theology has
sought to identify with religion a hundred or a thousand
things that no man on earth can prove. As an illustra-
tion of what I mean, Mahomet claimed to be inspired
of God, and to teach the doctrines of the Koran under

30                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

inspiration ; Swedenborg claimed to be inspired of God;
Peter and Paul claimed to receive visions direct from
God. Now, whether they did or not, nobody can tell.
There is no possible way of proving that they did or did
not. In other words, to state very definitely and very
clearly what I mean, many of the asserted truths of
religion have been heretofore "all in the air,"—truths that
nobody could touch, nobody could feel, nobody could see,
nobody could prove; so that you could accept them if
you wished to ; but you could not make it a rational
necessity for another man to accept them. But once
bring the methods of science into the sphere of religion,
establish the existence of God; establish the laws of God
as manifested in the universe, establish the nature of
man, and his religious nature as a part of it, — establish
these on the firm foundations of investigated and verified
truth, and no reasonable man will then think of ques-
tioning them, or questioning whether he ought to be
religious, and lead a religious life. He will no more
think of questioning these than he will the fact that the
earth moves around the sun.

And so science more and more ought to come into the
sphere of religion, and bring with it its methods of inves-
tigation and proof. And so, as the result of the present
conflicts, there is coming a grander revelation of religion,
and an establishing of it on immovable foundations, such
as heretofore the world has never seen.

II.

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD.

At the National Unitarian Conference in Saratoga
(1874), one of our most widely known ministers was
making a speech on our missionary work; and, in the
course of his remarks, he took occasion to speak slight-
ingly of those who were wasting their time on such
unpractical questions as the antiquity of the world and
the origin of things. He thought there were enough prob-
lems of real, pressing, living importance right about us
to absorb all our attention, and consume all our energy.
And a year ago (1875), in Music Hall, in the course of a
lecture on "Our Scandalous Politics," Mr. Parton took
occasion to ridicule those who were troubling their brains
over the theories of Darwin and Spencer, instead of
grappling vigorously with the political evils and social
reforms of the day.

Thoughts and utterances like these are natural enough
to one who does not look beneath the superficial move-
ments of the time for the hidden, and oftentimes remote,
springs and causes of the conditions of things. If one

32                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

knew nothing of the interior mechanism of a watch, he
might think he could make it keep good time by turning
the hands round on the face; but a wiser person would
take it to a watch-maker, and have the origin of the outer
movements looked after.

Men who pride themselves on their reputation as
" practical " workers are often very impatient of theories
and theorizers. Theorist to them means visionary. They
regard him as dwelling in a cloud-land, and dealing with
unsubstantial fancies. They think his fitting representa-
tive is the fabled dog on the foot-bridge, who dropped his
bone while clutching at a finer looking shadow. They
propose to hold by the bone. And yet, if you'll think of
it, every man living has his theory of every thing he does;
and all his practice is the result of his theory. The
farmer who sneers at his neighbor for adopting the " new-
fangled notions,"— the knowledge of chemicals and soils
that modern science has revealed to him, — and who
pins him to the walls of his kitchen with the stigma
" theorizer! " is himself a theorizer just the same; only
he keeps working away on a theory that consists in bun-
gling tools, — and guessing experiments, and back-break-
ing hand-labor, — a theory that kept his grandfather poor,
a theory long since exploded as deficient and half-way, —
instead of accepting that theory that new investigation
and successful practice have proved true. Should a boy
at school attempt a problem in mathematics, and pay no
attention to the theory, the underlying principles accord-
ing to which the question could be solved, you would say

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 33

he ought to exchange his seat for the dunce's block.
Watt and Stephenson succeeded in laying the foundations
of our present railway system, when they discovered the
true theory of the laws and application of steam. Von
Moltke is the greatest of modern generals, because he has
the brain to conceive and carry out the most nearly
perfect theory of the laws of war. All of us are theo-
rizers who have brains enough to think out, and work
along, the lines of any efficient plan in our business.
The banker, the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, the
minister, each has his theory; and he is successful just
according to his ability to discover the true theory of his
position, and to carry it out in effective practice. So you
might as well talk of practically growing an oak without
an acorn as to think of successful practical work divorced
from theory.

And now, for a moment, glance at the absurdity of the
position assumed by the preacher and lecturer just re-
ferred to. Society and state are sick with various mala-
dies which they desire to heal: so, without stopping to
waste time and strength on the unpractical questions of
the remote origins and causes of the disease, they propose
to blister and bleed and cauterize, without any loss of
time. An intelligent physician, when called to a patient,
does not consider it any waste of time to stop and investi-
gate, and study the symptoms, in order to find out what
the matter is; and, the more serious and urgent the dis-
ease, the more careful he is to do this.

Now, there is not a single personal, social, political, or

34                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

religious question of the day that does not run back and
root itself in the remotest antiquity of the race. They all
grow out of the original nature of humanity, just as the
topmost twig or leaf of a two-thousand-year-old tree is
the outgrowth of the first germinal principle from which
the ancient trunk has sprung. Here is the trouble with
most of the " reforms " of the age. They are the out-
come of transcendental notions, purely empirical study, or
the hasty guesses of enthusiastic persons, who propose to
finish in a year a structure the foundations of which God
has been centuries in laying. Any true reform must
know the drift of the ages, and work in the line of the
eternal movements of the universe.

We are now prepared to raise the question as to
whether a study of the " theory of the world " is a practi-
cal matter. And, in the first place, glance at the facts.
All nations on the face of the earth who have been
civilized enough to have any thought-out and organized
religion have always connected their popular religion with
a cosmogony, or theory of the origin of the universe. The
character of their gods, their conception of humanity,
their codes of morals, the rights of rulers and subjects,
their hopes and fears of a' future life, have all been the
outcome of their conception of the universe. Their whole
practical life has been the simple result of their theory of
the origin of things.1

And how is it with Christendom to-day ? The popular

1 Carlyle has said, "Tell me what a man thinks of this universe, and I will tell
you what his religion is."

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 35

conception of the nature and attributes of God, the nature
of man, the origin and nature of evil; the practical ques-
tion of sin; the ecclesiastical schemes of salvation, heaven
and hell; the prevailing theories of government and of
social progress ; the status of woman ; the rights of chil-
dren, — all the great practical questions of humanity are
the direct outgrowth of the Mosaic cosmogony, the Jew-
ish theory of the origin of the universe. And the present
condition, together with the past battles and progress of
science, is the natural result of this same cause. Not
practical, or of present importance ? There is not a single
question of the age, that for present, practical, pressing
importance, begins to approach the one that Spencer and
Darwin and Haeckel have raised. You might as well say
that because the sun is ninety-two millions of miles away,
its influence, and the laws of its life and shining, are of no
practical importance to Boston. Boston is an outgrowth
of the sunshine, from the granite that paves its streets to
the brains that rule in its counsels. So the present active
world, with all its widespread and multiplied interests, is
the outgrowth of the far-off origin of things.

To specialize a little more particularly, and let you see
how intimately religion is connected with the theory of
the world, I ask you to look at the Church of the last two
thousand years. Please observe that the whole orthodox
system is the natural and logical outgrowth of the Mosaic
account of the beginning of things in Genesis. The
prevailing beliefs about God, the nature and fall of man,
total depravity, the need and the schemes for supernatural

36                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

redemption, the whole structure, creed, and ritual of the
Church, the common belief about the nature and efficacy
of prayer-meetings, the whole system of popular revivals,
limited salvation and everlasting punishment, — every
single one of them is built on the foundation of the
Mosaic cosmogony. And there is not one of them all
but will be destroyed or modified when it shall become
popularly settled that the Mosaic cosmogony is not a
correct account of the facts.

Having made it appear, then, that as practical, earnest
men of to-day, it is well worth our while to look into and
investigate this question, I now ask you to go with me to
a consideration of the only theories that need detain us.
Of course we need not stop even to glance at the
fantastic notions that prevailed among so many nations
in the childhood of the world. Only two theories, the
Mosaic and the Evolution, even pretend to claim the
sober belief of our nineteenth-century civilization. To
these, then, we must confine our attention.

I. The Mosaic Cosmogony,

Before going any farther, I wish to make two or three
remarks that are worth careful attention.

(1)  The account of creation in Genesis holds its place
in the popular belief, not because it has been proved, or
is capable of proof, but solely because of its supposed
necessary connection with the truths of Christianity.
This is, at any rate, a strange and questionable basis on
which to found a scientific belief.

(2)  It is an old-world traditional belief, not for the first

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD, 37

time revealed to Moses, but one that came down from a
time long before the foundation of the Hebrew nation.

(3)  It does not even claim to be the result of a study
of the facts that it proposes to explain. No such study
was then possible, or had even been attempted; so that
Moses is not telling what either he or any one else at that
time had any way of knowing. It is only the traditional
belief of that age.

(4)  These traditions get a great deal of hardly de-
served reverence and belief from the fact of their high
antiquity; just as a man is proud of his ancestry, though
the roots of his family-tree run down into outright bar-
barism. But, if you'll think of it, the reverence belongs
here. We are the real ancients. The present is the
hoary antiquity of the earth. 'Tis a man's old age, and
not his childhood, that wears wisdom and gray hairs.
This story of Moses is one of the fancies of the world's
childhood. Never was civilization so old, and never had
it such stores of accumulated knowledge, as now. In fact,
never, until within the last hundred years, has the world
gathered enough about the facts of the universe, so that
mankind was competent to frame a reasonable theory of
the world out of its acquired knowledge. If, then, in the
history of humanity, there has ever been a time when
there was a possibility of settling this question, now is
that time.

(5)  The Mosaic cosmogony has no scientific claim to
be called a theory at all; for the simple reason that it ex-
plains nothing whatever. Its very claim to be an explana-

38                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

tion is merely a leap into the incomprehensible. It simply
says, " God made it." But that does not at all explain
the method of creation, — how, by what process, and
according to what laws and forces, things have come to
be as they are. I do not explain the mystery of life when
I tell my child that God made the new baby, and that the
angels brought it down to me. I do not explain a tree,
when I tell a child that God made it. I do not explain a
question in arithmetic, when I tell a pupil that I worked it
out, and that so and so is the answer. But all these are
explanations just as much as Genesis explains the world.
Men seek the causes and the methods by which results
have been produced. The solar system is explained by
the law of gravitation, not by saying God or the angels
make the planets move.

Thus it is perfectly safe to say that no one would think
of resting in the Mosaic story, were it not supposed to be
a part of their religion to do so. And evolution has been
opposed, not because it could not give good reasons for
itself, but because it has been regarded as hostile to the
popular religion.

With these remarks, then, in mind, we are ready to look
at Genesis. The popular belief has been simply this:
God had lived alone, complete and happy in himself, from
all eternity. Suddenly, for no conceivable reason, he
concluded to create the world. Previously, however, he
had made the angels, that they might serve and praise
him; though what service or praise he needed, who was
complete in himself, it were hard to tell. If he had any

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 39

motive in creating the world, it was thought to be that he
might glorify himself, and receive the admiration of his
creatures. The chief result was to be, that, after the world
had passed away, his goodness in saving a few, and his
justice in damning the many, might be seen as the result
of his scheme of redemption. When, then, he was ready,
by the word of command, he created matter out of nothing,
and of this matter built the world. This world, a flat
surface, he anchored in the midst of space, "setting it
fast forever, so that it could not be moved." Then he
elaborated the solid concave arch of the firmament, and
placed it like a dome over the earth. In this he arranged
the sun, moon, and stars, to divide the seasons, the days,
and the nights, and to give light to this earth. He sepa-
rated the waters, making the oceans of that which he
left on earth; and in his storehouses " above the firma-
ment," he treasured up the rains to water the earth, which
watering was to be done by opening the windows of the
sky, and letting the water through. Then he made the
different forms of life, creating fishes and reptiles, and
birds and animals, out of the dust. When this is done, it
occurs to the Deity that none of these creatures can think
of or praise him: so he consults, and concludes to make
man in his own image. He forms Adam out of the dust,
and then breathes in his nostrils, and he becomes alive.
Then, seeing that he is lonesome, he concludes to make a
woman to keep him company. So he puts him to sleep,
takes out one of his ribs, — which, strange to say, has
never been missed,—and from it constructs Eve. All

40                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

this has taken him six days. He is now tired, and gives
one day to rest. This is the origin of the sabbath. If by
resting is meant letting creation alone, we should suppose
it might have fallen into disorder during the neglect
But if it means simply ceasing to create, then he has been
resting ever since, on this theory; and it is hard to see
why it is stated that he took only one day. But we know
now that the process of creation has never ceased: so
that we can get no meaning out of it at all. Even Jesus
declared that his Father was working still.

Now, it is not my intention to insult your intelligence
by proving to you that this is not true. The conception
of God and of his methods is such as the world's child-
hood might ignorantly imagine; but no free intellect of
the present age cares even to refute it. Only to look at it
is sufficient refutation. Genesis contains contradictory
accounts even of the original creation; and the inspira-
tion of the Old Testament was not such as to prevent
the most palpable mistakes being made in describing
natural things.

We may now pass on to consider,

II. The Theory of Evolution.

It would transcend our limits to attempt even an out-
line of the proofs of this theory. These are to be found
in the works of the masters of science, specially prepared
for that purpose. I must, therefore, content myself with
remarking some of the surface probabilities, and then
placing the theory itself alongside the Mosaic, that you
may compare them.

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 41

(1)  It is a fact that ought to make men stop and think,
before rejecting it, that almost every trained scientific
man living, who is competent to give a judgment on the
question, is a believer in evolution. If all the skilful
doctors were agreed about a certain disease, it would
hardly be modest for us to say they were wrong. When
all the generals are at one about a military question,
the probabilities are decidedly their way. When all the
architects agree about a building, and when all the paint-
ers unite in defence of a question in art, outsiders should
at least hesitate. Nearly all the present opposition to
evolution comes from theology; but theology does not
happen to know any thing about it. As though I should
attempt to settle a disputed point in music by the sense of
smell, or a case of color (red or white) by hearing! The
men who oppose evolution may be generally divided into
two classes, — those actuated by theological prejudice, and
those who know nothing about it.

(2)  The theory of evolution is constructed out of the
observed and accumulated facts of the universe : it is not
guess-work. The men who have elaborated this answer
to the old question, How did things come to be as they
are ? are men who have gone to the facts themselves, and
asked the question. They went to the earth and studied
it, and so developed the science of geology : they looked
at the stars to see how they moved, and so made astrono-
my : they studied animals to see how they grew, and so
made zoology : they studied man, and so made physiology
and anthropology. If anybody, then, in the world, has

42                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION

any right to an opinion on the subject, it is those who
have looked at the facts to find out about them. And
it is simply absurd to see people offer an opinion, who
have no better stuff than ignorance or prejudice to make
it out of.

(3) It stands the very highest test of a good theory;
that is, it takes into itself, accounts for, and adjusts, al-
most every known fact; while there is not one single fact
known that makes it unreasonable for a man to be an
evolutionist.

Now, what is the theory ? Simply this: that the
whole universe, suns, planets, moons, our earth, and every
form of life upon it, vegetable and animal, up to man,
together with all our civilization, has developed from a
primitive fire-mist or nebulas that once filled all the space
now occupied by the worlds; and that this development
has been according to laws and methods and forces still
active, and working about us to-day. It calls in no un-
known agency. It does not offer to explain a natural fact
by a miracle which only deepens the mystery it attempts to
solve. It says, " I accept and ask for only the forces that
are going on right before my eyes, and with these I will
explain the visible universe." Certainly a magnificent
pretension, and, if accomplished, a magnificent achieve-
ment, of the mind of man.

Look at the theory a little more in detail. Evolution
teaches that the space now occupied by suns and planets
was once filled with a fire-mist, or flaming gas. This
mist, or gas, by the process of cooling and condensation,

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 43

and in accordance with the laws of motion naturally set
up in it, in the course of ages was solidified into the stars
and worlds, taking on gradually their present motions,
shapes, and conditions. This is the famous "nebular
hypothesis." In favor of this theory is the fact that the
earth is now in precisely the condition we should expect it
to be, on this supposition. The moon, being smaller than
the earth, has now become cold and dead. Jupiter and
Saturn, being larger, are still hot, — halfway between the
sun's flaming condition and the earth's habitable one.
And then all through the sky are clouds of nebulae, still in
the condition of flaming gas, whirling, and assuming just
such shapes as the evolution theory alone can explain.
The theory further teaches, that, when the cooling earth
had come into such a condition that there were land and
water and an atmosphere, then life appeared. But how ?
By any special act of creation ? No. It introduces no
new or unknown force, and calls for no miracle. Science
discovers no impassable gulf between what we ignorantly
call dead matter, and that which is alive. It does not
believe any matter is dead : so it finds in it " the prom-
ise and potency of every form of life." It has discovered
a little viscous globule, or cell, made up chiefly of nitrogen
and albumen. It is a chemical compound, the coming
into existence of which is no more wonderful than the
formation of a crystal, and calls no more urgently for a
miracle than a crystal does. This little mass, or cell, is
not only the lowest and most original form of life, but it is
the basis of every form. There is no single form of life

44                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

on the globe, from the moss on a stone up to the brain of
Sir Isaac Newton, that is not a more or less complex com-
pound or combination of this primary, tiny cell; and there
is no stage in the process of development, where ascer-
tained laws and forces are not competent to produce the
results. There is no barrier between the vegetable and
animal kingdom. No naturalist living can tell where the
one leaves off, and the other begins, so insensibly do they
merge into each other, like day passing through twilight
into night. Neither is there any barrier between species,
either of plants or animals. This point is now settled.
Evolution also (what no other theory does) explains the
distribution of plants and animals over the surface of the
earth. It explains the present condition of the races
of mankind, — the progress of some, the stagnation of
others, and the cases of gradual decay and dying-out. It
explains social, political, and religious movements and
changes, rises and falls. It is gradually proving its ca-
pacity to grapple with and solve the great enigmas and
questions of the ages. And when generally understood
and accepted, it will modify and direct all the forces and
movements of the modern world.

From the primeval fire-mist, then, until to-day, the
world has grown, without any necessity for, or help from,
special creations, miracles, or any other forces than those
known and recognized as at work right around us. It has
taken millions of years to do this; but what are they in
eternity ? There have been no cataclysms, nor breaks, nor
leaps. The sun has shone, the rain has fallen, the winds

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 45

have blown, the rivers have run, the oceans have worn the
shores, the continents have risen and sunk, just as they
are doing now ; and all these things have come to pass.

But some one will say, "This is blank and outright
atheism. You have left God entirely out of the question.
Where has he been, and what has he been doing, all these
millions of years ? From the fire-mist until to-day, all has
gone along on purely natural principles, and by natural
laws, you say ?" Yes, that is just what evolution says.
But, before we call it atheism, let me ask you a question.
Here is a century-old oak-tree. The acorn from which it
sprung was the natural product of some other oak. It
fell to the earth, and the young oak sprouted. From
that day to this, — a hundred years, —the oak has simply
grown by natural law. You want no miracle to explain
it. Is your theory of the oak, then, atheistic ? Is it any
less strange that the oak should grow than that thou-
sands of other oaks, and other forms of life, should do the
same ? When a child is born, it grows, you say, by natu-
ral law. Is it any more wonderful that it should be born
by natural law ? and that all life should be born, and
should develop, by natural law ? You are just as atheistic
to say that a tree or a child grows by natural law, as evo-
lution is, when it says the world did the same. Suppose
science should put its God back in the past some millions
of ages, while Moses puts his back only six thousand
years, would the difference in time make one theory more
atheistic than the other ? But I should call pushing him
back six thousand years, or a hundred million years, or

46                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

five minutes, even, more atheistic than I should like to
believe. So I would do neither the one nor the other.
What if we see the life and power and movement of God
in the fire-mist, in all the growing worlds, in the first
appearance of life on the planet, in the forms that
climb up through all grades to man ? What if we see him
in the dust of the street, in the grasses and flowers, in the
clouds and the light, in the ocean and the storms, in the
trees and the birds, in the animal, lifting up through
countless forms to humanity ? What if we see him in the
family, in society, in the state, in all religions, up to the
highest outflowerings of Christianity? What if we see
him in art, literature, and science ? What if we make the
whole world his temple, and all life a worship ? All this
we may not only do in evolution, but evolution helps us
do it I shall be greatly mistaken, if the radicalism of
evolution does not prove to be the grandest of all conser-
vatism in society and politics not only, but in religion as
well. It will turn out to be the most theistic of all the-
isms. It will give us the grandest conception of God
that the world has ever known. It is inconsistent with
" orthodoxy," but not with religion. It is charged by the
thoughtless with being materialistic; but in reality it is
any thing else. It so changes our conception of matter
as utterly to destroy the old "materialism." It not only
does not touch any one of the essential elements of true
religion, but, on the other hand, it gives a firm and broad
foundation on which to establish it beyond the possibility
of overthrow. To illustrate this will be the work of future
treatment of the special topics.

THE THEORY OF THE WORLD. 47

It only remains for me now to suggest a comparison
as to grandeur and divinity between the two theories of
creation. So many thoughtless sneers have been flung at
the theory that dared talk of man's relationship to the
ape, that a comparison like this may help change the sneer
to admiration.

We marvel at Watt, the first constructor of a steam-
engine; but it has taken many a brain beside his to
bring it to its present perfection. What if he had been
able to build it on such a plan, and put into it such a
generative force, that it should go on, through long inter-
vals of time, developing from itself improvements on
itself, until it had become adapted to all the needs of
man ? It should fit itself for rails; it should grow into
adaptation for country roads and city streets; it should
swim the water, and fly the air; it should shape itself to
all elements and uses that could make it available for the
service of man. Suppose that all this should develop
from the first simple engine that Watt constructed; and
should do it by virtue of power that Watt himself im-
planted in it ? The simple thought of such a mechanism
makes us feel how superhuman it would be, and how
worthy of divinity. Is it not infinitely more than the
separate construction of each separate improvement ?
And yet this supposition is simplicity and ease itself,
compared with the grand magnificence of creation after
the Darwinian idea. Who can pick an acorn from the
ground, and, looking up to the tree from which it has
fallen, try to conceive all the grand and century-grown

48                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

beauty and power of the oak as contained in the tiny
cone in his hand, and not feel overwhelmed by the might
and the mystery of the works of God ? How unutterably
grander is the thought that the world-wide banyan-tree of
life, with all its million-times-multiplied variety of form
and function, and beauty and power, standing with its
roots in the dust, and with its top "commercing with the
skies," and bearing on its upper boughs the eternal light
of God's spiritual glory, is all the godlike growth of one
little seed in which the divine finger planted such fructify-
ing force!

III.

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.

The manifestation of the life and power of the universe
has been a gradual evolution; that is, a continuous un-
folding, a growing revelation, the less becoming more, the
simple becoming complex, through an apparently infinite
development and specialization. The whole is recapitu-
lated in every flower that blooms. The rose is first a
seed ; it pushes up through the soil, then branches, sends
out bud and leaf, bursts into beauty and fragrance of
flower, and then develops from its loveliness the germ of
something more to come. So of the mountain-pine, that
has stood on its watch-tower overlooking whole centuries
of human history. Its potential life was once wrapped
up in one little seed, sheltered in the protecting grasp of a
tiny cone that one might hold in his hand. The might
and the marvel of this life are not to be seen by simply
looking at seed or cone, but by studying the processes
and results of the wondrous unfolding, or evolution.

The universe, so far as at present we are able to trace,
was once contained in the world-seed of the fire-mist, or

50                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

primitive nebula. We might guess all sorts of things, as
to where the fire-mist came from, and how it came : but
science means knowledge; and it is my purpose, so far as
possible, to keep myself strictly to what is known. The-
ology assumes God, and thinks thus to escape all diffi-
culties. But should science take to assuming, it has the
same right to declare that the fire-mist made itself, or that
it always existed, as theology has to say that God made
himself, or always existed. I am willing frankly to admit
that it is just as easy to think that the universe always
existed, or that it made itself, as it is to think that God
always existed, or made himself. -It is simply impossible
to imagine or comprehend either the one or the other. As,
then, I wish to speak to and command a respectful hear-
ing from those who are not content to rest in tradition or
assumption, but who wish to find out if religion has any
basis of knowledge to stand on, I propose to avoid assum-
ing any thing, even the existence of God. I wish to find
him, if I can; and then there will be no need of assump-
tion.

We begin, then, with the fire-mist, because that is the
first thing we know. This fire-mist, by cooling and con-
densing, became suns and planets and worlds, — the won-
drous heavens of our present telescopic astronomy. Our
system was slowly born. The sun, so large that it has
not yet cooled, is the source of our life and light and heat.
The moon, so small that it is already cold and dead,
exists now only for the sake of the earth. Other mem-
bers of the system are still half-sun and half-planet, not

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                     51

yet ready for the abode of life. When it was ready,
the lowest forms of life, having nothing of limbs, or bone,
or brain, — no organization, — appeared in the primeval
oceans of the world. Then there were long ages, during
which the highest type of life on the earth were fishes.
The whales and leviathans were the kings and the no-
bility of the time. Then these climbed up into the higher
form of reptiles. Huge creatures, half living in the seas,
half on the land, or with great dragon-wings flying heavily
through the air, now reigned over the earth for thousands
of years. Then came the birds ; and for centuries they
were the highest form of life upon the globe. Next ani-
mal shapes appeared, climbing up from the lowest types
and simplest forms, until the great tree of life flowered
out into humanity. But the first being that could be
properly called human was, as compared with later devel-
opments, no more than the insignificant blossom of a
wayside weed when placed beside the perfumed glory of
the rose, or the gorgeous tropical outflowering of the
century-plant. The gulf that separates the highest ani-
mals from the lowest men is as nothing compared with
the wider differences that divide between those lowest
men and the Dantes, the Shaksperes, and the Newtons
of the race. And above these the moral grandeur of one
like Jesus towers like a mountain, that, above all its range,
looks down on its fellows from the clouds.

Thus the panorama of creation has unfolded. The
first scene was the fire-mist: the last that we have looked
on is the present hour, including the highest social, politi-

52                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

cal, and religious life and aspirations of the race. And
the end is not yet: the creation is not still: the scene is
moving and unfolding to-day. And if we may guess the
future from the past, the imagination must confess that it
has no colors bright and grand enough to paint the possi-
bilities of the ages to come.

You can now see that the manifestation of the life and
force of the universe has been a gradual evolution. And
if, at any particular stage of the progress, there had been
some person present trying to find out what the life was
by looking at " the things made," of course he would have
had to make his idea of this life, or God (if he gave it that
name), out of the then condition of things. His god
would have been on the level of the fire-mist or the fishes
like the Philistines' Dagon; or of the reptiles, like the
deities of the serpent-worshippers ; or of the animals, like
the sacred bull of Egypt; or simply a physical man, like
the Roman Hercules or Jupiter, or the early Hebrew
Jehovah (for Jehovah at first was only a gigantic man) :
as David says, " Jehovah is a man of war." As such he
appears all through Genesis.

This manifestation of the life of things has thus been
a gradual and growing one. And it is curious and in-
structive to notice that the idea of God in the human
mind has recapitulated, or lived over again, this evolution
of the facts of the world. Have you ever thought over
the first conceptions that men had of God, and how they
have developed to what we think and believe to-day ?
The first men of the world, of course, had no fire, no

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                       53

houses, and no weapons with which to defend their lives,
or to hunt for food. The most important invention of the
world was discovered when some man first made a spear
out of a stick. Defenceless as they were in the midst of
hunger and cold and storm and wild beasts, the pre-
dominant motive and feeling of the time must have been
fear; and from this would naturally develop their first
religion. As they saw each other and the wild animals
moving about, and crying, and making noises, and saw
that they were alive, they, like the child-men they were,
thought that every thing that moved, or made a noise,
was also alive. And as the wild beasts hurt and killed
them, when they got a chance, and as the storms and cold
hurt and killed them, their most pressing thought was
one of safety. They saw the trees move when the wind
blew; they felt the motion and power of the wind that
they could not see; they saw the waters run; they saw
the lightning flash, and twist itself like a huge serpent
in the clouds-; they saw the clouds go across the sky, and
the sun and moon rise and set; and as they saw all
these things moving in this way, they thought they were
living beings, who might hurt them if they were angry, or
might help them, if they chose.' Thus they turned all
these things into gods. Then they began to pray to
them, and to give, or offer, them things they thought they
would like, and to try to find out how they might influ-
ence them to do what they desired. This was the original
polytheism, or, in its lowest manifestation, fetichism.
But after a good many ages, some of the races of men

54                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

grew wiser. They found out that stones and trees and
rivers and clouds and the sun were not gods. They
learned that praying to them did no good. They dis-
covered that, instead of moving about as they liked, they
were governed by some higher power, and moved accord-
ing to certain definite laws. Should a barbarian look at
a complicated piece of machinery, he would be likely to
think, at first, that every several wheel and lever and
piston and band was going all by itself. But study would
teach him that a central force moved it all according to
the laws of its construction. Something like this men
found out about the world. They learned that there was
somewhere a hidden mainspring that controlled the whole
life and movement of the universe, and so gave unity to
it all. This was monotheism.

But, as I have said, the first development of mono-
theism only thought of God as a gigantic and superhuman
man. The Jehovah of the Old Testament makes himself
a local habitation, appears in the temple, walks and talks,
and thinks and plans, loves and hates, gets angry, takes
vengeance, and changes his mind, very much after the
fashion of an Oriental despot. This is not to be won-
dered at; for as water cannot rise above its source, so
the human mind cannot think of God as being any thing
higher than its highest and best conception of what is
worthy of divinity. Humanity cannot escape itself; and
so its thought of God is always the best it is capable of
thinking at the time. As man grows and develops, so
does his idea of divinity. The divine does not change;

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                       55

but as you can put only twelve quarts of the Atlantic in
a twelve-quart pail, so in a finite brain you can put only so
much of the Infinite as the finite can contain. As the
thought of man gets larger, its contents increase.

The next grand step in the development of monotheism
is when Jesus says, " God is a spirit," " The hour cometh
when ye shall neither in this mountain [Gerizim], nor yet
at Jerusalem, worship the Father." Thus, to the highest
thought of men, God has become a power, whose centre is
everywhere, and his circumference nowhere.

This developing idea of God is a fact of human experi-
ence. But now the question meets us, Is this idea any
thing more than an idea ? Has it any real validity, or
right to exist ? Do we know that there is any God corre-
sponding to the idea ? Knowledge is popularly supposed
to have for its province all the regions of the tangible and
definite ; while the indefinite, and the intangible, and the
unseen, are turned over to faith and imagination. And
a great many hard-headed people are beginning to think
that what they cannot see and feel is of no practical
consequence. Even Tennyson, speaking of religion, per-
mits himself to write : —

" We have but faith we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see."

We are accustomed to say, " I know the earth. I know
a crystal. I know my friend." But when we come to
matters of religion, we say, " I hope, or I believe, that
God exists."

56                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

Now, I protest against this use of language, as not
being true to the reality of things. I know it will be
regarded at first, and by many, as daring and presump-
tuous ; but I propose to make and substantiate the claim
that the God of evolution, the hidden life and secret force
of this unfolding universe of ours, may be just as truly
and really known as a grass-blade, a star, or your next-
door neighbor. Please take notice that I do not say as
well known, as completely known, but known as truly and
really, as far as the knowledge goes. There is nothing in
the universe that is completely known. For the universe,
like the seamless garment of Jesus, is all of one piece :
every thread runs through it all; so that to trace one
thread completely is to unravel the whole mystery. As
Tennyson says with such force and beauty, —

" Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower; but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."

To justify this statement, I must ask you to consider,
for a moment, what it is that you know about any thing.
Is it the thing or the person in itself, or manifestations of
the thing or person ? In what sense do you know your
next-door neighbor ? You know the general size and fea-
tures of his person, the color of his hair and eyes, his gait
and style of movement, the clothes he ordinarily wears.
You know the tone of his voice, something of his past

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                       57

experience and present character, and, in some general
way, his intellectual and moral attainments; that is, you
know certain external manifestations of this mysterious
personality you call neighbor and friend. And no matter
how intimate you may be, the general fact is not changed.
In the secret recesses of his life, there is a whole unvisited
world. There are oceans on which you have never sailed,
continents you have never looked upon, and skies whose
stars have never caught your eye. In short, you know
nothing about the essential personality of this mysterious
being you call friend. You simply know certain outer
manifestations of the inner life. And the same is true of
a flower, of a piano, or of a chair, just as really as it is of
the sun, or of God. All these have certain qualities that
manifest themselves to your senses. You have five senses
to receive the manifestations. But that your five senses
and these manifestations are all there is, is the boldest of
all assumptions. As reasonably might a deaf and blind
mute assert that there was nothing in the world but hard-
ness and shape, because these were all he could feel.

