The coming religion must also be humane and social. Intellectual it must certainly be, but it must, too, be emotional and adoring. There are three implications in it—a spiritual nature in man, a living power in the universe, an eternal life of progress and attainment, and these are assured only by reason.
The coming religion, we may add, must be Christian in name, because Christianity as an ideal faith has worked itself into our common life. It is the soul of our laws, of our customs, of our institutions. All assume its authority; all respect its sanction. The great thinkers of the world conspire in thinking so. Thus Goethe says:
Let intellectual culture progress; let natural science extend our knowledge; let the human mind grow; it will never outstrip the grandeur of Christianity, nor its moral culture.
Strauss, in his essay on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," declares that humanity never will be without religion; and Laveleye says:
It is Christianity which has shed abroad in the world the idea of fellowship, from which issue the aspirations after equality which threaten the actual social order; it is also the influence of Christianity which arrests the explosion of this subversive force, and its principles, better comprised and better applied, will bring back by degrees peace in society.
Ours is a scientific age. There is a general demand for knowledge, a desire for demonstrated truth. Many will believe nothing that they cannot see with their eyes. In this sense, and in this sense alone, it is true that facts count for nothing in the domain of religion. But there are facts of the inner world that are quite as important as any facts in the outer world,—facts of the imagination; facts of love; facts of faith. Nothing is truer than that we are saved by hope. Science has enlarged the world; has beautified it; has made it look orderly, harmonious, poetic; but the realm of the known is very small indeed as compared with the realm of the unknown, and the more we discover, the more we find that there is to discover. The realm of the inner world is immensely large; and thousands of years must elapse before we discover its contents, if we ever do. The language of James Martineau is as true to-day as it was when the words were spoken, more than fifty years ago:
Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as, from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our comprehension.... The station which the soul occupies when its devout affections are awakened, is always this; on the twilight between immeasurable darkness and refreshing light; on the confines between the seen and the unseen; where a little is discerned and an infinitude concealed; where a few distinct conceptions stand in confessed inadequacy, as symbols of ineffable realities.... And if this be true, the sense of what we do not know is as essential to our religion as the impression of what we do know: the thought of the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind with the perception of the clear and true: the little knowledge we have must be clung to as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all our positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the surface of the infinite deep.
Shall I say that some form of theism will be the religion of America in the future? Not the literal theism of a generation or more ago, with its individual God, its contriving Providence, its supplicatory prayer, its future of retribution; nor yet the theism of Theodore Parker, of an infinite God revealed in consciousness, "the Being, infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely loving, and infinitely holy." It well may resemble the system described by Francis W. Newman in his book called "Theism," published in London in 1858. In this work he describes a religion based on conscience, without regard to any form of professed faith, yet covering in its theory and practice the whole region of ideal ethics. Different minds approach the problem from different directions. Mr. F. E. Abbot ("Scientific Theism," 1885) appeals to science; Josiah Royce printed a volume in 1885 entitled "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," wherein he pursues the line of sympathetic thought; James Martineau in his "Study of Religion" (1888), bases his system on the moral sense; but all three arrive at the same point—a supreme mind in creation.
We must be careful not to confound Theism with Deism, for though both are the same word—one Greek and one Latin—and mean the same thing, yet they stand for entirely different conceptions. Deism is a purely negative system, weighed down with denials. It is content when it has rejected what it calls all supernatural adjuncts—miracles, revelations, an inspired Scripture. Its face is set towards the past, not toward the future, and it is simply what is left of the old systems of belief, having no positive philosophy of its own. But Theism is a positive, fresh, original faith. It gazes forward, and builds on the natural consciousness of man, making no criticism on previous modes of belief. It is full of hope and enthusiasm, looking towards something that is before it, not scorning but believing. All that it needs in order to become a popular faith is a poetical element, something imaginative, symbolical, picturesque. The intellectual requirements it already possesses. It is affirmative; it is universal.
Neither must this kind of theism be identified with natural religion, unless natural religion be made to comprehend facts of the inner as well as the outer world—facts of psychology as well as of physiology; facts of mind as well as of body. Such a theism is not a mere reminiscence, either, of an ancient faith; for every form of mediatorial religion, however modified, simplified, "enlightened," as it is called, leaves something of its temper behind it. The intellect is haunted by old modes of truth; the heart lingers around the ancient places of reverence; the conscience refers to some antique authority; the soul cannot pray except in the language of a pater-noster or a psalm. A scent as of roses may hang round the human mind; but the roses will be grown in some garden of the East, not in ours. Such a theism as I am thinking of will be grounded in Ethical Law. You may call it "Christian," if you will, because the word Christian expresses the highest form of the moral sentiment, and carries a supreme authority to the human conscience; but on the human conscience it must rest. It will be a noble, pure faith, giving a welcome to all knowledge, bright with anticipation, warm with enthusiasm. As John Weiss has said so much better than I can what I mean, I will quote a passage from him. It occurs in "American Religion" (page 67):