Our Unitarian Gospel Part 8

Let us see now if I can give you a clear idea of what faith really is; and now I have the Bible and I am glad to say it behind me. This magnificent chapter,* a portion of which I read as our lesson this morning, gives precisely the same idea of faith as that which I am going to outline. What is faith? Faith is a purely rational faculty. It is not irrational, but it is perfectly understandable. Suppose there is a man suddenly accused of a crime, and I never saw him before, I do not even know his name; but I go into court when he is brought up for trial, and I say that I have faith in that man, and I do not believe that he committed the crime. Do you not see that I am talking nonsense?

I have no business to have faith in him, there is no ground for faith, it is an entire misuse of the word. But now take another case. Here is a man that I have known for twenty years. I have seen him in business.

I have seen him in his home, among his neighbors and friends, and in the street. I have met him in all sorts of relations. I have talked with him, I have tested him. I have been intimate with him. He is suddenly accused of crime, and is brought into court. I appear, and say I have faith in that man, I do not believe that he committed the crime.

I do not know that he did not commit it; but I have grounds here for faith. In the light of his past life, of his experience, of his temptations, of his opportunities to go wrong, and of his having gone right, in the light of all this past experience of years, I have faith in this man; and I say it, and I am talking reason and sense. In the other case I am talking folly.

Faith, you see, is a rational faculty. Let me give you another ill.u.s.tration. Suppose I am driving along through the country some morning when there is a very thick fog hanging over the landscape. The fog is so thick that I can see no more than ten or fifteen feet ahead of me; but I discover that I am near the bank of a river, and I come to the entrance to a bridge. I can see enough to know that here is an abutment of a bridge and an arch springing out into the fog. I drive on to that bridge with simple confidence. I do not know that there is any other end to the bridge. I have never seen it before. I have seen other bridges, however; and I know that, generally, bridges not only begin somewhere, but end somewhere. So, though I do not know for certain that the bridge ends on the other side of the river, for aught I know there may be a break in it, the bridge may not be completed, something may have happened to it, I confidently drive on; and in ninety-nine times out of a hundred my faith is justified by the result. This is a pure act of faith, but faith, do you not see, based in reality, springing out of experience, and so a purely rational act of the mind.

Let me give you one ill.u.s.tration of the scientific use of faith, very striking, beautiful, as it seems to me. The only time Mr. Huxley was in this country, I happened to be in New York, and heard him give the opening one of a brief course of three lectures in Chickering Hall. He was very much interested then in the ancestry of the horse. Most of you are probably aware of the fact that they have traced its ancestry to a little creature having five toes, like ordinary animals. At the time that Mr. Huxley was here, one link in this chain was missing; that is, one of the forms in the line of the horse's ancestors had not been discovered.

But here, for example, was the first one and the second one, we say, and the third one was missing, and here was the fourth one, and here was the horse itself. Now, in the light of the presumable uniformity of nature, Mr. Huxley went on to describe this missing animal. He said, if the remains of this creature are ever found, they will be so and so; and he went into an accurate detailed explanation as to what sort of creature it would be. He had not been at his home in England a year before Professor Marsh, of Yale College, discovered this missing link in Colorado, and it answered precisely to the description which Professor Huxley had beforehand given of it.

Now here is a case of scientific prophecy, scientific faith, a faith based on previous scientific observations, based on the experienced uniformity of nature. Mr. Huxley did not know, he could not have known; but he believed. He believed in the universe, he believed in the sanity of the universe, he believed in the uniformity, the order, the beauty of the universe; and the result justified his faith.

Faith, then, is a purely rational faculty. It has nothing to do with the past, but is always the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of something not yet seen. It is always looking along the lines of possible experience for something as possibly or probably to be.

Now at the end I wish to suggest a few things that are in the rightful province and field of faith, fields where we can fearlessly exercise this grand faculty, where indeed we must exercise it if we are to achieve the highest and finest results in the world.

And, in the first place, quoting the words of the old writer, let me say, "Have faith in G.o.d." I do not mean by this, accept certain intellectual statements or propositions about him, though they may be mine, and though I may thoroughly accept and believe them.

You may doubt the representation of G.o.d that is made in any one of the theologies of the world, as to whether the statements made about him are accurate. It is not this intellectual belief that I am talking about at this minute. Have faith in G.o.d! You may not even use the name.

