A Priest's Reply to a Scientist: The Religion of to-Morrow
I
IN the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Professor John Hodgdon Bradley, Jr., writes to a friend, a priest, a letter in which, as a scientist, he makes three points: —
1. We can agree at least in this: that the attitudes toward life engendered in me by science and in you by religion are utterly irreconcilable.
2. I should not be writing now if I were one of those who can feel only pity for religious people. I must admit that my feeling is closer to envy.
3. If there is any fundamental beauty beyond the tragic beauty of universal futility, or any hope but the blind hope of the wishful ego, we should like to know it.
This is far from the old hackneyed warfare between religion and science in which the chief actors were, on the one hand, inductive scientists who had revolted from the grotesque, geocentric, selfish, and material religion of their youth and knew no other, and, on the other hand, religionists who knew naught of the inductive method of reasoning. The scientist, as he calls himself, longs for the subtle peace of the religionist, but to him its price seems his own integrity, and he cannot sell his soul.
What is a scientist? What is science? What is religion? What is a religious person? The words are used with such varying connotations that one must define his terms before he speaks of either.
A religious person is a Greek Metropolitan, a Buddhist, a Moslem, a Holy Roller, a Roman Catholic, a Scottish Covenanter, a Quaker, or a New Thoughtist, to mention only a few kinds, and religion is what is believed and practised by them. If ‘religion’ is to be defined in a generic way, it must be a sort of least common multiple of them all.
Chemistry, physics, astronomy, and botany are sciences. There is the science of engineering, of medicine, of music, of navigation, and, for all we know, of politics, of industrialism, and of salesmanship. If ‘science’ is to be defined generically, it must include these and many more activities. If some clever manipulator of words should achieve these two definitions, would they be irreconcilable?
II
Even in its narrower sense, science is not as definite as one might suppose. He who studies the stars and he who studies protoplasm are both scientists, and both their subjects are strictly branches of science. The only bond of union between these two men is their method of study.
Science is therefore that method of study which proceeds inductively. The scientist observes phenomena and collects facts; he collates these facts and tries to ascertain whether there is any law which governs the phenomena; if he finds such a law, or thinks he finds it, he tries to predict when and under what circumstances similar phenomena may be expected to appear. These three stages — the collective, the collative, and the predictive — mark the development of every science.
Some sciences, such as mathematics and astronomy, are well advanced in the predictive stage. Others (to mention them might be invidious) seem not so far advanced, but have definite hope of progress. Any systematic study which has this definite hope would seem to be entitled to the name of science.
Not everyone who is busied in a scientific field is given the name of scientist. The bacteriologist, whom all admit to be one, would hardly grant that every physician is. Most astronomers would be loath to apply the name to astrologists. Sophomores in college who are commencing the study of physics would not be called scientists. He would seem to be a scientist who is engaged in his study with the purpose of arriving at the third or predictive stage.
The term ‘scientists’ is popularly and more narrowly applied to describe the men who are engaged in the scientific study of any material things in the universe, be they stars or bacteria, and who have learned some of the laws which govern their activity. These are the men who have made the physical universe better known to us, and who have enabled us to cope more easily with our environments. May their tribe increase.
III
Every scientist to-day knows that most of the theories (supposed to be laws) which gave rise to the studies and practices of his predecessors have been discarded, and that many hypotheses which were once accepted as axiomatic have been proved fallacious.
Alchemy gave way to chemistry, and the history of chemistry must include the activities of many who are recognized to have been hopelessly wrong. These men, however, labored not in vain; they prepared the way for their more learned successors, and, by every token, they were the scientists of their day. Modern chemistry is more closely related to alchemy than the casual observer may suppose. Nor is it difficult to imagine that, within a short time, the accepted chemistry of to-day will be radically altered by new discoveries in atomic activity.
The history of medicine describes many kinds of diagnosis and many systems of therapeutics. The last generation has seen undreamed-of developments which will probably be transcended in the next decade. The reason that such progress has been made in the science is that so many devoted men have gladly given their lives to its pursuit although they obtained no appreciable results. They had the quality of faith which needs not to see results; it has only to believe in its methods.
Scientists accept the principle that any theory which does not satisfactorily explain all the phenomena in its field will have to be altered or even discarded. They are humbly prepared to discover new phenomena which may compel them to revise many of their conclusions and explanations.
No scientist presumes to speak with authority in any field other than his own. The astronomer will not propose a bacteriological theory; he will make inquiry of a bacteriologist in whom his fellows have confidence, and will accept his statements, however surprising they may be. The true scientist is marked by humility and reverence.
