Chapter IX: Part 9

A third thing. We want to believe that there is a meaning in these little individual lives of ours. Sometimes, when we read of pestilences or the great wars of the world, when we think of children born and dying so soon almost as they are born, when we note the brevity of even the longest life and take into account the sweep of the ages, we sometimes find ourselves depressed with the thought that these human lives of ours mean so little. It sometimes seems as though nature cared nothing for us, and swept us away as the first cold and the frost sweep away the millions of flies that had been buzzing their little hour of sunshine.

We need to feel, then, if we are to live manly, womanly lives, that there is some plan, or may be some purpose in our being born, in our little struggle of a few years, in our being thwarted, in our succeeding, in our being sick or well, in our being rich or poor, in our being learned or ignorant. Does it make any difference how we live these lives of ours? Is there significance in them, any purpose, any plan, any outcome, to make it worth while for us to struggle and strive? We need to know this; and what do the investigation and the doubt and the struggle of the world say to us concerning these? If there is anything which science teaches us, it is that the infinite God, the Power, whatever we name it, that is the thought and life of this universe, is expressed just as perfectly in the tiniest atom as in the most magnificent galaxy. There is no such thing as an imperfect atom in this universe. The infinitesimal atoms below us, and the tiny orbits through which these atoms and molecules sweep, are as much in the grasp of the Eternal Law as the movements of the stars over our heads.

Things are not lost in this universe out of the eternal purpose because they are little. So our apparent littleness, the weakness, feebleness of our lives, need not disturb the grandeur of our trust in this direction.

Then as we study ourselves, as we see the good that has been growing through the ages, and as we note the fact that I hinted at a moment ago, that we can plant ourselves in the way, and hinder the working of the Divine, so far as our tiny strength goes, or that we can study the conditions of this growth and co-operate and help it on, and so be just as truly a builder of the highest and finest humanity of the future as God is himself, as we note this, are not our little lives raised into dignity and touched with glory? And why should I cringe and humiliate myself in the presence of a planet a thousand times larger than our earth, or a sun a million and a half times larger than the planet that shakes to its centre as I stamp my tiny foot? I, or one like me, has measured the sun, weighed it as an apothecary can weigh a gram in his scales. I have untangled the rays of his light, and am able to tell the substances that are burning those ninety millions of miles away, in order to send down that ray of light to our earth. I have untangled the mysteries of the heavens, and find these only aggregations of matter like those of which my body is composed; but I deal with all these and overtop them, speeding with my thought with the rapidity that leaves the lightning behind. And I know that, because I can think God and can trace his thoughts after him as he goes through his creative processes, so I am more than these,-- a child of the Creator. I may feel as a little boy feels who stands beside his father who is the captain of some mighty ship. The ship may be a million times greater than he; but the captain's intelligence and hand made it, shaped it, rules it, turns it whithersoever he will. And I am the captain's child, like him, and capable of matching his masterly achievement.

And so I may believe that I, as a child of the infinite Father, am of infinite importance to him in this universe of his; and I can live a grand and noble life. Nobody can harm me but myself. Place an obstacle in my path, and, whether it be insurmountable or not, I may show myself a coward or a hero as I face it. Tell me I have made a mistake, I can repair it. Tell me I have committed some moral error, am guilty of sin, I confess it. But I can make all these mistakes and sins stairways up which I can climb nearer and nearer to God. You may test me with sorrows, affliction, take away my property, take away my health, take away my friends; and the way in which I receive these may either make me nobler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun shines upon the earth. It turns one clod hard, makes it incapable of producing anything. It softens and sweetens another, the same sun: the difference is in the way in which it is received. So these influences may touch me, may make me hard and bitter and mean and rebellious, or I may stand all, and say, as the old Stoics used to, "Even if the gods are not just, I w ill be just, and shame the gods."

So man may say, Whatever comes upon me, I will meet it like a man, and like a child of the Highest, and so make my life significant, a part of the divine plan, something glorious and real.

