As a philosophy and as a religion, Pessimism is a failure. No man can be expected to strive much in a world when all is against him. If all is predetermined beforehand and is bad, what use to strive for that which is good? If, furthermore, final extinction is the ultimate hope, there is no hope at all. The mind refuses to rest in such a system. Again, Schopenhauer's system breaks down because he makes unsatisfied striving the essence of evil. But is it? Would complete satiety be blessedness? An ox that has fed and drunk and lies down to rest is a perfect ox; but not so of man. His very manhood reveals itself in its striving. To be completely satisfied would be stagnation, and that means death. It is of the nature of spiritual life that it ever aspires. So that Schopenhauer's thesis of perpetual striving, instead of being a basis for Pessimism, is the proof of the divine within man. Poor vaunt of life indeed Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to man; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the mow-crammed beast? Rejoice we are allied To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives than of his tribes that take. I must believe. What I aspire to be And was not comforts me. A brute I might have been; but would not sink in the scale. Optimism arises not out of overlooking the evil and suffering of life, but springs from the belief that God is bringing all life to higher perfection. This life is a training ground, and our desires and struggles are but teachers of larger life. It bases itself on the belief that through the universe "one increasing purpose runs." On the whole, humanity has found it impossible to accept any other than an optimistic theory of life. Pessimism gets us nowhere, and we will not follow a blind alley. 6 STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. "That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 27-29.) PART IV. POSITIVISM, THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. ACCORDING to this theory of life, a mother holding a child in her arms is the symbol of real religion. August Compte set aside a personal God and put in his place a kind of deified humanity, a great being. He claimed that religion must have two roots: First, the belief in a universal being, and, secondly, the belief in immortality. Since he could not accept a personal God, he found his supreme being in a deified humanity. Since he could not believe in the continuity of the individual after death, he found his immortality in that of the race. The aim of Comte was to bring about through his new religion a social ideal. He claimed that humanity was suffering from an overemphasis on individualism; and that to turn man's thought away from himself would not only benefit society, but also the individual. Fauerbach claimed that humanity is actually the object of all religious worship, since our God is only the anthropomorphic formation of our own desires and needs. He claimed that there was no objective reality corresponding to our conception of God, save as it could be found in humanity itself. Hence to him the setting up of humanity as our object of worship was bringing religion in touch with reality. George Eliot is perhaps the best literary exponent of this system. To her it became an enthusiasm; and while not in complete agreement with Comte, she has done much to popularize his theory. The central idea of her religion was not faith in God, but faith in man. Savonarola reprimands Romola for trying to run away from suffering. "If your own people are wearing a yoke," he says to her, "will you slip from under it instead of struggling with them to lighten it?" George Eliot called men to renounce self for the sake of a larger humanity. This is good if sufficiently motived by a humanity which has the Godhood within it. Immortality was the share each person could have in building a larger race. This also is good, provided all progress gained can be permanently kept. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. -Eliot's "O May I Join the Choir Invisible!" The value of this theory is to bring us back to earth and socialize our lives. This thing is all very beautiful; but the trouble is, on the positivistic basis, taking all Godhood out of man, it is not true. First of all, there is no such thing as an idealized humanity. This is a pure fiction. Humanity is far from idealized, and that it can lift itself by its own boot straps is the wildest dream. In setting aside man's relation to a divine power, the Positivists remove all hope of humanity's ever reaching an ideal state. Neither is humanity permanent so far as this world is concerned. Science holds that many centuries hence this world will be a burned-out cinder, and life upon it must be snuffed out. Hence humanity in the state we know it now, as a collection of individual beings, will ultimately be no more. An idealized humanity would, therefore, be a god of time and not of eternity and our religion a temporary makeshift by which we could delude ourselves into a temporary enjoyment of life. Immortality of the race is a figment, since when the last human being leaves this form of existence all the struggles of the human soul for character are thrown away. There will be no world in which gladness shall be music, and all the practice of the choir will have been useless. "The religion of humanity," said Frederick Harrison, "is simply morality fused with social devotion and enlightened by sound philosophy." But this is just where this religion breaks down. It neither has a sound philosophy nor does it offer to men a sufficiently permanent and valuable humanity to command our fullest devotion. I will not devote myself completely to a mere passing puppet, however well dressed and well trained that puppet may appear. Any humanity which is a bare humanity, bereft of a divine element, is finally a puppet show. STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. "Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.” (John xiv. 8-11.) "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." (Matt. xi. 27.) PART V. THEISM, A CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY. It has become more or less popular to say that we believe in God, but we do not need Christ to interpret God. That the Jews had a noble religion and that they knew God, no one denies. That there are adherents of Mohammedanism who know God, one cannot doubt. But do they know God in his fullness? and are we satisfied with their less perfect knowledge? On the other hand, there are many, both Jews and Christians, who are reading into God all the qualities which Christ came to reveal and then are saying that they do not need Christ, for their God has the same value to them as our Christlike God. It is fair, however, to ask where they got their conception of God. At the University of Nebraska a Jewish student stood along with a number of others who were thus indicating their quiet decision to give themselves to the Christian life. After the service the Jewish student came and asked if I thought he was right. He said he did not believe in Christ as the Messiah, but he believed in him as the greatest prophet. I then began to ask him about his conception of God. I found that he believed in the same kind of a loving Father that I trust and worship. His God was not the conception of Jehovah in the Old Testament, but the Heavenly Father of the New Testament. He was reading into his Jehovah all the attributes which Christ came to make known. For this I am thankful. Only I tried to make clear to my inquirer that it was hardly fair to incorporate into one's life all the message of the Christ life and yet deny the historical fact whence that message draws authority and power. Christ is not another God. Those who worship him are not dualists. This unitarian emphasis has had the benefit of bringing us to realize that we do not go to Christ instead of God, but we go to God through Christ. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” This does not mean that the Hindu does not have access to God simply because he has not heard of Christ. It means that his conception of God is less full and rich. It is in this sense that no man can come unto God save through Christ. If a man can only count ten, he is shut off from the further reaches of mathematics. And if a man has only had dim revelations of God, he has not come to God in his fullness. The doctrine of Christ is not the denial of any light that any man may have. It is simply the promise and fulfillment of a truer light to all who will through him come unto the Father. To cast aside Christ as unnecessary and unreasonable simply because all men have not heard of him is just as foolish as to cast aside all mathematical formulas simply because an African savage can only count ten. Not only so, but to say that one owes no debt to Christ in coming to God is on a par with saying that the savage counting ten can arrive at full mathematical knowledge without the intervening formulas. Christ is a historical fact, and we read God in the light of that fact. One can no more read the full character of God without the historical fact than we can have light without the candle which emits it. By all means let every man put into his conception of God all the richness which he can find from any source, but let him not deny the source from which that richness springs. |