The Religion of the Spirit

WHEN Auguste Sabatier declared that he had work enough planned out ahead to occupy him for two hundred years, he spoke the mind of the modern scholar. The impression which one gets from the serious books of the day is that the writers feel that they have just arrived in the promised land. They have seen new sights already, of which they give us a description: but these are as nothing in comparison with the wonders which lie beyond the mountains. This is true not only of the student of science, but of the student of theology. The time is long past when one could fairly say of any divinity school, “One professor is milking the barren heifer, and the other is holding the sieve.”

The contemporary student is in an attitude of expectation. His face is towards the future. The note of finality has no music for him. He feels that he stands not at the end, but at the beginning of the way of truth, and he goes on into it with the eagerness of an explorer. He perceives about him a new heavens and a new earth. If he is a scientist, he is making journeys of discovery in the new earth. If he is a theologian, he is watching the stars of the new heavens. The world is “mighty interesting,” and he is mightily interested in it.

Of course, the newness is neither in the earth nor in the heavens. They have both been in plain sight for a long time. The newness is in the heart of the student. For the first time in history, he is free to study. He used to be punished for studying. If he studied so hard that he learned something which nobody had ever thought of before, he was punished very severely. The student was under such bonds as were laid upon the Spanish explorers of this country, who knew very well that no exploration would be acceptable to the authorities at home unless, with their other discoveries, they discovered gold. That was their proper errand. They might find a new continent or a new planet, but unless the new continent had a gold lining and the new planet a gold equator, the discovery would result , not in the reward, but in the punishment of the discoverers. Likewise the student knew that he was expected to contribute to the store of current intellectual coin. Strange money, or strange metals which could not be conveniently stamped with the image and superscription of Cæsar, had no value. His business was to enrich the treasury of conventional opinion.

The student used to have his picture taken in the midst of folios, to show that all his ideas were decently derived from large old books. The disappearance of the folio is significant. Those great volumes, with their substantial covers, stood for permanent conclusions. They were made to last for centuries, outside and in. For many years now, not a writer of science or of theology has found a publisher willing to present his works in folio. Folio science and folio theology can be bought only in second-hand bookstores.

The difference between the old writing and the new is mainly a difference in the method of the writers. The argument from authority has been superseded by the argument from experience. The change amounts to an emancipation. The student of theology, who was for many centuries in bondage to the Church, and who escaped from that captivity only to be brought under bondage to the Bible, is now free both to think and to declare his thought, having no master but the truth.

The story of this emancipation is told in Sabatier’s posthumous book, Religionsof Authority.¹ He shows how gradually the idea of authority entered into the Christian religion. Christ had set Himself in sharp opposition to the Church, and had been put to death in consequence by churchmen. The apostles in their first recorded conference at Jerusalem had debated whether or not they were bound to obey the Bible, and had solemnly decided that they were not bound to obey it in the details of the ritual law. These great examples, however, were in time overborne by an appeal to human nature. Men began to appreciate the adminstrative convenience of infallibility. The next step was the natural conviction that a provision so convenient must be divinely ordered. The question was not, What has God actually done for the determining of human conduct and belief ? but What would God properly do ? And it was agreed that properly God would somehow speak with an infallible voice. In the Middle Ages men thought that they heard that voice from the lips of the head of the Church, and that opinion has culminated in our own time in the dogma of papal infallibility. In the era of the reformation men thought that they heard the words of inerrant authority when they read the Bible.

Against these two historic endeavors to bring men’s minds into captivity, M. Sabatier opposes the method of experience, the process of research, the question, not What could God do ? but What has He actually done ? the freedom of the reason, leading to the religion of the spirit. Let us trust man and the truth: that is what it means. Let us belong, with the apostles, to the Church of the Holy Ghost and Us, putting a self-respecting emphasis upon the pronoun. Let us believe that devout and honest men, earnestly and freely studying the revelation of God in the Church, in the Bible, and in the general life, will find what is essentially right. Let truth and error grapple.

Anyhow, whether we like it or not, the religion of the spirit is in all the new religious books. If the output of the publishers is a fair indication of the tendency of thought, then it is plain that thought is all that way. The men who are contributing to current theological literature do not speak for the religions of authority; or, if they do, they make no use of the argument which is characteristic of such religion. The universal appeal of the contemporary books is to the free mind. They express the religion of the spirit.