One thought more. When we have got through with this life, and stand on the shore of a sea whose wavelets lap the sands at our feet, and the ships of those that depart go out into the mist, and we wonder whither, what has doubt done, what has investigation done, touching this great hope of ours, as we face that which we speak of as the Unknown? So far as the old-time and traditional belief is concerned, I hold that doubt has been of infinite and unspeakable service. Certainly, I could rather have no belief at all than the old belief. Certainly, I would rather sink into unconsciousness and eternal sleep than wake to watch over the battlements of heaven the ascent of the smoke of the torment that goeth up forever and ever. But is there any rational ground for hope still? I cannot stop this morning even to suggest to you the grounds for the assertion that I am about to make. I believe that, if we have not already demonstrated eternal life, we are on the eve of such demonstration. I believe that another continent is to be discovered as veritably as Columbus discovered this New World. As he, as he neared the shore, saw floating tokens upon the waters that indicated to him that land was not far away, so I believe that tokens are all about us of this other country, which is not a future, but only a present, unseen and unknown to the most of us.

But grant, if you will, that that is not to be attained, modern investigation and doubt have done nothing to touch the grounds of the great human hope that springs forever in the breast, that hope which is born of love, born of trust, born of our dreams, born of our yearning towards the land whither our dear ones have departed.

Let me read you just a few lines of challenge to those that would raise a question as to the reality of this belief:

What is this mystic, wondrous hope in me, That, when no star from out the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O Death, If that thou rul'st the earth, if "dust to dust" Shall be the end of love and hope and strife, From what rare land is blown this living breath That shapes itself to whispers of strong trust, And tells the lie, if 'tis a lie, of life? Where did this wondrous dream come from? How does it grow as the world grows?

It must be a whisper of this eternal Being to our hearts; and so, in spite of all the advance of knowledge, all the criticism, it remains untouched, brightening and growing. And so there is reason, as we gaze out on the future, why we should look with contempt, if you will, upon the conditions that trouble us in this life, the burdens, the sorrows, the illnesses, when all that life means at its highest is that out of the conditions, whatever they are, I should shape a manhood, cultivate a soul, make myself worth living, fitting myself for that which gleams through the mist a promise, if you will, of something there beyond.

Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves children of the Highest?

EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN.

I TAKE two texts, one of them from the New Testament. It may be found in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the seventeenth verse, "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." The other text is from Emerson: "One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost."

The theory of evolution to-day, in the minds of all competent students, is quite as firmly established as is the law of gravity or the Copernican theory in astronomy. But, when it was first propounded in its modern form by Herbert Spencer, when he issued his first book, and when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published, there was an outcry, especially throughout the religious world. There was a great fear shuddered through the hearts of men. They felt as though the dearest things on earth were threatened and were likely to be destroyed. Essayists declared that this theory undermined the foundations of morals. They said that it took away, not only the Bible, but God and all rational religion. They told us that, in tracing the ancestry of man back and down to the animals, humanity was being desecrated, and that the essential feature of man as a child of God was being taken away.

If I believed that any of these things were true, I might not be an enemy of evolution, if indeed it be established; for there is very little reason in a man's setting himself against an established truth. But I should certainly be very sad, and should wish that we might hold some other theory of things. But I believe that it will appear, as we study the matter a little while carefully, that not only are these charges that have been brought against the theory baseless, but that right here is to be found not only the real progress of the world, but the true conservatism. Evolution is the most conservative theory that has ever been held. It keeps everything that has been found serviceable to man. It may transform it. It may lift it to some higher level, on to some loftier range of life; but it keeps and carries forward everything that helps. This inevitably and in the nature of things.

There are two great tendencies which are characteristic of that method of progress or growth which we call by the name of evolution. One is the hereditary tendency, and the other is the tendency to variation. One, if it were in full force, would merely, forever and forever, repeat the past: the other, if it were in full force, would blot out all the past, and forever be creating something new. It is in the balance of these two tendencies that we discover the orderly growth of the world; and this orderly growth it is which constitutes evolution. Let me illustrate: Here is a tree, for example. The tendency that we call heredity would simply constantly repeat the past: the tendency to vary would vary the tree out of existence. The ideal is that it shall keep its form, for example, as an oak, but that, in the process of growth, the bark shall expand freely and sufficiently to make room for the manifestation of the new life. Now, if the bark had power to refuse expansion, of course, you know, the tree would die. If there were not power enough to maintain the form, then, again, the tree would cease to exist. This you may take as a type and illustration of the method of all life and all progress everywhere.