I am no such stickler for phrases as to condemn a man who cannot say "G.o.d." I have known a good many men, who have hesitated to p.r.o.nounce the name, who were infinitely more divine in their life and character than those who are glibly uttering it every hour of their lives. It is not this I mean. It is something deeper, higher, grander than that. As you look along the lines of history from the far-off time when we begin to trace it until to-day, and see the magnificent march of advance, an orderly universe lightening and glorifying as it advances, becoming ever finer and higher and better; as you observe the order and truth and beauty and good dominant, and ever coming to be more and more dominant as the years advance, believe in this and trust this, trust to all possibilities of something finer and grander by way of outcome in the future. Have faith in G.o.d!

And, then, have faith in truth. I meet only a few people that seem to me to have utter faith in truth, who really believe that it is safe to tell the truth, always tell it. I talk with a great many people I wish to mention this as an ill.u.s.tration of what I mean who speak in the greatest commendation of the Roman Catholic Church. They say, We do not know what we should do in this country if we had not the Roman Catholic Church to keep a certain section of the people down, to keep them in order. I wonder if people ever realize just what this means. It means a lack of faith in G.o.d and faith in truth and faith in humanity, all three. If it is not safe to tell the truth, then I am not responsible for it. I propose to say it, although people tell me that there is danger of the explosion of the universe on account of it. If there is, I am not responsible for making it true. Oh, I get so tired of this kind of timidity, this playing hide-and-seek with people! I have had a minister tell me that he wished he was free to tell the truth in his pulpit, as I am; and then I have had people in his congregation tell me afterwards that they wished their minister would preach the truth plainly, as I did. Simply playing hide-and-seek with each other!

You remember the story of the man in Italy, who asked the priest if he really believed the religion of the country; and the priest said, "Oh, no! we have to go slowly on account of the people; they believe it."

And when the people were asked if they believed it, they said, "Oh, no, we are not such fools; but the priests believe it." And so people play hide-and-seek with each other, not daring to tell the magnificent, clear truth of things.

Have faith in the truth. It is feared that it is not quite safe to tell people the truth, because they are not quite ready for it; and I have had no end of conversations during the religious discussion of the last two or three weeks right in this line. It seems to me very much like saying that, because a man has been shut up in a dark prison for a long time, you had better keep him there, because it would be such a shock to him suddenly to face the light. Undoubtedly, it would be a shock.

Undoubtedly, it would trouble and stagger people for a little while to be told the simple truth; but how is the world ever to get ahead, if you keep on, as a matter of policy, lying to it for ages? How is it ever going to find the truth? Shall I lie for the glory of G.o.d, the supposed honor of G.o.d? I will take no such responsibility.

Let us have faith in the truth, then. Tell it fearlessly, simply, utterly; and, if G.o.d is not able to take care of his own world, why, the sooner it ends and we get into a stage of existence where it is safe to tell the truth, the better.

Have faith in men. Have faith in the people. This it is that we trust to in all our hopes of progress for the future. This it is which distinguished Lincoln among our statesmen. You remember that grand saying of his, true and humorous, so that it sticks in our memory, and we can never forget it, "You can fool all the people a part of the time; you can fool a part of the people all the time; but you can't fool all the people all of the time." Here is the basis on which we rest our republic. Our republic is fallen unless the people are really to be trusted.

Have faith, then, in the people, faith in their healthy instincts, faith in their general sanity, faith in their desire for the right and the true; and this is a genuine exercise of faith, for the past history of the world justifies it.

And, then, have faith in yourself as a child of G.o.d. I do not mean conceit now. I do not mean an overestimate of your ability, but belief that you can do great, grand, n.o.ble things, belief that you can become something great, n.o.ble, grand; belief in the possibility in this life or in some other life of unfolding all that is highest, truest, sweetest, in manhood and womanhood. It is this faith that is able to create the fact and make that which it trusts in.

Let us then believe in G.o.d, believe in truth, believe in humanity, believe in ourselves; and then we may work towards the coming of that far, grand time when the dreams of the world shall be realized and its faith shall become reality.

IS LIFE A PROBATION ENDED BY DEATH?

MY subject this morning is an attempted answer to the question, "Is Life a Probation ended by Death?" It will broaden itself naturally, if we cannot accept that theory of it, into the further question, What is the main end and purpose of our life? I take my text from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the fifteenth and the sixteenth verses. I will read them as they appear in the Old Version: "See, then, that ye walk circ.u.mspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time."

