THE NEXT STEP IN RELIGION
CHAPTER I
SUGGESTIONS
More than people are consciously aware, a new view of the universe and of man's place in it is forming. It is forming in the laboratories of scientists, the studies of thinkers, the congresses of social workers, the assemblies of reformers, the studios of artists and, even more quietly, in the circles of many homes. This new view is growing beneath the old as a bud grows beneath its covering, and is slowly pushing it aside. While the inherited outlook, still apparently so strong, is losing effectiveness and becoming a thing of conventions and phrases, the ideas and purposes which are replacing it possess the vigor and momentum of contact with the living tendencies and needs of the present.
Mankind grows away from its traditional beliefs as inevitably as does the boy or girl from childhood fancies, and often with much the same lack of realization. But the time is certain to come to both when the change is pressed home and there is need for interpretation and serious self-communing. At such a time, kindly—yet uncompromising and veracious—explanation of the nature and implications of the crisis is the course dictated by wisdom. Nothing can be more cruel, disorganizing, and, in a way, insulting than the attempt to harmonize what cannot in the long run be harmonized. The agony is then sure to be long drawn out and the strength of soul, given by fearlessness, is lost. I feel that the first law of personality is spiritual courage. Actions and methods founded on a doubt of this primary law lead to a blunting of the fine edge of the self, an injury greater than which can scarcely be conceived.
In this day of testing, when so few have been found lacking in courage and the capacity for self-sacrifice, it seems peculiarly fitting that spiritual values and beliefs be boldly thrown into the arena, there to prove themselves. In the years after the Great War, mankind must build its life afresh and it will be wisest to see that the foundation is a sound one. And, as a matter of social psychology, I doubt that a people which is unwilling to look carefully to the framework of its social and spiritual edifice can build a noble mansion. Mechanical efficiency and cleverness will not be enough for this task of spiritual creation. We must find lasting values around which to build a humane life. And this, also, is a kind of warfare. Some have expressed to me a doubt whether America is prepared for this effort at reconstruction of a basic, yet intangible, sort. I have hopes, although not blind ones. I refuse to take the vulgarities and ignorances of popular evangelists as completely diagnostic of America's soul.
In the following pages, which are devoted to a clear statement of the new view of man and nature which, in its essentials, has come to stay, I shall act according to this law of personality, to wit, spiritual courage. I shall explain the spiritualized naturalism to which we are ascending in the same spirit that the scientist presents his facts—impersonally, calmly, and simply. Such, at least, is my purpose and desire. What I write here is in its way a confession of faith. The values and loyalties which I shall proclaim as true, redemptive and invigorating are those which my own life and concrete reflection have selected. In them I see the possibility of high spiritual attainment.
The new view of the universe is founded upon, influenced by, and has for its necessary setting, the exact knowledge which the various special sciences, mental as well as physical, have been accumulating. This knowledge is rounding into something of the nature of a whole whose interpretation does not admit of doubt. Incomplete in detail though his knowledge be, man is no longer in the dark as to the main features of the world and his own origin and destiny. He knows that he is an inhabitant of a small planet in one of the many solar systems of the stellar universe, that he is the product of an age-long evolution in which variation and survival have been the chief methods of advance, that his mind as well as his body has its natural ancestry. While it will always remain a wonder, so to speak, that there is a universe in which and to which we awaken, it is equally certain that the only sensible thing to do is to seek to find out its character and laws. Is it not like exploring the chambers and corridors of a house in which one shall live for a stated period?
As a matter of fact, man has always been curious about his world. Yet before he hit upon the proper methods of investigation, he could only guess and dream about it, under the sway of hopes and fears which too easily threw themselves like gigantic shadows before him. The fire of his untrained intelligence was feeble and unpenetrating and, so, distorted the world which it dimly revealed. The result was what must be called the older religious view of the world—a view which saw personal and super-personal agency at the heart of things. This primitive interpretation of the world we shall be led to criticize, but, in so doing, we shall be the servants of truth and of a more adult spirituality.
It is not surprising that the patiently acquired knowledge, obtained by science, philosophy and a matured human wisdom, has been found to conflict with the first interpretation of the world. The recognition of this conflict dates back now some centuries—the warfare between science and religion also has its history—but each generation has seen the addition made of some new element to the clash which is leading man to a new view of the world.