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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Proceedings of the first annual meeting of the Free Religious Association held in Boston, May 28th and 29th, 1868
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Free Religious Association
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Place of publication: Boston, Mass.
Collation: 120 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contains a letter from Moncure Conway to Mr William J. Potter, Secretary of Free Religious Association of America, with regard to religious movements in England, p. 115-9.
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Adams & Co.
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[1868]
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G5179
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Free thought
Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Proceedings of the first annual meeting of the Free Religious Association held in Boston, May 28th and 29th, 1868), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Free Religious Association
Freedom of Religion
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tÿree ^eligiaus Association.
PROCEEDINGS
AT THE
Seventh Annual Meeting
OF THE
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION,
HELD IN BOSTON,
May 28 AND 29, 1874.
BOSTON:
COCHRANE & SAMPSON, PRINTERS,
No. 9 Bromfield Street.
18 74-
��CONTENTS,
PAGE.
Report....................................................................................
List
of
5
Officers.................................................................................... 7
Seventh Annual Report of the Executive Committee
.
.
8
SESSIONS IN HORTICULTURAL HALL.
MORNING SESSION.
Address of 0. B. Frothingham
it
it
a
a
Francis E. Abbot
<c
tt
. 19
Rev. S. R. Calthrop
Col. T. W. Higginson
•
31
. 41
•
49
AFTERNOON SESSION.
Essay by C. A. Bartol, D.D................................................................... .59
Address
of
Rabbi S. H. Sonneschein................................................. 72
EVENING.
Social Festival............................................................................. '
. 82
Appendix............................................................................................... 85
Constitution of the Free Religious Association
.
.
.90
��REPORT.
The Seventh Annual Meeting of the Free Religious
Association was opened -in the lower Horticultural Hall,
Boston, May 28, 1874, at 7.45 p.m.
The chair was occupied by the President, Octavius B.
Frothingham, who, on calling the meeting to order, made a
few introductory remarks.
The Record of the last Annual Meeting was read by the
Secretary, and accepted.
Richard P. Hallowell, Treasurer, read his Report,—
which showed the receipts of the Association for the year
(by balance from last account, membership fees, sale of pub
lications, ^contributions for conventions, lectures, and printing)
to have been $2,557.02 ; expenditures (for conventions, lectures,
publications, office expense, and correspondence), $2,016.77 >
leaving a balance in the Treasury of $540.25.
Voted, That the Report be accepted.
The President announced, as the next business in order, the
consideration of two amendments to the Constitution, of which
notice had been duly given. The first of these had been pro
posed to the Executive Committee the previous year by the
venerable Lucretia Mott, who desired to substitute some other
phrase for the words “scientific study of theology” in the state
ment of the objects of the Association in the first article of the
Constitution. Her objections were to the word “ theology,” as
2
�6
seeming to lay too much stress on doctrinal systems of religion.
To meet this, and some other objections that had been made to
this clause, the Committee had prepared a revision of the state
ment of the objects of the Association, so that it would better
express, as they think, the real intent of the Constitution, and
would read thus : —
“ I. This organization shall be called the Free Religious Association,—
its objects being to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to
increase fellowship in the spirit, and to encourage the scientific study of
man’s religious nature and history; and to this end all persons interested
in these objects are cordially invited to its membership.”
The article as thus amended was adopted, without discussion,
by a unanimous vote.
The second amendment that had been proposed was to
change the number of Directors, now limited by the third
article to “six,” so that the number shall be “not less than
six nor more than ten.”
The object of this amendment, it was stated by the Presi
dent, was to enable the Association to secure on its Executive
Committee a larger force of active members in the vicinity of
Boston. Probably not more than fwo new members would be
needed now, but it was thought judicious to provide for the
election of others as they might be required.
This amendment was also unanimously adopted.
Messrs. A. W. Stevens and R. H. Ranney were appointed
a committee for collecting and counting the ballots for officers
during the ensuing year.
The ballot resulted as follows : —
4
�7
*
OFFICERS.
President.
OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM................... New York City.
Vice-Presidents.
•
RALPH WALDO EMERSON........................ Concord, Mass.
LUCRETIA MOTT............................................... Philadelphia, Pa.
GERRIT SMITH............................................... Peterboro"1, N.Y.
ROBERT DALE OWEN................................. New Harmony, Ind.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD...................................... Wayland, Mass.
ISAAC M. WISE............................................... Cincinnati, O.
GEORGE W. CURTIS...................................... Staten Island, N.Y.
FREDERICK SCHÜNEMANN-POTT ... San Francisco, Cal.
EDWARD L. YOUMANS................................. New York City.
E. B. WARD......................................................... Detroit, Mich.
GEORGE HOADLY........................................... Cincinnati, O.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON . . Newport, R.I.
Secretary.
WILLIAM J. POTTER...................................... New Bedford, Mass.
Assistant-Secretary.
HANNAH E. STEVENSON............................ 32 Mt. Vernon Street,
Boston, Mass.
Treasurer.
RICHARD P. HALLOWELL............................ 139 Federal Street,
Boston, Mass.
Directors.
JOHN WEISS......................................................... Boston, Mass.
CHARLES K. WHIPPLE................................. Boston, Mass.
EDNAH1 D. CHENEY...................................... Jamaica Plain, Mass.
JOHN T. SARGENT........................................... Boston, Mass.
FRANCIS E. ABBOT........................................... Cambridge, Mass.
WILLIAM C. GANNETT................................. Boston, Mass.
HELEN M. IRESON...........................................Lynn, Mass.
JOHN C. HAYNES............................................... Boston, Mass.
The Annual Report of the Executive Committee was then
read by the Secretary.
�8
SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE.
In presenting their Seventh Annual Report, the Executive Committee
of the Free Religious Association are reminded by the number of the
Report, that they are agents of a society that is no longer very new and
can no longer rely on any mere attractions of novelty for the success of
its meetings, but must present solid and valid reasons for its existence,
if it would draw to itself public attention and win such a portion of the
public confidence as to justify its continuance. And the place of our
annual meeting this year— the committee, owing to a misunderstand
ing on the part of the agent of Tremont Temple, where we have been
wont to meet-, having been obliged to call to-morrow’s convention in
Horticultural Hall — naturally carries the memory back to that first
crowded gathering in that same Hall in May of 1867, when the Free
Religious Association was first organized. Then the expectant as
sembly that filled the seats and aisles and every spot of standing-room
in the Hall, gathered in response to a simple call for “ a public meeting,
to consider the conditions, wants, and prospects of Free Religion in
America,” betokened perhaps not a little of light curiosity as to what
was to be said and done under such a novel summons, but was evi
dence also, most certainly, of a wide-spread and earnest interest in
the problem to be considered.
THE PROBLEM OF FREE RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION.
That problem was to bring together, if possible, upon some common
ground of sympathy and fellowship and into some common bond of
activity for human welfare, those who, in the course of religious de
velopment ' and progress, had come to feel either that all sectarian
creeds and limitations had been outgrown, or at least that these should
not stand in the way of spiritual fellowship and of union in practical
work. It was apparent that there were many people — people of
earnest minds and hearts, some of them in the Christian sects, some
hanging but loosely upon the sectarian churches, some already adrift
altogether from the churches, and some, again, that had been bred
in other religions than the Christian — who were longing for a new
departure in religious organization and expression corresponding to
�9
the new attitude of their own thought and feeling. These people were,
querying whether it were not possible to have a religious organization
which should enjoin no test of speculative opinion as a condition of
membership and impose no restraint upon the right of free inquiry,_
an organization which should embody the fresh, inspiring life of the
present age, and should seek practically to combine perfect freedom of
thought with perfect fellowship of aim and spirit. Locally, and un
der simpler conditions, such organizations in a few instances already
existed. But the query was, Is such an organization possible on a
larger scale and under more complicated conditions, — possible as a
general association, aiming not at local and special but at universal
objects, and seeking to remove not only the barriers that separate the
Christian sects from each other, but the barriers that now separate
into hostile camps the various religions of the world, to the end that
people of whatever faiths and beliefs may talk and work together sim
ply as reverent seekers after truth and practical lovers of humanity?
And the Free Religious Association was organized as an honest at
tempt to answer this question. How far it has solved the whole prob
lem, it is not for us, nor probably in the power of any one as yet, to
say. But this at least can be said, that those to whose lot it has fallen
to serve on this Executive Committee have faithfully endeavored to
heed the spirit of the call that summoned that large gathering of
people seven years ago, and have kept in mind also what in their view
has been from the start a cardinal principle of the organization,_
namely, that the free religious movement was prior to and larger than
the organization, and that the organization was not to make nor to
manipulate the movement, but to represent it as faithfully as possible
in its various phases, and to hold itself free and pliant to be moulded
by its spirit to whatsoever service the naturally unfolding exigencies of
the movement might seem to require.
TWO CLASSES OF OBJECTIONS.
That the Association in these seven years Ips accomplished every
thing that was expected of it by all those who were interested in its
formation, cannot, probably, be claimed. There were, doubtless, some
persons who looked to it to set up at once an effective system of
machinery of the anti-ecclesiastical order and to engage in a vigorous
propagandism of what might be called the principles of free religion •
in opposition to the teachings of the popular sects and churchesj and
these have been disappointed. Others, again, have been disappointed
�IO
because the Association has been less attached to the Christian name
and traditions than‘they at first understood, and has seemed to them
in consequence to have drifted into a position where its influence for
good is very much diminished. With reference to the first of these
points, it may be said that a movement which is the result of chang
ing religious belief, and of changing belief not in one sect alone, nor
in one of the faiths of the world alone, but of a change that is slowly
taking place in all the sects and in all the more prominent of the
world’s religions, cannot be fully organized in a day nor a year, nor
in seven years, so as to show any very marked external results. A
company of people may change their religious opinions and organize
a new society or a new sect upon their new doctrines with no great
trouble ; but carefully to represent a change that is in process in the
heart of religious faith itself, a change that affects the very foundation
of the sects and the religions, is a task for which it may be confidently
said that no machinery of organization devised by any one body.of
men in a few years is competent. All the great religions have grown
gradually — have grown and not been made ; and the movement which
is now animated by the principle, and holds within itself the hope, of
bringing all the sects and religions of the world upon the platform of
freedom of thought and fellowship in spirit, can be no exception to
this law of gradual growth. Had the movement which the Associa
tion represents not been so large, more might seem to have been ac
complished. To have put into operation some of the machinery of a
new sect might not have been difficult and would have given the ap
pearance of a larger performance ; for an immediate achievement de
pends on narrowness of aim. But thus far the Association has kept
in view the larger aim, though its results may not be so immediate or
visible. Yet we are satisfed that what the Association has done, —
that the questions it has raised and the contributions it has made to
religious discussions, that the principles it has'stood for and even its
bare existence, have had and are having an effect upon public thought
which cannot be ignored, and which is gradually preparing the way for
other forms of work in*the future.
As to the otheK point, — that the Association has not been so
“ Christian ” as it was hoped by some it would be, and has even, as it
seems to them, drifted into an “ anti-Christian ” attitude, — it should
be remembered that the position of the Association was distinctly
stated in the First Annual Report of the Executive Committee,
thus: —
�11
“ The Association goes below any one specific form of religion, and seeks
to find the common ground on which all religions, or, more properly, reli
gion itself, rests, and plants itself there. It contemplates the ultimate union,
not simply of all sects in Christendom, but of all religions, Christian and
non-Christian, in one. It looks beyond ‘Christian ’ limits for its fellowship.
... For the first time in religious history, not only representatives of dif
fering Christian sects, but people of all religious names and of no religious
name, are invited to come together as ecpial brothers, and confer with, one
another on the highest interests of mankind. Most of us here are probably,
by reason of birth and education, counted in the census of the world’s popu
lation as ‘ Christian,’ whether we make any other claim to the name or not.
But on the platform of this Association we do not obtrude that title. We
agree here to listen to what our Hebrew friend may have to utter or to what
our India brother may write to us of their respective religious faiths, with
the same candor and the same integrity and openness of judgment that we
accord to a ‘ Christian ’ speaker. A believer in the Christian system of reli
gion may, if his conscience so dictate, use his right to speak on the plat
form of this Association with the purpose of proving the claims of his par
ticular faith paramount to alj others, and of converting non-believers to his
views ; but if he does so, that very act commits him to hear impartially the
same claims made for any other faith. One who should come here simply
to speak with dogmatic and sectarian arrogance for his own belief, and not
cordially to listen to what might be said in behalf of another belief, would
not come certainly in the spirit of the constitution of this Association.”
So said the first Report of the Executive Committee : and so said
previously the name and constitution of the Association from which
the sentiments 'of that Report on this point were drawn. And your
Committee are not aware that there has been any departure by the
Association from these principles. As a matter of fact the member
ship of the Association consists of those who hold to the Christian re
ligion and of those who reject it. There are Jews on its roll of mem
bers as there are Christians. And there are those who do not call
themselves by the name of any specific faith, and who may think that
the special faiths are all hostile to perfect free thought in religion and
are to be assailed and destroyed. And these various phases of opin
ion are represented in the Executive Committee. Any change so as
to limit membership by certaih harmonies of belief would be a viola
tion of that fundamental principle of thé Association which guaran
tees to every member “ absolute freedom of thought ” and makes him
“responsible for his own opinions alone,” and would be an abandon
ment of what has been the most distinguishing feature of the organiza
tion from its beginning.
�12
WORK OF THE YEAR.
In accordance with these principles, which have animated it from
the start, the practical work of the Free Religious Association has
been conducted the past year. That work in itself has been no
greater than heretofore ; yet it has been attended by signs of special
encouragement for the progress of the ideas and aims which the As
sociation represents. In no single year, probably, since its existence
has our organization become so well known to the public as in the
year since our last annual meeting. This is largely owing to the hold
ing of a Convention in New York last autumn, which has been the
most important achievement of the year.
NEW YORK CONVENTION.
This Convention in its plan and number of sessions was of larger
proportions than any which has been held elsewhere by the Associa
tion. The time for preparation was necessarily limited, and a number
of able speakers and writers from whom the Committee had hoped to
secure some service on the occasion could not be obtained. Yet with
the resources at their command the Committee were enabled to hold
a Convention of five sessions (three of them in the evening), during
which a number of vital and interesting topics were ably handled by
the speakers present. The time chosen for the Convention was aus
picious, it being immediately after the “ World’s Evangelical Alli
ance ” had held its ten days’ meeting, and public attention was
aroused to the subjects presented. The three evening sessions were
all attended by large and enthusiastic audiences. The morning meet
ings were smaller, but perhaps were not less valuable. The New
York papers by their reports, several of them generous in space,
called attention to the Convention far and wide. “ The New York
Tribune ” printed verbatim most of the essays that were read, and
gave abstracts — though not in all cases very perfect — of the others
and of the addresses. The religious newspapers quite generally took
up the subject, most of them, of course, in the way of criticism, and
some of them with most ingenious misunderstanding of what had been
said and done. Yet there was this satisfaction, that for several weeks
the Free Religious Convention was a topic of pretty general discus
sion in the country, and people who had never heard of its existence
before were set to inquiring about the Association that had held such
a Convention. Aside, therefore, from the direct influence which at
�13
tends such a public meeting, the New York Convention for these in
direct results may be regarded as a most successful and valuable
achievement.
PUBLICATIONS.
The first work of the year was, as usual, to issue a printed Report
in pamphlet of the last annual meeting. This was done in the sum
mer, in a style uniform with those of previous years. The Committee
have also issued, in tract form, the essay read by Mr. James Parton at
the New York Convention, on “Taxation of Church Property.” This
was felt by those who heard it to be so clear and forcible a presenta
tion of this now very practical question as to be eminently adapted
for wide popular distribution. Nearly enough money was collected at
the Convention for putting it in type, and the balance of cost has been
more than made up by returns from the sale of it. We have also cir
culated it to some extent gratuitously, sending copies for distribution
to members of the Massachusetts Legislature and of the Ohio Con
stitutional Convention, where the question of taxing ecclesiastical prop
erty was under discussion. And we would recommend the Tract to any
friends who wish to help the cause of religious freedom for use in this
way in similar cases. It is stereotyped and can be supplied as needed.
At Mr. Parton’s suggestion we printed in the Tract as an Appendix
a letter of a Roman Catholic clergyman (which appeared a few
months ago in “ The New York Tribune ”) taking the same view of
the subject as Mr. Parton takes, — a circumstance which may be
worth mentioning, because it seems a happy augury of the breadth
and liberality of the Association that the first regular Tract it has is
sued should be made up of the utterances of a very radical religionist
and of a Roman Catholic standing side by side. This Tract is
headed, “Free Religious Tracts — No. i,” — and it is hoped to add
to the series as proper matter for the purpose presents itself and the
funds in our Treasury allow.
But the Committee have in view a much larger publishing enter
prise than this. As mentioned in our Report last year, they are desir
ous of printing a volume of Free Religious Essays,—gathering up
from the past annual Reports of the Association, particularly from
those destroyed in the Boston fire, and from other ephemeral publica
tions, some of the utterances of most striking and permanent value,
and bringing them together into the form of a Book, which shall be a
fair and convenient and able presentation of different Phases of Free
Religion. Already the Publishing Committee have such a volume un3
�14
der consideration, and have taken some action towards compiling it:
and doubtless, if there shall be sufficient money in the Treasury to
warrant the enterprise, the Book will be published before another an
nual meeting. We have now in the Treasury, reserved from last year’s
receipts specially for this purpose, a most encouraging nucleus of a
publication-fund; but to publish a solid book of the kind contemplated
is a costly operation ; and valuable as we believe the book will be, it yet
can hardly be expected to be so popular as to meet at once with a sale
sufficient to cover the expense of its issue. We therefore make at
this time a special appeal to the friends of the Association to increase
this publication-fund, so that the Committee may carry through with
out further delay the enterprise of issuing a substantial volume that
shall, at least to some good extent, be a tangible answer to the now
common question, What does Free Religion mean ?
LECTURES.
A course of Lectures under the aspices of the Association, similar
to those of previous years, was given in the winter in Horticultural
Hall, Boston, on Sunday afternoons. The course, which consisted of
ten Lectures, was sustained as last year by special contributions made
for the purpose in Boston and vicinity, and was free to the public.
Large audiences have attended them. We renew the suggestion made
in our last Report that these Boston Lectures, or some of them, might
easily be repeated in other places by a little local effort to that end.
Not by any agency of this Committee, but through the well-directed
zeal of one woman, a resident of Waltham, Mass, some of the Boston
Lectures of this last season were repeated in that town, which, with
the addition of others, made an interesting and successful course.
There are other places where such an experiment would succeed.
And the hint may here be thrown out whether it would not be well
even for the Committee to take the initiative, if necessary, in institut
ing a course the coming winter, either the same as or similar to the
Boston course, in New Yprk city,
(OFFICE.
It became necessary last autumn to find storage room for our again
accumulating publications, which were lying in the cramped apart
ments of our printers. The question was therefore revived whether
W would establish, an office for the Association in Boston. The busi
ness to be don-e dj.d not seem to warrant our incurring the expense of
�i-5
the sole use of such a room as would be desirable. But an opportu
nity offered in connection with “ The Index Association,” which the
Committee thought it wise to improve. “The Index” had been re
moved to Boston, and had been established in central and convenient
quarters at No. i Tremont Place; and “The Index Association”
offered us in its apartments, at a reasonable rent, storage room and
room and privileges for a sales-table for our publications. This prop
osition was accepted, and an office of the Free Religious Association
was established accordingly at No. i Tremont Place, it being dis
tinctly understood that this arrangement between the Free Religious
Association and “The Index Association” was simply for business
convenience, and that neither Association became thereby in any way
responsible for the other. Mr. Stevens, assistant editor of “ The In
dex ” has generously and faithfully had charge of the sales-table, and
responded to such orders for our publications as have been sent to the
office, and for this painstaking service he deserves the gratitude of our
Association. The office, being up three flights-of stairs, is too difficult
of access for entire satisfaction, yet, notwithstanding this disadvantage,
has already proved itself a great convenience, not to say necessity,
and, all things considered, very well answers the present needs of the
Association.
OTHER SIGNS OF ACTIVITY.
x
This is specially a report of what has been done by your Com
mittee the past year in behalf of the principles for which the Free
Religious Association was organized. But we can hardly forbear
mentioning other signs of activity in the same general direction,
though outside of their immediate proceedings, and which help to
mark the year as one of progress; as, for instance, the organization of
some twenty or more Liberal Leagues in different parts of the country,
the starting of several local Free Religious Societies for Sunday meet
ings, the building of the new and elegant Hall by the old Free Society
at Florence, the dedication of the fine Parker Memorial Building in Bos
ton, and the readiness with which some of the best known representatives
of free religious thought find parlors and churches open to their utter
ances, especially in the West: these, together with the signs of increas
ing religious unrest and rebellion against the imposition of authority
in the sects and churches, are among the general encouragements of
the year. Some of these local movements are doubtless weak in re
sources, and crude, perhaps, in aim ; but they indicate a wide-spread
tendency to find some other ground of religious fellowship and co-
�i6
operation than dogma' and ecclesiastical'authority, and hence may be
full of promise for the future. And they well indicate, too, the kind
of work that this general Association can most advantageously at
tempt. The most important service that this Free Religious Associa
tion seems capable of rendering is to spread ideas, to stimulate men
tal activity to some high practical end, to extend and deepen knowl
edge on religious subjects, to send abroad and into the hearts of the
people the wise thoughts of enlightened and cultivated men, and so to
guide and steady these unresting elements that are emancipated from
the popular ecclesiasticism that their power may not be wasted in mere
speculative discussions and in an antagonistic individualism, but that
they may come together in a natural and free fellowship for their own
highest good and for the practical promotion of human welfare.
EVIDENCE FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
And this Report cannot, perhaps, be better closed than by some
extracts from the correspondence of the year that show how the fields
are opening for this kind of work, and how many minds seem to be
earnestly and anxiously waiting for it. But first let us say that one of
the most interesting features of our correspondence has been a letter
received only two days ago from that sweet-souled native prophet of
India, Keshub Chunder Sen, — a letter of affectionate fraternal greet
ing to the members of the Free Religious Association (which will be
read at our larger gathering to-morrow), and which speaks very encour
agingly of the religious reform movement in that country. More to the
present point, however, will be some selections from American letters.
Without looking up any in the past, I quote from two received in the
last fortnight. A member of the Association in central Iowa writes
to renew his membership ; and adds, —
“You may think it strange for me, an entire stranger, and living at such
a distance, to ask membership in your religious society. Well, I cannot
tell all the whys, but one thing is that I love the Association, and those that
have sacrificed so much for it. When I was young I said that if ever such
a time should come that a religious society could be founded on Freedom,
I could join it heart and hand : so I think that I have found thé pearl o
great price.”
He then goes on to speak of a few neighbors and himself coming
together in their country school-house, every other Sunday afternoon,
to talk with each other on such subjects as shall “ tend to the culture
of their social, moral, and religious nature.” They are called “hard
�!7
names,” but to one, he says, who has been “an old-line abolitionist”
these are not hard to bear; and when he sees that those who once
derided him for “ abolitionism ” now confess that he was right in that,
he has courage to hope that those who now think him so wrong theo
logically will live to see the day of religious emancipation. He sees
around him “ a strong under-current in that direction.” Another, who
has had several years of experience as a religious missionary of another
association, writes, —
“ The more work I did in this direction [that of free religious thought],
the more I saw might be done all over the Western States, but especially in
Wisconsin and Michigan. ... I see that there are Leagues to be organized
and agents to be looked up and the entire rural districts over the prairies to
be canvassed. Free Religious lyceums or Sunday schools may be, and I
am sure must be, built up in many places (unless everything by the name of
Sunday school is to become extinct erelong.) Reading clubs can be formed
such as they now have at Eureka, where liberal sermons and other free reli
gious productions are read. I am confident any man alive with the fire of
Free Thought can in a few months do in this way a work that would be
seen and felt by all concerned. ... I wish I could be with you at your
annual meeting. I would at least show my opinion on what seems to me
one of the great themes and demands of Liberalism. Has not ‘Free Reli
gion ’ something to do in a missionary way ? The demand for rational free
thought never was as great as at this moment, I am certain. Who will
make the sacrifice required, of money, of strength, to carry forward so
grand a work ? ”
Of similar strain is a letter published in last week’s “ Index ” from
Mr. C. D. B. Mills, of Syracuse, N.Y. Coming from a recent lecturing
visit to the West, he writes, —
“ I return with impressions altogether confirmed and strengthened of the
openness and fruitfulness of the field. It waits the husbandman with seed
and harrow and reaper: whence are the laborers to come? It is not the
ordinary missionary work that is wanted: it is instruction, addressing the
intelligence, quickening the thought, speaking to the reason, waking of the
higher consciousness, and kindling of the loftier ambitions of the soul. It
is the broad interpretation of religion, showing how poor and partial is the
current doctrine and worship, how sacred is nature, how high and hallowed
is life. The people wait the vital word ; they want not the dogma, nor any
ism, nor the emphasis upon historic or personal: they hunger and thirst for
the truths of life.”
Thus, friends, are we summoned to the work. The field, indeed, is
large, and we are few. Yet, with sagacity, energy, and self-sacrifice,
�i8
and an increase of our financial resources, we may do something
towards occupying it, even if we only extend the kind of instrumen
talities we have already used. In these seven years we have done lit
tle more than prepare the way. Shall we not now enter the field to
sow broadcast the seeds of ideas, from which our posterity shall reap
the harvest of a religion which shall be as full of true reverence, zeal,
and enthusiasm as have been the faiths that are passing away, but
more rational, more unsectarian, and more humane ?
Voted, That the Report be accepted.
Addresses were then made by Mr. Rowland Connor, on the
organization and working of the Free Congregational Society in
Florence, Mass., and by Rabbi S. H. Sonneschein, of St. Louis,
on the new departure of the Jewish faith, and on the hopes of
the future that should animate all believers in human progress.
Other expected addresses were prevented by the lateness of the
hour.
Mr. J. W. Winkley, Mr. R. H. Ranney, and Miss Mary
Osborn were appointed a committee for the nomination of
officers at the next Annual Meeting.
Adjourned to meet in the upper Horticultural Hall. Friday,
at io A.M.
�FRIDAY: MORNING SESSION.
The Convention assembled on Friday morning, according
to adjournment, in the upper Horticultural Hall, which was
crowded with a large audience. The meeting was called to
order by the President, O. B. Frothingham, who made the
following address on “The Validity of the Free Religious
Platform : ” —
ADDRESS OF O. B. FROTHINGHAM.
Ladies and Gentlemen, — It is very pleasant to me to come back
to our home. We were born in this hall, and I have never quite
become accustomed to the larger Tremont Temple : there is a home
feeling here which makes me happy.
It would hardly seem, at this time, as if it were necessary to hold
conventions of the Free Religious Association with the view of giving
any fresh impression of its aim ; and yet to make the idea of the Free
Religious Association intelligible has been no easy task. In fact, if
we can define a thing perfectly so that everybody shall understand pre
cisely what we mean, there is hardly any necessity for arguing about
it. State your case so distinctly and fairly that the average intelli
gent man will receive it simply as it is meant, and the thing is done.
Now, this is what we have been trying 'to do all these years, and we
shall try again this morning. It is a very difficult thing to define our
position, for the simple reason that no position in religion or in poli
tics is supposed to be easy of definition. The people who take a posi
tion are always presumed to have a special occult motive in taking it.
They are presupposed to be governed by certain partisan or personal
considerations. They must have some “ axe to grind,” as the phrase
goes, which throws the people who look on off the scent. The
simple reason why we are not better understood is that our idea
is so perfectly plain : it can be stated in half a dozen words ; it
can be put so simply that no child could misapprehend it ; and yet,
because it is so plain and because it can be put so simply, nobody
believes it! “You must mean something more,” people say; “you
must have something behind ; you must have a purpose of your own
(19)
�20
which you keep to yourself, and throw this out as a bait.” Now, I am
perfectly sincere; we are all perfectly sincere; we have no “ axe to
grind; ” not any of us that I know of, or ever heard of, have any
occult motive.
We announce that our creed is creedlessness,—that is to say, we
reject the idea of a creed always carrying the suggestion of authori
ty, a creed expressing, not what I believe, but what you should believe.
But when we announce our creed as creedlessness, men say we are
people of no opinions, and they do not wish to become acquainted
with people who have no opinions; unless people have opinions, their
standing in the intellectual world cannot be stated. We simply reply,
that the principle on which we stand is that no opinions carry an
authority not to be questioned, that no statement of doctrines is
infallible, — that is all.
Again, a member of this Association, for reasons peculiar to himself
personally, withdraws his name from the American Unitarian Associa
tion’s list of ministers; another member of this Association, one of
its Executive Committee, for reasons satisfactory to himself person
ally, lets his name remain in the Unitarian list of ministers until it is
dropped by the Unitarian Association. I do not criticise Mr. Potter,
and Mr. Potter does not criticise me, for our different courses of action
in this respect. We have our own opinions, our own personal feelings
and associations ; and yet the outside world says at once, “ Why, you
see these Free Religionists, who talk about the unity that they have
together, are not united on so simple a question of policy as to
whether they belong to the Unitarian denomination or not.” But
the test of our freedom is that we act on our personal responsibility.
Again, we have said a hundred times, and probably shall say a hun
dred times more before we get through, that we are not a clique of
philosophers ; that we are not a party of theologians; that we are not
propagandists of any system of formulas; that as an Association we
neither oppose any faith as a faith, nor stand up for any faith as a
faith. The most comprehensive theological statement that you can
make will hardly be perfectly satisfactory in all points to every one
of us. We say, — and we say it with perfect sincerity, — that we are
not building up a church; we are not building up a sect; we are doing
our very utmost to avoid doing anything of that sort; our aim is prac
tical. You may smile at our saying that we are practical men; but,
however unpractical we may be in other respects, in this respect, as
members of the Free Religious Association, in our aim at forming, in
our policy of conducting, in our whole spirit of administering it, we
�have tried to be perfectly practical. What is the point ? Breaking
down barriers ; removing dividing walls ; obliterating authoritative
distinctions ; filling up pits between churches and faiths, — that is
our business : it is pulling down fences. I don’t know a better way of
putting it than that, —pulling down fences. Look at your private yards
in the city laid along in a group, each house having its own little
patch in the rear, with a high fence around it to divide it from its
neighbors, — as many separate areas, fenced off each from the rest,
as there are houses. The wind cannot circulate, the sun has no
chance to shine there, and it is impossible to raise flowers or even to
make grass grow prettily on each separate ground-plot. Take away
the fences, substitute open iron-work just sufficient to mark the division
of one estate from the other, and the wind circulates, the sun shines,
there is no barrier, and each separate yard preserves its individuality,
and yet becomes a grass-plot and a flower-bed. Just that thing we pro
pose in religion, — so to pull down the fences, or to remove the barri
cading walls, that the air, light, and sunshine shall cóme in and let no
darkness rest on the soil. That is surely simple. Now, that is abso
lutely all ; believe me, on my honor, that is all. We know nothing
else. You may search my pockets, — I have no ecclesiastical revolver,
I wear no sword at my side, I do not hate my brother-man anywhere ;
I have no hostility to any religion, Presbyterian, Orthodox, Methodist,
none whatever ; call him by any name you choose, I can take a man
frankly by the hand as a human being, who worships according to his
own conscience : that is enough, and that is all.
Our foe is sectarianism, not Christianity necessarily ; not Evangeli
cal Christianity ; not Roman Catholic Christianity : it is simply sec
tarianism, the spirit that puts up barriers, and makes them authorita
tive barriers between the different forms of faith. If you will put up
barriers simply as definitions to mark the point at which thoughts di
verge, only making your definitions portable, movable, and pliable, so
that when a neighbor moves a little further off you can readjust your
line and keep neighborly intercourse with him still, we have no objec
tion to that. We simply have objection to bounds that cannot be
moved and cannot be passed. We will not have a Romulus that
would kill his brother Remus for stepping over the furrow which is
marked by the sacred plow. We do not say, “ If you, Remus, pass
that boundary, you are doomed to death at the hands of the priests.”
Now, is that intelligible or not £ Is it not perfectly intelligible ? and
if there is anybody here who does not understand it, is it not his own
fault that he does not understand it ? Is it ours ?
�22
We are an anti sectarian society. We make sectarianism a definite
special object of attack on several grounds. We say, for instance,
that sectarianism entails enormous and useless expense on every com
munity, — expense that is estimated by millions of dollars in any large
society; an expense that in the single city of New York probably,
or in Boston, can be estimated by millions of dollars: taken out of
whose pockets ? Out of yours, in part. Out of the pockets of poor,
hard-working people. It is, to use a not very elegant, but very expres
sive, phrase of a friend of mine, very “ sweaty money ” that sectarian
ism uses. But how is this all done? There is a church with a minister
of a very liberal, catholic spirit; men of different shades of belief go
there and worship; there is no quarrel, no trouble, no strife. But
a sectarian question arises, on a point of the Trinity, or the char
acter of Christ, or the supernatural inspiration of the Bible; and
the people divide; there are two churches where there was one
before; two ministers, two organizations, where there was one be
fore ; and double the expense is required for no practical purpose
whatever. The city is not more religious, more pure, moral, hum
ble, worshipful, than before, but less so in all these respects, and it
costs exactly twice the sum of money to carry on the work. Now,
multiply that instance, as it is multiplied in a great city like Boston
or Chicago, and the expense entailed is inconceivable. Look at
the shades of Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Episcopacy in the
city of New York. As you walk down the Fifth Avenue, there is a
great temple on this side, and then there is a great temple on that
side, and then on the other side there is a great temple going up
that promises to be more expensive and gorgeous than any of
the rest. None of these churches are filled; the salaries are enor
mous, the music alone will cost seven thousand a year, all simply for
the purpose of making this particular church outrival that particular
church, which has a shade’s difference of doctrine ; while the people
are losing ground, losing earnestness, losing love of truth, losing
interest all the time in vital religion. Now, we say, put away these
dividing lines, — at any rate make them simply lines of definition and
not lines of exclusion, lines that shut out nobody and confine nobody
in> and you will save the country millions on millions of dollars
every year. The Bible Society is sectarian, the Tract Society is sec
tarian, the organizations for converting the heathen in this way, and
for converting the heathen in that way, are all sectarian, and all bring
to bear the particular methods of this or that special sect. Now, we
say, that is an evil; not a speculative evil; not merely an evil in opin
�23
ion; but an evil which touches the pocket and affects practical life, —
an evil which everybody can understand if he will take a slate and
pencil and figure it out.
But more than this we say: we say that sectarianism bears very
powerfully and very clearly upon education. If there is any interest
in this country that is of supreme practical moment, it is that of the
education of the people — the lower education in the public schools,
the higher education in colleges, seminaries, and universities. Now,
one of the largest religious denominations in the country — the Roman
Catholic — refuses, on sectarian grounds, to combine with the Prot
estant population of the country in the support of common schools,
and cripples our whole common school system ; and the Protestants,
on their side, with an equal vigor, protest, on sectarian grounds alone,
that they will keep the Bible there, let the Roman Church go or come.
Remove sectarianism and you have your common school system in
tact; all the people at once can take an interest in it, the whole power
of the community can be thrown upon the solution of the problem
of popular education; and it is solved as soon as the sectarian
question is passed. I listened last week in the Social Science
Conference of New York to an elaborate essay by President White,
of Cornell University, on the “Higher Education of America.” In
that essay he stated, argued, and proved, that the “Higher Edu
cation of America ” suffers more from the sectarian spirit than
from any other single cause. There are more than three hundred
nominal colleges in the United States, sectarian colleges; here
Catholics, here Methodists, here Unitarians, here Universalists, here
Baptists, and so on, — each one supported, or claiming to be sup
ported, by its denomination alone, making no appeal to any other;
so we have this fact of three hundred and sixty starving colleges in
stead of one magnificient State College in every State in the country,
which might be abundantly, over-abundantly, endowed with all the
means of any college in the world, I was going to say, certainly with
as much as any college on the continent of Europe has now, without
straining the efforts of the people even to the point at which they are
strained to-day. The University of Berlin, one of the great Universi
ties of Germany, costs less money, educates more people, educates
them better than any one of our State colleges, or any half-dozen
of them; and yet it costs less than the colleges of a single State
in our confederacy. Now here is a strong practical point. Remove
this sectarian feeling, and at once the higher education of the peo
ple is provided for as well as the lower. Dr. McCosh, President
�24
of Princeton College, challenged to some extent Mr. White’s state
ment, and said it was overdrawn ; and yet Dr. McCosh himself, on
this very occasion, protesting against Mr. White, said, “ Why, you must
have some sort of religion, and if you have some sort of religion, you
must have a particular kind of religion; you cannot have a religion
that is made up a little of Presbyterianism, and a little of Episcopacy,
and a little of Unitarianism, and a little of Universalism,” — conced
ing the whole question. We say, let all the religious questions be
put out of view in a college, and have your education based, not upon
sectarian principles, but upon scholarly principles alone; and let it
be the education of the mind, and not the building up of a sect. Is
not that a practical point ?
Again, the evil influence of sectarianism is seen in the diminished
power and earnestness with which men pursue the truth. We all
know, in the abstract, that the truth is the only thing in the world
worth anybody’s having. We all say that. We all say that to love
the truth, to seek the truth above and beyond everything else-, is the
greatest quality of the mind, and yet nothing is plainer than that the
sectarian spirit cripples in high minds as well as in ordinary minds
this determination to find the truth and nothing else. As I was com
ing from Newport last summer to Boston, there got into the car with
me, and sat on the same seat, a young man who was a Congrega
tional preacher in Boston. He introduced himself to me pleasantly,
and we talked half the way to Boston on this very matter. He said,
“I have attended your meetings from the beginning; I have been al
ways interested in your movement, and have heard everything you
have got to say; and while I have a very sincere respect for your
motives, your purpose and your position, I cannot quite concede the
ground that outside of sectarianism the truth will be more surely
found and stated.” “Is it not the fact,” he said, “that each sect
hammers away at its own idea and perfects that, and thus by putting
all sects together you have a mosaic which represents entirely the
truth ? ” Exactly the reverse is the case in my opinion, — because the
moment you have a sect, you enclose a dogma which stands for the
truth. It must not be questioned. Nobody is allowed to come in
who does not believe it, and people are perpetually persuaded to come
in by force of believing it; to guard it, to strengthen it, to fortify it by
outside appliances, to preserve its significance and power, becomes
the aim of every member of the sect; and the result is that the dog
ma does not represent, but hides, the truth.
I had a letter not a very great while ago, apparently from an earnest
�25
man, — I never saw him, — who said he had passed the whole of his
life as a Congregational preacher, and at last — he was over sixty —
it had suddenly dawned upon him that there was something to be
learned outside of his sect. “Now ” said he, “ I want to know some
thing about your position. My position has always been this: I
studied the doctrines; I defended them ; I read no books that did
not advocate them; I not only believed them, I knew, I was perfectly
sure, that was the truth, and sought no further. Now,” said he,
“ I find it was all a mistake, and my life has been a mistake.” A
very eminent Congregational minister of New York, a gentleman of
great reputation, of scholarly attainment, a man of learning and of
liberal ideas, said to me himself in his own study something substan
tially the same. His health had given way and he was on the eve of
going to Europe. He was sorting his books ; some of them he was to
leave and some to take with him. On the floor in a corner was a huge
pile of literature, and some smaller books on the shelves. “What
books are these ? ” I said, pointing to those on the floor. “ Oh, those
are theological books, myoid professional books.” — “And What books
are these?” — “Oh, those are the books I have not had time to read
yet.” — “And among them, what?” — “Well, some of the new sci
ences, — Herbert Spencer’s works for instance : I have had them a
great while, but have never looked at them.”
Here was the point; as long as he was an Orthodox minister he
had no time to read Spencer, though the volumes were on his shelves.
Now that man, but for his sectarian position, which had to be recog
nized, and which absorbed his time and energies, would have read
Herbert Spencer and the “ new sciences,” would have been an enquir
ing mind and a truly catholic spirit. That very man, on an occasion
not so very long ago, being outside of New York, in some country vil
lage where people were not supposed to know, made an ordination ser
mon. In that he found occasion to speak of Unitarians, and he spoke
of them very severely; among others he spoke of Dr. Channing,—
he didn’t suppose anybody knew enough to correct him, — and said
that when Dr. Channing came to die he recanted his opinions. There
Happened to be in his audience a friend of mine, and a member of my
society, who heard the statement and told me. If that man had been
a lover of truth more than a lover of his sect, could he have said such
a thing as that ?
Again we say the spirit of sectarianism is fatal to love, fatal to char
ity. Always in sects we see brother against brother^ friend against
friend, neighbor against neighbor, church against church. It is
�26
mortifying to take up religious newspapers: political newspapers
are bad enough, but religious newspapers are quite as bad. There
is an excuse for political papers, because they are partisan organs:
the party owns them, supports them, they play into the hands of
managers. It is a money-making business on both sides. The
party depends upon the paper and the paper depends upon the
party. Is it so in religion ? It ought not to be so. Religion means
charity, brotherhood, love, truth, knowledge, peace, and good-will;
and yet open any religious newspaper, — I care not what sect it repre
sents, — and you will find misunderstanding bordering upon misrepre
sentation, and the spirit of evil partisanship in every instance. This
we say is an evil, a very palpable and tangible evil, which it becomes
earnest and right-minded men to do away with; and this Free Reli
gious Association is organized to help do away with it. •
I said we have as an Association no doctrine, no creed; but two
positions, as it seems to me, must be assumed before we can take the
ground we do against sectarianism. We must, in the first place, declare
all religion to be essentially of the same stuff, to be cardinally the same
in substance. Call it what you will, Christian, Hebrew, Heathen, Chi
nese, Buddhist, Brahman, Egyptian, essentially, at the bottom, it con
tains the same principles of ethics, the same cardinal conceptions of
the Supreme .Being, the same doctrines in regard to man’s nature, the
same general standard of the religious life, the same general portrait
ure of the good and acceptable man. We do not say that one is not
more complete than another; we should be fools if we did. Does not
the world grow? Does not the human mind become larger and
broader ? This being so, to charge us with the statement that there is
no difference between Christianity and Brahmanism, that there is no
superiority of Christianity over Shamanism^ why, it is ridiculous! We
may err, but we are not such simpletons as that. We might as well be
charged with holding that the astronomer of to-day is no wiser than in
the time of Tycho, that Lord Rosse’s telescope is not superior to the
telescope which Galileo used. But we know that the principle of the
lens which both Galileo and Lord Rosse used is precisely the same.
We well know that neither of them could have seen a single star
beyond what the natural vision would take in, unless assisted by
the power of the lens, and we know it is the increased power of the
lens, acquired by a finer skill in grinding glass, which makes modern
astronomy superior to that in the times of Galileo. We should agree
— most of us at least — that Christianity is superior to any other reli
gion to which humanity has given birth. It should be so; for the
�27
most enlightened races in the world have taken it up, the wisest
people in the world have moulded it, the most artistic people in the
world have decorated it, the people of highest aspirations have
brought their wealth of spiritual nature to enrich it, and it stands
the monument, the brightest monument in the history of man, of a
great world-religion. In the character of Jesus, its great moral Ex
emplar and Redeemer, in the nobleness of its Scriptures, in the
beauty of its art, in its idea of the angelic world, in its whole concep
tion of the universe, it is vastly superior to any other single religion.
Yes, we can admit that.. We only say that the lowest religion that
was ever known is of the same cardinal stuff with Christianity.
That justifies us in saying that all religions are of the same moth
er, that all assume the same fundamental principles, that all tend
or aim towards the same social and spiritual result. If you claim
inspiration for Christianity, we say, “Very well; but the facts de
mand that you concede inspiration to Mohammedism, to Brahman
ism, to all other religions of the world.” We say, more naturally,
all religions are the growth of human intelligence, the flowering out
of the human mind, according to the laws and conditions of its
growth. In the East, imagination predominates, and the prevail
ing religion is imaginative; in Italy, where the institution-power pre
dominates, religion is an institution ; in the North, where the idea
power predominates, theology is stronger; in the West, where the
spirit of movement and of progress is more powerful, there the reli
gion becomes blended with other elements of civilization, and is
mixed, fluctuating, and progressive.