“The transformation of the Christian consciousness and its liberation from all exterior servitude began,” says Sabatier, “on the day when piety and science first met. They will be completed and the religion of the spirit will reign, all systems of authority having been done away, on the day when piety and science shall have become so mutually interpenetrated as to be thoroughly united into a single entity; inward piety the conscience of science, and science the legitimate expression of piety.” For the furtherance of this common understanding, the editor of Ideals of Science and Faith² has made a book of essays written at his request by men engaged in various intellectual pursuits, writing from very different points of view. He foresees a mitigation, if not an abolition, of the old feud between the priest and the physicist in the possession of a store of common ideals. He agrees with Sabatier that the most serious difference between men is not in doctrine, but in method. Men of various beliefs may preserve a profitable friendship in the face of continuing contradiction, but men of radically different method cannot come into cordial understanding. In the nature of things, they will not have that initial respect, one for the other, which is essential to any frank discussion. He who seeks truth by the way of authority cannot approve of his bold neighbor who seeks it by the way of his own reason. On the other hand, he who is not satisfied until he has worked a problem out has a poor opinion of his fellow student who is contented to copy the answer from the book. Francis Newman told Moncure Conway that he found it impossible to carry a conversation with his brother John Henry beyond the condition of the weather.

Mr. Hands has assembled in his book students of biology, of psychology, of sociology, of ethics, and of education, with a Presbyterian, an Anglican, and a Roman Catholic clergyman. The voices of this mixed company are naturally somewhat confused, but an admirable spokesman for them all appears in the writer of the initial chapter, Sir Oliver Lodge. He finds the reconciling element neither in religion itself nor in science itself, but in philosophy or poetry. The prosaic, literal mind, entangled among details, cannot climb high enough to get an extended view. But the philosopher and the poet, who know that facts are the body of which the heart is truth, are able to appreciate and understand the true identity of meaning which is contained in very different statements. “By aid of philosophy, or by aid of poetry, a great deal can be accomplished. Mind and matter may then be no longer two, but one! This material universe may then become the living garment of God: gross matter may be regarded as an idealistic cosmic reality in which we live and move and have our being; the whole of existence can become infused and suffused with immanent Deity. ” Sir Oliver goes so far, in a notable passage, as to question whether the Christian believer is wise in his present tendency to substitute the prayer of communion for the prayer of petition. He finds in modern scientific disclosures of the action of mind on mind, even at a distance, a sanction for the prayer which desires of the Eternal a definite and concrete avower.

Sir Oliver’s idea is that plain common sense, even in the form of scientific accuracy, goes astray unless it walks in the company of the imagination. What is

seen with the eyes and touched with the hand is but the lesser part of life. He who dismisses philosophy and poetry, and accepts only that which comes within the range of experience, misses the truth. Nevertheless, the literal mind serves as a salutary check upon the exuberance of poets and the speculation of philosophers. The religion of the spirit needs that sober criticism of the religion of authority which is the expression of a conservative judgment. Wilfrid Ward, discussing the service which the Church of Rome renders in the reconciliation of science with theology, holds that the interests of truth are best guarded by an institution which acts as a drag on the over-free adoption of theories. Professor Genung, in the Words of Koheleth,³ finds in the author of the book commonly called Ecclesiastes, a man of the literal, conservative type, rendering to his generation just this kind of service. One comes to Mr. Genung’s new book, remembering his illumination of the epic of Job, with a sure expectation of interest and profit which is not disappointed. He combats the theory that Koheleth’s other name was Arthur Schopenhauer. He maintains that the book of Ecclesiastes, while it does undoubtedly take a grim view of life, teaches a high ideal of duty. The people of Koheleth’s time were being carried off their feet by the discovery of the world beyond the grave. Compared with this, the explorations of Copernicus and of Columbus were of hardly more importance than the adventures of a pedestrian along a country road. Suddenly, as it seems, into a Hebrew world which was bounded by the cemetery wall, out of which the soul went, as it says in the psalm, into the place where all things are forgotten, came the conception of the future as a time of great light, and comfort, and happiness, awaiting the faithful believer. The effect was to give men a new idea of the meaning of this present life. The world in which they lived appeared as no more than a way station on the road to heaven, to be lived, to be endured, but to be got through as soon as possible. It was a hard world, with oppressors and robbers busy in it, and death lurking always in the corners of the streets. Never mind, men were now saying, these evils will not last for long.

But the new doctrine did not convince Koheleth. He did not believe it. He maintained bluntly that nobody really knew anything about it. He was neither philosopher nor poet. He did not see how personal immortality could be proved, and he declined all consolation whose source was in the land of dreams rather than in the land of facts. He despised the books of apocalyptic visions which his neighbors wrote and read. No, he said, the only certainty is this daily life, and the only thing to do is to face the worst of it, and make the best of it. Professor Genung has no sympathy with the opinion that some good orthodox folk took Koheleth ’s bad book and sprinkled over it the holy water of a subsequent piety. He believes that the author himself wrote it all, the positive with the negative. All is vanity; but the sum of the matter in the midst of vanity is, Fear God and keep his commandments. That, at least, is man’s sure duty.