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

We have a fairly accurate knowledge of manifestations.
It is not perfect; for our senses sometimes make mis-
takes. But one thing more certain than any other item
of our knowledge is, that beneath all manifestations is a
life and a force of which the manifestations are the out-
come. I may mistake as to some special fact about my

58                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

friend; but that there is a personal, conscious life that I
call my friend is matter of absolute certainty. I may be
color-blind, and so mistake the red or the purple of a
rose; but that there is something that manifests itself to
me as a rose, this I absolutely know. And so the one
thing that we know about the universe more certainly
than we know any thing else is, that, underneath all the
forms and movements and manifestations, there is a life,
or a force, that manifests itself as form and movement.
And as our knowledge of a grass-blade or a friend is
only a series of facts of manifestation, so we have con-
cerning God precisely the same means of knowledge.
Let us go on, then, to indicate the outlines of what we
can know about the life and force of the universe that
theology calls God, and that science may call " nature "
or "law," if it chooses, since the name, whatever it be,
cannot change the essential reality.

(1) We have that whole class of manifestations, which,
taken together, make up the material universe. And
what can we spell out of these wondrous hieroglyphs?
They certify, at the outset, that this which religion calls
God, and which science names force, or power, or nature,
really exists. The universe is, and therefore that which
the universe manifests is. Next, here is everywhere
the movement of life; and beyond motion there is order,
— an order that speaks of a cosmos, or system. I do not
care to assert that this order demonstrates a designing
mind. It is sufficient for my purpose, at this stage of my
argument, to say that this order is such an one as agrees

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                       59

with the highest development of what we call intellect;
so that, looking up to it from our human plane, it is
proper for us to call it an intellectual order. And, further
still, we see everywhere, on leaf and flower, on sunlit
cloud, on curl of ocean surf, in mountain outline, and in
wildwood glade, an inexpressible beauty that becomes
the inspiration of artist and of poet.

Here, then, in inanimate nature, we see and know exist-
ence, motion, order, and beauty, and know them as the
outcome, as the real and true manifestation, of the inscru-
table and ineffable life of the universe. So far as they
go, they are reliable and adequate revelations of the
Unknowable One.

(2) As our next step up and on, let us glance at the
lesson of human history. I do not here enter into any
analysis of human nature, but wish simply to ask your
attention to the way in which the universe has dealt with
the race, taken in the mass. What is the lesson of the
drift of our human destiny, taking the world as a whole ?
It is twofold, and may be indicated by the two words,
"progress " and "righteousness." From the lowest forms
of primeval life up to the topmost height of our modern
civilization, there is evident a force of uplifting and on-
looking.

" Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."

What the poet here sings of the lower life of the

60                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

spring may be taken as typical of the grand truth that
binds together the Alpha and the Omega of creation.

And not only do we see progress along certain definite
lines of law that suggest the Tightness of this life-force
of the universe, but this progress has lifted up into what
we call the sphere of morals, and has been along certain
other definite lines of what we call righteousness; so
that the lesson which Matthew Arnold so finely deduces
from the history of Israel may be read with more empha-
sis still in the history of the race. This power of progress
is also a power of progress toward a moral ideal, — "a
power that makes for righteousness." I need hardly
illustrate this ; for I suppose no one but a pessimist will
hesitate to accept it. A full illustration would be an out-
line of universal history. This power making for right-
eousness has been that by which nations have grown, or
the rock on which they have foundered. The nations
which to-day stand highest in civilization are those which,
on the whole, best conform to and live out this law.

And, indeed, not only is this so, but it is easy to see
that it must be so. For as, in the body, if once disease
gains supremacy over the healthy powers, death must
ensue, so in the universe, if the lawless and evil forces
were really in the majority, the cosmos would tumble into
chaos.

This inscrutable power of the universe, then, is prog-
ress and righteousness as manifested in the outlines and
drift of human history.

(3) Come, now, to man, individual and social, and see

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                    61

what is manifested here. And just at this point I must
stop to notice, and protest against, that which seems to me
the height of what is irrational and strange in the reason-
ing of many, on the side of both science and theology.
Theology, in its attempt to exalt man, takes him out of,
and sets him apart from, the order of nature, and then
abuses nature as an untrustworthy guide in religious
things, because it does not find moral qualities—love
and mercy — in stones and mountains and trees. It
takes the soul out, and then wonders that it does not have
any soul. And many scientists, as if willing to take
theology at its word, go ranging through the inanimate
universe, as though they were examining some mechanism
with which they had nothing to do, and declare that they
do not find what nobody supposed they would find in the
material forms of the world. As if the mainspring of a
watch should start into independent life, and go to search-
ing through the rest of the machinery in the attempt to
find that of which itself was the representative, and
should then declare, on its honor as a good piece of steel,
that the watch showed no signs of a mainspring, and thus
was radically defective !

Whether or not there be any thing about man rightly
called supernatural, we know, that, at any rate, he is
natural. He is a part of the life and order of the world ;
and thus, in all the myriad manifestations of his varied
life, he is an outcome of the central power and life of the
universe. He is a part of the divine manifestation.
What, then, are the things that he reveals ?

62                  THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

In him, first, so far as we know, does the world come
up into a consciousness of personal existence. While
this does not prove that the inscrutable power of the
world is a person, it does prove that this power is, at least,
as much as, and as good as, personal.

Then, beyond this personality that consciousness re-
veals, man manifests all those qualities that we call social,
moral, and spiritual, — love, devotion, self-sacrifice, purity,
integrity, patriotism, heroism, and the "enthusiasm of
humanity." The mother watches tirelessly over some
sick child; or she gives herself to the care of one idiotic
or deformed. She forgets selfishness, and finds pleasure
in wasting away, and wearing out her life, for the sake of
her mother-love. Men ride at the front of embattled
armies, meeting danger, nor shunning death, for the tri-
umph of some noble sentiment or intangible principle.
Winkelried takes the spears of the foe into his own breast,
that he may make a breach through which his followers
may pour to a patriotic victory. Mattie Stephenson goes
to plague-stricken Memphis, and gives her life to a pure
pity for the helpless sufferers. John Brown " counts not
his life dear," so he may be able to help a degraded mass
of slaves up into freedom and manhood. The religious
martyr stands chained to the stake, with the kindling
fagots about his shrivelling limbs, when one false word
would set him free ; and when the last flame leaps up, his
life goes out on the air that still trembles with his song of
triumph — and all for what he holds as sacred truth and
divine light. A Jesus or a Socrates dies peaceful and

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                      63

calm, while with his last breath he forgives, or prays for,
the ignorant rage, or pitiable malice, that puts him to
death.

Now, this whole realm of the moral and spiritual is a
real country. These things are facts of human life and
history,—just as much facts as the labelled fossil bones
and the flint arrow-heads of scientific museums. These
facts are real and verifiable manifestations of the power
of which all the phenomena of the universe are expres-
sions. And if this power cannot be adequately expressed
in these terms of humanity, it is at least certain that it is
as much and as good as these. The partial expression is
not false: it is only inadequate. This power, then, is as
good and loving, and pitiful and devoted, as the best
manifestations of itself in humanity.

(4) One step more we will take. Above the common
level of our humanity there rise the exceptional and
towering summits of those mountainous men — seers,
prophets, poets, lawgivers, leaders of every kind — that
have served as landmarks and observatories for the race.

Consider, for a moment, the significance of the fact that
there have been such men. If a daisy springs out of the
sod, it is because there was a daisy in the sod. If such
men spring out of humanity, it is because there is in
humanity the stuff of which such men are made. If a
man admires the grand and sublime, it is because there is
grandeur and sublimity in him to respond to the outer
appeal. And thus the fact that the race is seen on its
face, adoring the idealized forms of these sublime and

64                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

divine men, is proof that humanity is potentially such as
they.

Now, these seers and great ones of the world have
manifested something still more and higher than the
common life of the race. They have seemed to be con-
scious of the divine and eternal as other men are con-
scious of themselves. Above the low-hanging clouds,
like mountain-peaks that forever look in the face of the
clear heaven, and gaze on the unsetting stars, they have
looked on the face of the divine, and have been conscious
of fellowship with it. And they have so dwelt in the
unchanging and permanent principles of life and truth,
that they have felt that they tasted immortality. I claim
for these grand visions and hopes only what they were, —
grand visions and hopes. But, as such, they were facts,
had a source and meaning; for the vision of an ideal can
no more come out of nothing than can a mountain or a
world.

Humanity, then, at its summit, has had these outlooks,
gained these glimpses of something better than it ever
saw realized, and gazed at a " light that never was on sea
or land."

What, now, has been so far developed ? The material
world is a manifestation of existence, order, beauty, and
power. History, in the physical world and in humanity,
is the manifestation of progress. Human history tells of
a " power that makes for righteousness." The ordinary
life of humanity speaks of love, devotion, hope, self-sacri-
fice, purity, pity, and all the range of powers and faculties

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                     65

that we call moral and spiritual. The seers have had
visions, and have dreamed dreams, of a divine life with
which they could commune, and of an immortality they
could consciously taste.

And these things all are facts of human knowledge.
And they all are outcomes and manifestations of the
infinite and inscrutable life and power of which all
phenomena are expressions. So much, then, we know
about God. The claim is not made that they are ade-
quate, or that God is any one of these things, or all of
them put together. But the claim is made, that these are
manifestations of God just as really and truly as color and
odor are manifestations of a lily; and though we cannot
say, "These are God," or "God is one or all of these," we
can say that " He is as much as and as good as these not
only, but that he fills all these conceptions, and overruns
them infinitely on every side, just as the light fills and
overflows the goblet of the sun." God is, then; and he
is infinitely beyond any conception we can frame, or any
manifestation we have seen; and Paul was right when he
wrote, " The invisible things of him from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made."

From "the things that are made," then, and as matter
of pure science, we know that God is. And we know that
in him are qualities that manifest themselves as power,
order, intellect, beauty, love, pity, devotion, and all that
we call by the terms " moral" and " spiritual" You may
call them attributes; you may call them by some other

66                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

term; you may not call them at all: but the fact that
these qualities are manifested remains just the same.

And now I must call attention to two or three ancient,
still unanswered, and perhaps I may safely say unanswera-
ble, objections that lie against the nature and character
of God as conceived by the old creation theory of the
world.

(1)  If he is objective to and outside of the universe, as
the architect is outside of the house that he builds, then
he is not infinite, and so falls short of our necessary idea
of Deity. Men speak of nature as separate from God,
and of God as making and ruling nature, as though it
were a sort of machine which he constructed and runs.
But the infinite must include the all. If there is any real
entity that is not divine, then God is not king. If he be
not in the dust of our streets, the bricks of our houses,
the beat of our hearts, then he is nowhere. The old
theory destroys the infinite, and only gives us two finites
in its place. This is a relic of the old dualistic belief that
modern thought is swallowing up in its all-inclusive unity.
If no other objection could ever be brought, this alone
would be sufficient to make the common idea intel-
lectually untenable. This ' difficulty is perfectly met and
answered by the evolution theory.

(2)  If God consults and thinks and plans, as Genesis
represents him doing, then he is simply a magnified man
made in our image. This kind of deity is only the spectre
of the Brocken, the gigantic shadow of man himself pro-
jected against the clouds. Against this might be brought

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                     67

the old prophet's accusation, where he represents God as
saying, " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an
one as thyself; but I will reprove thee."

(3) Then, again, on the old theory, it is impossible to
relieve God of the responsibility of the authorship of evil.
Brave old Lyman Beecher may say, " I don't want any
son of mine to defend the character of God. He is able
to look after himself." But the popular God of Chris-
tianity needs the defence, nevertheless. And all the theo-
logical works on the divine government ever written have
not defended him, either. Milton started out to "justify
the ways of God to man," but succeeded only in leaving
it a question as to whether Satan were not the hero of his
poem. Edward Beecher postulated pre-existence as the
answer; but this only made the charge more ancient,
without clearing it up. There is no use in trying to evade
it. An all-wise, all-powerful, and all-loving God might
have made a better world. And to say that he made it
all — good and bad, and both eternal — "for his own
glory" is only to add infinite selfishness and egotism to
the original difficulty; also that, being God, he had a
right to do as he chose, is only to justify the Neros and
Napoleons of history by making divine the infamous
cruelty that "might makes right." The world is neither
physically nor morally perfect; and John Stuart Mill only
voices the thought of all earnest and honest minds, when
he praises his wife as one " free from that superstition
that ascribes a pretended perfection to the universe."
He says, if God made the best world he could, then he is

68                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

not almighty; and if he could have made a better, and
did not, then he is not perfect goodness. If the Church
says, " The earth is cursed for the fall of man," then who
made man fall ? If it answer, " The devil," then who
made the devil ? and if it still say, " Either devil, or man,
or both, chose freely to sin," then why did God permit it ?
or why make them so that they would fall ? The difficulty
only shifts and changes: it is not removed. It always
comes back on God, after all.

But evolution at least hints a satisfactory reply. By
this theory, the universe is still growing; and by the very
terms of the conception, any thing that is growing is
never, at any particular stage of the growth, complete.
You would not criticise a picture still on the easel: wait
till the artist is done. The summer-sweeting is bitter the
first of June. The old hymn, then, is good science: —

" His purposes will ripen fast (slow),

Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower,"

And then the drift of science is pointing toward the
probability that evil is not a real thing at all. It is only
temporary maladjustment, a condition to be outgrown.
Evolution, then, may believe in a perfect God. It asks
not unreasoning faith. It plants itself on the solid facts
of the past, and waits to see the same forces unfold ever
new and newer glories, and justify grander and still
grander hopes.

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                     69

It remains to notice one or two questions or objections
that must be disposed of before our subject is complete.

(1) The materialist comes and says, "I grant that all
these things that you have said are facts ; but how do you
know that every thing is not the result of the various
combinations of matter ? Who shall say that the poems
of Shakspere, the science of Newton, and the religion
of Jesus, are not the outflowering of the higher and finer
forms of matter, just as much as the rose is a blossoming
of the dust ? " Such questions as these are asked by
some of the best thinkers of the time. We cannot afford
to slight them.

I have two suggestions by way of reply. And, first, if
you say these things that we call intellectual and spiritual
inhere in and come out of matter, then you change the
whole conception of the term, and matter becomes some-
thing spiritual and divine. This is utter destruction of
the old materialism, and makes matter only a form of the
eternal. It simply converts matter into what we mean
when we say spirit. But, in the second place, I challenge
any man living to prove that matter is a real and substan-
tial existence in itself, and as separated from the force
and life that we call spirit. So far as any man can tell,
matter is only the robe that spirit and life eternally weave
for themselves, and no more capable of separation from
them than light can be separated from sunshine. What
matter is, or what spirit is, in itself, nobody knows : so
that to say there is nothing but matter, is just as offensive
and unwarranted dogmatism as is any ecclesiastical claim

70               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

whatever. Even a man like Huxley will say that the
idealism of Berkeley is more consonant with our present
knowledge than is dogmatic materialism.

(2) Another question: Is the God of evolution a per-
sonal God ?

Here, again, I must make a twofold answer. If your
term " person " implies what we mean when we say Gen.
Grant is a person, or Queen Victoria is a person, then any
thoughtful mind will have to say No : God is not a person
in that sense. This kind of personality is limited, out-
lined, localized. Any true thought of God recognizes him
as infinite; and the infinite cannot be bounded, outlined,
or localized. You must not paint God as Moses and
Michael Angelo did, as only a great man, exalted, and
sitting on a throne, even if you give him the brow of Jove,
and put the lightning in his grasp. Jesus asserted the
higher idea when he said, " God is a spirit." He is not
on Zion or Gerizim alone, but everywhere. But, on the
other hand, if by denying him personality you take away
from him something, and lower him in your thought, you
must not do it. He is not less than personal, but in-
finitely more. Personality, in man, is one of his minor
manifestations ; and that which is manifested is not some-
thing more, but something less, than that which manifests.
Nothing comes out of nothing; neither does the greater
come out of the less. God, then, is all of good and great
and helpful that we mean by personal; and beyond that
he is infinitely more than the word " personal" can ex-
press.

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION.                    71

Who, then, is the God of evolution ? Not the mechani-
cal contriver, or the Oriental despot of the Old Testa-
ment; not the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazoa, ruling but half
the world ; not the Hindoo Brahm asleep in the heavens ;
not a deity dwelling in temples, and only to be sought
at special altars; not the partial and implacable God of
Calvin ; not one sitting afar on his throne, to be reached
only through mediators. The righteousness which is by
evolution speaketh on this wise : Say not in thy heart,
Who shall ascend into heaven to bring him down ? nor,
Who will descend into the deep to bring him up ? But
what saith it ? God is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and
in thy heart. And it says this with a reality and meaning
never said before. Or it borrows the beautiful and mystic
tongue of Wordsworth, and speaks of

" A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

Or, with Alexander Pope, it is ready to run its faith into
music, and sing,—

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, is yet in all the same ;
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame :

72                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent,
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small:
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all."

IV.
THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.

One of the most noted sayings of the early philosophy
in Greece was contained in the two words, " Know thy-
self." And, however much we may be interested in stars
or earth or animals, yet history, biography, epic poetry,
and the universal love for novels, tragedy, comedy, and
stories, show that to man the most interesting thing in the
world is humanity. Even trivial gossip is only interest in
our fellow-creatures that has turned a little sour. Thus
the nature of man, his origin, and how he came into his
present condition, and the drift of his true progress —
these are the most practical of all questions. And all the
great concerns of the day, — religious theory and experi-
ence, matters of reform, how to deal with crime, methods
of politics and government, — all must find their ultimate
solution in the nature of man. The farmer, the physician,
the chemist, the carpenter, the worker in metals, all
practical laborers, know that their success depends upon
their knowledge of the materials in which they work.
The stonecutter cannot hammer his blocks into shape any

74                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

more than the blacksmith can grind or chisel his. The
work all turns on an accurate knowledge of the material.
So it is beginning to be found out that much of the
religious, philanthropic, and political work of the world
has been thrown away for lack of a true knowledge of the
nature, the capabilities, and the needs of humanity.

But to what source shall we go to learn the nature of
man ? For ages men took all their ideas about the stars
and the earth and the animals from certain ancient
records of what the men of old time thought about these
things. But at last it occurred to them to study the stars
and the earth and the animals ; and from that study they
learned that all those ideas were wrong. It took the
world a long while to learn that the best way to find out
about them was to look at them. A few people are just
beginning to wake up to the notion that the best way to
learn the nature of man is to look at him. In the words
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, " We must study man as we
have studied the stars and the rocks. We need not go to
our sacred books for astronomy or geology. Do not stop
there. Say now bravely, as you will sooner or later have
to say, that we need not go to any ancient records for our
anthropology. Do we not all hope, at least, that the doc-
trine of man's being a blighted abortion, a miserable dis-
appointment to his Creator, and hostile and hateful to him
from his birth, may give way to the belief that he is the
latest terrestrial manifestation of an ever upward-striving
movement of divine power ? If there lives a man who
does not want to disbelieve the popular notions about the

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                      75

condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I should like
to have him look me in the face and tell me so." And he
adds, "We have taken the disease of thinking in the
natural way. It is an epidemic in these times ; and those
who are afraid of it must shut themselves up close, or
they will catch it."

It is time, then, that we studied man to find out about
man; he is not inaccessible, a great way off, and hard to
come at: he is the nearest fact of life. We can look at
him, and find out about him. And within the last fifty
years the records of his genealogy have been discovered.
We can now, in spite of some gaps in it, trace the line of
his descent, and find out where he came from, and by
what steps he has progressed.

There are two great and fundamentally opposite notions
concerning human nature, that, with sufficient accuracy, I
may call the Oriental and the Occidental, the Eastern and
the Western. The Chinese, the Hindoo, the Arabic, the
Jewish — these may represent the Oriental. The Greek,
the Roman, the German, the English, and the American,
may represent the Occidental. The Occidental is the
theory of self-respect. All our modern civilization is the
result of it. It believes in the grand capacity and noble
possibilities of the race. It seeks to make the most of
itself, and of the exhaustless resources of the world. The
Oriental is the theory of self-contempt. It casts dust and
ashes upon its head, and lays its mouth in the dust before
some supposed divine despot. It looks on life as mean,
and the body as vile. It is a part of the belief that all

76               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

matter and all life are evil. The Brahmin and Buddhist
aspiration to escape the curse of life by absorption in
deity, or the calm of practical annihilation, is its natural
fruit in religion. Political stagnation, social degradation,
and a listless submission to cruel and fickle despots, are
the natural fruits in practical affairs. The absurdity of
the mixture of the two may be seen in church on almost
any Sunday, when some self-respecting, wealthy, and
ambitious man, who is doing his utmost to get on in the
world, mumbles over after the priest his Sunday creed —
so different from his Monday one ! — that life is a " vain
show," wealth a snare, the ambitions and successes of life
a delusion, and he himself a " miserable offender;"
when, if anybody else should call him a " miserable
offender," he would stand up in his dignified self-respect,
and knock him down. It only means that he is living an
Occidental life, and that he has inherited an Oriental
creed.

The orthodox conception of man and his relation to
God, total depravity, supernatural redemption, and eternal
punishment, these are the outcome of the Oriental theory
that is a part of our religious inheritance. In the East it
took two forms ; one, that being connected with matter
at all, being born into fleshly bodies, was the source and
cause of all evil. This is Hindoo, Buddhist, and Plato;
and, through the Alexandrian schools of Philo and Neo-
platonism, it has tainted and colored all our early Chris-
tian thought. The other is embodied in the story of
Genesis. This allows that there was one man pure and

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION,                     77

holy in a natural body ; but he early fell under the power
of matter, and all his descendants are born immersed in
it, and depraved.

Now, as this story of Genesis is the basis of the popu-
lar theology, and as this and the evolution theory are the
only ones that earnest men in America are concerned
with, we will narrow down our discussion to these.

The popular belief is that somewhere in the valley of
Euphrates, God created, in the midst of the wilderness
world, a garden of delights, a paradise of perfect inno-
cence and beauty. In this garden, to dress and keep and
enjoy it, were placed Adam and Eve. They two were
physically and morally perfect. As old Dr. South ex-
presses it, " An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam,
and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise." But right
on the heels of perfection came utter ruin. A serpent —
popularly supposed to be the devil, though the story says
nothing of the kind, and the devil was not invented till
ages afterward — is found equal to the task of frustrating
the work of God, and seducing the obedience of man.
There is little doubt that the serpent is only an allegorical
figure setting forth the supposed sinfulness of fleshly
desire, thus linking this story with the old notion that the
flesh was inherently sinful. Any way, Adam fell; and
God had created him in such unity of relationship with
all his race that he dragged down with him all mankind.
Heaven and hell hung on an apple-bough : and, when the
fruit was tasted, —

" In Adam's fall
We sinned all."

78                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

The race was hopelessly lost. For " one man's disobedi-
ence " God, who just before had pronounced his work
very good, turns all his love to hate. He curses the
earth, even, for man's sake, and dooms him and his
posterity to labor and sorrow.

Now, this is the corner-stone on which the whole system
of orthodox theology rests. Total depravity, moral help-
lessness, infant-damnation, fore-ordination, limited vicari-
ous atonement, and everlasting punishment — these all
follow, with the fatal necessity of an irresistible logic,
from the fall in Adam. And in the light of this necessary
logic you may see the weakness of the positions occupied
by the " liberal orthodoxy" of the time. The moral
sentiment of the age has revolted against the dogma of
infant-damnation, which was once universally held; and
now it is cast to the rubbish heap of cruel superstitions.
But he who believes in the fall of man must logically
believe infant-damnation. And why it is any worse to
damn an infant, than it is to damn a man who is born
and who lives a helplessly and hopelessly depraved life
of forty years, is difficult to see. The one was no more
responsible for himself than the other. Then there are
thousands who have rejected the fall, who yet cling to the
atonement. But if man is not fallen, there is no need of
an atonement. It must soon be seen that this whole
system is an arch of doctrine in which every stone takes
hold of, supports, and is supported by, every other stone.
Knock out one of these, and the whole fabric tumbles into
confusion; so that the only logical position is the old

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION,                     79

orthodoxy or reason. Such men as Dr. Gardiner Spring
of New York did not fear to face and accept the logic,
and say, " God saves and he damns just the number he
wishes to in carrying out his own purposes."

Now, this doctrine, that God created man physically,
intellectually, and morally complete, in a moment, and
that by one sin he fell into a condition from which the
present condition of humanity is the result, is surrounded
by difficulties that seem to be insuperable. Let us glance
at some of them.

And, in the first place, there is absolutely no proof of
any thing of the kind. It is at the best an Old-World,
Oriental tradition. There is not a single known fact that
can be brought to its support, or that cannot be better
explained in some other way. Were it not supposed to be
divine revelation, no one would think of arguing in its
favor. And the narrative is so mixed up with crudities
and absurdities and contradictions and immoralities, that
it is a dishonor to any high idea of God to suppose him
capable of doing the deeds, or of inspiring a record of
them.

In the next place, that God should make a man, or any
thing else, full-grown in a minute, is utterly against all
that we really know of the divine method. All things
grow; and there is not a flower, or shrub, or tree, or ani-
mal on earth, that does not have on it, not only the marks
of its individual development, but also the traces of an
ancestral growth that reaches back into the earliest dawn
of time. The thought is as absurd, and as incongruous

80                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

with all our knowledge, as the boy's question when, in
answer to his father's statement that God could do any
thing he pleased, he asked him if God could " make a
two-year-old colt in fifteen minutes."

Again, the story of Genesis does not account for the
past history, the present abodes, and the different con-
ditions, of the various races over the face of the earth.
That a being, of whom Aristotle was only the " rubbish,"
should have produced descendants ranging all the way
from Newton to the South-sea Islanders, the Patagonians,
the Bushmen and Pygmies of Central Africa, is something
that the fall of man does not explain. There is nothing
in the nature of sin alone that can account for it. The
influence of nature and the laws of life can account for all
these varieties. And it is curious to notice, that, while
orthodoxy denies that nature has any such power over the
development and modification of man as evolution asserts,
it is yet obliged to call in just the forces that science pro-
claims to explain the facts which it cannot deny. Nature
asks as large powers to make all the races out of Adam,
as she demands to make them out of protoplasm.

And then we know — it is no guesswork any longer: we
know — that great civilizations existed, that men were
born, loved, hated, hunted, fought, and died, thousands
of years before Genesis says that man was created and
fell.

And, once more, the theory (as I illustrated somewhat
in the preceding paper) makes God a moral monster.

Whether, then, we can accept any other theory or not,

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                    81

even if we have to go without a theory, this one we cannot
hold. I might be content to say, " I know and can know
nothing about God : I must walk my path of life in the
dark, waiting to see what the future will develop ; " but I
cannot consent to say, " I love, I will worship, or even I
respect, such a God as is taught by the popular theology."
If there is a supreme power in the universe capable of
making such a humanity as is preached, and of treating
his child as he is represented as treating man, then
though I may have to submit to his power, as feeble
nations submit to despots, yet I will not, can not, love him,
nor bow to him my knee. And if I must go to hell with
the noble livers and the great thinkers of the world, then
I would choose it rather than the place of court favorite
in the presence of one who makes evil, and torture, and
everlasting prison-houses, for his own glory.

We come now to consider the evolution theory of hu-
man nature, and to notice how far it corresponds with the
known facts of the world. What is the theory ? That all
life on the globe is a unit, like a tree, and that man is the
crowning blossom on the topmost bough. To confine our-
selves to our immediate ancestry, it teaches that man has
developed from the animal life beneath him. I am aware
that the popular mind is full of prejudice on this subject,
and that a large part of its impressions have been derived
from newspaper jokes and caricatures. But I hope it will
be remembered, that those persons who set up in the busi-
ness of making people laugh are not particular about their
materials. They will ridicule any thing that the popular

82                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

taste will allow; just as Aristophanes wrote comedies to
make Athens laugh at Socrates; and as the London
" Punch " ridiculed and caricatured Lincoln because Eng-
lish opinion then favored it. I can sympathize with a
man who shrinks from recognizing the ape as among his
poor relations, particularly if there is a family likeness
that he fears will be discovered; but really we must put
prejudice one side : this is a matter not of feeling, but of
fact. I, for one, am ready to think it far more wondrous
and honorable that my body should have come to its
present perfection by the marvellous pathway of the ani-
mal world, than that it came straight from the slime and
the mud. Which is the more honorable material, —
mysterious, complex life, or dirt ? I should be ashamed
of arguing this point, were it not for the prejudice. I am
not half as anxious to find out that I did not come from
an ape, as I am to know that I am not travelling toward
one. Where we came from, touches not the matter of
what we are. " Now are we the sons of God;" and, if
evolution be true, well and grandly may we add, " It doth
not yet appear what we shall be." People who get up in
the world are sometimes ashamed of their parentage ; but
I think it much more important that we be careful that our
children have no reason to be ashamed of their parentage.
And since my line runs back millions of years, and ends
in God, I see no good cause for being ashamed of the
long and wondrous way by which it has come. Say it
plainly, then : we have derived our present life from the
animals. For the forces and laws of this development, I

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                     83

must refer you to the works devoted to their explana-
tion. It is sufficient for me to say that known laws
and forces are able to account for all the facts and re-
sults of evolution. As an illustrative hint of the power
of nature over humanity, you may take it as an approxi-
mately correct statement, that if a race could start at the
North Pole, and march southward, being some millions of
years on the journey, stopping long enough for all the
forces of its changing conditions to produce their effects
upon the new-coming members, such a race would pass
through all the changes, and exhibit all the peculiarities,
of all the races that have been actually subjected to these
various conditions. The natural force of development
worked on the body until it reached its upright attitude
and present comparative perfection. Then, when brain-
power became the winning element in the struggle for life,
the same force turned to brain. And now the moral is
gradually gaining supremacy; and the time will come
when this will be reckoned the mightiest, as it is now
admitted to be the noblest, force of humanity. The moral
power is coming to be the power that wins.

Thus, in accordance with these hints, evolution has no
more difficulty in accounting for intellect and righteous-
ness, than it has in explaining muscles and bones.

Let us now look at some suggestions and probabili-
ties.

And, first, there is a marvellous sense of sympathy in
our souls for the whole wide life of nature. Lowell talks
of trees being his ancestors, and of his lying under the

84                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

willows and listening to their whispers. Who has not felt
the storm, or the stars, or the pines, speaking to his inner
consciousness? By more than poetic figure we call the
earth our mother; and we love, in sunny spring, to go
back to our childhood, and lie upon her bosom. Every
sensitive nature has a subtle sense of kinship with all the
forms of natural life. Nature plays upon us, and creates
our moods. We sing with the birds, and cry with the
rain. The sunshine or gloom of the sky gets reflected in
our faces. The life of spring starts our blood into ting-
ling pulsation in unison with the waking activity of ani-
mals and the sap in the trees. Now, I believe all this
wondrous feeling of kinship is best explained by saying
we are akin.

And if you will notice the particular facts of animal
life, you will be surprised that the gulf between them and
us is so very narrow. What was once supposed to be an
impassable ocean is only a tiny rill. The animals share
with us almost every one of our habits and faculties.
Animals think, reason, hope, fear, remember, laugh, and
cry. They are faithful to their marriage-bonds, and de-
voted to their offspring; they are organized in commu-
nities and governments; they domesticate and use other
animals, even milking them as we do cows; they have
social grades, aristocracies, soldiers, artisans, and slaves;
they make war, and bring home captives; they punish
for crime, and execute the death-penalty; they lay out
and build cities; they station sentinels, and have watch-
men; they decorate and ornament their persons; they

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                     85

care for each other, and will fight in each other's defence,
or in the common defence of home and country: in short,
there is hardly a single faculty of humanity they do not
share. The difference between these animal powers and
customs and those of man is chiefly one of degree. The
power of abstract thought and the development of the
religious faculty and life are the great essential intellec-
tual and spiritual distinctions. The animal world, then,
is only a step beneath us; and that step evolution is
perfectly able to take.

Coming to and dealing with the body alone, it is a sig-
nificant fact that almost all forms of life have what are
called rudimentary organs; that is, certain limbs or parts
that were fully developed in one grade of life, but, not
being needed in the higher grade, are outgrown, leaving
behind them only a rudiment to show where and what
they used to be; just as, in an old tree, you often see
where a limb once was that has now died out. The
fishes in Mammoth Cave have rudimentary eyes. Os-
triches have rudimentary wings. These as simple illustra-
tions. I can only stop to say that man also has several
very striking rudimentary organs, which, if developed
to-day, would make him as thoroughly animal in his
appearance as is even his chimpanzee ancestor.

Another very remarkable thing I must only mention.
Every child, before its birth, in the course of its develop-
ment, passes through every phase of animal life from the
lowest to the highest. Thus man recapitulates and takes
up into himself all the life beneath him. Every infant

86                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

born passes over again the whole pathway of the progress
of life on the globe.

And then, after he is born, every child begins life an
animal, and grows up through and out of barbarism into
the civilization of culture and training. The child's play-
things are copies of barbaric weapons, — club, and bow
and arrow, and spear; and the games of children in the
nursery and on the sidewalk, and the school playground,
are mimic copyings of old religious rituals; and their
meaningless rhymes and formulas are the remnants of
Old-World stately ceremonials. So the child again, in his
training, recapitulates and lives over once more the whole
progress of civilization.