The human mind, we say, created all the religions, wrote all the
bibles, instituted all the forms of worship, framed all the great systems
of theology, reared all the,* cathedrals, painted all the pictures, and
built up the great conceptions of the material and spiritual worlds,—
the mind did it, — this human mind. If we cannot do it now, yet it
was done once. Because we cannot build cathedrals, it is useless to
say cathedrals were never builded by human art. Go to Milan, go
to Rome, or anywhere in Europe, and there are the colossal struc
tures, miracles of human genius, done under the natural inspiration of
religion. You say the human mind could never write the Bible. But,
the Bible is only a collection of literature, of higher literature, and it
took some thousand or two thousand years to do it. Consider the liter
ature of England for a thousand years past. Did not the human mind
make that? Yet it is a grander literature than the literature of the
Hebrews; more original, more thoughtful, more scientific, with more
�28
originality of mind in all directions. You say the human mind could
not have constituted the character of the Christ. Grant the charac
ter of Jesus to have been as lofty and pure and beautiful as you like.
I will not question it. I have no disposition to abate one jot from the
dignity, the nobleness, the loveliness of Jesus. Yet we know where
he came from ; we know his nature, his antecedents ; we know his
surroundings ; we know the things he said, perhaps — perhaps we
do not. We find acts of his that we question; we find words of his
that we doubt. Take it, however, for all in all, we say, “Here was
a wonderful person, a product of humanity in its hour of genius.”
Let him stand there. Bow the head before him, or the knee before
him, if you will. I have seen people before whom I could bend my
knee, men and women who were superior enough to me for that. I
do not hesitate to say so. Bow your knee to Jesus if you will, but
remember he was a product of this marvelous human nature of ours
which we do not understand, which none of us have fathomed, which
we have not reached the confines of nor exhausted; and along with
him, in different departments, put Buddha, Socrates, Michael Angelo,
Shakespeare, as also products of the human mind in other phases of
its manifestations. We say it is possible : there is no miracle about
it; nature will do it all.
But you ask, “ If the human mind has such, wonderful creative
power, if the human mind has made all these great religions, why did
it stop ? If the human mind is a creator, why does it not still create?
Does it not stand as a palpable fact that these great religions, seeing
that they keep their old place, were moulded and shaped by certain
special providential agencies fitted to do their work and then sink into
the background ? Does it not follow that they were not products of
the human mind but of the divine mind* that they were revelations
given to man but not revelations of man, impressions made upon him,
not expressions made out of him ? And since Christianity remains
as the crowning religion of the race and no improvement is made
on it, and no new religion has had birth in modern civilization, why
not own at once that Christianity is a divine, providential, and
final religion ? ” I deny the fact; I deny that the human mind has
ceased to be creative; I deny that the human mind has stopped
creating religions. Does that affirmation sound bold ? The religions
of the world do not comprehend all the humanity of the world. All
Christendom is not Christianity. There are thousands of people in
the city of Boston who are not Christians. There are probably ten
thousand people in the city of New York who are not Christians.
�29
They say nothing about religion, they join no other churches, because
there are none; they do not go to church at all; and if you should
get behind the surface of their minds you would find that there was
no Christian belief there, that they have drifted away, far beyond the
Christian faith. So it is in every great religion of the world. All the
religions put together do not include the whole of believing humanity.
Mankind, as Emerson says, grows beliefs. It does to-day: all over
the ground, in all our great cities, those who look keenly can see these
new religions sprouting up, the young grass of the future summer com
ing fresh from the still vital soil. Those who see it do not all under
stand it. Those who have the rudiments of the new faith in them are
not all aware of it.
Consider this matter of Spiritualism. I am not a Spiritualist, but I
recognize the fact, that hundreds of thousands, of people, millions of
people (some say five, some say ten millions of people), are. What
is the peculiarity of Spiritualism ? That it knocks down the barrier
between this world and the next. Knock down the barrier between
this world and the next, and what happens ? Your whole system of
mediatorial religion is gone. No mediator is any more required, no
Saviour, no Redeemer, no great sacrifice, no altar, no priesthood;
Christianity is swept away, Romanism is dispensed with, Evangelical
Protestantism is gone entirely, by that one construction. Spiritualists
do not all understand it, though many do. Not all conceive as yet the
full consequences of saying that the barrier between this world and
the next is cast away. On that barrier the existence of Evangelical
Protestantism and Romanism depends. All depends upon the integ
rity of that stone wall. All the Romish and Evangelical churches of
Christendom assume the existence of a bottomless gulf between the
two worlds, and their whole system of religion is but a system of ferry
boats to cross the water.
Now, fill up the pit, grade it over, run your tracks across, say
there is but one life, but one career, but one world, but one Provi
dence, but one system of forces, and this kind of religion is gone.
The advanced Spiritualist knows this perfectly well. There are
hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of Spiritualists who
have drawn this inference, who have come to these conclusions;
and if you get behind the surface of their minds you will find that
theirs is a great religion, an entirely new and fresh growth of religious
creation, with an ethics of its own, a philosophy of its own, a beauty
of its own, a humau life and human character of its own, just as dis
tinctly drawn out as in Christianity itself. Here, I say, is a new reli4
�30
gion ; that it is a new religion, created by the human mind to-day,
within this generation, is beyond dispute.
Again, take this thing that is called the Religion of Humanity,—the
Religion of Humanity according to Comtism, or as it is expounded by
Mr. Bridges of London. It is a conception crude, jagged, incompre
hensible to the multitude, unintelligible to all but a few, starting with the
first principle that there is no personal God, but that humanity is the
great creative being. Taking that principle, intelligent men, thought
ful, philosophic men, have constructed a system of religion in all re
spects a wonder, rich, suggestive, artistic, humane, progressive,- refor
matory, that has the power of taking hold of the social religious nature
and of moulding human life with an energy that was known to Chris
tianity only in its best days; Now, I believe there is a future for that,
laugh at it now as men will. There is nothing organized, nothing
formulated, nothing definite, nothing concluded ; but people are shap
ing it, making studies upon it, drawing inferences from it; and it will
not be a generation before the Religion of Humanity has its build
ings, its ministers, its temples ; it will not be half a century before you
have a new religion stealing into modern Christendom just as Chris
tianity stole into the Roman Empire.
I simply allude to this as a sign of the times, something mostly
in the future, something of which nothing very respectable can be
said to-day ■ but within it is a germ, a living germ, which shows that
human nature is still alive and creative. As I said* we of the Free Re
ligious Association confidently stand by and see our position authen
ticated by facts. We are not mere speculators ; and if we say that
Christianity is not all of religion and that all the existing religions are
not all the religions, but that there is something more to come in the
future, we have ground for saying so, and for so believing.
Free religion takes several different phases. We do not define
them authoritatively. We do not classify ourselves in regard to them.
They are held by the members of the Association and of its Executive
Committee in perfect peace and good will, without offense, without
criticism, without remark. One will say, “ I call myself a Christian,
I believe that all that is involved in free religion can, be found inside
of Christianity.” Very well: certainly, if you think so, say so; the
Association welcomes you to its membership, and its platform is open
for your statement.
Another says, “Ño, I think that we must go outside of Christianity
to find free religion. We recognize Christianity, but we recognize other
religions. The great family of religions we accept, and we will not, by
�3i
calling ourselves Christians, do injustice, even by an implied convic
tion, to any of those other grand faiths ; therefore we say free religion
is Non-Christian.” Another says, “1 go further, and maintain that
free religion must be Anti-Christian; there are elements in Christianity
that are despotic and tyrannical and must be thrown down, put away,
obliterated, before free religion can have a really free course.”
We are met here this morning to state these several phases. We
shall, in the first phase, state the case of those who contend that all
the principles involved in free religion may be found inside of Chris
tianity, — of those who hold to the Christ in name and to the Chris
tian religion, and believe that this religion, rightly understood, is as
free as any religion need be.
Then we shall have a statement in behalf of those who believe
that Christianity is opposed to free religion and must be attacked.
Next, a statement that free religion is best promulgated outside of
Christianity, not in antagonism to it, but outside of it. The first
statement will be made by our very good friend, Mr. Calthrop, a
Unitarian Minister, of Syracuse, N.Y., whose orthodoxy will not be
called in question by you or by me. The next statement, the AntiChristian statement, will be made by Mr. Abbot, who can make it
better than anybody else, as you will certainly agree. The next state
ment, that of the Non-Christian, or Extra-Christian, aspect or position
of free religion, will be made by our friend, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, and I l<now you will say he is just the man to represent
that side.
I have spoken a great deal longer than I meant to, but simply in
order to prepare the way for these gentlemen whom I have the pleas
ure of introducing to you; and we will begin with Mr. Calthrop,
who will now address you.
ADDRESS OF REV. S. R. CALTHROP.
One word to enforce what our President has said in regard to this
platform. This platform is not, ought not to be, and I trust never
will be, a “ Christian ” platform. To so name it would be an insult
to the gentlemen of the Buddhistic, Hindoo, Chinese, or Jewish
Religions whom we a?k to meet with us on equal terms. Certainly,
also, this platform is not an “ Anti-Christian ” platform. That would
be to omit the word “ Free ” from its name. It might still be a reli
gious platform from which all Christians were excluded, — a very
natural alliance perhaps, but one not universal. It would be an odd
�32
thing to have a universal free Congress of Nations Anti-English.
And again, this platform is not an “ Extra-Christian ” platform, be
cause that would mean the same thing in a milder form. It would be
merely your International Congress of Nations with the English, we
will say, left out in the cold. The Free Religious platform, then, is a
place where the religions of the earth can shake hands and say a
mutual “ God bless you ” and “ God speed.”
Now, I am not here to say there is no other religion but the Chris
tian religion: the whole includes the parts. I am simply here to speak
for those persons who are born with Christian nerves and constitu
tions, blood and bones, and under Christian circumstances and tradi
tions. I am here to claim for myself and those born under like cir
cumstances precisely what I claim for my Buddhistic brother ; and if
his rights are in danger, I stand up for him first of all. I should be
foolish indeed to suppose that my exotic thought could go right into
China and into that Eastern world, and instantly supplant Buddhism,
and do for that world what Buddhism does to-day. To do it, a thou
sand years of’’labor would hardly suffice: and what, in the meantime,
are those millions to do if they now have no light at all ? So much,
then, by way of preliminary.
And now I ask your thoughtful attention to the reasons why most
of us here ought to stand, as I think, where I do. My friend, the
Rabbi here, answers me that he is glad to stand as I do, — that is, by
his own religious name and traditions. It would be a shame for him
to refuse the splendid inspiration of his own faith; he knows that in
spiration better than I, and he can witness for it better than I, and
can cleanse its impurities better than I. It is not my business even to
state these impurities and corruptions. Let me keep my own door
step clean. But I have a certain religious history, and that history
gives me my religious position and duties. I have a universal history,
and I have a special history. Let us first, then, see the universal his
tory ; and upon this you will find that all the speakers to-day will be
substantially in accord. Paul said, eighteen centuries ago, “The prom
ises of God are yea.” In nineteenth century language, that delights in
longer words, the same thought is stated by saying the universe is an
affirmation and not a negation. Atheism, pure and simple, may be
left out of the question as mere negation ; for wiiat is Atheism ? Sup
pose I were to say this desk made the world, made the universe and
the galaxies. You would smile at me, because this desk is a very lit
tle thing; but take away that desk, and say the vacancy made the
world. It is still more foolish, is it not ? Atheism means no answer
�at all to the problem. Atheism means the human mind giving up in
despair and saying, I cannot understand. Atheism says an everlast
ing No to the world ; and so inevitably your answer tends- towards
Yes. The universe, then, is a reality; to solve it you have got to find
a power that shall do all that ever has been done or ever can be done.
You have got to give to your primal Force, if you will so call it, power
enough to keep the galaxies centered ; you have got to put into your
primal Force mind enough to produce all the minds that have ever
lived on the earth and in all worlds ; you have got to provide for
something capable of evolving angel intelligence, capable of'evolving
all the poetry, beauty and wisdom of mankind; you have got mentally
to manufacture a power which is as much beyond the finite being of
all worlds as man is above the mummy; and when you have got that
Power, that Life, I do not care what you call it, provided only that you
bow the knee before the infinite beauty and splendor and greatness.
Now science, with its doctrine of “nothing can come of nothing,”
is going to re-affirm this grand instinct of the heart of man. Yet
more, it is going to re-affirm, one by one, the most sacred beliefs and
hopes of men ; and, in its restatement of them, it is going to prove,
as never before, that they rest on the solid rock of Reality. Does
any one doubt this? Well, see that already science has re-affirmed the
trustworthiness of the common sense of mankind as to the Reality of
the Universe without us. Now thought, in its metaphysical stage, so
far from doing this, had only confused and distressed men, by throw- '
ing a haze of doubt and a sense of unreality over the whole outward
universe. But not only does science pronounce the universe to be
real in exactly the sense that men and women have always understood
it to be real, but it gets rid at once of a thousand perplexing questions
by showing that this Reality is a Reality of Growth. Stars grow ; gal
axies grow ; suns, planets, moons, grow; strata grow; plants, animals,
men, grow; thoughts, institutions, grow: and so now let us put into
one word, if we can, just what science means by the universe being a
Reality of Growth. Science knows distinctly two things : first, a real
universe, and, secondly,.real people, with real senses and real thoughts,
inside the universe; and says the whole scheme of the world and of
life is impossible and unintelligible unless you take a real universe
surrounding a man and a real man surrounded ; and so science bids
us look at each particular limb of man and each particular organ and
function of his mind as something real, produced by a real universe.
It sees light surrounding eyes, and it says light creates eyes. There
is a real light yonder, a real eye here. The light is not made of the
�34
eye, but the light makes the eye, and the eye is the thing which pro
nounces that light is. Now our eyes at last have come up from the
lowest possible grade, where our monad ancestors merely saw a dim
glimmer passing over the uniform surface of a single cell, — have
mounted up to such perfection that it is supposed to be religious to
say that we have got perfect eyes. Yet we see only one octave of
color. I believe that eyes are yet to be born on this planet that will
see seven octaves of color. So with regard to the ear: that has been
a slow creation too, under atmospheric force. You have only three
thousand tuning-forks ; my monkey ancestor had only a few hundreds,
and my monad ancestor had none at all; and so I hope that my chil
dren’s children’s children will have a hundred thousand or a million.
And so on through all the faculties of man. Each is a Reality of
Growth.
But now see what we have arrived at. Science says that this real
leg, with all its nerves and all its muscles and all its bones, has got
secret and subtle connections with real forces outside of it. My
limbs bow themselves instinctively to the law of gravitation. Space
and time have been around organisms since time began, and, at last,
nerve connections, infinite in their number, have been made in bod
ies, so that we instinctively know we are living in vital connection
with real space and time. A real something outside, a real faculty
inside; a real faculty inside, prophesying a real thing outside. Now
this is true of every faculty of man from his foot up to his fore
head. Let us see now what it says here, on the top of the head.
There is a real organism up there, isn’t there? The doctrine is that
nothing can come of nothing. The human mind has got an out- *
ward eye. It came of light, the light around every man. The human
mind has got what we call an inward eye, — conscience, the sense of
justice, love, &c. Is that made by no reality, by sham? The doctrine
is that organisms cannot be produced without reality. You can get
dream and fancy and myth without it, but legitimate, real organisms,
never. And so in me I have an organism which yields a conscious
ness of truth, justice, spiritual light, beauty; goodness, and a love
which lives forever; and I know very well this inside faculty is pro
duced by an Infinite Justice, Truth and Beneficence outside of man.
Tfie Reality without must correspond with the Reality within. This
may perhaps seem vague now, yet some day it will be the simplest
matter of science. For if you produce these qualities of yourself,
it is inevitable to say that a real thing is produced in the human
race without a real thing to produce it from. Where did you get
�35
your organ from? But the real universe keeps enforcing justice,
enlarging science, and expanding art. The reason is, the Infinite
Mind is getting organized here and is making its spokesmen and
spokeswomen speak with louder tongues.
We then together bow — all religions, knowingly or unknowingly,
bow — before an Infinite Power which produces the beauty and glory
of things. This is the universal element, common to all religions;
the everlasting foundation on which all religions rest.
We must now consider, in the second place, the connection of the
universal with the special, and the true relation of species to each
other. You may say, if you please, that the special is the universal
working under conditions, under the limitations of time, place, and
circumstance. To bring the Infinite completely into the consciousness
of the dwellers in time appears to be the master difficulty of the uni
verse. When you think of an infinite power which throws its streams
’ of life and force into you, it is a wonder that things do not go up into
heaven at once; but when you carefully investigate the intense conser
vatism of nature, which is necessary to her endurance, then, on the
other hand, the surprise is that any progress should be make at all.
When you think how absolutely essential it is to birth that the life of
the child should come from the parent, it is hard to see how new things
get into this world at all. Now, here is exactly the difficulty of sci
ence. When you come to special organisms, the Evolutionist is met by
this demand : Show us the evolution of a single species. Those who
have studied species know the intense permanence of them: how, after
millions of years, the likeness is still undimmed. Now, it so happens
that in religion you can put your finger upon the birth of species, and
show exactly how the progress started, and get some glimpse at its
laws. The Evolutionist tells you that you have to suppose, in the first
place, an exceptionally favored locality; secondly, an exceptionally
receptive organism; and then there will be a possibility of a move
ment upward ; and therefore you have to look to your exceptional
locality and organisms, and then you get the phenomena of religious
progress, or the origin of species in religion.
When Sextus Tarquin got possession of the town of Gabii he sent
a secret messenger to the old crafty statesman, his father, and said,
“ I have got the confidence of the people: what am I to do next ? ”
His father did not answer a word, but took the messenger into his
garden, and took his cane with him, and came to a beautiful poppy
bed. He took his stick and snipped off the heads of the tallest pop
pies ; the messenger carried back word of this action to Sextus Tar
�36
quin, who understood his father’s meaning to be that he was to cut off
all the progressive and most powerful minds in the town. He did so,
and where was Gabii? And so when Protestantism swept through
Europe, and Spain, being the strong tower of Catholicism, cut off the
tallest poppies in its domain, what became of the Reformation there ?
So you can easily kill out your rising faculty, your new thought, your
forming species. xA thousand times a new thought or movement has
thus been killed. You perceive, then, the necessity of careful investi
gation of places where the thoughts had a chance.
Now let us look at Judaism. You will see that for one phenome
non it had a race of prophets, and a belief in the living Spirit which
comes over and into men as inspiration. Now, if the Jewish people
had cut off all those prophetic heads, where would Jewish progress
have been ? Does not this seem to show a little the necessity, as a
condition of progress, of able minds, touched with a high idea, before
other minds can grasp it ? Cut off Phillips, Parker, May, and Garri
son from the anti-slavery movement,—cut off its great men as fast
as the crop comes up, and where is the republic of to-day ? This,
then, is the divine place for exceptional minds; and of course the
higher the minds the more complete the manifestation of their uplift
ing power. Now, a friend of mine says that the universal in each
religion is its sole and essential great truth, and that it shares this
with all others; and that the specialty in the religions is the necessary
antagonistic part of the religions. Very well. If each specialty is
necessarily antagonistic to all other specialties, all special claims are
false, or all but one are false, because you cannot have two necessa
rily antagonistic truths. But what are the facts in regard to our spe
cial religions ? It happens to be a fact that five hundred years before
the Christian era a beautiful mind rose up in India and vowed before
the universe that he would try to make an end of evil and pain and
sorrow and wrong; and the fire that was in his heart smote millions
of hearts, and they said, Let us bring pain and wrong to an end by
means of justice and truth and love to all. That is a fact; that is to
say, the wonderful influence of one man must have had power to set
the human heart longing and working and aspiring: and Buddhism
came. It is also a fact that right into the midst of wild Arabia there
came one man who lifted up a nation of Bedouin chiefs into a great,
new faith, and every man was exalted by the contact and lifted up by
the personal magnetism that belonged to Mahomet. Now, are these
two facts necessarily antagonistic ?. Of course, if Mahomet and Bud
dha were each to insist that he was the only teacher, there would be
Z -
�37
antagonism at once. But if each lovingly acknowledges the mission
of the other, to people and times wide asunder, where is the antago
nism ? Truly seen, on the contrary, they illustrate each other. Each
helps to make the amazing personal influence of the other no longer
seem fabulous, but credible and possible.
Turning to our own religion, we see the same great truth illustrated.
We must consider the whole Egyptian, Jewish, Persian, Greek, and
Roman inspiration as one vast stream of religious influence, of which
our complex Christianity is the continuation. It is the largest stream
because more streams run into it and its sources are found over larger
areas of humanity. When I look on all those majestic rivers flowing
into it, I should say we have got in Christianity a Mississippi of a reli
gion. After that Jewish people had been guided to truth and beauty,
for hundreds of years, and other great elements of religion had min
gled with Judaism, then comes the flower of the Jewish religion, the
Prophet of Nazareth, and says this belongs to the world, — not only
to a handful of people in Palestine, but to all people everywhere.
And so the beauty of Jesus is not that he is jealous of Buddha, jeal
ous of a man who tried to bring up the Hindoo to love his neighbor!
— we have not so learned Christ, — but that he yearns to do for the
West what Buddha longed to do for the East: namely, to make an end
of misery, pain, and wrong, and to bring in the kingdom of heaven;
and the glory of Jesus is that his personality had an influence so deep,
persuasive, and penetrating that to-day his life-blood flows in millions
of Christian breasts. We say, therefore, if your special claim is made
in any narrow and exclusive way, then some other special claim comes
immediately into conflict with it. But if my special claim shakes
hands with your special claim, — if Jesus clasps hands with Buddha,
and says, “Brother, the grace of God comes to us both, anointing
us for our tasks,” — then the special claims no longer antagonize, but
fraternize and help.
And we find, I think, if we look a little further, that in the first
place this view emphasizes the universal claim of all religions to the
living God and the living truth; and, in the second place, that
it maps out to each section of the world its special duty. Now, it
would be an odd thing, in the city of Boston, if Mr. A, B, C, and D,
down to X, Y, and Z, had no special tasks, but each should try to do
the other’s work: they would never get anything done at all. I say,
therefore, it is not my business to pick out the faults in Buddhism and
show them to the world ; nor is it in my power to bring out all its ex
cellences. But with perfect good-will I say to the Buddhist, “ You are
6
�3«
.\
i
the possessor of your own inspiration; it is your business to manifest
its glory, and we will lovingly and thankfully accept the blessing.” It
is not, my Christian friend, your business and mine to be everybody
else but ourselves, — to be a perfect mush of religions. We have our
historic line of inspiration, and that marks our post of duty. We are
to guard, clarify, and develop our own religion, not to stand sympa
thetic towards all other faiths and antagonistic to the one faith that has
reared us and made us what we are. For this reason one of our free
religious tendencies needs watching. Some of us, while they do not
feel at all that it is their business to criticise the Buddhist, yet feel a
terrible duty upon them to show where the Christians or Hebrews are
in error; they feel a divine commission to show how full of sectari
anism the church next door is. Well, that is a right tendency, but it
must not be exclusive and negative merely. It is perfectly proper for
the student of Shakespeare to get together in one work all the poor
passages in Shakespeare and say; “That is in Shakespeare.” It is not
a very gracious task, but it is a necessary kind of work. But if a man
stopped his criticism of Shakespeare there, and didn’t give Ham let"*'
and Othello a chance, what would you say of his criticism ? So it is
your duty and mine to find out the errors and shortcomings of our
own religious system. It is a part and parcel of our duty to the
world, as the legatees of this vast inheritance, to clear up all the
swamps in the estate and fill up the pit-falls and burn the rubbish.
But this work may be done sympathetically and affirmatively. And
to my friends who criticise Hebrew literature I wish to say one word.
You heard, twenty years ago, in criticism of the Genesis story of Eden,
that God repented and walked in the garden in the cool of the day.
That was pronounced absurd. The poetry of it was not seen; the
spiritual meaning of a legend or myth was not investigated; it was
only judged as if it were a literal narrative of outward facts. Criti
cism of the Bible was in the same tone in which Thomas Paine criti
cised it in the prison of La Force, — “I haven’t a Bible by me, but it
doesn’t make any difference; I can do very well without one! ” Of course
it was to get at the surface merely, and anybody could do that. Now
the sympathetic scholar takes those passages thus criticised and finds
exactly the opposite objection, — too much meaning for their alleged
time and place of authorship. He says these very passages — the
story of Paradise for example — are altogether ahead of the ideas
of the primeval Jewish people, who began away down in very
low conditions of intelligence. Can you suppose them not to have
had image worship, when Rachel sits on ' the little gods of her
�39
father and he cannot discover them, and is in a terrible way because
his divinities are gone? In such passages as that you will see that
the Jewish religion began very low. Now, sympathetic criticism goes
farther than that, and says that is the glory of it; the glory of human
ity is not that man began perfect with Adam, but that he began down
there in a monad, has already grown upward from that to his present
stature, and means to keep on growing; and the glory of the Jewish
religion is that it began low down in the rude worship of nature, and
at last arose to the vision of the divine splendor which shone on the
face of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. It is a glory of growth, and not a
perfection to start with in one little spot.
So, in the second place, your critic, as a Christian, has to know the
glories of his religion. We are the guardians of a splendid inspira
tion which has come down to us ; and if we were to let it go, the
Buddhists over yonder would come over to us in America and say,
“ Where are those neglected books ? ” just as the Buddhist missionary
went from China to find in India that the faith was dead and no
longer Buddha’s name held in reverence, but in its place degeneracy
and corruption. And so it is your business and mine to take this re
ligion of ours and clear it of its imperfections, and to take all the ex
cellences of it that we know, or ought to know, and bear them in our
heart of hearts, — to reproduce the spirit of Christ, the spirit of love
and tender sympathy, inside ourselves; and then all the disputes as to
external things will be of little moment.
And so, true friends, the issue thus imperfectly stated may be put,
with your permission, in a word that I used here in Boston one year
ago to a little .company. Free Religion does not mean tender and
sympathetic relations with all religions under heaven except Chris
tianity. It does not mean a glorious insight into Buddha’s character,
and a caricature of the character of Jesus. It does not mean sympa
thy with Zoroaster and alienation from Moses or Isaiah. It does not
mean the eye of an artist for the beautiful lineaments of Egyptian or
Roman hero or saint, and the eye of a sign-painter for Paul or John.
It does not mean our going from our own house of faith to inhabit the
houses of our neighbors. You don’t know it perhaps, but you would
catch cold in the Chinese Pagoda, and the dance of the dervishes
would make you sick, and the incense floating in Buddha’s temples
would put you to sleep. Nor does Free Religion mean pulling down,
fraternally of course, all other religious houses under heaven and inau
gurating a universal camping out while a new building shall be built.
I suppose it must be done fraternally. I will pull down the house of the
�40
Buddhist and he shall pull down mine, fraternally. I believe I can im
agine a song of triumph coming from the person who is pulled down.
Now, millions of tender hearts, whom we have in charge, would die
under the process. It is very laborious to camp out when you don’t
know how to do it, as the new soldier discovers. Well, what then is
the task? It is to have sympathizing relations with every effort toward
the Infinite under heaven j to rejoice to know that God loves his Chi
nese or Hindoos just as much as he does his Hebrews or Ameri
cans. It is to be sure that we never patronize the Spirit-born; it is
to be sure that we never constitute ourselves examining chaplains to
the Holy Ghost; it is to stand firmly on our own feet where we are, and
not only accord the same right, but to insist and beg that our Bud
dhistic and other friends stop where they belong. They are noble
where they are, but how exotic they would be if they tried to plant
themselves in our places. This difference of costumes is a fixed fact.
Don’t let us see them in a coat, which we buy at Parker’s, on Wash
ington Street, looking just like everybody else. You would know
them in their own costume and in their native religion and poetry,
uttered amid Eastern circumstances and in their own sunny climes.
And so we are shut up to this, if we want to do practical work, and
don’t want to be living in a wretched round of fancy or doubt. We
have got to stand just where God put us; we have got to cleanse the
house of God in our midst and build a temple to his name here and
now: gladly giving forth all of good we have inherited from our fathers
in the spirit; and gladly receiving from others the message they too
have received from heaven; and so hastening the time when the great
religions of the world shall no longer be so many hostile camps; but
shall at last know each other to be, not enemies, but sworn brothers,
standing side by side, giving and receiving the good word which the
Father is forever speaking to his earthly children.
The President. We cordially say “Amen” to Mr. CalI was a little afraid he was going to .criticise too
severely the custom of the Christian churches, but we are
more than content and satisfied. I have now the pleasure to
introduce to you Mr. F. E. Abbot, of “The Index,” who will
speak in the defense of the Anti-Christian attitude of believers
in religious freedom.
throp.
�4i
ADDRESS OF FRANCIS E. ABBOT.
It falls to me in this discussion to take the least attractive and the
least lovely attitude of the three positions to be represented on this
platform to-day. I am conscious of speaking, therefore, at a certain
disadvantage, because I know that to almost all of you, perhaps to all,
the word “Christian” is associated with the holiest and tenderest
feelings of your own childhood ; with your mother’s love; with the
best thoughts and the best sentiments that have surrounded you from
your infancy up. It is no gracious task to intimate anything that
should withdraw from that word any of these associations. It is suf
ficiently disturbing to see that one stands aloof from the word, regard
ing it without a positive allegiance. It is still more disturbing, and
must be, for one to say that that word stands for something which
must be religiously opposed. I repeat that, when it falls to me to say
this and to represent this attitude before you, I am conscious of doing
so at a great disadvantage; for I can hardly count upon the sympathies
of many, if of any, in your number. Nevertheless, I must speak the
word that comes to me.
The first question to be settled, when we are discussing the relative
truth of the Christian, the Extra-Christian, and the Anti-Christian
positions, must be, What is Christianity ? And who shall define it ?
Now is it fair, is it just, to go to the heretics of Christendom to get
the true definition of Christianity ? Is that the method of scholarly
criticism, to go to those who are not recognized by the great bulk of
Christians as representing the Christian faith, and take your definition
of Christianity from them ? Does that seem to you the exact, the fair,
and the just course to pursue? Would you then go to the Liberal
Christians, — to the Unitarians, to the Universalists, to any other of
the small handful of so-called Liberal Christians, — and take from
them your definition; or would you go to the hundreds of millions
of Orthodox Christians, whose substantial faith, notwithstanding great
diversities of church polity and minor points, is yet essentially one
and the same thing everywhere? Who, if not the Christian Church,
as a whole, has the right to define Christianity ? I must deny abso
lutely the right of any other party in this broad world to define Chris
tianity than the Christian Church itself, by its universal consensus.
That seems to me just; that seems to me fair; that seems to me to
be the only course that a scholar or even an honest man can pursue,
at least if he sees the real nature of the case. That is why I go to
the Christian Church —the great Orthodox Christian Church, includ
�42
ing the Greek, the Roman, and the Evangelical Protestant — for my
definition of Christianity, rather than to the rationalistic or so-called
liberal bodies of Christendom. I believe that this first question must
be answered, then, in this manner: it is the Christian Church itself
that must give the definition of Christianity, and not the avowed
heretics and the reputed infidels of the Christian communion.
What, then, is the answer that this great Christian Church (by which
I mean all the institutions which have grown up out of the Christian
religion) gives to our question, What is Christianity ? I will not tire
you with going through the list of doctrines ; you know them all. I
will simply sum them upas Christian Orthodoxy itself, — the funda
mental doctrines of the fall of man, the depravity of man, the wrath of
God, and salvation by faith in Christ alone: doctrines in which three
hundred millions of Christians agree as essential and fundamental to
their faith, — doctrines which only a small handful of two or three
hundred thousand exiles believe to be unessential. The characteristic
principle of Authority, now represented by the church, now by the
Pope, now by the Bible, determines what Christianity is, leaving us no
option to evolve a new or fantastical definition out of our own mod
ernized ideas of what is true and right. In all its forms the Orthodox
Christian Church claims to hold still the same great fundamental doc
trines on divine authority, and defines Christianity substantially in the
same way. Christianity, it says, is the religion of Christians; and
Christians are those who depend for their salvation on faith in these
chief doctrines of the authoritative Christian gospel. This is the
answer given to our question by the church itself: justice and common
fairness, as well as scholarly criticism, demand that this answer be
accepted as the definition of Christianity.
It is not true, then, when I am criticised for having or framing a
narrow definition, that I have any definition at all of my own. I
make none. I have none. I simply find, and accept’what I find. It
would be an impertinence to come before you, or before the world,
and say, “ This is my definition, and I call upon you to accept it.” I
have no definition of my own. I say, “ There is the church’s definition
of Christianity; there is the definition which Christianity has written
out on the great page of history for itself: take that.” By that must
the radical’s position be determined, if I am sound in my view; by
that definition of Christianity must we settle the question, Which is
the true position to hold, the Christian, the Extra-Christian, or the
Anti-Christian ?
It would be a very long and tiresome task, were I to go through the
�43
whole history of Christendom, and trace out for you what has been
the working of Christianity, thus defined, in the world, — what it has
done for man and what it has left undone ; what good and what evil
it has accomplished in the long course of the ages. Enough for me
to say that in fairness we must credit to the Christian Church, and to
Christianity thus defined, both the good and the evil they have done.
We must recognize in Christianity all the conserving and evolving pow
ers it has called into play ; we must recognize the great historic place
that the church filled in the middle ages, and still fills to a large extent
to-day; we must accept with generous approval and hearty applause
all the noble words that have dropped from the lips of Christian
teachers, all the divine and beautiful deeds that have been done by
Christian believers, all the sweet and beneficial influences that have
proceeded from Christian souls; yes, amen to all that! I do accept
them, and I am grateful for them. Far be it from me to disparage a
single one of those noble and beautiful things.
No ! But I insist also upon the other side ; I insist that you must
also credit to the Christian Church the long story of persecutions,— the
black and hateful record of crimes which have been done in the name
of the church, in the name of Christ, in the name of Christianity.
These things have happened, not by accident, but through intense
devotion to the claims of Christianity upon the obedience of human
ity. The Inquisitors were not bad men; they were simply Christians
of fiery earnestness, and they carried their devotion to Christianity so
far as to over-ride and violate the inalienable rights of the human
soul. Charge up, then, to Christianity all the doings of all its follow
ers, and from this large survey you will derive the only truthful and
just estimate of its real character. Institutions express the nature of
ideas, — the innermost nature of ideas. What institutions do in the
world is what the ideas tend to do. What the ideas contain in them
selves are germs of action ; and I insist that this is the only fair, just,
and proper way to consider the history of Christianity. Thus, there
fore, would I treat it.
Is it not true, then, looking at the working of the Christian Church
in this light, that from its birth down to last Tuesday the influence of
Christianity has been thrown against freedom of thought ? Has it
not been everywhere and always the opponent of the scientific spirit,
the free spirit, the secular spirit that would disincline men to accept
Christian doctrine, — the spirit which would sow distrust of the great
fundamental ideas of the fall of man, the depravity of man, the wrath
of God, the atonement and salvation by Christ alone ? These ideas
�44
have been the very centre of the Christian faith. Whatever called
them in question must be put down and crushed; and so it has been
from the very start. Freedom, at every point of history, has been
brought in direct collision with this great Christian system,— a system
of faith which has been the great enemy of light, and progress, and
modern thought. I cannot go into any lengthened argument or bring
up illustrations. I must leave my argument in the brief, sketched as
best I can sketch it in charcoal only; for the time is short and there
is much to say. But I must take this position, that whoever faithfully
" studies the history of the Christian Church, crediting it with both the
good and the evil it has done, as recorded on the historic page, must
come to this conclusion : that the net influence of Christianity in his
tory has been to repress, and not develop, the freedom of the human
mind.
This ground may seem dogmatic and unsupported by truth, but I
must take it, and go on. To say that Christianity is essentially an
organized slavery of the human mind, may seem dogmatic, may seem
harsh, may seem bitter, may seem malevolent; but it is the honest and
earnest conviction of at least one man in this audience, and I can
speak for no more. It is my deep conviction that the innermost spirit
of Christianity is hostile to the natural evolution, the free development,
of human thought; and for that I must unflinchingly stand. Come
what may, stand what may, fall what may, freedom of thought
is infinitely precious to mankind. The principle of ’freedom is
not negative, but positive. It means to be untrammeled and un
hampered by any human authority, by any church, or by any state,
in the search for truth ; and that, I say, is the one principle for which
we are called upon in this age to stand. It is this positive principle,
it is this love of freedom, that has made me Anti-Christian: that, and
that alone. I have no personal quarrel with the Christian Church;
I will bring forward no private grievances, for I have none; I have
entered my own path, and abide by its results ; I have no reasons why
I should be angry with the church, and tear it down or hurt it. There
is nothing personal about my position. The simple fact is that my
position is not a voluntary one. It is not one I have chosen for my
self, but I find in this age, from which I draw my mental as well as
my physical nutriment, a great stream of tendency, a great onward
movement of the human race towards larger liberty, and this great
wave has caught me up and thrown me where I am. It is no will
of mine, no choice of mine; no! But I see .whence I came and
whither I am going; I see that I have been borne out of the very
�45
heart, of the Christian Church to the heart of the Anti-Christian
camp, if you choose to call it so. I simply accept my position, not
made by me for myself, but made for me by the times and by my own
simple wish to be true to the duty of the hour. This, then, I want
to emphasize: the Anti-Christian position is not the main one — it is
the incidental one. Anti-Christianity is anti-slavery, and anti-slavery
is pro-freedom. That is where I am. I am for freedom; and what
ever fetters or limits freedom, that I am against, call it what you
please. I say, therefore, that the Anti-Christian position is simply
the position of one who is burning in his very heart’s core with the
passion for freedom, and sends out his thought everywhere in all
directions, to find out and bring back what truth it may. The posi
tive side is the free side. “ Pro-Freedom ” is the word, not Anti’ Christianity; that follows of course, if Christianity is opposed to free
dom. Let me emphasize this .thought that the Anti-Christian attitude
.is simply incidental, while the great positive thing is a burning devo
tion to the spirit and the principle of spiritual liberty. That is the
great human truth for which I stand here to-day ; and I care nothing
whether it be Anti-Christian or Christian, provided I can have that
truth and that principle preserved. .
If I am correct, then, in holding that Christianity itself is a denial of
freedom, that this denial is in its very warp and weft, and cannot be got
out except by destroying the whole fabric, then I say that all freedom
lovers, whether they know it or not, are Anti-Christians. I hold that
every Protestant is more or less an Anti-Christian. I hold that every
Liberal Christian is still more an Anti-Christian; I hold that the Ameri
can Unitarian Association is in its drift an Anti-Christian association •
I hold that the Free Religious Association is an Anti-Christian associa
tion ; I hold that any and every body of men who try to live by free
dom are, just in that proportion, Anti-Christian. The Catholic Church,
which none would admit in this audience, I suppose, to be other
than hostile to liberty,— we know its history; we know its intense
activity to perpetuate slavery of the mind, — I suppose there is none
here, except it be perhaps a stray Catholic, who will deny that the
Catholic Church is opposed to freedom. Very well, then ; so far as
the Protestant agrees with the Catholic, so far he is against freedom.
Does not the Evangelical Protestant plant himself on the same sub
stantial theology ? Does he not profess also to believe the fall of
man, the depravity of man, the wrath of God, and salvation by Christ
alone ? Is not that in both their creeds ? But the fall of man —that
is denied by Darwinism. The total depravity of man — that is denied
7
*
�46
x
♦
by experience. The wrath of God — that is denied by justice. . The
atonement and salvation by Christ alone — that is denied by reason
and common sense. The man outside of Christianity denies all this,
and thinks freely. The old dogmas can only be held to men’s atten
tion by the chains of ecclesiastical authority and the greater chains of
ignorance. That is the reason why the Catholic Church cannot edu
cate the people, and why it keeps the Scriptures in an unknown
tongue, and concentrates learning and intelligence in its own clergy.
So is it everywhere ; wherever Christianity has prevailed, intellectual
darkness has brooded over the land. That is the reason, friends, why
the Protestant Evangelical body comes forward, every now and then,
with a new case of heresy, like that of Prof. Swing, of Chicago ; a
man whom it would be an honor to any denomination to hold within
its communion, and yet a man who has been hounded down by perse
cution and obliged to withdraw from his own denomination because he
dared to think. This is not because his persecutors have been unfair
and unjust, but because they have been true to the fundamental princi
ples of their religion. I do not blame Prof. Patton or the other prosecutors of that case. I charge the evil of the trial, and the misery it
brings, and the public scandal it causes, all to the demands of the
ideas themselves, — to the system which those men were enlisted to
defend. I have no quarrel with men ; it is ideas that interest me.
I can throw open .rny arms as wide as you please, and take in every honest man; but I take him as a man, and not as a sectarian. I
cannot take in a Catholic as a Catholic ; but as a man I would do
the utmost in my power for him. So I charge to the Christian
system every such case as Swing’s.
Last Tuesday, I listened all day to a similar case in our own city,
tried before a tribunal which in numbers is not great, but in character
and intelligence is very respectable, — the Unitarian Association,
mean. I was drawn there by an intense desire to witness the last bat
tle between Christianity and freedom. I went to listen to the debate
on the Year Book and the exclusion therefrom of our friend Mr. Pot
ter’s name; and through all the debate I saw the same issues staring
me in the face, and I wondered how they could fail to be equally plain
to every other there. I saw those good men (good on both sides;
conservatives good, radicals good; both earnest, both honest in the
main, and filled with a good spirit), I saw them battling and striving
to get over an historic necessity which was too strong for all their
efforts. They were all pledged at the outset to be Christians; they
were all pledged, radicals and conservatives alike, not to call into ques-
,
|
�47
tion that name, “ Christian-Unitarian ; ” and the radicals among them
were trying to discover how it was possible to retain that as the name
of their body, and yet to admit into it one who will not call himself a
Christian. Well, friends, it is no discredit to any man to say he can
not accomplish a contradiction; there is no reason to blame the Uni
tarian Association that they could not see their way clear to retain the
fellowship of a man whom they all seemed to love and respect, without
falling into a contradiction. They had to choose between one of two
things: they must either take in a Non-Christian and thereby sacri
fice the Christian ground they profess to occupy, or else they must
exclude their friend for the sake of remaining all Christian. How
could they help themselves ? It was not their fault: it was the fault of
Christianity, if fault it be; it was the fatality of the case that decided
that question. In the most liberal branches of the Christian Church,
even those that profess unbounded fealty to frAdom, you see the same
historic necessity, tvhich is at bottom a logical necessity, working and
compelling them to exclude members whom they love and honor from
their common fellowship. Certainly they themselves perceive this
same truth in the case of Evangelical and Catholic Churches. This
seems to me to be the hard fact which we cannot get over : that Chris
tianity always includes, with all the beautiful things which it has said
and done, this suppression of individual liberty.
A few weeks ago we were all of us horror-struck, aghast, at the news
of the great calamity in Mill River. —a terrible flood bursting from
the Williamsburg Reservoir and carrying destruction to three or four
villages. In reading the accounts of it, I saw a statement that through
the lower side of that great dam had been noticed for some time little
rills of water spouting out, which were supposed by the people to be
<rings that had made their way through the embankment, and not to
we come from the waters behind. They came really from the vast
mass of water behind the dam. If they could have spoken, they
would have said, “ We do not want to break down this dam; we do
not want to remove this precious barrier, which protects these simple
and unpretending villages ; we only want to get out of the reservoir ;
we only want to be outside ; we do not want ,to hurt the barrier; we
don’t want to do any harm ; we only want to get through for ourselves •
we only want to escape from the confinement.” Well, did they not,
in coming out, carry out part of the dam, atom by atom, down the val
ley ? Did they not prepare the way, at last, for that ruthless rush of
the flood which swept away the barrier and brought ruin and destruc
tion so far and wide ? It is, it seems to me, just so with every man
�among you who says he is Extra-Christian, but not Anti-Christian. In
making your own way out, you weaken the great barrier which I,
instead of wanting to break down, pray to remain; for it protects the
world from the tremendous floods of superstition behind. Let that
barrier stand; I would not break it down. The water is there behind
it; but I would open the flood-gates and draw off" the water, and let
the river take its natural course. That is the way I would go to work.
