Page images
PDF
EPUB

SIMPLICITY OF TRUE RELIGION.

FROM various wanderings to and fro in search of rest from ordinary cares or change from ordinary pleasures, bringing, I trust, some deeper sense of the abounding mystery which everywhere environs us, some added strength for tasks that lie in wait for us at every turn, some keener zest for life's unfailing joys, we have come back to-day* to this dear place, to witness once again to our abiding faith in that which was the inspiration of the men who built it here beside the streaming tides of our habitual life; namely, the power and beauty of Religion. For any who have not this faith, this is no place to come save as they come in hopes of finding it, and rejoicing with us in its unspeakable good—a good which they have never consciously enjoyed or which the average presentation of religion has compelled them to forego; even, perhaps, to doubt the existence of it altogether. All such are welcome here,

* September 16, 1877.

if haply they may feel the joy unfelt before, or suffering from some terrible eclipse. Only let no one doubt, if it comes not to him or returns not, that there is such a joy, such an unspeakable good. Because I cannot speak of it aright, pressing it home on his conviction with unerring skill, it does not follow that it is not a fact, the one great fact of life. Let him be patient, and ere long some one shall speak to him according to his need, saying what I would say if I had but the gift. And did I say, This is no place for any who have not this faith for which we stand, save as they hope to win it or recover it by coming here, I hasten to unsay it. All, all are welcome, even those who think so meanly of us as to believe that we are hostile to religion, whether because of this belief they think well or ill of us. Shame on us if we cannot convince them, orthodox or heterodox, that in nothing else do we believe so much as in the power and beauty of religion; that for nothing else are we so anxious as to spread abroad this faith, that if we lay apparently irreverent hands on this or that which some consider venerable, it is only because we would put something far more venerable in the place of it. To none in this community, or any other, Protestant or Catholic, do we subordinate our interest in religious matters, our conviction that religion is the supreme interest of human life. Low is our roof and narrow are our walls and few our company. But not St. Peter's stands and witnesses to a more earnest faith than ours in the importance of religion, and not to all the millions whose eyes are

turned to the adjoining Vatican as to the shrine of an incarnate deity do we allow a faith more deep and wide, more rich and full, more satisfying and consoling and inspiring than our own.

I know that there are those who think, or think they think, that religion is a matter of the past; that it has seen its best days and is now seeing its worst, the days of its humiliation and decay; unless they should prefer to call the days of its power and triumph its worst days, worst for mankind, and these its best because well-nigh its last. But even these would not be able to deny that in the past the religious life of man has been his most conspicuous and important interest. Religion has been the most engrossing theme of the historian; it has built the grandest buildings, written the most precious books, furnished the most illustrious men, inaugurated the most important changes in society, controlled the most far-reaching movements of mankind. Granted that there is here no argument for the continuance of any special form of religion, is there not for the continuance of religion itself? This and that belief or form may pass away, but that in the future there will be something corresponding to the religious interests and enthusiasm of the past is a conclusion difficult to avoid. Something essential to humanity there must be in that which has been so vast, so multiform, so universal, so far-dating in its manifestations. To imagine the cessation of the family or state, or of any natural function, would not be much, if any, more extravagant than to imagine the cessation of religion.

Nothing more natural than religion; nothing more inevitable; nothing more universal. But I am pledged to speak of its simplicity. Yes, but of the simplicity of true religion. Do not imagine that by true religion I mean Unitarianism or Rationalism. I mean the essential quality of all religions, orthodox and heterodox, Jewish and Christian and Mohammedan, Buddhistic and Brahmanical. No one of these is true religion to the exclusion of the rest, but there is true religion at the heart of each and every one of them. It is of this true religion that I predicate simplicity; not of the manifestations of religious life; not of the problems theological and ontological which are connected with it; not of the divine nature, nor of evolution and creation, nor of the duties which are the fit response of men to the everlasting faithfulness of God. The manifestations of religion are not simple. They are very far from being so. They are exceedingly complex. The homeliest illustration is sufficient proof of this. From such or such a hill the country people tell you that you can see fifty or a hundred steeples. I always wish I could not see so many. They do not point to heaven so clearly as to the complexity of the manifestations of religion. The more steeples does not mean the more religion, but the more theology, the more dogmatism. They do not mean more love but more of hate. Yes, the manifestations of religion are exceedingly complex. There are the great religions of the world, Christianity and Buddhism and Brahmanism and Islam, and each of these is subdivided many

« PreviousContinue »