We are accustomed to say that such a man is foxy,
another is lion-like, a third is wolfish, there are "bulls
and bears" in the stock-market, others are swinish.
These are looked upon as purely figures of speech ; but
evolution fills such phrases with a meaning they did not
have before. Just as we may have the hair or eyes or
gait of not only our father or mother, but of ancestors a
hundred generations gone, so we may show still the good
or evil traits, propensities, and passions, that characterized
our animal ancestry a thousand ages ago. The thread of
a common life runs through, and binds together in one,
all forms of existence on the planet.

The battle of our moral life, on this theory, is ration-
ally explained to be just what we know it to be, —a fight
between the higher and the lower. The animal obeys his
impulses; and, having no moral sense, of course there

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                     87

is no thought of wrong, nor any possibility of remorse.
The child, at first, does the same, and has no more moral
sense than the horse. But as this sense unfolds, the
conflict begins. It is the contest between impulses,
and duties toward our fellows and our higher self. " I
wish " and " I ought " are in antagonism. It is just the
fight that Paul so graphically pictures in the seventh
chapter of Romans: " I delight in the law of God after
the inner [higher] man; but I find another law in my
members [body] warring against the law of my mind."
And, as many of us have exclaimed, he cries out, "O,
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me ? "

This theory, then, adequately explains the whole battle
of the moral life. Man is struggling up, out of the ani-
mal, toward mind and spirit. When the animal gains the
mastery,"he is degraded, and falls back into a position
worse than that of the animal, by as much as he is capa-
ble of something higher; and so when he misses it he is
self-condemned, and condemned by mankind. However
low or mean, you do not condemn a thing if it is all it
is capable of; but, however high, you still condemn if it is
content to fall below its highest possibility. Sin, then, is
not a substance or entity that either god or devil put into
a man, and that a priest can exorcise, prayer expel, or
baptism wash away. It is only the supremacy of the
lower over the higher in man; and guilt is the conscious-
ness of this. Righteousness is the supremacy of the
moral and spiritual, — a rational discernment of the laws
of our higher life, and an obedience to them.

8$                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

But if man was once animal, and has grown up into
man, when and how did the soul come in ? some of you
may like to ask. Of any soul that is a distinct and
separate entity, apart from the conscious mental and
spiritual life ; a soul that a man has, and that can be
saved, apart from his mental and moral condition, accord-
ing to the teaching of the popular revivalists ; a soul that
is in a man and yet not simply and wholly himself, — of
such a soul I must confess that I know nothing whatever.
And if any one is disposed to be troubled on this point in
connection with evolution, perhaps it is well to remind
them that they will find no relief in Genesis. Moses
knows nothing of any such soul. The Hebrew word for
the soul of Adam, and for the souls, or life, of the animals,
is precisely the same. When it is written, " The Elohim
breathed into his nostrils, and he became a living soul,"
it would be just as correct to say, " He became alive, or a
living being or animal." There is no hint that his soul
was any different from that of any other creature's soul.
This does not touch the question of the nature of the
soul, or of immortality: it only shows that there is no
more light in Genesis than there is in evolution.

It was a favorite topic of discussion among the school-
men of the middle ages, as to whether we derived our
souls by birth from Adam, or whether they came direct
from heaven at every separate birth; but I have never
heard that it resulted in any thing more profitable than
that other question, which they also expended their wits
Upon, as to whether our hair and finger-nails, that we now

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                     89

cut off, will or will not form a part of the resurrection
body.

Evolution simply takes man as it finds him, traces his
origin, studies his nature, and, looking along the line of
his development, attempts to forecast his probable future.
If it cannot say as broadly as Paul does, " Now are we
[all men] the sons of God," it can say, " Now are all who
live after the law of their higher nature the sons of God."
Man, then, once animal, has climbed up into the possi-
bility of sonship to the Highest; and in many cases he
has made the possibility a fact " It doth not yet appear
what we shall be;" but along the line of knowledge,
obedience, and struggle, there stretches before humanity
an ascending pathway up to God, bright and grand as the
sloping beams of light that bridge the deeps of space
from the horizon's edge up to the unbearable glory of the
rising sun. Here lies the way of religious progress, phil-
anthropic labor, and all reform. It is to be trodden by
all those who subdue the animal, and climb up into the
mind and the soul. And the true help for our fellows is
to be offered in assisting them up, step by step, along this
same stairway of attainment. No man can be suddenly
" converted " into it, any more than ignorance can be sud-
denly converted into knowledge. One may be suddenly
waked up, to the fact of his ignorance, and may suddenly
determine to go to school; but the way of learning is
long, and so is the way of all progress.

In the light of human nature, as thus revealed, may be
seen the futility of some of the present prominent notions

90                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

about reform, as in matters of temperance, social vice,
and the repression of crime. You cannot legislate char-
acter. The most that laws can do is to help on suitable
conditions for the development of character.

I have purposely passed by the question of a future
life for man. It only remains for me to glance at the
possibilities of his earthly outlook, as hinted by evolu-
tion. Man was first an animal, without shelter or fire or
clothing or weapons or domestic utensils of any kind.
We can trace him to the time when he fought the bear for
possession of his cave. His first weapon was a club ;
then he discovered fire, and so was able to mould metals,
and manufacture utensils and weapons. All the forces of
nature were hostile to him, because he was ignorant of
their laws, and so was constantly transgressing and suffer-
ing. But gradually he learned to obey them, and so
became their master. When he obeyed the laws of the
wind, he made it sail his boats; when he knew the laws of
water, he made it turn his mills; when he learned the use
of fire, he cleared the forests and discovered manufac-
tures : to-day he has made conquest, by his knowledge, of
immense tracts of the globe. Lightning, light, heat, mag-
netism, chemical forces, are all become his servants. He
is just winning his crown and grasping his sceptre. But
though we call ourselves civilized, we can see enough of
the yet unattained possibilities of man and the earth to
make us feel that we are as yet only in the morning
twilight: the full day is before us ; conquests await us in
earth and air and sea. Government shall be perfected;

THE MAN OF EVOLUTION.                    91

crime shall be outgrown ; most of the diseases from which
we now suffer shall be abolished. Accumulated wealth,
and knowledge of the yet undiscovered resources of the
earth, shall solve the problems of hunger and cold and
want, and deliver man from the crushing burdens of the
mere struggle for subsistence. Then man will be free to
go up and live in the affections, the mind, and the spirit.
It is perfectly within the scope of the forces and laws
now at work about us, to develop on earth a paradise as
much fairer than Eden as the noble plans and works of
manhood are higher and better than the dreams of the
nursery. Plato's republic and More's Utopia are only
hints of what the future will realize. The whole earth can
be made a garden, and human life upon it so regulated in
accord with natural laws that all government and society
and individual life shall run as noiselessly and harmoni-
ously as the stars move in the sky. Evil and pain and
disease will be outgrown.

How long will it take ? Thousands of years. But God
is in no hurry, having eternity to work in. He has been
millenniums already, in developing us to what we are;
and yet we are only on the threshold of what is not only
possible but probable. The future stretches out a road so
long, that those who stand on the heights of the ages to
come may look back and think of human history from the
first until now, as we think of the first mile of a journey
across the continent; as we regard the time from Adam
to the flood, in the old story.

" Beloved, now are we the sons of God;" and indeed

92                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

" it doth not yet appear what we shall be." But the scroll
of earth-life that God is unrolling has in it wonders and
surprises of good and beauty and glory that we cannot
now even imagine; but we may safely say that the blos-
som will be worthy of the root and the trunk.

V.

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL.

To the devil has been popularly attributed the author-
ship of all human ills. I propose, therefore, to trace in
rapid outline the more important phases of the develop-
ment of the Satanic idea, that we may understand how
the belief has risen and grown. Then I shall pass to
what we really know of the origin and nature of evil.
A knowledge of what it is will suggest practical measures
for controlling or escaping it.

Let us begin by trying to understand the condition and
state of mind of the first men on the earth. You must
imagine yourselves divested of every thing that we include
under the term " civilization." Not only must you men-
tally blot out the cities, the telegraphs, the railways, the
roads, the ships, but you must also think of them as with-
out houses, without even the simplest domestic imple-
ments and utensils, without any knowledge of iron or
copper or other metals of which they could make weapons
for their defence. They had no clothing, except as they
could strip a tree of its bark, or rob an animal of its skin.

94                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

They possessed no knowledge of fire. And then you
must not only strip their bodies of all the surroundings of
comfort: you must also strip their minds of knowledge,
and picture them in the midst of a world of which they
knew almost nothing. Hunger gnawed at their vitals,
the cold chilled and destroyed them, the thunder scared,
and the lightning smote them; the earthquake, the storm,
and the darkness all seemed bent on their destruction.
Invisible diseases attacked them, and mysterious death
snatched away one after another. They knew nothing of
natural laws, or of how a generally beneficent force might,
because of their ignorance or disobedience, work them
incidental injury. So they, using the best powers of
reason they possessed, argued that all these things were
their enemies. And as they had no idea of power apart
from that possessed by persons like themselves, they
attributed personality and individual life to all the forces
about them. Winter and night and storm and lightning
and disease, to their thought, became superhuman beings,
or gods. And since the results of their action were evil,
so far as they could see, they concluded they must be
malicious gods, inclined not to help, but to hurt them.
The sun and the light and the blue sky were kindly and
good gods. For not knowing, as we know to-day, that all
these apparently evil forces were the result of the sun,
they gave him credit only for the pleasant effects of light
and warmth which they could see him produce. But the
good gods of light and comfort were afar off in the sky;
while the bad gods of cold and darkness and hunger and

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 95

death were right about them. Thus the first religion was
one almost exclusively of fear. They worshipped these
gods, not because they loved them, but in the hope that,
by gifts and prayers and honors, they might gain their
favor, or induce them to be less cruel. Here, then, is the
germ-idea of the devil. He was born of the logic that
argued that suffering and death must be the work of a
wicked being. It was not one devil, or bad god, but a
thousand; for every thing that seemed to possess inde-
pendent power was personified.

In the Hindoo religion, though almost every thing was
deified, so that there were millions of gods, they yet took
one step ahead of the philosophic thought of primitive
man. They generalized the forces of the universe under
three grand gods, — Brahma the creator, Vishnu the pre-
server, and Siva the destroyer. The latter, who may be
called the Hindoo devil, was figured with a rope for
strangling evil-doers, a necklace of skulls, and earrings of
serpents. All evils were of his doing. And, as very
significant of the fact that popular worship concerns itself
much more about escaping evil than it does in getting
good, Siva is the most worshipped of all the Hindoo gods.
The idea seems to be to buy escape from his evil power.

Zoroaster, the religious teacher of Persia, took one
step more in advance. His religion was based in a
shadowy kind of monotheism; but practically the uni-
verse was divided between two gods, a bad and a good
one, who were supposed to be in everlasting antagonism.
Ahura-Mazda was the god of light and good, while

96                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

Ahriman was the god of darkness and evil. They were
engaged in a world-wide conflict very much as, during the
middle ages, Christ and the devil were supposed to be.
But, unlike the Christian teaching, it was believed that
sometime Ahura-Mazda would triumph even to the utter
destruction of all evil, and the redemption of Ahriman
himself.

It is worth your while to notice, in passing, how the
gods of an old religion become the devils in a new.
When a new and better god got the supremacy, it was
not supposed that the other gods were dead: they were
simply conquered and kept in subjection. In this condi-
tion they kept up a chronic rebellion, and did all they
could to injure their conqueror and his kingdom. Thus
the devils of Zoroaster were the gods of the older Hin-
doo religion. This is indicated in the very word " devil."
Deva, from which the word "devil" is derived, once
meant the good gods. The same use remains to-day;
for " divine" is only the old word deva in its modern
dress. So " devil" and " divine " are two words coming
from the same root. The same is true of the Latin deus
and our English " deity." In like manner the old Pagan
gods became the devils of early and mediaeval Chris-
tianity ; except when some infallible pope put one of
them into the calendar by mistake, and made him a saint.

In the classic religions of Greece and Rome, there was
no devil; for the gods were bad enough to get along
without one. The deities of Olympus were simply human,
except as to power and life; and they helped or hurt

THE DEVIL ; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 97

humanity, as all tyrants do, according to freak or favor-
itism, or as moved by gifts or honors.

We must now turn to the Old and New Testaments, and
trace the genesis of the devil here. There is no hint, for
ages after, that the serpent in Eden was the devil, or that
he had any thing to do with him. Jehovah, at first, as
being the one God, the Creator of all things, is regarded
as the author of both good and evil, dark and light. In
Isaiah he is represented as boldly assuming the whole
responsibility to himself: " I form the light, and create
darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I, Jehovah, do
all these things." (Isa. xlv. 7.) This, of course, could
not be true if evil originated with the devil. In other
places, the agency of the devil appears springing up, and
dividing the evil work of the world with Jehovah. When
David committed the supposed crime of taking a census
of his people, it is said in one place that Jehovah tempted
him to do it, and in another place that Satan did it. The
belief here is divided, and begins to waver. The first
time that Satan appears clearly outlined is in the book
of Job. But he is not at all the Satan of theology, out-
cast from heaven, the king of hell, and the ravager of
the earth. He is a member of the heavenly court, a sort
of prosecuting attorney for Jehovah, who goes forth only
on the divine permission, and to execute the divine will.
But after the Jewish captivity, and the national contact
with Persian life and thought, the Zoroastriari Ahriman
comes bodily into Jewish theology, and the devil is full
born.

98                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

To account for the existence of evil at the dawn of
creation, the devil must be made older than the world;
and hence arose the legend of a rebellion in heaven, and
the casting-out of Satan and his followers, a third part of
all the angels. To avenge himself for his celestial defeat,
he turns his malice against the new creation and the new
being, man, who was to take the place in heaven from
which he had been cast out. Then arose the idea that
the old serpent was only Satan in disguise; and that,
through the tempting and fall of man, the devil " brought
death into the world, and all our woe." The devil was
thus supposed to have become the conqueror, lord, and
rightful owner of the world. This was his kingdom. So
ingrained did this thought become that even in the Church
Prayer-Book to-day the organized Church is God's king-
dom, and the world is Satan's; and becoming a Christian
is " renouncing " loyalty to " the world, the flesh, and the
devil," and taking Christ as king. So perfectly was it
believed that Satan had come into ownership of earth
and man, that the early doctrine of the work of Christ
was shaped by it. Jesus made a bargain with Satan, by
which he surrendered himself into his hands as a ransom
for the deliverance of humanity; and as Christ had
been his rival in heaven, he was willing to accept the pur-
chase. But Christ, being divine, was able to outwit the
devil, cheat him out of possession of himself, and save
humanity into the bargain. Such were the early Christian
ideas of God and Jesus and Satan. You can judge how
worthy they are of our respect.

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 99

Throughout the middle ages, the devil was supposed to
be everywhere. His armies camped over all the earth.
Calamities, sickness, deformity, earthquake, storm, down
even to the most trivial perplexities, were attributed to his
agency. Every man was surrounded by devils, as a swim-
mer was surrounded by the sea. Evil thoughts were his
whispers, and evil deeds were done at his instigation. In
short, whatever was evil was the work of the devil. Sin
was a new element or quality that came into human
nature, through his agency, at the fall. Thus it became a
part of the life of every new child born into the world.
By this sin, which linked man with Satan, he was under
the perpetual wrath of God, and condemned forever.
The Church ordinances, rituals, days, — these were the
machinery of Christ for the expulsion of sin, or the deliv-
erance of man from its power.

The devil has been the mainspring of theology, and
hell the corner-stone of the universe. So important a
personage has he become, that one minister asserts, as
against Mr. Conway's lecture, that " if there is no devil
there is no truth in the Bible." As if the Sermon on the
Mount must look to the devil for support! And another
declares that "the devil constitutes an important element
in the means of grace established for the salvation of
sinners;" though, since he gets the largest part of them,
one would suppose that it was their damnation, and not
their salvation, of which he was an " important element."
I suppose this minister means that he needs the devil as
a scarecrow, to frighten people into heaven ; though, by

100               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

the Church's own confession, he has proved a failure in
this direction.

Now, it is perfectly natural that the ignorance of
primitive man should invent the devil as a part of his
mythology. It was the simplest explanation of the facts
of evil, as they then appeared. But it is now being seen
by all earnest and independent thinkers, that the theory
of the devil must take its place with alchemy, the Ptole-
maic theory of the universe, and other beliefs that the
knowledge of the world has outgrown. The devil only
complicates, instead of simplifying or explaining, the
origin and nature of evil. If there is any devil, he either
made himself, or God made him. If he made himself, he
is an independent deity; if God made him, or permitted
him, then God is the author of evil: so the devil is no
relief.

Let us, then, turn away from these frightful dreams of
the past, and look at the facts of the world, so far as we
know them. I think we shall find, in the light of evolu-
tion, a pathway out of our difficulties. What does our
real knowledge of the facts of the world and the progress
of life tell us about the nature of evil ? It denies not only
the existence of any devil, tut any necessity for him. It
denies the real existence of evil; that is, it denies that
evil is a real entity, a substance, either in the world about
us, or, as sin, in man. Evil is simply a temporary and
passing condition. To put the whole thing in one word,
all evil is nothing more nor less than maladjustment.
The devil, and sin, and sorrow, and calamity, and sick-

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL, 101

ness, and tears, and death, all resolve themselves into this
one word. I am aware that as thus stated the sentence
may convey to you little meaning; but I wished to put
the whole thing into one word, as an acorn contains an
oak-tree. And now I will go on to explain and illustrate.
If you can find any form of evil that cannot be wrapped
up in the word " maladjustment," then you will find what
all my thinking has failed to discover.

At the outset of this explanation, notice the meaning
of life. Life means simply this : A real being, man or
woman, in the midst of, surrounded by, and related to,
the real facts of the universe. When he is rightly related
or adjusted to these facts, then the man finds safety,
health, happiness, and peace. When wrongly related, or
maladjusted, he finds disturbance, pain, calamity, sick-
ness, and death. This one principle, I believe, will
explain all evil, from the physical up through intellectual
and moral to the spiritual. Let us now start out with it
on our search, and see.

1. Physical Evil.

How came it about that the first men of the world
interpreted all the great forces of the world as being
mainly evil ? It was simply because of their ignorance
and helplessness. Not understanding the laws of nature,
they were continually breaking them, and so suffering the
penalty of broken law. The lightning, the storm, the
earthquake, the winds, the poisonous vapors of swamps,
all these were continually working them harm because
they had not enough knowledge of them to be an ade-

102                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

quate defence. They were constantly getting into wrong
relations to these things. The great forces of nature
move on as resistlessly as a train of cars under full head-
way. If you get aboard the cars, the mighty power of
the steam will speed you smoothly on your journey : if
you get across the track, the same mighty power will crush
and mangle and kill. The whole thing depends on your
relation to the force of the steam. Right adjustment
makes it your servant: maladjustment makes it your ruin.
In the light of this principle, let us consider more directly
some of the prominent causes of physical evil.

It has been the popular belief of the Church and of
all Christendom, for the last two thousand years, that
earthquakes and tempests and floods and volcanic erup-
tions and pestilences and diseases and death were all
either the spiteful work of the devil, or else the vengeful
judgments of God for human sin. Sometimes the two
ideas were combined ; that is, it was thought that God,
being angry, permitted the devil to bring these evils upon
men. This belief was carried so far that it was even held
to be an impious resistance to God's will, when medical
men endeavored to counteract the natural sweep of a
pestilence, or to alleviate human suffering. Within a
hundred years, the world has witnessed the advocates of
the popular religion roused into a storm of opposition
against vaccination as a preventive of small-pox. Small-
pox was a judgment of God; and it was wicked to stand
in its way. And, so late as forty years ago, the use of
chloroform was opposed because it was thought to be

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 103

impiety to fight against the pain that God had sent as a
punishment for sin. Now, let us look at it, and see.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are a part of the
natural and necessary process in the development of the
globe. The wrinkling and tremors of the earth's crust, in
the process of the earth's cooling from its original molten
condition, are as necessary and natural as the wrinkling
and cracking of the surface of a pan of lard when it is
cooling in the farmer's kitchen. It is precisely the same
thing, only on a larger scale. And volcanoes are the
natural result of the same working. Now, when, and in
what sense, are they calamities? When men, through
ignorance of these natural laws, build their cities or homes
in the earthquake's track, or on a volcano's side, then
there come such calamities as that of the overthrow of
Lisbon, or the burial of Pompeii. These great convul-
sions are, on the whole, beneficent, for the good of the
earth; the incidental evils are the result of a maladjust-
ment of human relations to them. So soon as men know
the laws, and adjust themselves to their working, the
power to injure is taken away. Take the case of floods,
or the breaking of a great reservoir, like that in Western
Massachusetts a couple of years ago. When men know
enough to build out of the way of floods, and when the
public guardians know enough and care enough to pre-
vent the cupidity of contractors from slighting their work,
then these "judgments of God" will be found easily
preventable. It is a little curious that God has ceased
sending his lightning as a punishment for sin just as fast

104                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

and as far as Franklin's invention of lightning-rods has
been properly applied. Right adjustment to electricity
has disarmed it. When a ship is wrecked at sea, we know
that, in every case, it is for lack of proper adjustment be-
tween the vessel, and the powers of wind and wave. A
proper knowledge "of, and a compliance with, the laws of
navigation, would make wrecks almost an unheard-of
thing. Pestilences, like the cholera, the plague, the
yellow-fever, are perfectly within the control of human
intelligence. These punishments come not on sinners, in
the ordinary sense* of the word, but confine themselves
exclusively to those cities and lands that disregard sani-
tary laws. And every intelligent physician knows that
almost all diseases are preventable, and that none ever
come except as the natural and necessary result of the
disregard of physical laws. In other words, all disease is
maladjustment between man and nature. He who builds
his home beside a malarious swamp may be ever so pious,
but he will shake with chills and fever just the same.
The wicked man who knows enough to keep out of such
places will escape. That is, transgression of physical
law brings physical evil; and what you do or do not do
in spiritual matters does not touch this fact. Fire is one
of the grandest blessings of the race; but if Mrs. O'Leary
does not know any better than to put a kerosene-lamp
where her cow will kick it over, the laws of fire are not
going to stop : Chicago will crumble into ashes. A man's
house tumbles about his ears.; not because gravitation is
not a good thing, but because he did not adjust his

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 105

timbers and his bricks to the laws of gravitation. And
so you may take any illustration you please, and you will
find the same thing true : all physical evil is maladjust-
ment between man and his conditions. Increasing knowl-
edge is disarming these enemies of humanity more and
more. And not only are they being disarmed: knowledge
of and obedience to these great laws is turning them into
gigantic servants of the welfare of man. The sea, which
the ancients regarded as a waste of useless waters, — the
separator of nations, the destroyer of those who braved
its perils, and which even the Bible speaks of as an evil
to be done away in " the new heavens and new earth, " —-
" there shall be no more sea," —this is now known to be
the life of the world ; and knowledge of its laws is turn-
ing it into highways of human progress. The lightning
has turned mail-carrier; and all the great forces are
being harnessed to the car of human advancement.
There is not a single physical evil on the globe, that
future knowledge may not turn to man's advantage and
uplifting.

Death, the great evil, as men have thought, and which
was supposed to be the result of Adam's sin, is now
known to be as natural and necessary as life. It existed
ages before Adam is supposed to have been created. The
evils of it are only incidents and accompaniments that
human advancement will leave behind. The time may
and will come when men will die as unconsciously and
easily as now they are born. In fact, it will only be
another and a higher birth.

106               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

The devil of the physical world, then, is only ignorant
maladjustment. This is the great dragon; and knowledge
is the St. George that will overthrow and slay him.

II. Intellectual Evil.

I pass now to say that the same is true of intellectual
evil. This calls for no prolonged discussion. Its simple
statement will be its sufficient proof. The only evil of the
intellect is error, a lack of true knowledge of the real
facts of the universe. The only and the sufficient cure
for this is knowledge. The straight pathway to this
knowledge is the free and unhindered study that cares
only to find the truth. This is why I claim and defend
the right of free inquiry. Nothing is safe but truth; and
truth is always safe. And I can conceive no interest that
any man can have to do any thing else but find the truth,
and obey it; for truth is God. The man who builds on
it builds on the rock. The rains may descend, the floods
may come, the wind may blow and beat upon his house:
but it will stand; for it is founded on a rock. Any thing
but truth is sand ; and whoever builds on it will live
only to see the ruin of his fall.

Ill Moral Evil.

As our third point, consider the same principle of
maladjustment in relation to moral evil. The unfolding
history of humanity reveals nothing more plainly than that
there are great and universal laws of righteousness run-
ning through all the world. These laws are nothing more
nor less than the all-inclusive principles of equity or just
relationships in which men stand to each other. Within

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 107

these lines or laws of right is moral goodness. Breaking
over these lines or laws is moral injury and destruction.
Here, as everywhere, " sin is the transgression of the law."
Now, I wish you to carefully separate in thought this
realm of morals, of righteousness, from the intellectual
and physical realms. Breaking physical law brings phys-
ical evil; breaking intellectual laws brings intellectual
evil, or error; breaking the laws of righteousness brings
moral evil, or the injury of the moral nature. These
three realms may run into each other. As, for example,
when a man breaks the moral law of his relationship to
another by some sensual crime, he at the same time may
break a physical law of his body; but the physical evil
results, not from breaking the spiritual law, but from
breaking the physical. A man may be a thief, or cheat
in his business, and it have no effect on his body. He
will be in health so long as he obeys the laws of his
body, however much he may break the higher laws. The
farmer may swear and cheat; but this will not affect his
potato or wheat crops, if he is a good farmer. While
another farmer may be ever so noble and true in his
relations to his fellow-men ; still he will go hungry if he
does not manage his farming wisely. The higher moral
evils, then, result from disregard of the higher moral laws
of equity in which we stand to God and our fellow-men.
Thus society may be full of people who are successful in
their outward circumstances, because they know and obey
the laws of health and of business. They may be suc-
cessful in the pursuit of the scientific and philosophic

108              THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

truths of the world, because they obey the laws of this
search; and at the same time they may be so out of
harmony, of right relationships, with the spiritual laws of
righteousness, that in this department of their being all is
only wreck and ruin. A man will be a good painter, if he
obeys the laws of his art; but this will not teach him
music. He may be a fine mathematician; but this will
not teach him sculpture. So, if one is to be morally and
spiritually developed and complete, he must recognize
and obey the higher and finer laws of his higher rela-
tionships. When evolution has carried man high enough,
this spiritual realm of relations will be as real to him
as is now the physical; and the pang of pain following a
breaking of one of these finer laws of thinking and feel-
ing will be as keen and real as is now the burning that
follows the putting of a finger into the fire.

Moral evil, then, is only moral maladjustment, — a
man getting out of right moral relationships to God or his
fellow-men; and the cure for evil here is parallel to the
cure for all other evils. Man universally desires his own
welfare, that which is for his good ; and when he gets
wise enough to know that obeying the divine laws must
always be for his good,' then the whole force of self-
interest even will be turned toward doing right. Man
knows it now concerning physical evils. He does not
voluntarily seek them. They come through ignorance or
weakness or carelessness ; or sometimes he braves them
for the sake of what he thinks a larger good. He is
beginning to learn it concerning intellectual evil, or error.

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 109

He will one day become wise enough to know that it is
always safe and for his interest to find and follow the
truth. But he has as yet learned very little of the same
great principle as applied to moral relations. I think no
man ever does wrong at first, unless he has come to think
it good for him, for his interest at the time. This is
always a blunder ; but he does not know it yet. For it is
for no man's real interest to do wrong. But the selfish
hunger is strong, and his moral sense is weak and blind.
The sense of duty is only partially developed. Habit
grows until it becomes disease ; and so the current sweeps
him away. But a proper knowledge of moral laws, at
the start, would have kept him out of the current.

Knowledge, then, is the devil-killer, and the extermi-
nator of evil. It is often objected to this teaching (it is,
indeed, the stock-argument of religious newspapers), that
many educated men are criminals, such as Ruloff and
Green and Prof. Webster, the murderers ; and therefore
it is said that education cannot save men from sin. But
a fatal fallacy underlies the objection. It is not claimed
that physical education will save from any thing but phys-
ical evils. Knowledge of scientific and philosophic prin-
ciples will only save from errors in their peculiar realm.
It is moral education, a true and adequate knowledge of
moral laws and human well-being as related to these, that
saves from moral evil. Ruloff and Webster and Green
were moral fools. They blundered concerning the great
moral relations in which they stood, and mistook their
own real welfare, as well as the rights of others. When

110             THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

men are morally wise enough, they will know it is always
best to do right.

The perfect humanity will come, then, when there is a
complete knowledge of human relationships, and a com-
plete obedience to the physical, mental, and moral laws
of God.

God,- then, is not the author of evil. It is only human
maladjustment to laws that, when known and kept, are
the true servants and the mighty helpers of humanity.
The devil is a dream of the night and darkness of the
past. Let him be relegated to the museum of theological
curiosities, mummies, and skeletons, that the coming ages
will study to find out the world's thoughts that have
passed away. But meantime remember that unkept laws
are still capable of doing the works of destruction and
sorrow and ruin that have been credited to the devil in
all time* If physical, intellectual, and moral calamities
come, it will be small comfort to you to know that your
own ignorance or carelessness is the devil that brings
them. But in this destruction of the devil, and of a
wrong-doing God, we get the grand inspiration and the
hope that helps us face the future with good heart and
tireless endeavor. The way out and up being seen, and a
glimpse of light being visible as a herald of the dawn,
we "thank God, and take courage." Let our hope sing
itself in the lines of Tennyson : —

" O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

THE DEVIL; OR, THE NATURE OF EVIL. 111

" That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
"When God hath made the pile complete ;

" That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

" I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off— at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring."

VI.

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.

You all remember the story of the boy Theodore
Parker; how, when out in the field one day, he lifted a
stick to strike a turtle, but stood startled, and holding the
stick suspended in the air, because he seemed to hear
a voice distinctly saying, " It is wrong." On returning
home, he asked his mother what it meant; and she replied,
" It was the voice of God in your soul." And then she
went on to explain that, if he always listened to and
followed it, it would guide him in the way of right; but,
if not, it would fade out, and leave him in darkness and
error. Now, this might all be true with the conscience
of the boy of Theodore Parker's mother; for she was
exceptionally intelligent and religious. But a little obser-
vation would have discovered some remarkable exceptions
in the case of other boys in the neighborhood. Many of
them would have struck every tortoise they came across,
or have put coals on their backs to see them run, and
never have heard any voice of God say any thing about
it. What Theodore Parker thought a sin, they would

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.           113

have declared to be only jolly fun. What I wish to hint
is simply this : that this conscience, whatever it be, is not
uniform in its utterances, and does not declare any gen-
eral law of action. It tells one person that a thing is
wrong; it tells another that it is right; it tells a third
nothing about it.

These words of Mrs. Parker undoubtedly express what
has been the popular doctrine of Christendom. Con-
science has been supposed to be a direct intuition of
right, or the voice of God in the soul telling a person
what was right and what was wrong. But let us look a
little over the world, and see if we can still hold this
belief. The first thing that we observe is that the utter-
ances of conscience in different parts of the world not
only are not all alike, but that they are even contradictory.
Hardly a question concerning God, the state, society, or
the individual, that you cannot find conscience engaged
on both sides of. In one nation, conscience commands
the worship of Jehovah; in another, with equal impera-
tiveness, it commands the worship of Jupiter, or Brahma,
or Moloch, or Venus, or a bull, or a stone, or some sacred
serpent. In the breasts of our forefathers, it commanded
resistance to tyrants, and a contest for human liberty, even
at the cost of property and life. In Turkey, conscience
makes it a sacred duty to heaven to be abjectly submiss-
ive to a most degrading despotism. Conscience, in the
better parts of Europe and America, commands a state
of society in which one husband is faithful to one wife,
and in which both live for the welfare of the children.

114               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

In Utah, conscience binds two or forty women to one
man. In other parts of the world, this same conscience
sanctions the possession by one woman of several hus-
bands. The conscience of Plato led him to recommend
an ideal community, where husbands and wives should be
held in common. The American conscience commands
the most tender care of children, and the watching over
and securing comfort to the declining years of parents.
In India, conscience bids the loving mother cast her child
to the crocodile; and in the South Seas it commands
children to strangle their parents, or bury them alive. It
is held a religious duty to do this before they get old
and decrepit, that thus they may enter their eternal life
young and strong. Conscience in Sparta commanded
people to steal. Conscience in America builds prisons
for thieves. Conscience used to forbid taking interest on
loans. Money-lenders now worship God, build churches,
and sustain missions on the interest of their capital.
Conscience once carried on the slave-trade, and estab-
lished the institution in America. Conscience at last
rose against it, declared it " the sum of all villanies," and
poured out blood and treasure to 'overthrow it. Con-
science hung John Brown; and it made John Brown
willing to be hung. Conscience crucified Jesus; and con-
science deified him because he was willing to die for his
ideal of right. . Conscience built the Inquisition ; and
conscience made men strong to bear its tortures. Thus
it appears that conscience gives contradictory statements,
and is not, by any means, the same all over the world.