I would not try to tear down the barriers between the churches or
the sects. I would try to enlighten the masses in the Christian Church
by the method of instruction,, give larger truths and ideas, and thus
draw off" this confined terrific power from behind the barriers ; then we
can remove the barriers at our leisure and plant our grain in the
water’s bed. So, I say, every little rill which is bursting forth from
the Christian Church is Anti-Christian. Every such rill is carrying
away that which makes the dam, and is helping to bring on the im
pending catastrophe that must follow.
It has been said in the New Testament that Jesus declared to his
disciple Peter, “ Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” That is
true ; the gates of hell will never prevail against any religion whatever.
By the great surging attacks of licentiousness, of vice, of disregard
for all social and moral law, never will Christianity be removed from
the world or the walls of the Christian Church be broken down. No.
There is no power in vice, no power in error, to break down or even
to shake a genuine truth, but there is a power in the truth itself
to supersede all limitations of itself with a more perfect faith.
The church of Christ, though built upon a rock, is washed by
the great waves of the broad ocean of truth; and those waves
are grinding, grinding, grinding away at the solid rock on w^ich
the church rests, until by and by the waters will flow over the plact*
where it stood. That I believe. The religion of the future will come
from the ruins of all those special religions, which are mutually antag
onistic, and whose “special claims” never can “shake hands.” That
is a fond dream ; they never can shake hands while yes is yes and no
is no. These religions must all give place to a broader one, a cosmo
politan one, one which must be boundless in its nature, one that is not
identical with any one of the special religions, but is greater than
them all. All these special faiths must give way to that at last, and
then for the first time will the spirit of Anti-Christianity, which is sim
ply the spirit of pro-freedom, become universal throughout the world.
That is the coming of the unbroken human fellowship, and the unfet-
�49
tered union of soul with soul in the love of truth and the love of man,
and the common upsurging of the human heart to that Power which
we so little know, but from which we cannot withhold the allegiance of
our inmost being.
The President. Before continuing the discussion, the Sec
retary will read a letter he has received from Frederick Doug
lass.
The Secretary. We hoped, Mr. Chairman and friends, that
we should have Frederick Douglass here with us to speak to
day. Some of us who were at Florence a few weeks ago, at
the dedication of the new free hall in that town, found out for
the first time that Frederick Douglass, who was there, was in
very full sympathy with the Free Religious platform, and that he
had something interesting and valuable to say with regard to
the influence of the old religious faith with which he had be
come acquainted in the South when he was a slave ; and he
said then, in response to an invitation given to him on the spot,
that he hoped he might be present here to-day. The Committee
afterwards sent him a written invitation urging him to come, but
he was obliged to send this reply, I am sorry to say, in the neggative.*
The President. The discussion will now be continued by
Col. Higginson, who hardly needs any introduction to this
audience.
ADDRESS OF COL. T. W. HIGGINSON.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,.— Mr. Abbot’s point in
regard to the recent disaster in Western Massachusetts brought to my
mind another incident of that casualty which comes home more to
my sympathy perhaps than any other, and which suggests the thoughts
that were vaguely in many minds, I dare say, during this discussion.
It is a strange thing that in that fearful flood, when granite dams
proved nothing, brick walls crumbled, bridges were swept away, roofs
of houses afforded no solid raft to carry anybody in safety down the
stream, there was yet one little craft that rode the storm from its
launching to its landing, and carried its little captain quite safe. That
particular craft was a cradle, the captain of it was a baby, the first
mate was a baby, and the crew was the same baby. The baby had
*See Appendix for the letter.
�50
known that cradle as a place of absolute safety on land hitherto: in
its first experiment on the water the cradle was a place of safety still.
The baby floated down in the cradle, laughed and crowed, or cried
and bewailed, as it went along that swift voyage ; nobody knows. At
any rate, it landed at last, and was taken back to its mother’s arms
unhurt, that little child: and now the only question, I suppose, remain
ing in that family, suggested by that particular transit, is, What are we
going to do with that cradle? On this point, I notice that our two
friends who have spoken have diametrically opposite opinions. “What
to do with the cradle?” Mr. Calthrop would say, “Why, the baby must
stay in it of course ; if he outgrows it, have another one built on the
same pattern.” “What should we do with it?” says our friend Abbot,
“ Smash it, for fear somebody else should be taken and stowed away
within its uncomfortable limitations.”
I stand here, ladies and gentlemen, in the most humble position
- as the defender of that cradle. A cradle is a convenient and
comfortable appendage to a family, — in fact, I don’t know w|iat
most of us would have done without one j but there comes a time
when a man outgrows his cradle, and the decision of his life has
to be made. There is the first question, What shall he do with
himself? shall he stay there? There is the second question, What
shall he do with it after he goes out of it? And I find myself on
the decision of each of these questions in that most painful posi
tion, quite opposed to two of my best friends, and only hoping that in
the brief statement of my own position I may emulate in some small
degree the candor and the courtesy which marked their statement of
theirs. It is the pride of the Free Religious Association that its mem
bers differ from one another. It is also their pride that they are able
to state that difference very frankly without going to pieces. We may
be most of us born and bred with a little taste of fighting, but, at
least, we keep it from people outside. Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh,
describes a Scotch shepherd who was very proud of his dog, and he
said to some one who was stroking the animal, “ Oh, but there’s a
great deal of sairiousness in life for that beast, — he just never gets
enough of fighting.” There is a terrible amount of seriousness in our
lives as members of the Free Religious Association, but at least we
get enough of fighting outside to satisfy us, and nothing can exceed
the peace and harmony which prevail at our meetings. That meta
phor of the cradle may not do complete and full justice to the position
of my friends, or to my position: metaphors never do, and therefore
metaphors are never arguments, and it is dangerous even to use them;
�5i
but I think it will not be very hard to show briefly my reasons for
dissenting from each of those two arguments so persuasive and so
sincere.
First, as to that matter of the Christian name. I traveled »with
Mr. Calthrop through all the wide range of his argument, — wide in
deed, for it began with monads and came down to that highly collective
unit, the Free Religious Association, — and yet I did not hear, from
beginning to end, a single word that precisely touched my own posi
tion. I heard him say or imply in regard to those who are born in a
Christian land, bred in Christian civilization, trained by Christian
parents, that it is .their duty to call themselves Christians, to stand by
the flag in a manner. He did not tell us where that obligation ended,
or where the obligation of truth to one’s self begins. There are men
in this audience who are atheists, have been so from childhood, never
asked for any better faith, never found any better tonic anywhere else,
materialists through and through, resenting the invitation to believe in
God as an insult. Is it their duty, in deference to the land that bore
them, to forswear every consideration of their souls and take the Chris
tian name ? Or our friend the Rabbi, here on the platform, born in
Vienna, trained at the universities of Heidelberg and Gottingen, Chris
tian institutions throughout, is he to call himself a Christian, from
deference to local training, when all the private traditions of his fam
ily and his personal convictions go the other way? Or take a step fur
ther: one like myself, born in the very mildest and most vanishing
type of Unitarianism,— and how vanishing a type of dogmatism that is
those who have observed any of the microscopical investigations going
on over our friend Potter can judge, — what is one like myself, bred
from childhood to consult his own reason and his own conscience, to
seek for light everywhere, and to follow the best light he could find,—
what has he to do about the Christian name? How can he call him
self a Christian when, from the best investigation he is’ enabled to
make, he is not strictly a Christian ? That is the trouble. You know
you can call yourself a great many things if you are willing to tell a
lie, but if you are a fellow-countryman of George Washington and
cannot tell a lie, what are you going to do about it ? No matter what
others may say or think, if to you Jesus Christ is simply and abso
lutely a man, how can you, without man-worship, call yourself techni
cally a Christian ?
Thus far I am with my friend Abbot: I do not make my position;
it was made for me before I knew anything about it; it was made for
me before I went to Sunday school; it was made for me before I
♦
�52
*
'
studied theology. One day, at the theological school in Divinity Hall,
at Cambridge, I met my fellow-student Frothingham. He was then
a comparatively unsuspected, seemingly innocent, virtuous, deserving
young man, — not one of the million crimes that have since been dis
covered to coil their fiery serpents around his head had then come to
light, — he was as good as any of us, and I said to him, I remember,
“If we believe that Jesus Christ was a man, and we seem to believe
that, how can we call ourselves Christians, thus lettering ourselves, as
it were, with the name of a man ? ” And he said, with that total de
pravity which even then doubtless secretly characterized him, “ I am
not at all anxious to call myself a Christian ; I am perfectly willing to
be known to the world as a Frothinghamian ” — and I think he has
held to that position pretty faithfully ever since.
It is not a new position to many of us, I fancy, to find, on coming
to maturity, that even without taking into account all those vast
schemes of Christian doctrine to which Mr. Abbot has referred, when
we merely reduce Christianity to its simplest terms in doctrine, — the
recognition of Jesus Christ as an infallible authority different In kind
from all other authorities, — we not only are not Christians, but never
have been Christians. Such, at any rate, being my simple experience,
my friend Mr. Calihrop’s suppositions did not reach me.
Then, again, we are constantly told, “Even if you are not a Chris
tian in this intellectual sense, you may be still a Christian in the
recognition of an authority higher in degree than any other, not neces
sarily different in kind. Take the best authority you can find any
where, get the best, — as they say in the war of the dictionaries — label
yourself by that name; men do it in other spheres of life, why not in
religion?” I know they do it in other spheres of life, and how much
good have they got by it ? Men have called themselves Aristotelians.
The consequence was that for years and years the advanced minds of
Europe were? perplexing themselves to find out, not what was true,
but what Aristotle said in “ the book,” as his writings were called, —
nothing more than that. Men have called themselves Newtonians;
and in that charming autobiography of Mrs. Somerville, you will
find her saying that in her youth mathematical science was at a
low ebb in England, because reverence for Newton had prevented
English mathematicians from employing the “ Calculus,” through
which the French had accomplished so much. Men have called
themselves Shakspearians, and our greatest critic has pointed out
that the English dramatists have Shakspearized ever since his day.
Men have called themselves Swedenborgians, and the finest mind
*
�53
among American Swedenborgians, Henry. James, called attention
twenty years ago to the fact that there were already Swedenbor
gians who were making the infallibility of Swedenborg an article of
faith. Danger rests upon this subservience even to the noblest
authority ; safety begins with each rising generation of young men
when some one appeals to them, as Emerson appealed to all of us
years ago and said, “Be yourselves.” Then, after we have got that
into us, if we still recognize the authority at all, it is in that exceed
ingly comfortable way in which Henry Ward Beecher still claims to
be a good Calvinist; for he says, “I faithfully believe what John Cal' vin believed, or what he would have believed if he had lived in these
times and believed as I think he ought to.”
There is a danger on the spiritual side, on the moral side, on all
sides, in carrying your recognitions of any human authority so far as
to call yourself by its name. It is often easier to decide whether
a thought is true or not than whether it is Christian or not. It is
often not so hard to settle whether your moral code is right or
wrong as whether it is Christian, or otherwise. The whole history
of the temperance movement, of the anti-slavery movement and the
woman suffrage movement proves it so. A woman said to me not
long ago, a woman of an absolute purity that one reveres, but nar
rowed by her theology, — she said, to me, speaking of banishing wine
from her table, round which her young sons were growing up, “I
should feel that I was insulting my Saviour if I excluded wine from my
table.” Thus perilous, thus formidable, is the result which follows from
limiting one’s moral and spiritual standard even to the loftiest stand
ard. Take your own conscience as your guide, and you have some
thing that can be educated through great examples. But anchor your
self in absolute subservience to any one example, even the greatest, and
you may find yourself, at least if you are consistent, much as a gifted
woman once told me it was with her in the Roman Catholic Church to
which she had belonged and which she had left. She said she found
herself revolving and revolving in a narrower circle every year, until
it seemed to be getting about as big as a walnut, and she came out
of it.
And then again, apart from these special dangers, how shall we
take the Christian name who find every fiber of our souls yearn
ing for contact with all of nobleness, all of beautiful tradition,
all of superb mythology, that the world can yield? In this day
of universal travel, of universal science,, when the farthest parts
of the earth are being ransacked for their literature and their my8
�54
thology, how shall we call ourselves Christians and yet embrace, as we
long to embrace, the sympathy of this grander brotherhood, the state
ments of this wider faith ? How trivial seem our little Congregational
and Presbyterian churches, even our Episcopal churches, before the
historic grandeur of the Roman Catholic, that church which has had
kings for confessors, and made nations for converts, carrying to all
the world, in its way, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; making as its
own standard that which has been believed “ always, everywhere and
by all,” semper, ubique et ab omnibus. And yet when you once cast
your eyes outside of Christian limits, what a child of yesterday
the Roman Catholic Church seems! Why, how young it is, if you
come to that, how small, how few converts, how trifling its range com
pared with this vast range of spiritual activity of the human race! I
am not satisfied with Unitarianism. It is so much less in its compass
and range than Orthodoxy. I am not satisfied with Orthodoxy. It is
so trifling compared with Roman Catholicism. I am not satisfied
with Roman Catholicism, which after all is simply the older branch of
but one religion of the world. I long for something more than*a cathe
dral above us, for a tradition more grand. I don’t think we, any of us,
in this age, ought to be satisfied with anything less than a theology to
which the whole human race has contributed, and a liturgy to which
the whole human race adds its prayers.
The human race is outgrowing our special and limited religions.
You may take the robin’s egg from the nest on yonder tree, and so
near is the bird to being hatched, you may crack it with the edge of
your nail and the bird is free. But all your power and all your patient
fidelity and all the mucilage and sticking-plaster you can put on it will
never get that birdling back into that little egg again. So complete is
the sense of satisfaction, such is the feeling of freedom which comes
from once finding yourself, not merely out of these little sectarian
names, but out of the name of the larger and grander sect which is
Christianity, that you will find when the egg is once broken, the bird
is free forever. You had better let him use his wings, even if he comes
to mischief in consequence.
And yet, on the other hand, is that bird to turn back and blame the
egg, or that institution of egg, which somehow does in its own way
hatch birds for good or for evil into being ? Here again I must differ
from my friend Abbot, — whom I love to agree with, because I always
hope that by agreeing with him I may perhaps catch something of
that courage and fidelity of conviction that leave him too much alone.
He has recognized what it is needless forme to repeat. The sweetness,
�55
the virtue, the love that still for multitudes around us are engraved
in Christianity, he has recognized that. I recognize in return what
he has said, that if the brightest pages of the past are written with the
name of Christianity, so also are some of the darkest. I recognize
that, but where I take issue with him is this. I think that his view of
Christianity is too scholastic, too much of the closet and the office, too
little of the world of practical life. It is true, as he says, that when
we are interpreting the word “ Christianity ” for ourselves, we must in
terpret in view of all accuracy, all strictness of construction; but I can
not agree, as he says, that in interpreting what Christianity means for
others, we are to insist on that same strictness. Let each man inter
pret for himself, and let us judge him according as he interprets it.
God forbid that I should hold any man, because he calls himself
Christian, to be Christian in any other sense of the word than that
which he habitually recognizes. Words change. You cannot keep a
word unaltered. It is the business of a man who lives among men to
take words at their current valuation for current purposes. You must
deal with Christianity for what it is to day, not for what it was in the
past.
I think it is a mistake to go about the world treating all our fellow
creatures as if they were their ancestors who lived a great many cen
turies ago and behaved very differently. Let us take the facts as they
are. Clergymen in Boston in old times had those who differed from
them tied to a cart and whipped through the town. Am I to
carry the natural animosity of those days in dealing with a modern
clergyman who simply puts me into his buggy and drives me out over
the Brighton Road behind his Morgan mare. Because clergymen in
other days lighted the fires of the Inquisition, am I to keep up that
good old honest “no popery” resentment to the man who offers me
nothing more perilous than a lighted cigar ? It was all very well for
Miles Standish to go among the Indians of Massachusetts in his iron
helmet and iron corslet, but am I called upon to make a visit in
similar armor to the peaceful Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, merely
because their great-grandfather may have tried to scalp my great
grandfather? The principle of change rules human events. We
cannot leave it out of sight. We cannot accept the kindness, the
courtesy, the amenities of life that the civilized world gives us in these
days, and yet return them with the old war-whoop and the tomahawk.
It is impossible.
Theology is everywhere softened. In this week’s “ Independent,”
Dr. Taylor Lewis mourns that there is not a really evangelical pulpit
�56
left. The old woman says in the story, “ If you take away my total
depravity, what else have I to depend upon ? ” That is the position
of some of those good men, and so they are moaning over it at the
rate of two columns a week in “The Independent.” We are not
dwelling in a world of theologians who act consistently up to their
theories. Why, in those old Puritan times in Massachusetts, as
one form of punishment or penalty for certain crimes, a certain
offender was doomed to “go and talk with the elders,” and yet
barbarous and cruel punishments were forbidden in another clause;
so they were very inconsistent. We are not sentenced to that. The
only difficulty is to get the elders to talk with us; and that is very
hard in the Free Religious Association, for I corresponded with half a
dozen of them three years ago and could not get one to appear upon
this platform. No, the times have changed, and Christianity, refined
and softened, loosening its own barriers, still retaining them in theory
but not in practice, cannot be met as before. Its persecution would
nerve us, but its toleration disarms us.
Oh, but, my friend Abbot would say to me, “ Remember the pro
posed ‘ Christian Amendment ’ to the United States Constitution.”
If ever anything has happened in America to indicate the truth of
what I have been saying, it is the history of that Christian amendment
up to this time; for if anything ever organized Liberal Leagues for us,
if anything ever rolled in petitions to Congress and to State Legisla
tures, it was that little caucus of discontented theologians stranded
somewhere out in Ohio. No doubt they found here and there in the
denominations some to go along with them, but for one whom they
found they sent a dozen another way. But there is another thing, one
more final, one higher ground yet to be considered. I don’t wish to
fight against Christianity or the Christian Church, but only against
their excesses and abuses. We cannot spare the Christian Church
from the world yet, till it has done its mission and been discharged in
the natural way. Spare the Christian Church — why, we cannot even
spare the Roman Catholic Church. My friend Abbot was rather hard
upon the elder branch just now, I thought, when he said that it had
never been anything but an enemy to freedom. Sail down the beauti
ful Rhine, and you see on either side of you castle after castle, once
the terror of every peaceful citizen, but now in ruins. Sail down that
river with the remembrance of those iron times haunting your imag
ination, and you land at-last at Cologne, and as you enter the door of
that magnificent cathedral you find yourself in the only place that in
the middle ages protected the freedom of mankind against those rob
ber barons.
�57
'
1
No matter if it in after times became a tyranny; all organizations
run that risk sooner or later; no breadth saves them wholly. We may
have a tyranny in this organization sometime or other, though it will
not be till we get some other President. All these organizations are
dangerous, — theological, scientific, no matter what. And yet remem
ber, how at a much later time, when among our early American colo
nies there were but two in which freedom of religious thought was
distinctly recognized from the outset, — the Quaker colony of Rhode
Island, and the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland. And even at
this time, looking at the vast work of the Roman Catholic Church,
looking at the shoals of Irish emigrants pouring upon our shores,
these young girls scattered one by one into every family, unprotected,
unguided, each with nothing on earth between her and ruin except
what the traditions of her church keep alive in her heart, who can say
that he would, if he could do it by a single waving of his hand, extin
guish even the Roman Catholic Church from the world ?
And as we cannot say it of that, of course one cannot say it of the
Christendom of which the Roman Catholic Church is but one sect.
It is easy to see the faults of an old institution that has the sins of
ages accumulated on its head. Don’t let us forget that after all there
are certain things for which the church has stood, and still stands, —
for which, as yet, even that new science of to-day, which Mr. Abbot
loves sp much, has not yet stood, — the spiritual realities, the heart of
man, the love, the patience, the meekness, the trust, so long cherished
by Christians, not yet developed by the modern science that threatens
it. We talk about the superiority and dignity of the scientific method.
Was there ever an old school theologian who hated Arminianism with
a more good, thorough-going, almost unquestioning, hatred than our
dear Agassiz hated Darwinism ? We talk about the quarrels of theo
logians,— why, the one natural history magazine of New England was
filled, for months after months, with the quarrels of the scientific men
in regard to the bones of a single animal, with a long name, which
was dug up in Colorado; and they carried it so far that the editor had
to shut down on them at last, and let them print extra leaves at their
own expense, and their angry controversy only died as their pockets
grew empty. It is easy to see the great results that science is bring
ing us, but remember that religion, even the Christian type of religion
itself, is giving us also a great deal. Science, secularism, give us
“The North American” and “The New York Nation,” — periodicals
of great intellectual value, but whose maxim is not, as our friend
Frothingham quoted, the Irishman’s, “ Wherever you see a head hit
�5»
it,” but, “Wherever you see a heart hit it.” It is, on the other hand,
Christianity that still gives us newspapers like “The New York Inde
pendent ” and “ The Christian Union,” that scatter by tens of thou
sands through the nation such a breadth and liberality of doctrine that
“ The Independent ” was criticising “ The Index ” a while ago for
stealing its thunder. Secular science gives us Harvard University,
and no woman inside its doors. The only person on the Board of
Overseers who wanted to have them there was the only doctor of
divinity on the Board of Overseers, and there he is. [Porting to
Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who sat on the platform.] But Evan
gelical religion gave us Oberlin College and the Boston University,
which know no distinction of sex in knowledge.
No, I cannot see as yet that science is so far displacing Christianity
as to make Christianity legitimately a dead letter to the world. The
time may come when equal intellect, with more of heart, equal
thought, with more of tenderness, shall give us something before
which the Christianity of to-day, or of all days, shall find itself but
an incomplete thing, and shall withdraw itself so peacefully that it
shall not need the word “ anti ” to dispel it.
And yet, for the reasons already given, I can see no consistent posi
tion for many of us except that which might be called “ Extra-Christian,” simply outside of Christianity, because we cannot confine our
selves to it, — an attitude taking in Christianity, with what is best of
all religions of the world. But for Christianity itself I have not
merely the same sympathy that I should have for Buddhism if I was
within its temples, but a nobler sympathy as for a still nobler religion.
When the first large company of colonists came to the Massachusetts
Colony, it is reported that, as they left England, the clergyman who
was the leader of them looked back over the stern of the vessel, and
said, alluding to the earlier Pilgrims who had settled Plymouth, and
who had called themselves Separatists, “ We will not say, as the Sep
aratists did, ‘Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, Rome 1 ’ But we will say,
‘ Farewell, dear England ! Farewell, the Church of God in England,
and all the Christian friends there ! ’ ” And as we look back upon the
Christian Church, if we leave it, I see no reason why we should not
echo the loving words of that farewell.
The Convention then adjourned till 3 p.m.
�AFTERNOON SESSION.
The Convention re-assembled according to adjournment,
and Df. Bartol was introduced as the essayist.
ESSAY BY REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D.
The Religious Signs of the Times.
The prophet is but a weather-wise man, a sort of “Old Probabilities ”
for the social sky. Atmospheric and electric signals hint such as are
finer still. Let me avoid mock or useless ones, like those on the rail
way yonder, which, planted at an expense of quarter of a million of
dollars to give warning of an approaching train, after all will not work,
and are but a dumb show of safety, occupying room, save as a vain
promise of security, to no end.
The first sign is the Unitarian “Year-Book,” now destined to be
come a famous publication because from its list of ministers has been
dropped the name of a man who does not call himself a Christian.
This was affirmed to be only a matter of statistics. Mr. Frothing
ham had withdrawn his name, why should not Mr. Potter ? What a
clerical error of over-hasty classification! Mr. Frothingham is Mr.
Frothingham, my friend, and your honored President. Mr. Potter is
your Secretary, a quite independent person. We do not profess to be
birds of a feather. But the maintenance of the official act, after warm
discussion in the late meeting, with considerable show of unanimity,
proves it to be more than an item of information. It fixes as with a
mordant the unequivocal ecclesiastical color. Denominational disci
pline seems mostly confined to younger men. It is comparatively safe
for an old one to be an agitator ! Is it as the conspirator Metellus said
to Cinna of Cicero, that “ his silver hair will purchase us a good opin
ion ’ ? Perhaps Jesus would not have been crucified at threescore.
Mr. Potter no longer calls himself a Christian. Do people go round *
so calling themselves ? Channing preached Christianity, but I never
heard him call himself a Christian. I cannot call myself a Radical or
Free Religionist. This matter of naming is not so easy as Adam or
any of his children might think. We must not put men like cattle in
(59)
�6o
pound. With the proceeding Mr. Potter himself had nothing to do,
save courteously to answer certain inquiries propounded to him, and
to say that his name remained on the Unitarian list by no thoughtless
oversight of his own, his replies showing masterly strategy of perfect
simplicity, wiser than any serpent and more harmless than any dove;
making the, initiative indictment and the final sentence both to come
from the power for which the Unitarian Association, itself a creature
of the Unitarian community, is responsible. This is 'the first formal
exclusion of a man from the so-called liberal body by a verbdj test, —
an unchristian thing ip, that name of Christ which was never used as
a label in his own time, however afterwards at Antioch a derisive
brand. He said “ name ” as a synonym for “ spirit.” He welcomed
Greek, Jew, Gentile, barbarian, Syrophenician, or Samaritan, while he
reserved his thunders for professors of his name. We have revived
the old scholastic dispute of Nominalism and Realism; for that Mr.
Potter is in every quality a real Christian in their own sense none of
his judges doubt; but if not nominal too, his head must fall. Well, if
to be a Christian is to be that and nothing else or more, to have
received influence from no, other, Greek, Gentile, or Indian quarter, to
make Christ a finality and fetich, and his religion the boundary of the
human mind, and give up testing and re-testing its claims on the
ground that it has settled all questions and allows none to be raised
about itself, God, man, or destiny; if Christianity be a monopoly of
the bread of life for its priests to sell at their own rates, — then no
Christian am I, and no Christian is any man to whom thought is
sacred and reason a law, all systems partial, and every great senti
ment directly inspired. He does not call himself a Christian! Who
does or dares! “ Christian ” does not cover his whole experience.
Does it anybody’s ? Because a name is not taken, is it refused and
expunged? Names are important; but a name is not a principle, and
a term not a touchstone. Only an ecclesiastical fiction can make it
such. When a live man or his name is sacrificed to a notion, our
scheme of salvation is undermined.
The process with Mr. Potter was considered a trifle too insignifi
cant for argument or correspondence. So was that stream of water
big as a man’s finger in the Connecticut dam; and the alarmed ob
server was forbidden to carry the news of its slight escape lest it
should prejudice the people against the water-works 1 But the fifteen
minutes’ delay cost a hundred and fifty lives. So through unsound
places in Church-embankments the reservoirs of an artificial prosper
ity will run out. The erasure of “ William J. Potter ” is said to be an
�6i
innocent advertisement, and no intolerant act. Nay, it is a sign ! As
well might ships off Hatteras neglect the cautionary signal from the
prairies or the hills. The Unitarian scribe, Executive Board, and any
denominational organ only represent a now triumphant sectarian*ten
dency whose clash with free thinking will raise in the ranks a new and
long storm. “The Year-Book” is spoiled. I see not how any free
man can be content on it. So I congratulate your Secretary on his
removal. According to the Jewish law the sacrifice for sin was of no
stiff bell-wether which might have been found, but of a man without
spot. Authors of mathematical and insurance tables sometimes offer
thousands of dollars for the detection of an erroneous figure. A worse
erratum in this business will be discovered than any misreckoning of
interest or wrong time of sun-rising or the tides.
The Unitarian denomination has been esteemed rich in ability and
character, as it ought to be to make such exclusions. It must judge
for itself how well it can afford to spare men of whom it will lose
many with this one, to resist the providential evolution and become
itself a fossil, or fall into a trap of terminology to die. But when
any development is arrested, it is for the soul to bud and bourgeon
anew. Unitarian Christians have put a large bounty on Radicalism
and Free Religion. They have warned off the bright spirits, and
given generous souls notice to quit. Their exaggeration and over-em
phasis of a name is in strange contrast with Paul’s avoidance of it
when King Agrippa says, “ Almost thou persuadest me to be a Chris
tian,” and the brave apostle answers, “ I would thou wert both almost
and altogether such as lam.'' Bias the Christian name in it magic,
like Othello’s Egyptian handkerchief? What is Christianity? Not a
name, but a method. To put the means before the end, or to value it
for aught but the end, is superstition. When Christianity banishes
goodness and truth, men will ask, What is the use of being a Chris
tian ? It must be wide as the world and great as the soul, to swallow
all or be swallowed itself. When any platform is not large enough to
accommodate a true and honest man, it loses for all men its charm
and romance. Movement has stopped, and crystallization begun.
There is no longer any lure of generous enterprise for youth to fol
low, no hope of discovery, no Eldorado for the soul. The time has
come for the sexton and the funeral rites.
The next sign is the Brooklyn Council. If Mr. Potter stands for
liberty, Mr. Beecher for privacy. Under a continental scandal, he
says to orthodoxy and the American community, “This is my and Ply
mouth Church affair, and you but a huge Paul Pry, from whose imper9
�62
tinent curiosity I retreat to my covert, on my reserved rights under
the soul’s constitution. I screw down the lid against your unwarrantaable investigation, and stand guard over the screws. Is there coffin or
skeleton in my house ? It is my property; I have bought the burial
spot ; I warn off all resurrectionists as thieves. There is no founda
tion for the stories about me, which I decline to answer in detail.
But please to understand, once for all, I have no casket of corruption
or infernal machine to show.”
Here is a sign to consider indeed. With the hinted and, I would
fain believe, baseless allegations I have no concern. I am but bound
to discuss here the implied title to crush the indictment in such per
sonal or ecclesiastical way. There is tenable ground for privacy.
Romish and Greek casuists sought a sound doctrine of reserve in
opinion and action. All people have not, of course, right to know what
I think or do. Jesus says the closet-whisper shall have a house-top
proclamation. It is not true of all whispers, and ought not to be.
The door of the mouth closes on how much in this opaque dome of
the head 1 People talk magnificently of the window in their breast
which they want us to look through. Not with coarse eyes ! Be your
bosom a dead-wall to the malign tattler and insolent spy! Inquisitive
ness is insult. Much should be said sotto woce, sub rosa, to esoteric ears.
Delicate feelings resent being interviewed. Many not shameful things
we ingenuously refuse to address to a reporter’s pencil. The maid
would not speak were you going to tell! You shall not run your light
ning-express or end of your telegraph-wire into my closet. “ Does the
Kennebec Corporation meet in your office today?” an old lawyer
was asked. “No : and I shall not tell you when it does meet!” was
the reply. Looking at those glass-beehives, which show all the inte
rior workings, I think how uncomfortable human creatures would
be with such a standing invitation for spies. Boys cannot let an
unguarded pane alone with their stones: and men are boys.
But this privilege of privacy has limits and laws. Humanity is such
a nervous net-work as to preclude absolute individuality. The claim
is false to withdraw from notice any conduct which society is properly
interested in or may be injured by. If I am seriously questioned in
such real or suppositious case, I cannot justly affect in my reputation
or character superiority to accusation or suspicion. I feel a stain like
a wound. Although there be interiors which no painter has any busi
ness to sketch, and a minister or church may perhaps forbid inquiry
into particulars of local management, if they so choose, as social and
ecclesiastical, no less than political, centralization should be shunned,
�63
yet the prerogative of silence ceases when described and dated impu
tations lie at the door. No virtue can afford with professed or selfconscious dignity to slight widely circulated and accredited taunts,
however great dignitaries may treat the matter with the phrase “ vile
women,” so easy, de haut en bas, to fling! General slander may be
despised, but not a specific charge; nor, though the law of the land
hold a man innocent until he is proved guilty, can he in conscience be
allowed to couple general denial with refusal to examine. Whoever
would stand in honor invites scrutiny and challenges jealousy, as
Caesar, being advised not to venture in the Roman streets, said, “ I
must be seen;” or as John Bunyan, under the quip of impurity,
defied any woman on earth, in heaven, or hell, to appear a witness
against him. For the standard of morals cannot even in imagination
be lowered for any man’s convenience. No gifts of intellect can atone
for ambiguous behavior. No ethical act or relation must be withheld
from the light; and nothing should we do or design on which we are
ashamed or afraid to have the light fall. Do you doubt my transac
tion ? I insist on examination! The honest merchant shows his
books. I open God’s book of account in the volume of my heart.
To hide like Adam and Eve is to confess.
Sincere love for the Brooklyn preacher and cordial good-will to his
church prompt these remarks. If any man could neglect libellous
tongues or pens, who but he, with the hearty love for him of the
American people, and the memory, like a long track of light behind,
of his services to his country, while old, hard, stony superstitions fall
on either side as, with amazing power to pull, he plows his splendid
furrow of a large humanity before ? But, because he belongs to the
nation, the nation is careful for his fame. Sanctity, seeming to be
without candor, passes for cowardice and hypocrisy. Doubt shears a
man, though a Samson, of his locks of strength. Nothing you confess
can be so bad as what you cover! As builders subject to pressure and
strain materials for a costly structure, so we must test the composition
of men of high rank and merit, trying our benefactors, though we rear
to them equestrian statues, as of Washington and Grant.
Especially when mistrust saps the basis of human honor and weak
ens the church, a smoothing-plane is not the tool required. What do
we see ? A synod of seventy churches, holy and hoary-headed orna
ments of orthodoxy, from all parts of the land, summoned to an exi
gency so grave, at great expense of time and money and missing of
shepherds by the deserted flocks, meet and part without touching the
point in debate! With hosts outside that outnumber and are half
�64
hostile to the church, who shall measure the detriment of so ill-advised
a course? In all the miracle-plays of former times, never such a reli
gious spectacle 1 The trusted authorities, “ in the face of all Israel
and the sun,” do not ask, “Are our garments white?” but, “Has
there been an informal step ? ” Was a member regularly dismissed,
after the Congregational Order ? Has the Westminster Assembly
Polity been kept ? Again with mountainous labor the mouse has been
born; but that mouse, as in the fable of AZsop, will gnaw the net that
imprisons the lion. Strange handling of a serious problem, to lift it
beyond the proportions' of a neighborhood quarrel into dimensions
wide as the world! For the question is no less than this, Shall purity
in principle, and in theory at least, be maintained ? I venture to say,
No orthodoxy, no liberality, no Christianity can stand the strain of a
negative reply. Yet New England and New York Trinitarian Congre
gationalism is committed to the query, and staggers through the land
under the intolerable load. Alas ! has it actually come to the filthy
rags which it so long ago declared all righteousness to be ? Is it
demoralized by its emphasis on divine grace and disparagement of
human worth ? and is a new Antinomianism the foe which mankind
has to fear ? The finding of the mighty council was that there had
been some impropriety in a single case of withdrawal, without dismis
sion from church-membership, which, if not repeated, might not be
seriously blamed. Like the little boy in Dickens’ story, Plymouth
Church, having done nothing, was not to do it again 1 A soft beard
ing of the Douglas in his hall; a gentle stroking of the dragon that
growled out of his shaggy hide j a sportive encounter with the levia
than that counts such “ darts as stubble ” and “ laugheth at the shak
ing ” of a conventional “ spear ” 1
But there is somewhat even wild beasts must respect. Against a * ’
natural law there is no block, against a moral one no reply; and the
assumption to conceal which has been made involves a ruin which no
establishment, however broad and numereus, is stout enough to resist.
If the question be of fancy, this nation has no superfluous vitality to
spend on it; if it be of fact, have the carcass removed. Church and
theatre get pretty close in our times; and no fiasco of a dramatic per
formance has ever been more complete. What is it but a sign of reli
gious decadence, when the moral is postponed to the ecclesiastical, in
this second issue so much more flagrantly than in the one first named.
Like a duel in which discretion proves the better part of valor, the
dispute has ended in a sham-fight. A freethinker was taunted with
demoralizing God in his doctrine. He answered, “ By whom has God
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been demoralized in this case?” “Your kingdom,” said a veteran
thinker to a clergyman, “ is passing slowly away.” But the realm of
religion depends on no ministry so-called. The empire of law is just
hinting its boundless reach.
The third sign is “The Index,” the organ of Free Religion, spring
ing like a fresh shoot from the decaying trunk or wind-wafted seed of
“ The Radical,” as that perhaps from “ The Dial,” planted forty years
ago. Of our friend, the editor, so much is true, that he makes a
conscience of science. He repeats the motto of Montaigne’s seal,
“What do I know?” We have not got beyond Pilate’s “What is
Truth?” a question that disintegrates every system, dissolves institu
tions, and turns the solid world into a passing smoke before the all
searching soul. This terrible solvent of spiritual chemistry we must
have. The farmer wept and swore when, over the crucible, a smell of
sulphur was disengaged from the iron-pyrites which he thought was
gold. We need an assayer for every precious-looking creed : and have
it at No. i Tremont Place, Boston. We must not complain if the
office be not also a mine. Bring your ore : you shall at least learn if
it be silver or lead ! It is refreshing to have one man who takes noth
ing for granted. If not much be proposed, it is something not to over
state or pretend. Faith as a grain of mustard-seed that will grow is
more than a globe of matter without a germ. We rejoice in sincerity
more than in any discovery. It is the condition of all discoveries, and
itself the discovery of God. The worst of party is compromise, that
sacrifice of conviction to uniform and drill which is blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost. “ The Index ” stands for frankness. It is not the
voice of a conclave or committed to men. If it yield criticism more
than creation, let us prize the veto that saves us from the destruction
of majorities which present all our dangers on their bold and horny
front. We cannot flatter the radical literature with the registry of any
great accomplishment. The new theology has not come yet out of
“The Fifty Affirmations,” “Impeachments of Christianity,” “Liberal
Leagues,” or exclusions of God and Christ from the Constitution.
But how much rubbish has been removed from the room for the
prospective temple 1 Street improvement makes lanes of disorder at
first: and moral architecture calls demolition to its aid. “ Only so
much of supernatural as makes, its way into nature and human na
ture,” is the Radical and Free Religious cry. There is honesty, hero
ism, humility, grandeur, in the abnegation of a heaven to dwell in or
God to adore that is not real to the yearning mind. .
But sci^pce has metes. Beside knowledge, is the thing known, irre
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solvable into an intellectual process, save in the perceived identity of
object and subject, thoughts and things. A definition of a feeling has
been called “the mind’s opinion of that feeling.” Love is the sub
stance of science, beginning of creation, and residuum in every experi
ment. Can I turn the world into a theory, my instinct into my state
ment, reality into intuition, and what I behold into a beholding? No !
something is left, some peace of God and speechless benediction that
passeth understanding. Pascal says, “ All that is visible is but a
scratch in the vast range of nature;” yet, adds Papillon, that pro
found French critic just deceased, ill-deserving the name of “butter
fly,” “the experimentalists insist on worshiping this scratch.” God
and heaven, by reason of infinity, are not demonstrations, but dreams;
yet dreams of the human soul, never yet quite roused from sleep.
Ideas are firmer than all material facts.
Is there not some risk of over-action of the intellectual ? Goethe,
growing old, was said to have “ a determination of blood to the head.”
“ Are there not many men,” asks George Sand, “ in whom the loving
faculties have been starved by the travail of the brain?” In “Isidora ” she adds, “ O power of sweetness and goodness, so penetrating,
it is thou, and not the intelligence, that should rule the world ! ” But
nothing is so intelligent as the heart. Superficial study is a stricture
of that, which has imagination for its courier and fellow-traveler
through fairy-land. Wonder has fable for its handmaid. Strauss
complained that, at the free religious meeting in Berlin, the service
was dry and lacked the comfort of reference to a biblical legend. So
the last rag was stripped from his ideas ! Theodore Parker had little
sense of the meaning of myth, and so naturally thought Voltaire greater
•than Goethe. The scripture-tale to him was either true or false, with
scarce any middle ground of Oriental picture-writing or allegorical
sense. He began with thinking the Book of Ruth inspired ; he ended
with supposing the Bible meant that the Lord ate veal with Abraham.
He understood not the Old Testament idyls. So to his glorious icon
oclasm he added no spiritual structure.
With the courage of our opinions let us have breadth. Job is poeti
cal, and therefore can be bold. Beyond bald prose let us have beauty,
though but to adorn the tomb, like the author of that wondrous poem,
“Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyamf who sings, —
“O Thou,
Who e’en in Paradise didst form the snake,
Forgiveness give and take ! ”
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67
In Goethe’s “Truth and Fiction,” the fiction is the better truth.
Tradition necessitates analysis; but synthesis is the end, for recon
struction better than of the disunited States. Radical folk and Free
Religious have a star in saying, as did the old Abolitionists, what they
think of each other’s views, and not standing on compliments. They
keep nothing hermetically sealed. Every thing is for every body !
God suffers nothing which we hide from man. What we shut up in a
club or clique spoils, and is uneatable as the overkept manna. Let
the word, if it can, go through the continent and light on the decks
of the ships ; and our thoughts be open as the public fountain and
squares.
The next sign is Butlerism. We spend our wrath on the man who
is but an exponent. As truly, though in another way than Daniel
Webster said it of George Washington, he is “ a pure American pro
duction.” We would drive him a scapegoat into the wilderness. We
forget the many goats beside and behind, on the left hand, to scare
if not overpower the sheep on the right. We flatter the sovereign
“ people,” as though that were another phrase for “ purity.” Is this
an honest nation, the only one on earth that does not even pretend to
pay its debts, that relies not on reason and right, but the panacea of
universal suffrage, and rejoices in the government of the majority,
without thinking of a possible one of rascals and thieves ? Intelligent
men in business and the professions shirk their civil duty, and call
politics a pool which they will not dirty their hands in. Unless some
angel trouble that pool we shall not be healed ! We have just escaped
going up in a paper-balloon, filled with Western gas, because of a pre
vious inflation of this great country with the conceit that it needs no
coin, and satisfies its creditors with promises, and, as magnificently as
Falstaff, flouts “ security.” The popular conscience is not nice. It
admires smart and unscrupulous men who attend to business, engineer
jobs, and put things through. Congress and the legislatures represent
their constituents in every statute.
When my fellow-townsman on Cape Ann complained of peculators,
I asked, “Are they not elected after they peculate ? ” Did New York
convict Tweed or itself? What a knot of thieves, merchants cheating
the revenue, informers biting like gudgeons at the moiety-bait, confi
dential clerks, spies for the fine which officers higher than Jayne arid
Sanborn are suspected of grabbing, as lawyers, the lion’s share of,
while the examining committee find the transactions in the Treasury
too loose to fix the responsibility, — as Warren Hastings, the East
Indian plunderer, said, when he remembered the lacs of rupees which
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he had passed through, he stood astonished at his own moderation !
trustees of funds in villages, tellers in banks, conductors on railways,
and ticket-takers borrowing each other’s bells to embezzle in the streetcars, present a picture far from pleasant to survey of a too general sur
render of principle to greed. What is the cause ? We have plenty of
religion, such as it is. How becomes the common conscience so
blunt? Because the church spends itself on dogmas, and does not
expound laws 1 What Dr. Wayland said of the Baptists is true of all
sects, that they preach too little morals and too much creed. We want
some new abolitionists, to turn priests of form into prophets of reform.
We cannot hang a nation; but let us indict the community for the
monsters it generates! In the dispute at Hell Gate, in “ Paradise
Lost,” of Sin with Satan, the mother gets as good as she gives her
child. General guilt bears the whole brood of devils. State and
church are the “Chang and Eng” that must live or die together. I
hail Radicalism and Free Religion in the hope of no sentimental
spasm of a few elect, at a camp-meeting or in an ill-ventilated ves
try, but a revival of the body politic.