The idea of the writer is that, as we pa.s.s through the world, we should do it with our eyes kept intelligently open, looking about us on every hand, trying to comprehend the situation, to see what things are, and what we ought to do to play our part in the midst of them. Not heedlessly, not unwisely, he says, perhaps hardly the harsh word "fools," but as wise, as persons intelligently ready to take advantage of the situation and make the most of the condition in which one finds himself; redeeming the time, or, as the Revised Version has it, "buying up the opportunity "; being ready, that is, to pay whatever price is necessary in order to make the most of the situation.

This, then, is the spirit according to our text in which we should look over the problem of life; and this is the method by which we should attempt to guide its practical affairs.

That which people regard as the matter of most importance, any particular theory or plan of life which they may hold to be for them the most desirable, this, of course, is that to which they will direct their chief attention, on which they will lavish their thought, on which they will pour out their care, to which they will consecrate their energies. If now the theory or plan of life be false, if it be inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and fine and high.

Is it not then of the utmost importance that our conception of life, what it is for, what we ought to attempt to reach, and how we should make this attempt, should be an accurate one? Any young man starting out in life, if he sets up for himself a goal which is unworthy, which does not match his faculties and powers, and if he proposes to reach it by means which are not adequate to the attainment of his desires, do you not see how he wrecks and wastes his life? His opportunity is gone; and by and by he wakes up to find that the years have been dissipated, and he has not attained any worthy or n.o.ble end.

If this be true of a young man as he looks forward to a scheme or plan of life here during these few short years, how much more is a similar thing true, when we are contemplating not merely the question of a business, or professional or social failure and success, but are looking at the grander and more inclusive theme of the beginning and aim and outcome of life itself We have inherited from the past the idea that this life here, under the blue sky for a few years, as we live it, is a probation, that we are put here on trial, and that death ends it, and that, when we have pa.s.sed that line, gone over from that which is visible here into the invisible, we are either "lost" or "saved," and things are definitely fixed forever.

I am perfectly well aware that the most of us who are here have given up this idea, though there may remain fragments and suggestions of it in our minds still haunting the chambers of the brain, not yet outgrown, not yet cleared away. But with most people in the modern world, if they are sincere, if they are consistent, the one great question with them is whether they are to be saved or lost in another life. And, if this be the true theory of things, then not only ought men to bend all their thought, their energies, devote their enthusiasms, consecrate their time and money to it as much as they do, but a thousand times more.

We look, perhaps, with a sort of amused curiosity, some of us, from what we regard as our superior point of view, at a man like Mr. Moody; and yet Mr. Moody is one man out of a million for his consistency and consecration to the thought which underlies all the Protestant churches of the modern world, with the exception of a few here and there. Mr.

Moody believes that this life is a probation ended by death. There are thousands on thousand on thousands of men who say they believe it, who still cast in all their influence with churches that are based on it, and who yet devote their energies mainly to making money, to attaining social success, to pleasures of one kind or another, to political ambitions, who live as though this great fate were not overhanging the world, who meet their neighbors for pleasure or business, believing, if they are sincere, that this neighbor is heedlessly walking on to the brink of a gulf, and yet never speaking to him about it, never saying a word to imply that they really believe it; and yet this fear hangs over them, haunts their consciousness waking or sleeping; and, if you ask them if they believe it, they will say they suppose they do. In hours of danger, when disease threatens them or they are looking death in the face, they are affrighted, and try to flee to the traditional refuge as a place of safety.

The whole great Catholic Church teaches that n.o.body has the slightest chance of being saved except by becoming a member of her great body of believers and partaking of her sacramental means of grace.

This, I say then, is the great underlying belief of Christendom; and, if it is true, the world ought to consecrate itself, head and brain and soul, time, money, power, prayer, enthusiasm, everything, to delivering men from the imminent danger. If it is not true, then it ought to be brushed completely one side, put out of consciousness, of thought, of fear. The world ought to be dispossessed of its haunting presence. Why?

So that we may fix our attention on the true end and aim of life, and find out what it means to live, how we ought to live, and why and what for, what ought to be the goal of our human endeavor.