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.           115

There is hardly a namable crime that conscience has
not somewhere consecrated as a duty, and there is hardly
a namable duty, that conscience has not somewhere con-
demned as a crime; and not only is this true of the
condition of the world to-day, but there has been a contin-
ual change and progression in the doctrine of right and
wrong, along the line of the pathway of human history.
The conscience of the highest civilization is as much
above the lowest, as the highest types and forms of life on
the globe are above the fishes and the reptiles. But the
" voice of God," if it utter the constant and eternal truth,
cannot progress. The conscience of each man also
changes and develops in accordance with his own con-
ditions, education, and development from childhood to
age. He conscientiously drops some things he once re-
garded as duties, and he feels bound by new obligations
that before he did not recognize.

In the midst of all these changes and fluctuations, there
has been one and only one thing that has remained con-
stant and unmoved, like a rock in the midst of the sea.
This one thing is the fact that all men everywhere have
recognized and acknowledged the distinction between
right and wrong, and have confessed the meaning of
ought, — ought to do right, ought not to do wrong. Dis-
agreeing as to what was right, and what was wrong, they
have yet admitted that they ought to do the one, and avoid
the other. This basal rock we can rest on, and make it
the foundation on which to build a true doctrine. But we
are not quite ready for that yet.

u6             THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

I wish you to notice here that this universal conflict and
contradiction — a very Babel of consciences — utterly
disproves the teaching that the human conscience is, in
any exceptional sense, the " voice of God in the soul." It
is a purely human faculty, like the faculty for art or
music; and it gets its authority, as they do, by being true,
and just in so far as it is true. Now, orthodoxy regards
these other powers as purely natural; but it makes con-
science an exception, regarding it as a sort of permanent
inspiration, " inner light," or dwelling of God in the soul.
But if God in the soul speaks like a hanger-on at the
White House, or a paid partisan, according to circum-
stances, it is hard to see what advantage there is in calling
it divine. The important question is, Does it speak the
truth ? Orthodoxy explains the fallibility of conscience
by the fall of man, saying that this once divinely infallible
faculty is now only a part of the general wreck of human-
ity; but this is only another way of confessing that the
accuracy of conscience depends on the individual con-
dition, training, and character of every man. And on this
supposition, the consciences of all " converted" people
— those recovered from the fall — ought to agree. But
history teaches that the " Saints " have hated and fought
each other, for conscience' sake, quite as cordially as
though they had been the chief of sinners. Evolution
regards every faculty as an unfolding of the divine life of
things, but conscience no more truly so than any other.

But from this confusion on the part of the utterances of
conscience, many perplexed thinkers have hastily jumped

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE,           117

to the conclusion that there is no real and ultimate stand-
ard of right, that it is a mere matter of convention. Were
this so, every man and woman would be a law to them-
selves, and would be justified in doing " what was right in
their own eyes ;" and when a conflict arose between two
individuals, or between the individual and the state or
society, it could never rise to the dignity of a conflict of
principle. There would be no principle ; it would be on
the level of a bear-fight. It would consecrate and make
universal the doctrine that "might makes right." Any
man, then, who should be willing to die for what he called
right, would be simply a fool; and the great calendar of
the world's saints and heroes and martyrs would be re-
duced to a list of "candidates for a lunatic-asylum.

Conscience is not infallible : therefore, whether you call
it " voice of God," or natural faculty, it practically comes
to the overthrow of the old ideas concerning it. But the
doctrine that right and wrong are conventional matters is
still less tenable. Which way, then, shall we turn for the
truth ? The doctrine of evolution, as applied to the con-
science, will be found able to explain all the facts, and
solve all the difficulties. Let us, then, trace its root, and
mark the line of its development.

The root-meaning of the word " conscience" hints its
true significance. Conscience and consciousness are near
relations. They come from the same stock, and differ
chiefly in application and use. Consciousness is our own
knowledge of ourselves and of the relations between our
own faculties and powers. Conscience is our recognition

118              THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

of the relations, as right or wrong, in which we stand to
those about us, — God and our fellows. Con-scio is to
know with, in relations.

Now, let us see if we can find the basal principle of
morals, the very root of the distinction between right and
wrong. It is to be discovered in the fact of society, that
man is not alone, but exists in certain necessary relations
to others. If you will conceive a man utterly alone in the
universe, and not only so, but stripped of all those facul-
ties and powers that fit him for personal relations with
others, you will see that such a man would be incapable
of any moral action. He would not be moral, he would
not be immoral: he would simply be unmoral. He would
be incapable of doing, thinking, or suffering wrong: both
rights and duties would be abolished. The first time that
two persons looked each other in the face, and became
conscious, or had a conscience, of the independent exist-
ence and rights of each other, then the first feeble moral
sense became an element of human life. The lowest sub-
stratum out of which this sense was born was just this rec-
ognition of personal relationship or society. The germ of
it may be found in the forms of life" below the human, —
in a bird's nest, a lion's den, or a herd of horses. Some
highly developed dogs have been known to recognize the
rights of their fellows, and to show a sense of shame for
a mean action. But it was when primeval man developed
the first rudimentary society, that the human conscience
was born. It was the first feeble effort of the imagination
to " put yourself in his place," and thus conceive that

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.           119

others were only other selves, having similar desires, and
capable of feeling similar pains.

Conscience, then, began in, and was commensurate
with, the first society. What was the first society ? Nat-
urally and of necessity it was the family. So at the first
there was a family conscience. The father, the mother,
and the children recognized certain relationships in which
they stood to each other, and certain rights and duties
as springing out of these relationships. But while having
a conscience toward each other, they had no thought of
any rights or duties as pertaining to a family of strangers.
They could rob or murder or eat up another family with
no compunctions of the moral sense or qualms of con-
science whatever.

As the family developed into the tribe, there grew up,
along with the widened relationships, a tribal conscience.
All were bound together in the clan, by mutual rights and
duties. And this tribal conscience has usually been so
intense and strong that a member of the tribe could not
possibly live in disregard of it. And yet, beyond the
limits of the tribe, they have sometimes had no conscience
at all. Take, for example, a clan of Scottish Highland-
ers. Robbery, ravishment, and. murder were supposed
good enough for the members of a hostile clan, while all
these things were sternly repressed or severely punished
within their own borders. Or look at the tribes of
American Indians. A Delaware could be chivalrous and
high-toned as a modern gentleman toward the members
of his own tribe; and, at the same time, to lie to, to

120               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

cheat, to ambush, torture, or scalp, an Iroquois, was a
virtue.

Then, as the tribes grew large, organized, civilized, and
settled in cities, there came the development of the city
conscience. The palmiest days of Greece can illustrate
this. The Athenian conscience was practically limited
to Athens. The citizen of Athens, proud of his city
and jealous of her rights, had no conscience toward
Sparta.

But now that governments are not limited to city walls,
when many cities and towns are leagued together under
one national flag, we have developed a national con-
science. The progress of civilization has hardly ad-
vanced beyond this as yet. Americans feel a wrong done
to an American citizen anywhere on the globe; and they
feel justified in urging the government to demand redress,
even at the price of war. But they do hot lie awake
nights, nor get righteously angry, over wrongs done to a
German or an Italian citizen. Yet in one case the wrong
is as great and real as in the other. We feel an insult
to the piece of bunting we call our flag, and are ready to
fight for the national honor. But instead of having the
same conscience of wrong when England is insulted, we
can most of us remember the time when thousands of
Americans would chuckle over it, and think it was good
enough for her. We sympathize at once with the faintest
scream of our eagle; but the sorrow changes to a grin of
satisfaction when we hear the lion roar.

In regard to other and broader questions, however, we

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.          121

bury the distinctions of nationality in the consciousness
of the race.

In some directions there is what may be called a
Caucasian, or white man's, conscience. It is only a little
while ago, that it had passed into a proverb that " negroes
had no rights which a white man was bound to respect."
It was this spirit that Nasby caricatured when he pro-
posed the sarcastic improvement of the New Testament
words so as to make them read, " Suffer the little (white)
children to come unto me." And to-day, in California,
Christian men look on, and see the Chinese subjected to
such treatment as is a disgrace to humanity. Such abuse
of white men would kindle a revolution. Yet the San
Francisco conscience is very comfortable over the matter.

The day will come when the present rudimentary
notions of the rights and wrongs of man will be devel-
oped into all the breadth and grandeur of a comprehen-
sive human conscience. All the old partial forms of
conscience still remain, and have their representatives
in other directions. In many the family conscience is
still dominant; and the sense of right and wrong in their
hearts grows weak as they leave the home. Then there
is a church conscience. Even Paul could write, "Do
good unto all men, but specially to them who are of the
household of faith." And there is a club or corporate
conscience, illustrated by such orders as the Masons.
They feel obliged to help each other, not so much
because they are men as because they are Masons. The
church and the Masons are good, only they are partial.

122                 THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

So there are professional and business consciences. Min-
isters, lawyers, bankers, merchants, mechanics, each too
often shut up their sympathies within their own limits,
making one set of rules for themselves, and another for
them "that are without." A true conscience will be
wider than this. It will issue in what has been finely
called "the enthusiasm of humanity." It will make
binding on every soul the saying of Jesus, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself;" and the word "neighbor"
shall be comprehensive enough to include every human
being.

And one step more must conscience take. Paul could
raise the question, and give a negative answer to his in-
quiry, as to whether God cared for oxen: " Doth God take
care for oxen ? " But that is a narrow and only partially
developed sense of right and wrong, that leaves out of
its account any living thing. There is a sentimental
regard for animals, as well as for men, that is some-
times ready to oppose the justifiable sacrifice of a lesser
and personal to a greater and general good. A few
people care for pets. But the " Society for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals " is a living witness for the
fact that the human conscience is lamentably weak on the
side of our dealings with the brute creation. English
hunting scenes, Spanish bull-fights, as well as the practice
of American sportsmen, witness the same thing. An old
divine could speak of it as a proof of God's goodness to
men, that he made the animals for their delectation in
such delightful sports as bull and bear fights; and Mac-

124                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

conscience is one that answers to, and takes cognizance
of, the real relationships in which we stand to God, the
world about us, and our fellow-men. A false conscience
is one that answers to, and is formed in accordance with,
what the man supposes to be true, but which is really
false. Let us take some specimens from real life.

I. A false conscience.

The early Greeks and Romans believed heartily in the
supposed fact that Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus and their
fellow gods and goddesses held a celestial court on the
summit of Mount Olympus. To their thought these were
real divinities, ruling the world, and holding in their
hands the destinies of nations and of men. Their moral
sense of right and wrong, their conscience of religious
obligation, took hold of, and adjusted itself to, these sup-
posed but really non-existent facts. Thus, out of what
we know was only inherited superstition that had no
objective reality, they constructed a whole religious sys-
tem by which they were bound with the strictest sense
of obligation. They built temples, and instituted rites,
and felt their whole life touched and shaped by what to
them was the real sense of the overlooking and ever-
present gods. We know to-day that what they so labori-
ously performed were no real duties at all. Their fears
were groundless, and their hopes were dreams. They
had a vital conscience of what did not exist. These
same people, believing that the proper burial of the body
was intimately connected with the future rest of the soul,
would suffer conscientious pangs for years on account of

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.             125

any neglect of the funeral rites. We know that all this
fear was purely imaginary. I have spoken of tribes that
held it a religious duty to put their parents to death
before they grew old and infirm, because they believed
that, if they entered the spirit-land withered or old or
decrepit, they would remain so forever. Thus their
consciences turned murder of father and mother into
the most sacred religious duties. We, knowing that these
supposed facts are only superstition, regard as horrible
what they think religion. Paul, believing in Moses as
against Christ, thought it his duty to persecute the early
Christians. Afterward, when he changed his thought of
the relations in which he stood, he found out that his
first conscience in the matter was a false one. The first
Christians, believing that Christ was coming immediately
in the clouds of heaven to destroy and reconstruct the
world, held it their duty to oppose property and marriage,
and the whole order of things on which civilization de-
pends. Their conscience in this matter was false because
their supposed facts were untrue. The Romanist wor-
ships Mary, and prays to saints, and trusts in relics and
superstitious ceremonies. His conscience binds him to
this; but we know that his conscience is false, because it
is made to accord with a whole world of imaginations
that are no facts, and that do not at all touch the question
of his moral goodness, or real relation to God or man.
The early Puritans felt conscientiously bound to drive out
the Quakers, and burn the witches; but theirs was a false
conscience, because the Quakers were as sincere religion-

126                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

ists as themselves, and there were no such things as real
witches. Moody and Sankey believe in an angry God,
and an everlasting hell; and their consciences are made
to answer to these supposed facts; but, disbelieving what
to them are vital truths, we conscientiously oppose their
methods and their work as dishonoring to both God and
humanity. So, all about us, we see men and women who
have a false Sunday conscience, or business conscience,
or reform conscience, or prohibitionist conscience, or
political Conscience; and these men will be conscien-
tiously unjust and uncharitable and persecuting and cruel.
The most uncomfortable man in the world to get along
with is one who is pig-headedly obstinate in his conscien-
tiousness. He is so certain that he is doing God's work,
that he will be religiously inhuman about it. He gets so
anxious to drive men into heaven, that he will use the
spirit and weapons of hell in the work.

Now, all this false conscientiousness grows out of the
fact that men suppose they stand in certain relationships
that do not really exist. Thus the imagined duties are
no duties at all.

II. A True Conscience.

The nature of a true conscience appears in the fact
that it is the very opposite of the false. It is one that
answers to the real facts and relations of life. I am
under no real obligation to any imaginary God, whether
he be the dream of a Hindoo or Greek or Jew or Chris-
tian. Toward the God of Pius IX., or of the Sultan of
Turkey, or of the Emperor of China, or of the evangelist

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.             127

Moody, I feel no gratitude, and admit no sense of duty
or obligation. The real duty lies toward the real and
true God who is manifested in the great laws, forces, and
realities of the world, and in the highest and purest life
and thought of humanity. Though each narrow reli-
gionist calls it infidelity and atheism, yet the truth of the
true God is the only true religion of which the true con-
science will be the echo. Orthodoxy regards the liberal
as derelict in duty because he does not join him in his
work of soul-saving. So does the Mohammedan look
upon the Christian because he does not seek his heaven
through Allah and his prophet. But the God, and the
heaven, and the hell, and the lost humanity, of ortho-
doxy, we believe to be purely imaginary. Thus their all-
engrossing work is not only no real duty to us, but it is
even effort thrown away, power wasted, that might be
rightly used in real help for man. A true conscience,
then, is one that knows and is adjusted to the realities
of life. When men know the truth about God, about
themselves, — body and mind and spirit, — about the real
relations of equity in which they stand to their fellow-
men in state and church and society, and when they
appreciate these, and adjust their consciences to them,
then they will have a true conscience. An absolutely
true conscience of course cannot exist so long as our
knowledge of the reality of things is only partial. We
can only make closer and closer approximations to the
ultimate truth. So conscience will keep step with the
progress of the race. Just as the old theories of the uni-

128                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

verse are being constantly corrected by the advancing
knowledge of the world, and the real facts of things are
coming to light more and more, so will the sense of duty
grow, broaden, and advance, re-adjusting itself continu-
ally to the higher intelligence of the time. It is only
beginning to be seen how conscience must have to do
with the care of the body, with sanitary regulations of
cities and homes, with the proper treatment of the crim-
inal classes, and with the whole physical life of the
world. "The thoughts of man are widened with the
process of the suns." And so the conscience of man
will widen to the measure of his thoughts.

But in the midst of this progress, and since the con-
science is not infallible, which way lies present, practical
duty? In the first place, I would say, Whatever any
man's conscience commands, that he must do. It is to
each soul the supreme voice of obligation; and he must
obey it on penalty of violating and weakening and killing
out his moral sense. Evolution will insist on this just
as strongly as the old orthodoxy. Whatever you are
persuaded is wrong, that you have no business to do.
Whatever you think is right, you are under the highest
obligation to perform. Even though to others it be
only a whim or a prejudice, it is to you supreme duty.
Whether it is a Romanist refusing meat on Friday, or a
High-Churchman staying away from opera in Lent, or
an Orthodox refusing to ride in a street-car on Sunday,
still each one must obey the dictate of conscience. If
the pope thinks Luther is sending men to hell, then he

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE.             129

must seek to crush him; and if Luther believes he is
standing for God, then he must defy the pope. And here,
in this clash and conflict of consciences, come the great
tragedies of history. Men and causes temporarily go
down; but God and truth ultimately win the day for a
higher humanity. Out of the tempest comes a clearer
air in which the outlines of truth are more distinctly
visible.

But, secondly, each man must remember that his con-
science is not infallible, and that it may not represent the
real truth of things. So there comes in a duty that over-
tops all others, — the duty of perpetual, earnest * search
for truth, that so the conscience may be made to accord
with the real facts of God. You must keep ever your
eyes open for light, and your heart open with a world-
wide welcome for whatever is pure and true. Remember
that we are finite minds in the midst of infinite realities.
"We know only in part;" we must seek to know as
completely as we may. Throwing away prejudice and
conceit, seek to make your conscience like the magnetic
needle. The needle ever and naturally seeks the un-
changing pole. Ignorance and false teaching, and self-
confidence and passion, are side attractions that deflect
it from the right. Surround it only with truth, and it will
guide the way to God and the eternal life. " A good
conscience" is to be found only by finding out the
real truth of things, — truth that can be verified and
settled as true, — and then by a constant and sincere
obedience. With loyal heart, then, anxious to do the

130                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

right when discovered, let our daily longing and prayer
be the sincere cry that the Grecian Ajax sent up out of
the darkness of his conflict before the walls of ancient
Troy, —for light.

" Walk in the light: so shalt thou know

That fellowship of love
His spirit only can bestow
Who reigns in light above.

" Walk in the light: and thou shalt own

Thy darkness passed away,
Because that light on thee hath shone
In which is perfect day."

VII.
LOVE IN LAW.

Law, in the popular mind, means all that is cold, hard,
heartless, and cruel. This feeling has been fostered
somewhat by inconsiderate writing on the part of some
scientists, or by popular misconception of scientific writ-
ings. But the larger cause has been the tone of theol-
ogy and the pulpit. These have represented law as only
police and hangmen, thunders of Sinai, or torments of
hell. For ages the plan has been systematically pursued,
of making men feel that they were in the clutches of
cruel law bent on their destruction, and then of offer-
ing them deliverance from its iron power by means of a
gospel of mercy and love that was represented as being
outside of and above law. Thus the belief has been
created, that law and love were of necessity in a kind of
eternal antagonism. To the question, then, of the nature
and results of law, whether it is loving or cruel, we will
now address ourselves.

The early conception of the universe was that its great
forces were predominantly cruel. Cold, darkness, storm,

132                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

hunger, wild beasts, death, all these were the work of evil
beings that had no love for man, and were instigated
by hatred and malice. Nature was cruel. It was not,
however, cruel law. These early men had no conception
of any such thing as law. Cause and effect had no
orderly relation in their mind. It was only cruel caprice.
Behind these great movements and forces were malignant
persons that loved the smell of blood, and rejoiced in
the infernal music of human groans, and eagerly licked
up the tears that sorrow let fall. This is true of all the
early religions. The popular conception of Jehovah
among the Jews was that he was hard and cruel, the
god of thunderbolts and hail, " a consuming fire," one
punishing children for the sins of the fathers. At first,
then, nature was cruel caprice.

In after-times there gradually grew up a belief in a
good god. But you must notice that he was not at all
the god of these supposed cruel forces of nature. They
were bad gods still in all their terrible reality. Only
another god appeared, who was good and kindly disposed
toward humanity, and who opposed and sought to de-
stroy the works of the wicked nature-deities. This good
divinity was outside of and wholly separate from nature,
so that nature was still regarded as evil. This belief was
fully developed in Persia, where Zoroaster had set in
eternal opposition the good Ahura-Mazda and the evil
Ahriman. A similar belief appears in early Greece,
where Prometheus is chained forever to the rock, while
a vulture eternally devours his vitals; and all because

LOVE IN LAW.                                133

he had shown himself disposed to help mankind by
revealing some of the celestial secrets. He is the good
god overpowered by a majority of the Olympians, who
were evil disposed toward men. A similar idea appears
in early Christianity. God the Father, laying aside the
Old-Testament hardness, appears as one who loves and
wishes to save humanity. But the world of material
forms and forces is all opposed to him, being under the
dominion of the " Prince of this world." God in Christ
was to deliver from his power, and from the domination
of the world of sin and death, all who put their trust in
him, and renounced loyalty to the devil. Christendom
has generally stood for this phase of belief. There was
not yet any law, in the modern sense of that term: it
was only that God stood apart from and opposed to the
evil forces and dominion of nature, ready to save out of
it any who would accept the conditions. From this has
sprung up the present popular conception of nature and
law as something apart from and opposed to God, so
that the religious literature of the time is full of the sup-
posed need of a loving power to care for, protect in, and
deliver from, these great natural laws and powers. The
thought is, These laws are hard and cold and cruel: they
do not heed our tears ; they do not care for our prayers:
we want to believe in some one outside of and above
law, who will turn aside its wheels, and save us from
being crushed under the onward roll of this Juggernaut.

But in very modern times, and in spite of all senti-
ments of fear or feeling, wide and deep study has

134                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

oped a knowledge and sense of law, as opposed to what
is regarded as the capricious action of will. And this
belief in law threatens to cover, with its network of cause
and "effect, all the universe. Science recognizes every-
where in nature the dominion of law. It has also de-
monstrated the law of development, or evolution, that
brings into the general order the whole movement and
upward march of life on the globe. It talks now of laws
of history, laws of society, laws of virtue, laws of crime.
The most changeable and apparently capricious move-
ments and forces, it threatens to catch and hold in the
meshes of its universal order. And all the while, in the
popular mind, this law seems to exclude God and his
love, and to leave all things in the hands of a hard and
heedless fate.

Men wish to know, then, whether this is true. If law is
everywhere, is love shut out ? The popular conception
of love, as something outside of, above, and delivering
from law, is shut out. God himself is not above law;
for law is order and reason and the cosmos. Put God
outside of law, and you make him disorder and unreason
and chaos. Not that God is subject to any law higher
and stronger than himself; but that he must live out the
law of his own being. That man is subject to the law
of his own being, is only to say that he is sane. Supe-
riority to law, order, and reason, is what we mean by
insanity. The condition, then, must be one of two, —
law without love, or else love in law; law the expression
of love; for love without law, or above it, or outside of

LOVE IN LAW,                               135

it, is only unreason and chaos. Love in law, then, is
the thought of the highest and clearest thinkers; and it
must be the ruling thought of the future.

These three stages of thought the human mind has
passed through in its upward evolution. First, cruelty
as caprice; next, love as caprice opposed to capricious
cruelty; and, lastly, law, — first thought of as hard and
heartless, and then lifting up into all-dominant love, as
itself of necessity law and order, superior to caprice, and,
as being perfect, incapable of change. This last is the
position of "the religion of evolution." Let us now
see if we can comprehend something of its truth and
beauty.

And, first, we will see how broad and all-inclusive is
this universal "reign of law." As we have seen, the
early races put persons everywhere. There was a god of
the year. Day and Night were deities. The Dawn, a
goddess, led forth the dance of the rosy-fingered Hours,
twelve other deities. The Sun, a god, drove his flashing
chariot-wheels across the solid roadway of the sky; and
at night the Moon, "pale goddess," ruled the dusky
Hours, and led out the Stars for their night-long choral
song. The wind, and the clouds*, and the light, and the
sky, and the rivers, and the seas, and the trees all had
their god or goddess. Nothing ever came to pass except
as the work of some personal will. And these wills had
no conference or understanding together; but each did
" what was right in his own eyes." The god of the winds
made them blow to suit his own whim or caprice, or to

136                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

help or harm, as he took a notion. The god of the sky
sent rain or dew or bright days, as best accorded with
his own convenience, or as moved thereto by prayers or
sacrifices. The god of the grapes gave plenty of wine,
or blasted the ripening harvest, as he pleased. Ceres
blessed the corn, or cut off the crop. Nothing was sup-
posed to occur according to fixed and calculable order.
All was practically chance, because no one knew before-
hand — except by oracle or prophecy — what any partic-
ular god might conclude to do. This was the condition
of thought throughout the so-called heathen world.

Among the Hebrews it was very much the same.
While, in their later centuries, they were monotheistic,
and recognized but one God, the supreme Jehovah, they
yet thought of all natural forces as under the direct and
constant superintendence of angels, who ruled as vice-
gerents, or satraps, over the different departments of the
world. There was an angel in the sun, an angel in the
moon, angels in the stars, angels of the winds and waters,
rivers and trees, angels of rain and storm and darkness,
angels of the growing crops and of flowers, angels every-
where, and the active agents in every thing. This sys-
tem differed from the " heathen " only in this, that these
angels were supposed to be subject and answerable to
Jehovah, who was the only king. But this difference was
partly broken down by the belief that sometimes these
angels were rebellious and faithless to God, and ruled
wickedly after their own evil thought and will.

Thus, at first, law was nowhere. This in general was

LOVE IN LAW.                                137

the condition of affairs until very recent times. Perhaps
few are accustomed to think how modern a thing is
this conception of law. Even in the time of Kepler, the
wisest astronomers must think of an angel in the sun and
moon and stars to account for their movements. The
first grand triumph of law was in Newton's discovery of
gravitation. This bound the orbs of the material uni-
verse in the perfect and beautiful order that to-day makes
astronomy the most exact and fascinating of sciences.
But by many the comet was still regarded as an excep-
tion, a lawless and unaccountable wanderer up and down
the heavens. But when it was found that gravitation was
able to calculate even his apparent irregularity, and to
tell, from the path of his departure, just the year and
hour of his return, even over the gulf of centuries, then
the comet himself began to keep time and step with the
orderly march of the "host of heaven," the armies of
God. From that day to this, the advance of knowledge,
and the discovery of law, have kept even pace. Caprice
and miracle and spirits are still sometimes called in to
explain what else is not understood. But we know from
the past that a thousand things considered miraculous and
inexplicable by natural law have at last been explained,
and are now thoroughly understood, so that from known
causes certain and definite results can be easily and
always predicted with an absolute certainty; and, if any
thing can be learned from the logic of the past, it is
certain that the mysteries and unaccountable phenomena
of the world will one clay be known, and reduced to the

138                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

natural and universal order of cause and effect. Caprice
and lawlessness are already driven into the dark corners
of the earth, where the light' of knowledge has not yet
penetrated. But this is without exception true, that there
is absolutely nothing that is known which is not subject
to and explainable by law. Let us look about us a little
and see, so as to impress upon ourselves this truth.

Every sun and moon and star and comet is held in and
guided by the reins of an omnipresent law. Even their
perturbations and irregularities can be accounted for and
predicted beforehand. The development of the earth,
from its molten to its habitable condition, has been in the
hands and under the guidance of a law so perfect that
the most remote and various results might have been
seen and predicted from the beginning. The history of
the- rise, the growth, and the decay of nations, also is
only another illustration of law. The nature of their
origin, their elements, and their surroundings, have deter-
mined their careers and the " bounds of their habita-
tion." It matters not that they themselves have not
recognized it. The drops of water in a stream do not
recognize the currents and the banks ; but one standing
on the shore can trace and formulate the law of its whole
movement from source to mouth. So, as we study the
past of humanity, we can see that the movements, the
wars, the conquests and defeats, the overturnings, were
not matters of caprice or chance, but were governed by
all-determining laws. So true is this, that one who studies
France, or Spain, or Germany, or the United States, can

LOVE IN LAW.                                139

trace the order of its destiny, and predict the main out-
lines of its near future. Even the fair forms below us,
the slightest and most frail, tell the same story. The
wild field-flower, in all its freedom of growth and grace
of development, is the handiwork of law. Down in the
little earth-hid seed, and in the invisible forces of the air,
are the powers that control its apparently wanton growth,
and unroll its tinted petals until they look up perfect to
the sun. It is the product of conditions so fixed that the
size and shape of its stem, the number of its leaves, the
shading of its colors, and the quality of its odors, could
not possibly have been other than exactly what they are.
And so far is this from marring its grace and beauty, that
it requires the perfect laws to produce the perfect finish.
Thus the nice hand of law has wrought for us the million
varieties of the grasses and the flowers; and they are
what they are simply because they came up in "the law
of the Lord."

The same is true of those forces of nature that seem
the most lawless and uncontrolled. Even the wind, as it
"bloweth where it listeth," always "listeth" to blow in
the way appointed it. It has its fixed courses, its going
out and its return. It runs swiftly in well-defined chan-
nels, as truly as do the rivers in their banks. And while
seemingly loitering on, toying with a flower, or a lock of
hair, or fanning an invalid's cheek, its way is as sure as
that of the eddying ripple on the brook's surface. And
when the sweeping hurricane drags on through the wild
heavens its black car of desolation, it rushes on its

140                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

appointed way as really as do mountain torrents that the
rains have swollen. So the lightning strikes no uncertain
blow; neither do the surcharged clouds of the tempest
drift aimlessly in the sky. Law sits as charioteer, and
holds the certain rein. Free, wild, unchanged, the fury
of the storm is as truly in the hands of law as is the
electric flash when bound to the continent-spanning or
ocean-diving wire, and bearing regular messages for man.
Gen. Myers sits in Washington, and, reviewing the winds
and the clouds all over the continent, is able to tell us
day by day, whether or not we shall need our overcoats
and umbrellas.

It is law, too, that gives us the order of the seasons.
Its mighty arm swings us through the circuit of the
zodiac, and fills our hearts and lives with the variety of
the year. In this confidence we know that " summer
and winter, seedtime and harvest, shall not fail."

So in our individual life. There is no part of our
being that law does not touch, mould, and direct. By
law we make every motion of our bodies; by it we
breathe, and enliven and color the blood; by it the
blood courses vein and artery, repairing nature's waste
and wear; by it the heart beats, and the brain thinks,
the eye drinks in beauty and the ear, sounds; it com-
passes us round, and hedges us in on every side; but
do we feel it a bondage ? Not if we are healthy. The
least lawlessness is incipient disease; more becomes
insanity or death: so law is life.

And all this is just as true of thought and feeling,

LOVE IN LAW.                           141

the intellectual and the spiritual realms. Law and order
are everywhere the conditions of life, of happiness, of
goodness, and of beauty. So wide is its sweep, and so
grand is its unity, that Herbert Spencer has been able to
think and to formulate in a few sentences a law of the
universe, of which all things are only illustrations. This
is the grandest achievement of the intellect of man.

Now, whether we like it or not, it is pretty well settled
that we shall have to accept this universality of law as a
fact. All the knowledge of the world points to it more
and more definitely as true. Law and order reign.
Curses do not bring storms, nor prayers avert them.
Every department of the universe has its own laws and
conditions; and events are controlled solely by these.
Not only is this so, but the highest religious conception
of God is coming to demand just such a state of things.
A God who constructs a system, and then has to keep
coming in to regulate and re-arrange its working; who
changes his mind, and fixes things over after another and
a new plan; who could not see and order all things from
the beginning; who submits to having his elbow jogged,
and to take wiser suggestions from men than any he had
before thought of; who comes to help out of difficulties
that his own foresight might have provided against; who
has to keep mending and looking after things in an
abnormal way, — such a God, it is beginning to be seen,
is only a being created in the image of man, and in the
image of a man who is not over-wise or over-good, either.
To him who has gained a higher conception of God, a

142                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

conception so grand as to be in keeping with universal
and eternal law and order, it seems impiety and irrever-
ence to think of him after any lower fashion; just as to
the ordinary Christian it would seem impiety to represent
his God as capable of being pleased with the groans and
the burning of a human sacrifice, or as being liable to
human ignorance. So any thought of God less high and
grand than that which embraces universal and eternal law
and order seems irreverent and degrading.

But now let us see if there is any place for love in such
a system. I am ready to admit that the heart cries out
for love just as loudly as the brain calls for law; and,
further, I am ready to admit that to gain order for the
head at the price of the loss of happiness and trust for
the heart is a most questionable advantage, or even a
positive loss; for the heart and its needs are as real and
true and high a part of human life, as is the knowledge
and thought of the brain. I even believe that happiness
and peace are so necessary a part of life, that any life is
a failure that, in the long-run, does not gain them. If I
would hesitate to say, " Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly
to be wise," I would not hesitate to say that I would
oppose knowledge, did I not believe that its outcome
would result in the highest and truest welfare and happi-
ness of man. So I would not slight the heart and its
affections, even for the sake of the grandest truths and
laws.