Spiritualism, as in Robert Dale Owen, is another sign,— a sign of dis
content with the Calvinistic doctrine of doom. When a clergyman said,
“God is no doomster, only men insist on perdition,” I answered, “This
necessity is the same thing.” He replied, “ Not a necessity, but a cer
tainty,” still making his corner of eternal woe. Against fate and the pit
no wonder a more generous faith should rise, which, counting its votaries
by millions, is scarce disposed of by ridicule. The manifesto of spir
its, that materialize to communicate, strikes the knell of this old inhu
man doctrine of underground waiting, to rise at the far-off trump to
vicarious reward or punishment, as Christ or Adam gets the upper
hand. Said the old Catechism, “After incalculable ages your mother
shall ascend to bliss or sink to bale.” “ Your mother is present and
wants to speak to you,” cries the new gospel. A Universalist mother
told Lyman Beecher she would rather go to hell with her children than
to heaven without; and the old gentleman enrolled her name on his
books. The voice of nature is still strong! If there be no other
alternative, welcome then to the raps for a revelation, to the mahoga. ny-table for a Bible, to inspiration on a slate, and to the pulpit, like
the old tripod, of a trance. It must be confessed not much instruc
tion comes. Prophecy gets muffled in the medium. There is deben
ture, a tax amounting almost to prohibition, on the goods at this cus
tom-house. That friends survive and are happy, is the sum of value
that gets through. Yet it. is better than Genevan blasphemy or Sad-
�6g
ducee-unbelief to fill up this cave of hell and open the concave of
heaven, making it abut on earth, with no sepulchral sleep, only angels
to bring miraculous fruits and give an example for the finest of mod
ern charities in a flower-mission from the skies. When an orange was
brought to me, if I remember right, by Starr King and Father Taylor,
if I felt no more immortal than before, neither was I sensible of any
suspicion or scorn; and I preferred it to that fixed smell of sulphur
of which the Bethel preacher once said “we all have some sentimen
tality ” ! Build religion on ancient marvel ? Behold, all around, in a
thousand seances, wonders a plenty, the supernatural a drug, Sinai
superseded, the mountain transfiguration antiquated and obsolete be
fore flying shapes and twangling harps, passing the Red Sea or that
of Galilee matched by Home’s levitation at the ceiling, while for Neb
uchadnezzar’s furnace and lion’s den we have the Davenport broth
ers’ hands superhumanly untied in a box 1 Inexplicable phenomena
abound so as to become dull. We find we have mistaken the ground
of reverence, which rises, not from losing the trail, but tracing the law
which keen eyes see running everywhere, as the Indian marks the
track now in the sand and now in the stream, now in a bent shrub
and now in an upturned leaf. Valuable as the physical discoveries
may be to emancipate from a hard worldly skepticism, the noble soul
wants no map of heaven or chronology of a future life. It asks not
the incitement of recompense or to “read its title clear.” Glory is
cheapened when held out to goodness as a bauble or feast. A hound
will jump after a piece of meat in the air: let us not make Paradise
dog-cheap 1 Virtue must be shut up to its own motive, or it will not
remain virtue, but become salary and hire. Cake for children: but no
spiritual confectionery-store! Nothing in Jesus was sublimer than the
failure of his sight in the garden, his sense of abandonment, when,
though God forsook him, he did not forsake God. We have a lot in
that Gethsemane ! Dead ghost hunting lowers the tone. He that lis
tens for the echo misses his aim, though from Paradise come the
report. The garden is there, no doubt: but the Divine Wisdom puts
blinders on our vision to keep us to the road. A glance at heaven is
better than a gaze. Let there be some screen to this blaze of bliss !
That earthly duty may be done the celestial gates must be partly
closed. Spirit is more than spirits, though their swarm eclipsed the
sun.Religion is reception of God; and to drink of his river now is
more than any projection beyond the grave. Disappearance of time
in duty signifies inheritance of eternity; and forever, on earth or aloft,
the zz/z-manifested and unmanifestable is more than any manifestation.
io
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The ne'xt sign is Mrs. Woodhull and socialism, so prevailing among*
Spiritualists in her interpretation that it is doubted if she should be
allowed to speak. But the doubt is not in my mind! Marriage too
must be discussed. Is it sensitive and sore ? Then something “ rot
ten ” in this “ Denmark ” refuses to be probed and laid bare. Princi
ples are everlasting: but marriage is an arrangement, a civil statute,
religious sacrament, social convention, mutual contract, personal bond,
a lock in the order of life, the hinge of every door that swings in the
sun, the little brick the house is made of, the foundation of the home,
the underpinning of church and state; but not a principle: and all we
can say of its importance as an institution only emphasizes the need
of exposing whatever evil qualifies and imperils its good. We can
conceive, as Jesus did, of society without marriage, in a re-constitu
tion on earth or in the sky. But the impulse which it is meant to rule,
made strong that the race might not fail, cannot dispense with the con
jugal harness yet, or have the rein thrown on its neck. It would be an
uncaged beast, escaping from the menagerie into the street or the
woods. Steel rails hold the gliding train: what a beast or dragon,
fiercer than all the iron horses, and for more crashing overthrows, un
governed appetite would be 1 Wedlock is not its only, chief, best, or
noblest restraint: yet it is a discipline whose need no argument has
set aside. Its sincere assailant has her mission, but has offered no
working-plan, only a wild scream for freedom and vague doctrine of
selection in its stead. It is a false philosophy of freedom, which
subordinates mankind to its members. We are children of a race
which we do not constitute, but owe ourselves in all service and sacri- ■
fice to the welfare of; and the doctrine of extreme private liberty, at
whatever cost to the commonwealth, either as morals or metaphysics,
is alike erroneous, selfish, and bad. The reformers must put more
thought into their task 1 Meantime, let whatever mischief marriage
may cover be set forth. Only by being examined can it be saved.
Eternal vigilance is the price not only of liberty, but of order and
life. Something unsound was suspected in the Mill-River dam. But
scrutiny was refused as hurting the stock 1 So, for some thousands in
timely repair, a million was extorted by the demon of the flood, with
scores of friends and lovers laid so pale and low, an anachronism of
human sacrifice on the shrine. Marriage is not the river-bed, but
basin and canal: the levee against animal propensity with its unfath
omable source and immeasurable tide. Build and shape it well, or
look out for the bursting bevel and foaming crevasse 1 Think not the
�71
legal sanction covers and purges any sin. Away with mercenary mat
rimony, the ambitious alliance, the convenient bargain, mismatches of
disposition and age, the prostitution which human law allows to run
from the brothel to the house under its shield, the license that slips
in its cloak like a thief in the night from the den to the dwelling and
the dwelling to the den, the wandering imagination and the actual
abuse; and let works of loyalty and purity prove a love which flesh is
sanctified by because it is not of the flesh. Then nature will be sup
plemented by art; in such regulation as protection requires, inunda
tion will be checked ; and the new deluge, that sometimes seems
necessary to cleanse the earth, for awhile held back.
The Washington dial is a wise and kind Cassandra! If I announce
foul weather as well as fair, and advise cautionary signals, it is from
no despair, but from a hope that begins to wax and will never wane.
We are born with great expectations. Our confidence were betrayed
if they fail! We talk of progress. It has scarce taken its first step.
The seventh and last sign is the general breaking up, after a long,
hard winter, of the ice for free navigation on the river of. God.
The man everywhere, Colenso, Cheney, Savage, or Swing, is too big
for the establishment; and when he rises he carries the ridge-pole of
the tent with him. We are not at the end of our course. It is commencement-day in the great university! Like the earth in primeval
chaos, the moral world is still “ without form, and void, and darkness
covers the face of the deep.” All the ages are dark ages compared
with that to come. All history is but twilight before dawn. Yet,
behold the heralds and greet the light-bearers like the cherubs with
torches in Guido’s “ Aurora 1 ” Waking early to meditate my theme,
while yet the night seemed hardly to have withdrawn a corner of her
veil, I was surprised with the cheerful warble of the birds among the
trees. What ray of the morning from the far horizon, what suspicion
of splendor, had reached them to correspond with their song, I could
not tell. But some imagination of the sun warmed their breast and
stirred their note. It is not day-break yet for man ! In long eclipse
he lives, and in the shadow of the planet which is his home. ‘Yet he
imagines the sun! Music of prophecy is heard. Forerunners are
seen of a better millennium than any prophet paints. As good as the
angel’s “ Hail ” to Mary, every fresh voice is our Annunciation.
�72
The President. It was proposed when we arranged the
programme of this convention, that we should have, if possible,
at this afternoon session some protests and criticisms from
those who make objections to the Free Religious Association.
But though we have critics, it is difficult to get them to come
here; and some whom we invite and expect to criticise, turn
about and bless us. Of course we never expected anything but
a blessing from Dr. Bartol, and I think you will agree with
me that We have received it in that essay. And now another
of our friends will continue the discussion. We have with us
a gentleman from St. Louis, — a Jewish Rabbi with a beautiful
name, meaning in English, Sunshine, — who has come all the
way from the Mississippi because of his interest in the Free
Religious movement. I introduce to you Dr. Sonneschein.
ADDRESS OF RABBI S. H. SONNESCHEIN.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I stand here before
you as a Jew; and since the word “Jew” is not any longer repre
sented in the national Webster’s Dictionary as a word with an oppro
brious meaning, I can fairly consider myself here as being among
American fellow-citizens who will honor that name.
But I would have, with the well-known modesty of the Jew, never
accepted a call to address, with my poor German tongue, the dis
tinguished citizens of Boston, if I had not felt that it is my duty a^ a
Jew to represent here our denomination fairly and squarely, having
been asked to do it by your Secretary; to tell you, the friends of all
progressive movements in churches and politics, what Reformed Juda
ism means. To a great many it may assume the appearance of a
knife without a blade and without a handle. Reformed Judaism,—
what does that mean? Is not Judaism the remnant of that old cast
off religion, of that old citadel of superstition, which has well-nigh
vanished amidst the forces of modern civilization ? No: I can with
out any self-conceit say, in the name of truth, No, The Hebrew
race, originated by Abraham, never failed, whenever called upon, to
acknowledge the truth even at its own cost; and so I shall tell this
afternoon some truths that may even fall back upon the Jew. I shall
not be ashamed to acknowledge that the Jews have very often com
mitted the gravest mistakes, coming even near to religious and scientific
crimes, because the Jew is not an angel. The Jew is a human, erring
*
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being, and we were even cautious enough not to accept a member of
our own race, however spotless his character may have appeared to
our ancestors, as a God, — because no human being can have the per
fection of God. . You see, my friends, that I do not dwell much upon
phraseology. I speak as it is in my heart.. I may make perhaps some
blunders in the grammar, but I do not mean to make blunders in the
truth.
What is Reformed Judaism? Judaism is the representation, the
embodiment, of a long course of historical facts. Judaism^ is to be
traced back to the remotest regions of history, and is still looking for
ward to the most distant future; and so you may not expect that I
shall give you even the outlines of it. I suppose you are very well
versed in the history of ancient Judaism, and some other co-religion
ist of mine may have previously, upon this same platform, told you
many interesting things about the theological and the doctrinal signifi
cance of Judaism. What I have to say is of Reformed Judaism ; and
Reformed Judaism means, genuinely and earnestly, to be in full coin
cidence and in free sympathy with the Free Religious movement of
this day; and I have only to explain to you how it comes to that.
Old Judaism, called the Hebrew Biblical Judaism, is the germ and the
root; the Talmudical Rabbinical Judaism of the middle ages is the
trunk and the branches; and Reformed Judaism seems to me to be
the blossom, not yet the fruit. There may be many blossoms yet
cast off by many storms of the age, but I hope that some fruit
will remain, and give the germ for a new idea in religion, as it
has. often proved in the course of human progress. The Orthodoxy
in Judaism was not so much the result of the dead letter of the law.
Orthodox Judaism, or rather, as you may call it, Talmudical Rabbini
cal Judaism, is by no means the counterpart of what Paul of Tarsus
described when he said that the. letter kills. Not so, my friends. If
there is any living thing, or rather to say, if there ever was any living
religious body, fully alive to the interests and to the necessities of reli
gion, it was the Talmudical Rabbinical Judaism. For about five
hundred years, while it seems that every ecclesiastical movement was
in dead stagnation, there was an animated life, like that in a bee
hive, among the Rabbis of the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and even
eleventh centuries. Talmudical Rabbinical Judaism did not mean a
warlike religion. It was only a kind of self-defense, the erecting, the
establishing of a wall, of a fence, as the Rabbis themselves used to
call it; it was their favorite expression, “The laws that we establish,
the increased ceremonies and habits that we introduce, are made only
�74
to support and to protect our church against the inroads of our ene
mies.” It is like the custom of the American farmer; when he has
even the largest estate, he fences his farm to show that it is his prop
erty. So the Jew of old, and of the middle ages, was very jealous
that nobody should claim anything which belonged to him; and his
fence is called the “Talmudical Rabbinical Law.” But as sometimes
the chains that hold up the drawbridge of a fortress may become so
old and rusty that, if the time comes when the inhabitants of the old
citadel wish to go out, they cannot move the heavy drawbridge, and
the chains must be cut off by force, so Judaism of these days could
not handle those heavy ancient rabbinical doors in order to come out
into the fresh air of the nineteenth century, and they were compelled
to cut them down ; and that was the first step of Reformed Judaism
in Europe.
Reformed Judaism can be looked at from four different points.
The Talmudical Rabbinical, or Orthodox Judaism, consisted of sani
tary, of social, of ritualistic, of ecclesiastical measures. And so
Reformed Judaism must direct its attention to all these four points.
But certainly it did not determine to do the work all at once, but to
take one point after the other, the easier first and the more difficult
last, — not for being a little afraid of not being able to do the heavier
work first, but in order not to disturb the peace of its communicants;
for the Jew was always careful not to deprive any member of his race
of the title to belong to Judaism. Even nowadays you will find that
the most stubborn, the most determined, the most conservative Ortho
dox Jew, will shake hands in brotherly love with the Jew who has at
the same moment in his presence even declared that the Bible is not the
word of God. We Jews need not give up our name : it is not a name
given us by ourselves ; it is a name we have received. Why should
we give up a name which has no meaning at all? Free Religionist —
there may be somebody who will look for and try and find something
to scoff at in that name. Christianity may be a name that will give
dissatisfaction and offense to a great many. Any sectarian name, any
denominational term, is to be criticised; but Jew is a very harmless
name. What do you care whether you are called Yankees or New
Englanders? Is that a name anybody can find anything harmful in?
So it is with the name Jew; and we cling to our name because it
represents race and ancestry. Jewish blood is running through our
veins, and Jewish bones and muscles are framing our bodies, and we
cannot help it, but we can be anything else, — we can be even
Christians, — and still be Jews. A great many of the Jews of old
�75
sided with Paul and the other apostles, and were called Jews for three
or four hundred centuries nevertheless. Now Reformed Judaism does
not maintain the name Jew for any sectarian use, but only to hold up
that banner of liberty that was always protected by the Jewish army.
Although you may doubt that, yet I could give you samples, even the
fairest samples of this characteristic of my faith, that you would ad
mire and adore. But I shall leave that out; I am not here for boast
ing of my title and to give the reason for it. I shall merely go on
giving the reasons for Reformed Judaism.
Now, first, the sanitary aspect. The laws of Moses, since he meant
to give his nation not only a sound mind but also a sound body,
knowing very well that in a sound body a sound mind is the better off,
gave us sanitary rules according to the scientific notions of the time.
But why should we now, since science, especially natural science, the
knowledge of the laws of God and of the laws of human organization,
is so much ahead of that knowledge which Moses and his disciples
possessed, — why should we of this day not criticise these sanitary
laws of old and give up all those which do not prove to be facts of
science? And this the Reformed Jew does. The Reformed Jew of
seventy years ago, when he was going to trespass upon these old sani
tary laws, did it in his corner where nobody saw him, because he was
a little afraid of his brother, but he does it now in the open air; and
I assure you I enjoy my “ Christian” meal, this dinner I have eaten
to-day after the manner of yours, as well as my grandfather did his a
hundred years ago. I do not see that I am sick for it; I do not see
that I lose any strength of my body by it; but, on the contrary, it
seems to me as if I would gain a new body by partaking of something
I was never used to before. But this same ancient sanitary law was a
kind of medicine to the Jew who was confined within the walls of the
ghetto of old; he had his regular meals, and the times were fixed by
rule, so that when the simple cup of milk came for his supper he did
not dare to touch it unless six hours had passed away since his dinner.
That was well enough; it was a wholesome regulation ; he was con
fined in a small narrow room without much fresh air, and, being com
pelled to observe strict sanitary laws, he was the healther for it; and
therein lies the whole secret of the longevity of the Jew in the ghettos
of old.
Then comes the social aspect of Reformed Judaism. You know
very well that the Jew was shut out of a great many commercial pur
suits. For instance, the Rabbis themselves forbade the Jew to trade in
pork. It was not because pork was a forbidden food for the Jew. It
�bad quite a different reason. I may tell it in a few words. When the
city of Jerusalem was besieged by Titus, so tells us the Talmudical
tradition, the Roman soldiers used to make a laughing-stock of
the Jews by the following act: There was a private understanding
between some of the outposts of the Roman army and the priests
inside of the city that they should allow certain animals to be brought
into the city for feeding the foremost ones of the battle in the Temple,
and so they held up daily some half a dozen oxen, &c. One day the
Roman soldiers put into the crate, or elevator, some half a dozen
swine ; and the Jews were so incensed, that from that day the He
brews, in a council in Jerusalem, forbade trade in pork. But to-day,
since the actual dealers of Chicago and St. Louis and anywhere in the
West don’t care very much whether they buy the pork from a Jew or a
Christian, if only the price and the quality of the animal suit them,
so the Jew prospers frequently now even in that direction; and by
this simple remark you will have an insight as to how modern times
work upon the commercial interests of the Jew: that he moves in
circles that he never knew before and prospers in them.
Then comes the question of intermarriage. The Bible itself has a
great many samples where even prophets, kings, &c., married the
daughters of heathen. Why should a Jew not marry a Christian girl,
or a Jewish girl not marry a Christian man? You will wonder how it
came to pass that the Talmudical law was more strict in that respect
than even the Bible itself; but that was done also merely in order to
protect the Jewish law from inroads. They were afraid that from
other quarters there might be brought into that weakened and nearly
dead body of Judaism some elements that would destroy it altogether.
But now, since the doors are open, since we know each other, since
even a Jewish boy may read the heart of a Christian girl, and a Chris
tian boy may read the heart of a Jewish girl, why should their hearts
not be joined in holy love, notwithstanding the Talmudical law?
Again, there is the ritualistic point. I must only glance over these
things. There is, for instance, the law of Passover. You have heard
of it, — how strict the Talmudical Jew observes the Passover. Even
a bit of leavened bread may destroy the happiness of a Jewish house
hold at Passover. I remember in my youth to have been a guest of
grandfather and grandmother, and we were enjoying our meal. It
was a holiday, and especially dear grandmother flattered and petted
the grandson with the best bits on the table. But all of a sudden,
when I was just about to take a piece of fowl, there was a deathlike
pallor on all the faces ; everybody dropped their forks and knives ; I
�77
looked, but saw nothing there. “What is the matter?” I asked.
“Don’t you see, grandpa has found a grain of wheat in the stomach of
the fowl, and that is the reason that we have stopped eating ■ ” and
then all the table-cloths and all the things on the table had to be
removed and new had to be brought in. Even the water that the Jew
drank on Passover was cleaned again and again. It was not enough
that it looked pure, but it must be beyond the possibility of having
been touched by a crumb of leavened bread. According to the Talmudical law, if some boy throws into the Reservoirs of the Central
Park of New York a piece of bread, the whole Jewish population of
the city must starve for want of water. Now is Reformed Juda
ism not right in that it says that these heavy chains of ritualism, which
became rotten and useless, must be cut off in order that we may
breathe the fresh air of progress, and in order that we may enjoy
society with our fellow-men ?
There is another point of the ritual question on which I shall be a
little more earnest. The prayer, — you know very well what a stum
bling-block to the modern drift of thought the prayer is. Now, to
tell you the truth, my friends, although the Jew prayed a great deal,
although the Talmudical law provides that every Jew must pray at
least three times in the day, still the prayer-book of old was nothing
but a kind of anthology of Biblical passages, — psalms, prophetical
selections, and so on. But in later times, when the great attraction of
public worship was gone,—when it was, for instance, not allowed to
play an organ or a violin or to sing a joyful tune, because the Jewish
feelings had become callous, — then they tried to lengthen the wor
ship by some other means; and any second or third rate Hebrew
reader, who had occasionally the leisure time to read a Hebrew poem,
and was the minister of the congregation (I mean not the Rabbi, but
what you call the sexton rather), added to the old prayer-book some
favorite song of his, and that became by and by a holy hymn. The
grand songs of the Hebrew school are still appreciated as being the ut
terances of devout hearts, but the common prayer-book is so enlarged
by the fanciful efforts and music of these men, and even sometimes by
their crazy poems, that it became quite a necessity for the enlightened
Jew of modern days, who understood Hebrew as well as the Hebrews
of old, to obliterate everything that is not written in the pure spirit of
ancient Judaism. That was the first step in reforming the exercise of
prayer; but that was not all. There was another stumbling-block.
Although we understand Hebrews although we enjoy the Hebrew
expressions, although we revere that tongue of our ancestors, although
IX
�78
we never would give a Hebrew Bible for the best translation in Eng
lish or German, still the prayer must be the expression of the feelings
of the heart; and since the Hebrew language is not any more our
mother tongue, since it is only the language of our scripture and our
tradition, since it is only a dead language known to the theologians
only in the Jewish denomination, we find it proper that, instead of the
Hebrew prayer, the English, the German, the French, or any other
living language, shall be introduced to give any worshiper or visitors
in our synagogues or our temples an opportunity to utter the language
of their hearts. We also refrain in our prayers from any allusion to
things of the past that have been considered by the Talmudical Jew
only as a kind of consolation for the future. When the Jew of the
Talmudical era thought the Messiah would come, and must come, it
was not so much a dogma with him as a mode of spiritual encourage
ment. I could give you proof that a great many Rabbis of the time,
that a great many scholars among the Jews, rejected the idea of a per
sonal Messiah. They gave to the people, dejected and scattered, a
belief in the coming Redeemer; they said, “ The Redeemer, the son
of David, will come, and will bring you back to your old glories and
to your old beloved Palestine, and will make you happy again.”
Would you not praise the men of old for giving the masses in Juda
ism such a material and mental consolation ? But now the masses,
even amongst us, do not look any more towards Palestine. We look
no more for the coming of a Messiah. We understand and know per
fectly well what the most sanguine men of the Talmudical and the
middle ages said, that even Jesus of Nazareth is a kind of a Messiah,
making preparatory steps for the coming salvation. We understand
it, the people understand it, and for that reason we give up any allu
sion in our prayers to any return to Jerusalem and any restoration of
the Jewish Empire.
There is, finally, the ecclesiastical aspect. What would you think, my
friends, if I should tell you that for the five years I have been working
as a Jewish Rabbi in this country, I have never missed any occasion
to tell my people in my pulpit that the marvelous stories of the Bible,
that most of the laws of the Bible, are not worthy to be believed and
recognized as facts and truths ? Nobody thinks to-day to excommuni
cate me. There may be some personal reasons for some men to try to
excommunicate me. There was three years ago, if you remember, a
great stir among the American Israel to excommunicate some half
dozen Rabbis because, in a conference they attended, one of them said,
“I do not believe in a personal God.” The same congregation that
�79
may have sympathized for a little time with that effort for excommunica
tion, have already invited me to preach to them. I tell you the Jewish
Rabbi of the Reformed school may dare to be in the fullest sympathy
even with the results of the researches of my friend Abbot, who is
Anti-Christian, and Anti-Jewish, and anti-anything 1 We say, give us
the truth, and in the face of the truth, we shall acknowledge it. We
have the old saying, “The seal of Jehovah is truth,” and anything that
bears the stamp of that seal we respect and revere; and if “The In
dex” is sealed by the seal of Jehovah, I will read it and acknowledge
it. And all the old conceptions of revelation, of the coming of the
Messiah, of the depravity of man, and everything of that kind, we
gave up from the first moment we cut down the old citadel, the old
fence. We are students of modern life. We read modern history, we
are receiving education in modern colleges, and we accept and we
acknowledge everything that may be shown to us as the truth. But so ,
long as we see going on among the different denominations battle after
battle, so long as we do not see that the time has come yet for a real
religious peace and harmony upon earth, we are entitled to maintain
our peculiar name and fame as Jews. What would you say to the
architect who lays the corner-stone of a mighty building that he knows
will take years and years to finish, what would you say to such an
architect, if he would not obey the rules and advice of his physician,
who will tell him, “ You are not strong, and if you hope to live to see
your building completed, beware of too much exertion and exposure ” ?
Would that architect not be stultifying himself if he would not follow
the advice of his medical friend ? Would you not admire him for his
moderation and self-restriction in keeping aloof from everything that
might harm his health ? Is he foolish in assuming that he may live
, long enough to have laid, not only the corner-stone of the building,
but also the cap-stone of the dome? In the same position is the Jew.
He remains a Jew because the Temple of Universal Religion, the
Temple of the Religion of Humanity, is not finished yet. He laid the
corner-stone. But here a Christian friend may say, as I have read, if I
am not mistaken, in the proceedings of the Free Religious Association
five years ago, that one said, speaking right after a Jew (I shall not
state it verbatim, but I remembei' it quite well), “ Christ brought into
the world a new revelation. He first taught the world of a God who
is the Father of all, watching with paternal love over every creature.”
I ask you, my'friends, Christians, Free Religionists, Atheists, whatever
you may call yourself, I ask you, for the truth’s sake, is such an asserion a fact ? Did Christ bring into the world a new revelation in this
�8o
respect ? Did not the prophet of old, the psalmist of old, proclaim
this same God who is the Father of all, the Guardian of all, the merci
ful King of all? Who was it that spoke of God’s “loving kindness
and tender mercies”? Is it not in the Hebrew’s Bible ? And why
should the Jew of America not expect to live long enough to say to
the Christians, “We recognize your error,” and to hear them respond,
“You Jews were right; the God you have adored and worshiped,
eighteen hundred years before Christ, is the same God the Christians
worship eighteen hundred years after Christ”? Why should the Jew
give up his name ? It would be the act of a coward for him to leave
the vessel, although it is quite near the harbor, and to try to- swim
ashore for himself. We see the land here, we are American Jews, we
are happy enough to see it very near. Here upon this platform, which
is like an island near the mainland, a Jew can stand on terrafirma
and say, “I too hold influence.” Why as Jews should we not live
long enough to help all the good men of the world to lay the cap-stone
as wrell as we have laid the corner-stone ?
And now, in conclusion, I only want to ask one thing. I said yes
terday evening that we asked the Free Religious Association for help;
and now I ask that the Free Religious Association will accept our
help also as a little mite toward achieving its end : for one thing that
I read in this same Report of five years ago, or perhaps in “ The
Index,” as being said and written by our President Frothingham,
brought me to the- conclusion that I am a “Free Religionist,” — that
I was a “Free Religionist” even before I was in America, and may be
the Free Religious Association is older than my landing in this Re
public. But let me conclude by reading the words of Mr. Frothing
ham : “We can trust the great powers to vindicate their own suprem
acy. They need not that we should help, only that we should not
hinder, — that is all.” The Jews had no help whatever: on the con
trary, they were hindered a great deal; but still we shook hands above
the “ bloody chasm” of the past, and are brethren again. Why should
the Free Religious Association not have the same hope? They will
not be hindered so much because they can help themselves, — they
are Americans. And if the cap-stone shall be laid in a hundred years,
perhaps sooner, perhaps later, then may it bear the same inscription
that the corner-stone has. It will read perhaps exactly with these
words that I found in the latest biography of our beloved, departed,
heroic Theodore Parker, and that are said to represent Parker’s faith :
“There is one God and Father over all, absolute and immutable,
whose love is infinite and therefore inexhaustible, and whose tender
�8i
mercies are over all the words and works of his hand; and, whether
in the body or out of the body, the farthest one from the fold may yet
get home.”
That inscription is engraved and impressed upon the corner-stone
of the Religion of Humanity laid by Abraham, and that inscription
will shine everlastingly from the cap-stone of the dome of the finished
Temple.
•
The President. Before introducing to you Bishop Ferette,
of the Greek Church, who has strayed from his bishopric into
radicalism, and who will speak from his own practical observa
tions of religions in the East, you will be kind enough to listen
to a cordial and eloquent letter from our friend Keshub Chunder Sen, of India.*
Bishop Ferette followed in an address on the importance of
withdrawing all state endowments' from churches, whether in
the shape of direct gifts of money or of exemption from taxa
tion, illustrating the topic by the evils of the system of church
endowment existing in France. This was a theme, he said,
nearer to his heart than that on which he had been invited to
speak, and one of serious import to America. He advocated
the separation of Church and State, — at least to the extent that
the State should not recognize any system of doctrinal theology,
and should, even by law, render invalid any sectarian bequest.
The sectarian spirit was the bane of religion and the bane of
politics and society, and the State should rather tax it than
endow it.. He closed by reading the draft of a law which he
thought would remedy the evil.
At six o’clock the Convention adjourned.
* See Appendix for the letter.
�SOCIAL FESTIVAL.
In the evening a Social Festival, similar to that of the pre
vious year, was held in the new Parker Memorial Hall. The
occasion was equally successful, as at the first experiment, in
bringing the members and friends of the Association together
for better social acquaintance, and also in adding a considerable
sum of money to the Treasury. Mr. T. W. Higginson presided,
and the time was agreeably diversified with conversation, music,
brief addresses, and the interest of the refreshment-tables. This
Festival is likely now to become an established feature of the
Annual Meeting, and it is hoped that those friends of the Asso
ciation who cannot be present in person will make it the occa
sion of sending their annual donations for carrying on the Asso
ciation’s work ; and also that those who can be present will not,
in their enjoyment of the good time, forget the Treasurer. The
following hymns, written for the occasion, will fitly close our
Annual Report : —
“THE LIGHT WHICH LIGHTETH EVERY MAN.”
BY
SAMUEL
LONGFELLOW.
Air, "Sweet Hour of Prayer
O Life that maketh all things new,—
The blooming earth, the thoughts of men !
Our pilgrim feet, wet with thy dew,
In gladness hither turn again.
From hand to hand the greeting flows,
From eye to eye the signals run,
From heart to heart the bright hope glows ;
The lovers of the Light are one.
One in the freedom of the Truth,
One in the joy of paths untrod,
One in the soul’s perennial youth,
One in the larger thought of God ;
The freer step, the fuller breath,
The wide horizon’s grander view,
The sense of life that knows no death,
The Life that maketh all things new.
•
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�“IF THAT WHICH IS DONE AWAY WAS GLORIOUS, MUCH
THAT WHICH REMAINETH IS GLORIOUS.”
BY W. C. GANNETT.
Air, “Autumn."
Fairer grows the earth each morning
To the eyes that watch aright,
Every vision is a dawning
Of some marvel come to light,
Of some unsuspected glory
Waiting in the old and plain ;
Traveler ne’er told the story
Of such wonders as remain.
As we seek — the quest is duty —
Inward towards the heart of things,
Everywhere the gate called Beauty
Fresh across the pathway swings ;
Each we enter, foolish mortals,
Thinking now His throne to find,
Just to gaze on grander portals, —
Still the Temple lies behind !
O my miracles ! you flowers,
Laughing secrets in my eyes !
Well I know the Heavenly Powers
Hide from me your best surprise.
O dear brothers ’neath the flowers,
Glory that was torn away !
Vanished faces light these hours
More than all the shining May.
Faith I love ! I love you deeper
That to lose you would be gain ;
Seedjnay perish, if the reaper
Comes home singing after pain.
All our creeds are hinting only
Of a faith of nobler strain, —
God is living ! Who feels lonely
With the Glories that remain ?
MORE
��APPENDIX.
LETTERS.
FROM KESHUB CHUNDER SEN.
The Brahmo Somaj of India,
Calcutta, April 17, 1874.
Dear Friend and Brother, —
Accept my love and greetings. To all those who are co-operating with
you in promoting the cause of Free Religion in America, and strengthen
ing the ties of brotherly love among the missionaries of truth in distant
lands, my hearty good wishes and affectionate regards. I sincerely regret
I did not receive your cordial message in time, or I would have gladly sent
a response for your May meeting last year. It was perhaps through inad
vertence you posted it round the Pacific, instead of via England. Hence
the unusual delay. I trust, however, my present letter will reach you in
time for your next annual meeting.
Both from your letter and the Report of the Free Religious Association
you kindly sent me, it is clear that the tide of liberal thought is steadily and
mightily rolling onward in your part of the world. The success of “The
Index” is a striking fact. I wish we could get the paper in exchange for
our “ Indian Mirror,” which is a daily paper, devoted to religious, social,
and political reformation, under the auspices of our church. The evidence
you have given of the remarkable activity of the liberal press during the
year 1872 is most encouraging. The books you mention, judging from
your flattering remarks, are alike creditable to the authors and the spirit
of the age, and will no doubt greatly help the development and extension
of pure faith. May all those whom God has called to the battle-field
fight valiantly and earnestly, and may their example inflame the zeal of their
weaker brethren, so that with able leaders and a numerous band of faithful
soldiers, with ample resources and an extended and powerful organization,
we may eventually be enabled to overcome all opposition and unfurl the
banners of victory.
12
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�86
It is indeed of the utmost importance that all scattered forces should
unite, and our roving brethren, unknown to each other, should meet in a
common home and unitedly and lovingly further their common work. Dog
ma unites men and forms communities. That we have seen. Love too can
unite the children of the one true God, even where there is no dogmatic
and sectarian tie. This the world has yet to see. May all true-hearted
Theists in different parts of the world be one in faith and love and hope,
and combine to hasten the advent of the kingdom of God !
Here, too, our church prospers. The Lord is working in our midst and
evolving fresh truths and ideas, for which we thank and bless him with
hearts full of gladness. He is so kind and merciful to us and our mother
land ! How he is cheering and sanctifying the souls of our countrymen
and countrywomen ? Not a month passes but we have some new tokens of
his love. Sweet is it to glorify the God of love.
Let us then, brother, join hands and hearts to sing the glory of our com
mon Father, and further the cause of truth in the world.
Believe me yours affectionately,
Mr. William J. Potter,
Keshub Chunder Sen.
Secretary of Free Religious Association of America.
FROM FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
Dear Mr. Potter, -
Washington, D.C, May rS, 1874.
I have delayed attention to your kind invitation thus long in the hope of
being able at last to return you an affirmative answer, but circumstances are
against me. I cannot be present at your Free Religious Convention in Bos
ton. This is, of course, of smaller consequence to others than to myself,
for I should come more to hear than be heard. Freedom is a word of
charming sound, not only to the tasked and tortured slaves, who toil for an
earthly master, but for those who would break the galling chains of dark
ness and superstition. Regarding the Free Religious movement as one
for light, love, and liberty, limited only by reason and human welfare, and
opposed to the works of those who convert life and death into enemies of
human happiness, who people the invisible world with ghastly task-masters,
I give it hearty welcome. Only the truth can make men free, and I trust
that your convention will be guided in all its utterances by its light and feel
its power. I know many of the good men and women who are likely to
assemble with you, and I would gladly share with them the burden of
reproach which their attacks upon popular error will be sure to bring upon
them.
Very truly yours,
Frederick Douglass.
�«5'
■
- ■ ?' '•
87
FROM D. A. WASSON.
_,
- r,rr ■ , ,,
Stuttgart, 5 Alleen Strasse, May 8, 1874.
My Dear Mr. WJupple, —
3
’
.’
*
It was a pleasure to me to see the circular of the Free Religious Associa
tion, which has just now come to hand, and to be reminded by it of the
country, the coadjutors and friends, that, with less perhaps of partiality, I
hold only dearer as years increase. I see in that Association, not the nu
cleus of a new sect, one more sect added to the overplus we have already,
but an institute for discussion of the largest problems in the largest spirit.
As such it should be welcome to all those who know in what age they live.
I have, for my own part, no quarrel with Christianity, but recognize in it an
ideal of goodness that is in its way unsurpassable, as nothing can be more
golden than gold itself. Some antiquated dogmas, again, of Christian the
ology seem to me adumbrations of truths that many have cast away along
with their obsolete forms, and that will have to be recovered, restated, and
made familiar to the modern mind. But also it seems to me idle to pre
tend that, after Newton and Darwin, after Nieburhr and Baur, we are just
where we were before, and need to inquire only within the limits of formal
Christianity. Farther, I cannot but think it mischievous, almost criminal,
to instruct men that they must choose between acceptance of these limits,
on the one hand, and materialism, atheism, on the other. That has been
but too much done already. Numbers, daily increasing numbers, take the
alternative as stated, and, incapable — creditably incapable, I should say —
of being medievalists in religion while moderns in everything else, say,
“ Well, materialism, atheism, be it then.” This is pressed upon my mind
by the vast spread of materialistic doctrine among the people with whom I
have been two years living. It does not indeed appear to me that there is
more of materialism in Germany than in America; but it has a different
character. In this country, it is the materialism of science; in ours, of
money-making. In the one case it is manifested as opinion ; in the other, as
motive. In Germany it leaves the church ; in America it perhaps joins the
church, recites the creed, and deacons out the bread and wine. It is plain
that, theoretically or practically, one or both, the attitude of the world
toward religion has changed ; that new mental needs have arisen, and that
the old answers to the old questions do not now answer. After all has been
said that can be said about the Christian religion, there is still a question,
becoming a very serious one, about human religion ; and it scarcely serves
to discourse of the coat when there has got to be a doubt about the cloth.
Under the head, “Howto cook a salmon,” the advice was given, “First
catch your salmon.” Our theological cooks have their methods and sauces,
but while they are getting up a fire, preparing their pans and collecting the
condiments, it turns out that the fish is in the sea, and will not bite at the old
bait. The Christian dressing is the best, but what use to talk of it to men
to whom the reality or value of the raw article has become questionable ?
Pardon what seems, or is, a trivial metaphor; if I speak in a light way, it
�88
is not with a light mind, for indeed the situation is no light matter. It is
wholly plain to me that, while Christianity contains an immortal ideal, the
Christian institution, the Christian ecclesiasticism, with its “plans of sal
vation,” its confessions, symbols, sacraments, is dying at the root. The
churches still make converts, but on cheaper and cheaper terms. The old
creeds are still recited, but more and more in the style of a tourist who
visits a cathedral to say that he has seen it, or of a man who buys a library
because every gentleman should have one. Even what are vaunted as
manifestations of faith manifest the want of it. See these people in Amer
ica, who go about praying, not to God, but at men. What is prayer to
them ? A social force, like fashion, having its effect, not between earth and
heaven, but between mouth and ear. A great change goes inevitably on.
The church resembles a town whose business has decayed ; the enterpris
ing, daring minds migrate to seek their fortune elsewhere ; the timid and
ease-loving stay, with those who are detained by tender considerations of
kindred, domestic ties, etc. The town remains, but grows somnolent. A
wit said that Newport is Newburyport without the bury. The ecclesiastical
institution, Augustine’s “ City of God,” has come to have much bury about
it. Look for the daring activities, and you find them in some rampant
Chicago, itself not perfectly pleasing to the mind, but “going ahead” and
making the future. It is time that this state of things was recognized.
Without preaching a crusade against the old towns, somebody should look
after the Chicagos, give them sobriety of thought, moral texture and tone,
the fine spirit of culture, the deep spirit of reverence,— should take up for
them the old truth, and make it new ; and share with them the new truth,
to give it the ripeness of age. I see in your Association a look that way,
¿nd trust it will look to some purpose. You will keep it large and hospit
able, I hope ; not the organ of a small, speculative polemic, not the expo
nent of an exclusive modernism, and cheap because exclusive, as if nobody
had thought until our day. He that shuts the “ spirit of the age ” out of
religion, and he that Would shut up religion in that spirit exclusively, are
simply rival jailors, opposite and alike. The merely modern mind has its
own limitations, some of them very stringent ones. There can be too much
spirit of the age. Progress only in that spirit is like those fertilizers which
force the land without feeding it; there is a crop for this year and an
exhausted soil for the next. We want the organic, structural spirit of all
aSes, —
that has made civilization and that sustains it. Do not think me
renegade if I say that the mere modernist — for an example of his limita
tion— is trying to get more out of liberty than there is in it. Liberty,
simply as such, is inorganic, indeterminate; not structure, but mere let
alone. At best, it is but the timber in the forest, which, observe, has to be
felled before you get your ship or chalet. But your president, I see, has the
last winter been emphasizing the word discipline. That was to me a cheer
ful token. There the organic, the structural thought, comes in. Man has
not a human condition without liberty, and liberty itself is not human
�89
.
without discipline. I attribute many of the moral confusions which pre
vail with us to our having a blind eye upon that matter. Our Jeffersonian
liberty would have done us to death long ago, if that puritan discipline
which Jefferson so hated, and which was indeed too priestly, had not
been behind it.
Enough, you will say, of this ; but indulge me a moment more. What
I wish to suggest is this : the world is in for a hard time ; and that the time
may not prove too hard, some things must be seen to. The old is dying
out, and the new — well, it is new, raw, half-made. Civilization is removing
into another habitation. This removing is at best an ugly, topsy-turvy busi
ness, demoralizing to all domesticities ; but removing into a house that as
yet is but a composite of wall, scaffolding, litter, and out of doors, upsets
orderly habits in a peculiar degree. That is the modern situation. Indeed,
there are many who have moved out, and will not even try to move in, but
camp around, gypsy fashion. Well, I do not say, Stay in the old home
stead ; that is tumbling down. But I .do say, Get a whole thought about
the new one, and mean structure^ with the liberation of human virtue within
it; not Bedouin freedom, that liberates the beast to enslave the man. You
do not need my counsel, but I offer what I have ; and if the guest at my
table has as good dishes at home, so much the better.
Give my greetings to your friends and mine, and assure them that, in my
own way, I am working as sincerely as they, or as any, for the new time ;
and not working without good hope, though aware that, as ever, courageous
hearts and clear heads can alone give hope its fruition. I am conservative,
no doubt of it, and mean to be so, as Nature is ; being of opinion that with
out a good deal of conserving our world would not probably be here. Only
•I have no intention to conserve rotten wood ; and if a resolution to see
when the wood is rotten be radicalism, count on me for a radical. It is a
question of eyes, this of conservative or radical. The conservative princi
ples that go into a good wall are a good thing, and the radicalism that
means building solidly, at the right time and place, is another good thing.
Your Association means both, I trust.
Faithfully yours,
D. A. Wasson.
��
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Proceedings at the seventh annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston, May 28 and 29, 1874
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Free Religious Association
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Place of publication: Boston, Mass.
Collation: 89, [1] p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. _Letters from Keshub Chunder, Frederick Douglass, and D.A. Wasson_
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Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Proceedings at the seventh annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston, May 28 and 29, 1874), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Conway Tracts
Free Religious Association
Free Thought
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free Religious! association
PROCEEDINGS
AT THE
FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION,
HELD IN BOSTON,
June 1 and 2, 1871.
BOSTON:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
1871.
��7
CONTENTS.
Report .....................................................................................................
List of Officers............................................................................
.
Fourth Annual Report of the Executive Committee ....
5
7
8
SESSION'S IN' TREMONT TEMPLE.
iilorning Session.
Address of the President........................................................................ 19
Essay by jJohn Weiss.............................................................................22
Remarks by C. A. Bartol........................................................................ 43
„
,, Henry Ireson........................................................................ 45
„
,, William H. Spencer.................. (.................................... 46
,,
,, T. W. Higginson.............................
