Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 9
Our second chapter dealt at length with the lack of distinctively religious results which we have to confess as we sum up the work of our First Century, and with the question of its causes. In the enumeration of these causes, one was left for separate mention here. It is, that our generally accepted theory of Religion has not recognized the necessity, or even the importance, of the experimental type of it. Not that, as a people, we have ever lacked either faith in religion, or respect for it—as we have understood it. Any statement that we have lacked either of these things, by whomsoever made, would grossly misrepresent us. But while we have not lacked in these respects, and have never been without those who have insisted as strenuously as any others on the necessity of Experimental Religion, the conception of religion which has most prevailed, and which, though not so widely as in former years, is still prevalent among us, is that it is a good conscience towards man, rather than a pious heart towards God. A one-sided, because too literal, interpretation has been put on James' words, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
Nor is this state of things surprising in view of all the facts. The several explanations set forth in Chapter II., all have their place in accounting for it. And still another, of much weight, must here be added. Protesting against Catholicism and Episcopacy, and reacting from them and their abuses, the Puritans renounced many things which are now seen to have been not only desirable, but, in a sense, essential. The result was a most austere religious life and a singularly barren worship, fitly symbolized in the bleak and rocky coast and the inhospitable soil to which the Plymouth pilgrims came. In much the same way, our conception of religion was determined. As recently even as the year of grace, 1865, a committee of the "National Congregational Council," headed by no less a man than Rev. Dr. Shepard, of the Bangor Theological School, pronounced it a "fallacy" to suppose "that converting men, making them Christians, of course makes them honest and benevolent"! But when our movement began, this divorce between religion and character was not only much more pronounced, but was almost universally regarded as, beyond question, the right view of the subject. Religion was supposed, as religion, to consist wholly in this—that one had 'made his peace with God' in 'a change of heart,' and had become scrupulous in prayers and church-going, and earnest in zeal for the salvation of his own soul and of other souls from hell. Morality, character, was thought to be quite another thing. An unimpeachable life, full of all social kindness and charities, was depreciated as but 'filthy rags'; and it by no means followed, because a man was conspicuously 'pious,' that he was honest, benevolent or trustworthy. Naturally, then, protesting so vigorously against the theological errors they assailed, and disgusted with a pietism so hollow that, whatever might be its meaning towards God, it could, in no single particular, be accepted as a pledge of any good or right thing towards man, our pioneers swung into the other extreme. Specially emphasizing, in their rebound, the long ignored duties to man as cardinal requirements without which there could be no religion worth the name, they failed duly to consider the other side. As the consequence, the phrases 'experiencing religion' and 'experimental religion,' fell into discredit and disuse among us. They and the idea they represent became distasteful to great numbers of our best people, because, it was thought, always carrying with them an odor of cant, and suggesting only an offensive pretentiousness and a pharisaic assumption, which, talking about God and praying much, had occasion to sit at the feet of the worst open-handed and upright 'sinner,' to learn the alphabet of a real fidelity to moral and social obligation. It was overlooked that the spirit of James' definition necessarily implies a tender and habitual recognition of "God and the Father," and thus a life lived always as 'before' Him. Hence its mere letter became, to a large extent, our sole and constantly quoted catechism upon the subject. Not only was it insisted, as every right-minded person must insist, that religion means truth and honor and charity; it was also insisted that one who is morally upright, kind to the poor and thoughtful of those in trouble, fulfils all duty, and is in the best sense religious, though what is called piety may fail to appear.