Instead, then, of doubting about the answer to the
question as to whether there is any place for love in a

LOVE IN LAW.                                143

system of universal law, I am ready to make the claim
that there is no place in it for any thing but love. It is
all one complete, perfect expression of the wisest and
highest love. Consider, —

(1) That we know love and joy as facts of science.
They reach from the depth to the height, and sweep
through the whole length and breadth of animate life on
the globe. The whole natural and healthful creation is
one scene of sentient gladness. The fish balanced in
his crystal home, or darting here and there like a beam
of light, is full to his utmost capacity of gladness.
Healthy life itself is an ecstasy. The insects that glitter
and buzz in the sun are as full of joy as a liquid drop
is full of water. And in June

" The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
A-tilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives."

And so all through human life, just so far as there is
health, harmony, and right adjustment between man and
his conditions, there is a music of joy, like that of an
instrument when kept in tune. And from the mother-
bird in her nest, or the father-bird gathering food for the
young, clear up through every grade, till you sit beside
the human mother rocking her cradled babe, or watching
over the restless sleep of some sick darling, there is every-
where the all-pervading and ever-growing love and tender-
ness that are the glory of the highest humanity. Now, all

144                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

this love and tenderness are facts of life ; and as such
they are a part of the infinite manifestation of God.
They have a source as much as do mountains and fossil
bones. And we may justly reason that the fountain is
more than all the streams. For the growth of civilization
is the growth of love and care and help. Since, then,
these are growing still, with no sign of diminution, we
may believe that the source is so much greater than all
we see as to justify us in asserting that all human love
and tenderness and care are only faint glimmers and
reflections of the divine. Your tenderest mother-love is
no more when compared to the divine love than the shim-
mer of moonbeams on the water is equal to the glory of
the noonday sun.

Law, or no law: so much we may say we know.
To see, then, whether this fact is contradicted or over-
balanced by the fact of universal law, let us go on, —

(2) To inquire, What is law ? On this point there is a
strange and wide-spread misconception. Theology has
so long taught that nature was opposed to, or at least
outside of and separate from, God, that it is a long and
difficult task to correct the error. Natural law, then, is
only God's method of working. The highest science
teaches that matter and force and law are only manifesta-
tions of God to human consciousness. This is the highest
wisdom of all the ages. Since God is equally every-
where, and in all things, science knows no distinction of
natural and supernatural, or of strange things from one
side breaking through and interfering with the regular

LOVE IN LAW,                                145

on-going of affairs on the other side. All law, then,
everywhere is natural; and this natural law is simply God
working. And even if we could not observe it all about
us, the uniformity of his working would be a necessary
inference from his perfection. To speak after human
analogies, if, the first time God ever did any particular
thing, he did it the best way, then, under similar circum-
stances, he must always do it the same way: otherwise
he must do it in some poorer way, and that would be a
display of imperfection and unwisdom destructive of our
very idea of God. God's perfection, then, demands uni-
versal and eternal law as its natural expression. When
we wish for a break in this perfect system, we. are wish-
ing for the dethronement or the degradation of God.
But,—

(3) Take notice of the character of the working of
natural law. It is always and everywhere for good.
There is no one single natural law in all the universe, so
far as we know, whose normal working is not for good.
Why, then, would we have them weakened, broken in
upon, or changed ? All evil is only law broken or dis-
obeyed. Even pain is only a signal marked " Danger!"
that is set up along the railways, at the switches and
crossings of human life. If it were not painful for the
moths to get singed in the gas-flame, they would burn
themselves up in its luring brightness. If pain were not
the result of breaking the laws of the body, who would
be careful to keep in health ? . Were it not for the pains
of discontent in low conditions, what force would have

146                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

driven man on and up into civilization? It is just this
perpetual unrest and sorrow in conditions of incomplete-
ness and maladjustment, that compel the perpetual strug-
gle for higher and still higher forms of life. It is a seri-
ous question as to whether any useless pain can anywhere
be found. Certain it is that the natural, healthful work-
ing of all the forces of the world issue in goodness and
joy. Health and harmony and obedience are everywhere
music. Pain is simply God saying, " Get out of danger,"
or, " Go up higher."

A fearful picture is sometimes drawn of the battles, the
rapine, the blood, the mutual devouring, of the animal
world; and the argument for nature's cruelty is drawn
from it. It appears to me to be one huge fallacy.. We
carry our human sympathies and hopes and fears down
into this lower life, and judge it by our standard. Look
at the facts. Animal life in the main, and all through, is
happy : they are content and satisfied. But death is a part
of the law of life : so all must die. This is no wrong.
A good that I keep for a year is not an evil, because it is
then withdrawn. Now, it is doubtless true that, in being
slain and devoured, the lower animals suffer less than
they would by lingering, and dying a natural death, per-
haps from starvation. They suffer from fear so long as
this fear can aid their escape; but it is well known that,
in almost all cases when the prey is caught, fear is gone,
paralysis takes its place, and death is painless. Dr. Liv-
ingstone relates that, when the lion's paw was on him, he
was stunned, and had lost all fear; and a similar thing

LOVE IN LAW.                                 147

is true of all the victims of carnivorous birds and beasts.
Natural law, then, everywhere works for good; and until
some law is discovered whose normal working is evil, the
statement that law may justly be called an expression of
love must stand unimpeached.

Law, then, makes the order, beauty, and music of the
heavens. This is the true "music of the spheres." It is
only law that makes civilization possible. It is because
we know the laws of earth and iron are constant, that we
can build railroads; and because the laws of steam are
changeless, we can run our engines upon them. With
faith in the unchanging laws of wind and wave, we build
and sail our ships all over the globe. On the laws of gas,
we build and arrange the lamps that turn our streets from
darkness into illumination. The law of electricity assures
us that the cable that to-day takes our message to London
will not be useless to-morrow. By the laws of nature we
erect the stores and houses, and lay out the streets, of our
cities. It is the stability of God in our bricks and stones
and timbers, that makes us rest at night, with no fear that
he will change his mind before morning, and let the whole
thing down about our ears. On our faith in the laws of
light, we put the plate-glass in our windows, and cut our
jewels. Because laws change not, we have to-day the
pictures and statues of the masters of the olden time. It
is the stability of the laws of human life that makes it
possible to frame constitutions and establish governments.
If, in the long-run, humanity were capricious, statesman-
ship would be impossible. Art and science would be

148                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

unknown but for law, that holds all things fast and firm.
Commerce means trust in the general stability of human
nature. Crimes and betrayals are only insignificant ex-
ceptions. That Shakspere and Homer hold their place
in human thought, is only because the law of human
thought is uniform. There could be no growth or devel-
opment of religion, were it not for the constant elements
of human thinking and human conduct. Were there no
law in character, if it were the caprice of a self-moved
will, how could we ever trust each other? That a man
had perilled his life for virtue to-day, would be no guar-
anty that he might not commit murder to-morrow. That
there is a cosmos at all, a universe in which life and
thought and knowledge and progress are possible, is just
because of the universality of law.

I do not wish any gospel, then, to deliver me from the
law. To deliver my heart from the law would be to make
me capricious, as likely to hate as love. To deliver my
brain from the law would simply mean insanity. To
deliver my body from the law would be disease or death.
Whatever lives, lives in, and whatever grows, grows by,
law. Happiness and heaven were delusions without it.
Law, then, is the all-present, wise, loving God. God's
law comes in the light, and wakes me for my morning
labor. By his law I remember yesterday, and link the
past with the present. By his law I break my nightly
fast, and fit my body for duty and joy. By his law I live
and think and labor and play. By his law I build my
house, and do my work. By his law the world is full of

LOVE IN LAW.                              149

life and brightness and opportunity. By his law the
languor of sleep once more comes over me, while still his
law makes my bed, and rocks me to rest on the old earth's
bosom, " as she dances about the sun."

Do we, then, need any providence as a protection
against or deliverance from nature and law? That could
only mean that we need to have God defend us against
himself. God is in law, and law is in God. This uni-
versal law is only universal, all-encompassing, tireless,
changeless providence. It hurts us only when we trans-
gress. But, then, it is for our good to be hurt, and so
warned, lifted up, and delivered. " The law of the
Lord," then, "is perfect,".perfect wisdom, perfect power,
and perfect love. May we not, then, on our part, exclaim
with the old-time Psalmist, only with fuller meaning, " O,
how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day" ?
And may we not fitly close with the upward-reaching cry,
"Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, and I shall
keep it unto the end " ? For " the law is holy and just
and good"

VIII.

PRAYER.

The place which prayer holds in the popular thought,
the controversy in regard to it, and the consequent doubt
and confusion, — these make it a topic of the first im-
portance both to the understanding and the heart. To
glance at its origin and development, and then to study
the popular beliefs in the light of modern knowledge, and
so, if possible, to gain a position both rational and devout,
— this is my present purpose.

I have shown that the early objects of human worship
were not persons to be loved. The gods of the childhood
of the world were beings who filled the souls of men with
dread. The first altars were built by fear; and the first
prayers were deprecations, pleas, and entreaties intended
to ward off impending ill. It was common among the
early tribes to worship the spirit of their ancestor, who
was supposed to watch over his descendants, and to hold
their fortunes in his hand. This worship did not spring
from any special love or veneration; but they believed
that their tribal founder was jealous of his memory and

PRAYER.                                  151

honor, and that, if they did not keep alive his name
and his worship, he had both the power and the dis-
position to do them incalculable harm. So their altars
and their prayers were only a sort of tribute paid to keep
their god in good humor, and thus to buy his favor and
protection.

And a similar idea prompted the aboriginal worship of
the forces of nature. The forces and movements that
pressed most closely upon them were those of hunger and
cold and storm; forces that hurt them, and of which they
stood in continual fear. Thus their prayers were not at
all in the nature of loving communion, as of a child with
father or mother. They did not love their gods, nor care
for their friendship or fellowship for its own sake. They
only stood in dread of what the gods might do, and
thought it the safest way to keep on as good terms with
them as possible. So their worship took on a sort of
commercial aspect. They thought to buy favors, or at
least freedom from injury, as one would put a bribe into
the hands of an unjust judge, or purchase with a gift the
good-will of an irresponsible despot. When they went
out to war against their enemy, they first sought the altars
or temples of their god, endeavored to learn his disposi-
tion in the matter, appealed to his ambition as against the
honor that the enemies' god might gain if he did not
show himself the stronger; they promised special worship
and offerings if they came back victor; and then, after the
battle, they came and hung their trophies in his temple,
and ascribed to him the praise of their conquest. You

152                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

find ideas like these even among the Hebrews. Moses is
represented as appealing to the pride and ambition of
Jehovah. Weary with the obstinacy and obtuseness of
Israel, Jehovah threatens to destroy them. Then Moses
pleaded with him, and said, " Only think how Egypt and
her gods will exult, if, after leading thy people into the
wilderness, thou leavest them to perish, as though thou
wast not able to lead them on to the conquest of the
Promised Land." And the plea prevailed, and the people
were spared.

The old-time gods were accustomed to pray to each
other; for as each had his department of the world, if he
wished to gain any end beyond his control, he must do
it through the favor of the deity in command. AEneas
and his followers are on their way from Troy to Italy,
when Juno, who is their enemy and wishes their destruc-
tion, goes to AEolus, the god of the winds, and by a con-
descending appeal to his pride and friendship, and by the
promise of a magnificent gift, she persuades him to let
loose his winds, and raise a tempest on the sea, so that
the Trojan fleet may be destroyed. At the same time,
Venus goes to Jupiter, and begs for their deliverance ;
and the king of the Olympians sends a messenger to see
that the storm is allayed, and the ships are permitted to
find a harbor of safety.

Such were the early ideas of the place and the work of
prayer.

All through mediaeval Christianity, similar ideas pre-
vailed. Each city or people or convent had its special

PRAYER.                                       153

tutelary saint; and to him, as to a favorite at court, their
petitions were addressed. He was supposed to have
influence in heaven, and to look after their peculiar and
personal wants. God, to them, was not the all-present,
watchful Father. They thought they needed special in-
tercessors and friends at the heavenly court. And even
to-day, throughout Romish Christendom, the great ma-
jority of prayers go up to the saints and to Mary, whose
tender mother heart is supposed to be most easily touched
and moved at their requests. And a thought like this
last seems to be infecting all Protestantism. The Bible
nowhere gives countenance to making Jesus the object
of prayer; and most intelligent and thoughtful writers
oppose it as unscriptural and wrong: but in the popular
mind the Father has come very largely to represent the
law, while Jesus is the embodiment of the loving and
saving God; and thus to him the tenderness and love of
all hearts turn, and to him are addressed the pleadings
and the prayers of the anxious and fearful souls.

The common idea of prayer to-day is, in the main,
that of the ancient heathen world. As I have many
times heard it from the lips of a prominent evangelist,
" Prayer is the power that moves the arm that moves the
world." It is supposed that by it God can be prevailed
on to do many things he otherwise would not. Stilling-
fleet, an old English writer, says, " Prayer is supposed a
means to change the person to whom we pray." It is
believed to have power to bring to pass the things prayed
for all over the world.

154                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

Within a few years, in Scotland, the whole Church was
ordered to hold a service of fasting and prayer for deliv-
erance from a severe disease among the cattle. Only a
year or two since, the whole Church of England was
holding a special service for the recovery of the Prince
of Wales, who was sick. Muller, in his "Life of Trust,"
claims that he has established, and that he constantly
supports, an immense orphan-house simply by prayer.
He seems entirely to overlook the fact that such a claim,
continually republished and kept before the popular mind,
is the most ingenious and effective kind of advertising
possible. It is a perpetual appeal and prayer to the pop-
ular sympathy and help. To one who at all appreciates
the springs that move the popular heart and the popular
imagination, there is nothing strange about it. Dr. Cullis,
of Boston, makes a similar claim concerning his Consump-
tives' Home; and yet hardly an institution in the city
is more persistently advertised. He also has his troops
of children travelling all over the State, visiting the
churches, and exciting the popular interest in- the
piety and the wonder of the work he is doing. In one
of his books of sermons, Mr. Talmage ascribes the re-
markable success and safety of a certain line of ocean-
steamers to the fact that the wife of one of the head
proprietors makes each ship, as it starts from port, the
subject of special prayer. This theory is slightly inter-
fered with by the knowledge that another line, that has
no proprietor's wife to pray for it, has lost less ships in
thirty years than it has. And, besides, were this all true,

PRAYER.                                       155

insurance-companies would be an impertinence, as well as
a useless outlay of money. Most of our churches in
America have ceased praying for rain; though still the
annual fast is appointed, and is supposed to have some
influence on the general welfare of the people.

Now, all these illustrations simply point out and illus-
trate the popular belief that prayer is able to induce. God
to produce certain definite results in the natural world
that would not take place except for the prayers. You
will notice, also, that this whole conception of the nature
and office of prayer implies that God is a person outside
of and separate from natural forces and laws, who, at
the request of man, comes in to interfere with and change
the method of their regular working.

Along with the progress of civilization, and the growth
of scientific knowledge of the world, there is a growing
a wide-spread doubt as to whether prayer has any such
power, or produces any such results. Whether for good
or evil, whether well founded or ill founded, this doubt is
a fact. It is a doubt that touches and paralyzes the arm
of the Church itself. The ordinary prayer-meeting is not
attended in any such way as indicates a vital belief that
it has power to convert the heathen, to save the husbands,
brothers, fathers, of its supporters. People go from a
sense of duty, or as they feel inclined : and if it is made
a sort of lecture, and the lecturer is interesting, then the
room will be full. But if men believed that it was. really
a power to move God to their wills, how could they excuse
their negligence ? The constant appeal and devices of

156                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

the minister, to get even church-members to come, show
how little real faith they have in it.

Let us, then, inquire whence this doubt springs, and
whether it can be justified. There are certain great diffi-
culties in the way of holding the traditional faith that
press very hard on thoughtful minds.

(1) Prayers for changes in the natural course of
things, so far as we can ordinarily see, are not answered.
This is so generally admitted, that I have often heard
ministers tell their people that they prayed as though they
did not expect to get any thing; and that probably noth-
ing would be so much of a surprise and astonishment to
them as to find their requests granted. Now, people in
that state of mind cannot have received what they asked
for, very often. And, for my part, I cannot be particu-
larly surprised that they do give up looking for it. "I
have been praying for the conversion of such a one
twenty years, and he is not converted yet," said a noted
minister. Is it strange that people ask, "What, then, is
the use of prayer ?" But it is said, more prayers are not
answered, because people do not pray in faith. So the
mediums tell us that the seance is not successful, because
sceptics are in the circle. But if the spirits are in ear-
nest, why do they not astonish and confute the sceptics
by offering facts that would compel belief ? and if God
really wishes to answer human prayers, in the ordinary
sense, why does he not astonish his listless children with
answers, so that they cannot help believing ?

It is this last rational thought that gave life to the

PRAYER.                                       157

recent celebrated " prayer-gauge" controversy in Eng-
land. And if prayer is a real and definite power for the
healing of the sick, I see nothing irrational or impious in
the test that was proposed. In the Old Testament, God
is represented as complying with man-suggested condi-
tions so as to demonstrate his presence and power. Has
he changed, so that he is not willing to do it now ?

A few days since, the newspapers reported the miracu-
lous cure of a sick woman as the result of Dr. Cullis's
prayer. If true, why is not the road to Grove Hall
thronged with the lame, blind, and diseased, going to be
healed ? Why does he keep his " Home " at all, at an
enormous expense that might be used in other beneficent
ways ? Cure them all, and then travel the country as the
universal healer. I have it from a man who was a rela-
tive, that Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, healed a child
of a chronic disease, by the laying-on of hands. There
is evidence to prove that Our Lady of Lourdes is continu-
ally curing her devotees. And a large mass of proof can
be brought to show how the bones of saints and bits of
the true cross have always exerted such power.

The simple facts are these : Talmage prays for his wife,
and she gets well. Another man, presumably as pious as
he, prays for his wife, and she dies. A third man's wife
gets well although she is not prayed for. The laws of
health and disease work all over the world, and produce
their proper and natural results; and, so far as we can
settle by the evidence, the praying or not praying has
nothing to do with it. Gen. Butler goes to New Orleans;

158                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

and the saints of the region pray that " Yellow Jack," as
they call the prevalent fever, may waste away and destroy
his army. Not being given to piety, he does not pray
against it; but having a sense of natural cause and
effect, he looks after the sanitary condition of the city;
and " Yellow Jack " postpones his annual visitation.

(2) Superadded to this doubt growing out of observed
facts, is the essentially modern doubt that has' its root in
the growing knowledge of the reign of law. There is
growing up an irresistible belief, based on facts that can
be verified, that this universe is one ruled by law and
order. Cause and effect are so intimately linked together
that the slightest movement of the world's affairs to-day
is a link in a chain that stretches back into a past eter-
nity. The glance of a ray of this morning's rising sun,
the tremble of a twig in the wind, the form of the smoke-
wreath that hovered above your chimney and then melted
out of sight, the curl of a wreath of mist that floats on a
mountain's top, the eddy of the little cloud of dust that
the wind-gust whirls across the street, — these all are as
much a part of the fixed and determined order of the
world as Mont Blanc is a fixed and definite peak in
the Alps; and to change the mist-form or the wind-
current were as much a miracle as to hurl Mont Blanc
with its roots upward into the Mediterranean. The
prayer that asks that this day's weather may be changed,
even to the blotting out of one cloud, or the adding or
taking away one rain-drop, asks so stupendous a thing
as that the whole order of creation from the beginning

PRAYER.                                      159

may be changed to suit the whim or convenience of an
hour.

(3) Then, again, the common belief is rendered absurd
by the contradictory prayers of men. You pray for a
bright day, that your excursion to the country may be
pleasant, or that your hay may dry in the field. Another
man prays for rain, that his parched potato-field may be
revived. Which will God hear? One prayer at least
must be denied. Two ships are at sea. One wishes an
east wind, and the other a west. Others want neither
east nor west. Dr. Bushnell once suggested that the ma-
jority prayer would win. A very large and very pious
crew would seem to be a necessity, then, so that they
might out-pray the other ship. When you think of it in
this way, it comes to look as though these prayers, instead
of being piety, might very easily come to be the quintes-
sence of selfishness. Is it not quite as well to leave God
to look after the general good, and not think to tease him
into the favoritism of neglecting the common interest,
that may demand dry weather, for the sake of watering
your flower-garden ? Heaven has larger interests on hand
than the making of itself your private watering-pot. It
looks very much like the little boy who wanted the cap-
tain to stop the ship, because he had lost his apple over-
board.

But a stronger objection than all these roots in piety
itself, and gets its weightest reason in reverence and trust.
If God is indeed perfectly powerful, wise, and good, it
becomes the worst of all scepticism to suppose that God

160               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

will neglect the smallest interest of any, the very least, of
his creatures. In the hands of such a God, the poorest
worm and the grandest archangel must be alike safe.
There is a mother in Boston who devotedly loves her
children. She is exceptionally intelligent, and knows
what is for their truest welfare. She is wealthy, and able
to command all means for carrying out her purposes.
One of her children is wayward, and gives her anxiety
and trouble. Another is sick and in danger of death.
Suppose you should go to her each morning, and with
tears in your eyes and sobs on your lips beseech and
entreat her to do her plain and simple duty by these chil-
dren, — beg her to be kind and helpful to the wayward
boy; beg her. to have a physician and nurse for the sick
girl. Such action on your part would be gross and inex-
cusable insult; and, if you repeated it, she would be justi-
fied in calling the police for your benefit. And yet half
of our prayers imply that, unless we keep jogging his
memory, or stirring up his benevolence and pity, the ten-
der and all-wise and loving Father in heaven will either
not remember, or will not care, to be decently kind and
regardful of the welfare of his children. I have often
heard prayers, that people thought were pious, that made
me indignant, and that seemed to me simple blasphemy.
A hundred times, as a boy, I have heard a man say in
prayer, " It is time for thee, O Lord, to work ! " — as
though God did not know whether it was time, or not!
Said another, " O God, won't you do any thing about it ? "
Said an evangelist, "I am. going to be in this city only

PRAYER.                                 161

two or three days longer, and, O Lord, if thou art going
to do any thing for the salvation of this town, do it
now ! " — egotism and blasphemy combined, with a doubt
as to which predominates. Said the same evangelist,
" Come to the meeting to-night, for there are going to be
wonderful displays of the divine power," — as though he
had served a writ on the Almighty, and was going to pro-
duce and display him at all hazards!

Just because God is loving and wise and mighty, this
kind of petition is not only useless, but insulting. And
I make the charge that the prominent evangelism of the
day, in its frantic appeal to God, as though it could not
trust him to do right, displays a worse and more open
infidelity than any it lays at the door of liberalism or of
science. The quiet, loving life of the child at home is
stronger proof of trust in father and mother than that
anxiety that appears to think its wants will not be at-
tended to unless as the result of perpetual begging. The
little child in mother's arms looks up and smiles, and
sinks off to sleep. It does not need to beg mother to
rock its slumber, and tuck it into its soft crib. Just this
child-relation toward God I believe to be the true and
pious one. Prattle your childish wants in the Father's
ear as much as you will: only remember they are child-
ish, and that he knows best, and that the best of all
prayers, after all, is, " Not as I will, but as thou wilt."

All this it has seemed needful to say before coming to
that which is most important of all. The whole question
finds simple, natural, and satisfactory solution when

162                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

looked at in the light of the principles of evolution.
What is that principle ? This: All the myriad forms,
forces, movements, and life of the universe, are only the
varied manifestation of the divine life that lives in and
works through it all. The divisions between natural and
supernatural, sacred and secular, are broken down. All
is natural, and all is divine and sacred. God is as much
in the law of gravitation as in the moral law, " Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself." The sun, the winds, the
clouds, the rivers, the growing fields, all speak his mys-
terious name, and reveal his present life and power. The
law of the unfolding flower is just as divine as is the
impulse to gratitude or prayer. It is just as rational and
religious to expect prayer to yield to gravitation, as it is
to expect gravitation to give way to prayer. God does
not undo with one hand what he is doing with the other.
Nature is no longer — as was once universally, and is
still too commonly, supposed — a realm opposed to or
outside of God, into which he comes at times to counter-
act its forces, or to deliver from its power. Nature is
God at work, executing his own wise and perfect will.
It is not to be supposed, then, that the impulsive requests
of men are going to persuade him to contravene his own
purposes, or interfere with his own wise work. It be-
comes not simply unreasonable, but a lack of intelligent
piety, to expect it.

Do I take the position, then, that man can bear no
active part in the midst of the divine operations of the
world; that he is only to sit still, and let the great forces

PRAYER.                                       163

drift him on their current, like a leaf on the surface of a
torrent ? By no manner of means. Man's whole life,
physical, intellectual, and spiritual, depends on just how
much and how wisely he " interferes " with God's work-
ing, bringing to pass results that else would not occur.
But he must do this intelligently, and according to the
laws of that department in which he expects his success.

To illustrate what I mean: You are perfectly aware
of the practical use of my principle in the common
affairs of life. You do not abdicate your reason here.
If you wish to move a piece of stone or timber, you use a
lever or some mechanical force : you never think you can
argue it, or pray it, or wish it, or will it, from one place
to another : you meet mechanical force with mechanical
force. If you desire to gain admission to a man's favor,
you do not think you can pry his heart open with a hand-
spike, or blow it open with nitro-glycerine: you meet
emotion with emotion. If you wish to convince a man's
intellect of a doctrine in political economy, you never
think of applying electricity or steam : you meet logic
with logic, argument with argument, proof with proof.
All this only means that you recognize the natural order
and fitness of things which teach that, in any particular
department of life, you must seek for results in accord-
ance with causes that naturally belong to work in that
department. Apply this principle now to our subject.

A man desires a profitable crop of wheat in a certain
field. The laws and forces of agriculture are divine laws,
and they never change. Let the man, then, see to it that

164                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

his field is one naturally adapted to the raising of wheat.
Then let him look after tillage and dressing, and the
quality of his seed, and its proper sowing. In all ordi-
nary seasons he can thus make his harvest sure. But
prayer, a spiritual force, has no relation to sunshine or
rain or frost, or any of the laws of agriculture. And to
expect that he can neglect his proper work, and then
guard against or retrieve his failure by prayer, is simple
impiety. It is expecting that God will put a premium on
laziness and ignorance and neglect, — crops which the
divine Husbandman does not care to grow. Through the
physical laws of my body, God speaks to me with a voice
as sacred and commanding as that said to have been
heard on Sinai; and he says, Obey these laws, and you
shall have and keep your health. Ignorantly or wilfully
I break them, and am sick. God still says to me, These
my laws point out to you the divine way back to health ;
but, still neglecting these, I expect to circumvent God's
own methods, and get back to health again by a super-
stitious talisman, a saint's relics, or some ignorant enthu-
siast's prayers. It is just as presumptuous, impious, and
foolish, as it would be for me to jump off Bunker Hill
Monument, and then pray to God to suspend gravitation
and make my fall easy; or as if I should touch a match
to a keg of powder, and ask God to keep it from explod-
ing. The laws of health are just as fixed and certain, and
just as divine, as those of powder or gravitation. Moody
teaches that a minister has no right to look after his
worldly affairs; and says that when he wants a barrel of

PRAYER.                                       165

flour, he asks God for it, and it comes. This is all very
well so long as Mr. Farwell of Chicago believes Mr.
Moody is doing a good work, and stands ready to back
him up with both money and flour; but it is nonsense to
suppose that prayer would bring the flour if no one had
any confidence in the utility of his work. All over the
world, and in all time, men and women and children have
hungered and cried for bread, and starved with a prayer
as their very last breath. Is Moody a special pet, that
only his prayers are answered ? A man wants a factory
on the bank of some running stream. Can he build it
with prayer, or out of logical syllogisms, or emotions of
the heart ? He can build it only in the use of natural
forces, and in accordance with natural laws. In the
building of the dam, the raising the walls, the construc-
tion of the machinery, the adaptation of wheels to the
water-power, every step must be a knowledge of natural
laws, and a rigid obedience to them ; and just in accord-
ance with the knowledge and the obedience will be his
success. He combines and adapts laws and forces, and
so produces results that otherwise would never have come
to pass. Man is no idle spectator of God's working in
nature; or, if he were, there would be no civilization.
So man does " interfere " with and materially modify the
natural order; but so far as he succeeds he interferes with
law lawfully. He combines, adjusts, and adapts, and so
accomplishes his results. All the forces that are repre-
sented in a train of cars, or the Atlantic cable, are natural,
divine forces; but nature alone would never have made

166              THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

either. And yet man does not contravene the laws in
making them: he combines simple forces for the produc-
tion of a complex result.

But all these things come through obedience to God in
the special department where the result is reached. Mr.
Frothingham has been cried out against for saying that
the popular notion of prayer is immoral; but a little
thought will teach you that he is right. To disregard
God's methods in one department of life, and expect to
escape the consequences by resort to the methods of
another department, is nothing more nor less than to
expect that God is going to take one hand to deliver you
out of the other. Men say practically, " O God, I will not
obey your conditions of health; but I expect that when
I pray you will make me well. I will not pay any heed
to your law of gravitation; but you must keep me from
falling and being injured. I will not regard your laws of
steam ; but I hope you will make my engine work just as
well as if I did. I will not study to know the laws of gas;
but I trust, for the sake of my prayers, you will make my
house as light as my neighbor's. I will not pay any atten-
tion to your laws in the strength of materials; but I pray
that my store may stand as strong and as safe as any
on the street. I will not keep your laws of morality and
character; but I will become as good as anybody else by
praying that you will suspend the general rules in my
particular case." That is just what the common idea of
prayer means. It puts a premium on laziness and ignor-
ance and incapacity and wilfulness. If it is true, there is'

PRAYER.                                       167

no need of knowledge, of labor, of training, of skill, of
foresight, of care. In the truest and deepest sense of
the word, it is immoral. Carried out logically it would
make civilization impossible. What is the use of mer-
chandise if God brings flour to the door of every man
who asks for it ? Mr. Moody ought to go a step further,
and save his wife the housekeeping trouble by having the
flour ready made into bread. On his theory, a breath
could do it. What is the use of skilled physicians when
prayer alone can heal the sick ? What is the use of
trained captains and drilled sailors, much more of insur-
ance companies, if prayer will always insure a safe voyage
at sea ?

These natural conditions and laws are the present,
active, working God. He who knows and obeys the con-
ditions becomes master of the divine omnipotence. The
whole force of divinity helps him.

Must we not, then, pray ? If there be spiritual life in
you, you cannot help praying, any more than a rose can
help exhaling its fragrance. The child does not sit dumb
in the presence of father and mother, because it knows
the love and care of his parents do not depend on regular
asking for them. The child-heart seeks rest and love in
the parent-heart, and naturally pours out its thoughts,
hopes, fears, and wishes, into the sympathetic ears; but,
if the child be a wise one, he does not expect to make his
wishes prevail against higher and better wishes.

And yet the prayer may be a very vital thing in the
matter of our character and relation to God. What does

168                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

compliance with divine conditions do in nature ? Simply
this : It does not change any single law or force ; it only
sets us in new relations to them. Gravitation will hold
me firmly on my feet, or it will fling me down an abyss,
according to the relation in which I stand to it. When I
obey them, laws help me: when I disobey, they hurt me.
Thus prayer may set me in new and higher relations to
God, so as utterly to change, and grandly to elevate, my
character. When by spiritual, aspiring prayer, I reach out
after God, I comply with the conditions of spiritual health
and strength. If I open my shutters toward the east, the
morning sun will shine in. It will shine any way, but will
do me no good unless I obey the conditions of its shining
on me. So, if I open the windows of my soul toward
God, the light of his divine truth and life will shine in.
In this spiritual realm it is knowledge and obedience to
divine laws and conditions, precisely the same as in the
material. It is one God and one order in both. Study
and work, then, are material prayer; and prayer is spirit-
ual study and work. " I will, therefore, that all men pray
everywhere."

" For, what are men better than sheep and goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, having hands, they lift them not in prayer
Both for themselves and those that call them friend ?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

So far, then, as both natural and spiritual are con-
cerned, when we make the request, — " Lord teach us to

PRAYER.                                       169

pray," the answer comes, that the way for us to find
God, and get his forces as helpers on our side, is by
knowing and obeying the divine will — the laws and
conditions — in whatever department we wish the results
produced. Thus the highest prayer is, " Not as I will,
but as thou wilt." God's will is the only power; and
it works out our purposes when we have obeyed the
conditions, so that the divine forces flow in the channels
that we have intelligently dug out for them.

" And yet the spirit in my heart

Says, Wherefore should I pray
That thou wouldst seek me with thy love,
Since thou dost seek alway ;

" And dost not even wait until

I urge my step to thee ;
But in the darkness of my life
Art coming still to me ?

" I pray not, then, because I would :

I pray because I must;
There is no meaning in my prayer
But thankfulness and trust.

" I would not have thee otherwise

Than what thou ever art:
Be still thyself, and then I know
We cannot live apart."

IX.

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.