IV
Like every other phase of civilization, religion has taken many forms in many races, and has undergone many transformations in the same race. For it to take a fixed and final form would be to spell the end of its usefulness. In our own country it has no common form, but appears in more varieties than in any land.
Even Christianity is a name assumed by a great many different religions which would not apply it to each other. Roman Catholics are Christians; so are Quakers and Unitarians and Baptists; and about the only common element to them all is a belief in the name ‘ Christ,’ which they apply to figures varying all the way from Guido Reni’s Ecce Homo to the salesman hero of The Man Nobody Knows. The din of voices is akin to the babel of the therapeutic world. Speaking philosophically, Christianity is becoming rather than being.
Different as are the religions of the country, like all the religions of the world, they resemble each other in three features. Periodically the adherents of a religion meet together for some sort of ceremony or rite which we call worship or cult. There is some more or less official explanation or rationalization of the cult which we call creed. By the ceremonies and their explanations there is some regulation of the lives of the adherents which we call conduct.
The purpose of this cult, creed, and conduct, which, together, make up the religion, is always to enable the adherents to effect a union with the Great Something Other than themselves, and thus to cope the more effectively with the spiritual immensities of life which sooner or later beset us all — stress, perplexity, sin, sorrow, failure, death.
V
Religion in America has suffered much from the hands of its friends. We Americans recognize the principle of authority in nearly every department of life. The electrician does not presume to dictate to the physician, nor does the astronomer to the dentist. The grocer does not essay to speak with authority upon the steel industry; the hatter does not offer instructions upon bridge building. There are, however, two glaring exceptions to the rule.
Every American considers himself, with no special training whatever, of equal authority with every other American in the subjects of religion and politics. The condition of these in our country indicates that both have been conducted by amateurs who knew nothing and cared less about the experience of the race. Democracy in politics and Protestantism in religion have been responsible for the widespread theory that no special training is necessary to be an expert in either of these subjects. The invasion of this principle into the medical world is responsible for the hosts of novel ‘-pat hies’ and ‘-practics’ against which the medical profession has consistently taken the scientific stand for which it is, in turn, branded as bigoted, narrow, mercenary.
This was the reason that emotional revivalism flourished so well and so long upon American soil. Untrained and untaught men with a sincere zeal for moral reform would artificially create an atmosphere of excitement, and aggressively and volubly reiterate words and phrases of whose meaning they were ignorant. Listeners who were equally ignorant were caught by the spell of their glibness and fired by the contagion of their emotion. These were described as ‘getting religion,’ which, as a phrase, became popularly confused with the hysterical moral inertia and intellectual monstrosity which shock and revolt everyone who learns a few of the facts of the universe and of history, and which positively repel the scientist in any field whatsoever.
VI
In many American religious bodies which are antithetical to revivalism of any kind, the cult has resolved itself into a sacred concert whose object, like the object of the revival, is to gather the crowd. In others it has become an unintelligent performance separated entirely from the ratiocinative processes of the worshipers. In both these instances there has been an inevitable result upon the creed, for the creed is always the explanation of the cult.
In the first instance, the creed has lost all semblance of philosophic unity and has become an aggregation of pious opinions and aspirations or a collection of moral maxims. In the other, the creed has become a body of fixed phrases, frequently couched in terms of a discarded philosophy, to be learned by heart and repeated by rote whenever occasion demands. Illustrations of both these conditions could be easily adduced, but, inasmuch as we Americans have not the grace of impersonality in discussion, they had better be omitted.
It is small wonder that a scientist turns in vain to either of these groups for the courage and strength and peace his soul desires. The first group has no answer to his inquiries, and the second does not understand their nature. He will hearken only to that religion which has very definite theories, as he himself has, and whose theories are consonant with well-known facts and phenomena.
VII
Religion is not dying in America; it is in process of transition to a form new to many, but not so new to many others. The details which it will assume may not all be accurately foreshadowed, but one may make a few predictions of its general nature.
It will, for a long time, be almost esoteric in character. Like the activities of true science, it will be based, not upon foundations of mass appeal, but upon deeper and more basic principles, which will be apprehended only by the few who devote themselves to it. Its spread will be, not by accretion or by deliberate attempts at extension, but by the silent and almost unnoticed method by which the seed grows into a mighty tree. Its hero will be, not the successful salesman, but the humble servant, the kind of man of which the true scientist is made.