But while it is easy to explain how such a style of think ing came into vogue among us, the thinking itself is none the less to be regretted; nor is what has resulted from it, or our need of a New Departure in respect to it, any less manifest. As between such an estimate of religion, indeed, and that which holds it a 'fallacy' to think "that making men Christians of course makes them honest and benevolent," the former is infinitely to be preferred; and while we have occasion deeply to mourn our lack religiously, we have no less occasion to rejoice that, morally, Universalists, as a class, have made for themselves a record confessedly so honorable as an upright and benevolent people. Better this than mere pietism without it—as the recently exposed improbity and turpitude of so many in high places, who had been regarded as distinguished samples of 'evangelical religion,' has impressively taught us. Alas! such revelations, in high or humble places, as they too often occur, do but show us what legitimately comes of that chronic separation of religion and character, which Dr. Shepard's remark so signally illustrates. But both these estimates are incomplete—one quite as much as the other; and as our 'evangelical' friends need to make—as some of them already have made—a new departure in respect to character as a part of religion, we need scarcely less a similar departure in the other direction. It is possible to make no one Christian, they need to understand, without making him to the same extent honest and benevolent, since piety, so far as it is genuine, necessarily includes morality; and on the other hand, we need to understand, no morality is soundest, or most real, which does not grow from religion as its tap-root. The true life comes only of the harmonious blending of the two.
Very earnestly and decidedly, then, we should at once give ourselves to the New Departure thus indicated—not in thinking of any social charity or fidelity less, but of piety more. Moral faithfulness is indispensable. But nothing is farther from the truth than the idea, however or by whomsoever held, that we are religious enough when we are morally faithful. It virtually ignores God. It fails to take a whole half of our nature into account. It overlooks not only our duty to God, but the indispensable office of a devout regard for Him, as an element in our experience and as a formative force at the centre of our lives. Filial duty is by no means answered in simple kindness to brothers and sisters, and a scrupulous obedience to every parental command. It is answered only when the whole life is possessed and moulded by a filial love. As little is our duty all done, or our whole nature ministered to, in any mere moral fidelity, however exact, or any philanthropic service, however thoughtful. It is answered only as the whole being is pervaded with a sense of God, and all life is made a loving offering to Him.
Religion, having this meaning of piety, it needs far more generally to be seen, is the necessity of every soul:—a necessity because our relations and obligations to God demand it, and not less because our own nature requires it. God is the Life of all life, and the law of all movement and being. All nature confesses Him, and therefore there is order among the circling worlds, and in the domain of matter everywhere. Imagine God out of the universe, or His will no longer recognized, and what would follow? So, equally, God must be the central fact in the life of souls, or moral necessities will as certainly be broken, and moral confusion and death ensue. Hence our constitution, with religious instincts and what we call our religious nature—that we might be held to God as planets are held to their central suns, or the needle to the pole. Neither needle nor planet can wholly divest itself of this innate allegiance, but, however temporarily affected by counter attractions, always, in the end, confesses its original law. So with us in respect to God. Made to be religious, we can never wholly rid ourselves of this tendency, and are sure at some time to come back to the recognition of God, however we may have lapsed from it. Religion is the recognition of God; the centripetal force of the spiritual universe, binding souls to Him; the electric chain, linking us as offspring and Him as Source, through which alone can the vital current be communicated to us. Sever the flower's connection with its root, it withers. Cut off the stream from the fountain, it dries up. Detach the wire from the battery, it is powerless. As inevitably, sever the soul's conscious connection with its God,—let religion be wanting as the medium through which we shall be nurtured in Divine hopes, and be kept sensible of our dependence, and loving as well as loyal in our service,—and, in proportion as this is the case, though intellect and conscience survive, and the formal processes of life go on, the vigor and freshness of our being decay; the healthfulness and harmonious action of our higher faculties fail; spiritually, we die. There is no life away from God, and religion alone keeps us in contact with Him.
Why but on this account does Christianity come to us as it does? A philosophy of spiritual facts and laws, it is at the same time a perfect system of doctrine, and a perfect ethical code. But does it content itself with what it thus is? Far otherwise. Recognizing in us needs and capacities which crave something deeper than any intellectual solution of the universe, and something more interior and vital than any mould for our outward life, it comes to us a Religion, seeking not only to inform the understanding and instruct the conscience, but to take possession of every faculty, pervading it with the required sense of God, and so putting our whole being into time and tune with Him. Only as thus a religion, and on the basis of our religious nature, does it, finally, seek or expect to do anything for us. Of what avail would its effort be, if it did? A genuine manhood or womanhood in Christ, rounding all our noblest possibilities into full expression, is the result it contemplates in respect to each one of us; and how could this be accomplished if the primary element of our spiritual nature, and what is most vital in our relations, had been left out in the process?