The clothing, the buildings, the institutions, the arts, the
commerce, the rites, the ceremonies, the books, the gen-
eral habits and customs of a people are the natural out-
come and expression of that people's life. So all these
things change as the people change. They rise, they
progress, they decay, as the people rise, progress, or
decay. None of these things, then, can be permanent
in any special form, unless humanity could stagnate, and
come to a permanent standstill. And since we believe
that man began at the animal level, and is rising as the
ages advance, we must also believe that none of the outer
manifestations of the life' of man has yet reached its
completest manifestation. The art, the architecture, the
literature, the statesmanship, of barbarous man, are all
barbaric. As he develops, they develop and take on
new forms. And unless we believe that humanity has
gotten its growth, and will never be any wiser and
stronger and better, we must expect that all our outer

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                  171

life — that we comprehend under the word " civilization "
— will in the future

" Suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange," —

becoming richer and finer than we now know; and,
though strange to our present thought, yet familiar to
that which shall be. But all this change will be in the
order of growth; new and strange only as manhood is
new and strange to a child.

This law of change and growth, which is true in all
other things, holds also with equal force in matters of
religion. The religious rites, institutions, and books of a
people, are and must be the natural expression of that
people's religious thought and grade of civilization. In
rude and savage nations, where the art is grotesque, and
the whole life is on the barbaric "level, the religious
thought and form correspond. The images and pictures
of the gods are rude, the cultus is coarse, sometimes
obscene, always rude and gross; and the hopes and
fears find expression in such rough and material shapes
as are fitted to impress rough and material people. As
civilization develops, these things grow, — a few thought-
ful men always ahead of the crowd, — until the cultus
becomes stately and grand, the idol's masterpieces of art,
and the Scriptures the highest religious aspirations and
inspirations of the time.

These things, which we know to be historic truth, are
precisely what evolution demands; for it teaches that the

172                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

whole outer life of man must be but the natural unfold-
ing of that which is within him. The religious writings
of the nations, that they have come to look upon as
bibles, — divine revelations, — are no exception to this
rule. They have been, at the time, the natural out-
growth of the people's religious life. That they have
been produced only rarely, and at special epochs of
upheaval or change, no more militates against their
natural development than the fact that the century-plant
blooms only once in a hundred years takes it out of the
category of flowers. To say that, if bibles are natural
developments of humanity, they ought to be more com-
mon and in perpetual process of manufacture, is no more
conclusive than as if you should say, since Shakspere
is not miraculous, we ought to expect to find a Shak-
spere in every country village.

The rudest religions have no bibles, just as the rudest
peoples have no literature. Every race that has become
so cultivated as to have a literature has also had its
sacred literature, or bible, — the one the natural expres-
sion of its religious life, as the other is the natural
expression of its intellectual. So the Chinese have the
writings of Confucius; the Hindoos have the Vedas and
Brahmanic scriptures; the Buddhists, the works of their
master; the Persians, the Zendavesta; the classic na-
tions, their hymns and oracles; the Norsemen, their
Eddas; the Hebrews, their laws, prophets, and psalms ;
the Christians, their Gospels and Epistles; the followers
of Joe Smith, the Book of Mormon; the New Church,

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      173

the writings of Swedenborg; and the Spiritualists, the
books of Andrew Jackson Davis, and a host of others.
One thing, if you will notice it, is common to all. Noble
or ignoble, wise or unwise, inspired or uninspired, all
these various scriptures have on them the birthmark of
their nationality and their time. They are all the natu-
ral and necessary outgrowth of the religious thought
and life, hopes and fears and aspirations, of their age.
They partake of the ignorance and limitations and preju-
dices of their time. Not one of them betrays any verita-
ble knowledge higher than the high-water mark of their
epoch. This means simply that they were growths of
the earth, and not exotics transplanted from heaven.

One other thing I wish you to notice, that is true of
them all: not one of them came to men with such cre-
dentials of revelation as to make them take their place,
from the outset, as the " word of God." The sacredness
with which they are regarded is a matter of growth.
The reverence that surrounds them is chiefly the halo
of antiquity. Paul was personally despised, and his let-
ters cast out and abused, by the majority of his fellow-
Christians. Only after ages have passed away have
books taken on sacredness. As the earthly authorship
grows dim and distant, the heavenly claim is brought
forward and emphasized. It seems to be true, that the
less people know about a religious claim, the more they
will believe in it.

And another habit of humanity needs emphasizing.
When they once come to believe in the sacredness of a

174                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

thing, they will not give it up even for something that is
manifestly better — as though any stronger proof could
be given for the divine authorship of a thing than its
truth, beauty, and utility. Take one striking illustration
of this: In the earliest times, the use of metals was un-
known. The priest then used a stone knife in sacrifice,
for the very good reason that a stone knife was all and
the best he had. Through use, the stone knife became
sacred. So, when metal knives were at last invented, the
people dare not use them; and they kept to the worse, be-
cause it was old and sacred. How much wiser or more
sensibly religious are we ? Because the Bible sanctioned
slavery, thousands defended and fought for it. Though
manifestly inhuman, they thought, because it was in the
Bible, it must be divine. And to-day the question of
Sunday and our centennial cannot be argued on the
ground of human fitness and utility, because of religious
prejudice. So all causes must be brought, not to the test
of reason, of sense, of experience, of utility, but must
come to the Book. And yet the writers of the Book
wrote in other times and with other peoples, and with less
of knowledge and experience of humanity than thousands
possess to-day. What Buddha and Zoroaster and Confu-
cius and Moses and Paul thought and said, are of bind-
ing force to-day — if they are true; but their mistakes
and limitations should not bind us simply because they
are in bibles, and are called canonical.

All this will be admitted by everybody, and in all
nations, concerning every other bible but their own. The

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      175

practical question, then, for us to settle, is, as to whether
our bible is an exception. All religionists regard their
own bible as a divine revelation; and they reject all
others. They know theirs is true; and they know all
others are not. What, then, is ours ?

The common claim of the Church that the Bible is, and
ought to be, the court of final appeal, and the end of
human reason, rests on the other claim that the Bible is
inspired, and so infallible. The foundation of this latter
claim, then, is the thing for us to examine.

As specimens of the ordinary argument, and of the use
of texts as proof, we will just glance at the two pillar
passages that are supposed to support the common belief.
In 2 Pet. i. 21, it reads: "For the prophecy came not in
old time by the will of man; but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Three
considerations take all value from this passage as proof.
First, the words "prophecy " and "holy men " are indefi-
nite : they do not cover special men or books with any
such certainty as makes us know just what is meant.
Second, it is more than questionable as to whether or not
Peter is the author of the second letter that bears his
name. Third, even if it were settled that Peter wrote it,
still it remains to be proved that it is any thing more
than fallible Peter's fallible opinion. The other passage
is in 2 Tim. iii. 16: " All scripture is given by inspira-
tion of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness." This
passage, being written long before the New Testament was

176                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

brought together, of course has no reference to any thing
but the older writings. But, more than this, the present
translation is incorrect. Bishop Ellicott, a leading Church
authority in England, makes it read, " Every scripture,
inspired by God, is profitable," &c. You will notice that
this leaves wholly unsettled the central question, as to
what scripture is inspired by God. Our judgment, then,
must be made up from other sources than any special
texts.

There is one vital distinction that is frequently lost
sight of in discussions of this subject. I refer to the
distinction between inspiration and infallibility. Proving
that a book is infallibly true does not prove that it is in-
spired, in the ordinary sense of that term, as used among
the churches; and, on the other hand, proving that a
book is inspired, does not necessarily establish its free-
dom from error: but as the two things are so often con-
founded, or claimed together, any clear view of the theme
must notice them both. How stands the case, then, in
regard to biblical infallibility ?

To begin with, it is a fact worthy of earnest atten-
tion, that the Bible nowhere makes any claim to be infalli-
ble. We have already seen how little the strongest pass-
ages of the kind to be found are able to bear any such
strain of interpretation: and, as a fair specimen of
the style and real pretensions of the writers, notice the
opening words of Luke's Gospel. Here he says, that,
as others were writing down their accounts of the life and
sayings of the Lord, " It seemed good to me also, having

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                     177

traced down every thing from the first, to write unto thee
in order, most excellent Theophilus;" and one " ortho-
dox " commentator remarks upon this, that " inspiration
did not render it unnecessary to use every available
source of information." Luke merely says that, having
had means of information, it seemed good to him to write
his Gospel.

And,—what is not true, — even though some one writer
should claim to be infallible, and should make good that
claim, his infallibility would be no guaranty of the infal-
libility of any one else; for there is no reason better
than the bookbinder's, or simple convenience, why all the
books of the Bible should be together in the same covers.
What one says, therefore, does not necessarily hold true
of, or represent, any of the others.

What are the real facts about the Bible as a book ?
The different books were composed by different authors,
of different nationalities, and at periods so widely apart
that the time of their writing stretches across a space of
fifteen hundred years. Of some of them, nobody knows
when, where, or by whom, they were composed, or how
they have come to be in their present places or shapes.
Of others, the authorship, though not quite so obscure, is
still in dispute; and this not of certain unimportant ones,
but of the very central books of the New Testament.
The authorship of the Gospel of John is not yet deter-
mined ; neither is it known that we have either of the
Gospels in its original form.

And then, even though we knew who wrote them all,

178                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

and where and when, we have no sort of guaranty that
they have been handed down with such textual accuracy
as to justify any bishop or church in pronouncing judg-
ment on the basis of its present verbal utterances. We
have only modern copies of books from two to three
thousand years old. They floated about in the hands of
persons or organizations for generations before they were
collected as we have them now. In copying they were
purposely or blunderingly altered — sometimes, we know,
to the extent of whole paragraphs: how much more, we
do not know. In no case have we an original manuscript.
The most ancient one we possess was written at a time
farther from Christ than we now are from Shakspere.
And when you think of the disputes of commentators
over the text of the dramatist, — and this in an age of
printing, — and remember that even his personality has
been called in question, you can judge something of what
probability there is that we can be so sure of the mere
words of the Bible as to warrant us in using them as
instruments of hatred and warfare, and even of present
and future damnation of our brethren.

And even if we knew all about the separate books, and
were sure we had accurate copies, we do not know with
certainty as to what is bible, and what is not. I mean
by this that the sacred canon has never yet been defi-
nitely settled, even by the Church itself. The Council
of Trent, and all the Roman Church until now, not only
declare the whole Apocrypha canonical, but anathematize
all who dissent. The whole Protestant world rejects it.

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      179

And the best scholarship of the Church is still unsettled
about Hebrews, James, Jude, the second epistle of Peter,
the second and third of John, and the Revelation.

If there be infallible books, of which to make an infal-
lible bible, and if these be infallibly preserved and trans-
mitted to us, we are still undecided and in trouble, unless
we have also an infallible catalogue to tell us which they
are. If there are two or three guide-posts, and one is
infallibly correct, and the others not, it matters little to
us, unless some one is able to tell us which is right.
And then, if words be so important, how comes it that
the New Testament writers quote the Old loosely and
incorrectly? In one place, the Septuagint is followed
where its translation from the original Hebrew is blun-
deringly wrong, and even reverses the sense; and not
only are these things so, but there are in the Bible palpa-
ble errors and inconsistencies and contradictions that no
one would think of trying to cover up, were it not for the
pressing necessities of special pleading. Not only is it
confessedly impossible to reconcile Genesis — I do not
say Moses, because it is extremely doubtful as to whether
Moses wrote the Pentateuch — with the words of God's
great world-book that we know he wrote, whether he
wrote any thing else or not; but even the New Testa-
ment writers do not always agree, and, in some cases,
were most certainly mistaken. I have not time to dwell
separately on the contradictions of the evangelists con-
cerning the birth of Jesus, the length of his ministry,
the date of the supper and the crucifixion, and the inci-

180                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

dents connected with his resurrection. In regard to
these, I content myself with the general statement that
they never have been successfully reconciled. Let me,
however, emphasize the point by two or three examples.

In the first place, I refer you to the genealogy of Jesus
as contained in Matthew and Luke, as compared with
each other, and with the Old Testament records. The
table of Matthew is not correct: it is not the genealogy
of Jesus, in any sense, unless he is the natural son of
Joseph; and it is wholly irreconcilable with the table of
Luke or with that of the Chronicles. It has a suspi-
cious look to find that the genealogical table is divided
into three perfectly equal parts; and it is found wholly
indefensible when we notice that this even division is
obtained by changes and omissions. The matter is
confirmed by the discovery that, while Matthew gives but
twenty-six generations between David and Joseph, Luke
gives forty-one; and then, both Matthew's and Luke's
tables give the genealogy of Joseph, which is nothing
at all to the point, unless Jesus be the son of Joseph.

In the next place, the evangelists quote the Old Testa-
ment inaccurately not only, but they quote as prophecies
of Christ words that have no reference to him whatever.
In one place, a passage from Zachariah is attributed to
Jeremiah ; and, in another, a passage is professedly quoted
which has no existence in the Old Testament, nor any-
where else.

Once more, notice the long address attributed to Jesus
concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, and the " end of

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                  181

the world." False Messiahs and great wars were to pre-
cede the downfall of the city. We know from history
that neither of these things occurred. Christ was to
come again in the clouds of heaven, immediately after its
overthrow, and before that generation passed away. He
did not so come.

Paul was mistaken on this same point. He teaches dis-
tinctly, in i Thess. iv., that Christ was to come and raise
the dead, and set up his Messianic kingdom, before "we
who are alive " have passed away.

And then, this doctrine that the Bible was infallible, and
not to be touched, criticised, and judged of, by individual
students, was not prominently held out till the sixteenth
century. Luther needed an infallible book to set up in
opposition to infallible Rome, and so claimed he had one;
and, while he affirmed the "right of private judgment " as
against the pope, he did not hesitate to deny it, even to
the point of persecution by the civil power, as against
Luther.

Again: Peter and Paul were at swords' points on the
question of receiving the Gentiles into the Christian
Church. Are we to assume that they immediately became
infallible on taking a pen in their hands, while they were
mistaken about the gravest matters when talking and act-
ing, and while they were even capable, when hard pushed,
of dissimulation or falsehood ? And, once more, Jude
was not so infallible but that he could quote from the
apocryphal book of Enoch, written but a little while be-
fore his own time, and all the while suppose himself re-

182              THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

peating the words of " the seventh from Adam," who was
translated.

"But if the Bible is not infallible," say some, "how are
we to get along for a guide ? We must have an infallible
guide."

I am perfectly aware that this kind of reasoning is
much more common than it is logical or honest. Such
arguments — and books and pulpits are full of it — are
mere appeals to passion and prejudice, that would not be
needed were not facts sadly wanting. Never forget one
thing: the consequences of a fact can never invalidate it;
and that you want a thing is not quite sufficient ground
for believing it true. Suppose you thought yourself worth
fifty thousand dollars, but wake up to find you have not a
cent. " It can't be! I must have money! I hate the
man who brought the news ! " These and like expressions
would hardly add much to your bank account. It is well,
it is honest, and it will pay in the end, though temporarily
painful, to find out and face the exact truth.

But what am I saying about its being painful to face
such facts as these ? In a certain sense, it is painful to
give up any old and cherished belief. It is not pleasant to
find that the rock you had anchored to is only an ice-cake,
and melting at that. It is such a comfort to feel that you
have an unchangeable standard to refer to.

I have two remarks to make about this; and, first, all
this talk of a fixed standard in the Bible, outside of the
last decree of the Church of Rome, is pure illusion.
There is hardly a doctrinal passage in the Bible that

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      183

"orthodox" Christendom is agreed about. It is hardly
satisfactory to a person seeking exact truth, to have half a
dozen doctors of divinity each giving the only correct
interpretation of a text, and all anathematizing the other
five. Looked at through the medium of denominational
commentators, the various doctrines assume as many
shapes as the cloud in Hamlet: —

Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a
camel ?

Polonius. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale.
Pol. Very like a whale.

All this talk of an infallible standard is meaningless
and delusive, unless you have, as Romanists claim, an
infallible interpreter.

And the second remark is this: So far from its being
painful to give up the doctrine of biblical infallibility, I
hesitate not to say that, just in so far as one has the spirit
and love of Christ, and at the same time comprehends
intelligently the points at issue, he will rejoice to be able
to give it up; and what little comfort there may be in
thinking he has an infallible guide, he will gladly sacrifice
to the larger and better results. So far from there being
any justification for " orthodox" writers and preachers,
when they say that those who question the infallibility of
the Bible are undermining the hope of man, it is true, on
the other hand, that bald and blank materialism gives a

184                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

nobler, juster, and more blessed picture of human life and
destiny, than does "orthodoxy." He who has in his heart
something of the love and devotion and self-sacrifice of
Christ would rather take the boon of his brief life be-
neath the stars, and then at its close go down into dark-
ness and silence and nonentity, than to grasp eagerly
after the gift of immortality, if, along with that, he must
also take the appalling fact of the unending sorrow and
wail of one single human soul. I do not say that our
feelings or preferences touch the fact of the matter in any
way whatever: I am talking of the question as to which
side has the right to charge the other with teaching horri-
ble and hopeless doctrine. I would rather die like a dog,
and see no to-morrow, than selfishly take a heaven while
one single soul is in endless torment, even on the outer-
most verge of creation; and I do not envy that man his
Christian charity, who would not surrender his immortality
for the sake of the abolition of hell.

Am I not right, then, when I say that the " orthodox "
hope of heaven, alongside an everlasting hell, is more
horrible than the materialist's hope, that, though it do not
contain any heaven, is also destitute of a hell ?

A belief in the infallibility of the Bible is one of the
greatest evils of our Christianity and civilization. It per-
verts and makes childish, partial, despotic, and horrible,
the character of God. It misrepresents and maligns the
nature and destiny of man. It warps moral perceptions,
clogs progress, and hinders civilization. It makes the
churches, instead of reformers and evil-slayers, sectarian

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      185

and jealous clans in perpetual feuds. It turns them into
system-makers and riddle-guessers and Chinese - puzzle-
arrangers. In short, not one single valuable thing will be
lost when the fiction of infallibility is surrendered; and
many and grievous evils will be thrown off.

So much for infallibility. I have given time to it
because of its importance, and because of the ignorance
and prejudice current concerning it. I will despatch the
second part of my subject as briefly as I can, though I
do not wish to slight it on account of haste. Turn now,
then, to inspiration.

This, as I have already said, is quite a different thing
from infallibility. The Bible writers do claim for them-
selves inspiration,—that they speak and act under a di-
vine guidance and influence.

Before proceeding to investigate and define this claim,
let us glance at the different theories of inspiration that
have obtained. By so doing, we shall find that we have
already incidentally replied to some of them; and so we
shall clear our way, and see what path we are to follow.

And, first, the prevalent theory, from the time of the
Reformation until forty or fifty years ago, was the one
called the verbal. This taught that every word of the
Bible was the direct communication of God to the mind
of man, and this as much as though God held the hand
and directed the pen of the writer. Old Dr. Owen, a
prominent English Puritan divine and commentator, held
that even the points and accents of the original Hebrew
— which we now know were invented for convenience'

186               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

sake, long after the time of Christ — were divinely in-
spired. And as these masoretic points, as they were
called, stood for vowels in the Hebrew tongue, and as a
different point or vowel might make a different word, he
rightly held that, unless they were inspired, he had no
certainty as to the meaning. Owen's successors have been
compelled to surrender his premises; though they still
illogically cling to his conclusions, so far as infallibility is
concerned. But as verbal inspiration is not now claimed
by any, so far as I know, it is not needful to give it any
further attention.

The theory that followed that, and is the " orthodox "
one of the present day, is that which is called plenary
inspiration. It gets its name from the Latin plenus, mean-
ing full, complete. It teaches that the Bible writers were
so inspired as to put them fully, completely, in possession
of truth, and enable them to teach that which was wholly
free from error.

This theory has already been overthrown by the same
arguments and facts that overthrew the doctrine of infal-
libility; for of course, if there are any mistakes or false
teaching in the Bible, that proves that the writers were
not possessors of plenary inspiration.

There is one more theory left, which may perhaps, with
sufficient propriety, go under the name of the Liberal.
This theory teaches that every soul — being made in the
image of God, and so capable of communion with him —
is open to the divine influx, and does in its measure
receive it, just as every gulf and bay and inlet and

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      187

shallow and sinuosity, on the ocean-shore, is open to the
inflow of the tides. But human capacity for the recep-
tion of this inspiration is conditioned and gauged by con-
stitution and character: so that as, on the seashore, the
openings for the sea range all the way from gulfs to shal-
lows, so the capabilities of human souls mark gradations
that reach all the way from the evanescent impulse and
uplifting of a common man in common daily life, up to
the magnificent spiritual insight of Paul. And it holds
out the hope that, by faithfulness to what we have, we
may grow to an ever-enlarging capacity, on the principle
that "to him that hath shall be given," so that by and
by we may walk under a whole heaven full of light, and
read the law so perfectly written on our hearts that we
shall be a law unto ourselves. Perhaps I need hardly say
that this is my own belief.

Before proceeding to speak of its sufficiency or value,
let me indicate to you what seems to me its reason-
able, scientific foundation. However great the havoc that
science has made with the forms and supports of theology,
it has given utterance, through its most distinguished
mouthpiece, Herbert Spencer, to what it confesses must
be an eternal basis for science not only, but also for reli-
gion. It shows us how all things run back and down
into an underlying, changeless, and yet inexplicable force
and life. This life or force science may call one thing or
another, as it will. A name cannot annihilate it; and we
will call it God. This life and power of God is the only
possible explanation of any thing. How does the grass

188              THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

grow ? Science answers, " Nature, force; " religion an-
swers, " God." How came the stars in heaven, and how
comes their light to us ? Science says, " Nature, force,"
once more; and religion again replies, "God." How
came man to be, and whence his powers of thought and
love ? Once more science repeats, " Nature, force; " and
once more religion says, " God."

This unseen and incomprehensible God, which is a
Bible doctrine as well as a teaching of Spencer, is the
life of all that lives, and the motion of all that moves.
Every good and holy thought, every noble deed, every
high endeavor, is by and through so much of God as
works through humanity; for without him we can do
nothing. He dwells in us, both to will and to do. " In
him we live and move and have our being." This is
nothing more nor less than the doctrine of the immanence
of God in the universe and in man, — all things by God,
and through God, and for God.

Inspiration, then, is natural to the human soul, and its
degree is determined by character and capacity; and it is
not confined to the teachings of formal religious truth.
Even the Old Testament teaches that certain men were
inspired of God to work in linen and brass and cedar and
gold. Why not, then, Shakspere and Michael Angelo,
and Socrates and Epictetus, make good a claim to think
and work by the inspiration of God ?

Let us see. All truth, of whatever kind or degree, is
from God. All light is from the sun. Whether it shine
from moon or planet; whether it be reflected by brook

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      189

or mirror; whether it stray, a broken beam, into some
prison-cell; whether it flare in the gaslight, or glow in
the coal of our evening grate, — all light is, first or last,
just so much sunlight. So, whether a truth be in Bible
or science, in Christianity or Paganism, on the banks
of the Jordan or the Ganges, wherever found, and by
whatever path it come, being true, it must be from
God.

The Bible, then, though not in any exclusive sense the
word of God, yet does contain the word of God; and, in
so far as it is true, so does any and every other book;
and every book, so far as true, is sacred, as being a
reflection of the divine.

Do I, then, put the Bible on the same level with all
other books ? By no manner of means. Here is a
primer, and here is Sir Walter Scott; both are books.
Does saying that degrade Sir Walter to the level of the
primer ? Here is Tupper, and here is Shakspere. Be-
cause you call them both poets, does that bring Shak-
spere down to Tupper ? Does calling a third-rate painter
an artist make him equal to Raphael ? I would still put
the Bible apart by itself, as, in a certain grand and real
sense, what the ages have agreed to name it — the Book.
I would do this, because, after all that has been or can
be said, it still, by the degree of its inspiration, and by
the quantity and quality of truth it contains, outranks the
literature and religion of the world.

What I have said has not been against, and does not
invalidate the work of, the Bible. It is not against any

190                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

claim that the Bible makes. It is only against false and
unfounded claims made on its behalf, — claims, the nature
of and failure to prove which, are constant hinderances
to a perception of its real worth, and so injurious to the
simple, magnificent, and divine truth of Christianity.

The central teaching of the Christianity of Jesus, con-
tained in the Bible, is the true theory of humanity, and
the inspired truth of God. Much that has passed un-
der its name is superstition, Pharisaism, and Paganism.
The truth of the latter statement may be easily proved
by study and comparison. The truth of the first may
be verified by reason, and demonstrated by trial. Jesus'
conception of God is the grandest that the mind of man
can yet conceive; and his theory of human life is the
outline of the best we can hope for. The underlying
principles of Christianity, and the underlying principles
of humanity, as it moves on toward perfection, are per-
fectly identical. This alone is demonstrative of its truth ;
and that it is true is the highest of all conceivable
authority, and is absolute proof that it came from, or
was inspired by, God. Any amount of evidence or
human testimony could not be so authoritative.

So far, then, as the central truths of Christianity are
concerned, here is certainty beyond any thing that any
theory of " verbal" or " plenary" inspiration could
give.

As for that further question, so often asked, How am
I to know whether a particular teaching is, or is not, true,
if all the Bible is not to be received ? I reply, By the

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                  191

general consent of the highest moral sense of the world."
How do men test works of art, and assign them their
rank? By the general consent of artists, cultured men,
and those of the highest taste and sense of beauty.
There is no standard that one can carry in his pocket,
that is able to guide a boor in the selection of a fine
painting. He who has taste knows at a glance. So no
amount of Bibles can help unspiritual and selfish men to
discern spiritual truth. Can a book in the pocket or on
the parlor table of a miser help him discern the star-like
glory of "It is more blessed to give than to receive"?
How many inspired volumes would it take to help a rake
see the truth of " Blessed are the pure in heart" ? The
purest, best, and noblest men of the world are the highest
standards of moral and spiritual truth, just as the greatest
statesmen and jurists are standards in their specialties,
or as the greatest poets and artists are standards in
theirs. Shakspere is a criterion by which to judge the
world's dramas; and Titian and Angelo are the last ap-
peal of artists. They are all we have; and they are
enough. They bound the horizon of human vision in
the direction of the beautiful. And so Jesus and John
and Paul are moral and spiritual' seers. They overtop
the mass of the world, and gaze afar. They bound
the horizon of earth in the direction of character and
God.

Then this inspiration is not something once given for a
while, and then forever after withdrawn. It is too great

192                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

for any book; it breaks out of the Bible, and becomes a
living stream, to follow us in all our lives, and humanity
through all time, as the brook that burst out of the rock,
under the rod of Moses, is said to have followed and
quenched the thirst of Israel in the wilderness. It says,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world." God is not shut up in covers. "The word of
God is not bound " by the bookbinder, any more than in
any other way. Neither is it dependent on the Bible, like
a physician on his medicine-chest, so that if that be gone
he can do no healing work. All heathendom is not "with-
out God;" for in " all nations" those that fear God are
accepted of him." He is a living, loving, guiding spirit.
He gives light to the eyes, and strength to the heart, of
the nations. He has more truth than is in the Bible ;
and the process of the ages is but the unrolling of his
divinely written scroll. What matter, then, though we do
not certainly know each step we are taking ? Are the
children of a ship-captain less safe because they do not
understand the log-book, the quadrant, the path of the
vessel through the waves ? A wise head and a loving
heart are in the cabin, and a strong and wakeful hand is
on the wheel. The captain knows where he is going;
and he knows his route; and the smallest, weakest, and
most ignorant child shall go sailing up the harbor, and
when the anchor is dropped, and the boat lowered, shall
set foot on the wave-washed, sandy beach of the everlast-
ing shore, just as surely and safely as the captain himself.

BIBLES, AND THE BIBLE.                      193

Have faith, then, not in churches, nor creeds, nor coun-
cils, nor books : "have faith in God;" for

" I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range ;
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day."

I have a great deal of doubt of men, — their thoughts,
their creeds, and their systems; but with all my heart and
soul I believe in God and the future. He has inspired
and led in all the past; he inspires and leads to-day; he
will inspire and lead to-morrow; for "he is the same yes-
terday, to-day, and forever."

X.

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.

The atonement is the central doctrine of Christianity,
and of right and necessity is it so; for, if the fundamental
principles of the popular system be once admitted, then
the necessity of this doctrine of atonement logically fol-
lows. Without any the, it is the central doctrine of all
religion. It always has been, and it always will be. To
understand the truth of this statement, let us ask what
atonement means. Atonement, of course, can have
relation to the situation in which two human beings stand
to each other. If there has been estrangement between
friends on account of an injury rendered one by the other,
or on account of an innocent mutual misunderstanding on
the part of both, atonement means bringing them together
again, reconciling between them, clearing away the mis-
understanding, and bringing them once more into the
position of their old sympathy and friendship. Of course,
from the religious standpoint, atonement must always
have relation to the position which humanity occupies in
regard to God. What does atonement mean here, then,

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              195

and what shape must it necessarily assume ? It will be
determined always, in the character of its definition, by
the conception which any special age in the history of the
world shall have of God, of humanity, of the actual rela-
tion in which they stand to each other, and of the ideal
relation in which they ought to stand. If you will think
of it a moment, you will see that you must understand
these four points before you can get at the conception of
the doctrine of atonement, as held at any particular time
in the history of the world : What is God ? what is man ?
what relation do they actually sustain ? what relation
ought they to sustain ? And then atonement comes in as
the means by which the actual is changed into the ideal,
-—by which the fact becomes what ought to be the fact.

If I should prove my statement, that atonement is the
central doctrine of all religion, the bringing of God and
man at one, it would involve the necessity on my part of
giving you the universal history of the religious thought
and the religious life of the world. Of course, within
my present limits, I can only point out two or three of
the more important stages in the development of this
thought, along with the applications that will naturally
follow from them. Following, then, the line up the
pathway of humanity by which the progress has been
attained of which we are to-day the representatives, and
coming down from the most ancient times to the present,
you will recognize three distinct and separate stages in
the thought of man concerning this great doctrine of
atonement. Go back to the earliest times. Atonement

196                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

then possessed nothing whatever of any moral element,
or what we should now call " religious." What was
the conception of God, the conception of humanity, and
their relations by which the form of the doctrine was
determined, in those earlier ages ? The gods themselves
were not moral beings; they did not represent any moral
idea; they did not stand for the human conception of
righteousness. They were simply the personified forces
of the world; and the relations which men sustained to
those gods were not moral relations. Men never bowed
down before Jupiter, or before Odin, or before Brahma,
with the consciousness of sin such as men speak of to-day,
and with,the desire to be made purer in heart, and recon-
ciled to this god, who to them was the ideal of righteous-
ness and truth; for, as I have said, those old nature
deities were not the representatives of righteousness and
truth. They were simply forces, powers, having a certain
influence over men, being able to help or to damage
them, and which they stood in fear of, or whose favor
they wished to gain. So that atonement, as I said, in
this first stage of the world's religion, possessed no
moral element; it was not a reconciliation between
human unrighteousness and divine righteousness. What
was it, then ? Suppose there came some dire calamity
upon a person, a family, or a nation, so that they con-
ceived that some one of the gods was angry: what did
they do ? Why, they endeavored to find out, by the best
means they had at their disposal, what it was that they
had done, and why it was that they had incurred the

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              197

divine displeasure; and atonement, to their minds, was
simply an endeavor to placate the wrath of offended deity.
It meant building him an altar, erecting a temple, bring-
ing to him offerings, burning sacrifices, pouring out obla-
tions, establishing rituals, — doing something by which he
should be appeased. Or, if one of the gods was indif-
ferent, and they wished to gain his favor, it was simply
bringing to him some offering that they supposed he
would desire, that would enlist his interest on their behalf.
Then, as I have said, the first form that the doctrine of
atonement assumed (this attempt to bring humanity and
God together) was not a moral form, and had nothing
whatever to do with righteousness or with morals; but out
of this conception of the Divine, and of man's relation-
ship to him, grew one of the most important elements of
all religions, an element that has not been outgrown, an
element that largely forms and gives color to the popular
Christianity even of to-day. I refer to the element of
sacrifice, not as the giving of something for the attain-
ment of something else, but sacrifice as a religious cere-
mony, — burnt offerings, the bringing of the fruits of the
field, the firstlings of the flock, as offerings to God. This
idea of sacrifice was once universal; and it grew out of a
conception of God as a cruel being, who delighted in suf-
fering, who rejoiced in the smell of the burning fat of the
victims that were consumed upon the altar; a God who
was ready to take from you your sacredest and your dear-
est, as a punishment for something that you had done by
which you had given him offence.. I say this world-wide

198                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

doctrine of sacrifice, this doctrine, false in its form (for
the doctrine of sacrifice itself is universal and eternal), —
this false doctrine of sacrifice grew out of this false
and partial conception of God, and of his relation to
humanity.