Koheleth represented the religion of the spirit only in his intellectual integrity, in his refusal to accept at the hands of authority a creed which he did not believe. The hero of Professor Bacon’s book, The Story of St. Paul,⁴ represented the religion of the spirit in its fullness and perfection. He was the apostle of religious liberty; following the Master whose teachings, we may say, he rescued out of the hands of the servants of authority. When he withstood his brethren to their face, these two conceptions of religion, these two methods of approaching truth in religion, met in sturdy conflict. The beginning of St. Paul’s watchword, as Dr. Bacon says, is not “ Whatsoever things are scriptural,” but “Whatsoever things are true.” This watchword the present interpreter carries with him through his excellent book. He is not afraid to take even the position of Max Müller, who in reply to a quotation from one of the epistles said, “But I do not agree with Paul!” That is, he brings to his study of the apostle that disposition of perfectly free inquiry which is characteristic of the religion of the spirit.

This appears notably in Dr. Bacon’s dealing with differences. He is engaged in comparing the Acts with the Epistles. The older commentators, undertaking such a task as this, devoted themselves to the minimizing of the differences. What they wished was “harmony,” in order that authority might speak with a clear voice. One time, in the early centuries, they went so far as to write out the four gospels in a single consecutive narrative in which the variations disappeared from sight. To the newer commentators, however, the differences are of eminent interest. They assure us of the presence of various witnesses, and contribute to our knowledge of events and persons. Thus from the two extant sources, the Acts and the Epistles, Dr. Bacon retells the great story of the life of the missionary apostles, and of the teachings of the father of Christian theology. The letters are interpreted in part by the life of the writer, and in part by the general life of the time, of “that marvelous time when the national religions of the world had broken down, and out of the confusion that supreme type of personal religion which we call ‘ the Gospel ’ was drawing to itself the elements of truth from Jewish and Gentile sources, infusing and quickening them with the Spirit of Jesus.”

The endeavors of the Gentile teachers to develop a true type of personality, and the inclusion and completion of them in Christianity are considered very simply and effectively in President Hyde’s From Epicurus to Christ.⁵ Here the Epicureans and the Stoics, who appear for a moment in the Athenian audience of St. Paul, come forward into clear light and speak our modern speech. With them are Plato and Aristotle. Each of these four philosophers produced a principle of personality : “The Epicurean pursuit of pleasure, genial but ungenerous; the Stoic law of self-control, strenuous but forbidding; the Platonic plan of subordination, sublime but ascetic; the Aristotelian sense of proportion, practical but uninspiring.” Each of these great teachings is treated with respect and sympathy, on the positive side, with illustrations in contemporary life and thought, and with a constant bearing on present conduct. Dr. Hyde seems to have his college world in mind, and to be writing for young men who are preparing for the future, and shaping the ideals which are to lead them to success or failure. He knows what such young men have in their souls, and addresses them in the strong and scholarly way which wins an irresistible assent. The undergraduate who feels that the ordinary parson has been out of college too long to understand him finds here what the parson is doing his best to say, said in college language.

It is all summed up in the closing chapter in which the essential truth and good of the old philosophies are found in the Christian ideal of divine and human love. Here the heart of the book appears. He who would be a complete man is taught to find his perfect example in Jesus, the source and perfection of the best life. “The time is ripe,” says Dr. Hyde, “for a Christianity which shall have room for all the innocent joys of sense and flesh, of mind and heart, which Epicurus taught us to prize aright; yet shall have the Stoic strength to make whatever sacrifice of them the universal good requires; which shall purge the heart of pride and pretense by questionings of motive as searching as those of Plato, and at the same time shall hold up to as strict accountability for practical usefulness and social progress as Aristotle’s doctrines of the end and of the means require. It is by some such world-wide,historical approach, and the inclusion of whatever elements of truth and worth other systems have separately emphasized, that we shall reach a Christianity that is really catholic.”

What are the preachers doing to bring this large religion of the spirit into the lives of the great congregation ? An encouraging answer is found in four books of sermons, one by an archbishop, one by a college president, one by a college pastor, one by the minister of a city parish.⁶ These sermons are all directly practical in the best sense, getting down to

The Archbishop of Canterbury impressed all who met him during his visit to this country with the simplicity of his manner and the helpful directness of his spcech. The impression is confirmed by the sermons and addresses of his American journey, assembled in this book. Whatever the occasion and whatever the congregation, the archbishop maintains that the mission of the Church is not to exalt itself but to increase the happiness and goodness of human life. He preaches in Trinity Church, Boston, on the words,“Ye shall receive power,” but the power of which he speaks is not that which strengthens authority, but which enriches and extends service.