Those people who naturally represent the heredity tendency what we call the conservative people of the world are the ones who are always afraid of any change. They deprecate the utterance of new ideas. They hesitate to accept any new-fangled notions, as perhaps they call them. They are afraid that something precious, something sweet, something dear, that belonged to the past, may be lost.

This manifests itself in all departments of life. I suppose that there never was an improvement proposed in the world that somebody did not object to it in the interests of the established order. And yet, if these people that do not want any changes made had had control of the world ten thousand years ago, where should we be to-day? We should still be barbarians in the jungles. For it is because these people have not been able to keep the world still that we have advanced here and there in the direction of what we are pleased to call civilization. You remember, for example, as illustrating this opposition, how the workingmen, the laborers of the time, a few years ago, in England, fought against the introduction of machinery. They said machinery was going to take their work away, it was going to break down the old industrial order of the world, it was going to make it impossible for the laborer to get his living. A few machines were to do the world's work; and the great multitude were to be idle, and, not having anything to do, were to receive no pay for labor, and consequently were to starve. This was the cry. The outcome has been that there has been infinitely more done, a much larger number of laborers employed, employed less hours in the day, paid higher wages; and in every direction the condition of the industrial world has been improved. I speak of this simply as an illustration of this tendency.

When we come to religion, it is perfectly natural that the opposition here should be bitterer than anywhere else in the world; and it always has been. If you think of it just a little, if you read the history of the world a little, you will find that the last thing on earth that people have been willing to improve has been their religion. And this, I say, is perfectly natural. Why? Because men have instinctively felt and rightly felt, as I believe that religion was the most important thing in human life. They felt that it was the most sacred thing, that on it depended higher and more permanent interests than on anything else; and they have naturally been timid, naturally shrunk from change, with the fear that changing the theories and the practices and the thoughts was going to endanger the thing itself. They have said, We will hold on, at any rate, to these reverences, these worships, these precious trusts, these hopes; and we will hold on to the vessels in which we have carried them, because how do we know, if the vessels are changed or taken away, that we may not lose the precious contents themselves? This, I say, has been the feeling; and it has been a perfectly natural feeling.

I wish then, this morning, for a little while to review with you some of the steps in evolution that the world has taken, and let you see how it has worked in different departments of human thought and human life, so that you may become convinced if possible, as I am that evolution has never thrown away, has never lost, anything precious in any department of the world since human life began. If I believed it did, I would fight against it. For instance, here is a devout Catholic servant-girl. She believes in her saints. She counts her beads and recites her Ave Marias. She goes to the cathedral on Sunday morning. And this is her world of poetry and romance. Here is a source of comfort. This throws a halo around the drudgery of the kitchen, the service of the house in which she is an employee. Would I take away this trust, this poetry, this romance, untrue as I believe it to be in form, inadequate as I believe it to be? Would I take it away, and leave her mind bare, her heart empty, leave her without the comfort, without the inspiration? Not for one moment. I would take it away only if, in the process, I could supply her with something just a little better, a little more nearly true, something that would give her comfort, something that would be an inspiration to her, something that would buoy her up as a hope, something that would help her to be faithful and true in the work of her daily life. This is what evolution means. It means taking away the old, and, in the process, substituting therefore something a little bit better. I would not take away the idol of the lowest barbarian unless I could help him to take a step a little higher, so that he should see the intellectual and spiritual thing that the idol stood for, and so enable him to walk his pathway of life as firmly, as faithfully, as hopefully, as he did before.

I have been watching the work that has been going on in our streets during the last months. You, too, have seen how they will replace the track on an entire line of railway without stopping the running of the cars. They take away the old and worn and poorer, but constantly substitute something better for it; and human life moves right on. Everything is better; the change has come; but that change is; an improvement. This is what evolution does; for evolution is nothing new in the world. It is only the name for the method of God, which is as old as the universe itself, new to us because we have just discovered it; but as old as the light of a star that has been travelling for twenty-five thousand years, and has just come into the field of the astronomer's telescope, so that he announces it as a new discovery.. This is what it means.