The second stage in this development of the doctrine
of atonement is represented by the growth, in humanity,
of the moral conception of God. It is represented well
enough, and perhaps best of all for our purpose, in the
later life of the Jewish people; for at first the gods of the
Jews, just as well as the gods of other nations, were
nature-deities, and did not represent the ideal of right-
eousness as Jehovah came to represent it in later ages.
There grew up, I say, a conception of God as a moral
being, as representing the highest ideal of righteousness
and of truth; and there grew up, along with this, a con-
viction of sin on the part of humanity; for, when once
their grandest ideal of righteousness was placed on the
throne of the universe, then there came into their hearts
a conviction that the one thing that God demanded of
them was righteousness in heart and in life. But they still
attempted to satisfy this moral demand by the old, false
form of sacrifice; that is, when a man felt a conviction
of sin in his heart, recognized the fact that he had not
lived out the divine ideal of righteousness which he felt
was demanded by the law of his own conscience, not
knowing what else or what better to do, he still brought
to the altar of his God an offering, the firstlings of his
flock, or the fruits of his vineyard. He still brought

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT,              199

some gift, as though he could take some of the things
that belonged to God, and, by giving them to him, make
up for his own moral deficiencies. This was the weak-
ness, the central weakness, of the old Jewish system of
religion; and this began to be recognized after a time by
the highest thinkers, and the best religious teachers, of
the Jewish nation. You will remember, perhaps, how in
the first book of Samuel it is recorded that Saul was com-
manded by Jehovah to do a certain thing, and did not
obey; but afterward, to make up for the deficiency in his
own character and his own obedience, he brought large
offerings to the altar of God; and then the prophet
Samuel rebuked him, saying, "Has the Lord as great
delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying
the voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better than
sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams;" thus
echoing this universal and world-wide consciousness that
liberal religion stands for to-day, and stands for, in a
certain distinct way, above and beyond all others, — that
obedience, righteousness of character and of life, are the
things that are acceptable to the Divine. This same idea
comes out in the writings of David, in the touching and
beautiful psalm where he says, ".For thou desirest not sac-
rifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-
offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not de-
spise." And then, in the later prophets, particularly in
Micah, it is brought out more clearly still, that the one
good which God demanded was righteousness, and not

200                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

the offering of " thousands of rams, or ten thousands of
rivers of oil." " To do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God," is the thing that the prophet
demands as the way by which we can bring humanity
into accord with the divine life. This old doctrine of
sacrifice is tried in the realm of morals, in the effort of
humanity to atone for its sins, and to make reconciliation
between itself and God, — is tried, and is found wanting.

The third great form of the doctrine of the atone-
ment is that which is represented in popular Christianity.
In order that it may be understood, I must give, just
as I did in the other case, the fundamental concep-
tion of God, of humanity, and of what people supposed
human salvation meant. There had grown up in the
later Jewish life a belief in immortality, — a belief which
was. not apparent in their early history and teaching.
There had grown up the doctrine of the fall of man, —
a doctrine also not apparent in the earliest teaching and
belief of the Jews. It was believed that, on account of
this fall of man, death had come into the world; that, if
man had not sinned and fallen, he would have lived here
forever. It was further believed that, on account of this
fall, man had come under the wrath of God, into the
hands of Satan and his angels: so that after death,
unless there was some redemption found for him, he
must endure the misery and torment of a never-ending
hell. The one thing, then, according to this conception
of God, of the nature of man, and of their relations, —
the one thing that was needed was some power, not

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              201

necessarily touching the present life of humanity, but
some power that should reach beyond the grave, that
should grasp humanity in its fallen condition, rescue it
from the clutches of the Evil One, save it from the wrath
to come, and, delivering it from its dark destiny of abid-
ing in the midst of torment forever in one place, open
for it the gates of the city of life, and suffer it to enter
into the bliss and joy of God forever. This was the
problem to be solved. How was it solved ? There grew
up the doctrine that Christ was the atoning sacrifice that
had been prefigured through all ages, whom all the world
had looked forward to, and who now had wrought the
one work by which humanity was to be saved in the
future life. That there is no consistent revelation in
regard to this Christian doctrine of atonement, that
makes it* binding on the thought of all honest persons,
is apparent from one or two very remarkable facts. In
the first place, you may search all through the history of
the words and teachings of Jesus himself, and you may
search in vain, to find any doctrine whatever of atone-
ment, as it is popularly understood to-day. There is
not one single word that teaches or supports it in any
accredited utterance of Jesus; so that we are brought
face to face with this remarkable fact: if Jesus did come
into the world to bring about such results as are claimed,
he utterly failed to speak one word in regard to the
great central object of his mission, — apparently forgot
entirely the burden of the message he had been sent to
deliver. And the other remarkable fact is this: that the

202               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

doctrine of the atonement, as held by Christendom, has
itself undergone changes and transformations, and has
followed the line of a definite progress from the first
until now. It has assumed some fifteen or twenty differ-
ent shapes, during the history of Christendom. In the
first place, Jesus was supposed to be a price paid to the
devil for the purchase of humanity. That is, humanity,
by sin and the fall, had become the property of Satan,
he having a right to own and control it. Jesus was his
ancient rival in heaven, as represented in the poetry of
"Paradise Lost;" and so there was a bargain made,
by which Jesus was to be delivered over into the hands
of Satan, that he might work his will on him, in considera-
tion of the salvation of certain numbers of the human
race, who were to be redeemed by this purchase, and who
were to take the place vacated by him in heaven. But
Jesus being divine, so that, as the New Testament says,
he could not be "holden of death," when he had de-
scended into hell, broke away from the power of Satan
by which he was held, burst the gates of Hades, and
escaped, leading a great multitude of followers, who for
ages had been chained in the dark abysses of despair: so
that Jesus, by his superior wit and his superior power,
outwitted Satan, and delivered not only himself from his
clutches, but all those who thereafter should believe on
him. This was the first form of the doctrine of atone-
ment, which was held in the Church for ages. You will
find traces of it all through the New Testament, if you
read it in the light of this fact; and we read it in the

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.             203

Prayer-Book to-day. It is recited in the Episcopal, the
Anglican, and the Catholic churches every day, how Jesus
actually descended into hell, and how he delivered him-
self thence.

Then the doctrine of the atonement was changed, and
took on the form of Christ being a sacrifice to appease
the wrath of an angry God. This was held, also, for
ages. Then it took on the form that is prominently held
in what is called " New England theology " to-day, — the
doctrine that God somehow must sacrifice Christ as a
governmental necessity. That is, here was this great
moral government of God, on which the life and safety
and peace of humanity depended; and it was claimed that
he could not forgive humanity, and still maintain the dig-
nity and the power of his moral law intact, unless there
were found some sacrifice, some one who would give
himself voluntarily as a victim, so that it might be made
manifest to the universe that no man could disobey the
laws of God with impunity; and so Christ was found,
and he gave himself thus. And then the doctrine has
taken on the form of substitution, that has been preached
by the evangelists very forcibly and very prominently
during the last two or three years. Christ became the
purchase for the elect, — a certain part of humanity cho-
sen from all eternity. Christ came, and suffered the
precise amount which they would have had to suffer, if
they had been chained in darkness and torment through
all eternity, and thus he purchased their redemption;
and they, through the power of God and by faith in him,

204               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

are redeemed and set free, and permitted to enter on the
divine life.

The last form that I care to notice at this time, and
which is a recent one, is that which is received and
promulgated by the younger clergymen of the country;
the one that is popularly held and taught by what is called
"liberal orthodoxy;" the one which is intimately associ-
ated with the name and fame and life-work of the cele-
brated Dr. Bushnell, recently deceased; the doctrine that
Christ, by his life, by his teachings, by his sufferings, by
his death, revealed the righteousness and love of God,
and became a power for the conviction of sin, and an
impulse toward a life of righteousness on the part of
humanity. This is the moral view of the atonement;
and this, I believe, contains in it a central kernel of truth,
of power, of life, that will abide forever: for Christ, by
his life, by his teachings, by his sufferings, by his death,
did reveal the majesty and the glory and the love and the
righteousness of God; and he did convince men, when
they contrasted their life and character with his own, — he
did convince men of sin; and he has become a moral
impulse to renovate the life of thousands and thousands
of men, and will become Such an impulse still in the ages
of the future.

The doctrine of the atonement, that I believe to be the
one that shall be permanent and universal in the future
history of the race, does not slough off and leave behind
this moral view of the atonement which I have just de-
scribed. It takes it up into itself, and carries it along as

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              205

part of the universal and world-wide doctrine: for the
moral power of Christ for the renovation of humanity is
not expended; and it does not depend at all upon the
theological conception of Christ's person, or his nature,
or his birth, or his death, or his resurrection. Christ has
become part of the moral and religious life of humanity,
a part that cannot be eliminated, a part that shall in-
crease, and become mightier and mightier yet, as it takes
its proper place in the history of the religious thought
and life of the world.

What, then, is the universal doctrine which I believe
must bear sway in the future ? And here, again, I must
start with new definitions. We have rejected the doctrine
of the fall of man. It is not something that we have
speculatively cast aside for the simple reason that it does
not please "our thought, or because we have chosen to take
up with some new-fangled notion. The doctrine of the
fall of man is proved, absolutely proved, to have been
untrue; and precisely the reverse of that is established
as a matter of fact and demonstration to-day. Humanity
has never fallen. Humanity has never been so high, so
noble, so pure, so true, as it is to-day. Starting in the
dust, it has, through struggle and sorrow and toil and
tears, climbed up to its present position of grandeur and
of glory, where it catches an outlook of the future that is
cheering, inspiriting, and divine. Of course, then, the fall
being given up as a part of the doctrine of the religion
of to-day and of to-morrow, there is no necessity for any
contrivance, on the part of God or man, by which the sup-

206                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

posed fall is to be retrieved. The old doctrine of atone-
ment has no place in such a conception of humanity as
leaves out the doctrine of the fall; and there is one weak
position of what is now called "liberal orthodoxy." I
know a great many ministers, and a large number of per-
sons, who still claim to be orthodox, who have totally
rejected the doctrine of the fall; and yet, illogically,
they retain the doctrine of the atonement: for, if there
was no fall, there is no need of atonement, in the theo-
logical sense. Then, the salvation that humanity seeks
to-day has undergone an entire and important change. It
is no longer a salvation simply from future peril. The
salvation we need is a salvation that shall take us right
here to-day; that shall take us in our homes, that shall
take us in our social life, that shall take us in our busi-
ness life, that shall make us faithful in all departments of
our career. This is the salvation that the age is longing
for, and reaching out after the attainment of. We care
very little to-day, comparatively, as to the chances that
await us when we have passed beyond the veil that
separates between this life and the next; for we know
that if as true, faithful men and women, clean-hearted and
clean-handed, we can pass under that veil when the
divine hand has lifted it, we may stand unabashed in
the presence of our loving Father, who has led us
through this life, and has taken us to himself. The sal-
vation we need then is a present salvation.

And one more change has come. It is no longer a sal-
vation of the soul simply: it is a salvation of the man.

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              207

We recognize no longer any soul that man carries about
with him as a piece of property, that he can get insured,
that he can provide for the safety of in all contingencies
and changes in the future of life. We recognize no
division in human nature. Human nature is one; and
body, mind, and spirit are only different forms of the
manifestation of this one conscious life that we call self.
The salvation that is needed, then, is not salvation of the
soul: it is salvation of the body; it is salvation of the
mind; it is salvation of the spirit; it is something that
regards humanity as a unit, and that seeks to save man
all over and all through.

And there is another change. There has been growing
lately in the thought of the intelligent part of the world,
and it is to grow more and more in the future, a doctrine
which, in philosophical language, is called the " solidarity
of humanity;" that is, the doctrine that not only the
individual is a unit, but that humanity collective is one,
and that there is no possibility of saving myself, or saving
yourself, while we leave the rest of humanity " out in the
cold." Humanity is a unit: we must go up or down
together. We recognize it sometimes, — wake up to it
occasionally here in Boston, or in the other great cities of
the world. Now and then there comes the sweep of a
pestilence : what does it mean ? It comes creeping about
the doorways of the great, looking into the windows of
the rich, striking down the fair, the beautiful, the edu-
cated, the cultivated, from the highest circles of society.
What does it mean ? It means that the culture and edu-

208                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

cation and wealth of a city have neglected the lowest, the
poorest, the outcast, and the mean. It means that some-
where in the city there is collected a centre of ignorance,
a centre of crime, a centre of filth, a centre of neglect,
that has turned at last into a centre of disease; so that
the breath of God's heaven, as it sweeps over the city, has
taken this suffering and plague that was neglected and
left on one side, or in one spot in the city, and has swept
the infection into every house and into every home. It
means that the city was one life, and that the head of the
city could not with safety neglect the feet; that the upper
circles of the city could not with safety to themselves
neglect the foundation; that the city life was one; and
that there is no possibility of saving the upper while
neglecting the lower. This lesson has been taught, if one
will look for it, hundreds of times in the history of the
world. Take the old Roman civilization, surrounded on
every hand by barbarism. By and by the grandeur of
that classic life, that classic thought, that classic writing,
that classic art, is swept to the winds by the down-coming
from the North of the avalanche of barbarism that they
had looked upon with scorn and neglect. They had tried
to save the Grecian and the Roman world, without saving
the rest of it; and the barbarism overwhelmed and swal-
lowed up the civilization. Take another hint from the
life of France, just preceding the French Revolution.
Never has there been a period in the history of the world
when culture and refinement and art and pleasure were
carried to a higher pitch than in the last years of the

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.            209

French empire. But beneath it was a life looked down
upon with scorn and neglect by the rich and the great;
and that life by and by rose beneath this fabric that
was resting upon it as a foundation, — rose as the flood
rises under the ice in spring, broke it into atoms, and
whelmed the fair life that was above it, beneath its
cold, dark, slimy, and muddy waters. The sans culottes
were in the palaces and the houses of the great. There
was no possibility of saving a few, while leaving the many
outcast and neglected.

The atonement, then, of the religion of the present,
and that shall be the religion of the future, — the doctrine
of atonement that is permanent, that is universal, — must
be something capable of taking this living, throbbing,
pulsating humanity of ours in its entirety, and bringing
it, body and mind and soul, into sympathy with the life
of God right here, now; not to-morrow, not in another
world.

Who, then, are doing this work of atonement ? Who
are the saviors of the race in this universal sense ?
Jesus is one of them. For, as I said, the moral teachings
and the life and power of Jesus have entered as perma-
nent elements into the religious life of the world; and,
thank God for it! they cannot be eliminated. But this
doctrine shall not hereafter be confined to Jesus. In
their sphere, and according to individual power, individual
effort, and individual achievement, it is possible, and it
shall be a fact, that every man, woman, and child in the
world shall help on the work of universal atonement

210                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

between humanity and God. The great army of truth-
seekers over the world, — those who patiently and per-
sistently, in loneliness and neglect, misunderstood and
outcast, day and night, are seeking after truth, — they are
helping on such an understanding in regard to God and
man, and the relationship existing between them, as shall,
culminate at last in this perfect work of atonement
between God and man. Studying the stars,. reading the
records of creation as the hand of God has written them
in the hieroglyphics on the rocks, that have been laid
down slowly, age after age, from the first dawn of the
world until to-day; tracing back the record of the life of
man, finding out what man is, where he came from, how
he came to be what he is to-day; tracing the dim and
distant records of the earliest civilization, the experiments
that man has tried, succeeded in, failed in, tried again,
in the work of bringing to pass a perfect society, — the
experiments of man in government, in attempting to bring
about the time when the statute-book should represent the
really high life and thought and justice of the best men
of the world, — this, great army of truth-seekers, I say,
are first and foremost in this grand world-wide work of
atonement. And then there is the army of reformers :
not those self-constituted reformers who expect to save
the world by passing a series of resolutions, or calling
public meetings; but those men who are studying the
early facts of the world, who are attempting to adjust the
relations between the rich and the poor, between labor
and capital; those men who are attempting to bring about

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.            211

a mutual understanding on the part of the alienated ele-
ments and classes of society; those men who are engaged
in what seemed to be at first purely secular work, — the
discoverers, the inventors, of the world, — those men who
are studying the laws of nature, who are making them
obedient servants and helpers of humanity. Why, some
of the purely physical discoveries of the world bear a
closer relation to the religious life and the future welfare
of humanity, than do some of the great religions of ages
in the history of the past. To-day the telegraph and
steam are doing more, and they have done more in fifty
years, to bring about a sense of universal brotherhood, to
help humanity feel that it is one, and that all humanity is
related to every other part of humanity, — I say these two
agencies, the telegraph and steam-power, have done more
to bring about this, than all the preaching and all the
churches of the last eighteen hundred years. So the men
who are seeking to regulate the sanitary life of cities, to
give the poor, the outcast, the down-trodden, an opportu-
nity to live, physically, according to the laws of health,
of decency, — these men are doing more than hundreds
of those who simply preach and pray, in the work of lift-
ing up humanity toward God, in bringing about such a set
of conditions as shall make it possible for those who are
lowest in the scale of humanity to climb up into decency
and self-respect, and so to find out that they have brains,
that they have hearts, that they have spiritual natures that
link them to God. And then the great army of witnesses
for righteousness and truth, the sufferers and martyrs,

212                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

those who have had some insight of the divine principles
of righteousness, and who have stood for them in the face
of mobs and angry crowds; who have stood for liberty,
who have stood for the rights of the down-trodden, who
have been the martyrs of the outcast races of the world,
— those men who have dared to stand in the face of
death, while the flames were kindling about them, or,
stretched on instruments of torture, have dared to die
rather than yield one jot or tittle of truth, — such are the
men who are bringing about this grand, universal work
of atonement between the human and the divine. And,
more than that, there is not, as I have said, one single
person who reads this, nor a single human being alive,
who may not, in his sphere, become as divine a savior as
Jesus, or any of the grandest and sweetest souls of his-
tory.

Be faithful and true in your relations where you are
placed. Stand by the principles of right as you see them
to-day. Be true, be honest, be faithful, be fearless. See
what you can of the divine, and embody it as far as you
can in your own life, and in the lives of those about you;
and you atone, you help bring on that time when the life
of all humanity shall be pervaded by the spirit and the
life of God.

I wish to call attention to just one thought as my last.
I pointed out at the first how a false conception of
sacrifice was the central principle in the idea of atone-
ment in the early ages of the world. All are well aware
how the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is claimed as the

THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT.              213

central idea of the doctrine of atonement, as held in the
popular religion; and the idea of sacrifice remains, trans-
formed, taking on a new shape, having a new significance.
Sacrifice shall still be the central idea of the world-wide
and universal doctrine of atonement, — the sacrifice of
the lower to the higher, the sacrifice of ease, the sacrifice
of wealth, the sacrifice of whatever be needful to enable
you to stand for the highest ideal you can discern of truth
and right. Nothing that is worthy of attainment has ever
been gained in the history of humanity, and never will be,
except by the pathway of the cross, as Jesus used the
term, — the cross, in its grand and central significance.
If you wish to become rich, it must be by the sacrifice
of ease and pleasure, the sacrifice of ten thousand other
pursuits that you might like to follow. If you wish for
pleasure, you must sacrifice every thing that stands in the
way of pleasure. If you wish for fame, for power and
influence, you must study, and struggle, and train your-
self, and sacrifice, to attain it. And so you find the law
universal: whatever you wish to gain, you can gain it only
by the way of the cross, — by the giving-up of something
that stands in the way of attainment. Look through
every nation, every religion, every civilization of the past,
and you find it a world-wide truth, that the men who have
stood for the highest, who have helped on the progress of
humanity, who have lifted men up toward God, have been
the men who have been misunderstood, who have been
maligned, who have been outcast, who have been lonely,
forsaken by friends, forsaken by kindred, out of sympathy

214                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

with their time, daring to stand alone with God, to sacri-
fice fame, to sacrifice reputation, to sacrifice money, to
sacrifice ease, to sacrifice every thing that stood between
them and God. They have been the men who dared to
trample pleasure and wealth and fame underneath their
feet; marching ahead, the pioneers of humanity, and
awaiting praise when, by and by, grateful after-times are
willing to write their epitaphs, and honor them on their
tombstones. So that still it is true, applying the words to
any individual who works for the atonement of humanity,
applying them to humanity collective, applying them to
Jesus, applying them to any and every one who has in any
measure been a savior of his kind, still those words are
true, " Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgres-
sions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are
healed."

XI.

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.

If evolution is true, what becomes of Christianity?
Are the two antagonistic, so that one necessarily excludes
the other ? That depends upon definitions. Prof. Tayler
Lewis said, not long ago, that the dogma of the super-
natural and instantaneous creation of man, by the flat of
a purely personal God, was the very foundation of Chris-
tianity, and essential to its existence. But I utterly fail to
see how the two have any necessary relation to each other.
So I would answer our opening question by saying, Since
evolution is true, therefore Christianity, one of its prod-
ucts, is also true. This statement will hold only of its
essential life. Forms and statements may change indefi-
nitely, while the same life that created the forms remains.
The life that animates the caterpillar, as it crawls slowly
along the ground, is the same life that soars and floats
and glitters in the butterfly. The transformation extin-
guishes not the life. One of the results of evolution can-
not possibly contradict evolution itself. I am none the
less a Christian, then, because I am an evolutionist. I

216                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

will even say I am a Christian because I am an evolution-
ist. To justify this position, to trace the progress of reli-
gion until it culminates in Christianity, and to show the
relation it sustains to those religions that have preceded
it, — this is my present purpose.

The first form that the religious thought of the world
clothed itself in was fetichism. It sprung up naturally
and necessarily out of the best and highest thought of the
time. It is nothing to be contemptuously despised, any
more than the infant's first efforts at speech. It accorded
with all the philosophy and facts then known, quite as
well as Christianity to-day harmonizes with the knowledge
of to-day. It agreed perfectly with what was known of
the universe, and sprang out of that knowledge. It was
just as necessary a phase of the religious life of humanity,
as -twilight is a necessary phase of sunrising. Look at
the process of thought out of which it sprung. Man
recognized his own personal will and choice as the source
of all his movements and power. This was the only kind
of power he knew any thing about: therefore, whenever
he saw exhibitions of life and power, he could account for
them only on the ground of his knowledge and experi-
ence. Man can never conceive of any thing that tran-
scends all his knowledge. Thus his experience com-
pelled him to endow with personal will and choice every
thing about him. His dreams made him familiar with the
thought of spiritual beings existing apart from substantial
bodies; and these souls he thought of as the source of
life and power. And it was natural for his crude thought,

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.              217

to endow all things with souls. Thus, when a savage
buried along with the dead warrior his horse, his bow and
arrow and spear, his kettle and his cooking utensils and
tent appurtenances, he was not so silly as to suppose that
he was going to take these material things with him to
the happy hunting-grounds: he believed that the souls of
these things would accompany and still serve and be use-
ful to the soul of the warrior. Stones, sticks, trees, rep-
tiles, birds, springs, rivers, — all things were thus alive to
him, and represented a personal consciousness like his
own.

And, as I have already shown, since the principal
forces encompassing early humanity were forces that hurt
them, on the action of which they could not calculate, and
of which they were therefore afraid, they thought that
most of these beings were evil-disposed toward them.
They did not know nature enough to control it, and make
its powers serve them, and they had not philosophy
enough to see how apparent evils might become real
good: so, of necessity, their first gods were devils, and
the earliest religions were devil-worship. Even to-day,
should you go to people in this condition of mind (and
fetich-worship is still widely prevalent), and tell them
about God, they would perhaps inquire, " But what if this
great being should eat me ?" and the effect would very
likely be, that they would run off affrighted into the
jungle, to get away from God.

You will notice here what you will find to be true
always and everywhere, that the prevailing thought of

218                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

God accords with, and is on the same level as, the preva-
lent philosophy of the universe, the theory of the world.

The next step in the evolution of religion was to
polytheism. This is only fetichism partially generalized.
That is, instead of making each tree a god, they rose to
the thought of one god for all the trees. Instead of each
frog or serpent being a deity, they had thought of a
king, or god, of all the frogs or all the serpents. They
divided nature off into departments, with a deity supreme
in and ruling each. Thus AEolus became god of the
winds, Neptune of the oceans and seas, Jupiter of the
heavens, Pluto of the under world of spirits, and so on.
The individual spirit in each individual thing was not at
first destroyed : only there was one chief, like the chief of
a tribe, who held the allegiance of all. You see here the
social and political condition reflected in the religion.
This only shows how all the different departments of
human thought and life, social, political, philosophical,
and religious, keep even step and progress side by side.
One side of humanity does not outrun another. Not only
did they have gods of the several departments of nature;
but they gradually rose to the conception of abstract
ideas, and had deities to represent the departments of
thought and the various mental life. So Apollo was the
god of eloquence, Minerva the goddess of wisdom, the
Muses superintended poetry and the arts.

One step more brought the human mind to anthropo-
morphic monotheism. That is, they generalized still
more; and instead of gods supreme in their different

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION              219

departments, like the kings of sovereign states, they con-
ceived a universal monarchy of the world. But as yet
this universal monarch was only a mighty and gigantic
being in the image of man; for they could think of no
higher power than that which humanity represented. And,
though he was supreme, the other gods were not dead.
The conception was very much like the theory of our
government, in which the president is supreme executive,
while still the governors rule, as subject to him, over the
several states. Even Israel at first had no higher idea
than this of their Jehovah. They sing of him as being
"a great king above all gods." The "all gods" are real
beings: only Jehovah is " king above" them. In the
progress of thought these subject gods at last die out, or
else become degraded to the position of rebellious but
yet conquered and subject devils. This last was the con-
dition of things in the popular thought of early Christi-
anity ; and it is the condition of things in popular Chris-
tianity to-day; only that the people who still believe in
the devils have forgotten where they came from, and how
the belief originated. God is still to most minds only a
gigantic man, acting on human motives and impulses, and
according to human methods.

But among the higher thinkers of all ages, there has
been a tendency to take the fourth and highest step of all,
—- that leading to a purely spiritual monotheism. Jesus
gave it its purest old-time expression, when he said, " God
is a spirit," and taught that he did not dwell in any
one material place, like the ark, the temple, Gerizim,

220                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

or Moriah. Modern science, culminating in evolution,
rounds out and completes this conception by teaching that
God is the spirit and life, underlying and giving form to
all things, while yet he transcends all thought, and eludes
all attempts to give him shape, and slips through the
finest-wrought meshes of all the creeds. This is the per-
fect monotheism, " God over all, and in all, and through
all."

The outward forms of all religions have, of necessity,
taken their shape from the prevalent thought of the time.
Thus the growth has been from the sorcery and charms
of fetichism, through animal and human sacrifices, prosti-
tutions, symbol-worships, idolatries, rituals, and stately
ceremonies, up to the high spiritual thought that true wor-
ship is the aspiration and adoration of the heart, and that
mercy and justice and truth are more than all altars and
sacrifices. Only the finest thought and the finest living
can appreciate this last even yet. It seems unsubstantial
and unreal to the multitude; just as this same multitude
cares more for a minstrel than a symphony, for a farce
than for Hamlet, for a chromo than a Raphael.

We must now pass to the evolution of the ethical side
of religion. Morality and religion are closely connected
in our minds; but originally they had no relation to each
other. At first men prayed and sacrificed to and wor-
shipped the gods, not because they thought of it as a
moral duty, but because they feared them, and wished to
ward off some supposed danger; or because they wished
some favor, and hoped to gain it in this way. So far was

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.              221

the fetich-worshipper's mind from connecting any moral
ideas or thoughts of right or wrong with the worship of
his gods, that he did not conceive his gods themselves
as moral, or as caring for right. One does not seek to
please the devil with righteousness. The only morality
of that time grew out of the simple human relationships
in which they stood to each other; and the gods and reli-
gion had nothing whatever to do with it. The same was
and is true of polytheism. In Greece and Rome, the
popular religion was in no way connected with the popu-
lar morality. The gods were simply the kings and rulers
of heaven and earth; and they represented, in their own
characters, all phases of human character, even its vices
and crimes. They even patronized and protected vices
and crimes, so that licentiousness and theft and murder
were sometimes a main part of religion. There were, in-
deed, supposed to be Fates and Furies that punished the
more flagrant outbreaks of wickedness ; and in later ages
they thought of future rewards and punishments. But
they were only after-thoughts. Men could even pray to
the gods for help in some deed that now would ostracise
a man from society, or shut him behind prison-bars.

The moral motive and sanction in communities like
ancient Athens were purely social and political; so that,
though religion and morality were growing side by side,
though they re-acted on and modified each other, they yet
sprung from different sources, and flowed like parallel
rivers before they come to a junction.

During the early history of Israel, religion and morality

222               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION,

were quite as distinct as among other people. Good wor-
shippers of Jehovah also worshipped Baal and Ashera
with obscene rites; they could lie and steal, and be
drunken, and murder, could neglect father and mother,
and play false to all the moralities of life, and yet not
forfeit their allegiance to the national God. But the later
conception of Jehovah represented him, through the
mouths of the prophets, as a moral God, who demanded
" clean hands and a pure heart" on the part of his
worshippers.

In the teachings of Jesus, religion and morality came
into still closer combination. In his highest thought they
became identical. To love God with all the heart, and
the neighbor as ourself, became at, once the summing-up
of all religion, and, at the same time, the perfect formula
of morals. But in the hands of his immediate followers,
and of those who gave shape to Christianity as an institu-
tion in the world, religion and morality became separated
once more. Religion was metamorphosed into a " scheme
of salvation." The thing to be saved from was not unright-
eousness, but hell; and the means of salvation were not
right thinking and living, but baptism and faith. So the
grand work of Jesus was partly undone by his disciples.
Indeed, his thought was so far beyond his age, that only a
few could comprehend it, and it was necessarily degraded
to the level of the common intelligence. The Church
became a close corporation, holding the keys of heaven as
a corporate privilege, for the exclusive use of its members.
And one "without," however moral and godlike, could

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.              223

only find refuge among the devils in hell; while those
" within," though ever so vile, had become partakers of
the corporate spirit and grace, and so had gained a " right
to the tree of life, and could enter into the city." This is
Romish doctrine still. The brigand of modern Italy
looks to his saint to help him plunder, and returns the
favor by offering at his shrine a saint's share of the booty.
So it is nothing strange that Tetzel should travel through
Europe selling papal indulgences, the privilege beforehand
of committing all sorts of sins and crimes, so only that he
recompensed the Church, which, " for a consideration,"
promised to keep the gate of heaven ajar for him till he
got ready to go in.

And this same idea taints Protestantism still. The
ecclesiastical conditions of salvation are held in such high
esteem that even to-day a heresy is less easily forgiven
than an immorality. Mr. Moody stands up in New York,
with all New York Protestantism at his back, and, without
one audible undertone of dissent, asserts that morality
" don't touch the question of salvation." It is still only
an ingenious ecclesiastical " scheme," by which God is
enabled to snatch sinners with his one hand, called sal-
vation, out of his other burning,; dark hand, called dam-
nation. If only church-members are logical, it is no
special wonder that Washington should be full of " Chris-
tian statesmen " who dabble in " Credit Mobiliers," and
that ministers like Winslow should find it convenient to
go to Rotterdam. It is not enough that the Church
should preach that its members ought to be moral, so

224                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

long as it also preaches that its great end and aim,
salvation, hangs on something not connected with mo-
rality.

Evolution goes back, and, taking up the pure word of
Jesus, completes and enforces it with all the knowledge
and emphasis of modern science. When it makes all law,
physical, intellectual, and spiritual, only the manifestation
of the living, loving, righteous God, then it absolutely
identifies religion and morality, or makes morality only a
part of the greater and grander thing, religion. God is
not any longer a being sitting apart, to be pleased or dis-
pleased by what you do, or do not do, as pertaining per-
sonally to him, while life here in the world is something
disconnected from him. But God is here, all about us
and in us. He is in sun and air and ocean and earth.
He is in heart-beat and brain-throb, in every fibre and
muscle and thrilling nerve of the body. He is not only
in the truths of religion, but he is in the truths of science.
The laws of the intellect are his laws; the light of truth
is his light; the moral relations in which we stand to our
fellow-men are the expression of his thought and life in
humanity. So that duty to God becomes absolutely iden-
tical with all human duty. Righteousness before God is
absolutely identical with all human righteousness. Pleas-
ing God is obeying all his laws. Salvation can possibly
be nothing more nor less than coming into perfect accord
with the whole life and movement of things. A man is
saved just in so far as he knows and obeys the laws of
God. Perfect salvation is perfect knowledge and obedi-

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.              225

ence. A man in this condition is of necessity perfectly
moral and perfectly religious.

Thus the teaching of evolution completely accomplishes
what Jesus began, but what popular Christianity failed to
carry out, — it identifies and makes one the moral motive
and the religious motive. The gods have become one;
that one has become spirit; and that spirit has become
the life and inspiration of all goodness and truth and
beauty in state, in society, in the individual, in art, in
letters, in science. Indeed, in the grandest sense, God
has become " all and in all."

