IV.]

without religion.

203

choice of its citizens who are conscious and active factors in the national life. Each citizen, therefore, of a modern state is brought face to face with the problem of personal religion. The past and present testify to him of Christ. Does he believe in Christ? If he answers, 'I cannot honestly assert that I believe,' the reply is ready. There is no compulsion: read the word of God, pray for further light, and in time it will be granted you.' M. Reveillaud for years was in this position, recognizing insuperable difficulties on the one hand in the way of honest belief, on the other hand in a mere agnostic attitude; but lately he has been enabled, we believe, to embrace heartily a creed, which from its practical fruits he could not but believe to be true. He read the records of the past and of the present, and they all testified of Christ.

There are two grand spectacles in modern history significant in many ways above all others. More than two centuries ago Cromwell's veterans, a great army of sixty thousand men, were drawn up on Blackheath to view in sullen acquiescence the return of Charles Stuart to the throne of his unfortunate father. The next day these invincible soldiers were again peaceful citizens; they had quietly dispersed to their homes, and we hear of them no more. Again, seventeen years ago, after the great Civil War of America, the mighty army of the North, which had finally accomplished its purpose, and preserved the unity of the nation, was peacefully disbanded, and its soldiers became citizens once more. There remained behind no Chauvinism-no restless, lawless spirit of warfare, ever clamouring for something to conquer, and ready for frivolous reasons to distract the country. Continental statesman had prophesied great troubles from this cause, but these never came; and the reason was that the men of that army, as of Cromwell's, were citizens who had been brought up as Christians, and returned to Christian homes. Only the influence of religion could have produced such a result. The future of nations possessing such citizens was assured.

204

A parable.

[LECT.

Along the great highway of time-if you will allow the parable the nations have passed and are passing. The road is full of pitfalls, the path is crowded, the onward march is very dangerous. The weaker bands are jostled, and crushed and trampled upon; the stronger in their heedlessness often fall headlong into yawning abysses that are ready to engulf them. On this highway history, like the Baptist of old, has taken her stand, and sounds her note of warning in the ears of the passers-by. 'I have stood here and watched your fathers, and forefathers, and remote ancestors as they hurried past; I have noted carefully their steps, and the manner in which each was equipped for the journey. Some, heavily burdened, walked slowly and circumspectly and hardly seemed to care whither their leaders were taking them; others marched swiftly and lightly, urging their leaders on, and casting aside every encumbrance that seemed to check the rapidity of their advance. And this I have ever remarked: as many as threw away the lamp of religion that was attached to their girdle, so many were lost by the way and perished. Travellers might safely rid themselves of such lamps as yielded little or no light, but if they failed to replace them by other and better, they were certain to be lured to their doom.' Such is the warning of history; read history for yourselves and decide if it is not. To modern nations God's word still remains

A lamp unto the feet, and a light unto the path.'

The century which has elapsed since Edward Gibbon wrote his great work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has infinitely increased our knowledge of the past, has furnished us with a new historical method, and has given us a political and social experience rich in materials for the use of the inductive process. It is therefore too late in the day to quote with approval his shallow dictum that religions are all very much alike, believed in by their votaries, rejected as false by philoso

IV.]

Renan versus Gibbon.

205

phers, and used by politicians for their own ends. Let us rather take the well weighed words of a writer eminently distinguished for those very qualifications which it is Gibbon's disgrace to have made only a pretence of possessing, a writer, moreover, in no way to be suspected of undue bias. In the extract we are entitled to take Christianity as synonymous with religion. "Nothing," says M. Renan, " is further from the truth than the dream that a perfected humanity will be a humanity without a religion. Progress in humanity, instead of destroying or weakening religion, will only serve to develop and increase it."

LECTURE V.

CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS.

I. PREFATORY.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to stand on one side of a question, and, in presenting the other side, to be in all cases perfectly just. And yet that difficult thing I must try to do, as far as my knowledge and powers go. In order to do so I hope to discuss this important subject not from the standpoint of a partisan, who sees only the good qualities of his own side, and only the bad ones of his opponents. Let us try to get rid of the idea of sides and opponents and warfare altogether, and to be honest seekers after truth, recognizing all truth as the legitimate heritage of man-the outflow from the one divine fountain. I have no desire to parade the excesses and follies which have everywhere grown around the simple beginnings of ethnic religions, for men can retort by showing equally appalling monstrosities which have at times grown as hideous carbuncles on the fair form of Christianity. My aim is rather to seek for and show forth the first fundamental principles of various religions which have influenced the world, and to trace those principles in their workings as shown by history, and in the results of human development or degradation, and to point out wherein they have failed to meet the needs of the human constitution, to answer the true end of a religion.

My aim is to find a religion for man, as such; not for one or some of the elements of the man, but for all; a religion for mankind, not for some particular nation, or political party, but

LECT. V.]

All Truth is God's Light.

207

for the great solidarité of the whole race from pole to pole; a religion for all time and all eternity; not a something fit for children and old women, or the infant stage of human development merely, that must be cast aside as the garments of childhood, but one that shall unfold its infinite fullness as the mind grows large to grasp it, that opens a vista of possibilities of progress beyond the wildest utopias of human imagination; a something that will develop and satisfy the infinite longings, the unbounded powers of the human mind; in a word, the realization of "the desire of all the nations."

I do not intend to maintain that all other religions beside Christianity are pure falsehood, while we hold a monopoly of truth. I believe that in many of the religions of the world there has been much of truth, and though generally the light in them has become darkness, yet whatever light they have had or have to-day is the light of God. As the light of a farthing taper is like the light of the sun, and may indirectly be traced to the sun as its source, so every spiritual truth in its own measure shows forth the one great fact of the existence of fundamental Truth, and points to one original fountain. And if some souls with the flickering taper of a little truth stumble through darkness and gloom, amid moral pestilence and the putrid dead, up into living aspirations after the noble and the good, with a hatred of that which is evil; if there is a just God and a pure hereafter, those souls will shine more brightly than the thousands who have leisurely sauntered into heaven amid the sunlight of fuller knowledge, with every surrounding influence urging them on to higher things. That taper truth was for that willing soul the leading hand of God. But I do maintain that when the sun has risen in power, and in unbounded prodigality spends on earth's peoples his opulent beams, there is no more need of the taper, or of lamps, or of gas jets, or of electric lights, no matter how fine they may seem in the dark. And so when the light of