Our religious nature is the granitic base and material of character, and on it and out of it only can the highest order of manliness or womanliness be produced. Consider Christ. Had he incarnated simple intellect and bare loyalty to moral law, could his have been the perfect life which now so wins while it awes us? Great intellects and correct lives have many times shone upon the world. The distinction of Christ is that his intellect was so invigorated and vitalized by something higher, and deeper, and grander than intellect, and his character so pervaded by the very essence of goodness, and his entire life so attuned into accord with Divine harmonies, that he became in all things so complete as the Ideal Man as to be also the Image of God. And why? Not only because his perceptions of God were so clear, but because his consciousness of Him was so complete; because his trust in Him, and his communion with Him, and his union to Him, were so entire; because his whole soul was so alive with Him, in the quickening of every religious factor of his nature, and the perfect fruitage of every religious possibility. He might have known all he did, and might have been as externally blameless as he was; but, lacking this consummate religiousness which was, at the same time, despite the apparent confusion of figures, the substratum, the essence and the aroma of his life, he could never have been what he was, nor have shed such a power into the world. And he but exemplifies the universal fact. Not only is religion no new invention, the religious needs and tendencies of men being coeval with human existence, but, in every period of the world, the most truly religious man, other things being equal, has been the largest, most philanthropic, noblest man; and all men have been good, happy, truly great, in exact proportion as they have approached the best standard of religious excellence.
And the past in this particular only prophesies the future. There are those who are fond of talking of religion as a superstition, a sort of childishness and temporary weakness of mankind, which is, in due time, to be outgrown, as children outgrow their toys and primers. No doubt the world has much to outgrow—how much, or what, no one can say; and, as the consequence, many things now dear—usages, opinions, institutions—are doubtless to be cast aside. But, as was in substance said in speaking of Christ, whatever else may be cast aside, religion never will be. There can be no progress beyond the scope of its truths,—no condition of development in which it will have no further office. Opinions will change. Forms will perish. Interpretations will pass away. But man will never outgrow God. Religion there will always be—the necessity of souls; the support and handmaid of the intellectual and moral elements of our being, whatever the progress possible to them. And in heaven, as on earth, human nature and its relations to God continuing the same, the most religious soul, living most in God, will stand in the van of the race, breathing most of that clearer atmosphere; having the broadest outlook, as well as the deepest insight; and exhibiting the noblest specimen of ripened and sanctified human life.
And, all this being true, what is the conclusion in respect to experimental religion to which it conducts us? Clearly, if we are to be religious at all, not religion as a theology, nor as a moral service, but as an experience,—experimental religion, is that which alone meets the demands and conditions in the case. What is experimental religion? No wise man should suffer himself to be prejudiced against the thing because the terms by which it is signified may have been abused. This abuse of the terms, indeed, admonishes us that we should distinctly understand what experimental religion is not. It is not mere church-going, or talk about God and religion, we should bear in mind. It is not a pietistic dilettanteism, that affects religious pictures and forms; and, quite as decidedly, it is not a mere effervescence of religious sentiment or emotion, that loves devotional meetings, and runs over in pious phrases and professions, and is never so happy as in some convocation for prayer and religious exhortation. One at all experimentally religious, it is true, will naturally love religious associations and exercises. But none of these things in themselves constitute experimental religion; nor is a fondness for them by any means a sure sign of its presence. On the contrary, some of those whom I have known most addicted to them have been, of all the people I have met, among those farthest from possessing any such religion, and from any just conception of it—because showing, in their meanness, selfishness, or dishonesty, in their fractious or unamiable spirit, that religion was in no positive sense a fact in their lives.