Now let me call your attention to the fact that in the world below us the world of the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and the plants this evolutionary force is working after precisely the same method that I have just been indicating. All the fair, the beautiful things have been developed under this process, in accordance with this method, out of the first bare and rough and crude manifestations of vegetable life. Nothing has been thrown away that was of any value. Take it, for example, in regard to the wild weeds which have become the oats and the wheat and the barley and the rye of the world. All the old that was of value has been kept and has been developed into something higher and finer and sweeter. The aboriginal crab-apple has become a thousand luscious kinds of fruits; and the flowers all their beauty, all their fragrance, all their color and form? are the result of the working of this method of God's power that we have called evolution. Nothing of any value is left behind in the uncounted ages of the past. All that is of worth to-day has been transformed and lifted to some higher level and made a part of the wondrous life that is all around us.

So, when you come to the animal life, you find the same thing. The swift foot, the flashing wing, the beauty of color, all the wonders of animal life have simply been developed in accordance with this method and under this impelling force which we call evolution, which is only a name for the working of God.

When we come up to the level of man, what do we find? Man as an animal is not the equal of a good many of the other animals in the world. He is not as swift as the deer, he is not as strong as the lion, he cannot fly in the air like a bird, he cannot live in the sea like the fishes. He is restricted to the comparatively contracted area of the surface of the land. He is not as perfect as an animal; but what has evolution done? It has given him power of conquest over all these, because the evolutionary force has left the bodily structure, we need expect no more marked changes there, and has gone to brain. So this feeblest of all the animals physically speaking he would be no match for a hundred different kinds of animals that are about us is able to outwit them all, that is, to outknow, he has become the ruler of the earth. And not only has this evolutionary force gone to brain, it has gone to heart; and man has become a being whose primest characteristic is love. The one thing that we think of as most perfect, that we dream of as characterizing his future development, is summed up in his affectional nature. Then, too, he has become a moral being.

There are times, like the present, when it seems as though the animal were at the top, and the affectional nature suppressed, and the conscience were ruled out of court; and yet you study the methods of modern warfare as compared with those of the past, you see how pity and tenderness and care walk by the side of every gun, hide in the rear of every battlefield to attend to the wounded and suffering. And you know what talk there has been of pity for the hungry, the desire of the world to feed those that need; and the one dominant note in the discussion of the war all over the world has been the question as to its being right. No matter how we may have decided, whether the decision be correct or not, the civilized world bows itself in the presence of its ideal of right, and demands that no war shall be fought the issue of which is not to be a better condition of mankind.

Evolution, then, tends to the development of brain, heart, conscience, and the spiritual nature of man. It has left nothing behind that is of any value to us. It has transformed or sublimed or lifted all up into the higher range of the life that we are living to-day, and contains within itself a promise of the higher and the grander life that we reach forward to to-morrow.

I wish now, for a moment, to illustrate the working of this in regard to some of the institutions of the world. If I had time, I could show you that the same law is apparent in the development of the arts, sculpture, painting, poetry. I must pass them by, however. As illustrating what I mean, let me take the one art of music. From the very beginning man has been interested in making some sort of sounds which, I suppose, have been regarded as music by him. Most of those that are associated with the barbaric man would be anything but music to us. The music, for example, that they give in connection with a play in a Chinese theatre would not be acceptable to the cultivated ear of Americans. We have left behind much that the world called music. We have left behind any number of musical instruments. We do not now have those that the Psalmist makes so much of, the old-time harp, the sackbut, the psaltery. I do not know, though you may, what kind of instruments they were. The world has completely forgotten them, and left them out of sight. And yet no musical note, no musical chord, no musical thought, no musical feeling, has been forgotten or dropped along the advancing pathway of the world's progress; and in our organs all the attempts at instruments of that kind from the beginning of the world are preserved, transformed and glorified. In our magnificent orchestras all the first feeble beginnings are developed until we have a conception of music to-day such as would have been utterly incomprehensible to the primeval man. What I wish you to note is and this is the use of my illustration that the advancing growth of the music of the world has forgotten nothing that it was worth while to keep.

