Against all these forms of petition the modern view of life emphatically protests. It starts with the grandest of scientific generalizations, that of the universality of nature's laws. These laws cannot be broken; they govern the course of the planets as they revolve through space, they appear in the slightest eddy of dust that rises on our streets. The world is a Kosmos; to pray for a change in its arrangements is to pray for its destruction. The rains come when they must come, and the earth yields or withholds her crop, as a system of causes determined from immeasurable aeons of time prescribes. Is the God to whom men pray so poor a workman that he will change the mechanism of the Universe at their bidding? If all that is, is his work, why then the drought is his work, and the famine, and the sickness are his work, and they are, because he has willed that they should be. "The gods help them that help themselves." We are placed in a world with which we are but half acquainted; our business is to know it thoroughly. All the history of mankind from the beginning has been a series of tentative struggles to acquire this precious knowledge, and we have made indeed some headway. We began by defending ourselves against the attacks of wild beasts; we tilled the soil; we invented tools, we formed communities, we moderated the friction of social intercourse; we discovered the talisman of science, and the Aladdin's lamp of art. In the treatment of disease also a great advance has been made. When the Mayflower reached the American continent, she found a bleak and barren shore, full only of graves. A great epidemic had swept over the Indian tribes, and the natives fell like dead flies before the scourge. They had charms and prayers; these did not help them. We have accomplished a little; we are bound to aim at more. Why then call in the supernatural? It will not come, though we call never so loudly. The vain attempt does but keep us from that which is more needful, active exertion and strenuous efforts at self-help. But we are told that our success is poor at best, and that in the vast majority of cases, all our exertions avail nothing: moreover it is said that man is too frail and feeble a creature to depend upon himself alone in times of trial, and that prayer, whether it be answered or not, is valuable as a means of consolation that soothes and stills the heart. It is but too true that our achievements fall far short of our desires. Let those that do not, cannot pray, seek support in the sympathies of their kind, and where self-help fails, mutual help will offer them an inexhaustible source of strength and comfort. As for that species of prayer which is not addressed to a personal God at all, but claims to be an aspiration, an outpouring of the spirit, we do fail to see how it deserves the name of prayer in any sense. The use of the vocative, and of the pronoun thou is certainly calculated to mislead, and the appearance of inconsistency is hardly avoidable.
Lastly, the old Ideal was stationary, retrospective; it placed its paradise at the beginning of human history. In the far off past it beheld our best and loftiest hopes anticipated and realized. Then the full significance of life had been reached; then the oracles had spoken loudly and clearly whose faint echoes now float like memories of half forgotten melodies to our ear; then the imperishable truths were revealed in those olden, golden days. Not so, says the new Ideal. Rude and wretched were the beginnings of mankind on earth, poor the mind, and void the heart. Far from being exemplary, the ideas of right and wrong entertained by our earliest progenitors were infinitely below our own. Not indeed, that the substance of the moral sentiment has ever perceptibly changed. The inherent principle of right remains the same, but it assumes higher forms and is applied on a wider scale as the race advances. Thus the commandment not to kill a being like ourselves was recognized from the first, but in the earliest times, only members of the same family were esteemed beings like ourselves; to kill a neighbor was not wrong. The family widened into the clan, the clan into the people, and all the nations are now embraced in the common bond of humanity. Thus step by step the life of the clansman, the fellow citizen and at last of every human being came to be regarded as sacred. From a common centre morality has developed outward in concentric circles. In different ages also different virtues predominated. Patriotism was esteemed highest in the Roman world; self-sacrifice and chastity in the first Christian communities. But whatever had thus been gained was not thereafter lost. Each age added its own to the stock of virtue; each contributed its share to swell the treasure of mankind. The struggle for existence that raged fiercely on the lower levels of culture, loses its harsher aspects as we advance upon the path of civilization. The methods of force by which the unfit were eliminated are gradually falling into disrepute, if not into disuse. At last the good will survive because of its own persuasive excellency. The conflict will become one of ideas merely, an emulous peaceful contest for the prize of truth.