Experimental religion is religion experienced and appropriated as a possessing and governing power. Experimental honesty, democracy, benevolence, is honesty, democracy, benevolence not simply talked and believed in, but understood, felt, put into action. In like manner, experimental religion is real religion—religion felt, applied, permeating the soul, to thrill, quicken and control it. It is the working of God's Holy Spirit of Truth within us, vitalizing and fructifying us—as, if the earth were conscious, spring, summer, autumn, would in turn be its experimental attestation that it had felt itself warmed, watered, and supplied with all the quickening and fertilizing agencies appointed to stir and make it fruitful. It is the life of God in the soul:—what our Lord enjoined when he said, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. . . . He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him, . . . and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. . . . Abide in me, and I in you. . . . He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit" (John vii. 17; xiv. 21, 23; xv. 4, 5);—what Paul had in his thought when he said, "because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us . . . I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . that he would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (Rom. v. 5; Eph. iii. 14, 16–19);—what Peter meant when he said, "whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet, believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Pet. i. 8, 9);—and what John was thinking of when he said, "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments . . . . For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" (1 John v. 3, 4).
It is one of the chief misfortunes of the world, and especially of the church, that so much of its religion is non-experimental—alas! much of it that broadens its phylacteries, and prays loudly, and thinks itself experimental. Reading Morell's "Philosophy of Religion," years ago, I was struck with a statement to this effect: "We pity the deluded people who substitute the superstitious reverence of saints, relics and images for the veneration and heartfelt worship of God. How few reflect that, within our own communities, there are multitudes, claiming to be much more intelligent, who are practising a substitution equally fatal to all that is most elevated in the Christian life—the substitution of terms, phrases, propositions, beliefs, for the vital power of the religion of Christ." It is sad to think how large the number is who make this substitution, and how all the interests that would be furthered by a more living and experimental Christianity are suffering in consequence.
Two things are to be particularly noted as thus resulting.
In the first place, to the extent that it is made, this substitution gives a thin, poor, halting faith, instead of the assurance to which the Christian believer is called. This assurance is one that knows nothing of doubt—that takes hold of Christianity as a fact, and of God, and Christ, and redemption, and immortality, as realities, with a confidence as implicit as that with which we take hold of any fact in the unquestionable order of nature. But such a faith never comes of mere argument.
It is well—on some accounts, very important—that we should thoroughly understand the various proofs of Christianity, historical and moral, external and internal, that we may thus see how it is established and fortified at every possible point, and so be prepared to answer the objections of unbelief, and the questions of honest inquiry. But these, after all, avail little towards the moral certitude which makes a conviction of the truth of Christianity as absolute as the conviction of one's own existence. Most people take Christianity on trust. Their faith in it is the result simply of education or tradition, and, in the nature of the case, if this is all, cannot, when sharply assailed, be very strong. And the faith that is better founded and more intelligent, but that is only historical, critical, intellectual, however sure, is never so quite sure as to be certain beyond all peradventure. The result of what is called a comparison of evidence,—that is, of a balance of probabilities, with the balance more or less decidedly in favor of Christianity, it is always liable to gusts of questioning and flaws of doubt, as one sailing on some lakes is constantly exposed to squalls, and, if a wise man, always sails with one hand on his rudder, and the other on his 'sheet,' feeling perhaps not insecure, but, all the time, that some unexpected gust may strike him, and, if he is not duly on his guard, upset his boat, and tumble him into the water. For the faith which, whether one accepts Christianity by education, or only after careful inquiry into its proofs, is most confident, putting one entirely at rest, as one sails some placid sea, where no flaws or gusts ever come, and where, before the steady blowing of some favoring breeze, he adjusts his rudder and fastens his sail, and, in a sense of entire security, has no thought except of the calm delight of the hour, and of the place where, by and by, he is to land, one must have the demonstration of experience.
Because of what is thus true, there is perpetual significance in the familiar story of the unlettered man who, being asked by a self-confident sceptic where he found his evidence of Christianity, laid his hand on his heart, saying, Here. Only of this evidence does the highest assurance come. As the consequence, the more entirely Christian one is,—i.e. the more one has 'Christ in him, the hope of glory,' the instructor of his ignorance, his comfort in sorrow, his help in every need, the less, so far as he is personally concerned, will be his interest in the ordinary elements of proof, and the more inconsiderable will seem to him their value. Desiring to know whether there really are such places as Niagara and the Yosemite, I do well to collate evidence and study descriptions; but what need have I of these things if I am there? How was it with the healed blind man of whom John (ix. 10—33) tells us? Pestered by his cross-examiners with questions which he could not readily answer, this was his sufficient rejoinder, "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." What if there were questions which he could not answer? This was the impregnable demonstration that Christ was verily from God.