47
Afternoon Session.
Essay by William J. Potter................................................................... 51
Remarks by O. B. Frothingham............................................................... 67
,,
,, Lucretia Mott.................................................................... 67
,,
,, D. A. Wasson......................................................................... 69
,,
,, John L. Russell........................
69
,,
,, Dean Clarke......................................................................... 70
,,
,, Rabbi Guinzburg.......................................................................
SEbening Session.
Essay by Ol B. Frothingham.................................................................. 70
Remarks by William Denton................................................................. 83
,,
,, J. Vila Blake....................................................................... 84
,,
,, A. M. Powell....................................................................... 86
Constitution of the Free Religious Association
88
��REPORT.
The Free Religious Association held its Fourth Annual Meet
ing in Boston, on the 1st and 2d of June, 1871.
The opening session, for the transaction of business and for
addresses on the Report of the Executive Committee, was held in
the Parker Fraternity Hall, Thursday, June 1st, 7.30 p.m. ; the
President, Octavius B. Frothingham, in the chair.
The Record of the preceding Annual Meeting was read by the
Secretary, and accepted.
The President announced that the first business in order would
be the proposition, which had been advertised with the notices of
the meeting, to amend the Constitution so as to make five mem
bers of the Executive Committee constitute a quorum, — the
reason for the change being that, since it now requires a majority
of the Committee to make a quorum, and several members reside
in distant parts of the country, it is frequently found difficult to
secure the attendance of a sufficient number for the transaction
of business. The amendment, which appends to the third article
of the Constitution the words, “ Five members of the Executive
Committee shall constitute a quorum,” was put to vote and passed
unanimously.
Richard P. Hallowell, Treasurer of the Association, read his
Report ; by which it appeared that the receipts of the year (by
balance from last account, membership-fees and donations, sale
of publications, and proceeds from lectures) had been $2,355.59 ;
expenditures (for last Annual Meeting, Western Conventions,
Boston Lectures, publications and correspondence), $2,694.53 ;
�6
leaving a deficit, due the Treasurer from the Association, of
$338.94. Mr. Hallowell explained that a considerable portion
of this deficit belonged to the lecture account, and was guaranteed
by persons specially interested in the Lectures, but not yet paid.
The Report was accepted.
The Committee on the nomination of officers reported that they
proposed no change in the present Board, with the exception that
in place of Mr. Tiffany as Director, who wished to be released
on account of ill-health, they had put the name of Thomas W.
Higginson, and in place of Mr. Higginson as Vice-President they
had inserted the name of John T. Sargent, — it being quite
important that one of the Vice-Presidents should be a resident of
Boston. (Rowland Connor, one of the Vice-Presidents elected a
year ago, had already resigned his place on the Committee, having
removed to Milwaukie.)
At a later hour in the session the ballot on officers was taken,
and the Report of the Committee adopted as follows: —
�1
OFFICERS.
OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM........................ New York City.
ROBERT DALE OWEN.......................................New Harmony, Ind.
MARY C. SHANNON........................................... Newton, Mass.
JOHN T. SARGENT............................................Boston, Mass.
Semtarg.
WILLIAM J. POTTER........................ ....
New Bedford, Mass.
Assistant .Secretarg.
MISS HANNAH E. STEVENSON................... 19 Mt. Vernon Street,
Boston, Mass.
^Treasurer.
RICHARD P. HALLOWELL ............................. 98 Federal Street, Bos
ton, Mass.
^Directors.
ISAAC M. WISE................................................. Cincinnati, Ohio.
CHARLES K. WHIPPLE....................................... Boston, Mass.
MRS. EDNAH D. CHENEY.................................. Jamaica Plain, Mass.
FRANCIS E. ABBOT........................................... Toledo, Ohio.
JOHN WTEISS............................. ....
Watertown, Mass.
THOMAS W. HIGGINSON.................................. Newport, R.I.
The Annual Report of the Executive Committee was then read
by the Secretary.
�FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
The Free Religious Association has now been four years in
existence, — a period already longer than was allowed for its career by
the prophecies of some of its enemies. We do not discover yet any signs
of the predicted early decadence. On the contrary, the past year, the opera
tions of which we here report, has been one of increased activity and special
encouragement. One of the Boston daily papers, in noticing the printed
pamphlet containing the proceedings of our last Annual Meeting, said,
“The Report gives evidence of a compact and lasting organization.” We
are confident that our Report of this year’s doings will strengthen this
evidence. Our field of work has been materially enlarged; and the receipts
of our treasury, increasing regularly each preceding year, have this last
year doubled in amount. True, our Treasurer, unfortunately, has to
report a deficit. But this is rather because no very vigorous special
measures were taken to raise the necessary sum, than because it could not
be raised. The Committee were confident that the members of the
Association would sustain them in carrying through successfully the pro
posed plan of operations for the year, and would supply the needed funds
as soon as the deficiency should become known. At the same time we
wish to say that the Committee would be relieved of much anxiety, and
could lay t'heir plans much more confidently and effectively, if their con
stituents would be more prompt and generous in their contributions. It
certainly should require no vigorous begging to secure the small sum of
money that this Association has thus far used each year. And the Com
mittee see how they could use a much larger sum to advantage, if it
should be intrusted to them.
But even if the Committee had been inactive, the Association might
still have reason to congratulate itself on the auspicious signs of the times.
So far from being the result of a transient impulse whicfh is soon to spend
itself, the Free Religious Association represents ideas and principles that
are among the most vital elements of the present age, and that are
every year gaining ascendency among thoughtful and practical people
throughout the civilized world. Unrestricted liberty of thought, the
�9
religious recognition of science, the direct application of religion to prob
lems of social and private life; spiritual fellowship on the basis not of
creed nor of alleged exclusive Revelation, but of common human aspira
tions after truth and virtue,—these surely are principles substantial
enough to give enduring vitality to any organization that shall be faithful
tn them. We might indeed specify one single feature of these general
ideas and principles, which of itself would furnish a sufficiently solid
foundation for an Association like this. We refer to the natural kinship
of the religions of the world, which is being historically and scientifically
established by the laborious research of such scholars as Max Muller, —
an idea which is gaining ground rapidly, and which must in time revolu
tionize the theology of Christendom. With this idea the Free Religious
Association from its origin has been in perfect line. And when to this
you add that it respects historic investigation of all kinds, that it is in
harmony with the progress of science, that it welcomes the largest and
finest culture, that the humane and philanthropic spirit of the age is also
one of its inspirers, that commerce and material enterprise are working
for it in opening the avenues by which nations and religions are to be
brought into a more intimate acquaintance and fellowship, — it is evident
not only that the Association has an ample and worthy field, but that many
instrumentalities are engaged in doing the work to which it is pledged.
What has been done by the Executive Committee the past year may
be summed up as follows : — PUBLICATIONS.
The usual Report of the Addresses and Discussions at our last Annual
Meeting has been published, making a pamphlet of one hundred and
twenty pages. From the nature of the subjects treated at that meeting,
this pamphlet is an excellent representation of the principles and objects
of the Association ; and our friends, who have occasion to answer inquiries
on this point, could hardly do better than to keep a supply of it on hand for
the benefit of inquirers. One address in the pamphlet, that of William
Henry Channing, on the Religions of China, was considered as having a
special interest in view of the present immigration of Chinese to this
country; and a separate edition of it was printed. A large portion of this
edition has been sent gratuitously to persons in public life who are in a
position to influence legislation with regard to the Chinese, — to members
of Congress, Editors, &c. More recently the Committee have had printed
in pamphlet form the article by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, on “ The
Sympathy of Religions;” first printed in “ The Radical.” This pamphlet
also makes a most excellent statement of one of the fundamental ideas of
2
�10
our Association. With these pamphlets added to those of preceding years ,
the Association at present possesses the following publications:—
Four Reports of Annual Meetings.
“Worship of Jesus,” by Samuel Johnson (published by aid of Association).
“ Reason and Revelation,” an Essay by W. J. Potter.
“ The Religions of China,” by W. H. Channing.
“ The Sympathy of Religions,” by T. W. Higginson.
Of the first Report, only a few copies remain; and calls for it can no
longer be supplied. The other three are yet on hand, and are still in
demand. The matter in them is mostly such that it does not grow old,
and many persons who begin their acquaintance- with the Association by
reading its last Report wish then to read those that have preceded it.
Under the head of publications last year, we announced that an arrange
ment had been made with Mr. F. E. Abbot, the Editor of the Toledo
“ Index,” by which a certain portion of that paper was devoted to the
special interests of the Free Religious Association, and edited by its
Secretary. This arrangement was harmoniously continued until the end
of the year 1870, and it is believed with advantage to the Association. It
was then abandoned, and in place of it what was deemed a better plan by
all concerned was substituted. The Association’s department was given
up, but officers and friends of the Association agreed to fill the same space
each week as editorial contributors. This they do in their individual
capacity merely, and not as officers of the Association ; and there were no
reason to note the fact here except to say that the Association has no
longer any official or special department in “ The Index.”
CONVENTIONS.
At our last Annual Meeting a resolution was passed recommending the
Executive Committee to take into consideration the question of holding
conventions, in the interest of free religious ideas, in different parts of the
country outside of Boston; and to arrange for such conventions, if they
should deem them practicable. This resolution received early and care
ful attention, and was finally referred to a Sub-committee with full power
to act in the matter. The result was that a series of three conventions
was arranged, and held in the West in the early part of last November.
For the convenience of speakers, who could not be long absent from their
regular posts of duty, the conventions were necessarily put close together
in time. But this was decided to be also an advantage from a public
point of view, since the meetings from this cause attracted more attention,
and the public impression was deepened. The points selected for the con
ventions were Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Toledo. And at each of these
�11
places most interesting meetings, continuing two evenings and a day, were
held. The evening sessions were all attended by audiences large and
attentive. And the audiences at the sessions during the busier part of the
day were very respectable in numbers and not lacking in enthusiasm.
The opening session at each place was devoted to setting forth somewhat
specifically the principles and aims of the Free Religious Association.
At each of the other sessions some one practical question was considered,
bearing on the emancipation of religion from irrational dogma and degrad
ing superstition. The conventions were everywhere welcomed with gen
erous and hearty hospitality by local friends. They were all attended
by the President and Secretary of the Association, and by other members
of the Executive Committee ; and the Committee who had them specially
in charge were perfectly satisfied with the success of the experiment.
From what they saw and heard, they came to the conclusion that the West
is particularly open to the reception of the ideas which the Free Religious
Association represents. There are probably a hundred other places where
similar conventions could be held, and with the same success. On the
intervening Sunday between the conventions, two meetings were held by
the Secretary of the Association in Richmond, Ind., where large and
intelligent audiences gathered. If some of our lecturers could be spared
from other fields of labor for an extended tour through the Western States,
we are confident that great interest in our cause would be awakened and
great good achieved.
LECTURES.
Another enterprise, undertaken by the Executive Committee the past
year, was the management of the course of Sunday Afternoon Lectures in
Boston, now known as the “ Horticultural Hall Lectures.” These lect
ures had already been conducted by individual management for two
seasons. They had been widely reported in the newspapers of the country,
and had achieved a national reputation. Their‘agency in the circulation
of rational and liberal ideas seemed too good to be abandoned ; and, since
the individual managers did not wish to continue the responsibility longer,
the Committee had little hesitation in accepting the trust, — especially as
any funds that might be needed above what would be secured by sale of
tickets were guaranteed by private subscription. Ten lectures were given,
making a course equal, it is believed, in ability, variety, and interest to
those of preceding yearsi The audiences were large and more uniform
than at the previous courses ; and, had it not been for the fact of several
very inclement Sundays occurring in the series, it seems probable that the
course would have fully paid all expenses. There is little doubt that these
lectures, if continued, may be made self-supporting. It is a question
�however, whether, if the Association keep the management of them, it
should not be put into a condition to open them free, or nearly so, to the
public. There are many persons to whom these lectures would be daily
mental and spiritual sustenance, a vital element in their education and
life, who cannot afford to pay three or four dollars for the price of a
ticket. If some means could be provided to meet the wants of this class,
the object of these lectures'would certainly be better reached, as well as a
better example set of that equal brotherhood which it is one of the objects
of the Free Religious Association to promote. And if the plan of these
lectures could be enlarged, so as to extend perhaps through eight or nine
months of the year, and to admit of series of lectures on some specific topic
or for some specific class of people, — as lectures on science for working
men, — their usefulness might be still further increased.
RADICAL CLUBS.
One interesting fact of the year has been the formation of local free
religious associations, generally under the name of Radical Clubs, in sev
eral places through the country. These have no direct official connection
with this Association, and are only noted here as one of the signs of the
times. They have come, just as this Association from its origin has
declared they should come, out of local interest and needs ; and they vary
in their form and methods somewhat according to local demands. They
express, as they should, the free spontaneous sentiment of the communi
ties where they exist, and are not dependent for their sustenance on any
missionary subsidizing from abroad. At the same time these local organ
izations may become very efficient channels through which this Association
may communicate with the public, and are valuable aids in forwarding its
work.
CORRESPONDENCE.
The correspondence of the Association is still one of its most interesting
features, and that of this year indicates a growing attention throughout
the country to its principles and aims. Letters asking for our publica
tions, or enclosing a dollar for membership, or a larger donation, or making
some inquiry with regard to our objects and work, have come from all
sections of the Union, — from Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Minnesota,
California, as well as from New England and New York. Our con
stituency, as shown by our correspondence, already extends through threequarters of the States. Not a few of the letters come from those who
are in connection, at least nominally, with so-called evangelical denomina
tions, but who are. believers in liberty, and are earnestly inquiring for the
�13
light of a more rational faith. And sometimes they reveal a strange
mixture of the elements in these denominations; as when a minister of
a Christian church in West Virginia, having, as he says, just attended a
conference of his sect where it was urged and resolved that the members
should individually devote themselves more zealously to the spread of
gospel truth, sends for a supply of our publications, and for any thoroughly
liberal and rationalistic tracts that we can procure, that he may distribute
them in his neighborhood, — believing, as he adds, that this is the kind of
“ gospel truth ” needed in this age.
Our correspondence abroad, also, discloses an increasing desire for
acquaintance with the Free Religious Association, and an increasing faith
in its capacity for usefulness. In England there are movements looking
toward the organization of similar societies, and a letter has been received
from one who is much interested in these attempts, suggesting co-operation
with us in certain forms of work, — as in the publication, in English, of
certain portions of Oriental religious books for popular distribution. It
may not be practical to do any thing of this kind at present, but this is a
hint of what may be.
It was stated at our last Annual Meeting that there was a prospect that
Keshub Chunder Sen, the native modern prophet of India, would visit
this country, and that your Committee were in correspondence with him,
earnestly urging him to carry this purpose into effect, and offering to
him the cordial hospitality of the members of this Association. Subse
quently he was invited also to give one of the lectures in the course last
winter at Horticultural Hall. But he was compelled to forego his hope
of coming to America. After his return to India, we received from him
the following letter: —
The Brahmo Somaj
of
India ; Calcutta,
26tA October, 1870.
owe you a hundred apologies for leaving your kind message
unanswered so long. In anticipation of your invitation, I had almost made up my
mind to visit America after making a short stay in England. But owing to illness, and
the urgent necessity of prolonging my stay in England, and cultivating a deeper
intercourse with the leading men of the place with a view to insure the success of
my mission, I was unfortunately compelled to abandon the idea. Nothing, I can
assure you, would have gladdened and encouraged me so much as a visit to your
great and glorious country; and I would surely have undertaken a voyage across
the Atlantic but for the above reasons. Should it please God, I may do so at some
future time. In the mean time accept my warmest thanks for your kind invitation,
and my cordial regards for you, the Eree Religious Association, and the whole body
of liberal thinkers in America. I am sure that, in the fulness of time, all the great
nations in the East and the West will unite and form a vast Theistic brotherhood;
and I am sure, too, that America will occupy a prominent place in that grand con
federation. Let us, then, no longer keep ourselves aloof from each otherj but coDear Brother, — I
�14
work with unity of heart, that we may supply each other’s deficiencies, strengthen
each other’s hands, and with mutual aid upbuild the House of God. Please take this
subject into serious consideration, and let me know if you have any suggestions to
make whereby a closer union may be brought about between the Brabmo Somaj
and the Free Religious Association, — between India and America, — and a definite
system of mutual intercourse and co-operation may be established between our
brethren here and those in the New World. Such union is desirable, and daily we
feel the need of it more and more. Let us sincerely pray and earnestly labor, in
order that it may be realized under God’s blessing in due time.
With brotherly love, I am ever yours,
To Wm. J. Potter,
Keshub Chunder Sen.
Secretary F. R. Assoc’n, America.
To this cordial and fraternal letter it was replied that, while the Free
Religious Association was not a church in the sense of the Brahmo Somaj,
and was not organized on any creed, even that of Theism, it was, never
theless, most heartily in sympathy with all efforts for religious emancipa
tion and reform, and most especially with this native effort in India,
which so finely illustrates the truth of one of our principles, that there is
substantial vitality in all religions ; and that, with this understanding of
the difference in our organizations, we could most earnestly reciprocate
the desire for a closer fellowship and co-operation. It was further sug
gested that intercourse by frequent correspondence, and a regular exchange
of publications, with, if it were possible, some arrangement for a larger
distribution of the publications of each organization in the country of the
other, might be the most practicable form of co-operation for the present.
RELATION OF THE ASSOCIATION TO SPECIFIC RELIGIONS.
The natural relationship which we of this Association bear to this native
reform in India leads us to say a word on the relation of the Association
to the specific religions in general ; and with this statement this Report
may fitly be brought to a close. There is considerable misconception in
the community, even among those who are not a little in sympathy with
the Association, as to its actual position on this point. Because the Free
Religious Association aims to do exact justice to àll the religions that
exist, or have ever existed; because it invites them, so far as is practica
ble, to come together upon one common platform, where each may state
its faith for itself, and each and all may be treated with fraternal respect
and courtesy ; because the Association emphasizes the underlying sym
pathies and agreements which, beneath all differences, are found to exist
among the religions ; because it asks whether the natural development of
these common elements will not gradually wear away the differences and
antagonisms, neutralize specific and exclusive claims, and bring mankind
�15
into universal spiritual unity and fellowship on the basis of freedom, —
because of all this, some persons seem to think that the Association has
seriously set itself to the task of striking out the eighteen centuries of
Christian history, and of resuscitating the ancient religions; or that, if
it has not attempted this, it has at least proposed to take the things that
are true and good in all the religions, and, mechanically combining them,
produce a new religion. It may be confidently said, we think, that the
Free Religious Association has more wisdom than either of these repre
sentations of its objects would imply.- It is reported of the quaint English
Platonist, Thomas Taylor, that he excited the alarm of his landlady and
lost his lodgings, because that good Christian housekeeper discovered that
he was making preparations to .sacrifice a bull to Jupiter in her back
parlor. But, with all the variety of faith and freedom of utterance
among the members of the Free Religious Association, we have not
heard that old Thomas Taylor has any disciple among us; and we believe
¿hat the orderly housekeepers of the established religions, of whatever
name, may dismiss all anxiety, in this particular. And as to the criticism
that we propose to select the truths of all the religions, and mechanically
make a new religion of the compound, it is sufficient to say in reply that,
if there is one thing which members and officers of this Association have
declared more emphatically than another, it is that religions are not made,
but grow,— that there is a natural historic order of religious develop
ment, a steady evolution of religious ideas from certain primitive germs,
and that the special religions are so many phases and stages of this
progress, brought about by the different conditions under which develop
ment has taken place. We refer to the old religions, endeavoring to do
exact historical justice to each, in order to set forth the proof of their
natural relationship to each other, and their descent from substantially
the same primitive germs. But this is not to affirm that the order of
development is to be reversed, nor that any of the religions, especially
the latest, can be spared from the historic line. But neither, on the other
hand, do we assume that the order of development has reached its ulti
mate, — that the religious sentiment has historically exhausted itself, and
Spoken the final word of absolute religion. On the contrary, we would
assert rather that the religious consciousness is as vitally organic to-day
as it has ever been; and that, whatever changes are coming in the relig
ious condition of the world, these changes are to be brought about by no
mechanical, eclectic combination of the virtues of past religions, but
are to be the product of regular organic growth and progress. The
Universal Religion, that spiritual unity and fellowship of which we in this
Association sometimes speak, is certainly to grow, just as much as the
special religions have grown. These religions, after having served some
�16
specific purposes in the history of the race, will, as it seems probable,
gradually be absorbed by a process of vital assimilation into the religion
of universal unity. And we have come to that epoch when there appear
very marked signs of progressive movement in several of the world’s
* great religions on converging lines towards a common centre of faith and
fellowship. It is this grand movement of the religious consciousness, to
which the Free Religious Association (in this feature of its work of which
we now speak) would strive in some way to give voice. The Association
does not expect to shape the movement: it does not profess to organize
it. It rather is shaped and organized by the movement. It simply
desires in some way to represent it, to give it utterance, to remove artificial
barriers, dogmatic and ecclesiastic, in order that it may have a freer
opportunity and a more natural progress.
Such, friends, is a statement of our principles so far as, this year, a
statement seems called for in our Report, and such the simple record of
your Committee’s.doings. The record seems brief; yet we are confident
the work has not been without good and lasting effect. Give your Com
mittee the means, and it can show larger performance. And now, as we
come together again in our Annual Meeting, let us renew our vows of
zeal, fidelity, and generosity to the cause which is here committed to our
hands.
Voted, That the Report be accepted, and its subject-matter be
open for remarks.
The President spoke of some of the practical difficulties in the
way of such an Association as this, so large and free in its scope ;
but explained how they were gradually being overcome. He also
alluded to some of the misinterpretations and criticisms of its
objects and principles. Some persons objected that it was not
called the “ Free Christian Association; ” but the term “ free
Christian ” would be as much out of place as “ free Mohammedan ”
or “ free Buddhist: ” religion was the larger word. And this
Association wished to emphasize the fact that there is common
ground under all the religions, and did not propose to set up the
special exclusive authority of any; therefore it did not, as an
organization, call itself after any of the specific religious names.
Neither was the Association, as some seemed to think, a Boston
' or New England clique. It was American and democratic. Its
ideas were adapted to the masses of the people. Its officers were
selected from different parts of the country ; and he suggested
�17
that it would be well to increase the number of Vice-Presidents
so as to give room for a larger number of ^representative names
from different localities.
Mrs. E. D. Cheney made some remarks on the enlarging,
liberalizing influence of one of the ideas of the Association, —
that of the “ Sympathy of Religions,” — and hoped- that the
means* might before long be provided for putting such ideas into
a popular form for the benefit of the class who had not the time
or culture for reading the original books. She spoke also of the
great importance of educating the so-called working-classes into
rational views of religion, as a preventive against violent revolu
tion. The late outrages in Paris, in one Of their features, showed
a tremendous reaction against the ecclesiastical system, and the
latent power of revolt that exists in the human mind against the
priestly authority. If this Association could open a free passage
for this rebellious feeling, so that it should find utterance in love
and joy and a rational reverence for truth, instead of violence and
bloodshed, it would accomplish one of its highest objects.
Rabbi Guinzburg, of the Boston Hebrew Synagogue, spoke
of the freedom, both actual and ideal, that belonged to Judaism,
maintaining that the Free Religious Association was the natural
result of principles which Judaism had taught. God had made
man in the image of Himself, — not the Jew only, but man, —
and so the Divine likeness was found in all humanity, the same
elements of reason and intelligence in all races and religions. In
like manner the moral law, as embodied in the Mosaic command
ments, was not for the Jew alone : it was a law for man; in other
words, conscience was another of the universal elements of human
consciousness. And in these common elements of intelligence
and conscience he found the grounds of human fellowship and
brotherhood ; hence he rejoiced in the Free Religious Association,
and could join it and work with it.
Mr. Oliver, of Boston, spoke of the great value of the name,
“ Free Religious Association,” and hoped it would never be
changed.
Mr. T. W. Higginson followed in a few remarks on the impor
tance of continuing the kind of work that had been undertaken
the past year in holding the Western Conventions, and urged
upon the Committee the advantages of having one convention,
3
�18
before the next Annual Meeting, in New York City. Mr. Hig
ginson’s remarks w6re indorsed by Mr. A. M. Powell, of New
York. Mr. Frothingham spoke of the difficulties of holding a
meeting in New York, but thought they might be successfully
overcome the present year.
Mrs. Cheney hoped that the suggestion made by. Mr.t Froth
ingham as to increasing the number of Vice-Presidents would be
adopted ; and, on her motion, it was voted that the Executive
’ Committee prepare such an amendment to the Constitution, to be
acted upon next year.
,
Voted, That the Chair appoint a Committee on the nomination
of officers for next year, and an Auditing Committee. Aaron M.
Powell, Mrs. Maria E. McKaye, and Abram W. Stevens were
appointed as a Nominating Committee; and Cornelius Welling
ton and Henry Damon, as Auditing Committee.
Adjourned to meet in Tremont Temple, Friday, 10 a.m.
�SESSIONS IN TREMONT TEMPLE.
MORNING SESSION.
The Convention assembled according to adjournment in Tre
mont Temple, Friday morning, at ten o’clock. The officers were
on hand at the hour ; bût, owing to the noise in the Hall from the
people continuing to come in, the meeting was not called to order
till 10.25. (At eleven o’clock the large hall was well filled, and
even larger audiences were present at the later sessions.)
The exercises were introduced by a brief preliminary address
from Mr. Frothingham, the President. Speaking first of the
gradual development of the ideas and work of the Association
and of the changes which had been made from year to year in the
programme of the Annual Meeting, exhibiting the large breadth
and variety of phase covered by the principles of the Association,
he proceeded substantially as follows : —
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT.
The purposes and principles of the Free Religious Association by this
time are, or ought to be, well understood by all who care to under-,
stand them : that we hold to religion ; that we believe in the sympathy of
religions ; that we are cordial to all forms of religion and hostile to none ;
that we are opposed to all sectarianism in religion, to all ecclesiasticism,
to the very spirit and form of dogmatism ; that we aim at getting at the
secret of religions, at the kernel and heart of the great faiths that have
ruled the world ; that we wish to build now into the foundations of human
nature ; that we wish to reconcile religion with all the other great interests
of life, and to show that they are one ; that we wish to prove and to make
perfectly clear to all men the identity of religion and science, religion
and philosophy, religion and literature, religion and art, religion and
music,—nay, the perfect compatibility — may I not also say the identity?
— of religious life and principle with all the great stirring activities that
impel men to build themselves up into grander and nobler forms of civiliza
tion. To touch all these questions ; to touch them firmly ; to touch them
�20
reverently ; to speak of them positively ; and to use them all, not in any
degree or in any sense for the destruction of any thing that is good or of
any thing that is true, but for the culture and ripening of all that is true
and good, — this, it is perfectly understood by all who care to understand
us at all, is our deliberate aim and purpose and resolution.
And so to-day we adopt still another form of address. We are trying
to get closer and closer to our central fact. We are seeking to bring our
guns to bear more directly upon those great obstacles, which in our view
stand in the way of the reconciliation of religion with all these great
interests and supreme facts of life. Therefore this morning we propose
to throw down this problem, — a problem not of speculative interest
mainly or largely, but of public interest, of intellectual interest, of literary
interest, of practical interest, — the question of the relation between
Religion and Science, which are coming face to face with each other in
broad and long lines that cover acres and acres of territory, setting front
to front the thinkers and the feelers, the thinkers and the believers ; and we
wish to make those two great classes shake hands. In the afternoon we
throw down this problem, — that religion does not rest on the authority
of any single person. We throw down the problem of Jesus, for rev
erent and frank and generous discussion. In the evening we come face
to face with those two great influences of our time, as of all time, Dogma
tism and Superstition ; and we shall try to get our thought uttered on
that matter. The opening essays, you will understand and will allow,
are carefully prepared by gentlemen selected for the purpose. They are
meant to be thoughtful, intellectual, and as thorough discussions of the
questions as the time will admit. The discussions that follow are in
tended to develop the same subjects under more popular forms of appli
cation and address, with a view of interesting a larger number of people.
We must have an intellectual principle: we wish it to be understood
of all men that we stand upon ideas, that we believe in culture, that we
are ready to justify ourselves with thinkers, and have beneath us a
rational basis of thought and philosophy. But we do not wish to end
there. We are not simply a body of littérateurs ;■ we’are not simply a
company of clergymen in the pulpit or out of the pulpit ; we are not a
little clique of writers, of speculators, of closet philosophers ; we are not
a dainty, finespun set of men who amuse ourselves and hope to entertain
society with a few lucubrations about the tremendous realities of faith.
We mean business. The Free Religious Association means to address
itself to the common mind and to the common heart and the common will
and the common interest of the world. I believe, our constituency
generally believes, that our movement is intended to be, and will event
ually become, a great popular movement. We expect to get the sym
�21
pathies of the working classes of people. If it were not that we felt that
the times demand the emancipation of the working mind of this country
from all sorts of dogmatism, ecclesiasticism, formalism, ritualism, super
stition, we should hardly have undertaken a movement like this,.formid
able as it is in its burdens, formidable as it is in its toil. No : we wish to
put this thing home to the people; and we confidently expect, when our
methods are perfected and we can work according to our minds, such a
rally from the earnest mind and the resolute purpose of the -common
people of America as no existing sect commands. And we shall not be
set aside from this expectation: we shall say we are disappointed and
defeated if we do not in time hear a popular echo to our words. We
mean humanity : we are interested in the laboring man, the laboring
woman; and we are interested in developing every spark of intellect, of
will, of purpose, that exists in the body of our American communities,
so that there will begin to blaze before long a great burning fire of popu
lar enthusiasm for a faith that is free, rational, and humane.
I tell you, friends, there is a feeling — I know it living in New
York; people in the West, and here in the East, know the same thing
— there is a feeling of deep dissatisfaction with the present state of the
religious world in America. People are beginning to apply to their
religion the same liberty that builds up their politics and their literature.
There is a deep-seated discontent. It breaks out in words. It breaks
out in resolutions. It shows itself in the desertion of the churches. It
shows itself in the abandonment of the sacraments. It shows itself in
the neglect of the old sanctities. It shows itself, too, in distant, unintelli
gent murmurings and mutterings, that threaten something like a revolu
tion. And to anticipate this, to discharge the threatening clouds of their
most formidable shocks of lightning, we come forward to bridge over the
chasm between the old and the new; to offer a larger sympathy, a grander
hope, a more generous basis of faith, to the thinkers, doubters, disbelievers, sceptics, and deniers of our age. This is but a beginning.- We
are feeling our way gradually. I ask your allowance: judge us not by
what we have done in the past, judge us by what we purpose and hope
to do in the future. What we have done I could stand here and tell you
of, if I had the time and this were the place now. It has been a great deal
more than it seems, and the excess of result over the visible means em
ployed convinces me, and convinces us all, that we have struck a key
note, that we have awakened a response; that we are on a trail over
which thousands and thousands of men and women are moving, and that the
intelligent word alone is needed to crystallize and bring together in vigor
ous, organic fornl the chaotic elements that now seem distributed and
scattered over society.
*
�22
The President closed his remarks by introducing John Weiss
as the Essayist to open thé morning subject. Mr. Weiss pre
faced his reading by saying that he had written altogether too
much for the occasion, but would make selections from his manu
script, and ask that the address might not be judged as a whole
until printed entire in the Report.
ESSAY BY JOHN WEISS.
Religion and Science.
I am to speak upon the attitude of Science towards Religion. But
this subject opens into so many quarters of thought, some of which
presume a technical knowledge not possessed by me, that I can only
hope, by selecting my topics, to furnish some suggestions towards any dis
cussion that may follow. A thorough treatment of this interesting subject,
which is beginning to attract the attention of all minds that are more or
less competent to deal with it, involves more time and more respect for
details, more personal and experimental observation, than- any morning
platform can furnish. I lately heard of a saying of Professor Agassiz,
that the amateur reader of scientific discoveries never actually possessed
the facts that are described : they belong only to the observer, who
felt them developing and dawning into his knowledge with a rapture of
possession that seems to share the process of creation. To that just
remark I add my conviction that the practised observer does not always
thoroughly apprehend and calculate the drift of the facts which he pro
cures. Still, a mere reader of science, however receptive his intellect
may be, or inclined to scientific methods, is not in a position to speak
with authority upon various points which emerge from the controversy
that now prevails between the two parties of Natural Evolution of Forces
and Natural Development of Divine Ideas ; for thus I propose to state
the matter in hand.
One party may be said to derive all the physical and mental phenomena
of the world from germs of matter that collect forces, combine to build
structures and increase their complexity, establish each different order of
creatures by their own instinctive impulse, and climb at length through
the animal kingdom into the human brain, where they deposit thought,
expression, and emotion. At no point of this process of immense duration
need there be a divine co-operation, because the process is supposed to
have been originally delegated to a great ocean of germs : they went into
action furnished for every possible contingency, gifted in advance 'with
the whole sequence from the amoeba, or the merest speck of germinal
matter, to a Shakspearian moment of Hamlet, or a Christian moment of
�23
the Golden Rule. Consequently, ideas are only the impacts of accumulating sensations upon developing brains; an intellectual method is only
the coherence of natural phenomena, and the moral sense is nothing but a
carefully hoarded human experience of actions that are best to be repeated
, for the comfort of the whole. The imagination itself is but the success
of the most sensitive brains in bringing the totality of their ideas into a
balanced harmony that corresponds to the Nature that furnished them.
The poet’s eye glancing from earth to heaven is only the earth and sky
condensing themselves into the analogies of all their facts, in native inter
play and combination, wearing the terrestrial hues of midnight, morn,
and eve. The epithet divine, applied to a possible Creator, can bear no
other meaning than unknown; and the word spiritual is equivalent to
cerebral. Spirit is the germinal matter arranged at length, after a deal
of trouble, into chains of nerve-cells that conspire to deposit all they have
picked up on their long journey from chaos to man. So that when their
living matter becomes dead matter, their deposit drops through into non
entity ; and the word Immortality remains only to denote facts of terrestrial
duration, such as the life of nations and the fame of men with the heaviest
and finest brains. If a brain-cell discontinues its function, existence can
not continue.
The other party, which inclines to a theory that creation is a development
of divine ideas, is very distinctly divided into those who believe that this
development took a gradual method and used natural forces that are every
where upon the spot, and those who prefer to claim a supernatural incom
ing of fresh ideas at the beginnings of genera and epochs. The former
believe that the Divine Mind accompanies the whole development, and
secures its gradualism; or, that the universe is a single, unbroken expres
sion of an ever-present Unity. The latter believe that the expression
can be enhanced, broken in upon by special acts that do not flow from
previous acts, but are only involved in the ideas which the previous acts
contained; so that there is a sequence of idea, but not of actual creative
evolution out of one form into another. The former think that they find
in the marks of slow gradation from simple to complex forms, both of
physical and mental life, the proof that a Creator elaborates all forms out
of their predecessors, by using immense duration of time, but never for a
moment deserting any one of them, as if it were competent to do it alone;
so that the difference of species, men, and historical epochs, is only one of
accumulation of ideas, and not of their interpolation. The latter think
that the missing links of the geological record, the marked peculiarities
of races and periods, the transcendent traits of leading men, are proofs
that the Creator does not work by natural evolution, but by deliberate
insertion of fresh ideas to start fresh creatures. One party recognizes
the supernatural in the whole of Nature, because the whole embodies a
*
�24
divine ideal. The other party is not reluctant to affirm the same, but
thinks it essential to the existence of Nature to import special efforts of
the ideal, which are equivalent to special creations : so that the naturalist
gets on with nothing but unity and gradàtion ; the supernaturalist cannot
take a step without plurality and interference.
What are the opinions entertained by Naturalism upon the origin of
ideas, the moral sense, the spiritual nature ?
Naturalism itself here splits. One side borrows the method of natural
evolution of forces so far as to derive all the contents of the mind from the
experiences of mankind as they accumulated and systematized themselves
in brains ; and when further questions are put as to whether there be an
independent origin for a soul, and a permanent continuance for it, —
whether there be an original moral sense that appropriates social experi
ences, and gives a stamp of its own latent method to them,— the answers
are deferred, because it is alleged that Science has not yet put enough
facts into the case to support a judicial decision.
But another camp is forming upon the field of Naturalism. Its follow
ers incline to believe that all human and social experience started from a
latent finite mind, distinct from the structure that surrounded it ; and that
the movement of evolution was twofold, one side of it being structural
and the other mental, both strictly parallel, moving simultaneously in
consequence of a divine impulse that resides at the same moment in the
physical’and mental nature, — an impulse that accumulated into a latent
finite mind as soon as a structure appropriate to express it accumulated ;
that the history of mankind has been a mutual interplay of improving
circumstances and developing intelligence, but that the first step was
taken by the latent mind, just as the first step in creating any thing must
have been taken by a divine mind ; and that the last steps of perfected
intelligence reproduce the original method and purposes of a Creator who
imparted to man this tendency to reproduce them. In this latent tendency
all mental phenomena lay packed, or nebulous, if you please ; or it was
germinal mentality, if you prefer the term ; or inchoate soul-substance.
The term is of little consequence, provided we notice the possibility of
something tb begin human life with beside the structure that was elabo
rated out of previous creatures.
We know that the human brain repeats, during the period of its fœtal
existence, some of the forms of the vertebrata that preceded it. We also
know that when any organ of man’s body is diseased, a degeneration takes
place that repeats the state of the same organ in the lower animals. The
secretion is no longer normal, but recurs to a less perfect kind. So we
4 notice that in degeneration of the brain some idiotic conditions occur that
repeat with great exactness the habits and temper of monkeys and other
animals. The descending scale of degeneration, no less than the ascend
�25
ing effort of development, touches at animal stages, and incorporates
them in the human structure. It would require a uniformity of degen
erating conditions sustained through an immense duration of time to
degrade a human structure into any actual animal form, if, indeed, such a
retrogradation be not forbidden by the mental and moral superiority which
any human structure must have attained. Still, the physical and mental
diseases of mankind are significant allusions : they mimic, as it were, some
stages of structural development.
When Dr. Howe visited the isolated cottages for the insane at Gheel
in Belgium, he noticed that the noisy .ones (les crieurs, the howlers) could
be heard in the dusk crying like animals, but-clearly human animals;
and he says, “ Is it only fancy, or were men once mere animals, shouting
and crying aloud to each other; and is this habit of shattered maniacs
another proof that all organized beings tend to revert to the original type,
like that reversion of neglected fruit tpwards the wild crab ? ”
The popular language notices this tendency to deterioration in the
tricks of over-sensual men: we^say a man is a hog, a goat, a monkey.
Some cunning facial traits remind us irresistibly of the fox, others of the
rat. These resemblances were the unconscious elements in the Egyptian
theory of metempsychosis, or the retrogression of evil men into the
animals whose special tricks were like their own.
We cannot help seeing that Nature slowly felt her way towards us,
built her clay models, reframed her secret thought, committed it to brains
of increasing complexity, till man closed the composing period, and began
to blab of his origin.
But how did he begin to do that ? Was his social life a physical result
of the sympathies of gregarious animals, who defend and feed each other,
protect and rear their young, dig burrows, spread lairs, and weave a nest ?
That, it is replied, was only the structural and physical side of something
that had been preparing to step farther. It could not have furnished the
germinal conditions of speech, thought, and conscience. Was it be
cause the fox was cunning, that man learned to circumvent his enemies;
because the elephant was sagacious, that he undertook to ponder; because
the monkey was curious, that he began to pry into cause and effect;
because the bee built her compact cell, that he grew geometrical ? The
answer made is, that these structural felicities lay on the road between a
Creator who geometrized, and a creature who learned to see that it was
so, and called it Geometry. At the end of that road is a mind that under
takes to interpret whence the road started, and how it was laid out. If
you prefer to derive that latent mind from these previous states of animal
intelligence, it does not damage the presumption in favor of independent
mind. Estimate the animals to be as sagacious as you please, until they
4
�26
barely escape stepping over into the domain which our reflective words
have appropriated, — such as memory, perception, adaptation, causality,
also a rudiment of conscience. Even be surprised»by traces of selfdevotion, like that in the “ heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded
enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or in the old baboon, who,
descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young com
rade from a crowd of astonished dogs.” Say, if you will, as Rama
said in the Ramayana, when a vulture died in defending his mistress: “ Of
a certainty there are amongst the animals many good and generous
beings, and even many heroes. For my part, I do not doubt that this
compassionate bird, who gave his life for my sake, will be admitted into
Paradise.” Believe, if you are a dog-fancier, that in “ that equal sky ”
your faithful dog will bear you company. It would infringe upon my
sense of personality no more than to have him trotting by my side in this
world. Here he is altogether unconscious how my moral sense sets store
by and idealizes his instinctive service, and how I flatter him with imputa
tions of my own self. He licks the hand^that extends to him a mood of
the Creator’s appreciation of fidelity.
But grant that the Creator derived the latent human mind by gradual- ‘
ism out of all kinds of animal anticipations. The mind thus derived
reaches to a distinction from physical structure, and to a subordination^
it to ideal purposes, at that point of development where the man can say,
1 am; that phrase is an echo against the walls of creation of the first
creative fiat of Him who is I Am. When man finds language to express
his sense of personal consciousness, God overhears the secret of his own
condition told into all the ears he has created by all the tongues of his
own spiritual essence. The mouse cannot squeak it, nor the elephant
trumpet it; the sparrow cannot cheep and twitter it, nor can the ape
chatter his anticipation that hqjf is 'about to be liberated into speech and
personal identity. All the herds of the animals furnish the physical
structure of man with the devices of their strength and instinct, but they
have no personal freedom to contribute. A school of whales will yield
so many barrels of oil to feed the midnight lamps of thinkers who chase
the absent sun with surmises concerning a light that never sets.
Certainly it must be true that the physical and chemical forces which
are involved in acts of creation cannot suggest to any parts of creation
the previous laws of the Creator. We say thele forces reach the felicity
of making a man: if this be so, they have made something that is differ
ent from their own nature. Man himself betrays this difference as soon
as he begins to establish science upon universal laws: it is a proof that
he is not only a part of creation, in the natural order, but also the member
of a spiritual order, by virtue of which he attains slowly to conceptions
*
�27
*
of the laws that made him, including the chemical functions of his
various organs. Which of all our secretions could explain themselves ?
After they have discharged all their duty of nutriment and defecation,
. they have reached the end of their tether. Could the pancreatic juice,
by going into partnership with the liver, kidneys, and stomach, succeed in
explaining the manner of its secretion, and how it pours into the duode
num? Can the blood, which is the expression to which these lower
functions reach, lift to the brain a report of the way it grew to be red,
Mid of the use of the white corpuscles ? Do the countless nerve-cells
that weave their telegraphic circuits through the brain — to which every
organ sends its message, and receives thence its reply — convert these sen
sations into something that is not nerve-cell, that is not gray or fibrous
matter; do they lose their identity and become deduction, wit, imagina
tion, and synthetic thought ? When you can prove that germinal matter
made itself, you will be in a condition to show that matter interprets itself.
Dor that is what man does: he interprets not only the matter of his own
private structure, but of all organic and inorganic forms. Does matter
arm the eyes it makes with the telescope and microscope to overcome its
own extension and density ?' What is it that calculates the weights of
the planets, and records the relative ratios of their movements, and an
nounces new planets before they have been seen? Something kindred
with the intellect that preconceived the existence of that universe of
germs which becomes function, substance, form, and force. “ When we
See daily how all created things hasten to fall in with the logic of the
best thinkers, and to crystallize along the lines which they draw, we know
that such lines are drawn parallel with divine ideas, and that science is
made in the image of a Creator.”
