* Westminster Catechism.
** Moehler's Works, quoted by Cotter Morison, Service of
Man, page 51.
What is true of Christianity is equally true of its parent, Judaism. The full stress of the Old Testament is on the necessity of the Ceremonial and not the Moral Law. While the Jews were not only permitted, but were ordered to break every Ethical commandment in the decalogue, to commit theft, murder, massacre, and acts of oppression and brigandage,—every departure from the ritual of Israel was visited by immediate and clamorous punishment. Both Judaism and Christianity make their special objective, not character, but the creed. How, then, can a movement the motto of which is "The deed, not the creed," maintain so profound a silence, or refrain even from calling attention to the positive hurt which the old religions do to the cause of righteousness? What is the defense of Ethical Culture against this charge?
If it be answered that, the churches no longer take their creeds or bibles, seriously, notwithstanding their official professions, then the Ethical lecturers should, instead of silently endorsing the hypocrisy which professes one thing and believes another, thunder against it with all their might. This should be done not from motives of hatred or combativeness, but in the spirit of faithfulness to the best interests of man. It is error, and not its victims, against which the Rationalist directs his straight and sounding blows. It was Paine's kindly advice in the French convention to kill the king and spare the man. It is the desire of Reason to destroy false teachings and to help enlighten the teacher.
The effect upon the prosperity of the Ethical Societies, both in America and Europe, of this policy of silence, has been really disastrous. Like Unitarianism, the Ethical Movement has drifted into the sheltered harbor where it hugs the wharves made fast by posts and ropes. Both these movements started out for the sea, but not a vessel flying their flags can now be encountered at any distance from the coast. Thirty years ago there were four Ethical Societies in America; there are now these same four and no more, and three of them are without any lecturers.
But not only by their silence on the injurious teachings of both Judaism and Christianity, which strike at the very foundations of moral health, but also by their attempts, incredible as it may seem, to discredit science and to seek in metaphysics, or in a sort of attenuated theology, the origins and sanctions of Ethics, the Ethical lecturers have given to decaying dogmas the support they owed to Rationalism.
In a contribution by Dr. Adler, head of the fellowship, on one of the fundamentals of the Movement, we see full traces of this deplorable effort to divorce Ethics from science, and wed her to theology.
In discussing "The Religion of Duty," the professor, instead of explaining duty in the terms of science, tries to make of it a deeper mystery even than the thrice veiled dogmas of the churches. "Duty," he says, "becomes religion when we recognize that it is not a law or a command that has a merely sensible origin, or can be explained in terms of sensible experience, that we can get to the bottom of it and thoroughly penetrate it with our understanding, or see fully the use of it. * * * It is then that we come to realize that in the moral command there is something awful." The language is not very clear—perhaps because the thought is not very clear—but we believe its meaning is that, a moral command is awful because we cannot understand it. Prof. Adler seems to make of duty a new kind of a god. The qualities and attributes of the deity he bodily transfers to his successor—Duty. Accordingly, Duty becomes just as mysterious and awful as God, and we can no more get at the "bottom" of Duty than we can understand the Deity. Duty no more than the Deity can be "expressed in terms of sensible experience," hence it is inexplicable; and the only way we can feel "the majesty and inexplicable augustness of it," says the professor, "is to draw back the curtains and see," and then "we shall find that out of this relation we suddenly get religion." I fear we get it a little too suddenly. Such rapid transformations suggest a deus ex machina.
There is serious danger of making a fetish out of the word duty. The thinking world has abandoned theism because of the impossibility of explaining in terms of sensible experience, the existence of a personal infinite; but now Prof. Adler wishes to surround his new deity, Duty, with the same "clouds and darkness" which have so long hung about the ancient divinities.
In what sense is it a compliment to the moral law to say that it cannot be "explained in terms of sensible experience"? What is gained by putting a dead wall or "curtains" between the intelligence of man and his conscience? Why sneer at the scientific explanation of the origin and growth of the moral sense by calling it "narrow, secular, materialistic and paltry," as Prof. Adler does in this lecture—when no better explanation is offered than a mere rhetorical recommendation "to draw back the curtains and see the majesty and inexplicable augustness of it"? What are these curtains? Who put them there to hide such "augustness"? If the scientific explanation of the origin of the moral sense is a "flat failure," quoting from the professor again, what is his explanation? We are really grieved to see so influential a public leader taking sides against science, the only dependable teacher we have, notwithstanding its many limitations.
Again, in his criticism of the evolutionary view, the professor says: "As against the scientific evolutionary view, I plead for what I would call the moral evolutionary view, which asserts that the moral law is a law of our nature, and in so far, the universal nature. * * * We leave the issues to work themselves out; we leave them to mightier powers than we, whose ways we wot not of." Here surely is theology—cap, cassock and all.