It is as we "taste and see that the Lord is good," that we know Him to be so, and find it blessed to trust in Him; and whatever may be our acquaintance with other arguments or evidence, it is only as we have experience of Christianity, and find ourselves illumined, vitalized, saved by it, that we attain to the certitude which says, I know it is of God. As Dr. Chapin has somewhere remarked, "The more we get into the very spirit of Christ, and participate in his life and joy, the more we see that he was and must have been from God; and the more we test the capacity of his religion for our wants and trials, and find it what we need, the deeper will be our assurance that it is from Him who made us what we are." We thus have the witness within ourselves; and any other is and can be only akin to that which a blind man has of the beauty of a landscape, or of the splendors of the setting sun, or such as one may have concerning the grandeur of the mountains, or the ruins of Thebes, who has only read about, and has never had his soul thrilled among them.
But the great consideration pertaining to this subject is that only an Experimental Religion at all positively answers any religious purpose, or can effectually do the work of saving souls. Any faith in Christianity is, in a sense, something gained—as, if people were suffering on account of a morbid abstinence, something would be gained in getting them to believe in food, and water, and fresh air. But what would mere belief avail towards sustaining life? As little does any mere belief in Christianity avail for the ends it contemplates. It prepares the way for something better than belief. But, in itself, such a mere opinion is worth little more than any other opinion. Heart as well as head must be affected, if Christianity is positively to accomplish anything. "It's a wonder to me," once said a perplexed and inquiring friend, as we were talking of Christ, "if Christianity is really from God, that it does not take deeper hold of men, and more generally control them. Why doesn't it?" The same question has doubtless occurred to many others, and to answer it thoroughly, numerous causes would have to be taken into account. But here we have the main and most inclusive answer:—Because such vast multitudes are content to believe with the head, and not with the heart. Because so great a proportion of those nominally ranged under the Christian banner are Christians only in a nominal assent,—in a merely historical or traditional faith,—in talk about Christianity, instead of being Christians in a faith that pervades and possesses the whole being, transforming Christianity from theory into fact, and so bringing souls into a living union with the Saviour, and filling them with the fulness of God. Appropriation, application, insight, experience are wanting. In other words, Religion is only on the surface of the mind, as an opinion. It fails to go into its depths, among the springs of life, as a principle and a power. Shall we wonder that, under these circumstances, Christianity does not more widely conform life to itself? The wonder is that it has accomplished and is accomplishing so much. It is as if the rain, and sunshine, and all fertilizing agencies could barely touch the face of the soil,—never infiltrate and pervade its substance. How much, were this so, would they do to cover garden and field with the verdure of the spring-time, or to crown the autumn with harvests?
The chapter on Christ Essential glanced at the condition of things before Christ's advent. And why were things so? Not because the world had no truth. It had a great deal of truth; in some form had not a little of that which Christianity more perfectly embodied,—enough, certainly, if it had been effective, to have made life very different from what it was. But it was ineffective. Why? Because its moral force failed to be seen and felt; because men speculated and believed concerning God and Duty, just as they did about problems in geometry, or rules in mathematics, touched no more spiritually by a Divine thought than by the multiplication-table; because, therefore, consciences were not quickened, nor hearts pricked or melted; in a single word, because there was nothing experimental in the faith or religion of the time. The result was that, notwithstanding all the truth the world had, it was 'dead in trespasses and sins,'—ready to perish. Thanks to Christianity, the moral standards of society have greatly changed since then. Higher ideas rule the world. The general conscience has been educated up to far juster estimates of obligation. It takes vastly more now to make a respectably good man or woman than it did then. But so far as the essence and purpose of life, consciously chosen and determined, are concerned, in what respect does the life of the average nominal Christian to-day differ from the life thus prevalent before Christ? How much more has he of an habitual sense of God,—of spiritual awakening and experience,—of penitence for sin,—of a heart given to God and poised on Him? Or, were Christ and Paul now with us in the flesh, how large is the number of whom the former would not say, as he said to the Jews, "I know you that ye have not the love of God in you," or of whom the latter would not repeat his words,—"knowing God, they glorified Him not as God"?