This position of theistic Naturalism entitles it not to be afraid of all
the scientific facts that can be produced. «If Mr. Darwin could prove to
morrow that we have descended from an anthropoid ape that tenanted the
boundless waste of forest branches, we should as cheerfully accept our
structure created out of dust in that form as in any other. There is
dignity in dust that reaches any form, because it eventually betrays a
farming power, and ceases to be dust by sharing it. I am willing to
have it shown that I travel with a whole menagerie in my cerebellum: *
your act of showing it to me shows that neither you nor I are members
0>f that menagerie. We are its feeders, trainers, and interpreters. We
act God’s part towards it, as he does upon the scale of zones and conti4 nents. In us, in fact, he improves upon his natural action by bringing
all his dumb creatures under one roof, where he enjoys the benefit of
knowing that his motive in creating them is understood and delighted in;
so that though saurians are out of date, and he no longer has the joy of
�28
making the mammoth and aurochs, we rehearse the ancient raptures for
him, and preserve them in our structures.
“ Thus He dwells in all,
From life’s minute beginnings, up at last
To man, — the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life; whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o’er the visible world before,
Asking to be combiiied — dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole —
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make —
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man.”
“ Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things : the winds
Are henceforth voices, in a wail or shout,
A querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh —
Never a senseless gust now man is born.”
“ So in man’s self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendor ever on before,
In that eternal circle run by life.”
I submit to you the doubt whether germinal matter, even if it be called
Protoplasm, and then re-baptized as the individual, Robert Browning,
could have composed those lines which contain prevision of the whole drift
of modern science. Could nerve-cells, nourished by roast meat, revel in
those “ august anticipations ” of a state and attainment that depend upon
a continuance of our life ?
We need be afraid of nothing in- heaven or earth, whether dreamt of
or not in our philosophy. It is a wonder to me that 'scholars and clergy
men are so skittish about scientific facts. I delight, for instance, in the
modern argument which reproduces and systematizes the ancient fireworship of the Persian, by showing that the sun’s atmosphere contains
* all the stuffs of the solar system, and is its God whose vibrating emanations
wake all things to a morning of living. The more possibilities you
attribute to the sun, the more exhaustive you allege its creative power to
be, to the extent, if you please, of sending the fine ether which courses
through the brain-cells, the more correspondent to the solar nature you
show that all life-action may be, — the more you help me to my belief in a
latent mind as the first term of human existence. You have made that
'fluent and wallowing sun a solid stepping-stone in the great river of
�29
phenomena, and it takes me across dry-shod, with not the smell of its
fire upon my garments, — takes me directly to a Cause for something so
glorious, for such a mobile and flaming minister to all things. On the
way toward that Cause, if I choose, I can step to suns more distant, each
of which is the life-centre of its system and the distributor of germs;
but though this pathway may stretch to the crack of doom expected by
the theologian, I shall find at the end of it something that sands the floor
of heaven thick with suns. Something; not another sun, but suns’ Father.
I started with an idea of Cause, and now I find the reason why I did,
because nothing is uncaused. I get justification for using the term; for
it appears to be the language used at length by One who can no longer be
content that his heavens should have no sound, and that their voice
should not be heard. Latent mind first betrayed its presence on the earth
by beginning to grope from effects to causes, to account for things. Thus
the mind, like a weak party of soldiers separated from its base by for
midable streams, has slowly pontooned its way back to the main Cause by
successive discoveries of causes. It is recognized afar off, it is welcomed,
and rushes with the hunger of long absence into the arms of comradeship.
It does not disturb me to be told that the mind has no innate ideas;
that, in fact, the entity called mind is a result of the impressions which
the senses gather from Nature, a body of sifted perceptions ; that all our
emotions started in the vague sympathy that the first men had for each
other when they found themselves in company; that a sense of justice is
not native to the mind, but only a consequence of the efforts of men to
get along comfortably in crowds, with the least amount of jostling; that
the feeling of chastity has no spiritual derivation, but was slowly formed
in remote ages by observation of the pernicious effects of promiscuous
living; that, in short, all the mental states which we call intuitions should
be called digestions from experience. For, supposing this theory to be
the one that will eventually account for all mental phenomena, why need
one care how he grew into a being who throbs with the instantaneous
purpose of salutary ideas, with the devotion of his thought and conscience
to the service of mankind, with a ravishing sense of harmony, and pro
portion that breaks into his symphony and song ? When a man reaches
the point of being all alive, thrilling to his finger-tips with all the nerves
a world can contribute, shall he distress himself because, upon examining
his genealogy, he discovers no aristocrat, but a plebeian, for his ancestor ?
If, in fact, he should discover something that had fallen to the convention
ality of being an aristocrat, it would, as the world goes, breed a’suspicion
that something previous had maintained the dignity of being a plebeian.
Manhood ennobles all ancestors, and they enjoy princely revenues in its
vitality. Must I make myself miserable because I am told that for nine
4
�30
months of my existence I was successively a fish, a frog, a bird, a rabbit,
a monkey, and that my infancy presented strong Mongolian characteristics ?
This, then, was the path to the human mind, that outswims all fishes in a
sea where no fish can live, that leaps with wit and analogy more agile
than frogs or kangaroos, that travels by aerial routes to spaces where no
bird’s wing could winnow. So be it, if it be so. I do not care for the path
when I come in sight of the mansion of love and beauty that has been
prepared for me. Its windows are all aglow with “ an awful rose of
dawn.” What delicacy of sentiment dr imagination can be desecrated
because barbarian ancestors felt like brutes or fancied like lunatics ? Can
the find’s majestic conception of a divine plan of orderly and intelligent
development be unsphered and brutalized because the first men felt the
cravings of causality more faintly than the pangs of hunger? Causality
has reached its coronation-day: its garment of a universe is powdered
with galaxies and nebulae, suns glitter on its brow, the earth is its footstool,
its sceptre God’s right hand. You cannot mortify or attaint this king by
reminding it of days spent in hovels and squalor, hiding from the treason
of circumstances, sheltered and fed precariously by savages. Would you
unseat him ? Then annihilate a universe.
• This latent tendency to discover cause rescues the first beginnings of
the human soul from any materialism that would deny its independent
existence. It provides the human structure with a tenant, who improves
it as his circumstances become more flattering, until both together frame
one complete convenience. We do not require a theory of innate ideas
to establish this soul upon earth and set it going. All we require is
the theory of innate tendency, of latent directions, of inchoate ideas, that
pervade this germinal soul-substance just as the divine ideas pervaded
primitive matter. I conceive that our mental method and our moral sense
were possibilities of soul-germs, but that experience stimulated them into
improving action and expression, till at length our idea of sequence and
origin, and our sense of right and wrong, have become normal conditions
of intelligence. Why not say, then, that they are at last intuitive ? But
it is chiefly important to accept them as essential elements of a human
person, without regard to the method of their derivation. For derivation
is not in itself fatal to the independence of the thing derived. It is not
among genera and species : why should it be among personal ideas ?
People do not like to have their conscience derived from gradual discov
eries of acts that turned out to be the most useful or the most sympathetic,
nor to feel that they have no inner guide but this inherited succession of
selfish experiences. And, indeed, the theory does not account for all the
facts. It is unable to give any satisfactory explanation of the moral con
dition of such men as Woolman and John Brown; of any brakeman or
*
�engineer who coolly puts himself to death to save a train ; of Arnold of
Winkelried who “ gathered in his breast a sheaf of Austrian spears,”
and felt Swiss liberty trample over him and through the gap.
This theory, that the moral sense was slowly deposited by innumerable
successions of selfish experiences, could make nothing of the story lately
told of the way a little girl was rescued, who had “ wandered on to the
track of the Delaware Railroad as a freight train of nineteen cars was
approaching. As it turned the sharp top of the grade, opposite St. Geor
ges, the engineer saw the child for the first time, blew ‘ Down brakes,’
and reversed the engine. But it was too late to slacken its speed in time;
and the poor baby got up, and, laughing, ran to meet it. 11 told the con
ductor,’ says the engineer, ‘ if he could jump off the engine, and, running
ahead, pick the child up before the engine reached her, he might save her
life, though it would risk his own ; which he did. The engine was within
one foot of the child when he secured it, and they were both saved. I
would not run the same risk of saving a child again by way of experiment
for all Newcastle County, for nine out of ten might not escape. He took
the child to the lane, and she walked to the house, and a little girl was
coming after it when we left.’ The honest engineer, having finished his
day’s run, sits down the next morning and writes this homely letter to the
father of the child, ‘ in order that it may be more carefully watched in
future,’ and thanking God ‘ that himself and the baby’s mother slept tran
quilly^ last night, and were spared the life-long pangs of remorse.’ It
does not occur to him to even mention the conductor’s name, who, he
seems to think, did no uncommon thing in risking his own life, unseen
and unnoticed on the solitary road, for a child whom he would never prob
ably see again.”
The feeling of utility would confine men strictly within the limits of
the average utility of any age. Each generation would come to a mutual
understanding of the things that would be safe to perform. The instinct
of self-preservation would be a continual check to the heroism that dies
framing its indictment against tyrannies and wrongs. The great men who
fling themselves against the scorn and menace of their age could never be
born out of general considerations of utility or sympathy; for each man
would say that a wrong, though not salutary to its victim, would not be
salutary to one who should try to redress it. Sympathy that was spawned
by the physical circumstances of remote ages could never reach the temper
of consideration for the few against the custom of the many. You could
no more extract heroism from such a beginning of the moral sense than
sunbeams from cucumbers.' We owe a debt to the scientific man who can
show how many moral customs result from local and ethnic experiences,
and how the conscience is everywhere capable of inheritance and education.
�32
He cannot bring us too many facts of this description, because we have
one fact too much for him; namely, a latent tendency of conscience to
repudiate inheritance and every experience of utility, to fly in its face
with a forecast of a transcendental utility that supplies the world with its
redeemers, and continually drags it out of the snug and accurate adjust
ment of selfishness to which it arrives. The first act of such devoted
self-surrender might have been imitated, no doubt; and a few men in every
age, having learned by this means that a higher utility resulted from doing
an apparently useless thing, might be developed by a mixture of reason
and sympathy into resisting their fellows. But how are you going to
account for the first act ? How for a sentiment of violated justice, if justice
be only the precipitate of average utility? How for a tender love for
remote and invisible suffering, for wrongs that are a nuisance at too great
a distance to be felt or observed, if sympathy is nothing but an under
standing among people who are forced to live together ? I should as soon
pretend that my nostrils were afflicted by a bad smell that was transpiring
in Siam.
This reminds me to ask how any particular odor was first discovered to
be nauseous. If the reply be offered, that olfactory discrimination must
have resulted from experiences of the effect of odors, gradually acquired,
and slowly modifying the organ, I say that the process must have begun in a
capacity to perceive, no matter how imperfectly, that a scent is disagree
able. What is that previous, capacity ? It must have been something
that was not created by the scent. It is no objection to this that people
differ in sensibility for odors, so that a flower may be disagreeable to one
and pleasant to another. If odors create the organ that corresponds
to and discriminates them, they ought to appear the same to everybody.
But there is a latent perception that varies among individuals, and decides
their favorite perfumes ; and it is curious to notice how they correspond
to mental characters and seem to have a faint analogy with the condi
tion of the-moral sense. Discrimination in smelling could not have been
originated by the things that were smelt, any more than a man’s trail or
blood-drip must have preceded and created the blood-hound’s tracking. »
The moral sense to which we have attained by stages must have started
from an original tendency to become sensitive to moral acts. We cannot
say that the results have established the tendency, any more than we can
say that marks of design have originated a designer; that an eye, for
instance, developed light, or that light created a light-maker.
The phrases, I ought, 1 ought not, are not merely functional, as when
a blood-hound tracks, a pointer points, a watch-dog listens through the
house. We detect even in the animals a sense of duty in carrying out
their instincts, and a deferring to man, as if to a source of the instincts,
�33
or at least to a power that holds them responsible for good behavior. So
W® instinctively refer our moral attitude to a source of moral law.
It is possible we have reached a moral sense from the anticipatory
types of conscience in some animals, by drifting along with them through
Mr. Spencer’s experiences of utility and Mr. Darwin’s social instincts.
But a latent mental tendency must have fallen in with that structural
drift at some point, else man would never agonize to say, 1 ought, 1 ought
not. Is it any the less divine because it has consorted with animals and
savages, and found their company no hinderance to this elaborating of a
sense of right and wrong? It is all the more divine, because it betrays
conformity with the great order of development, at the same time that it
has been forereaching through it to perfect moral actions.
What was the nature of John Woolman’s secret satisfaction when he
insisted upon non-compliance with the habits and allowances of his time ?
If conscience be the result of discovering what turns out badly for a per
son who is living on the scale of other persons, why should he, a tailor,
have discouraged the making and wearing of fine clothes; have refused to
touch, to his own serious privatior^ one of the products of slave-labor;
have protested, to the loss of sympathy and gain of contempt, against
ownership in men? Was he an abnormal variety, a deteriorated speci
men, a man whom advantage hurt ? Where do Mr. Darwin’s social
instincts come in? Woolman withstood all these for distant and abstract
incentives, and originated, without social and intellectual material, a fresh
epoch of moral feeling. The latent tendency attained to liberation from
all its previous experiences.
One of the bases of conscience is said to be the intellectual capacity to
recall past impressions, to compare them with present temptations, and to
decide upon the most advantageous action. Possibly; but it cannot be a
sine qua non, as we see in the cases of those uncultivated souls who have
a new scruple or a sudden heroism. And some of the best intelligences
are dull and uncertain in the moral sense. Is it because they are at the
same time weak in the social instincts ? Some very acute and long
headed pirates of society are fond family-men, love to gather children
around their knees, have sympathetic impulses; and, when they are not
on a plundering excursion among widows and orphans, as directors of
mills and railroads, would be selected to found a society of correct men
in consequence of immaculate dicky and domesticity.
The lower senses, by repeated experiment and observation, acquire an
unconscious, automatic movement. When the higher senses have passed
out of their experimental stages, they acquire a spontaneous movement.
In the region of intellectual and moral ideas this becomes intuitive; that
is, they attain to a power of looking into themselves, of comparing and
5
�34
deducing, and also of anticipating other ideas, or at least evolutions from
existing ideas, which sometimes lead to the forefeeling of a law of Nature
in advance of its confirmation by experiment, — as when Lucretius antici
pated moderns vyith a theory of evolution, of the magnet, and of the
constitution of the sun; and Swedenborg divined fresh planets before
Leverrier was furnished with the calculus which might have led him
experimentally to the fact; or when Kepler saw dimly in his mental
firmament the law to which at length the sky responded. This was
latent correspondence with the law: it was stimulated by all his scientific
knowledge; but when it stepped upon planetary ratios into a new secret
of creation, it announced its independence of experience, and betrayed
a similarity in essence with the Creator.
Let us now consider if this latent mentality, which reaches thus to
independent action, has any chance of surviving the dissolution of the
cerebral structure by means of some force, called Vitality, distinct in kind
from all the physical and chemical forces that build our frame. Natural
ism denies a special vitality, because it is so engrossed with showing how
functions develop by the instrumentality of human forces: it affirms that
the whole drift of experimental analogy sets against the conception of
another force, unless it be one that shall differ only in degree, and not in
kind, not in essential independence, not in permanent continuance, from
the rest. Observation has lifted these forces to the level of so many
functions, till at length it has detected them conspiring in the action of
the brain, that scientific men are cautious about predicating the existence
of a finer force that comes to use the deposits of the brain-cells, or that
is exhaled from them into an independent essence. This modesty is not
mistimed, for its singleness of purpose supplies marvellous facts and
hints about the human organization which no religion can afford to do
without. It is childish to be afraid of their tendency, and weak to
declare that they yet decide the question.
What is Vitality ? I notice, in the first place, that our common contrast
of animate and inanimate — which means, when we make it, that we
believe that the former could not have been developed from the latter —
is really only a contrast derived from a general optical impression. We
think we see that one object is alive and that another is not, and our
sight applies the tests which experience has preconceived as being cor
respondent to life and to death. But it does not follow that the origins
of life — which are removed from us by immense duration, and thus far,
if they are still going on, by inadequate means of observation — must he
distinct acts of germs that exist in a plane apart from the inanimate.
They may have been, and may still be, evolutions through forces out of
inanimate matter. Inanimate may be only latent animate.
�35
But I think we ought to discard this old-fashioned contrast, and substi
tute the terms organic and inorganic; for a bit of wood or stone will
. show, beneath the most powerful microscope, a gathering and shifting of
granules, a confused intermingling, that is enough to betray motion at
least, and to put us on the track of the suggestion that a primitive ocean
of germs was set on its creative way by motion. Nothing then can be
called inanimate that contains the first quality or essential towards vitality.
But it may be called inorganic if its structure admits of passing to no
Other function. An organism is something that announces vital force or
function; that gathers the universal cells, granules, cytods—or whatever
you may please to call protoplastic stuff — into some definite gesture,
however faint, and begins to use the inorganic to nourish and sustain its
organs.
Mr. Beale, an eminent advocate for a special and indestructible vitality
in man, says: “ If a particle of living matter, not more than joo^o' th
of an inch in diameter, were made in the laboratory out of non-living
matter, — if it lived and moved, and grew and multiplied, — I confess my
belief in the spiritual nature of my faculties would be severely shaken.”
Why should it be shaken any more than if it should turn out to be true
that living matter originated the spiritual nature ? It is certain that living
matter is instrumental in expressing our faculties, whatever their origin
may have been. Then of what consequence is it whence the living matter
is derived? We are not appalled at the possibility that organic matter may
be made out of non-living—or, more properly, inorganic — matter. We
are nerved for such a result, whether it occur in the laboratory or in Nature,
by the conviction that the spiritual functions are no more imperilled by
using matter originated in any way, than the Creator hazarded his existence
by originating matter in some way to be used by himself and by us. His
vitality resides in the whole of matter; so that even if the inorganic be
convertible into the organic, or the organic into the inorganic, he has to
no extent fallen dead. Then there can be no danger to our mind that
may result from either process, or that may receive its material instru
ment from either.
There is nothing really inanimate in all creation ; for the Infinite Life
has gone into representation by each of its epochs, from the primordial
germinal matter through all its evolutions: no form or result of it can
fee dead. There is no such thing as death, but an incessant shifting into
and out of all forms. The stone arrests for the present the shifting, but
it must have a certain kind of life in itself in order to do that, — some
thing that tends to be not long or constantly arrested, that is all the
time vaguely tumultuous with its imprisoned particles. If any thing
could be really dead, God would, to that thing’s extent, cease to be alive.
*
�36
•
I have sometimes indulged the speculation that the molecular activity
observable in inorganic substances is a degeneration of the germinal
activity which is observable in the amoeba and other vital stuff. That is,
I suppose that the germinal has preceded the molecular activity ; and that
all stones, minerals and gems, were held positively vital in the original
nebulosity, in that ocean of creative germs, which was not inorganic, though
it was undetermined. What we call dead matter is the excrement of a
germinal universe; but it may still go into fertilizing, and is doing it,
perhaps, all the time. It once shared the life of all germs, though it now
seems to have become inert and solid merely to build continents for the
support of vital forms. The word inert cannot represent an absolute fact
of death, but only a relative condition of vitality.
But what is vitality in a human structure? It may be only (a part of
the universal vitality, raised to very high conditions, or it may be a spe
cial mode of it; but in either case I do not see why it does not share the
universal advantage of being indestructible. “Yes,” says the scientific
man ; “ but it also must share the universal tendency of forces to shift into
force again when the structure that contains them is destroyed. The
man’s vitality may still exist, but only in some mode of impersonal force,
as motion shifts into heat. When all the known forces are discovered
constantly at this interplay, we cannot assume that another force yet
undiscovered will be differently endowed.” What have we got to say to
that ?
The only attempt which I have noticed, of purely scientific pretension,
at an answer is contained in a paper on Vitality, read by the Rev. H. H.
Higgins, M. A., before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liver
pool. He says : “ The most delicate tests for indicating minute changes in
electrical, thermal, and other conditions, have been applied at the moment
of death, and have shown no sign. Now it is certain of the forces of heat
light, motion, &c., that they are absolutely indestructible: they may be
converted one into the other, but they cannot cease to exist. If the
vital principle was analogous to these agencies, it might escape in any one
of them ; but of this no well-ascertained trace has been observed in any
investigation of the phenomena of death.”
But this statement proves too much. If the tests applied at the moment
of death discover no force at all in the act of escaping, it only shows that
no force at all is discoverable under the conditions of a dying moment.
But we know that thermal and electrical conditions exist in the functions
of a living body: they ought, then, to be intercepted as they pass away.
Where, for instance, does the thermal condition go, and why should it
not be seen in going? For it certainly existed just before the moment
of dying, and for some time after. This, then, is not a decisive test of the
undetectable presence of a special vitality.
�This is the question. If there be specific vitality, does it escape from
death with the mental, contents of the person whose body died, to prolong
his identity, or is it only another physical force, though a specific one,
with character distinct from heat, light, &c., but still a force that joins
after death the unconscious equilibrium out of which it first allied itself
to a human organization ?
To call vitality specific, and to claim that it is prior to organization,
does not answer the above question.
All the steps of modern investigation seem to disprove the theory of
personal continuance. Functions of the body which were long supposed
to depend upon a specific vitality are now referred to known chemical
forces, and are repeated in the laboratory. The theory is pushed from
post to post, till it seems to have only a base of moral probability to fall
back upon.
Far from undervaluing that,.— finding, on the contrary, in the manifesta
tions of personal character a hint of immortality that is superior to, at
least, the resurrection of any dead body, — I still claim that Science is
not so neutral on this question as it thinks to be. I am quite content to
wait for some special investigation of the point, while the co-ordination of
all phenomena by mental laws that explain creative acts, and refer us back
to a pre-existing mind, show me, with the emphasis of a universe, that the
minds which can interpret and spiritually reconstruct the plan of creation
must share the nature of the Creator. It is his nature to have pre
existed distinct from his germinal material. It must be the nature of
corresponding mind to be distinct from its germinal material, to have been
allied to human structures in a state of latent mentality.
I own I find it difficult to conceive how this latent mind was gradually
developed out of the structures that passed through animal into human
conditions. It seems at first as if the mental quality must have been
homogeneous through all its gradations. In what manner could it have
begun to be different in kind from itself as it was in its previous animal
expressions ? At first, in trying to meet that question, we appear to be
driven to put up with one of two alternatives: either that the animals
have shared independent vitality, if we have; or that we started from
germinal soul-monads that were outside of, and previous to, physical
structure, but were in some way attracted to all the points of human
development.
But I suggest whether there can be any germinal soul-substance except
the mysterious force which we call Vitality wherever we see it in the human
state. It went into creation allied with all the germs which have subse
quently taken form. It carried everywhere a latent sensibility for the
creative law out of which it came. It swept along with a dim drift of
�38
the Personality that first conceived it and then put it on the way to self
expression. It mounted thus by the ascending scale of animals, and its
improvements in structure were preparations to reach and repeat Per
sonality, to report the original sense of the Creator that he was independent
of structure. At length it became detached from the walls of the womb
of creation, held only for nourishment by the cord of structure, till it
could have a birth into individualism. Then the interplay of mind and
organism began, with an inherited advantage in favor of Vitality. Now
Vitality, thus developed and crystallized into personality, tends constantly
back towards its origin. The centrifugal movement through all the animals
is rectified by the centripetal movement in man. The whole series of
effects recurs to an effecting Cause.
At any rate, it is quite as difficult to conceive that there were pre
existent soul-germs which could be attracted from without to human
embryos, to become their vital and characteristic forces, as it is to frame a
clear statement of the way in which independent minds became developed
out of all the previous animal and semi-human conditions. How or when
could a soul-monad become buried in a foetal form ? If such an act could
take place, it would break up the inherited transmission of characters ; for
it is not credible that every door of descent is waylaid and watched by
just the style of soul-germs that can straightway be at home and carry on
the business at the old stand. It is plain that the whole process of evolu
tion of vitality into personal consciousness must take place within the
limits of human structure, and that the child is father of the man.
Could the unconscious form of the embryo select its appropriate soul
germ, and detach it from the world-cluster to absorb and incorporate it
through the mother ? By what nicety of instinct or affinity could the
moment of fertilization, or a subsequent moment of the foetal throb,
pick out of some great ether of vital monads just the proper soul-germ, so
that each human family might propagate its traits and accumulate its
ancestors ? It is impossible to conceive of any descent or amplification of
vitality except in the direct line of fructification, conception, and birth.
It is not absurd, then, to suppose that each human being started
from a finite beginning. He pre-existed only in the impulse of vitality.
It is objected that, if he was not an actual essence or monad that
pre-existed before his finite structure was brought up to the felicity of
receiving it, he could not continue after the physical structure had dis
appeared. Why not ? Personal continuance need not be supposed to
depend upon any special moment of eternal creativeness from which the
person may have started. It might be early or late : in Judæa, Greece, or
California. When a person starts, he need not be imagined to stop until
the infinite Personality out of which he started declines to project the
�39
vitality that propagates persons. If there be such a fact as personal
WOtinuance, it must depend only upon the impulse of vitality.
It does not trouble me that I cannot put my finger on the period of
human development when man began to have independent personality.
Who can tell when a child begins to have a consciousness of self, and to
say I, with a distinct feeling of what his speech involves ? Yet at length
he is found to be saying it, and to be converting the identity of conscious
ness into personal character. Ages of semi-human conditions may have
preceded, as years of characterless infancy precede, the assertion of per
sonal identity. The men of those developing ages may have perished
like ants that swarm in the pathway of feet. What of that, if a day
comes that speaks an imperishable word ?
That word is, I know Unity — I share Unity — I pass into consciousness
of Creative Laws — I touch the Mind from whom my mental method started,
and I thus become that circle’s infrangibility. My law of perceiving is *
so complete an expression of the law of creating, that I perceive, as the
Creator once perceived, that matter alone could not start with it nor end
in it. I know the laws which matter did not make. Then matter did not
make my knowledge.
Science does me this inestimable benefit of providing a universe to sup
port my personal identity, my moral sense, and my feeling that these two
functions of mind cannot be killed. Its denials, no less than its affirma
tions, set free all the facts I need to make my body an expression of
mental independence. Hand in hand with Science I go, by the steps of
development, back to the dawn of creation ; and, when there, we review all
the forces and their combinations which have helped us to arrive, and
both of us together break into a confession of a Force of forces.
Science has performed a mighty work against Theology, in freeing
us from its superstitions. We have picked ourselves up from Adam’s fall,
and are busy shaking that dust from our garments; geological cemeteries,
full of dead creatures, speak to exonerate us from the unhandsome trick of
having brought death and sin into the world; we shake the tree of knowl
edge, and woman helps us to shake it and devour the invigorating fruit;
there’s nothing edible which we do not perceive to be a divine invitation to
eat, with a conviction that the great Landlord is not plotting murder to
pillage our persons. We feel perfectly safe in every part of the house,
and are learning how to promote the interests of the Builder, by clearing
out corners that grow infectious, and correcting our own carelessness ; so
■that there is not a slur left to cast upon God. Death is discovered to be a
process of correlation and recombination of force; and we detect Heaven’s
wonderful footprint, that can never be mistaken, in the paths of evil.
Only let us know enough, re-enforce every gift with the beneficial facts,
�40
irrigate the whole surface of the mind with law, that our structures may
more happily repeat the health that mantles on the face of a universe.
Scientific men find themselves in opposition to almost every form of
theology, because the world is: they have no personal motive, and indulge
in pique no more than the great system whose movements and causes they
express. But Theology has so systematically libelled the Creator and
misled the creature ; so deliberately substituted trains of arbitrary thinking
for the law of Evolution; so depraved God by pretending the depravity
of man, to make a jailer of one and a felon of the other ; so placarded the
spotless plan with whimsical schemes of redemption; and so represented
the universal Love, as if it were confectionery to stop the whimper of re
turning sinners, — that Science might well transfix it with the contempt
of a gaze that is level with the horizon, and as brimful hot with the noon
day sun.
When the great observers are accused of disrespect towards Religion, it
would be well to remember how long, and to a period how late, men have
understood Religion to be something that is brought down by modified
systems of Theology, and to be dependent upon an act of faith in them.
Science takes men at their word; they point to a number of articles that
embody mental propositions ; they extol emotional and mystic states, and
exclaim, Behold, here is something better than good behavior, better than
health, superior to scientific interpretation,—- behold Religion I Science,
armed with all its glasses, curiously investigates this portent that as
sumes to be divinely accredited, and cannot discover a single germinal
dot, not a bit of plasma that might make one honest animalcule of a
spiritual man.
In the mean time, real Religion is busy with moral sense, right mental
method, true social feeling, ecstatic vision of the divine order, to appropriate
every genuine fact and put it to service in its scheme of humanity. How
ever violently Science may pretend to be hostile to Religion, there is nothing
in the world so religious as its method and industry. For Religion, in
stead of being, according to the old definitions, a restoration of rebellious
human nature to divine favor — attained by theological beliefs and emo
tional practices, by prayer and praise, by pietistic exaltations and homiletic
absorption — is simply the recurrence of human nature to the facts of the
universe.
At first, this definition seems to be a dry, pragmatic one, fit only to
express the old function of Theology, imperfectly exercised by it in meta
physical notions about the divine plan and nature. Theology always»
presumed that its statements represented facts. But Religion, recovering
of late from mediatorial emotions, enlists intelligence, arms itself with a
mental method that is the counterpart of the divine plan, and casts loose
�41
for ever from the speculations of Theology. Then it assumes the function
of indicating realities ; and every fact it gathers is a proclamation of God’s
love, or will, or wisdom, and an invitation to man to be on healthy terms
with these attributes. In recurring to the facts of a universe, man recurs
most sensibly to God. But this gesture can be made only with the help
of intelligence. Facts must be taught and known, not metaphysical con
trivances or scriptural formulas. The brain must learn to act upon its
own facts, in order to present the world with a body in normal condition
to perform a normal work. The relation between the finite and infinite
must be found upon lines of forces and stepping-stones of laws, not upon ,v
phrases and ceremonies. These weave no features of the infinite into
our life. As well might a woman expect by knitting to embroider the
zodiacal light upon her stocking. If she croons a favorite hymn of Watts
or Toplady over her work, the sky is still too cunning to descend, being
content to overlook her patient labor and to light the daily steps of the
little feet she covers. Her automatic action is superior, for religion, to all
her darling sentiment.
I close by noticing that Science benefits Religion with hints at a more
practical treament for the objects of moral and spiritual culture. The
technical results of scientific observation now begin to enrich every
department of life, as they flow into the kitchen and workshop, and down
all the streets; so that a man may draw at his door health and mental
nourishment, and find an alarm-box in every ward that will report what
ever threatens sanity and comfort. All the kingdoms of Nature contribute
their economical facts, which slowly find their way into social science,
into the methods of domestic life, into education and amusement. Man
was never so sumptuously served before with things to depend upon. He
learns what to eat, drink, and wear, how to ventilate his dwellings and to
build his fire. The most inventive minds teach him labor-saving pro
cesses, which aspire even to regulate and economize religion. This prompt
and convenient way of life begets a desire for facts: we want nothing
encumbering the house that we cannot use; theories go into the waste
basket, with a good many superfine emotions that were once thought to be
essential to a spiritual life. Sometimes, by picking over the basket, we
discover that gifts very dear to the household, legacies of eternity, have
been hastily thrown there, in the greed for clearing out all the corners
and ambushes for rubbish, to have nothing around that is not portable and
ready for immediate use.
This tendency to bring the art of living down to its practical mini
mum has gone so far that some sources of spiritual culture have fallen
into discredit. The newspaper, the lecture-room, the scientific cabinet,
the technological school, the special platform, is commended : men crave
6
�42
exactness and the current intelligence. They long to live creditably in
the present, because they have discovered it is the master of the future.
And American pulpits have certainly earned the distrust, if not contempt,
of the more robust portion of the people, by approaching all the critical
moments of the private or public life with their pill, their plaster, or
buchu, as they sound the trumpet of the quack before them in the market
place, to call their livelihood together.
There is something which may be called the vestry-sentiment, that acts
like choke-damp upon all natural ideas: it will breathe an artiiicial
compound, or prefer to be asphyxiated. A badly ventilated Scripture is
responsible for these moods, which cower over their little pile of smoul
dering texts, and shudder and protest at leaving all the doors ajar. It is
nourished upon phrases in books of mediatorial piety, and drops theatre
tears over its futile feeling of dependence, its consciousness of sin, or
faded appreciation of good behavior. Its disciples are the victims of fatty
degeneration, when it is their boast that they are nothing but heart. To
some of the churches of this want of faith, intelligence has penetrated far
enough to excite suspicions that the old phraseology has been outgrown;
they are almost ready to espouse the new Bibles of human information
and enthusiasm, not quite ready to cast off the damaged phraseology of
the clerical believers in miracles and grace : so that they remind one of the
garret of the eminent but rather penurious lawyer, which was found,
after his decease, filled with suits of clothes, each labelled, “ Too old to
wear, but too good to give away.”
Verbal statements of imaginary relations between man and God, set
off with appeals to a kind of average religiosity, compose the sanitary
method of such churches. It lets more blood than it makes: precious
life-drops of the common people, squandered in artificial excitements, in
political compromises, and in the awful campaigns that restore natural
religion to mankind.
A better method will set in whenever the pulpit prefers confirmed real
ities, and looks for them in every province that the wit of man visits, —
when the only question it asks relative to any subject is, What are the
facts ? Let us know the conclusion of the best minds and the most de
voted hearts, let us preach the salvation that intelligence reveals. Open
wide the door of the meeting-house, so that the six days can wheel up to
it, and deposit what the earth and sky manufacture, all the certainties of
all the arts, and every emotion that bears the stamp of sincerity.
Nothing can come amiss, if it comes from a quarter where honest hand
work or head-work has been engaged. The whole universe is let down to
the level of the preacher’s desk, creeping tilings as well as winged. The
voice says: “ Slay and eat them, for there is nothing common or unclean
�43
that God has made.” Nature has sometimes furnished the pulpit with
illustrations: she is ready now to provide the texts and substance also,
and to occupy the whole discourse.
But the treatment must be ideal. All the facts, after passing through
the technical treatment of the platform, the lecture-room, and scientific
session, to receive their diplomas of utility, must come into the pulpit
bringing mankind with them, as into a place where separate localities can
be seen to melt into one broad horizon, stretching so far that eternity is
overtaken and included, and the souls of the spectators are greatly ennobled
to perceive that all their little functions build the endless view.
What is ideal treatment ? A kind that is neither metaphysical nor emo
tional. It is not the investiture of subjects with a poetical form, nor the
speculative infirmity that broods upon an empty nest. There must be a
real egg beneath, for warmth and devoted patience to quicken. The ideal
treatment is that deference to the natural law of every thing which puts
into it the divine breath. To the pulpit is consigned the task of showing
that the earth, the air, the water, swarm with vital germs; that no sub
stance is too solid to resist their penetration, none too thin to support
them ; that man himself is a compendium of them, and in his soul they find
a tongue to express how religious they are, how implicated with the life
and love of the Creator. Ideal treatment sets forth the ideas that corre
spond to every fact and circumstance. It is bent upon proving that they
arise in the soul, and are not transitory views, or impressions depending
upon the position of the spectator, or digested from his food; that they
have a continuity in the laws of Nature and in the persons of men and
women, and are thus connected with the moral order, are self-sustaining,
and derive no authority from any source save Nature herself; and that the
only religious certitude we can enjoy is provided by the harmony between
things, necessities, organizations, and the laws of things.
After the Essay, the President appealed to the audience to
contribute money for the maintenance of the Association, and
said the Finance Committee would pass through the hall and
collect the contributions. He then introduced Rev. Cyrus A.
Bartol, D.D., as one of the oldest and most honored friends of
the Association.
Dr. Bartol said that the essay was like the kaleidoscope, which as they
looked straightway was enlarged and lengthened out; and they saw it was
not only the kaleidoscope of beauty, but the telescope of truth. For him
self, he was not anxious to run a line of demarcation between the lower
�44
creatures and man. lie did not see that it could be drawn clearly. If there
were a place to get into any part of God’s kingdom of life and nature a
distinction of the finest knife, the universe were chaos, and not a universe.
His inability to distinguish between animal nature and human nature was
the sign and proof to him that they could not cut off, on the other side,
between human nature and angelic nature. The old motto, “ The whirli
gig of time brings around strange revenges,” came back to him. They
were told, during the long anti-slavery discussion, “ Why concern yourselves
about these negroes ? They are not men, they are apes.” And lo ! Mr.
Darwin, the cold scientific man, came in and showed them that the white
man was just as much the kin of the monkey. So they were all in the same
boat. He did not want therefore to cut himself off from his lower fel
low-creatures, his “poor relations.” The man who cut himself off from kind
ness to them, from acknowledging some common nature with them, was the
man who ran the most risk of not being admitted to his rich relations by
and by. As he was walking about in the fields, he heard a song that
filled the sky. He hunted a long time before he could find whence it came;
and it was a little brown bird about two inches long, singing, singing, sing
ing, not tired at all, minute after minute, till he was amazed to understand
how the bird could keep it up so. What immense vitality, or what draught
from an infinite fountain of life it must have had ! It continued that song
till he felt God was behind the bird just as much as behind him. Indeed,
he thought birds were the best prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, inspired
as they were, yet mixed some human will and human calculation with
their prophecy ; but the birds prophesy, saying, “ God is ; ” “ All is well; ”
“ There is joy in the universe; ” “ Somebody is having a good time all
through this creation.” The bird was a very unsuspicious prophet; and he
would believe him sooner than he would Jeremiah, who didn’t sing, “ God
is cheerful.” He was willing to trust God for the hereafter. If he was
going to let him go among angels, very well; he did not ask of God any
note of hand — he believed in him. But meantime let them treat kindly
the relations they saw, those they were acquainted with. He really
thought the new feeling that would come through science, and through the
religious sentiment, that the lower animals — the horse, the oxen, and the
rest — were fellow-creatures (as Burns said the mouse was), when it once
impregnated the human mind, would do more for humanity to those animals
than a thousand of Mr. Bergh’s societies. So he was not ashamed of the
long animal train — who should say where it began ? — that men dragged
after them.
He wanted to say a word in regard to what is called Radicalism and Con
servatism. People did not like the word radical; but could they help it ?
They did not make it. It was born of the hour. It was a thunder-bolt
�45
that came down out of the cloud, and they could not get rid of it. It was
objected by the conservative that the radical was a denier; but it seemed
to him that the radical did not say “ no ” half so often as he said “ yes.”
He said yes to Nature. The old conservative theology had not got over
»tying no to Nature. The first shape it took was that God was too high
to dirty his hand in making this world. He did it by proxy. Then there
was the idea that he left it to run itself; only, being a little ashamed of
his work, he stretched out his hand to mend his ways with a miracle ;
Nature was a sort of hell he made to hide away in. The radical believed
that God, like man, was not concealed, but revealed by his works ; and, if
understood at all, it must be through his works. Nature was not an eclipse
of him; it was, if any thing, a crystal transparency, the crystal-palace of
God. The world was God’s robe, his living garment. The radical be
lieved what it was reported he said, that what he had made “ was good.”
The radical also said yes to human nature. The old conservative, when
he found that he could not clean God out of Nature, tried to put him out
of human nature. The radical said, “ No : human nature was Nature with
an addition; and it was blasphemy against God to decry human nature.”
He had rather not be, than to be what the old Calvinistic theology had
said men were. The man who preached the doctrine.of evil as an essence
or an eternal thing did not believe in God. Even the Commune of Paris,
which had just gone down elbow-deep in blood, was not totally depraved.
The radical said yes also to progress. People told them they must
respect the past. He would say, Certainly respect the obligations to the
past; but as in legislation, so in religion, the question was, not what had
been done before, but what was next in order. A friend of his had a pair of
horses so large that they had to be fed out of doors, because there was no
Stable in the town large enough to admit them; and so there were men
who would have to receive their spiritual food out of. doors till the churches
were enlarged: he did not mean enlargement of the pews to make room
for a human body to sit down, but such an enlargement as would make room
for a human soul to stand up. The congregations were too much bound
by old phrases, and by continually worked-over forms of words a thousand
or two thousand years old, as if they could make religion out of them.
In closing, Dr. Bartol gave several interesting illustrations of the law of
human sympathy and kindness, which is able to bind all classes and per
sons together in the bonds of a true church and a natural communion.
Rev. Henry Ierson, of England, was then introduced. He said that
in his experience he had found that whenever men set themselves off under
particular names and sects, and divided themselves from other people, they
did mischief both to themselves and others. After a man was ticketed as
belonging to a denomination, if he said any thing not in accordance with
�46
the usual language of that denomination, he was looked upon with suspi
cion. When there was no ticket, men could meet each other as simply fel
low-creatures of God; and he presumed that was the spirit of the meeting
that day. There were certain old notions that stood in the way, and the ques
tion was, What to do with them ? It was idle to say that men must live past
them; for it was impossible to disregard what had had a history in human
thought for centuries, and also had a present living power. It was idle to
bow in respect before them, simply because they were old ; but what had
been at any time a vital power in the world had a title to his respect which
he was prepared to acknowledge. He would not quarrel with his childhood
nor the methods of his early life ; neither would he quarrel with the child
ish beliefs of the early world. But he could not help trying to find out
about their origin, for he had such an interest in humanity that he felt
obliged to apologize to civilization for the stupid things people had believed
in past ages. In regard to the scientific men of England, he said that
their position with reference to these old questions was not perfectly un
derstood there. Huxley and Tyndall, and the other leaders of science, were
a long, long way from being atheists, and they would be greatly grieved if
any thing they had said had justly and properly brought on them this re
proach. But they did not believe in the first chapters of Genesis, and could
not help saying so. But they did not generally trouble themselves to give
their creeds, because such matters were between the human soul and God.
Mr. Ierson was sure that scientific observation was not the root of religion,
and therefore it could never teach religion as popularly understood.
And the men of science, he said, distinguished between the basis of
religion and the basis of scientific fact and law. He counselled those
who heard him not to be too anxious and over-eager to define their posi
tion, if they were asked to do so. They must make the world feel that
they were really impressing some principle upon it, and then the question
would be answered for them. They must show the world that they doubted
in the first place in order to believe afterwards, and in the second place from
the ground of a temperate belief that compelled them to doubt.
Rev. William H. Spencer was the next speaker. He took a general
survey of the relation between Religion and Science as it had been in the
past, as it was at present, and as he thought it ought to be. They all
knew how Religion looked upon Science first as a bastard boy, entitled to
none of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which she
enjoyed. Religion hated Science because she feared it. While yet in its
infancy, Science came to the conclusion that the earth was not flat, but
round like a marble; and then, when a little older, that the sun did not
revolve around the earth, but the earth around the sun; and then it grew
bold to say that the world was not made in six days. At each of these
�47
declarations, Religion was greatly alarmed for her safety, and declared that
Science would slay her, if he was not stopped in his career. She tried to
stop him herself by the old appliances of persecution, — the rack, the fire,
the dungeon; but each time Science managed to escape and live. The
attitude of Religion to Science had been not that of a brother, but that of
a cruel master to a slave. The attitude of Science for a long time was that
of a cringing slave begging its life of its master But Science to-day was
free. It had emancipated itself from thraldom to Religion. Sometimes,
perhaps, it was a little boisterous and arrogant; and some persons seemed
to fear that Science would now have its revenge on Religion for her past
persecutions. But there was no cause for alarm. Science regarded Religion
with cool indifference and was peaceably disposed; but Religion had not
yet buried the tomahawk. But since the Church in the past had always
been found fighting against truth when fighting against hypothetical science,
it would behoove her to keep hands off now. We must be ready to accept
every thing that Science can positively prove. Mr. Spencer said that he
wanted truth, and he wanted immortality: truth with immortality, if he
could have it; but without it, if he must. He believed that Religion
needed in this age nothing so much as the scientific spirit that looks facts
right in the face ; and Science needed something that Religion might give,
— a spirit of filial trust in the truth. Science was the knowledge of law,
and Religion was trust in the law. They should live peaceably together.