President Harper, addressing a company of young persons engaged in study, has much to say of the difficulties which bar the way of faith. He finds one of these difficulties in that very transition from the argument of authority to the argument of reason which seems to Sabatier the beginning of the millennium. The student comes to college from an environment of authority, having been taught to believe what he is told. In the college he finds a totally different mind. The acceptance of truth on the basis of another person’s authority is superseded by the scientific attitude of mind. The student is now instructed to question everything. “He is brought into contact with men who are investigating problems in every department of thought, — problems supposed by the rank and file of humanity to be settled, or else of the very existence of which the ordinary man is quite ignorant.” The result in many cases is a temporary disturbance in the believing soul. Dr. Harper, in his place of convenient observation, finds that this is commonly no more than a transient phase, out of which the earnest and clear-minded student passes to a surer faith. The whole series of addresses is in this spirit of understanding, of sympathy, and of assurance.

The college pastorate of Dr. Leeds at Dartmouth covered forty years, during which time he addressed two generations of students. At theend of thatlongperiod, the spirit of his ministry was expressed by his congregation in these words: “ In a church and community marked by very divergent opinions, strongly held and openly expressed, on religious, social, and political subjects, he maintained his independence without compromise and without offense; and bringing no reproach upon the cross of Christ, he exhibited to all an unselfish gentleness.” The justice of this commendation is made evident in the book. Beginning with 1860 and closing with 1900, including the political questionings raised by the civil war, the theological discussions started by the doctrine of evolution, and the social dangers accompanying a time of great material prosperity, these sermons go quietly on, dealing with the eternal matters which are the ultimate solution of all controversy. The spirit and the message of them all is in the words of the book of Job, which the preacher quotes with deep appreciation, “Acquaint now thyself with God and be at peace.”

In the sermons of Dr. Gladden, the religion of the spirit finds free and high expression. The sky, he reminds us, begins at the surface of the earth. The old idea was that the sky began at the utmost summits of the highest hills, and that God had his residence beyond the sky, where He sat in celestial state upon a great white throne. But Dr. Gladden and his brother preachers teach that we are all in the sky with God, that the sky is the common air, and that God is in all life, in whom we live and move and have our being. “Just as sure as the sky is round about us, as eternity is our habitation, as heaven is a present reality more than afuture hope, so sure is it that He whose days are from everlasting to everlasting, and whose love is the light and law of heaven, must be the one ever-present, inclusive, all-pervading fact of the life of every man.” In this book the doctrine of the immanence of God is brought out of the difficult pages of theology into common life. Dr. Gladden is here continuing his characteristic and valuable service to contemporary thought and conduct, in taking the great new thoughts of the great books and giving them to the plain man.

Nine notable men are considered in Professor Brastow’s Representative Modern Preachers :⁷ five broad churchmen, Schleiermacher, Robertson, Beecher, Bushnell, and Brooks; two high church - men, Newman and Mozley;] two low churchmen, Guthrie and Spurgeon. The book is the result of repeated studies of these men with classes of students in the Yale Divinity School. The estimates of these various masters are made with deep sympathy and substantial justice. Newman, in the nature of things, presented the greatest difficulty, his dogmatic method making no appeal to the distinctly modern mind of the critic; but Newman’s true message, and the earnestness with which he gave it, and the sanctity of life with which he accompanied it, are all brought out abundantly. Indeed, the nine preachers were all selected as likely to afford suggestion and inspiration to the preacher of the present day. Professor Brastow has so dealt with them as to bring out their personal as well as their homiletical qualities, making a book which is of interest to those who care not only for sermons, but still more for men.

With the Dynamic of Christianity⁸ we return again to the clear note which we have found with more or less distinctness in all of these recent dealings with religion. Mr. Chapmanhas written an exposition of the religion of the spirit. Passing rapidly over the regions of controversy, recalling the assertions of authority as illustrative of a fashion in theology now past, he emphasizes the argument from experience. In the midst of much confusion of popular thought, he finds a general agreement that Christianity rightly understood and applied would solve all problems and meet all needs. He looks, therefore, into the teachings of Christ for “ some central principle vital enough to be the resident force in a permanent and ever-developing influence upon life.” And this he finds in Christ’s doctrine of the Spirit. The Dynamic of Christianity is the Spirit of God. It is the revelation of God as the resident or immanent force of the world. “The ultimate force of the philosopher, and the resident force of the physicist and biologist, and the immanent Spirit of the theologian, are but different names, representing different glimpses, of one God.” He who has thus seen God is at home in the present, has no fear of the enmity of reason or criticism, and has entered into the freedom of faith. Such a believer appreciates the value of authority, finding it in the Church, which comprehends the Christian experience of nearly twenty centuries, and in the Bible, which opens the way of salvation. “ No great doctrine which has moulded life is valueless or without vital meaning,” But the heart of Christianity is the religion of the spirit.