It will not be something novel and invented, but will be as closely linked with traditional religion as modern chemistry is with alchemy, or as modern physics with Archimedes. Saint Thomas Aquinas will be as important in its history as are Newton and Copernicus in the history of astronomy. Its behavior toward tradition will be neither the fawning adulation of the cringing slave nor the hysterical hatred of the recent fugitive. It will look to the rock from which it is hewn.
It will have a restrained and symbolic cult, which will not be a realistic outlet for emotions, a sacred concert, or a perfunctory performance of habit, but will be an objective presentation of the spiritual ideal of man, an awakening of a sincere desire to realize it, and an actual means of approximating it. In this cult a sermon will not be considered necessary, for, when men preach, it will be because they have something to say, and not because they have to say something. Choirs and preaching, the expensive overhead of present-day Protestantism, will not be regarded as essential to cult, but will be among its adornments when desired and possible. They will always be kept in their proper place of expressive adornments and will not be allowed to usurp the centre of the stage.
It will have a creed which will not be a congeries of ‘inspirational’ exhortations and verbose platitudes or a collection of unintelligible phrases, but will be a sane, definite, and cogent explanation of the worship. This creed will be no more fearful of the phrases of antiquity than we are of such phrases as ‘rising sun,’‘setting sun,’ or ‘falling stars,’ but will be focused upon phenomena and ideas rather than upon words.
It will have a definite discipline, America’s great lack to-day, which alone can produce character, and which will have an unmistakable effect upon the lives of its adherents, whose conduct will be marked by courage and humility and self-control, by strength and dependableness, by ingenuousness and calmness and selflessness, by faith, hope, and charity.
The most powerful commendation of this religion will be, not the invincibility of its logic, but the profound conduct of its devotees. It will not appeal to the ambitious or the selfish or the contented, for these want, not religion, but service, and their conception of God is of the Chief Bell Boy of the universe.
The approach to this religion will not be by comprehension to be followed by practice, but, like the approach to all art and science, by practice which generates apprehension. The practice of the cult will first be an act of faith, like that of the scientist, who sees not the results of his work but trusts that by his methods they will appear at the proper time.
The motives for the practice of reli - gion will be absolutely devoid of the desire to continue the wishful ego or any other selfish incentive. Men will learn that the law of the spiritual development of the race is the very opposite of the law of physical development. Self-preservation is the first law of nature; complete devotion of self is the first law of the spiritual world.
We know much of the lives of those whose chief contribution to society has been material progress. We know comparatively little of the biography of those whose contribution to the race has been spiritual — of Moses, of Isaiah, of Gautama, of Confucius, of Socrates, of Shakespeare. We know comparatively little of the biography of Jesus of Nazareth.
VIII
The scientist points grimly to the tragic beauty in the universal futility of material things. To seek beauty, tragedy, or futility in the universe is to seek immeasurable and imponderable spiritual values, and for this search a spiritual equipment is necessary. The search itself is a spiritual activity.
There is neither beauty nor discord, neither tragedy nor comedy, neither futility nor purpose, in the inexorable activity of matter. A machine has no purpose. He who made it and he who drives it may each have a purpose, but the purpose is external to the machine and is not in any way a part of it. The poor machine is not even conscious of its own purposelessness; it has not even the elementary beginnings of a spiritual life. The material universe is, in a sense, a machine.
When that strange biped, man, entered upon the scene, seeking not only for food and shelter and mating, but for purpose, a new kind of life was inaugurated which has had its unfolding in manifold spiritual activities. This elementary seeking is related to the more complex spiritual development as the protoplasm is related to the human body. That it has not been wholly futile has been due to the incentives given to it by inspired men.
Man’s physical development has proceeded upon his obedience to and coöperation with a Something external to himself — call it Power or Law or any name that pleases. Man is not the lord of nature, but is still its helpless slave, dependent for his very life upon meticulous obedience to its laws. The discovery of this has been due to students of science who for countless centuries have given themselves, with admirable devotion, to its patient pursuit. Long may their labors continue, and may they be crowned with success.
To the appreciation of spiritual values and coöperation with the Great Something Other that controls their development, students of religion have given themselves with a devotion that is equally unfailing. They have made many mistakes and many discoveries, and have not always been able to distinguish between them. This, however, we have learned: that to religion alone can we look for the things that are unseen and eternal. The alternative is the conscious pursuit of the material for its own sake, the aggregation of things, which can only lead to the ultimate destruction of the race by itself. And this is hell.