He believed that in the future they would be reconciled and harmonized ;
that each would discover that the other was not its enemy, but friend, and
would help each other to nobler development. Disciplined by the experi
ences of life, they would be joined at last in a true marriage, to the great
gain of both.
The President then asked Colonel T. W. Higginson to add his
word : —
He said : —Mr. Chairman, I should hardly venture to say even a clos
ing word at this late hour of the morning only that, much as has been
said to-day, there are one or two things that ought, it seems to me, still
to be said. I think we all felt, during those two noble statements that
came from Mr. Weiss and Mr. Bartol, that we had attained what Mr.
Emerson pointed out in his first speech here as his desideratum for this
society, — “ the luxury of a religion that does not degrade men.” And, in
the possession of that luxury, I only wish to dwell on one special point
which may not have been enough emphasized even yet, — how large a
part of that luxury consists in the absence of fear. I know of no religious
platform in Christendom except this where men can consistently stand and
�48
say that in their secret souls, whatever happens as the result of investi
gation, they are not afraid, but ready to trust the truth. Go where you
please, you find a creed or a basis of thought which implies the possibility
of an alternative, which has an “if” somewhere; and that “ if” a terrific
one. No matter how sure the theologian may be of his position, it always
seems based upon a certain line of historic probabilities; and a discovered
variation in the testimony of one human being, the change of a single
text, the error of one version, however unwelcome he may think it, how
ever he may shrink from accepting, if he is once compelled to accept it,
may overturn his faith. There is always some alternative he cannot bear
to contemplate, some fact he cannot look in the face. No man is strong, so
long as there is an “ if.” While the case is open and pending for any
man still unsettled, so that some future Darwin or Tyndall may yet dis
turb it, that man is not strong and he is not free. But when a man
comes on this platform, he usually accepts the universe as it is, fearless
of results. Let the path of science be followed to its ultimates and being
back any answer, still he is ready to face it. That man, and that type of
religion, is strong.
I remember in college days they put before us a book to be studied,
called “ The Evidences of Religion.” It startled me as I have hardly
been startled since. What! the evidences of religion ? the case is still
open then ; the matter is in court, is it ? I, too, am on the jury to decide ;
I thought that was settled long ago. My mother never told me when
she first sung her cradle songs over me in childhood, — she never told me
that her religion was founded on “evidences,” implying the possibility of
an “if” at the other side of them. I never dreamed in childhood that
religion was among the doubtful things in the universe. But in college
they didn’t give us “ evidences ” of mathematics; they didn’t offer us a
book treating of the evidences of chemistry. Those were treated as exact
sciences, based on axioms or on recognized facts. It was when we came
to the “ evidences” of religion that the college professors hinted doubts to
us of which our mothers never had given the prediction.
I was not quite satisfied with the tone of some of the statements made
this morning in regard to some of those great scientific men of Europe.
It seemed to be thought essential to show that, whatever their doubts may
be, they never doubted God. That is not what I wanted to know. Our
friend Ierson thought Darwin and Huxley would feel themselves affronted
at being called atheists. Why should they feel affronted if science leads
them out so ? There is a second question with me, — suppose they are
atheists, what then ? If atheism is true, who would not be an atheist ?
If immortality is a dream, who would not know it is a dream? I have no
share in such doubts of God or immortality myself. What of that ? I
�49
am not starving to-day; but I want to know that there is manhood
enough in me, if put in a dungeon to starve to death, to bear it as my
brothers bore it in Andersonville. It is not because I am starving now,
but if starvation is my sentence, I want to meet it as becomes a man. If
I were to be starved of my God by the conclusions of science, I should
wish to stand that also as a man ; and I believe it can be done. Personally,
I do not believe that result is coming ; I have no fear of it. But it is not
so important to know what is or is not coming from science as to know
that, whatever comes, truth is truth and man is man. I would say to the
atheist, if the worst come to the worst, — if God be a dream, man is not.
If I am nevei- to see the face of Deity, thank Heaven I see all of yours. If
I were to have no heaven beyond the grave, it is much to possess to
day ; and if man has health and life and love and a June day, is not that
enough for infinite hymns of gratitude, even if he knew he was to lie
down that night, and sleep to wake no more ? O my friends ! we deceive
ourselves ; we wrong our little children, by narrowing in their basis of
belief and making them think that unless they can convince themselves
thus or so they are hopeless and miserable. Don’t shudder if your child
reads a scientific book and temporarily doubts God. If you have been to
Mm what you should be, he wont doubt man; or, if he doubts man, he
wont doubt woman. Do not frown if he honestly doubts immortality.
Teach him to live the life here nobly, if the universe never granted him
another day. That is the way to meet science ; not by simply asking of
it the boon to live, but by so living and so thinking that science is but a
part of our basis of supply, and science may come or go and leave us still
the same. I have never doubted immortality; but if you have once made
up your mind that even if immortality were a dream your life shall not
be one, I don’t believe that any result of science can be formidable. The
only thing that seems to me dangerous in any way in science is that
very likely it is going for the time being to substitute a new hierarchy
for the old one: a race of conceited professors instead of a race of con
ceited clergymen; men who teach you to depend too much on magnets
and microscopes, as the other side taught you to depend too much on
Bibles and prophets. But then this new aristocracy of intellect among
our great scientific teachers has the advantage over the old one that the
new aristocracy of wealth has over the old aristocracy of power: it may
lose good manners, it may lose good taste, but at any rate it has the
advantage that it means the man himself, and not the man’s grandfather.
It is based on something done to-day, and not something done day before
yesterday. I say of theology, when it yields place to science, “ Ze roi est
mort; vive le roi,” — “ The king is dead; long live the new king,” — not but
I believe that there is a time coming when all the kings shall be no more ;
7
�50
and all the forces of our nature — science and life, heart and intellect —
shall come together in a great democracy, with God alone for President.
Science will never, can never, take its highest place in this world unless it
recognizes its own limitations, unless it owns that the emotions of the
heart, and the aspirations of the religious sentiment, the resolves of duty,
— nay, even the great pictures of imagination, twin principles with itself, —
are yet greater than itself. Science, the best of servants to man, may yet
be the worst of masters. But we may be sure that the same development
of the race that trained science will train at last all the other faculties;
and that the great scientific era of the future, of which we dream, will
show also purer sanctities of life and higher reverence for religion than
any superstition of the past could conceive.
The meeting was then adjourned until half-past three o’clock.
AFTERNOON SESSION.
On reassembling at
p.m., it was announced by the President,
in behalf of the Committee of Arrangements, that, besides the
speakers in the programme for the day, a number of persons,
scientific men and others, had been invited to take part in the
discussions, who for one reason or another were unable to accept
the invitations. The Committee had desired that the discussion
should be as many-sided as possible, and it was not their fault if
it was not so. He then introduced the Secretary of the Associa
tion, Mr. W. J. Potter, who had consented to read an Essay in
-place of that expected from Rabbi Wise. Mr. Potter first read a
brief note from Dr. Wise explaining why he could not meet the
appointment, but adding that he was “ nevertheless heart and
soul with the Association, — with truth, progress, and enlighten
ment.” Mr. Potter also read short letters, expressive of interest
and good-will, from Gerrit Smith and William Lloyd Garrison,
who had been among those invited, but who were unable to be
present. Then saying a few words of the difficulty of filling such
a gap in the arrangements as that caused by the regretted
absence of Dr. Wise, he proceeded to the subject of his Essay.
♦
�51
ESSAY BY WILLIAM J. POTTER.
Natural Genesis of Christianity, and its Relation to Preceding
Religions.
The patriot Kossuth used to strike the key-note of his wonderful
political addresses with the phrase, “The Solidarity of Nations.” So
would I, in humbler fashion, declare as the watch-word for this hour in
religious history the solidarity of religions. There are certain elementary
principles common alike to all religions and native to the human con
sciousness, which make the soil out of which spring all specific religious
systems, all forms of worship, all theologies and faiths. These principles
In their rudimentary form are not ideas, but the germs of ideas. We can
give no other account of them than that they are the in-coming of a
power that was before humanity into humanity. And just as we find in
every phase and condition of humanity certain rudimentary principles of
intelligence, which furnish the basis of all subsequent thinking, reasoning,
knowing, and impart those universal elements that make science, logic,
truth, to be recognized as essentially the same thing among all races of
men and all round the globe, so the different religions rest at bottom on
a common basis, and may recognize each other by certain universal ele
ments that may be traced back to the natural common outfit with which
the human race started on its career.
And these rudimentary religious faculties are subject to the same con
ditions of development to which the human mind in general is subject;
that is, to the natural conditions which attach to all human existence.
They do not therefore always develop in the same shape nor to the same
degree. As the conditions vary according to locality, climate, period,
outward circumstance of every kind, so the phase of development varies.
As we find different races and nations standing at different heights of in
telligence, of art, of science, of general civilization and enlightenment, so
do we find them, and just as naturally, at different stages in religious
development. And as we find among every people individuals who stand
higher than the mass as statesmen, or poets, or philosophers, or inventors,
— the Homers, Newtons, Shakspeares, Washingtons, — so do we find,
and just as naturally, those in whom the religious faculties predominate,
and who in consequence have a clearer insight into religious truth and
can make a better expression of it than the average mind of the people
around them; and just in proportion to the force and clearness with
which these persons express what the common heart of the people has
had hints of, aspired after, struggled after, just in proportion as they
realize in word and in life the ideal held in the heart of their nation or
�52
neighborhood, will they be listened to as speaking with authority — very
likely with supernatural authority — and be followed as divinely appointed
religious guides; For the human mind instinctively believes that Heaven
will indorse and commission its best thought and hope.
Hence the belief in supernaturalism, common to all religions, rests upon
a perfectly natural basis. The popular mind in an early stage of culture
cannot conceive truth abstractly. It catches a glimpse of it and sights by
that, but cannot bring the truth home to full comprehension until it has
put it in some concrete form. From this fact come the vulgar ideas of
creation, of inspiration, of God communicating outwardly and mechani
cally with man, which have prevailed in all religious systems. There
must be, according to the popular interpretation, definiteness of locality
and persons, visible appearances, real voices, some mysterious kind of
mechanical instrumentality between heaven and earth, in order that these
wise men and prophets should have such knowledge and power. And so
the primary religious sentiment, as it has developed into form and ex
pression through the popular understanding, has everywhere gathered
about its career legendary stories, myths, miracles. These are, as it
were, the crystallization into which religious ideas have been precipitated
in the solution of the common understanding. But go behind these
stories, break through the crust of fable and myth, get at the kernel of
reported miracle, and, however various, grotesque, and unbelievable the
narratives may be, we shall find a thread by which we may trace them
back to a common source, and to some germ of vital spiritual truth.
So, too, when we fathom the different religious systems in respect to
their higher declarations to their depths, we find, amidst all their variety
of creed and ritual, that a unity pervades them all, and that they all ex
press, with greater or less completeness according to the intelligence and
culture of the people, the same fundamental religious sentiments which
inhere naturally in the consciousness of humanity. “ There are diversi
ties of gifts, but the same spirit; differences of operations, but it is the
same God which worketh all in all.” We may say that the stream of
religious history, having its source in the primitive religious sentiment
common to mankind, and swollen from time to time by an influx from the
natural inspiration of great souls, and constantly increased and freshened
from every little spring and rill along its path which are fed to-day in
the same way as the original spring of all, comes down through the cen
turies, taking color and conformation, and even more interior qualities, as
of purity and salubrity, from the soil of the national mind through which
it flows. It takes also in its course different names according to national
or local, external or internal, characteristics, — as here Buddhism, there
Judaism, and so on; sometimes it is named for persons who have specially
�53
Utilfeed the flowing current, and turned it into new channels for human
advantage. But analyze the waters of this stream, and, though there be
great difference in volume and power, the constituent elements will be
found everywhere nearly the same, — the same vital parts that were
combined in the first conscious aspiration after truth and virtue that was
ever breathed upward from a human soul. We may apply the modern
scientific doctrine of the conservation and correlation of forces to the
history of religious evolution. Everywhere is one Primal Force, one
spiritual energy, one revealing power, one revelation, coming up from
the beginning, now and for ever, through the deep wells of human con
sciousness, wherein are the springs of Divinity; and these different names,
as Hindu, Jewish, Greek, Christian, only mark the altitude to which the
revelation has risen or the conformation it has assumed in the Hindu,
Hebrew, Greek, and Christian intelligence. Religion is one, and all its
revelations natural; religious systems are but higher or lower phases in
the natural development of the religious sentiment.
From these general remarks on the unity that pervades all varieties
of religion and binds all together by one chain of natural historic se
quence, let us proceed to consider the more specific question: How
stands Christianity in this order of religious development? How is it
related to the religions that preceded it ? And, more generally, how is it
related to universal or absolute religion ?
There has been no more difficult problem in Christian theology for
those who make a distinction between “ natural ” and “ revealed ” religion
than to draw the line between them; that is, to say just how much re
ligious truth the human mind might have been able to discover through
its natural faculties, and at what point it was necessary that a supernatural
revelation should come to the aid of the natural faculties. The difficulty
of the problem is twofold. First, there is a philosophical difficulty. It
is evident, and is admitted, that the human mind by its natural faculties
must be capable to some extent of forming religious conceptions; other
wise it could not possibly receive a revelation. It must at least have
Some idea of a Divine Being, and conceive of him also as a being of
veracity, before, it can possibly receive and rely upon any communication
as coming from him. Again, sufficient dignity and ability must be al
lowed to the human mind to make it not only worthy of receiving a
revelation, but capable of appreciating and using the revelation when
received. And so it becomes a very nice problem to draw the line at
just the proper point between the natural ability of the human mind
which makes a special revelation available, and the natural disability of
the human mind which makes a special revelation necessary. Theologians
have a good deal of skill in metaphysical tight-rope performances ; but in
�54
this case the rope is so very slender that they have never managed to
keep their balance on it with much success. The danger is that if the
natural ability of the human mind be 'strongly stated, an opponent may
retort, “ A mind thus endowed is capable of reaching through its natural
powers all the truth you claim for a special revelation,” — which is the
actual objection that has been brought against two of the greatest English
writers on this subject — Dr. Cudworth and Bishop Butler — who placed
the powers of the human mind so high, in order to show how it was nat
urally adapted to and harmonized with Christianity, that they were
charged with endangering the argument for the necessity of a miraculously
revealed religion. On the V)ther hand, if the natural disability of the hu
man mind be strongly stated so as to set forth the necessity of a specific
revelation, there is peril of undermining the argument on the other side;
of which theological crime, a more recent English writer, also of the
'Evangelical party, has been accused—Mr. Mansel—who has argued that
the human mind is utterly incapable of forming any conception of infinite
and absolute truth, and so has proved, it is alleged, not so much the
necessity of a miraculous revelation as the impossibility of any revelation
of the Supreme Being!
Secondly, there is a historical difficulty in the way of those who attempt
to draw a line of separation between Christianity and the so-called natu
ral religions, as if there were no natural relationship between them.
Historically, whether we regard the contents of the religions or the man
ner of their origin, there is no such separation, — no gap or chasm across
which we cannot trace the lines of natural genealogy and kinship. It
would be difficult to find in Christianity any fundamental truth of religion
or morality, nay, any theological dogma or opinion, or narrative of won
ders, that did not have a parallel expression in some anterior religion.
The ideas may be differently illustrated and emphasized in the different
religions, and so may make a very different impression; but those that are
most fundamental and central cannot be claimed as the exclusive property
of any specific faith. The immortality of the soul, the unity and pure
spirituality of Deity, the communion of the human soul with the Divine,
the superiority of the spirit to the letter, the inner light, — these ideas
have found as clear expression in other religions as they have in
Judaism and Christianity. The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of
man; the obligations of justice, of purity, of probity, of love to the neigh
bor ; the principle of the Golden Rule, the overcoming of evil with good,
the intention of the heart rather than the outward act the test of virtue, —
these central truths of practical religion found distinct and abundant
utterance in various religions before Christianity. (I will not take the
room to cite the passages I have collected on this point, but will refer
�55
those who wish for information, and yet cannot go to the original sources,
to Mr. Samuel Johnson’s essay on the “ Natural Sympathy of Religions ”
read at our last Annual Meeting, and printed in the Report of the pro
ceedings ; and to Mr. T. W. Higginson’s article on the same subject pub
lished in the “ Radical ” for February, 1871, and since printed by the Free
Religious Association in a separate pamphlet; and also to another excellent
paper in the “ Radical” for March, 1868, by Mr. Samuel Longfellow, on
“ The Unity and Universality of Religious Ideas.” ) If we look more par
ticularly at theological beliefs, the resemblance between Christianity and
Some of the older religions is also very remark^le. Centuries before Jesus
We find the ideas of Incarnation, Mediatorship, the Fall of Man, Sacrificial
Atonement, Redemption, Pre-existence, Resurrection of the Body, a fu
ture Judgment-day, of God as “ one substance and three images,” — in
short, all the paraphernalia of a Calvinistic “ Body of Divinity.” This
resemblance penetrates into parts purporting to be historical narrative.
Krishna, in the Hindoo theology, is the Redeemer. He was born, it is
believed, to save the world from the oppression of a tyrant. His parents,
at the time of his birth, were in a humble prison. In the presence of the
heavenly babe the fetters that bound the prisoners were broken asunder,
and the cell dazzled with supernatural light; joy and sorrow over
whelmed the unhappy parents. A heavenly voice whispered to the
father to flee with the young child across the River Jomuna, in order to
save its life. Then the tyrant who had sought to destroy the child, en
raged with disappointment, sent messengers and put to death all the
infants in the neighborhood. (J. Gangooly’s Life and Religion of the
Hindoos.) I need not repeat the similar story, as found in the New Tes
tament, in the early history of Jesus. There is a striking similarity also
between what Christian writers are accustomed to call the legends con
cerning the birth and post-mortem judicial offices of Osiris and Buddha,
and what they are accustomed to recite as facts in the corresponding parts
of the.career of Jesus. Similar miracles, with attesting heavenly voices,
are alleged as attending the birth of all three; and after death it is claimed
for them all that they descended into hell, and thence ascended to heaven
to sit as judge of the dead and dispenser of the rewards of immortal life.
Now, the question comes, how are these wonderful resemblances to be
accounted for, on the supposition that Christianity has no historical con
nection with these various religions that came before it? It may be
asserted, to be sure, in spite of these resemblances that Christianity has
no natural relationship to other religions; that these great declarations
of moral and spiritual truth (leaving aside the legendary narratives),
though found in previous religions, were yet given by original and special
revelation to Christianity. But then the further question would come,
�56
Why was a special and miraculous revelation necessary to reveal these
truths in Judaea which were open to all the rest of mankind through their
natural faculties ? Indeed, the more cautious defenders of a miraculous
revelation have yielded this point, and given up all the fundamental
truths both of morality and practical religion as within the scope of the
natural human faculties, retaining only as revealed truth the peculiar
Christian scheme of Atonement and Redemption. Bishop Butler, for in
stance, says that Christianity has two offices. First, it is a republication
of natural religion. He does not claim that it adds any thing new in re
gard to our duties towards God. Natural religion, he expressly admits,
teaches that God is our Father, and what we owe to him as such. But,
secondly, he says, Christianity contains an account of a particular dis
pensation of God not discoverable by reason; viz., the redemption of
mankind (who, as he thinks, are represented in Scripture to be in a state
of ruin) through the atoning offices of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And this theological dogma, with the duties of observance growing out of
it, is the only thing which Bishop Butler, one of the ablest and most
scholarly exponents that Christian faith has ever had, claims as strictly
original to Christianity. He would be met, of course, by the whole array
of Unitarian and other Liberal Christian writers, with the assertion that
this dogma, at least as he understood it, is not to be found in primitive
Christianity. But, even if it were, it would be difficult to prove that it is
peculiar to Christianity. The substance of the Christian dogma of the
Atonement, and something very like the form of it, appear in other re
ligions. Yet it may be true, as Bishop Butler says, that it is “ not dis
coverable by reason,” — probably because there is no reason in it. There
are certainly a good many doctrines in all religions that did not come
from reason, and which reason will never indorse.
Another claim for a special revelation in Christianity, akin to this of
Bishop Butler, but freed, it is thought, from its theological vitiation, is
sometimes made, — made especially by theologians of the Liberal Chris
tian school. The one peculiar word of God in Christianity, not found in
Nature, not known through the intuitions of reason, is, it is said, his love
for the sinner. A recent learned and popular writer expresses it thus:
“ Christianity is a revelation of pardon to the conscience, of peace to re
morse, of hope to despair. No other revelation says any thing plainly of
this; none offers forgiveness of sin. The laws of Nature never pardon.
Law, as such, cannot forgive: it can only reward obedience and punish
disobedience. No intuition of reason, nothing in the absolute religion
of the soul, says more. But, in Christ, God makes a special revelation of
his forgiving and saving love. As the mother is more proud of her
strong, manly son, but loves more tenderly the sick, deformed, or crippled
�57
child; as the father rejoices in the virtues of his good, faithful, upright
children, has them ever with him, and considers all that he has to be
theirs, but yet yearns with a peculiar tenderness toward the poor, half
dead prodigal; so God in Christ manifests an infinite tenderness of pity
towards the discouraged, the forlorn, the outcasts, and the reprobates.”
Now that this passage accurately and beautifully represents what was a
distinguishing trait in the spirit and teachings of Jesus may be readily
admitted ; but is it quite just to human nature, is it just to historical facts
and to the Supreme Being himself, to say that the idea of divine pity and
forgiveness, however much it was elevated and newly illustrated and
exemplified by Jesus, came then for the first time into human conscious
ness ? Where is it that it is written, the Lord “ forgiveth all thine
iniquities; crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies ; he
hath not dealt with us after our sins ” ? No intimations of divine for
giveness in Nature, nor in the intuitions of the human heart ? Whence
then this very comparison with which the writer illustrated his argument ?
“ As the mother is more proud of her strong, manly son, but loves more
tenderly the sick, deformed, or crippled child ” — ah 1 here it is, in the
natural intuitive tenderness of a true human mother’s heart by which she
folds more closely to her bosom an unfortunate child, — here it is, in nat
ural human love, that the Infinite Parent has been proclaiming from the
beginning of our race his own pardoning, saving, pitying tenderness. No
intuition of forgiveness, of love for the outcast and despairing, in human
reason? How was it Jesus himself taught this doctrine of divine for
giveness, but by appealing, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, to the
natural love and forgiveness of an earthly father ? So far from claiming
to teach a new doctrine on this point, he hastened to show his hearers
that it was the old revelation of their own hearts.
^Nor is it quite true to facts even to claim, as is sometimes done, that
Christianity Is the first and only religion in which charity and philan
thropy have been organized into public institutions. It is true that in
the limits of modern Christendom there has been a remarkable develop
ment of instituted benevolence. And it is easy to show that all this is in
harmony with the life and teachings of Jesus; but not so easy to prove
that it is all the direct historical result of his career, nor the exclusive
fruit of Christian training. Philanthropy is better organized under
modern civilization, just as all social forces are better organized; yet
that kind of organized benevolence which gives to the word philanthropy
its modern significance in Christendom hardly dates back a single century.
To no small extent, indeed, the distinctive Christian Church has put itself
in antagonism to Philanthropy and Social Reform; and, even in the
limits of Christendom itself, the practical humanities of the age are quite
�58
as much in the hands of heretics as of Orthodox believers. But a fact
more to the present point is that charity was socially organized to a con
siderable degree before the time of Jesus, and that Christianity for a num
ber of centuries introduced no great change in this respect. Sakia Mouni
and Zoroaster both laid great stress on regular and daily acts of benevolence
as an essential part of religion. The Chinese have all those public insti
tutions of philanthropy and mercy which are commonly supposed to be
specially characteristic of modern Christendom, — such as Orphan Asy
lums, Institutions for the Relief of Widows, and for the Aged and In
firm of both sexes, Public Hospitals, Free Dispensaries of Medicine ; and,
what Christendom, I believe, has not yet had, Asylums of Mercy for the
dumb animals. All these institutions, together with Free Schools, date
back their origin in China to a time long anterior to the contact of the
people with Christianity. The Jews instituted benevolence in their laws,
— as, for instance, in the commands not to deliver to his master an
escaped bondman, and to extend hospitality and justice to strangers;
and, in the still more beautiful laws, that the widow’s raiment should not
be taken in pledge for debt, and that the gleanings of the harvests should
be left in the fields and vineyards for the poor. The Essenes were a
brotherhood of charity as well as of religion; taking care of the poor,
the sick, and the old, with true fraternal interest and love. The remark
able resemblance, indeed, between this Jewish sect, which flourished just
before the Christian era and disappeared so soon after, has led some
writers to identify it with the early Christians. It does seem quite prob
able that the sect was absorbed into the Christian brotherhood, and that
the striking resemblance between the two fraternities in respect to moral
and social habits was more than accidental. This little sect, departing in
some important particulars from the Hebrew faith and traditions, and
introducing features that belonged more to other religions, may be, in
deed, the historical connecting link through which Christianity was
directly joined with the great religious systems and faiths anterior to it.
And this brings me to the point which I have had specially in view in
making this comparison in respect to theological and ethical features be
tween Christianity and previous religions. The point is not that Chris
tianity is not superior to those previous religions, nor that it has not done
greater service than they in the development of humanity, but that it
came into the world by a process entirely natural, and has a perfectly
natural relationship to those antecedent forms of faith. As coming later
in the line of history and combining a larger number of vital historic
elements, it should be by natural law a richer and more effective faith.
But the point to which I wish to direct attention now is simply this, —
that Christianity, instead of being in any sense a supernatural, or
�59
extraordinary interpolation into the course of religious history, had its
natural genesis in the previous historic development of the nations and
countries where it appeared ; that, instead of originating in a sudden and
marvellous interruption of the natural chain of historical sequence, it
was the legitimate result of natural social forces which the unbroken
chain of that sequence logically involved. Christianity was separated
from previous religious systems in no other way than the babe when the
hour of birth has arrived is separated from the mother that has borne it.
But it may be asked, Is there any evidence, other than these resem
blances in sentiment and doctrine, that Christianity had an actual histori
cal relationship with older forms of faith, — at least with any other but
the Hebrew, w'hich it abrogated? And may. not‘these resemblances,
after all, be purely accidental? To show that natural causes wrere
Sufficient to produce Christianity, it is enough to point out that its
fundamental truths and doctrines have been developed in religions called
“ natural.” But, to prove that there actually was historical connection,
some other evidence is needed. Let us look, then, at some of the facts
that bear on this proposition.
And, first of all, we must consider the very important part which the
Roman Empire played in that great era of history. Christianity origi
nated in the age when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power
and splendor. The armies of the Cresars had penetrated to the Atlantic
on the West and to the verge of India on the East; Gaul and mountainous
Rhoetia had submitted to their power in the North, and the whole coast
line of Africa, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Isthmus of Suez, in the
South. Before the irresistible might of these conquering legions, through
all this vast extent of territory, the partition-walls between races and nations
had disappeared: Jew and Greek, Asiatic and European, the swarthy
princes of Numidia and the rough barbarians of Gaul, all acknowledged
the law of Augustus Cmsar and of Rome. Now this vast political trans
formation could not have taken place without effecting to a greater or less
extent an intermixture of various peoples, and bringing into contact and
mutual acquaintance various philosophies and faiths. Not only were the
boundaries removed that separated these races and nations outwardly, but
the barriers that kept them apart in the inward relations of faith and
Sentiment were also thrown down; national pride and exclusiveness were
broken over; people of various religious opinions and modes of worship
came to be neighbors, learned to know each other better, and found that
they had common wants and aspirations: and so the way was laid over
which they should pass to a broader faith and a more comprehensive
religious fellowship. Jew and Greek, Persian barbarian and Alexan
drian philosopher, were brought together, ready to unite in a more
�60
universal spiritual kingdom. As described by the writer of the Book of
Acts, who shows the various elements of the primitive Christian Church,
“ Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia,
and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pampliylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers
of Rome, Jews and proselytes. Cretes and Arabians,” — all these, when
introduced to each other, discovered that under their various religious
“tongues” they were articulating substantially the same faith, and that
each, whatever the utterance, could detect his mother tongue. What was
more natural than that the different “ tongues ” should help mould each
other into the language of a new religion ? This is but a hint of the
religious transformation that must have been effected by the aid of the
Roman Empire. Through commerce and travel and emigration, and
union under one system of government, there thus came into contact with
each other the culture and philosophy of the Greeks, the theological and
spiritual mysticism of the Oriental nations, the theocratic and ethical ideas
of the Jews, and the practical organizing power of the Romans ; and it was
by the conjunction and interaction of these different ideas, principles, and
forces, that the conditions for the origin of Christianity were naturally
established.
Let us now, narrowing our survey, pass to two or three facts somewhat
more specific. Of these historical forces that were thus brought to
gether, the three that were the most positive in their religious character
were the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Persian. And of these three, of
course the Hebrew, with réference to Christianity, both geographically
and historically, was the central ancestral power. But it is to be noted
that before the Christian epoch Judaism had received tributaries of religious
thought both from the East and the West. As far back as the Babylonish
captivity, five centuries b.c., the Hebrew religion had been carried forci
bly into contact with the religion of Persia, and brought away from the
union some important modifications of thought and practice that remained
even after national independence was again secured. And in the century
just preceding the Christian era, through the migrations occasioned by the
spread of the Roman power, carrying Romans and Greeks eastward and
bringing the Asiatic nations westward, and especially by the gradual exile
and settlement of Jews in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, Judaism
was again brought into general contact with the Persian religion on the
one hand and with the Greek religion, particularly as represented in the
Platonic philosophy, on the other. F rom the East many religious specu
lations were imbibed by the Jews from the Cabalistic writings ; and on
the other hand there were learned Jews, like Aristobulus and Philo,
versed in Grecian lore, who were attempting by allegorical interpretations
�61
of the Old Testament to prove that Moses taught the Platonic philosophybefore Plato himself. Nor must it be forgotten that even in Jerusalem,
after it came under Roman power, this transformation of faith was going
on ; and at the period just before the advent of Jesus it was aided by no
less a character than king Herod the Great. We must not think of
Herod as merely the cruel, brutal tyrant that he is represented to have
been in the Sunday-school literature of Christendom, founded on a leoendary story of the New Testament. Whatever his crimes may have been,
he was yet a man of liberal tastes and culture for his time, and had the
laudable ambition to make Jerusalem another Alexandria, — a city hos
pitable to all learning and all faiths. He especially affected Grecian
culture, and made the Jewish capital free to Pagan forms of worship. So
that, though the story were true of his killing all the infants of Bethlehem
in order to destroy Christiarfity in its cradle, he was nevertheless, in spite
of himself, helping prepare the way for the successful advent of the new
faith.
We find, therefore, that just before the Christian era, and even in the
limits of Judaism itself, three distinct and representative forms of religious
faith had been brought into outward neighborhood, and were acting upon
and moulding each other in their inner character. And it is not difficult
to trace the contributions that came from each of these sources into the
Wly development of Christianity. Judaism contributed its ethical doc
trines somewhat enlarged and spiritualized from the law of Moses; also
it® monotheistic conception of the Divine Being, which, from the severe
Mosaic idea of Almighty Sovereignty, had been gradually assuming more
of.the character of paternal tenderness. We may find almost all the pre
cepts of the Sermon on the Mount and the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer
in Hillel and other Jewish rabbis before the time of Jesus. Judaism con
tributed, too, the Messianic idea, — a transformation of its old conception
of a theocratic government; and this was a very important contribution,
since this idea became the central mental instrumentality through which
Christianity was organized. Persia brought the doctrine of the resurrec
tion of the body ; of a day of judgment; of future rewards and retributions ;
of an irrepressible conflict in the universe between two essentially hostile
principles, good and evil, light and darkness ; of a Satanic power; and of
angels as messengers between heaven and earth. It contributed therefore
the scenic conditions of that primitive Christian faith, — that the world with
its evil was to come to an end by a grand catastrophe, and the Messianic
kingdom through the supervision of heavenly powers was to be miracu
lously established on a regenerated earth. From the spiritual philosophy
of Greece came the conception of the Divine Logos, or Eternal Word,
emerging from the Infinite to create the finite world and to incarnate itself
�62
in humanity; a conception from which sprang the dogma of the Trinity
and kindred metaphysical phases of Christian doctrine. It was a concep
tion too, which played a very important part in the early development of
Christianity, inasmuch as it transformed through a process of spiritual
idealization the Jewish idea of the Messiah, and so enabled that idea to
keep its historic course even after the primitive Christian form of it —
the expectation of the outward reappearance of Jesus—had necessarily
been disappointed. It seems clear that it was this transformation of the
Messianic conception through the influence of Greek philosophy (which
even began to show itself in Paul’s view of the Messiahship) that com
mended Christianity to the western Gentile mind, and furnished the
medium for its rapid development in the countries around the Mediter
ranean Sea.
Not to go into further details, we may say, -then, on this point, that we
find very important and central doctrines of three of the most prominent
faiths that were anterior to the Christian era — the three faiths that had
come outwardly into contact—reappearing in Christianity, fused into
one religious system.
And when we consider that these previous religions had severally
gathered into themselves the thought and culture of other religions, —■
that even ancient Egypt and India had probably poured their contribu
tions to the religious wealth of humanity into these streams, — the point
of their fusion seems a very central point in the past religious history of
mankind, and the Christian era by natural causes is invested with im
mense importance, and marks a most pregnant crisis in the development
of the human race. The spiritual blood of Moses, Zoroaster, and Plato,
had met by natural genealogy, and Christianity was the natural product.
Now what was the relation in which Jesus stood to this great era?
That he made the era can hardly be asserted in face of the historical
facts we have here noted. That he had nothing to do with shaping the
elements of the era into the new form of faith that took the name of
Christianity would seem to be equally violative of the record of history.
The elements were there, brought together by natural causes ; but a
fusing touch was needed for successfully combining them into a symmet
rical whole: a representative person was needed who should actually
exhibit the combination in his own doctrine and character, and so become
its exponent to the popular mind. This need was supplied by Jesus.
The requisite fusing touch was found in his spiritual genius, which happily
combined in itself the various elements that were seeking combination in
society. He came, therefore, as the natural prophet and spokesman of
the era, — came just as naturally as the era itself, and through the same
causes that produced the era; and was related to it in the same way as
�63
Luther was related to the Protestant Reformation, as Washington to the
American Political Revolution, as Charlemagne to the new departure
of government, learning, and civilization in Western Europe 'n the eighth
century: not that Jesus did the same kind of organizing work belonging
to a new era that was done by these personages. That was impossible
in the limit of the few months he was in person on the stage of
history. Paul was rather the representative organizer of Christianity;
yet Jesus had supplied the personal magnetic touch that set the elements
into the attitude of crystallization. His power was the power of a strong
personality, which put existing ideas and sentiments into motion, and fur
nished them a vital centre of organic attraction. And this he did by
presenting in his own thought and character so harmonious a union of the
various, if not indeed conflicting, religious elements that were floating in
chaotic mass around him. We may say, indeed, that he was himself the
product of Moses, Zoroaster, and Plato, — that they and the religious
faith their names represent were in a sense freshly incarnated in him;
not meaning, however, to imply that he came to his religious ideas merely
through a study of the records of their systems. Probably he did not
know that such persons as Zoroaster and Plato had ever lived. Had he
only reached his idea through books, he would have been simply a phi
losopher or scholar — not a prophet, not the reputed founder of a new
religion. The results of these systems of religious thought entered un
consciously as elements into the groundwork of his being. They were in
the very air which he breathed, in the very blood which mingled in his
veins. Very likely he had himself been educated as an Essene, and had
early imbibed the wisdom of that remarkable sect. So far he was a
product of the intellectual and religious forces which produced the age
in which he lived. But these forces were thoroughly assimilated to his
own mental and spiritual life. He did not regard them as something
apart from himself to be studied, — they were in him and of him, appear
ing in as fresh and original inspiration in him as ever in Plato or Zoroas
ter or Moses ; his personality certainly as much as theirs manifesting the
continued vitality of a fountain of life that was older and greater than
they, and that was still able to shape itself into new forms of conscious
ness, and to collect itself in new personal organisms, for ever increasing
demonstrations of its power. Thus Jesus exhibited, taking his teachings
and life together, a character that combined in fine symmetry the varied
elements of this new era of faith ; and he became its natural representative
and interpreter to the popular mind. The shortness of his actual career
and its tragic ending, added to his saintliness of character and to a quality
of mind and speech that was at the same time theologically radical and
spiritually mystical, rendered it all the more easy to idealize him, and left
�64
the elements of the new faith, after they had once found in him a fusing
centre of attraction, free to shape themselves according to their own or
ganic law. Christianity accordingly came into the world, not by a merely
outward junction of previous religious systems under the pressure of some
strong external force, but as a vital organic process of historical growth,
being in this respect like all other natural historic processes that have a
real vitality and power.
Now this union of so many vital elements of religious development,
drawn from such a wide variety of nation, culture, and belief, and left so
comparatively free from external pressure to crystallize into a new relig
ious system (the spread of which was indirectly aided from the first by
the Roman Empire), amply accounts for the large degree of catholicity
and universality which Christianity has possessed, and for its power of
adapting itself in its historical career to a great variety of national life
and of human condition. An especially important point in its favor was
the exceptional fact that it organically united two race-faiths which had
long lived apart, the Semitic and the Aryan, deriving from the union of
these two independent stocks of religious sentiment a strength greater
than either had shown alone. Christianity has had a capacity for self
development and has attained a power beyond that of any other religion,
because it absorbed into itself the vital force of the religious thought of
two great races as well as of three prominent and powerful faiths of the
ancient world.
But, does it therefore follow that Christianity is absolutely universal
and catholic? Is it unlike the religions before it in having no limita
tions ? Will it have power to adapt itself to all times, and to all kinds
and classes of men, and so finally absorb all other religions, and all na
tions and civilizations, into itself, and become the universal, perpetual
religion of mankind ? I would answer these questions with all reverence,
yet with all plainness, anxious only to seek and serve the truth. It seems
to me, then, clear that Christianity, both in its origin and in its history, has
limitations; and these limitations were just as natural to it, and just as
necessary in order to meet the conditions of the age, as were its elements
of liberality and comprehensiveness. Not to speak of certain sentiments
and dogmas which were attached to it in its earliest phases, — such as
belief in demonic possession, in the second coming of Jesus, in the
speedy end of the world, and in eternal punishment, which reason can
hardly accept now, but which it may be claimed were not absolutely es
sential to the religion then; not to speak of some moral imperfections
which it might not be difficult to point out even in the pure and lofty
character of Jesus, but which yet might not have made it impossible for
him to have taught the principles of absolute religion, — there was at least
�ou6 feature of limitation which was actually essential to the very birth
0'f Christianity as a historical religion, and which has always remained as
Ott® of the most central principles of its existence. This is the claim of
Jesus to be the Messiah, and the recognition of him as such. Jesus
began his mission from a Jewish stand-point and with Jewish views ; and,
whatever may have been his own conception of his mission, the Messianic
idea certainly furnished the instrumentality, and, it would seem, the only
one possible at the time, for his obtaining any foothold in his nation. The
Messianic hope presented the immediate motive which concentrated and
organized the various religious elements of the time into a church. It
was necessary in that age that the new faith should appear in this con
crete shape. Yet so far did this Messianic claim limit Jesus’ work that
it seems extremely probable that Christianity would have been only a
reformed Jewish sect, had not Paul come, bringing a larger element from
the Hellenistic thought and culture, and opened the door of the Messianic
Kingdom to the Gentile world. Paul with his broad mission to the Gen
tiles, — a “ mystery ” of the new faith which the more primitive disciples
could scarcely comprehend, — and with his vigorous genius for religious
propagandism, which well matched and followed the genius of Rome for
^political propagandism, saved Christianity from one of the narrow effects
of the limitation inherent in the Jewish Messianic idea.
Still, the essential feature of that idea remained, — was in some respects
even aggravated by this early adaptation of Christianity to the Gentile
nations. For the essential feature of that idea was, that Jesus, by right
of his office, could claim allegiance as a specially commissioned represen
tative of God. He was King and Lord of the Messianic realm. And
the effect of enlarging and spiritualizing the realm was not to remove
Jesus from this position, but rather to magnify and elevate his office still
more, until he was idealized into a God. Through the influence of the
Greek philosophy, the Messianic idea, as we have seen, was very
thoroughly transformed, taking the shape of the Divine Incarnation; yet
in some shape it remained as the vitalizing principle of the Christian
Church; and, upon the confession that Jesus was the Christ, Christianity
was organized and has held its career to this day as a specific religion.
Now this is a limitation in its central organizing principle which pre
vents Christianity from being the universal and absolute religion, and
incapacitates it from adapting itself to all times and all men. Science,
scholarship, historical investigation, and a rational interpretation of history
are all undermining the idea that Jesus, however much he has been ele
vated and worshipped by the Christian Church, was more than a man, or
that he had any other authority than that which belongs to all sincere and
impressive utterance of great truths, or any other office than that of the
�66
propbet and reformer. The very conception of Messiahship, as it has
been held by both Jew and Christian, modern rational thought condemns.
And there are signs that Christianity has now reached, because of the very
limitation of this conception, the limit of its longitudinal development, so
to speak, in human history. It may continue to spread somewhat further
sidewise, gaining adherents from people who are on a relatively lower
level of thought than are its most enlightened devotees; though the pros
pect is not very encouraging for it even in that direction. But it seems
impossible that it should adapt itself any further to human progress, and
still remain Christianity. In the most liberal sects already the “ Chris
tian confession ” has been rationalized to the utmost it will bear, and the
authority of Jesus reduced to the minimum quantity that is consistent
with any conception of his official or supernatural position. One step fur
ther in the same direction, and he is seen to stand in the line of natural
humanity, with no other authority than that spiritual wisdom “ which
in all ages, entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God and
prophets.” We have come to the age when it is beginning to be seen that
there must be democracy in religion. Free, rational, thinking men cannot
much longer accept any other authority than that which has its seat in
their own souls, and cannot give sincere allegiance to any sovereignty less
than that which expresses itself in the totality of Nature’s laws and the
human consciousness.
And it does not help the matter for Christianity to declare that Jesus is
not King and Lord in any such sense as having absolute authority, but
that he is only a great moral and religious leader, who by natural ways
has come into the position of providential spiritual headship to the
human race, — an example and ideal for all future time. For as soon as
we place him in the line of humanity, and affirm the natural origin and
development of Christianity, we make it irrational and preposterous to
suppose that he, a simple man, has the place of headship to the whole
human race, or has furnished a religious system to man which is absolutely
perfect and unchangeable. No more irrational would it be to say of
Beethoven or Homer or Shakspeare, because of their great superiority
to others in their respective arts, that they have therefore sounded the
ultimate depths of music or poetry or the drama, and given not only speci
mens, but entire systems of their arts, which must for ever stand as the
goal of all human attainment. There is no a priori impossibility, nor
very great improbability, that a man should at some time have appeared,
or should now appear, who, with reference to his own time, should rise to
such relative perfection in knowledge and character as to manifest no
defect, compared with the very highest »contemporary standard. But to
say that any finite human mind existing in Judeea two thousand years ago,
�67
or existing in the most favorable spot on the earth in this nineteenth cen
tury, could come by entirely natural processes to the possession of absolute
perfection in spiritual wisdom and character, so as to set a standard for
humanity never to be surpassed in all the ages, is certainly a very wild
belief. If Jesus had been God, then he might have established the uni
versal and absolute religion. Being man, he takes his place among the
workers for God; and his work, however great and enduring in its power,
cannot have anticipated and supplied the wants of all mankind for all after
time.
Christianity has rendered, and is still rendering, inestimable service to
®an. So all the specific religions have been useful in their time and
place. They all have preserved some truth, and have satisfied some
human want. But humanity is now beginning to cry out for the sub
stance of religion, and to care little for the system. The special systems
have had their day, and mainly done their work. They have all been
useful, but “received not the promise; God having provided some better
thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” In other
words, in the natural development of religious ideas the specific religions
must shed their antagonistic claims to supernatural authority, and put off
their mutually excluding special features of dogma and ceremony, in
order that Religion itself may mature its finer elements of thought and
character, and that men from all countries and faiths may be drawn to
gether in a free, broad fellowship, on the basis of the common allegiance
of the human faculties to the law of truth and right.