Let me give you one more illustration. Take it in the line of government. The first tribes were governed by two forces, brute force and superstitious fear. These were the two things that kept the primal tribes of the world in order, such order as was maintained in those far-off times. The world has gone on developing different types of government, different types of social order. I need not stop to outline them for you this morning: you know what they are; and I only wish you to catch the thought I have in mind. I suppose that every time one of the old types was about to pass away the adherents of that type have been in a panic lest anarchy was threatening the world. Believers in these types have said that it was absolutely necessary to keep them, in order to preserve social order. Take the attitude of the monarchy to-day, for example, as towards the republic. When we attempted to establish our republic here in this western world, it was freely said by the adherents of the old political idea in Europe that it would of necessity be a failure, that there was no possibility of a stable human order without a hierarchy of nobles with a king at the top; and I suppose they believed it. But we have proved beyond question that we can have a strong government, an orderly government, without either nobility or king. There is less government in the United States here to-day than in almost any other country of the world, a nearer approach to what the philosopher would call anarchy. Anarchy does not mean disorder, when a philosopher is talking: it means merely the absence of external government. And that is the ideal that we are approaching.

Paul says, you know, that the law was made for wicked people, for the disobedient and the disorderly, not for good people. How many people are there in New York to-day, for example, who are honest, who pay their debts, who did not commit a burglary last night, who do not propose to be false to wife and home, on account of the law, the existence of courts and police? The great majority of the citizens of America to-day would go right on being honest and kind and loving and helpful, whether there were any laws or not. They are not kept to these courses of conduct by the law. They have learned that these are the fitting ways of life that these are the things for a man to do; and they despise themselves if they are less than man. In other words, this governmental order, which exists as an outside force, at last gets written in the heart and becomes a law of life.

Now precisely the same process is going on in other departments of the world: it is going on in religion. And now let me come to religion, and illustrate the working of the law here. The old types of religious thought and life and practice, the first ones that the world knew, are long since outgrown. We regard them as barbaric, as cruel.

We have learned that there are not a million gods of whom we need stand in awe. We have learned that God is no partial God. We have learned that God does not want us, as universal man once believed, to sacrifice the dearest object of our love. We have learned that he does not want us to sacrifice our first-born child, as the old Hebrews used to, and the remains of which custom are plainly visible throughout the Old Testament everywhere. We have left behind these old types of religious thought and life; but the world has lost nothing in the process. The world has not left religion behind. The whole process of growth and development in the sphere of the religious life and the development of man has been one of outgrowing crude and partial and inadequate thoughts and feelings about the universe and God and man and duty and destiny.

We do not care so much about ceremony as the world did once. The most civilized people in the world are not so given to these things in their religious development. We do not care so much about creed as they did a thousand or five hundred years ago. We do not believe that God is going to judge us by our intellectual conceptions of him and of our fellow- men. And I suppose it is true, always has been true as it is to-day, that the adherent of any particular form or theory of the religious life has the feeling that, when that is threatened, religion is threatened; and he defends it passionately, fights for it, perhaps bitterly, feels justified in opposing, perhaps hating, those he regards as the enemies of God and his great and sacred and religious hopes. And yet we know, as we study the past, whether we can quite appreciate it as true in regard to the theories which I am voicing to-day, that the truth has never been in any danger, and the highest and finest and sweetest things in the religious life have never been in any danger, are not in any danger to-day.

Let me indicate in two or three directions. There has been a class of thinkers, which has done a good deal of talking and writing in this direction, who are telling us that the poetry, the romance, the wonder, the mystery, of the world those things that tend to bring a man to his knees and to lift his eyes in awe and reverence are passing away; that science is going to explore everything; that there is going to be no more unknown; and that, when we have completed this process, one of the great essentials of religious thought and feeling and life will have perished from among men. I venture to say to you that there has never been a time in the history of the world when there was so much of mystery, so much of wonder, so much of reverence, so much of awe, as there is to-day. We are apt to fool ourselves in our thinking, and, when we have observed a fact, and labelled it, to think we know it.

