The Open Court
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" The Open Court A Fortnightly Journal, Denoted to the Work of Establishing Ethics and Religion Upon a Scientific Basis. \ Three Dollars per Year. Vol. I. No. 4. CHICAGO, MARCH 31, 1887. 1 Sin^l Copies, 15 cts. A HINT FROM FRANKLIN. a Moloch or a Baal, Christ is still the victim sacrificed BY JOHN" BURROUGHS, upon the altar to conciliate an offended deity, religion is In his autobiography, Franklin speaks of a certain still a doctrine and a ceremony, man is still the spirit of sect of the Dunkers of his time, who had wisely refused capricious and super-human powers; justice is still to print their confession of faith, lest as the}' progressed in repriyal and reversal; there is wrath and a feeling of spiritual knowledge, they he too much hound by it and destruction in heaven, and the day of judgment is still it proye a bar and a hindrance to them. "When we an assizes adjourned to some future time. Creeds in were first drawn together as a society," said the Dunker, our day harden the heart; they shock our religious sensi- "it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to bilities; they make atheists and scoffers. see that some doctrines which were esteemed truths In a city near me, there is a large cemetery, in a were errors and that others which we had esteemed neglected corner of which is a multitude of children's errors were real truths. From time to time he has been graves which have the appearance of being outcasts? pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have reprobates; and so they are. These children were not been improying and our errors diminishing." Franklin baptized, therefore they cannot be buried in consecrated adds, that "this modesty in a sect is perhaps a single ground; their blameless little souls are in heli, and their instance in the history of mankind, every other sect sup- bodies are huddled together here in this neglected posing itself in possession of all truth, and that those corner. This is a glimpse of the beauty of the Catholic who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling creed. The [ewish Papalists used to believe that the in foggy weather, those at some distance before him in .utterance of certain magical words engraved upon the the road he saw wrapped up in the fog as well as those seal of Solomon would transform a man into a brute, or behind him, and also the people in the fields on either a brute into a man. The Catholics ascribe the same side, but near him all appears clear, though, in truth, he magical power to water in the hands of a priest. When is as much in the fog as any of them." These Dunkers the service is read and the unconscious infant is bap- were indeed wise in their day and generation, and tized, at that moment a miraculous change is wrought in Franklin himself was, perhaps, as little in the fog its nature, and Rome says, with true Christian charity, engendered by narrowness and dogmatism as any man "let lvm be accursed" who believes it not. The mere of his times. If there is one thing certain in the his- knowledge of such things is hurtful. And it requires tory of mankind it is that sects do outgrow their creeds rare Christian forbearance to read the Andover creed, and are compelled to pull down and build larger or else and not fall from the grace of brotherly love. Is it not be terribly pinched for room. Probably every one of easy to see what short work Jesus would have made of the evangelical churches is to-day more or less pinched these creed mongers, the friend of publicans and sinners, by its confessions of faith. No one can read the the rebuker of formalists, the comtemner of life service, debate of the Congregational ministers last fall at Des who laid all the emphasis upon the condition of the Moines, on the subject of Foreign Missions, Future heart and the attitude of the spirit, who said to the chief Probation, etc., without seeing how keenh' the finer and priest of the popular religion of his time: "The publi- more expansive spirit among them felt the hard limita- cans and harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before tions of their creed. The Andover professors have you ? tried to enlarge the creed a little, or rather, they haye Our doctors of divinity talk glibly of the growth of tried to stretch it so as to make it less galling to the religious thought, but seem to lose sight of the fact that modern humanitarian feeling, and for this they are now growth of religious thought means more or less a decay arraigned, and by many of their brethren, already con- of old beliefs. There is no growth in anything without demned. What pagans and heathens most of us still a casting off and a leaving of something behind. Growth are in opinion, hardly yet more than half liberated from in science is to a great extent the discovery of new facts the most groveling and materialistic superstitions of the and principles, which render the old theories and conclu- pre-Christian world. Heaven is still a place with our sions untenable. See how much we have had to unlearn creed makers, hell is still an infernal abode, God is still and leave behind us by reason of Darwin's; labors and —a 86 THE OPEN COURT. further advances already lessen the significance of some dogma is weak. The growing disbelief of which we of his principles. But it may be said that religion has hear so much, is a disbelief in the infallibility of dogma, not to do with outward facts and laws like science, but not a disbelief in the need of godliness, purity, spirit- with inward spiritual conditions. Then why seek to uality, and noble disinterested lives. These things move embodv its final truths in formal propositions, as if they us as much or more than ever, but in the creeds we hear were matters of exact demonstration like science? The only the rattling of dry bones. How had the Puritan creeds treat religion as objective fact, something to be theology been sloughed off by Emerson, and yet what proved to the understanding and to be lodged in a sys- a pure, stimulating, ennobling, religious spirit shone in tem of belief, like any of the teachings of physical that man, and still shines in his works. The "saving science. Regarded as such, it is always exposed to the grace" of heroic thought and aspiration, if they ever inquiry: Is it true? Is it final? Does it agree with the existed. The same might be said of Carlyle, rejector rest of our knowledge? Does it keep pace with the pro- as he was of the creed of his fathers. " Religion can- gress of science? If it is a subjective condition, if the not be incarnated and settled once for all in forms of Kingdom of Heaven is really within, as Christ taught, creed and worship. It is a continual growth in every then the expression of it in outward forms of belief and living heart—a new light to every seeing eye. Past creed must change as much as any other philosophy or theologies did their best to interpret the laws under metaphvsics change. A noble sentiment mankind will which man was living, and to help him regulate his life doubtless always admire ; a heroic act, self sacrifice, mag- thereby. But the laws of God are before us always, nanimity, courage, enthusiasm, patriotism will always whether promulgated in Sinai thunder or otherwise." awaken a quick response; so will religion as devotion, The progress of religious thought that has been made or piety, or love, or as an aspiration after the highest in the last half century is indicated in the writings and good, but as an intellectual conception of God and of sermons of such men as Maurice, Campbell, Erskine, the manner of his dealings with man, it must be subject Kinglsey, Stanley, Arnold, Robertson, Tulloch, Mauds- to change and revision like all other intellectual concep- ley and others in Great Britain, and in those of Emer- tions. Where actual verification cannot take place as in son, Parker, Hedge and Mulford, in this country— science or mathematics, belief must forever fluctuate like progress from the bondage of the letter of the law into the forms and colors of summer clouds. The subject of it the freedom of the spirit. When we think of what may always be the same—God, the soul, the eternal life, these men have said and done, we may look forward but the relation of these and their final meanings can with some confidence as Goethe did to a time when "all never be once and forever settled. Theology is at best of us by degrees will learn to elevate ourselves out of a only a tentative kind of science. Its conclusions cannot Christianity of catechisms and creeds, into a Christianity have anything like the certitude of scientific truth be- of pure sentiment and noble action." cause they are not capable of verification. Principal Tulloch in his Movements of Religions Thought in JEPTHAH'S DAUGHTER AT HONOLULU. Britian, had the courage to say, that " the idea that BY MONCURE D. CONWAY. theology is a fixed science, with hard and fast proposi- The Princess Like Like, of the Sandwich Islands, tions, partaking of the nature of infallibility, is a super- has just died in her youth.