And the signs are not few that the era for this new order of spiritual
fellowship is now opening. And — may I not add? — at the dawn of this
era stands the Free Religious Association, ready to voice its spirit, confi
dent with the expectancy of great hopes ; its white banner modestly raised,
yet high enough to catch the light of the new morning that is breaking
over the world, with fresh promise of peace and good-will to men.
After Mr. Potter had finished his Essay, Mr. Frothingham
Baid that in the absence of Dr. Wise it might not be out of place
to give a brief report of what his lecture would have been if they
could have listened to it.
It was his fortune to have heard it when it was delivered by Dr. Wise
in New York ; and Dr. Wise had said to him that he gave the study of
twenty years to this question of the origin of Christianity, a book upon
which subject he published two or three years ago. The sources of his
information were largely exclusive of the New Testament. His position
was in substance this : He did not speak as if he represented the view of the
Jewish Church, but his own view as a historical student, and as a Hebrew.
�68
In the first place, he, of course, discarded all the Christian theology in
regard to Jesus, or what is commonly called Christianity. He dismissed
altogether the account of the Immaculate Conception, and assumed that
Jesus was a mere man, and all the stories of miracle as unproven. But he
contended for the historical being of Jesus as a person who actually ex
isted, insisting upon it that there was as much reason to believe in his
existence as there was to believe in the existence of any other historical
person who lived so long ago. In regard to his position, he paid the very
highest tribute to the moral grandeur of the character of Jesus. There
was a deep and solemn earnestness in Dr. Wise’s tone as he spoke upon
the life and purposes of Jesus. He believed that Jesus was tried and
condemned as an insurrectionist against the Roman power, the Jews who
believed in him being too weak to take his side, and the Jews who did
not believe in him rather favoring his execution because it secured their
position. Dr. Wise went on to say that the story of the resurrection of
Jesus had its source in the imagination of the Apostles. He denied that
Jesus predicted his own resurrection, or that he ever did rise. His dis
ciples, in their own simple-hearted enthusiasm, gathering about themselves
such legend and tradition, proceeded to found their own religion. But the
power that founded Christianity, as we call it, was in the soul of St. Paul;
and it was St. Paul who was the creator of the Christian Church. With
that Jesus had nothing to do. He was a breath ; he was an inspired
heart; he was as warm, devoted a soul as ever lived; but with the sub
sequent errors, traditions, and legends that gathered about his name, he
had nothing to do, and his noble soul would have been distressed could he
have known that such things should have been said about him, and have
been built upon his work.
Lucretia Mott then took up the subject in an address of considerable
length. She had no doubt that great good was resulting from the free dis
cussion of the character of Jesus, and other religious topics. What was
called natural religion was revealed religion, and inspired, as she thought,
in the same way as were the great utterances of Christianity. Men were
so superstitious, so prone to believe what was presented to them by their
church or creed, that they ought to follow Jesus more in his non-conform
ity. Those who most delighted to honor the name of Jesus had yet to
learn the nobleness of his character, which led him to live up to and act
out his highest convictions, though so opposed to the traditions of his time.
She alluded to the observance of the Sabbath as springing more from a
superstitious than a rational motive, and as certainly not resting on the
command or example of Jesus. Jesus claimed very little for himself, but
was ever ready to bring in the name of the truth, saying that it was the
truth that made men free. She held that scepticism was a religious duty,
*
�69
awl that men should question their theology, and doubt more, in order that
they might believe more. She would ask those who were so satisfied to
regt in the name of Jesus, why they put so much faith in the name with
out following him in his works, and even in the “ greater works ” which
he predicted ? Paul, she admitted, was too much of a theologian for her;
tat she knew of no warrant that required her to take St. Paul as an
authority. She thought, however, there had been of late great advance
in liberality even among the strictest sects, and gave some interesting
reminiscences of this kind of progress. Her remarks were closed by an
earnest appeal for more of practical simplicity and sincerity in the daily
Conduct of life. She protested especially against the prevailing extrava
gances in dress and housekeeping, and said that she mourned for the
future of the marriage institution and of society, unless plainer and less
COStly habits of living could be adopted.
Mr. D. A. Wasson wanted to say a few words with reference to the
position taken by his esteemed friend Colonel Higginson, who, if he un
derstood him rightly, was ready, if need be, to dispense with a God, say
ing that if we lost God we still had ourselves. He doubted that. If God
be, then he is the life of ourselves, and we ourselves not men unless this
universe is divine. If it be bigotry to desire to know that this universe
is penetrated with the light of a creative mind, and warmed with the
divine blood of a central heart; if it be bigotry to feel a concern for the
troth that there is a reality above us which we may climb to, as well as a
reality below us on which we may tread, then he wished to be put down
a bigot. No man had the life of a man but in the truth of ideas. As
to the subject of the afternoon, he so fully accepted the statement that
Christianity was founded on the human soul that he had put the question
behind him, and thought they should make haste to arrive at another
point. He did not want an extract from all the religions of the world as
a sort of universal religion. He tried to get at the root of every religion,
and he came to Christianity in the same spirit, because he was no longer
'jealous of other religions. He thought that Christianity should be judged
O a whole, and not simply as it was left by Jesus. It was not the slight
est objection to Christianity that it got something from Chrysostom and
St Augustine, and is getting something to this day. He had no doubt
that Jesus started a new chemistry ; that he launched ideas that crystal
lized anew, and were built up into fresh organic life, and that Christianity
is the result of that building. He had no desire to make dogma, but he
wanted the spirit of appreciation that was ready to take up the ideas of
the human soul as they have got their expression in that great constructive
fact of human history that was called Christianity.
Mr. John L. Russell, of Salem, understood Mr. Higginson’s argu*
�70
ment to be, that the life that now is is so magnificent and so replete with
every thing that is glorious, every thing that thé human intellect and
human affections can possibly conceive of, that, if it was proved there was
nothing but this life, it ought to suffice. He wanted to insist also upon
the point that the nineteenth century is not indebted to Christianity for
its improvements. What is called the Christian civilization of this era
rested, in his opinion, upon the modern awakening of science ; and yet
almost every day in pulpit and press it was claimed that we were in
debted to the Christian religion for the benefits of modern civilization.
It seemed to him rather that Christianity was being moulded and trans
formed by science.
Mr. Wasson said a few words more in regard to his position, and read
a sentence or two, to which his attention had been called, from the Report
of the Executive Committee, showing that his criticism with regard to
forming a new religion by mechanical combination of extracts of old reli
gions could not fairly apply to any opinions that had been expressed by
this Association.
Mr. Dean Clarke followed, speaking not so much on the specific
topic of the Essay, as on the position and work of the Association in gen
eral, in the meetings of which, he said, he felt very much at home. He
was in conviction a Spiritualist, and for that reason he liked this broad,
free platform, representing religious reform and progress.
Rabbi Guinzbitrg spoke a few words in the same strain from his
stand-point of the Jewish Church, — said l.e had been greatly interested
in the Essays and discussions of the day, and wanted it understood that
he was a member of the Association.
Adjourned till 7.30 p.m.
EVENING
SESSION.
The Convention reassembled according to adjournment. The
Chair was taken by John T. Sargent, one of the Vice-Presidents ;
and the President, Mr. Frothingham, delivered the following
essay.
ESSAY BY 0. B. FROTHINGHAM.
Superstition and Dogmatism.
The Committee appointed to arrange the topics for discussion at this
Convention set apart this evening for talk on the existing power of Dog
matism and Superstition, and requested me to introduce it by an Essay
�that should bring the matter fairly before the audience. In performing
this duty, I shall aim to be simple and direct. It is, however, impossi
ble to speak of the existing power of superstition without speaking of
Superstition itself. It has a long lineage, and is always the same thing.
Its power is dynamic : its malignity is in its quality, not in its mass. But its
mass is fearful ; for it is bounded only by the realm of ignorance,
stupidity, and credulity.
Is it proper, some will ask, to speak of an existing power of supersti
tion ? Is not superstition a thing that existed once, or exists elsewhere?
It is a popular delusion that superstition has disappeared ; or, if not, that
it has become harmless. This is the superstition of the superstitions.
The insane think all insane but themselves. Everybody hates superstition,
and everybody hugs it. It is the universal horror and the universal pet, —
the confessed foe of religion, and the as cordially clutched guardian of it.
It is cursed and caressed by the same devotees. The disease is a mild form
of rheumatism in our case, but gout in our neighbors. It is the “ fire water ”
which is ruining the man over the way, but which we take in very small
quantities for the stomach’s sake,—our meat, his poison. Our super
stition should not be called superstition. Would you find the genuine
article, you must go to the “ little church round the corner.” You call
at the “ little church round the corner,” and the well-bred rector refers
you to the big cathedral on the square. You hasten thither, and are
told with lofty disdain that you have come to the wrong place. The
horror you look for is in a synagogue, on the side street. Your search
is like the search for the bosom sin. The Romanist enlarges on the
superstitions of the Pagans. The Protestant waxes hot, as he d \ cribes
the superstitions of the Romanists. The Unitarian pours scorn on the
superstition of the Protestant. The Theist fastens the charge on the
Unitarian. The Positivist delares that the Theist’s belief in a personal
God holds the very soul of superstition. By general consent, it is admit
ted that the Positivist has cleared himself from the aspersion ; and, by
general consent, it is agreed that the Positivist is an unhappy creature,
who has got rid of his devils indeed, but at the expense of getting rid of
his angels.
The inference would be, then, that Superstition is commensurate with
Supernaturalism. Not quite. Supernaturalism thinks of a Being who
comprehends, overawes, presides over the natural universe, or a principle
that is not exhausted by an organic universe. Superstition describes this
Being as directly interfering as ruler and director. The finest minds may
point to the Supernatural ; only the coarser are infested with Supersti
tion. It is a familiar saying, that Ignorance is the mother of Superstition.
It would be hard to say that Ignorance was the mother of Supernaturalism.
�72
No one by searching, perhaps, can find out God. But very little search
ing suffices to reveal that God is not whimsical or capricious like ourselve*.
at is the whole history of the intellectual progress of the
world but one long struggle of the intellect of man to emancipate itself
from the deceptions of Nature ? Millions of prayers have been vainly
breathed to what we now know were inexorable laws. Only after ages
of toil did the mind of man emancipate itself from those deadly errors, the
deceptive appearances of Nature, to which the long infancy of Humanity
is universally doomed.” (Lecky’s Morals, i. 56.) It used to be thought
that Africa was a land of monsters, serpents large enough to stop ar
mies, and men without heads; that golden apples grew in Spain ; that
giants and enchantresses lived in Sicily; that a cave on the shore of the
Black Sea was the mouth of hell. The Roman legions and the travelling
merchants made these phantoms vanish. The Australians have an evil
demon named Koin, who tries to strangle them in their sleep. He never
comes, except when they have been gorging themselves with food. He is
the nightmare of an overloaded stomach. If you want to reach the heart
of this subject without pains, open the first volume of Mr. Buckle’s
“History of Civilization” at the 269th page, and you will find matter
for profound reflection. There is the whole case in a nutshell. There is
the clear statement, fortified by hosts of references and illustrated by
facts in every field, that Superstition is simply the child of Ignorance.
There you will read that so simple a process as the draining of marshy
land cleared the brains of Englishmen of their notions of a special provi
dence in chills and fever, while the same Englishmen pray for wet or dry
weather because they have not discovered the laws that control the fall of
rain. The discovery of those laws will still further limit the domain of
the Supernatural.
A vast area of mind was purged of superstition by the science
which discovered the law of the eclipse. An Athenian general, Nikias,
fearing to risk a battle at the time of a lunar eclipse, allowed him
self and his army of forty thousand men to be either slain or taken pris
oners. In the tenth century an entire army suddenly became demoralized,
and was dissipated, by an eclipse of the sun. I am acquainted with
persons who will on no account see the new moon over the left shoulder;
and a very elegant woman calmly told me, the other day, that her mis
fortunes were due to her having been born under an evil star. She knew
some things better than she knew Astronomy.
Religion is the last hiding-place of Superstition, for it is the last region
that Science invades. Into the world of imagination, sentiment, feeling,
into the world of pure speculation, of awe, wonder, and mystery, knowl
edge penetrates slowly. There the chemist, the naturalist, the astron
�73
omer, the meteorologist, the physicist, are at fault. The physiologist is
just beginning to probe the secrets of the nervous organization, and to dis
turb the bats we thought were spirits. How Draper and Maudesley make
them fly! What simple and sufficient answers to the questions of the
superstitious are elicited by the medical cross-questioning of the brain!
How sweetly the Divine Order comes in and occupies the wild territory
which fancy had peopled with spirits ! How magnificent the avenues of Law,
that stretch away into the invisible regions that had once been the dwelling
places and play-grounds of the wilful gods ! Special providences become
general, and general providences move with shut eyelids. Gods merge
in God, and God loses individuality and fades away into spacelessness
until conscious Law is King of kings. We must of course discriminate.
Supernaturalism implies reliance on supernatural powers, not belief in
supernatural things. Believe as you will about heaven and hell, imps and
angels, so long as you expect from them neither help nor harm you may
be irrational, but you are not superstitious. Religion finds it hard to dis
card the word supernatural, but the rational Theist has no difficulty in
clearing his mind of every vestige of superstition. The God he worships
rules, but never interferes; presides, but never intrudes ; enacts laws, but
never breaks them. Theodore Parker was an immense believer in God
and immortality; but the charge of superstition could no more be fixed on
him than on Humboldt.
To most people, the spiritual world is still the abode of spectres.' If
you want
pies of pure superstition, you must go to Religion. There
are people
will not start an enterprise on Friday, but we laugh at
them. There are people who will give up a journey if a black cat crosses
their path, but they laugh grimly at themselves. Thousands of people
rejoice in their fear to travel on Sunday. Thousands think their journey
will be more prosperous, if before starting they utter a prayer.
Six hundred years ago, St. Francis d’Assisi, kneeling in his little
chapel, had a vision. The Virgin and her Son appeared to him, thanked
him for his great services to the church, and begged him to mention any
small favor they could render him as a token of their gratitude. Francis,
bowed down by the condescension and oppressed with humbleness, merely
asked that all who, from that time forward, should confess and partake of
the Mass in that particular chapel, might have all their sins forgiven.
The request, though too insignificant to be spoken of, was granted. But
to make it more worthy of such a petitioner and such a giver, the trifling
privilege was extended to the churches of the Franciscan order through
out the world. On a day in last August the Church of St. Francis, in
New York, was crowded from morning till night with pious souls who
were anxious to get a few centuries of their allotted purgatory wiped off.
10
�74
Archbishop Manning, who is spoken of as a promising candidate for
the papacy, if the present incumbent ever leaves it, gravely justifies the
practice of trading in celestial real estate, which so shocked Wycliffe and
Huss, and at length outraged Europe into Protestantism.
The rite of Baptism shows a pure case of superstition. The Indian
“ medicine man ” muttered a formula over a gourd filled with water from
a neighboring fountain, and sprinkled it on his sick patient. The Peru
vian, after confessing his sin, bathed in the nearest running stream, and
said: “ O thou river! receive the sins I have this day confessed unto
the sun; carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.”
The Aztecs began their order of baptism thus: “ O child! receive the
water of the Lord of the world, which is our life; it is to wash and to
purify; may these drops remove the sin which was given to thee before
the creation of the world,” — and in conclusion the priest said: “ Now
he is born anew and liveth anew, now is he purified and cleansed, now
our mother the water again bringeth him into the world.” When the
Romish priests saw the ceremony, they thought the old Enemy had been
at work, and crossed themselves with holy water more devoutly than
ever.
The Episcopal priest, before applying the water, prays that God will
“ grant to the child that thing which by nature he cannot have,” will
“ wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost; ” and, after applying
the water, declares the child to be regenerate. Was ever Pagan suckled
in a more fantastical creed than this ? When the superstition vanishes
from the rite, and it becomes a simple observance of sentiment, nobody
cares about it.
The Communion is another instance of unmitigated superstition. See
that morsel of bread. It was ripened in the field, harvested, ground,
kneaded, baked in an oven, — touch it, taste it, it is bread, and nothing
more. Consider this wine in the goblet. It was grown in a vineyard,
imported in a vessel, bought at a grocer’s shop. It differs from ordinary
wine only in not being so good. But, on the utterance of certain words
in a religious service, the substance is transformed. What seems bread
becomes God’s body. What seems wine becomes God’s blood. The
mouthful and the sip pass the Lord of the world into the soul through the
gateway of the lips. The Divine Intervention is pledged to come in at
every utterance of the charmed words, and pack the living Godhead into
a thin wafer that would not stay the hunger of a child. The natural
mind calls this blasphemous nonsense. The supernatural mind calls it
divine mystery.
The English Book of Common Prayer affirms that “ the body and
blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful
�75
in the Lord’s Supper.” “ Grant us,” the priest implores,—“grant us
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and to drink his blood, that our
sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed
through his most precious blood.” When Zwingli took out the poison by
declaring that the Supper was simply a memorial observance, it dropped
into disuse. Without the superstition, it was nothing. Take away the
miracle, and you take away the meaning. Yet a leading Unitarian divine
declares that instituted Christianity cannot survive the neglect of the
Communion !
Protestants can boast of superstitions every whit as pure as those of
Romanism. “ Zion’s Herald ” stands by the statement that the earth will
explode sooner than the truth that earthquakes and other natural con
vulsions are caused by human sin. The Presbyterians in Philadelphia
lately put on record their conviction that the hideous woes that afflict
France are a doom passed on the nation by the Protestant God to pay
for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Such nonsense is the despair of
history and the confusion of reason. The vulgar idea of prayer is satu
rated with superstition. “Prayer,” says an “Orthodox” divine, “is the
rope up in the belfry: we pull it, and it rings the bell in heaven.” Says
another: “ Jesus, the high treasurer in heaven, knows every letter of his
Father’s handwriting, and can never be imposed upon by any forged note.
He will always honor his Father’s bills.” Said another dealer in pious
imagery: “ When a pump is frequently used, the water pours out at the
first stroke, because it is high. But if the pump has not been used for
a long time, the water gets low, and you must pump a long while to get
it. So with prayer.” Here is natural superstition for you 1 Bell-ropes,
pump-handles, and promises to pay on demand! The ropes rattle, the
pumps suck, the promises to pay wait for indorsement. To the spiritually
minded this rusty machinery is disgusting. But finer machinery will still
be machinery. Substitute for the bell-rope the sigh or the tear, for the
pump-handle meditation, for the promissory note the temper of trust, —
the difficulty still remains. Mechanism is mechanism, whether it be the
turning of a mill, or the tapping of a telegraph wire. It is as rational to
pray for rain as for righteousness; for a favoring gale to speed your ship
as for a breath of the Holy Spirit to revive your soul. It is equally
superstitious to pray for life, and to pray for a willingness to lay life
down. The superstition lasts so long as the notion lasts that we can
have any gift for the asking; that we can obtain any single good thing
without conforming to the vital conditions ; that wishing, however earnest,
can dispense with willing; that the rule, “ If a man will not work, neither
shall he eat,” may, under any circumstances, be suspended ; that any part
of creation, any realm of being, is uncontrolled by law. Superstition
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disappears when the conviction comes in that we must earn what we
would have. • Jeremy Taylor assigns so many conditions of acceptable
prayer, that the ceremony of praying may be omitted. The work is done
before the supplication begins. If to be successful, prayer must be intelli
gent, sincere, earnest, humble ; if all good desires must precede it, and all
sweet tempers and noble dispositions must accompany it, and the grand
est resolutions must fortify it, — in other words, if every thing you pray
for must be presupposed before you pray, why pray ? The time is coming
when men will not pray for natural or spiritual gifts ; when it will be
seen that all such prayers have been breathed in vain to inexorable laws.
Read John Weiss’s chapter on “ False and True Praying,” in his new
book on “ American Religion ; ” shame yourselves by the reading out of
the superstition of praying for things which, if you really desire, you will
earn; and, by studying that and other chapters, educate yourselves into
the clearest ideas about rational religion that have ever been printed.
While present views of Providence last, Christians cannot look down on
Pagans. The augurs and soothsayers are their brothers. While the
present idolatry of the Bible lasts, Christians cannot look intelligent
heathens in the face. “ See that Christian missionary,” said a Hindu to
his companion, — “ see that Christian missionary carrying his god under
his arm.” There is a pure fetich: a book of charms ; a miracle-working
product of the printing-press. The Bible Society turns it out by the
hundred thousand copies,—always in one volume; always broken up in
chapters and verses; no spurious parts omitted; no apocryphal part put
in; no mistranslating corrected; no dark texts explained; no intelligent
classification of books allowed ; no vowel points changed. That the
volume should be understood is not essential. It is not necessary even
that it should be read. It must be distributed and possessed. It is
scattered among the heathen by shiploads; it is left at the doors of people
who cannot read ; there is a copy in every room of your hotel; the saloon
of every steamboat has one or more ; the traveller puts it in his trunk as
a talisman; the soldier puts it in his breast-pocket to ward off the bullet,
or stay the bayonet thrust (which it sometimes does), the undisturbed
presence of the book in the pocket being thought sufficient to insure its
virtue. To read a chapter every morning, without asking what it means,
will keep off the devils for the day. Devout people open it at random,
and find a divine oracle in the text that first meets the eye. If a child
flings the book down and kicks it, the resources of parental discipline are
inadequate to the emergency, and the minister must be called in to pre
scribe for th6 offence. The proposition to translate the volume into plain
English is repelled; and the idea of reading the volume as one reads
other books is scouted with horror. “ Have you any request to make,
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Tommy ? ” said a pastor to a little boy who was sick. “ Yes : when I
am buried, please put my little Testament in the coffin with me. I am
a very little boy, and I am afraid Jesus will forget me. But I will reach
up my New Testament to him, and then he will receive me.”
Who shall do justice to the superstitions that infest the Sabbatarian
mind ? Here is one day in seven that is not to be reckoned in the ordi
nary calendar: it is an intruder in the astronomical universe. It has no
place in the schedule of time; history has to jump over it. The solar
system has orders to pass it by. It takes no celestial observations.
Another sun shines for it; other winds blow for it; other elements work
for it ; the laws of hydrostatics and pneumatics and gravitation are sus
pended on that day. They are the ministers of God, and tradition says
that on this day God was asleep. On that sacred day the obedient sea,
converted from its secular habits, swallows up not the unskilful sailor, but
the worldly absentee from church. The orthodox winds upset not the
inexpert who know not how to manage their sail, but the irreverent
who do not love the Sunday school. If the sportsman is killed on Sunday
by his own gun, it is not because he is a careless sportsman, but because
he was not reading his Bible. If a carriage breaks down on Sunday, it
h not the fault of the roads or of the axle; the laws of mechanics are
of no account on Sunday: that the word of Scripture might not be
broken, the wheel gave way. The natural forces are all orthodox on
one day in the week. The sea becomes “evangelical.” The sun dis
penses the gospel, and is literally a sun of righteousness. The winds
obey the behest of the Holy Ghost. The beasts prophesy. The trees
rf the field are strict Sabbatarians. Nature studies the Bible, and
goes by the letter of it; she guards the slumbers of God. The “ New
Cyclopedia of Illustrations,” a work introduced to the public by no
less a person than Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, of New York, quotes approv
ingly an Eastern legend to the effect that, while Solomon was on his way
to visit the Queen of Sheba, he came to a valley in which dwelt a peculiar
tribe of monkeys ; on inquiring into their history, he learned that they
were the posterity of a colony of Jews, who by habitual profanation of
the Sabbath had degenerated into apes.
Dogmatism is superstition of opinion. A dogma is an opinion with a
magical attachment. It is a medicated bullet. The dogma is a fetich. The
less you understand it, the diviner it is. Its mysteriousness is its merit.
The credo quia absurdam is the motto of the dogmatist. The formula
is a charm, a philactery to be worn about the neck, or on the arm, or upon
the forehead. Emblazon it on the church, and Christ will dwell there.
Set it over the gates of your college, and God will bless the institution.
Let the Lyceum Committee write it upon the wall of their council room,
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This great ignorance, illusion of evil, the Free Religious Association
primarily aims to dethrone. Its motto is not faith, but knowledge. It
seeks to know. It believes in knowing. The definition of truth it does
*
not attempt. The love of truth it would fain promote. It would eman
cipate the mind from the tyranny of the supernatural, from the bonds of
dogmatism, from the despotism of idolatry and superstition. In doing this,
it is actuated by the sincerest of aims. It is animated by a pure human
regard.
I. In the first place, we charge Superstition with ruinous waste of
means. The Egyptians could not eat their onions because they had made
gods of them. The Jews could not improve their Sabbath because they
had consecrated it. The Christians are unable to make rational use of
their Bible because they deem it the “ word of God,” too holy to read
intelligently. It is sacred to stupidity. The antiquarian, the archae
ologist, the historian, the philosopher, the moralist, look at it with long
ing eyes, but their touch would profane it. It is a buried treasure
which is defended by magical charms. Literature has no claim upon it.
It is too hallowed to be the property of the human mind. It is forbidden
to the vulgar to know its genuine thoughts. A seventh part of all the
time there is having been given to the Lord, men may not avail themselves
of it for their human purposes. It must be devoted to doing nothing. To
open libraries on that day or lecture-rooms to give instruction in science,
history, mechanics, literature, art, to entertain the tired people with music,
to facilitate easy journeys into the country, to make galleries and gym
nasiums and gardens accessible to the famishing multitude, would be an
affront to the majesty of Heaven, would disturb the slumbers of the god.
The Communion Supper feeds nobody either with, food or sympathy,
because it is a “ holy ordinance.” In order that the sacrament may be
observed, the occasion is lost. The human qualities of Jesus cannot be
appropriated, — cannot even be appreciated, — the virtue in him being im
puted to his mythological character. In Naples, one sees hanging upon
the walls of shrine and chapel implements and weapons, fishing lines and
nets, through which poor people have been saved from danger, or have
met signal good fortune. The grateful owners devoted them to the Virgin,
and had to buy new ones. Being once consecrated, they could not be
used. This tool-worship is very expensive to poor people, though the tools
be nothing but rusty knives, a skein of twine, or an old oar. Who shall
compute the cost of it, when the sanctified and wasted tools are books that
hold the literature of a nation ; rare persons, the like of whom are not
born more than once in a thousand years ; and fifty-two golden days
in every twelvemonth, each composed of precious and irrecoverable
hours ?
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II. The second charge we make against Superstition is, that it demoral
izes and degrades mankind. Old Burton says; “The part affected by
superstition is the brain, heart, will,^understanding, soul itself, and all the
faculties of it; all is mad and dotes.” “Death takes away life,” says
Pliny, “ but not superstition. No torture is like it, none so continuous,
so general, so violent, so destructive.” “ The visionary,” says Plutarch,
“ hath ne’er a world at all; for he can neither use his reason when awake,
nor be free from his fears when asleep. His reason is always asleep, and
his fears are always awake.” “ When the atheist falls sick, he reckons
up his surfeits and debauches, .his 'excessive labors or unaccustomed
changes of airs or climates. But the fanciful superstitionist accounts
every little distemper in his body or decay in his estate, the death of his
children, crosses, and disappointments, as the immediate strokes of God.
If he be sick, he thrusts away the physician; if he be in grief, he shuts
out the philosopher.” The soul of superstition is fear of the unseen
powers, dread of the unknown. It infects with cowardice. Why are
men afraid of inquiry? Why do they cower under creeds they dis
believe ? Why do they sit dumb in presence of calamity ? Why do
they submit to strokes of fortune they might parry, and accept situations
they might escape from ? Why the backwardness to explore Nature ?
Why the horror of new opinions ? Men snuggle under their prejudices
as children under their blankets, peopling the dark with phantoms. We
ar® not half the men we ought to be. We will not do our own work,
from the superstitious hope that God will do it for us. We will- not
push our own way, from the superstitious fear that we may cross God’s
path. Superstition, instead of supplementing man, oppresses him ; instead
of supplying more strength when his natural strength is exhausted, it
drains him of his natural strength.
Superstition in the Roman Empire must have been a bitter thing, when
poets loathed it as the destruction of all beauty; when moralists de
nounced it as the subverter of all goodness; when philosophers deplored
its malignant influence on the rational nature; when a man like Plutarch
branded it as the worst calumny against the Deity, as more pernicious
than atheism, as being, in a word, essential atheism with cowardice super
added ; when thinking people hailed with rapture the materialism of
Epicurus, which at least gave them promise of quiet and unbroken sleep
in their graves. It took away their gods, and that was the greatest boon
that could be conferred.
Superstition must have been a frightful curse in Italy, when the monk
Savonarola dared to assail it in the person of the Pope of Rome. It must
have been a ruinous woe in Bohemia, when John Huss poured out his
torrents of eloquent indignation upon it; when his scholar, Jerome Faul11
�82
fish, burned the papal bull under the gallows ;* when the people rose,
insulted the priests, stormed the town-house, and defied the authority of
the Church. It must have been a oorroding disease in Germany, when
Martin Luther bore his witness against the doctrine of indulgences, and
at the risk of his life confronted the ancient system under which he
was educated with the pure text of the Word.
The flashes of lightning that Theodore Parker drew from the cloudy
masses of faith, and that have not ceased to blaze yet, reveal the temper
of superstition in America, — a temper as bitter, though not as powerful,
as in Greece and Rome. These great souls were struggling to emancipate
men from their bondage to the supernatural, to get breathing room for the
mind, to secure freeholds for thought and will, to gain the right of eminent
domain for the human faculties in every sphere of natural activity, to
make them, so far as the light of the generation permitted, kings and
priests to themselves. They could not execute their work perfectly,
because they could not see it perfectly. We see it better than they did.
Our successors will see it better than we do. The time will come when
Nature will assert her claim to the whole dominion of the supernatural;
and then, when the half-gods go, the gods will arrive.
That Superstition calumniates the Deity need not be argued: that is its
grand offence. “ For my own part,” said the philosopher, “I had much
rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a
man as Plutarch, than they should say, Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle,
froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow.”
Mr. Lecky, in the sentimental mood that sometimes comes over him,
writes : “ No error can be more grave than to imagine that, when a
critical spirit is abroad, the pleasant beliefs will all remain, and the pain
ful' ones alone will perish. Superstitions appeal to our hopes as well as
to our fears. They often meet and gratify the inmost longings of the heart.
They offer certainties when reason can only afford possibilities or proba
bilities. They sometimes even impart new sanctions to moral truths.
Often they become essential elements of happiness, and their consoling
efficacy is most felt in the languid and troubled hours when it is most
needed. We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge. ‘ Why is
it,’ said Luther’s wife, looking sadly back upon the sensuous creed which
she had left, ‘ that in our old faith we prayed so often and so warmly,
and that our prayers are now so few and so cold ? ’ ”
But the argument conveyed in this mournful passage proves too much.
Let comfort be the master, and who would leave the fireside ? Was Luther
wrong in leaving the Church of Rome ? Not in this pensive mood
did Mr. Lecky write his “ History of Rationalism in Europe.” That we
owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge, he has taught thousands
�83
to question: that proposition we take leave, in his own name, to deny.
We are quite willing that the pleasant superstitions should go with the
painful ones; that the prayers should become fewer and colder till, as
ceremonies, they cease’; that the dreams should be dispelled by the
dawn ; and’ that the good angels along with the evil should fade away in
the brightening daylight of science. Instead of consoling ourselves in
“ languid and troubled hours ” with illusions, let us make such hours fewer
by knowledge. .
Heat and light are not the same thing, but they have one cause. Light
undergoes no change of manifestation that does not in the same manner
and degree affect heat. The same agent that falling on the nerves of
seeing produces vision, falling on the nerves of feeling produces heat.
So, if knowledge strike the understanding alone, it merely illuminates;
but if it touch the chords of moral enthusiasm, a glow is excited, that,
better than any striking of flints or crackling of fagots will take away
the chill of the human heart.
The subject of the Essay was then opened for discussion. The
following report is an abstract of the addresses that were
made : —
Prof. William Denton was the first speaker. He began with the
remark that, while listening to Mr. Frothingham’s essay, he had come to
the conclusion that Free Religion might be correctly defined as the appli
cation of science and common sense to matters of religion, just as we have
applied them to other matters; and, when that should be done, the rod of
dogmatism and superstition would be broken. Enumerating several
instances where the advance of science had abolished superstitious beliefs
and fears, he proceeded to the special point to which his remarks were
directed, — Bible-worship. The Bible, with the popular beliefs concern
ing it, seemed to him, in this country, the grand fountain of superstition;
and we should never be free from the terrible curse until the Bible should
take its place with other books that belonged to the record of man on
religious subjects. People should be left at liberty to take just as much
of it for truth as would harmonize with reason and common sense, and
reject all the rest. At present the Bible was the great idol of Christen
dom. People talked about the heathen idolaters in far-away countries.
But Boston, said he, is full of idolaters, — full of heathen temples and hea
then priests officiating in them. In the chiefest place in the temple is this
god, the Bible, gilded like a god in a Chinese Joss-house;1 and the priest
every Sunday bows down and worships it, and calls upon the assembled
people to do the same. They may not offer up their sheep and oxen in
�84
sacrifice ; but, what is worse, they sacrifice their reason and conscience and
manliness. If it should be said that no Christian believes the Bible to be
very God, he would answer that no heathen believes his image to be his
God. But in both cases the God is believed to be imaged in the idol.
The Bible is taken as God’s infallible representative. He then proceeded
to show some of the evils of this view of the Bible. It stood in the way
of the advance of science among the people, and it made cowards also of
scientific men. There were scientific men in America to-day who did not
tell all they think and believe, because it would come into conflict with
the popular notion of the Bible. So this Bible-idolatry imprisons thought
and delays the wheels of progress. There are thousands of people who
are drawn to Darwin’s view of creation and would accept it, but fear it
because it is going to overturn the Bible and Orthodoxy. Another evil
of this Bible-idolatry was that it put over mankind, in Jesus, a “ Lord and
Master,” before whose authority the great mass of people bow down as
slaves. The speaker would spurn all such yokes of authority in religion.
He was here on this planet for himself, and the only master he could
recognize was the God who spoke through his own consciousness ; and he
knew of no better way to end superstition than to set men on their two
feet, let them look at the matter with their own eyes, and accept nothing
that does not commend itself to their own best judgment and conscience.
In conclusion, Mr. Denton referred to Mr. Frothingham’s remarks on the
possibilities of superstition in Spiritualism. He said he did not share in
the fear. He did not know of a single man or woman (who had any great
influence among Spiritualists) who taught that spirits are to be regarded
as authority not to be questioned, or that what comes from them is to have
any more authority than would be claimed for a living man or woman.
Just as he would put the Bible alongside of other so-called sacred books,
and read it and study it with them, claiming the same kind of authority
for all, so he would put the revelations of Spiritualists alongside of ideas
from any other source, and have men and women read for themselves and
judge them all alike, submitting them to the test of their own reason. A
spirit is nothing more than a man with his jacket off. As he would
not make any living man his master, so he would not make the spirit
of a dead man his master. And while Spiritualism should hold to that, he
had no fear of its superstition. It had done more, in his opinion, than all
other means together to break down the power of superstition and the
dogmatism of the sects. In the place of superstitious notions about the’
future world, Spiritualism had brought the demonstration of facts ; and it
invited for the facts the tests of reason and science.
Mr. J. Vila Blake, minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational So
ciety, Boston, followed Mr. Denton. He announced that, after hearing such
�85
radical utterances, he should have to appear as a conservative; and he re
joiced that the platform was so broad that he could speak in that character.
He then criticised Mr. Frothingham’s remarks on the subject of prayer,
thinking them too extreme, and inconsistent with Mr. Frothingham’s own
practice in his pulpit services. He also thought rather more of the Bible
and of the kind of authority which, as it seemed to him, Jesus meant to
assume, than Mr. Denton appeared to think. By calling himself a con
servative, he meant that he had a great regard for the past. His rever
ence for the past was so great that he wanted all the facts of the past just
as they were, and all the past. That seemed to him a shallow radicalism
which only went back eighteen hundred years. He would go back for
his facts a great deal farther than that. As to miracles, he was too con
servative to believe them; for he could not find, after weighing the evi
dence, that any such things were ever facts. And as to the Bible, that
did not cover the whole of human history. He must have all human
experience for his basis. He then passed to discuss the special point of
the superstitious observance of Sunday, and quoted many sayings from
those who are commonly regarded as authorities in the Christian Church,
in opposition to the modern Orthodox view of Sunday. The example
and teaching of Jesus himself were directly against the Pharisaical use of
the Sabbath day in his time; and that Pharisaical use of the Sabbath
among the Jews corresponds very nearly to the present “evangelical”
doctrine of Sunday. So Paul said it was a piece of Jewish superstition
to reckon one day above another. Luther said, “ If they tell you to be
solemn on the Lord’s day, I will bid you sing and dance and play upon it.”
Calvin and others of the leading reformers said substantially the same
thing. It was not till Puritanism came that that kind of Sunday observ
ance which is now contended for by Orthodoxy was known in Christendom.
This Orthodox doctrine of Sunday must be pronounced therefore a mod
ern innovation. True conservatism cannot defend it, for it has compar
atively a very brief past behind it. The lesson of the real past of
Christendom is that Sunday is free, — that we are free to use the day in
neighborly kindness for whatever we may think conducive to human
welfare. But even if the New Testament enjoined this observance of
Sunday, — which, in his opinion, it did not do, — and even if Christians from
the Apostolic age were unanimous in enjoining it, he would still say that
experience, reason, and common sense teach a better use of the day, and
4 that we are free to change the usage. He would make it a day of rest,
of recreation, of refreshment to body and mind, — a day of familiar
. assembling and enjoyment .for all, especially for the young. A simple
freedom from selfishness would solve the problem. What we should do
is so to order the day that the .utmost possible freedom and refreshment
*
�86
should be gained at the expense of the minimum of labor. He believed
in the necessity of the day, but more as a holiday than as a day for
formal worship. He would do any thing that only for one more hour in
a year would relieve this American people of their terrific industry. And
if the day were kept as it might be, and hallowed by natural uses as it
ought to be, it would come to us once a week distilling heavenly bene
dictions.
• Mr. Frothingham, alluding to Mr. Blake’s criticism of his statement
concerning Prayer, said he had .spoken of Prayer in the sense of im
ploring favors from the Supreme Being which men must earn for them
selves. It was this kind of praying that he hoped would cease. It had
ceased with him long ago. The expression of aspiration, the mingling of
our thoughts with the Highest and Best, — that was something very dif
ferent ; and that in his humble way he tried still to do.
Mr. A. M. Powell, editor of the “National Standard,” New York,
was the last speaker. The movement represented by the Free Religious
Association, he said, as he understood it, had two functions, — one of in
terpretation, the other of application. The first had been largely exhibited
during the day: he wanted now to bring forward more specially the
second. He desired to show the practical side of the Free Religious move
ment, — to set forth its connection with philanthropy and social reform,—
and at the same time to expose the power of dogmatism and superstition,
as organized in the Christian churches, in resisting philanthropic and
reformatory efforts. But as the hour was late, he would only hint at the
topic. He felt a strong interest in the intellectual interpretation of Radi
calism, but his interest was stronger in the practical outcome of it. He
saw around him the most distressing suffering, the bitterest injustices and
wrongs, human energies wasted and corrupted by dissipating vices, and
our pretences to civilization mocked on all sides by the actual condition of
society. You appeal to the Christian churches to take hold of these
practical evils and rectify them, but for the most part they pass by on the
other side. They are so devoted to inculcating their dogmas and keeping
up their ceremonies that they cannot take up the works of justice and
humanity. Therefore he looked with hope to this movement for the
emancipation of the human mind from the thraldom of ecclesiastical
authority and from the chains of dogmatism and superstition. From
mental emancipation, moral emancipation must logically follow. But, said
he, when we go from this platform to apply the lessons here learned, im- i
mediately, as soon as we reach yonder side-walk, in our very first effort to
reform these evils, ■— to check intemperance, t® eradicate the spirit of caste,
to establish the equal rights of woman, to remedy “ the social evil,” to abolish
the gallows, — we shall meet the Church as an organized power against us
�'87
and the greatest obstacle in our path. Just as the old anti-slavery battle was
fought and won in spite of the American Church and clergy, so it seems as
if all social and civil reforms had got to be carried against the same oppo
sition. The Church is bent on saving its ordinances and its theology, no
matter what becomes of these great problems of humanity. It is afraid of
the agitation which they cause, and turns a deaf ear. Clergymen quote
St. Paul as infallible authority, and because he said, “ Let women keep
silence in the churches,” think that that settles the woman question. Be
cause of the superstitious observance of the Communion, wine is used even
by those who do not believe in its use elsewhere; and so a great obstacle
to the cause of Temperance is continued by the authority of the Church.
Temperance reformers have yet to learn that they must make war upon
the use of wine at the Communion-table as well as at the Parker House.
In all these questions of reform the same ecclesiastical opposition will be
met. Hence the usefulness of such conventions as this, to help break this
bondage of the Church, in order that men and women may stand up in their
emancipated manhood and womanhood, ready and free for every good
work.
The hour of ten having arrived, the exercises of the day were
closed, and the Convention adjourned.
4
�CONSTITUTION
OF THE
\
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCI AT I O N.
I. This Association shall be called the Free Religious Associa
tion, — its objects being to promote the interests of pure religion,
to encourage the scientific study of theology, and to increase fel
lowship in the spirit ; and to this end, all persons interested in
these objects are cordially invited to its membership.
II. Membership in this Association shall leave each individual
responsible for his own opinions alone, and affect in no degree his
relations to other associations. Any person desiring to co-operate
with this Association shall be considered a member, with full right
to speak in its meetings ; but an annual contribution of one dollar
shall be necessary to give a title to vote, — provided, also, that
those thus entitled may at any time confer the privilege of voting
upon the whole assembly, on questions not pertaining to the man
agement of business.
III. The officers of the Association shall be a President, three
Vice-Presidents, a Secretary and Assistant Secretary, a Treasurer,
and six Directors ; who together shall constitute an Executive
Committee, intrusted with all the business and interests of the
Association in the interim of its meetings. These officers shall be
chosen by ballot, at the Annual Meeting of the Association, and
shall hold their offices for one year, or until others be chosen in
their place ; and they shall have power to fill any vacancies that
may occur in their number between the annual meetings. Five
members of the Executive Committee shall constitute a quorum.
IV. The Annual Meeting of the Association shall be held in the
city of Boston, on Thursday, of what is known as “ Anniversary
Week,” at such place, and with such sessions, as the Executive
Committee may appoint ; of which, at least one month’s previous
notice shall be publicly given. Other meetings and conventions
may be called by the Committee, according to their judgment, at
such times and places as may seem to them desirable.
V. These Articles may be amended at any Annual Meeting of
the Association, by a majority vote of the members present, pro
vided public notice of the amendment has been given with the call
for the meeting.
*
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Proceedings of the fourth annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston, June 1 and 2, 1871
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Free Religious Association
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Boston
Collation: 87, [1] p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
John Wilson and Son
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1871
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5291
Subject
The topic of the resource
Free thought
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Proceedings of the fourth annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston, June 1 and 2, 1871), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Free Religious Association
Free Thought
Freedom of Religion
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Proceedings of the third annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston May 26 and 27, 1870
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Free Religious Association
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Boston, Mass.
Collation: 121, [1] p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
John Wilson and Son
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1870
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5173
Subject
The topic of the resource
Free thought
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Proceedings of the third annual meeting of the Free Religious Association, held in Boston May 26 and 27, 1870), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Free Religious Association
Free Thought
Freedom of Religion