For example, here is this mysterious force that we call electricity, which is flashing such light in our homes and through our streets as the world has never known before. The cars, loaded, are speeding along our highways with no visible means of propulsion. We step up to a little box, and put a shell to our ear, and speak and listen, and converse with a friend in Boston or Chicago, recognizing the voice perfectly, as though this friend were by our side. We send a message over a wire, under the deep, and talk to London and all round the globe; and we have labelled this force electricity. And, instead of getting down on our knees in reverence, we get impatient if our communication is delayed two minutes or three. We fool ourselves with the thought that, because we have called it electricity, we know it, we have taken the mystery out of the fact. Why, friends, do you know anything about electricity? Do you know what it is? Do you know why it works as it does? I do not; and I do not know of anybody on the face of the earth who does. The wonder of the "Arabian Nights" is cheap and tame and theatrical compared to the wonder of this everyday workaday world of ours, in the midst of which and by means of which we are carrying on our business and our daily avocations. The wonder of the carpet that would carry the person through the air who sat upon it and wished is nothing compared with the power of electricity, steam, any one of these invisible, intangible powers that are thrilling through the world to-day. There never was so much room for mystery, for awe, for poetry, for romance, as there is in the midst of our commercial life in this nineteenth century.

This element of religion, then, is in no danger. We know nothing ultimately. Who can tell me what a particle of matter is? Who can tell me what a ray of light is, as it comes from a star? Who can tell me how the movements in the particles of air striking my eye run up into nerve and brain, and become translated into thought, into light, into form, into motion, into all this wondrous universe that surrounds us on every hand?

Then take the element of trust. People used to think they could trust in their gods. Rebecca, for example, stole her father's gods, and hid them in the trappings of her camel, and sat on them. She thought, then, that she had a god near her who would care for her. The old Hebrew, with an ox-team, carried his God, in a box that he called the ark, into battle, and supposed that he had a very present help in time of need. But we have the eternal stability and order of the universe, a God that never forgets, a God on whom we can lean, in whom we can trust, who is not away off in heaven, but here, closer to us than the air we breathe, a God in whom we live and move and have our being.

And has this evolution of the religious life of the world threatened the stability of truth? There never was a time on earth when there was such a passion for truth as there is today. What means all this intense activity of the scientific world? these men that devote their lives to some little fraction of the universe which they study through their microscope, not for pay, to find one little fragment of the truth of God; these critics that are rummaging the dust-heaps of the ages in the hope that they may find one little, bright-glittering particle of truth in the midst of the rubbish? There never was such a passion for truth as there is here and now.

Are we going to lose the sense of righteousness which is the very heart of religion? There never was a time since the world began when the average man cared so much for righteousness, when he laid so much emphasis on human conduct, on kindness, on help, on all those things that make this life of ours desirable and sweet. The ideal of character and behavior has risen step by step from the beginning, and is higher to-day than it ever was before. Not because men fear a whipping, not because they are threatened with hell in another world, not because a God of vengeance is preached to them, because they have grown to see the beauty of righteousness, because they know that obedience to the laws of God means health, means sanity, means peace, means prosperity, means well-being, means all high and good and noble things. This righteousness is not driven into one by blows from outside: it blossoms out from the intellect and the conscience and the heart, as the recognized law of all fine and desirable and human living.

What are we losing, then, as the result of this growth of the world in accordance with the law of evolution? Are we losing our hope of the future? The form of that hope is passing away. We no longer believe in an underground world of the dead, as the Hebrews did. We no longer believe in a heaven just above the blue, as Christendom has believed for so long. We no longer believe in a heaven where all struggle and thought and study and growth are left out, where there is to be only a monotonous enjoyment that would pall upon any living rational soul. The form of it is passing away; but there never was a time when there was such a great and inspiring hope, not simply for myself and my friends, not simply for my neighbors, not simply for my particular church. There never was a time when there was such a great hope, including humanity for this world and for the next, as that which inspires us now.

Nothing, then, in religion that is of any worth has the world forgotten or is it likely to forget. All the old reverences and loves and trusts and inspirations and hopes and tendernesses are here intermingled. They are in the highest and noblest people; and they are being carried on and refined and purified and glorified as the world goes on.

And now let me suggest one thought more that may be of comfort to some. A great many people have been accustomed to associate so much of their religion with the forms of their religious expression that they fancy that the world's outgrowing these means that religion is being outgrown. I said, you remember, when touching upon government as an illustration of the working of the law of evolution, that governmental forms were being outgrown just as fast as the world was becoming civilized. If this world ever becomes perfect, government will cease to be, in the sense of these external forms, simply because there will be no need of it; just as you take down a staging when you have completed a house. So I look forward to less and less care for the external forms of the religious life. I believe they will remain, and they ought to remain, just as long as they are any practical help to anybody; but, because a person ceases to need them, you must not think that he has ceased to be religious. When the world gets to be perfectly religious, there will be no need of any churches, there will be no need any more of preachers, there will be no need of any of the external ceremony of religion.