That the manners of the modern world have indeed become ameliorated, our own brief experience as a society serves to illustrate. A few centuries ago, such an enterprise as ours would never have been attempted, or if undertaken, would have been speedily crushed by the arm of authority or the weight of prejudice. We will not say that bigotry is dead; the fires of persecution still slumber beneath their ashes, and now and then start up into pretty bonfires to amuse the idle crowd; but the time has gone by when they could mount on funeral pyres—they can kindle conflagrations no more.
The new Ideal is progressive. Whatever we have achieved, it tells us there are larger achievements yet beyond. As we rise in the scale of moral worth, the eye becomes clearer and wider of vision. We see in remote ages a race of men freer and stronger because of our toils, and that is our dearest hope and our sweetest recompense that they shall reap what we have sown.
The old and the new Ideals will struggle for the mastery; that which is stronger will conquer as of old, in the struggle for existence. But the new hope fills us with trust and gladness that that which is true will be strong.
IV. THE PRIESTS OF THE IDEAL
It is with good reason, that the very name of the priesthood, has become odious to the modern mind. How has their fanaticism drenched the earth with blood, how has their unbridled ambition sown seeds of discord among the nations; how lamentable a commentary is the record of their frailties upon the assumption of superior sanctity and God-given authority. Yet it is not the priestly office, but its abuse, which has proved of evil, nor has the time yet come, when the ministry of priests can be safely dispensed with. There shall come a new Ideal to attract men's reverence and a new service of the Infinite and a new priesthood also to do its ministry. It is of this modern priesthood, I would speak.
Fear not that I am about to advocate a return to that system of spiritual bondage, from which we have but just escaped. The priests to whom we allude shall not be known by cassock or surplice. It is not at the altar they shall serve, least of all shall they have dogmas to communicate. They shall not be more than human, only if possible more human. Priests have we of science, we name them so; men whose whole soul is wrapped up in the pursuit of knowledge: priests of art, who dedicate their lives to the service of the Beautiful, priests also of the Moral, artists of the Good, sages in the science of Virtue, teachers of the Ideal.
Let us consider for a moment, in order to illustrate our meaning, the life of one such priest, whose fame has come down to us undimmed by the corroding influence of time—the life of Socrates. He held no office, he ministered at no shrine, yet he was in the true sense a priest. A plain unpretentious man, content to live on coarse fare, inured to want, homely in appearance, using homely language; nothing had he in appearance to attract; yet the gay youths left their feasts and frolics when he approached, and the busy market-place was hushed to listen to the strange wisdom of his sayings; there was indeed a singular and potent charm in this man's soul. He had a great need of righteousness, wonderful, how he awakened the same need in the hearts of the Athenian burghers of his day. He was the reverse of dogmatic. In comparison with the vastness of the unknown, he was wont to say, all human knowledge is little even to nothingness, he did not assume to know the truth, but strove to assist men in finding truths for themselves. He had his own enlightened views on questions of theology. But far from desiring to convert others to his convictions, he rather sought to divert their attention from those mysterious problems, in which men can never be wise, problems that are no nearer their solution today, than they were two thousand years ago. To those who questioned him concerning religion he replied: Are ye then masters of the humanities, that ye seek to pry into divine secrets? His father had been a fashioner of statues before him, he was a fashioner of souls! This Socrates was condemned to suffer death on the charge of atheism, and met his fate with the calmness of the philosophic mind. If death, he said, is progress to untried spheres, then welcome death! If it is sleep only, then also welcome death and its deep repose. All the tokens of the priest were fulfilled in him. He was true to himself and unbared to others the veiled truths of their own higher nature. He was a loftier presence on earth, a living flame fed from its own central being, a sun to which the world turned and was thereby enlightened. We perceive then, that what we desire is not a new thing. There has been this service of the Ideal from the earliest times. Only a new plea would we urge for larger fidelity to that which the best have striven for, and which under new conditions it will be the glory of our age to approach more nearly.