So long, then, as this belief does lie at the foundation of all the great churches of Christendom, so long as it is employed in all the criticisms of us who do not any longer accept it, it seems to me that it is worth our while to reconsider the question for a little while, so that we may clear our minds and thoughts, and may fix our attention definitely and earnestly on that which ought to be the goal of all our endeavor, our enthusiasm and our hope.

Let us, then, look for just a few moments at this theory, and see what it means and implies.

It is said that our first father was put on probation, was called upon to decide, not for himself only, but for all his descendants, as to what the future history of the inhabitants of this planet should be.

Two famous books were published only a few years ago by Dr. Edward Beecher, the eldest son in that famous family. These were "The Conflict of Ages" and "The Concord of Ages." Dr. Beecher argued that anything like a fair probation on the part of Adam was an impossibility. This in the face of the prevailing beliefs of the time when the books were written. He said that, if a man were to choose on such a momentous question as this, choose adequately, choose fairly, he must be so circ.u.mstanced and endowed that he could comprehend the entire result of his choice. He must be able to look down the ages imaginatively, and see on one hand all the line of sin and misery, of death, finite and eternal, which should issue from his choosing in one direction. He must be able to comprehend all the good, the music, the joy, the beauty, the glory, the infinite perfectibility, in this world and the next, which should follow his choice in the other direction. And he said that Adam had no such opportunity as that, and was not endowed with the ability or the experience to make any such momentous choice; in other words, that the fundamental basis of the whole theological scheme of the world was unjust and unfair.

This was Dr. Beecher's contention. How did he get over the difficulty?

He believed in the pre-existence of human souls, and that in some other life before Adam there must have been an intelligent and fair choice, and that we here and now are only fighting out one stage of the results of that far-off decision. But, if you will stop to think of it a moment, you will see that this puts the difficulty only a little further back: it does not solve it. How does this first person, if it is so, countless millions of ages ago, happen to be endowed with intelligence and experience and ability enough to make such a momentous choice?

And now just consider a moment. Is it conceivable that a sane person should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such a choice as that?

If one of these first ancestors in the Garden of Eden, or no matter how far back, had a right to choose for himself, I deny his right to choose for me. What right had he to choose for you? What right had he to determine that you should be born with a perverted and corrupt nature, so that you would be certain to choose evil instead of good, helpless in the hands of a fate like this?

Now you may look at this theory any way you please, place this probationary choice at the beginning of human history on this planet, or place it just as far back as you will, it is inconceivable, it is unfair, it is unjust, it is insane, it is everything that is foolish and wrong. And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue, turned into wrong channels!

Is this a dead question? Is there no reason for us to consider it here in this latter part of the nineteenth century? Why, nine-tenths of Christendom to-day is spending its time in trying to propitiate a G.o.d who is not angry and trying to "save" souls that are not "lost."

Expending its energies along mistaken channels towards issues that are entirely imaginary! Think, for example, if during the last two thousand years all the time and the money, all the intelligence, all the consecration, could have been spent on those things that would have really helped men to find out the meaning of life, and to ill.u.s.trate that meaning in earnest living; suppose the money that has been spent on the cathedrals, on the monasteries, spent in supporting hordes and hordes of priests, spent in all the endeavor to save men in a future life, if all this had been used in educating men and training them into a comprehension of what kind of beings they really are, what kind of a world this is in which they have found themselves, spent in training them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our feet!

Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money, their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?

Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be wrought out as the result of our attempt.

The philosopher Kant has somewhere said that there are three things needed to the success of a human life, "something to do, some one to love, something to hope for." The old Catechism says that the chief end of man is "to glorify G.o.d and enjoy him forever." I indorse the words of Kant; I agree most heartily and thoroughly with the Catechism.

Philip James Bailey, the author of that once famous poem "Festus," has said,

"Life's but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to all things, G.o.d."

This also I indorse. I believe that life is something inner, something deeper than that which we ordinarily think of as const.i.tuting the matters of chief concern regarding it. Let me quote two or three lines again from Bailey's "Festus," familiar to you because so fine.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. "He most lives Who thinks most, feels the n.o.blest, acts the best."

What is human life, then? What is it for? The object of life is living.

But what does living mean? Most people cannot answer that question, because they have never more than half lived, and consequently have never appreciated its depth and significance. As I have had occasion over and over and over again, to say to business men, and I like to say it on every opportunity, it seems to me, as I look over the face of society, that most people live only in some little fragmentary way, some corner of their being.