You remember what the old seer says in the book of Revelation, as he looks forward to the perfect condition of things. He is picturing that ideal city which he saw in his vision coming down from God out of heaven. This was his poetical way of setting forth his idea of the perfected condition of humanity; and he said, speaking of that city, "And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God was the temple of it."

The external forms pass away when the life needs them no more. Take, for example, the condition of things when Jesus came to Jerusalem. You know how they put him to death. And what did they put him to death for? They put him to death because he preached of a time when there would be no need of any temple, no need of any priesthood, no need of any of the external things that they regarded as essential to religious life. They thought he was blaspheming, they thought he was an enemy of God and of his fellowmen, because he talked that way. He said to the woman of Samaria, You think you must worship God on this mountain, Gerizim, and the Jews think they must worship him on Mount Moriah; but God is spirit, and the time will come when you will not care whether you are in this place or that, but will worship him in spirit and in truth.

You see it was just along these lines that Jesus was preaching and working in his day. So, when humanity becomes perfected, external forms, that have helped mould and shape man into his perfection, will be needed no more. They will fall off, pass away, and be forgotten; but that will not mean that humanity has forgotten or left behind any great essential to the religious life. It will mean simply that he has taken them up into his own heart, absorbed them into his life. He naturally drops them when he is no longer in need of external supports.

This law of evolution, then, is simply the method of God's progress from the beginning, the same method which was to be found in the lowest, the method which has lifted us to where we are, the method which looks out with promise towards the better things which are to come.

The one life thrilled the star-dust through, In nebulous masses whirled, Until, globed like a drop of dew, Shone out a new-made world. The one life on the ocean shore, Through primal ooze and slime, Crept slowly on from less to more Along the ways of time. The one life in the jungles old, From lowly creeping things, Did ever some new form unfold, Swift feet or soaring wings. The one life all the ages through Pursued its wondrous plant Till, as the tree of promise grew, It blossomed into man. The one life reacheth onward still; As yet no eye may see The far-off fact, man's dream fulfill? The glory yet to be.

WHY ARE NOT ALL EDUCATED PEOPLE UNITARIANS?

THE religious opinions of the average person in any community do not count for much, if any one is studying them with the endeavor to find out their bearing on what is true or what is false. This is true not only of popular religious opinions, but of any other set of opinions whatever; and for the simple reason that most people do not hold their opinions as the result of any study, of any investigation, because they have seriously tried to find out what is true, and have become convinced that this, and not that, represents the reality of things.

Let us note for a moment and I do this rather to clear the way than because I consider it of any very great importance how it is that the great majority of people come by the religious opinions which they happen to hold. I suppose it is true in thousands of cases that a man or a woman is in this church rather than that merely as the result of inheritance and childhood training. People inherit their religious ideas. They are taught certain things in their childhood, they have accepted them perhaps without any sort of question; and so they are where they happen to be to-day. If you stop and think of it for just a moment, you will see that this may be all right as a starting-point, but is not quite an adequate reason why we should hold permanently, and throughout our lives, a particular set of ideas. If all of us were to accept opinions in this sort of fashion, and never put them behind us or make any change, where would the growth of the world be? How would it be possible for one generation to make a little advance on that which preceded it, so that we could speak of the progress of mankind? Then, when persons do make up their minds to change, to leave one church and go to another, it is not an uncommon thing for them simply to select a particular place of worship or a special organization for no better reason than that they happen to like it, to be attracted to it for some superficial cause. How many people who do leave one church for another do it as the result of any earnest study, or real endeavor to find the truth? And yet, if you will give the matter a moment's serious consideration, you will see that we have no sort of right to choose one theory rather than another, one set of ideas rather than another, because we happen to like one thing, and not something else. Liking or disliking, a superficial preference or aversion, is an impertinence when dealing with these great, high, and deep questions of God and the soul, of the true or the false.

