Christianity and Modern Thought

by Henry W. Bellows; James Freeman Clarke; Athanase Coquerel; Orville Dewey; Charles Carroll Everett; Frederic Henry Hedge; James Martineau; Andrew P. Pe

The spirit of the age is truth-seeking. We speak often of the eagerness for wealth that marks the age. I think that when, from the distant future, men shall look back upon this period of the world's history, the search for wealth will not be seen to fill the place that to us it seems to occupy. The age will be seen to be animated by a nobler quest than this. The search for truth will be seen to be the quest by which it is marked most really. We speak of the corruption of the age, of the trickeries of trade, of the unscrupulousness of speculation, of the pretence and display of fashion, of the venality of politics. All this is true. These things deserve the denunciation of the moralist and the preacher. But behind all this is the life which truly marks the age. It is the life of patient, earnest, honest search for truth. I believe that never and nowhere has there been manifested, to so great extent, such conscientious and self-forgetful love of truth for its own sake as may be found in the scientific investigations of the present day. Such accuracy of research, such microscopic delicacy of measurement, such patient and unprejudiced examination, I believe to be unequalled in the history of man. This proves that, in spite of the frauds and falseness of which I spoke, the age is really sound at heart. Theologians sometimes speak of the flippancy and conceit of the science of the day. The terms would be more true applied in the opposite direction. Theology is more open to such charges than science. A love of truth that would fling away even the highest glory of the earth and the hope of heaven, if so be truth may stand pure and perfect, has something sublime about it. Well might the theologian take a lesson from the man of science in regard to this consecration to truth. For theology, with its presumption, its prejudice, its pretence, its glossing over of difficulties, its leaning upon authority which it feels at heart is not authority, its saying what it does not exactly believe, that it may not contradict those who perhaps do not believe exactly what they say, may well stand ashamed in the presence of the science of the day that has left all to follow truth. Theology should give to science not tolerance, not patronage, but reverence. While it utters fearlessly the truth that is given it to speak, it should in its turn seat itself as a learner at the feet of science, and seek not only to gather the facts which it has to teach, but to catch something of its spirit, the spirit that loves truth, and that will suffer nothing to take the place of this.

But Christ was not a truth-seeker. It does not appear that he ever doubted or questioned. Pilate asked the question, What is truth? It does not appear that Jesus ever did. Jesus came not to seek the truth, but to announce it. "To this end," he cried, "was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." He came to bear witness unto the truth, but it was truth that came to him without his seeking. Neither does it appear that Christ loved truth above all things. To the Jesuit there is something better than truth, and to this he will sacrifice truth itself. I assert nothing like this in regard to Christ. Truth was to him fundamental and essential. He would not accept or tolerate what was false. But still to know was not the great object of his life. There was something better to him than truth; namely, life. He would rather be than know. At his touch truth sprang into life. If he came to bear witness to the truth, this was only a step in his grander work, the work which he proclaimed at the very beginning of his mission, when he cried, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." And, further, Christ did not merely teach life through truth: he taught truth through life. "If any man," he said, "will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." And John was full of the spirit of his Master when he cried, "The life is the light of men."

We see more clearly the antithesis between Christ as a teacher on the one side, and the present age on the other, in this fact: viz., that Christ speaks with authority to an age which rejects authority. The cry of the age, in the world of the intellect as well as in that of politics, is for liberty. But to this age, as to every age, Christ comes as a master. "My yoke," he says, "is easy;" but it is a yoke none the less.

If the relation of Christ to his truth is so different from that of the spirit of the age to its truth, it must follow that the two forms of truth rest on different bases. The faculties by which the age seeks truth must be different from those through which the truth came unsought to Jesus. This age seeks truth by the discriminating and investigating power of the understanding. Truth came to Jesus through the intuitions of the soul. In him the moral and spiritual faculties were full of strength. He lived as naturally in the world of spiritual realities as other men live in the world of physical realities. As we need only open our eyes and see, so his spirit had only to open its eyes and it saw. As the voices of the outward world come to us without our listening for them, so the voice of God came to him whether he would or no. And this was the ground of the authority with which he spoke. Whoever speaks from the moral and spiritual consciousness to the moral and spiritual consciousness may and must speak with authority. We may illustrate this by an extreme case. When a man is lurking for the commission of some crime, or after he has committed it, he feels the mastery of all innocent things. The rustle of a leaf may excite his dread. To a voice denouncing his crime, or crime like his, he listens as to the voice of God. This recognition of the mastery of a higher degree of life after its own kind is felt at every stage of moral and spiritual development. If the soul be comparatively guilty, it recognizes this mastery with dread. If it be comparatively innocent, it recognizes it with joy. Such was the authority with which Jesus spoke. Though he spoke with authority, what he said did not rest on this authority. It was the authority with which the awakened calls to the sleeper, bidding him awake, for the world is bright with the morning. The voice penetrates to the obscured consciousness of the sleeper. He stirs himself, he opens his eyes, and rejoices for himself in the morning brightness. So Christ called to a sleeping world. Nay, he called to those who were dead in trespasses and sin, and they that were dead heard the voice of the Son of Man and lived.

If the truth taught by Jesus and the truth that is sought by the present age rest on such different bases, they must be, we should suppose, in some respects different each from the other. But, if each be truth, they must be the complements each of the other. And, if they are the complements each of the other, they must need one another. Each must be imperfect without the other. Each must find a certain confirmation and support from the other, and each must complete for the other the circle of truth. We are thus led to look at some points in the teaching of Christ, and to see how these complete and are completed by the truth which the present age seeks and finds.

