But is there a substitute for prayer?
Among the advantages of prayer is often mentioned this: that in it the soul reaches out towards its source, and in so doing wonderfully recruits its spiritual energy. It finds, ethically speaking, its second wind. It reaches down beneath its utmost strength to find an increment of strength not previously at its disposal. The question is whether this increment of strength cannot be obtained more surely and to better purpose in another way, namely, by concentrating attention on the spiritual need of the fellow-beings with whom we are in daily touch, and by becoming aware to what an extent the finer nature imprisoned in them is dependent for its release upon our exertions. The appeal of the God in our neighbor is the substitute for the appeal in prayer to the God in heaven, the call of the stifled spiritual nature in the men and women at our side, is to draw out of us our utmost latent force, the strengths underneath the strength.
The common life we share with our fellow-members in the religious society demands expression in song and in responsive services. The high wave of this common life welling up in us, rising to the surface, makes the glow of religious meetings, gives them fervor, and a touch of rapture, not indeed the common life conceived as a uniform life, but as the life we live in others, and they in us.
The addresses that awaken and appease spiritual pain, the presentation of the various modes of right living, the songs that lift the individual above his private self and help him to live, not indeed submerged, but rather spiritually accentuated in the life of the whole, these are the public manifestations of ethical religion as I see them. They will contribute to make of the society itself the symbol of its ethical faith. We shall not have an external symbol like the cross: the fellowship itself will be our symbol.
There will also be festivals. Every religion must have its festivals. In place of Baptism the solemn taking of responsibility for the spiritual development of the child. A festival of vocational initiation, like the ancient assumption of the toga. Festivals of citizenship, inspired by the ideal of the national character as one to be spiritually transformed. Festivals of humanity in connection with the commemoration of great events in the history of our race and of great leaders who were inspired in some degree by the ideal task of humanity. Festivals of the seasons, deriving their significance from the spiritual interpretation of the corresponding seasons of human life,—youth, middle age, old age. And a solemn though not mournful festival in commemoration of the departed.
The religious assembly should itself be organized; the members of the different vocational groups should be allocated to different parts of the meeting hall, as were the Guilds in certain of the mediæval cathedrals.
Besides the public manifestations, the private religion will receive attention. The religious society as a whole is to be the microcosm of the spiritual macrocosm, a miniature model of the ideal society, but care must also be taken for the private communion of the individual with the spiritual presences which the ideal evokes. There should be a special breviary for the sick, a Book of Consolation for the bereaved, a Book of Friendship, a Book of direction for those who pass through the experience of sin, and a book of preparation for those who face the end.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST OUTLOOK ON LIFE
The view of life that man has on leaving it is the final test of his philosophy of life. These are my thoughts: It is time to detach thyself from this earth. The shadows are lengthening. Look around you and note the strange changes that have taken place in the men and women of your acquaintance. Those that you once knew in their prime are now old and wrinkled,—and how many already dead! As you survey the procession of life, how many vacant places are there in it! How many true and loyal comrades have been swept away! Or go into the busy streets of the city, and look at the multitude passing through them. You are still one of this multitude. Presently you will drop out. There will perhaps be a little ripple on the surface, and then the stream will flow on as before. How curious is it to think that this frame of life which sustains such high faculties should crumble into a little heap of dust at the touch of the wand of death! Detach thyself, therefore, relax thy hold by anticipation as thou shalt soon relax it actually. But detachment does not mean cold inattention or unnatural shrinking from the earthly scene, like that of the monk in his cell. Relax thy hold on what is earthly in the earthly scene, and fix thy loving attention all the more on what is spiritually significant in it. Regard with a friendly eye the beauty of the natural landscape around thee—yonder lake and yonder noble mountain summit. They are earthly, yet are they also hieroglyphs and symbols.