Then I have known a great many people in my life who went to a particular church for no better reason than mere convenience. It was easily accessible, it was just around the corner, they did not have to make any long journey, and did not have to put themselves out any to get up a little earlier on Sunday morning, which they would otherwise need to do. A mere matter of convenience! And this is so many times allowed to settle some great question of right or wrong. Then you will find those who select a particular church or a particular church organization, become identified with it, merely because on a casual visit to the place they were taken with the minister, happened to like his appearance, his method of speaking, the way he presented his ideas. Or perhaps they were attracted by the music. There are persons who decide these great questions of God and truth and the soul for no more important a reason than the organization and the capacity of the church choir.

It is not an uncommon thing for people to attend some particular church because it promises to be socially advantageous to them. It is fashionable in a particular town. I have a friend, I still call him friend, a Boston lawyer, who told me in conversation about this subject one day that he deliberately went to the largest church he could find, and that, if in the particular city in which he was residing the Roman Catholic Church was in the majority, he should attend that. There are thousands of persons who wish to be in the swim, and who are diverted this way or that by what seems to them socially profitable. Think of it, claiming to be followers of the Nazarene, who was outcast, spit upon, treated with contempt, on whom the scribes and Pharisees of his day looked down with bitterness and scorn, and who led the world for the sake of his love for God out into a larger truth, who made himself of no reputation, claim to be followers of him, and let a matter of fashion decide whether they will go this way or walk in some other path I Think of the irony of a situation like that!

Then, again, there are those who attach themselves to some one church rather than to another because, after looking over the ground, they made up their minds that it would be to their business advantage. They will become associated with a set of people who can help them on in the world. It is all very well, if there be no higher consideration, for a person to be governed in his action by motives like these; but is it quite right to decide a question of truth or falsehood, of God or duty, of the consecration of the human soul, of the service of one's fellow- men, on the basis of supposed financial advantage? There is hardly a year goes by that persons do not come to me, considering the question as to whether they will attend my church. I can see in a few minutes' conversation with them that they have some purpose to gain. They wish to be helped on in the prosecution of some scheme for their own advancement. If they succeed, they are devout Unitarians and loyal followers of mine. If not, within a few weeks I hear of them as devoted attendants somewhere else, where they have been able to make their personal plans a success.

These are some of the reasons there are worthier ones than these which influence the crowd. There are, I say, worthier ones. Let me hint one or two. I do not think it is any sacrilege, or betrayal of confidence, for me to speak a name. The late Frances E. Willard, one of the ablest, truest, most devoted women I have ever known, frankly confessed to me in personal conversation that she was more in sympathy with my religious ideas than of those of the Church with which she was connected, but her love, her tender love and reverence for her mother and the memory of her mother's religion were such that she could not find it in her heart to break away. She loved the services her mother loved, she loved the hymns her mother sung, she loved the associations connected with her mother's life. All sweet, beautiful, noble; but, if nobody from the beginning of the world had ever advanced beyond mothers' ideas where should we be to-day? Is it not, after all, the truest reverence for mother, in the spirit of consecration she showed to follow the truth as you see it to-day, as she followed it as she saw it yesterday?

So much to justify the statement I made, that the average popular belief on any subject is not a reliable guide to a person who is earnestly desiring to find the simple truth.

Now let us come to the answer of the specific question which I have propounded. Why are not all educated people Unitarians? I ask this question, not because I originated it, but because it has been put to me, I suppose, a hundred times. People say, You claim to have studied these matters very carefully, you have tried to find the truth, you think you have found it. You have followed what you regard as the true method of search. If you have found the truth, and if other people, using this same method and being as unbiased as you, could also find it, how does it happen that Unitarians are in the minority? Why do not all persons who study and who are educated accept the Unitarian faith? This question, I say, has been asked me a great many times; and it is a question that deserves a fair, an earnest and sympathetic answer. Such an answer I am now to try to give.

In the first place, let me make a few assertions. I have not time to prove them this morning; but they are capable of proof. The advantage of a scientific statement is that, though you do not stop to prove it, you know it can be proved any time, whenever a person chooses to take the time or trouble. For example, if I state the truth of the Copernican system, or that the earth revolves around the sun, and you challenge me to prove it in two minutes, I may not be able to; it may take longer than that; but I know it can be demonstrated to-morrow or next week or any time, because it has been demonstrated over and over again.