In the first place, Christ teaches us of the loving providence of God. He awakens in our hearts all childlike instincts of trust and confidence. He tells us that God is our father, that his love watches over all his children, that it follows the prodigal in his wandering and greets him on his return, that even a sparrow does not fall to the earth without it. This teaching is sufficient for the spiritual necessities of our nature. The spirit that has adopted these principles into itself will live a strong and blessed life. They have been the inspiration of the centuries ever since Christ uttered them. They contain all that could be told of God in the age when Jesus lived. But they do not exhaust the truth of God. They leave space for misconception. Love may be universal, and yet be not without caprice. Providence may watch over all, and yet in every case be only a special providence. God may watch over every individual of the race, but over each merely as an individual. If there may be the caprices of love, then it is not a long step to the possibility of caprices which spring from the lack of love. Love may alternate with hate. If each individual be dealt with singly, as though he existed by himself, the step is not a long one to the thought of discrimination between individuals. The caprices of love may become favoritism, and the special favor shown to one implies the neglect of another. All these things are foreign from the spirit and the teaching of Christ. They contradict the fundamental principles of his teaching. And yet, men's habits of thought being such as they were, the teaching of Christ could not be absolutely fortified against them. He told men that the love of God was like the sunshine that visits all alike, but the words passed through their ears unheeded. Thus Christianity all along has been corrupted by misrepresentations of its truth in which the thought of love had suggested caprice, and the thought of special love and special providence had suggested the thought of favoritism, and favoritism had suggested discrimination and neglect. All men were seen to stand in the presence of God as individuals, which is true; and merely as individuals, which is false.

The truth that God is love needs to be supplemented by another truth; namely this, that God is Law. The great truth of the absoluteness of law cannot be taught in a single lesson. No man can tell it to another. It must be demonstrated to be believed. It must be shown in its myriad and unvarying applications to all forms of being before it can be felt as a reality. One must see for one's self the grand march of the order of the universe, the unfailing sequence of cause and effect, the mathematical exactness of the correlation of all the forces of the world, before one can have a sense of the truth which lies at the basis and forms the culmination of scientific thought to-day. This truth has not been reached suddenly. The ages have been groping after it. This age has reached, by slow and patient thought, a comprehension of this truth which is its inspiration. The ages to come will only add to it new illustrations as they follow its mighty sweep. This truth is what seems at times to put this age into antagonism with the spirit of Christ. It is really the offering which the thought of the age brings to Christ. The teaching of Christ needs, as we have seen, this truth as its complement. The antithesis between the two shows the intimate relationship between them. When we bring the two together in one thought, we have the most sublime conception that ever dawned upon the mind of man. The truth of Christ finds a body: the truth of the age finds a soul. On the one side, all possibility of caprice is driven from our thought of God. The love of God, as strong and tender as the lips of Jesus could describe it, is seen to be as regular and as calm as the movements of the heavens. This truth only adds to the strength and the clearness of our thought of the love of God. We see demonstrated before us how his care pursues all things, how not a sparrow falls to the earth unfollowed by this watchful providence, how every grain of dust that floats in the summer sun has its place and work in the great whole, not a single mote forgotten. We learn in what direction to look for the action and succor of this providence. We do not look for it to come to us in weakness, but in strength. We see that this perfect order is the truest providence, that the care of each is most perfect that recognizes each in its relations to all the rest. So soon as we recognize the divinity of law and the love that is enshrined in it, we feel the omnipresent might of this divinity, the omnipotence of this love. The restlessness and passion of our hearts are stilled. Trust in God takes on the peace and the calmness of the heavens. Such is the offering which the age brings to Christ. It brings a body in which his spirit may incarnate itself afresh.

The result of the union of the thought of the age with the thought of Christ may be seen in all the relations in which the soul stands to God. Christ bade his followers preach his gospel to every creature. The age has taught us the necessity of educating and civilizing the barbarian, if we would christianize him. Christ taught us to love the sinner while hating sin. This has seemed to some paradoxical; but the age has removed some of the difficulty by showing how much of what we call character is the result of inherited tendencies and outward circumstances. Jesus taught the doctrine of immortality. Men have tended to look upon the future life as something standing over against the present. The age teaches us that such a break in life is impossible, that if there be an immortality it must lie hidden in the present. It teaches, too, that the judgments of God, if there be a God, are never arbitrary. He does not hold blessing in one hand and cursing in another, and give each, by an outward bestowal, as he may see that it is deserved. Men's acts drag their consequences after them. Thus the old Scripture phrases are just coming to their meaning. It is not an angry God that pursues the sinner: it is his own sin that has found him out. Men do reap the fruit of their own sowing. There is no scientific truth of the day that stands in any stronger antagonism to the truth of Christ than is implied in such antitheses as have been referred to. Even the theories of development, so rife at present, do not stand in the way of Christ. Christ looks not downward but upward, not backward but forward. Such theories, if established, would only show the progressive power of spirit, the omnipotence of life.

But if the thought of Jesus needs that of the present age, still more does the thought of the age need that of Jesus. If the spirit needs a body, still more does the body need a spirit. The laws, the forces on which the thought of the age dwells, until this divineness is added to them are hard and cold. The body, which could carry on all the functions of its life, yet without life, would be a machine, perfect indeed and wonderful, but a machine none the less. The thought of the age, taken by itself, uninspired by Christian truth, tends to drag down the soul, to imprison it in mere mechanism, to take from it its divine inspiration; and while we need the thought of the present age to illustrate to us the methods of God's dealings with the soul, none the less does the thought of the age need the knowledge that there is a soul. Among all the forces of the universe, the power of the soul, the culmination of them all, is apt to be lost sight of. The thought of the age tends to look upon things from without, and to lose that which is their essence. It needs the voice that shall awaken its own inner life, and thus bring it to a consciousness of the life that lies at the heart of all things.