The Story of My Mind; Or, How I Became a Rationalist

by M. M. Mangasarian

In 1888 I became acquainted with the work of the Ethical Movement, which was then establishing a branch in Philadelphia. The platform of the movement appealed to me strongly, because it was completely divorced from the supernatural. It emphasized the deed, and ignored the creed; or rather, it believed in the creed of the deed. I invited the leaders of this movement to address my society, and to explain to us in detail the philosophy of Ethical Culture. All five of the lecturers of the Ethical Societies in America successively occupied my platform in St. George's hall, and I in return occupied their platforms in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Philadelphia. This interchange of platforms resulted in my accepting a call from the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and three years later from the Chicago Society, which latter I served as its lecturer for five years.

The founder of the Ethical Societies was Dr. Felix Adler, the son of a Jewish Rabbi, who was expected to succeed his father as the spiritual head of the fashionable and wealthy Fifth Avenue synagogue in New York City. But all the other members of the fraternity of lecturers were either ex-ministers of the Christian church, like myself, or had, at one time, studied for the Christian ministry. In the beginning, the movement was consistently and fearlessly Rationalistic. Adler had a lecture on Atheism in which he boldly exposed the weakness of the theistic position. This lecture was printed and widely circulated. The other lecturers also openly antagonized the God idea as robbing the idea of the Good of the attention and love of man. The churches feared the Ethical Movement in those days, and denounced it as an irreligious institution.

But soon there appeared a change in the leader and founder of the movement, and gradually also in the majority of his colleagues. The lecture on Atheism was withdrawn from circulation, and Dr. Adler began delivering addresses on immortality, and exalting the character of Christ in the fashion of Unitarianism. All lectures in criticism of the fundamentals of Orthodoxy were as much as prohibited. Orthodox leaders were invited to preach from the platform of the Ethical Societies, and it became the ambition of an Ethical lecturer to deliver only such lectures as no church-goer would object to hear. I do not mean that Orthodox doctrines were promulgated by the Ethical lecturers, but nothing was to be said against them, if nothing could be said in their favor. The aim of the Movement was now defined to be solely the improvement of the morals of its members and of the public, and therefore, like the church, it began to fight "sin," studiously ignoring the debasing superstitions and the bondage of dogma which not only had bankrupted, both mentally and morally, whole nations, but which had also withered the greatest civilization the world had ever seen, and surrendered humanity to the keeping of "the dark ages" for a thousand years. This change in the program of the Ethical Societies greatly pleased the Orthodox world, and all fear of menace or danger to its theological interests from that direction was dissipated. Catholic and Protestant clergymen vied with each other in expressions of admiration for the work of the Ethical Societies, and all praised the tact which the leaders of the movement displayed in refraining from criticisms of the churches and their doctrines, to protest against the degrading effects of which, was the very object for which the Ethical Societies were organized in the first place. Thus it will be seen how completely the Movement came to abandon its original program. The Sunday lectures of the leaders of the Movement became, in time, so "harmless" that preachers recommended them to their flock, while the Ethical lecturers in return publicly declared that it was not necessary for a Trinitarian, a Papist or a Jew to leave his church before he could be admitted to membership in an Ethical Society. The Ethical Societies, in fact, did not encourage people to break away from their ecclesiastical connections, but indirectly, at least, advised them to support the new movement without withdrawing their support from the churches to which they belonged.

I cannot imagine that any one seriously believed that a devout Christian, or an Orthodox Jew, would join an Ethical Society for purposes of edification in morals. To do so would be equivalent to an admission that one's divinely appointed church was not satisfying one's highest needs, and to feel that way toward one's own church is to cease to believe in it. Only those then who had parted with the past, with its crushing and hampering freight of dogmas, would think of joining an organization that started as an "Atheistic," or at least, a non-religious society. But the invitation to join the Ethical Societies without leaving their own churches had the effect of drawing the new movement into closer relations with the religious bodies, which in our opinion has greatly handicapped the Ethical lecturers, and impaired their leadership in the world of thought. It is not my intention to bring a charge of deliberate surrender to the churches against the leaders of the Ethical Movement. It will be difficult to find anywhere a finer body of men than the lecturers of the different Ethical Societies in America. But they swerved from the path they had started to follow, and sacrificed a magnificent career to become an annex to the church. Not only the history of the Movement, but also the literature which it now puts forth, lends confirmatory evidence to the criticism I have made against a cause to which I once gave my heart.

That the publications of the Ethical Society as well as the Sunday lectures of the leaders, show decidedly reactionary tendencies, it will not be difficult to prove. They do this, first, by maintaining a significant silence on questions the free discussion of which would offend the churches, and in the second place, by indirectly endeavoring to bolster up, by new interpretations, the discredited dogmas of the popular religions. Either of these charges, if true, will be enough to prove that the Ethical Movement has not remained faithful to its original intentions.

It is not a secret that the lecturers of the Ethical Societies no longer publicly condemn the false teaching of the churches. These false teachings, in our opinion, form an essential part of both Christianity and Judaism, which have to be exposed and attacked vigorously and without compromise, if morality is ever to make any permanent progress in the world. It should be as impossible to reconcile Ethical Culture with the churches, as it is to reconcile theology with science, and yet, that is precisely what the Ethical lecturers think they Have accomplished. I have only to quote from authoritative Christian sources to show how prejudicial to the interests of morality is the teaching of the churches. For an Ethical Movement systematically to ignore the evil which the churches do by sacrificing reason to dogma is in the nature of treason to its own principles. The whole trend of Christian teaching is that Ethics is secondary. How can the Ethical Societies afford to ignore so fundamental an untruth? Both the established and the non-conformist churches explicitly and officially declare and teach that, "They also are to be accursed that presume to say, that every man shall be saved by the Law, or the sect that he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the Light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved." * Clearly, then, for the churches it is not ethics, but faith in Jesus, a disputed personage at the very best, which represents the highest interests of the race.

* Eighteenth Article of the Church of England.

That the same unethical doctrine forms the basis of the Reformed churches will be seen from the following:

"Much less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved, be they ever so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature; and to ascertain and maintain that they can is very pernicious and to be detested." *

The same indifference, if not contempt for morality is shown by the leading exponents of Christianity. When I was a lad of about fifteen, one of the books placed in my hand, and which I was made to regard almost as inspired as the Bible, was, Paleys Evidences of Christianity. Speaking on the scope of the Christian religion, in the second part of his book, he writes: "Moral precepts or examples, or illustrations of moral precepts, may be occasionally given, and be highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose of the mission." The meaning is clear: Christ did not come to make men moral, he came to save those who shall believe in him. And this is also the teaching of leaders like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon and General Booth. The burden of Luther's message was that "Christ had come to abolish the Moral Law." The liberty which Luther proclaimed assured the believer that even the decalogue shall not be brought into account against him, "nor its violation be allowed to disturb the conscience of the Christian." ** In the same spirit, Spurgeon cried in his London Tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, for nearly half a century: "Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do it in." And this doctrine that faith in Christ can in one instant make a man who has led a life of crime and corruption, one of God's saints, Spurgeon and his fellow-clergymen learned from Christ himself, who opened the gates of paradise to the malefactor on the cross, and in one minute wiped out all his past. This example from the gospels shows that, the preachers and the creeds in giving to morality a secondary place, are not misrepresenting the teachings of Christ. What need has a religion which can change men miraculously,—and which makes faith the sole condition of salvation,—for Ethical Culture?