If evolution be true, the life of the universe is one life.
And since religion is a part of this life, if evolution be
true, the religious life of the world must be one. Let us,
then, search for the essence of religion, see whether it
exists everywhere, and, therefore, whether there are many
different religions, of which Christianity is one; or
whether there is only one religion, of which Christianity
is the highest outgrowth and expression. Science teaches
us that there is only one life on the globe. From the
little viscous globule that palpitates in primeval seas, or
the lichen that creeps over the rock, up through all
ascending forms of plant and animal, till you reach the
infinitely involved brain of Newton working a problem in
the differential calculus, the imagination of Praxiteles
seeking the hidden god in the block of marble, or the
complex arts, societies, and politics that issue in our
world-wide civilization, — everywhere and all through and
all up, it is one life that beats in it all. So evolution

226                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

teaches that the blindest gropings in the realm of religion
were only poor, weak human hands and feet feeling after
the lowest step in "the world's great altar-stairs, that
slope through darkness up to God." The fetich-worships
per, with the best light and knowledge he had, went "feel-
ing after God, if haply he might find him," who is " not
far from any one of us." It was not depravity on his
part when he stood in awe of, and worshipped, and sacri-
ficed and prayed to, a stick or a reptile. He saw therein
the infinite mystery and life of the world, and interpreted
it as well as his ignorance permitted; and so constructed
a religion as high for him as ours is for us,—that is, a
religion as true and high as his philosophy enabled him to
think. He was not so foolish as to worship the stick: it
was the mysterious and wonderful life in the stick, he
adored. He who to-day reverences the church, the altar,
a day, or the Bible, is doing the same, with the difference
there is between a man and a child. The child thinks
and feels and imagines as a child; but it is the same life,
the same brain, the same heart, that make the after man.
So that which the child-man reached after and thought of
was the best interpretation he could give of the same God
in nature that " the heavens declared, and the firmament
showed, and day and night uttered speech " of, to the
Psalmist, — the same that we see in all things to-day.
And when, in after times, they offered to God their chil-
dren in human sacrifice, it was not human depravity that
prompted the (to us) murderous deed. Jephthah tenderly
loved his daughter; Abraham's heart yearned over Isaac;

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION.              227

the Ganges mother clung to her babe with the same heart-
wringing mother-love that throbs in your bosoms. But
the gods were inexorable; and they gave with heart-break
and tears that which was dearest, because heaven de-
manded the precious gift by all the sanctions of religion.
Though the deed was horrible, it was reverence and fear
for the gods, that nerved the arm, and steeled the heart.
It was the same religious motive in the heart as that
which made the martyrs, and has been the inspiration, in
all ages, of heroism and noble deeds. And even the ser-
vices of impurity had behind them the motive of supposed
divine sanction and religious obedience. So that when the
Santal uses his fetich for a charm, when the Parsee fire-
worshipper bows before the rising sun, when the Hindoo
lies down to be crushed by his Juggernaut, when the
Chinaman offers incense before the image of his ances-
tors, when the Buddhist devotee sits beneath a tree, and
all day recites some holy and magic word, when the
Romanist bows to the crucifix, when the Ritualist recites
from his book, when the Quaker sits silent and waits for
the spirit, when the Protestant bows in prayer, or when
the philanthropist goes out on some deed of mercy,
believing that " he prayeth best who loveth best," — in all
these human bosoms beats the one throbbing, human
heart; and each, according to his knowledge, seeks to
worship the mysterious life of all things, that we call God,
after the highest and most sacred fashion which he has
learned. However inadequate his conception of God, he
still seeks to find the

228                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

" Father of all, in every age,

In every clime, adored, —
By saint, by savage, and by sage, —
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."

The thought of God that is held may be wild, chaotic,
and, to our mind, wicked. But his art and his govern-
ment and his civilization are the same; and he thinks, in
the one case, on a level with his thought in the other.
Religion can have no expression higher than the age is
capable of: so it advances with the advance of man.
But the point is, that all religions are reaching out after
the same God that each one of them fancies it has found.
It is the same religious nature of man in all the varied
manifestations. Thus religion is one just as art is one,
or literature is one. Each age and each nation finds its
own expression; and each one is true or false according
as it approximates more or less nearly to the perfect truth
of things.

But when I say that religion is one, do I then say that
one religion is as good as another, and that Christianity is
no more divine than any other ? Let us see. Human
thought is one; that is, it is all alike the product of
human brains, and differs only in quality and degree:
do I therefore say that Newton's thought is on a level
with, and no better than, that of a clown ? Poetry is one :
is therefore Shakspere no higher or more divine than
Tupper or Walt Whitman ? Art is one: is this to say
that the snow-man that makes the holiday frolic of a lot
of boys is to be put on the same level as the Moses

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION              229

of Angelo, or the Christ of Thorwaldsen? In all these
cases, the infinite range of production is the work of
precisely the same faculties, that differ only in the kind
and quality of work. And each special work is true and
valuable just in so far as it expresses the true and the
divine in its department. So all religions are the out-
growth of the divine, the religious nature, in man. But
there are all degrees of truth, of excellence, and therefore
of divinity, ranging from the deformities of the rudest
fetich, up to the divinest thoughts and scriptures and
hymns and prayers of the loftiest seers of the world.
Christianity, then, is not something thrust into, but apart
from, the growing order of the world, any more than
Handel's " Messiah " is out of tune and accord with all
the music of humanity that, beginning with the rudest
song and pipe of reeds, leads up to and culminates in its
grand harmonies. Christianity is the highest outcome of
religious evolution, just as man is the highest outcome of
animal life. It is no more severed from the rest than the
full-blown rose is severed from the little twig that broke
the seed, and developed into the bush. It is the bright-
colored, sweet-scented, and consummate flower on the top-
most bough of the religious life of man.

Since, then, Christianity is the result of evolution, is it
to be expected that evolution will still go on, and ulti-
mately outgrow and leave Christianity behind ? This is
the hasty logic of some. Christian schemes of salvation,
Christian cosmogonies, Christian ecclesiasticisms, Chris-
tian rituals, — these may and probably will be outgrown.

230                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

Much of what is called Christian theology will be
sloughed off and left behind, as a growing bean rejects
its. pod. All life takes to itself form, and clothes itself
in outward symbols and institutions; but these are only
clothes that are cut and worn after the fashion of the age.
A boy may change the cut and style of his clothing with
every year; and he must put on larger as he grows, to
suit the developing size and figure of his body; and he
may wear as many fashions as ingenious tailors can in-
vent ; but all through, from infancy to age, it is the same
boy becoming youth and man. If, therefore, Christianity
does put off its old clothes, and put on larger ones as it
gets larger, it will not necessarily follow that Christianity
itself will be outgrown and left behind. If it contain in
itself any touch of the universal and eternal, it must live
forever; and if this something that is eternal in it be of
its very essence, as Jesus taught it, we may still logically
hold that it is Christianity.

As I have already shown, when Jesus said, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy
neighbor as thyself," he gave utterance to words that
absolutely identified religion and morality, and linked all
life with God in the same sense in which it is to-day done
by the doctrines of evolution. These words Jesus made
central; and they are the formula of a perfect human
life. So that, so far as we can see, the utmost progress
of evolution in human life — individual, social, political
— can only approximate more and more closely to this
infinitely progressive and expansive ideal. It means the

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION             231

command to be perfect; and even God himself cannot
outgrow perfection.

While, then, the popular forms and creeds and institu-
tions may be outgrown, and replaced by better, the essen-
tial spirit and life of Christianity will become more and
more the essence and spirit of evolution itself, so far as
it bears on humanity. The whole force of evolution,
henceforth, will lift up and urge on humanity toward the
fullest and highest Christian life.

Is evolution, then, a radical or a conservative element
in religion ? It is both. It is radical in so far as it
eats away, tears down, and leaves behind, the transient
and perishable forms; for these things, when decayed and
fallen, only become obstructions in the pathway of human
progress. But so far as essence and life are concerned,
evolution is conservative. It teaches that the one, all-
important thing is life. The forms live for it, and not it
for the forms : so it does not regard a partial, incomplete,
or even grotesque form, so objectionable that it is to be
got out of the way at so great a cost as the risk of the
life it holds. It will keep a flower in a cracked flower-
pot, rather than risk the flower itself, by knocking the pot
away. It will leave a man the inadequate shelter of his
hut, rather than tear it down about his ears in a storm,
before it can invite him into a better house. Regarding
all things as a growth from small beginnings, it does not
teach the top of a tree to ignore its roots, nor a man-
sard house-roof to despise the mudsills, nor a man's head
to scorn his feet. It is, therefore, tolerant of ignorance

232                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

and half-development, and the slow process by which a
little comes to be more. Since it took God millions of
ages to get the earth habitable even for reptiles, it does
not ask him to lift the reptiles up into humanity, and
make humanity absolutely complete, in six days.

Thus evolution is tolerant even of fetichism. It would
not knock an idol out of an ignorant religionist's hands,
except as it can replace it by a purer and truer symbol.
It would not destroy Mohammedanism, except by repla-
cing it in the minds of its devotees by a nobler God than
Allah, and a better morality than that of the Koran. It
will permit the Romanist Irish girl to keep her beads and
her mass until she can grow into a conception of a higher
and more spiritual religion. To take these away, and
leave her empty-handed and empty-hearted, is against its
whole spirit, and seems to it impiety. It lets the boy
keep his toys until, having become a man, he is ready to
" put away childish things." So the attitude of evolution
toward orthodoxy is such as makes it rejoice that men will
cling to orthodoxy until they can see and feel that some-
thing else is better. The moral and religious life first and
highest. Religious forms and creeds and rituals are only
the expression of its life, and made to serve it. As the
life lifts and broadens it will lift, break up, and sweep
away its covering that threatened to be its bond, as the
spring freshet tosses on its bosom and sweeps away the
ice that covered it, but was not strong enough to hold it
in chains.

Evolution, then, in religion, will seek to find and spread

CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION              233

abroad all truth, believing that the inner life is able to
stretch the bark, and fit it to its various stages of life and
growth. It tolerates the twilight because it leads to the
sunrise. Its trust is in time, light, growth, and God. It
is patient with the lower form of life, and also with the
lower life of man; for it knows that these are but the
necessary childhood of life, that at last shall grow up to
and culminate in

" The crowning race

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge ; under whose command
Is earth, and earth's, and in their hand

Is nature like an open book ;

" No longer half akin to brute ;

For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped and suffered, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit."

And so, holding always any present to be but the seed
of a better future, it trusts in and waits for the still larger
unfolding of

" That God which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one divine, far-off event
To which the whole creation moves."

XII.

IMMORTALITY.

The belief in some kind of a future life seems to be as
old as humanity. The testimony on this subject is much
more ancient than any written records. It speaks to us
from the excavations where have been discovered the
remains of prehistoric man. So the old question of Job,
" If a man die, shall he live again ?" had been asked by
the same human heart thousands of years before his
day; and, rightly or wrongly, it had been answered in
the affirmative.

So far as we know, the animals are not perplexed over
the problems of life; they do not try to settle right and
wrong. They shelter themselves from storm; they bask
in the sunshine; they eat and drink and sleep; and, when
the hour of death approaches, the sheep or horse or dog
lies down with no anxious questioning as to what may
come after death. It never pauses on the edge of des-
tiny, like Hamlet, to soliloquize: —

" To die — to sleep, —

To sleep ! perchance to dream : ay, there's the rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."

IMMORTALITY,                              235

Such thoughts and speculations as these are confined
to humanity.

At what precise point in the upward lifting of animal
to man, the newly developed human heart began to raise
these questions about a possible future, it is now impossi-
ble to tell. But we can go back far enough to trace the
probable course of reasoning out of which the belief first
rose. Indeed, we may find this same primeval belief and
primeval reasoning in existence to-day. If you wish to
see how a century-old oak-tree sprouts and grows, all you
have to do is to look at a bursting acorn, and watch the
unfolding of the tiny stem. So the thoughts of the
world's childhood can still be read in the mental pro-
cesses of those races that are in their childhood still.
In this way we can come at the origin of the world's
belief in a future life.

These first men reasoned well, considering their knowl-
edge and their mental powers. It seems to have been
something in this way. They looked on the body of
some one who had died: here were the feet that were
so swift in the chase, or on the war-path; here, the hands
that bent the stiff bow, or hurled the spear; the eye, that
was quick and sure as the hawk's for his prey, was dull
and sightless; the heart beat no longer; and the ear
that was never deaf to the shout of a comrade or the
taunt of an enemy was now equally indifferent to both.
And they said within themselves, as they saw him stiff
and cold and still, " This is not all there was. He who
loved us, and fought our enemies, and hunted with us the

236               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

common prey, — he is not this body: he has gone away,
and left it. He was more than this, and different from
it." Thus, of necessity, there grew up the thought of
life, as separate from the body.

Other lines of reasoning led to the same result. They
saw forms and heard voices in their dreams. Knowing
nothing of their true origin and explanation, of course
they must explain them as best they could. They saw
no reason why their dreaming experiences were not as
real as their waking ones. So these shadowy forms that
came and hovered about them, and talked with them,
they learned to look upon as real persons. And when,
after a friend had died, he came to them in dreams, this
seemed to solve for them the mystery of death; for here
was the same old face and figure smiling upon and speak-
ing to them, though the body was in the grave. So they
were compelled to believe that every person was double,
having a body and another self, a spirit or shadowy one.
They knew nothing of the laws of sunlight, by which
every object casts a shadow when the light falls on it;
and they saw that at times, when it was cloudy, or when
they went under the trees or into their huts, these mys-
terious shadows went away, or hid themselves. Thus
they began to identify their shadows with this second
self that came and went in dreams, and that went away
and left the body entirely at death. It was this second
self that looked up into their faces from the surface of
glassy lakes or springs. So real to their minds was this
belief, that they held it dangerous to walk along a river's

IMMORTALITY.                                 237

bank where their shadow would fall into the water, lest a
crocodile should seize it, and so cause their death. They
learned to believe that all dreams were real spirit life,
their souls going off on a journey, or else other souls
coming to visit them. From this grew the world-wide
belief in visions as revelations from the unseen world.
And all the modern superstitions about dreams as being
warnings, or signs, have had a similar origin, and are
only survivals from these old times.

They identified the soul with different parts of the
body. It was the pupil of the eye, or the heart, or the
blood, or the breath. In Hebrew thought, God was
supposed to have breathed the soul into the nostrils of
Adam; or, as in the law it is said, "the blood is the
life." In Homer, the " shade" or soul of the warrior
rushes "out through the wound that causes his death.
Among other peoples, they talked of the heart's going
away, or coming again, as the life ebbed or flowed.

So much, then, by way of explanation of the way in
which the thought of a dual life in man first sprung up.
A word now as to the nature and location of this future
life from the first, until to-day. The earliest notion
seemed to be that the soul of the dead would still con-
tinue to love its old-time body and place of abode. So
it was supposed to hover about the spot of burial, or
wander through the village that was its home. This
oldest of all ideas still lingers in the thrills of supersti-
tious fear that many yet feel in passing a graveyard at
night. It is the survival of the ancient thought that the

238                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

spirit still stays about the grave. And the stories of
haunted houses are only remnants of the old-world belief
that the soul still clings to its earthly abode. And the
Egyptian custom of preserving the body in the form of
a mummy is not only connected with their belief about
a bodily resurrection, but also grew out of the thought
that, so long as they kept the body, they could also pre-
vent the soul from going far away.

The next stage of belief is higher. It was thought that
the ancestor of the tribe was still interested in it, and
retained his authority over it, after he had passed away.
So it was supposed that he was engaged in preparing a
home and kingdom for the spirits of his descendants in
the other world. They believed that in this kingdom he
received and ruled over the souls of his tribe as they
entered the shadowy land. Dying, then, to them, was
simply going to the fathers of the tribe.

A third stage in this belief was that which is repre-
sented by the Elysian Fields of the Greeks and Romans,
the Islands of the Blest, or the Halls of Odin, as they
were imagined by our Scandinavian forefathers. Socrates,
on the eve of his death, talked with his disciples of his
expectation that in the Elysian Fields he should meet and
converse and walk with the wise and the great and the
good of the olden times. And he so separated his body
from himself, that, when one of his friends spoke of his
burial, he said playfully, "You may bury me as you
please, if you can catch me." He expected to be away,
though the body was left behind.

IMMORTALITY.                                239

The Jews at first had no knowledge of any future life ;
but, when the notion of the Messianic kingdom grew up
among them, they believed that the coming deliverer of
David's line would raise the dead, and establish an ideal
and everlasting kingdom on the renovated earth. So
their hope was purely a material one.

I would have you take notice that thus far there is
almost no trace of any friendship with the gods, or of any
heaven to be spent in their company. The Halls of Odin
are really no exception to this statement; for this eternal
feast was only for the bravest of the warriors who died
fighting in battle. Common humanity had no part in it.

The last historic step of which I wish you to take notice
is the early Christian conception of heaven with God.
This, at first, was only the Hebrew Messianic idea some-
what modified. John, in the Apocalypse, pictures "the
new heavens and the new earth," and describes "the city
of God descending from God out of heaven," to abide on
the earth. In this gem-gated and gold-streeted city, the
" nations of them that are saved " were to " dwell; and
God was to dwell with them, and be their God." Re-
inhabiting their resurrected bodies, the redeemed were to
live in this material and glorious city. They would need
no sun nor moon, for God was to be their light. They
were never to go out, and death was never to enter.
Such was the immediate expectation of the early Church.
But, as this delayed, they began to imagine the city of
God as just above the solid arch of the firmament, and
to think that there their friends were gone. When mod-

240                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

ern astronomy destroyed this old-time firmament, and the
world learned that it was only an optical illusion, of
course the location of heaven must be changed. (For
now we know, though it is very recent knowledge, that
the arch of heaven is only light and air, like that which is
all about us.) Then speculation placed heaven in the
moon. By others, books have been writted to prove that
it is in the sun. " The To-Morrow of Death" twists
science in the most fantastic way, to support this last
idea. Some have thought heaven might be on the star
Alcyone, which is supposed to be the centre of the great
star-system to which our solar-system belongs. And in a
recent sermon Mr. Talmage (who talks as if he had been
there, and knows) asserts that it is located on the central
sun of the universe, which he supposes to be millions of
times larger than any other. Since Mr. Talmage has
given the weight of his tremendous authority on this
point, of course it is of no practical importance for me to
add that no other man living knows any thing about the
existence or the nature of any such orb. We know that
there are stars so distant that the more than lightning-
like velocity of light requires some millions of years to
travel the distance that separates them from the earth.
But though Mr. Talmage's heaven is farther off than
these, he assures us that souls can make the journey in
a fractional part of a second. This is a great comfort ;
for otherwise we might be left to fear that even Adam,
during these six thousand years, had hardly got started
out on his journey even yet.

IMMORTALITY.                                241

One of the standing charges of the Church against
science is, that it is materialistic. I wish, in passing, just
to call your attention to the fact that the whole ecclesi-
astical conception of the future life has been, and is still,
pure materialism. The material body is to rise and dwell
in a material heaven.

Such, then, have been some of the more prominent
speculations of the world concerning the nature and loca-
tion of heaven. We can think and believe and hope; but
any intelligent and thoughtful man will hesitate before he
will assert that he knows any thing about it. Ignorance is
confident; for it has always been true, as Pope says, that
" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." But reverent
knowledge will wait for light.

All these forms, then, under which the hope of a future
life has been held, have been disproved and outgrown by
modern knowledge. And here comes in the great ques-
tion, Must we therefore give up the hope as irrational?
Is it only a dream of the world's childhood from which its
larger-grown intelligence awakes ? As a hope, it is most
magnificent; as a dream, it is beautiful and grand. And
it argues strange and high capacity in man, that he should
even hope or dream of such a thing. Of course we will
give it up if we have to; but most certainly we cannot be
expected to till then. Let us, then, raise the question as
to whether there is any theory left that an intelligent and
rational man can hold. As I look over human thought, I
find two, which I must try and make clear to your minds.

(1) There is, then, first, a materialistic theory which

242               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

our present knowledge cannot disprove nor make absurd.
It is well known that all our senses have only a certain
narrow range within which they are able to bring us into
sensible contact with the world about us. All outside
this range we are unable to reach. For example, we do
not see all forms and colors; we do not hear all sounds;
we do not smell all odors; we cannot consciously touch
all substances; we cannot taste all flavors. Vision de-
pends on the wave-motions of light. If these motions
are less than a certain number in a second, they do not
produce on the eye the sense of vision: if they are more
than a certain other number, we cannot see them. Thus
the narrow range between two definite numbers that rep-
resent the quantity of wave-motion in a second, is the limit
to our sense of sight. A whole world of things may lie
on the one side, and another world on the other side, of
this limit, in the presence of both of which we are totally
blind. So there are forms and colors all about us on
every hand, that we do not, and can not see. And a simi-
lar thing is true of our ears. We can hear only within
certain definite limits. Were our senses acute enough,
the silence of a summer midnight would become to us a
thunderous tumult. We could hear the flowers grow in
our garden until the stillness broke into a noise as loud
as the waves on the seashore in a storm. Huxley tells us
that, if we could hear the movements in the growth of a
stinging-nettle, it might become to us as loud as the rattle
and roar of a great city.

For any thing we know to the contrary, then, a refined

IMMORTALITY.                              243

and spiritualized order of existences may be the inhabit-
ants of another and an unseen world all about us. Mil-
ton has said,—

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep."

Of course, the poet's words do not prove this true; and
all I care to say about it is, that such a thing is possible.
That we do not see or hear them, is no proof that they
do not exist. The inter-planetary spaces may be the
home of a universe of life, for all our senses can say to
the contrary. I suppose that some such idea as this lies
at the base of modern Spiritualism. I have never yet
been convinced that it is proved; but certainly any
knowledge we now possess cannot say that such exist-
ence is impossible.

A remarkable book has been recently published, called
" The Unseen Universe." It is the work of two promi-
nent English men of science. It attempts, on a scientific
basis, to establish the possibility of the existence of an
unseen world, closely connected with this, from which the
visible universe came, and to which it will return again.
It would take too long for me to give you the outlines of
their argument. They do not prove the fact; but they
do prove the possibility. And this is all I care for now.

It is not unreasonable, then, to believe in the possi-
bility of another life, even if your theory of it be only a
refined form of materialism.

(2) But there is another possible theory that is purely

244               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

spiritual. Ever since the first man saw his shadow, and
talked about his other self, it has been common to speak
of man as a combination of mind and matter. To find
out what mind is, whether it is a product of matter, or
something distinct from it, has been the study of all ages.
But the question is not settled yet. Some scientific mate-
rialists claim that they have settled it, that thought is
a product of the brain, just as bile is a product of the
liver. Moleschott — as though the saying decided the
question — declared, " No thought without phosphorus;"
but that hardly proved that thought was the product of
phosphorus. No flash of lightning without the proper
atmospheric conditions; but that does not prove that
these conditions create electricity. What, then, is the
belief of the best modern thinkers, about the relation of
mind to brain? It is inclined to believe that the only
real things that exist are the mind and God, and that
the universe is only the infinitely varied manifestation of
God to the human consciousness. For instance, let us
see what it is that we know about a desk. I touch it
with my hand, and feel the sensation of touch. Now,
all I really know is my own sensation, and that some-
thing outside of me has produced this sensation. But
that all this outside something that I call the universe is
any thing other or more than the manifestation to me
of the infinite God, I do not know.

And so far from mind's being explained as the product
of the brain, all we know is, that the action of mind
coincides with certain molecular movements in the brain.

IMMORTALITY.                               245

But all these movements can be explained and formu-
lated without any reference to the mind at all. The
movement of electricity along a telegraph-line is accom-
panied by certain molecular changes in the wire itself;
but the wire is not electricity, neither does it produce it.
Thus modern science has found it utterly impossible to
explain mind either as a part or a product of matter.

It is perfectly reasonable, then, for any man to believe
in a purely intellectual and spiritual existence, apart from
any material form or substance.

You will notice that I have not claimed to prove either
the materialistic or the purely spiritual theory of a future
life. My only purpose has been to show that there are
theories that intelligent people can hold, even in the clear-
est light of modern science, without laying themselves
liable to the charge of being irrational.

Having this basis, then, to stand on, let us review some
of the probabilities of the case. No intelligent man, I
suppose, will claim that he can demonstrate immortality.
The most we can do is to weigh the probabilities, and see
how strong a foundation we have on which to build our
hopes. What are some of the stones, then, that go to the
making of this foundation ?

(1) I wish to make one negative point. Our present
ignorance concerning the nature or even the fact of an
immortal life is no valid argument against its reality.
Humanity knows nothing beyond the range of the experi-
ence of humanity. By the very terms of our supposition,
the immortal life is something above and beyond the

246               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

earthly experience of man. The caterpillar probably
knows nothing about any life higher than that of his toil-
some crawling on the ground; but that is no proof against
the fact that we know he is to become a butterfly. The
boy knows nothing about manhood, and cannot know.
Though he sees men and their labors all about him, he
has and can have no conception whatever of what it
means to be a man : it transcends all his experience.

So, if there is a life very much different from, and very
much higher than, our present one, it is not strange that
we are ignorant of it. It is perhaps impossible that it
should be otherwise. I could not, with all my trying,
make you understand any thing entirely unlike all you
have ever seen or heard. So, if an angel should come
and tell of another life, it would mean nothing to us,
unless he could translate it into terms of our own experi-
ence. We could not understand a " light that never was
on land or sea." Our ignorance, then, is not even a
probability against the belief.

(2) I ask you to notice that the belief exists, and has
the field. It holds the position, and will stay, unless dis-
lodged ; and, of right, it ought to stay. It is practically
true to say that all men everywhere have believed in a
future life : no matter under what form, the fact remains.
The exceptions have been hardly enough " to prove the
rule." The burden of proof, then, lies with the doubters.
If the universal belief is a falsehood and a cheat, it is for
them to prove it so. The universal human instinct and
longing is well uttered by Tennyson, —

IMMORTALITY.                                247

" Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest life in man and brute ;
Thou madest death; and lo ! thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him : thou art just."

No man can call me unreasonable for holding the
world-wide creed until he has proved to me that it is not
true.

(3) As the process of evolution goes on, life grows
fuller and more intense. And the more intense the life,
the stronger grows the belief in its continuance. There
are times of sorrow and weariness when we feel that life
itself is a burden, and that the only real rest and peace
are to be found in long and dreamless sleep. I have
heard of some who felt tired at the thought of living for-
ever, and who hardly wished for the certainty of such
belief; and it is fabled that old Tithonus begged the
gods to take from him the gift of an earthly immortality,
it grew to be such a burden.' But, in all these cases, the
weary ones cumber their thought of immortal life with the
burdens of endless earthly cares. So it is not life that
men grow weary of: it is only the troubles and sorrows
that take away from the sum and fulness and power of
life. Life, of itself, is always joy and strength. So, in
spite of suicides, of the poetry that longs for the grave,

248                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

of the weariness that would even push away the prof-
fered cup of everlasting life, it is still true that

" Whatever crazy Sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.

" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, —
O, life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that we want."

If it were true that, the larger and grander life be-
comes, the more nearly it seemed to culminate and reach
its completion, there might then be room for the thought
that some day it would reach its limit, and so naturally
and contentedly come to an end; but just the reverse of
this is true. It is the narrow and stinted life that thinks
it knows all, and is contented. It is men like Newton
that talk of standing and gathering a few pebbles on the
shore of an infinite ocean that lies all unexplored before
them. The larger life and knowledge grow, then, the
more they reach out and hunger for the infinite still
unattained.

(4) It is a law of evolution, that, when it reaches
the highest form, its whole force, which destroyed lower
forms in the interest of higher, now turns to the perfect-
ing and continuance of this highest form. It climbed
through lower animals to man. But in man the highest
physical form is apparently reached. So now it works
only to perfect and continue humanity. It creates no

IMMORTALITY.                               249

new brain, but only lifts brain higher. It creates no
new moral life: it only lifts and continues and intensifies
the old moral life. It makes no new mind or spirit: it
only broadens and deepens mental power, and increases
the consciousness of the divine and eternal. The high-
est result of evolution, then, is to increase and strengthen
in man his consciousness of the divine and spiritual in
life, — the beauty, the truth, the right, the ideal, the
eternal. He comes thus into conscious possession of
things that must be a part of the everlasting life of God.

To many men, poetry is nothing. It has no real or
appreciated existence for them. They have developed
in themselves no poetic faculty to which it can appeal.
But to Milton or Dante it was the most real and intense
of all facts. And they, and such as they, prove that it
is a part of humanity. There are many for whom music
is no reality; but Beethoven and Mozart ask for no
demonstration of its life and power. Their very life was
music. Praxiteles and Angelo, and Titian and Powers,
need no proof of the reality of art. To such men, the
universe is art. And you will notice that men become
conscious of poetry or music or art, only as they develop
and live in those faculties of their being that find ex-
pression in these. Why, then, is it not reasonable to
suppose that the great religious masters of the world so
developed the spiritual, the divine, the eternal, in them-
selves, as to become conscious of these things, as lower
men are conscious of the material ? Emerson says, " I
admit that you shall find a good deal of scepticism on

250               THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

this subject, in the streets and hotels, and places of coarse
amusement. But that is only to say that the practical
faculties are developed faster than the spiritual. Where
there is depravity, there is a slaughter-house style of
thinking." That is, the man who lives in the spiritual
and eternal believes in the spiritual and eternal.

(5)  The man who denies immortality must explain
why it is, if it is not true, that men possess the thought,
the hope, the dream. The most flitting fancy has its
cause as much as. has a mountain. And it is the funda-
mental doctrine of modern science, that human faculties
are the result of outside forces that created them, and to
which they respond. For example, the existence of eyes
proves light and objects to be seen; for it is the play of
light and external objects of vision, on the human organ-
ism, that made the eyes. Sound created ears; and so
the very existence of ears proves the reality of sound.
The sense of justice, of beauty, of truth, can thus be
explained only by supposing some external realities that
made them, and which they thus represent. So the most
natural explanation of these hopes and longings after
immortality is, that they are created by, and that they
represent, some eternal reality from which they have
sprung.

(6)  No creature can think beyond himself. The art
of the world proves that art is a native element of hu-
manity. The poetry of the world proves that humanity
is capable of poetry. A thousand martyrs prove that
heroism is a part of humanity. That man, then, can

IMMORTALITY.                              251

think of God and the infinite, proves that there is some-
thing of the divine and the infinite in man. If a horse
could sit down and meditate ; if he could study his own
structure, scan the universe, put noble thought into noble
verse, think and speculate about the nature and destiny
of horses,— it would be held to prove that he had capa-
cities that lifted him out of the plane of the equine, and
gave him brotherhood with the human. If man, then,
can think and study and speculate beyond his present
self, it indicates that there is in him the possibility of
overstepping his present limitations, and emerging upon
a higher plane of existence.

(7) Then there is the sense of justice, the imperish-
able belief that somewhere and somehow all things shall
come. out right. We are perpetually pained here with
the sense of wrong. Like the Psalmist we cry out that
" all the foundations of the earth are out of course."
The wicked prosper; and good is persecuted. The prob-
lem of the Book of Job is the problem of all the world
and of all time. But Job did not answer it; and this
world never has answered it. What is the end of all the
sorrow and all the wrong ? If there be no justice and
right at the heart of things, then whence came this hu-
man sense of just and right? It must be the response
in us to some eternal reality. And, if just and right do
represent an eternal reality, then all must some time be
well; we must

" Trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill."

252                THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION.

But we see it not here and now; and so, out of this long-
ing, men have always built a better future. And to the
question, —

" What hope of answer or redress ? "

has always come the response, —

" Behind the veil, behind the veil."

What, then, is our thought? The belief in a future
life is a natural and an universal one. It may claim the
credit of being native and essential, unless it can be
disproved. It cannot be disproved. The most that
doubt can do is to say it does not know. It may stand,
then; and no one may justly charge it with unreason.
Beyond this there are many indications that point toward
this belief as their most rational solution. This hypothe-
sis of a future is the one that most naturally accounts for
all known facts. Such being the case, we may as logi-
cally claim it as the astronomer claims a new planet, as
yet unseen, as the needed explanation of the perturba-
tions and movements that ask for some such cause.

The most important thing for us to consider practi-
cally is the work of personally co-operating with those
forces and tendencies in us that are fitted to lift us up
into vital relationship with the spiritual and the eternal.
Progress sloughs off, and leaves behind those things that
are not fit to endure. We can make no better prepara-
tion, then, for the future, than to develop in ourselves so
full and noble a life that God cannot afford to lose us.

IMMORTALITY.                                253

Let us make ourselves a part of the permanent good of
things, a portion of the eternal order. Then, because
that lives, we may live also.

As illustrating how out of darkness comes grander
revelations than day could make, and as indicating how
the truth may be a better one than many doubts and
fears would sometimes indicate, I cannot close better
than by quoting Blanco White's sonnet on " Night and
Death:" —

" Mysterious night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue ?

Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,

And lo ! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun ! or who could find,

While leaf and fly and insect lay revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou madest us blind!

Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife ?

If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ? "

HOME