There is weighty significance in the fact thus suggested; and in the light of this fact, is it difficult to see why Christianity does not take deeper hold of men, and more perfectly control them? For what we are unconsciously and without self-purpose, amidst the educative and elevating influences of the Gospel, we are entitled to no credit; and putting this out of the case, we really rise above the heathen, and begin to live on the Christian plane, only when we begin to have our hearts moved in view of the moral meaning of Christianity, and thus to be quickened into the purpose to make it an experimental thing—an inspiration, a law, a power, a life. We may talk, and talk well, about Christianity, and think we believe it. We may attend where it is preached, and exhibit an unimpeachable morality, and be in good report, as kind-hearted people, among those who know us. But all this does not make us Christians to any best effect. It is only when down into our souls flows a mastering consciousness of God, and of what, as the supreme realities of the universe, God and Christ and Immortality demand,—it is only as, in presence of the Cross, we are touched, humbled, and drawn to God, with hearts awakened and glowing in the purpose to have no other life or law, that we are Christians in truth, knowing something of what the religion of Christ is, and illustrating its efficacy as we experience its quickening and its joy.
And consider, for a moment, what the life of one who has thus experienced religion is. I know there are pretenders. I know there are those "having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," and that through the pretences and hollow talk of such, Christ is dishonored, and the very name of experimental religion made a thing to be jeered at. But God does not die, nor Christ become a fable, nor religion cease to be a reality, on account of these things. There are souls—many of them, who are not pretenders, and who, in saintly lives, daily walk in the companionship of Christ, 'dwelling in God, and God in them.' And think what the life of such a one is. What seem dreams or abstractions to others, are the sublimest verities to him. While to others God is an impersonal and shadowy conception, the logical ultimate in the solution of the universe, or an inexorable law, to him He is an encompassing Presence of Mercy,—a Friend who never forgets,—a Father, numbering the hairs of our heads,—a Shield and Help always. While others recognize only external and artificial relations between them and the men and women about them, he sees in all who wear the human form, whatever their complexion or condition, those to whom he is linked by vital and enduring ties—brothers and sisters, to whom he owes a brother's love and service. What to others are but so many meaningless facts are to him the symbols of a tender and comprehensive love, or assurances of a power to which all things are possible, or of a beneficence that never sleeps. Go where he may, he sees everything instinct with God; and every place and all time and all experience are hallowed by the thought of His care. The universe to him is a temple, life a worship, and every object or circumstance somehow a minister to faith, reverence, or joy. The sunlight greets him as the messenger of an impartial favor, and each star as it shines in the sky of night tells of a goodness that through the darkness watches still. Every flower, as it sheds its fragrance or nods in the wind, is a type of some beautiful thought of God, and all the music of nature does but help to keep his heart in tune. Every joy is sweeter as the gift of a Father's thoughtfulness, and every sorrow is accepted as the appointment or permission of One who is aiming thus to discipline him into a more perfect communion with himself. When clouds gather, he pierces through them, beholding the light beyond. When dear ones die, he calmly bows to their loss in the assurance that they have but preceded him in the journey home. In his moral conflicts, assailed by temptation, or conscious of faults or sin, he looks to Christ and gathers courage,—looks to the cross and gathers strength. Amidst the varied annoyances incident to all earthly conditions, centred on God, he maintains his equanimity and self-possession, and growing sweeter, more thoughtful of others, more forgetful of self, becomes, like ripening fruit, flavored and mellowed by the passing time. And when, at last, death approaches, he closes his eyes on this world, peaceful as he trustingly lays his head on the bosom of God, and breathes out his life here, confident that he is to live forever. By the side of such a life, what is the life of the worldling, or the philosopher, or the most genial and unexceptionable moralist even? Only in such a life does one truly live; and however fair or pleasant in its seeming, any other is, at the best, empty and incomplete. In this life only does our whole nature find expression and satisfaction; and whoever fails to live it, and in exact proportion as he fails, comes short alike of the Divine resources, of the rounded character, and of the strength and peace in which alone our destiny is fulfilled.
Is not such a life one to be desired? But experimental religion—religion as a vital principle and power in the soul—alone makes it possible. For this reason, many very excellent people fail of it. Excellent in many respects, they come short of the roundest and completest life, because they have never experienced religion; have never had their hearts kindled; have never felt the glow of God's life in theirs. "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" asked Paul of the disciples at Ephesus; to which they replied, "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." And this is what the class of persons referred to would have to say, if asked the same question. They do not know that there is any Holy Ghost. But Christ's baptism is a baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire—a baptism of awakening and consecrating power; and only as we receive this baptism, and, in penitence, love, and self-surrender, are impelled to take Christ's hand, in trust and prayer,—to walk as he leads, to feel as he felt, to try to live as he shows us how,—are we, or can we be, lifted into the noblest living, because only thus can we have Christianity in us the ministry it aims to be, or have it go out from us the saving influence God has designed. Christianity masters and ripens only those whom it experimentally enters, melts and possesses.
These things being so, the issue tendered all who profess to believe in Christ is obvious. It is—an experimental religious life, or a life empty alike of the moral flavor and spiritual power of the Gospel, failing of real completeness, whatever its excellences, and resembling in essence the lives of those who knew not Christ, and who were perishing in consequence. This is no mere talk. It is solemn fact, if God and Christ and souls are facts. And, full of interest to all, this alternative should be of special interest to us. Universalism is nothing if it is not the awakening and life-giving religion of Christ. It is this, we are pertinaciously affirming. Were it possible for us to be convinced that it is not, who is there of us that would not at once abandon it? And if it is what we thus insist, "what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness!" How our hearts ought to thrill and burn with the Divine afflatus, and our lives give evidence of its indwelling presence and inspiration! Nowhere on the broad earth is there a man or woman who ought to be so devout, with a heart so glowing, with a life so built on religion as a principle, and so pervaded by it as a power, as the Universalist; none is so utterly without excuse for not being so. For think what we have to impress and move us, in the Divine Father and His pitying and pleading love; in a Saviour so devoted and compassionate, so tenderly and unconquerably wedded to our redemption; in the conversation with heaven and the communion with our departed to which we are invited; and in all the sanctions and appeals by which we are addressed. Whatever the strength of his conviction intellectually, or however ready or zealous in church work, one cannot be most fully a Universalist, or be able to do most for Christ, and truth, and souls, under the banner of Universalism, until he has thus experienced it as a religion, seeing and feeling that it is a religion, and giving daily evidence that it has effectually wrought within him.
It is one of the chief misfortunes of Universalism that it is so widely supposed to be fatally wanting in religious efficacy. This impression it is our duty immediately to correct; but it can be corrected only as we bear in mind the Master's test, "By their fruits ye shall know them." One life demonstrating that Universalism has power to infuse a sense of God into souls, and to make His life theirs, will do more than whole libraries of books, or any amount of argument. It is this power that the world now most needs; and, because of its alleged fitness to communicate this, Universalism, we are claiming, is the providential answer to the need. Shall we fail to make it such an answer in fact, because failing ourselves to appropriate and experience what it religiously is? Alike for our own sakes, that we may personally know the best blessings of our faith,—and for the sake of the Gospel in our keeping, that its real character may be vindicated,—and for the sake of our Church, that it may be made vital with the living Christ,—and for the sake of the world, that the power which alone can possess and save may be shed into it,—we should, with one consent, straightway give ourselves to the New Departure which justice to Universalism as a Religion demands. It is a shame to us that, with so much to make us vitally religious beyond all others, we are showing comparatively so little sign of it. Let this reproach henceforth cease.